Which at first glance looks very like the last photo from yesterday - if you look closely though you can see how the window rail has now been evenly clamped down to the door top which has helped remove the slight bend it had in it before.
For the sake of completeness, here's a "before" photo looking at the bottom of the window runner from inside the car (photo is of the nearside door, but they had identical issues).
Looking at the same spot now at the front and rear of the door:
The only thing I still need to do there is to put a blob of sealant in the end of the stainless steel channel so that water is forced to drain through the dedicated drain holes rather then just running out of the front or back of the channel, straight over the inside of the door.
A bit of paint wouldn't go amiss either but that's a bit further down the priority list.
The channel rubber is pretty knackered but is far better than what was in there before which was about 40% missing. This does at least securely hold the glass now, whereas the window panes could rattle both in the frame and against each other before.
Very much hoping that this is a job I won't need to do again.
Not content with having lost half my body weight in sweat in the morning, I ventured back into the garage in the afternoon.
My willingness to do anything besides hide in front of an air conditioner when it's anywhere north of about 20C outside is next to non existent under normal circumstances.
I'm trying to maintain momentum with this though so dragged myself back outside. I've really been enjoying buzzing around in this little car the last couple of days now I think I'm starting to get a better feel for it. I don't want to end up putting off sorting things and ending up another year down the line with it barely getting used.
Having got the door back together it was time to reattach the gear selector to the gearbox.
This job is most easily done from underneath, though jacking the car up would have meant taking the car out of the garage and working beneath the deadly ball of death that is the sun today. Not happening.
I wanted to inspect the pulleys, CVT belt and check the oil levels in the gearbox and diff - all of these things want the rear service hatch in the cabin out, so figured I'd just work from above like last time.
When the new pulley set was installed a few hundred miles ago there was quite a bit of surface oxidisation on the primary pulley, I'm glad to report that just normal use appears to have resolved that. They've both got a lovely satin smooth texture now which is exactly what you want.
Belt also seems happy enough. The manual states very clearly that cracking between the teeth on the belt will happen early during its life, is absolutely normal and shouldn't be considered a sign of impending failure, so I'm not worried about that. It still seems nicely pliable and there aren't any signs of fraying around the edges or anything like that.
It's really noticeable that before the pulleys were replaced that this whole area used to get covered in finely atomised belt material during any run. No noticeable deposits anywhere since last time I was in here though so that behaviour seems to have been purely down to surface corrosion on the old secondary pulley.
The gear selector was originally attached to the selector arm on the box by a roughly 1/4" diameter roll pin, held in place by a split pin. I was missing this because the replacement selector I fitted (the original one in TPA was totally siezed) didn't have it, and no amount of effort was able to shift the original one from the linkage. Originally I fitted a bolt in this location and used a locknut arrangement to try to stop it loosening itself over time. Apparently this didn't work as since then I've lost two bolts.
Annoyingly the replacements I have, presumably because they're a metric size, don't fit. The smallest size I've got that fits drops straight through, the next size up won't fit. Adding an extra washer to the smaller one adds enough length that I can't then get the split pin in. So we will need to use a bolt then for the time being.
It was at this point I had a bit of a brainwave. There are two pivot joints on the gear linkage of this type. The lower one (the source of my problem) attaches to a rod which acts as a see-saw before attaching to the gear selector on the gearbox itself nearer the top of the box.
So I took the standard coupler out of the top pivot and installed that in the hard to get to bottom location. I then fitted a bolt and lock nut to the top one.
The fact that I can actually get to it makes it possible to easily do the locknut up *way* more tightly than I probably managed last time. I also put a blob of thead lock on it.
At least if it does drop off again in future replacing the thing will be a five minute job as it's dead easy to get at.
I do get the impression that I may need to look at replacing the gearbox seals at some point though...
Yes, I am indeed still out of gloves.
The box has always been quite oily but never actually seems to drip anything so I'm not worrying about this too much in the short term but it would be nice to get that sorted.
While I had access to the rear of the bulkhead because the service hatch was out I also replaced the self tapping screws that were holding the fire extinguisher bracket in place as they had (unsurprisingly) stripped their holes out so the thing wobbled around madly and rattled while driving. Bolts and nice big washers were instead employed which has made the extinguisher sit far more securely in place and far less likely to launch itself off the bulkhead if I were to brake too sharply. Given how loose the screws were I'm honestly surprised it hadn't already done so.
I'd been literally dripping with sweat since about two minutes after leaving the house so called time at this point before I wound up passing out from heat exhaustion (showing 36C in the garage by the time I called it). I'll check the gearbox and diff oil levels tomorrow before I button the service hatch back up and call this round of work done.
