MkI Sprite - Froggy

[ribbit]

A repost of my About Me thread from the old forum.

Hi All,

Thought I might as well introduce myself. My name is Robert and I am the proud new owner of a black MkI Sprite.

I got a taste for Frogeye's recently when I hired a leaf green one for my dad's 70th birthday up in the Lakes. It was great fun, and we covered over 200 miles between us, so the following weekend I went to look at one I'd had my eye on for a little while... I finished up buying it. ;D

I haven't actually taken delivery of the car yet, but here are a couple of pictures I took when I went to look at it.





I am gradually getting to grips with what is original and what has been modified. The car was restored around 2005, and it now has a 1275cc engine, a Peter May straight-cut gearbox, electronic ignition, front disc brake conversion, spax adjustable suspension, and a rather nice chrome finished K&N filter. Externally the car has been left looking fairly original, which is the big appeal for me, and it is all steel, though I understand that black was never an original colour (though there was a black one on the original sales literature - I must try get hold of a copy of this).

I don't intend for the car to just sit in the garage, I want to get out there and drive it - hence my choice of one that can keep up with modern traffic. I hope to meet some of you when I'm out and about.

I'll post up some more pictures up when it arrives.

Are there any more AH owners on here from in and around Cheshire?

Cheers,

Robert

[ribbit]

Well he finally arrived yesterday on the back of a truck at 6.20 am!

I managed to take him out for a couple of drives yesterday and he feels great, and then Paula (ribbitfriend from above) helped me to get the frog ready for his debut on the AHC stand at the Classic Car Show at Tatton Park today.

So without further ado, here are a few better piccies of the frog himself:









I'll post some photos of the show up later in the events section.

Cheers R.

[ribbit]

I finally managed to get a week off work last week to take Froggy up to the Lakes and what does the weather do? It chucked it down for almost the entire week.

Was a lovely day on the way up last Sunday, and I really enjoyed the drive up, which took just under 3 hours. I arrived with a slightly numb bum and a slight ache in my accelerator foot, but still with a big grin on my face. A Cobra and a kit car said hello on the way.

My mum's car was demoted to the driveway and Froggy found his way into their garage, and stayed there most of the week, until Friday when the sun deemed to come out, and my dad and I took him for a trip to a point above High Newton with a view out over the Lyth Valley and Morcambe Bay (piccies below), and then came back via Cartmel. Great afternoon out and I think my dad enjoyed his turn at the wheel.









On the way back we popped into the local BMW dealership for a cuppa and to say hello to the service manager, who we know pretty well. Here are a couple of pics of Froggy with some BMW friends.





The journey back yesterday afternoon was rather wet. Full weather gear and froglights on. The wipers worked better than I thought, even on the motorway, though they deemed to pack up the moment I got the car back into the garage at home. Got a bit wet inside with the wind blowing rain in between the window and roof and I now have a some rather soggy carpet under the seats which I am in the process of drying out - need to see if I can sort both of these before I next go out in the rain.

Pretty good for a first road trip, and the engine ran great there and back. Next job is to change to a thicker oil as the new engine has now covered over 500 miles.

Cheers R.

[ribbit]

Well Froggy is getting nastier by the day! Yesterday I did a little bit more re-wiring and put a toggle-switch on the fan circuit so I can control the fan from inside the car. Turned out to be a pretty easy job.

This morning looked bright and sunny, so I took him out for a quick spin. The engine definitely got up to temperature much more quickly, which will be a big help when the air coming in is even colder, but I had to pop the fan on when the temp gauge kept climbing past 175F. This brought it back down to more like 165F. So it looks like I might need to run the fan even when driving at a decent speed, thus I think a thermostatic control is going to be necessary.

Sadly I didn't get very far before the rain started. I was glad I had the tonneau on and had just unzipped the drivers side, but I think a roof would have been better. :'D I was getting quite wet by the time I got home.

Driving in the wet was a bit interesting - a couple of times the rear wheels span up pulling away, and once they were still spinning in second gear! Wasn't a problem, but it certainly woke me up! Is this normal or do I need some new rubber? There is plenty of tread, but I am not sure how old the tyres are. My other car is RWD, but it only ever span the rears when they got worn below about 3mm, but then it does have wussy traction control on it.

Cheers R.

[ribbit]

Have spent a happy afternoon polishing the frog. His radiator grille is has had the effect of a cheese-grater on my fingers, but it looks so much better for a good autosol'ing. He looked so good when he was done, I couldn't resist a couple of laps of the block and a quick dart through the runway tunnels. ;D

Anyway, here are some pictures:









Cheers R.

[ribbit]

Well he may be a beautiful little frogeye, but he certainly wasn't a mechanically sound one. Having decided that the old wire wheels were past their best and sourced some new ones, I inspected some of the suspension components and discovered that most of the bushes were perished, and I also discovered a small fuel leak from the petrol tank, so I booked him into Merlin Classics in New Mills to be fixed up ready for his MOT. Alan, the owner, put him in for his MOT first to see what he failed on, and he came back with a two page MOT failure sheet!

Most of the problems were front suspension related, but there was also an issue with the front brake pipes, the handbrake and a few other things. Whilst the car was apart, we found a couple of other things wrong, so they got fixed too. So here is a list of what he has had done:

* Wishbone pans, pins and bushes
* Front springs - now uprated fast road springs
* Front dampers inc. rethreading one of the bolt holes
* Front brake pipes and hoses, rerouted with less junctions
* New mounting bracket for one of the wishbones
* Clean up halfshafts and change diff oil
* New rear wheel bearings
* Service rear brakes
* Replace clevis joints
* Rear dampers - Spax adjustables again, but correct size for car
* New seal round fuel tank sender

Then he went for a little trip to see Ike at Chatsworth Motor Spares in Chesterfield for a little light tuning. There he got:

* New throttle linkage
* New throttle cable
* Pretty much all the jets changed :'D

He felt like a different car on the way home. Smooth throttle, no misfires, and he wanted to keep pulling - it was all I could do to restrain him to 70! ;D The suspension changes have made a huge difference too - no longer does the back end crash over bumps - and he feels much more precise going into corners. Shame it was wet on the way home - I need to take him out for a play in the dry now - but I am very happy with him now.

So besides having a much lighter wallet - two weeks in a garage doesn't come cheap - I have a somewhat cloudier view over the competence of the person who did the original restoration and the dealer who did his last MOT.

On the plus side, Froggy is now very much the car that I thought I was buying and I should be able to enjoy driving him properly.

I will post some piccies of his new bits up when it is dry enough to take some.

Cheers R.

[ribbit]

A few pics of Froggy's recent changes.

New wheels - same 13x4J size, but much shinier


New springs, dampers, wishbone pans, brake lines, track rod ends, king pins and trunnions


New exhaust bracket and rear dampers - spax adjustables again, but the right size this time!


New wishbone bracket - excuse the road dirt


Old seat base and cushion - shocking condition!


Cheers R.

[ribbit]

Just a couple of piccies from our holidays in the Lakes. Weather was not bad, but on the day we went up to Keswick it kept trying to drizzle and wasn't terribly warm, so the roof went on after our morning coffee stop at Whinlatter. Then it was off to Buttermere and over the top via Newlands before going back through Keswick. Fun day out and my dad enjoyed his drive of the rejuvenated Froggy.





Cheers R.

[ribbit]

I haven't updated this thread in a while. I took these on my way home from today's show.







Cheers R.

[ribbit]

Been a few months since I posted any pics. The frog has been out and about when the weather has been fit over winter and today we went for a little run out sans roof. A little photo stop at a rather pretty little church and then parked up by a lake and had an icecream. Is it really only the first week in March!





The only slight problem is that I was supposed to be cleaning the inside of the car ready for the indoor show in a couple of weeks... I only had time to vacuum the carpets as I'd been out having fun all afternoon! :'D

Cheers R.

[ribbit]

Been a while since I've updated this thread. A few interesting developments over the last few weeks...

Gearbox
Biggest change is the fitting of a Frontline 5-speed gearbox kit - based on a Ford gearbox - despite only supposed to take a few hours to fit, finished up taking several days. Gearbox feels nice in the car, but the closeness of the gates is going to take a little getting used to. A shorter gear lever is also likely to be needed, along with some thought over what to do with the domed housing that sits round the base of the gearstick - it doesn't fit as the shaft is about an inch further towards the rear of the car.

On a side note, I was hoping to get a decent trade in on my "Peter May straight-cut racing gearbox"... which turns out to be a standard gearbox with a fair bit of metal sloshing around in the oil. It seems that the description has been embellished somewhat from the "entrusted to Peter May Engineering for rejuvenation" in the first auction ad I can find for it!

Rear Main Oil Seal
This is a supplementary seal that fits behind the scroll seal on the rear of the engine. It was a kit from Frontline. It needed a little work to get it to fit, but should prevent those annoying oil drips after you stop the engine.

Diff
Has been off the car again and is confirmed as a 3.9, and fresh oil and seals fitted. This will be being replaced in a few months when I decide what to fit. The speedo is a mile out at the moment, but no point recalibrating it until I know what diff is going in - I'm using my satnav as a speedo temporarily. If anyone knows a good place to get it recalibrated, please let me know.

Starter Motor
Turns out that the one fitted was off god knows what. It had too many teeth and was not doing the flywheel much good. This has now been replaced with one from Moss.

Clutch Slave Cylinder
This has been replaced as the old one succumbed to the stiffer new clutch that is part of the 5-speed kit. Clutch feels marginally heavier, but being able to find first gear on the first attempt means I won't need keep my foot on the clutch quite so long!

Need to do some proper tests with the gearbox and monitor engine revs and compare to previous results. I'm after reducing revs in 5th whilst still maintaining decent low end acceleration.

Cheers R.

[ribbit]

Just a quick update. Managed to get a run with a passenger who was brave enough to try to write whilst moving. The new gearbox ratios are pretty much the same as the original ratios from 1 to 4, with 5th dropping the revs by approx 700rpm at 70mph. So, it looks like I will be sticking with the 3.9 diff, but will hopefully a new one will be somewhat quieter.

The car doesn't seem to have reacted to well to having its engine out - the throttle was not closing off properly, and idling at 3500rpm isn't particularly helpful round town - a second throttle return spring has cured this for the moment, but I have a new throttle cable to fit at some point.

I also had a small water leak on the top hose and the electric fan thermostat seems to have given up the ghost. The two are likely related as the capillary tube for the thermostat goes into the top hose and I nipped up the jubilee clip to stop the leak. Leak has been sorted with a Kenlowe grooved rubber ring (not a sex aid) which allows the tube to enter the hose without risk of crushing it. I have bought a new thermostat switch and will swap them over when I finish decorating.

Once the car is back to good running order, I'll order the diff and get it fitted, then we'll go and see if we can get the speedo sorted. In the meantime, I may see if I can create a temporary paper scale on the computer, so I don't need the satnav all the time.

Cheers R.

[ribbit]

Managed to sort the electric fan thermostat today. Fairly easy job - just dropped a few pints of coolant, remove top hose, swap thermostat bulb, hose back in, coolant back in and test.

It seems that the thermostat bulb had been inserted the wrong way round when the radiator was reassembled - it should go into the radiator, not down the top hose towards the engine - that's the benefit of having the destructions to hand when fitting.

I don't think that was the cause of it not working though, as when the engine temp was reading 212F, it still didn't cut in and there is no way the top hose is that much cooler!

The override switch works a treat - it illuminates when the fan is running, so I can monitor how often it cuts in. I'd recommend fitting one just for that feature if you have an electric fan or are considering fitting one.

Test run was good fun, but I had to work the engine quite hard to get it anywhere near the temp that the fan cuts in. ;D

Cheers R.

[bbh]

Excellent, given me some motivation to get my BT7 thread copied over. Did your original posts have photo bucket links? - I know that it is something that I'll have to deal with, since although the are working at the moment, I don't expect it to last long.

[ribbit]

Photos hosted on my own site, so very easy copy and paste job. Changing photobucket links is going to be fun for those that have to do it. If you can keep the image filenames the same, you might just be able to do a search and replace on the first part of the link.