De Lorean EuroTec

Got the backing plate for the coil area done with the platers stuff and renewed the back seal, it's won't be seen with the coil cover but nice to know it's looking nicer behind it I suppose

The front door striker support body tub bracket was in very bad shape on drivers side. One third of it seemed to be missing or rotted out. A serious pig to get off with all the sealant/glue holding it to the tub but eventually with patience it finally came off.

Not sure if the part is even available but will have to sort something

The tub side after removal and the remains left after 40 years

Steering rack was needing sorting next, thought it would just need a clean up and a paint but when I inspected it closer found some notchyness on the tie rod bars something wasn't right.. Took off the boot and cleaned the grease off and found a craic in the tie rod jam nut.

Not sure how it got like that but needless to say not safe

In the end the Rack had to be fully rebuilt with newly made tie rod bars jam nuts, shims and bearings to match. It feels so much nicer and taught with zero play in comparison to before it should make a big difference to the steering feel I'm hoping.
Looking forward to fitting it.

Top updates! That rack looks great - will make a massive difference!

Started rebuilding the brake calipers and hand brake mechanism. Everything cleaned down re zinc plated and or replaced. Internals greased up to hopefully work as intended.

After assembling the hand brake mechanism tried testing it out as best I could think of to simulate it working on the car and to see if the self adjusting system was working.

I marked the inside pawl drum with a marker to see if it changed position. I tried first with the covers off by inserting the long adjustment bolt and then ratcheting the lever arms to simulate the hand brake cables being used.


The system seemed to work , the extra pull I was exerting to simulate low pad wear was making the ratchet spring pull the long adjustment bolt further into the pawl drum threads by the outside teeth rotating on the ratchet spring.
I then closed the covers up fully as if it was on the car and tried the ratcheting again. Bit of a pita to do cause with the covers on you can't see if the pawl drum ratcheted and moved accordingly. Took the covers off and was able to confirm with the mark I made it had indeed moved as expected.
Buttoned everything back up again to move onto the other side and test that one

Tried the other hand brake caliper with the same test. It worked fine with the covers off but when I put the cover on something wasn't right. I was not getting the ratchet to move the pawl drum. Also there was no ' feel' that ratchet action was working, just alot of movement but not much else.
It took me a while to figure out but then found out why. The outside cover was damaged.
The cover has bulbous concave mound on the outside. This was alot 'flatter' on this caliper compared to the other one, also the rest of the plate had curved inwards slightly down the length.

That extra concave shape in the outer cover is needed to give the necessary clearance for the ratcheting pawl spring and drum to work. When the cover was tightened down with the screw to lock it in place, it was touching the pawl spring and drum thus not allowing it to move and rotate onto spring.

These covers are no longer available spare as I understand it, So I had to do a bit of manipulating with some heat and a ball pein hammer to get to bend the cover back outwards and make the hollow more pronounced again

A bit crude but It seemed to do the trick, re tested it and all checked out thankfully..

The pad return spring fork hold down bolts were replaced with new but under closer Inspection they are not quite the same as originals. They have a flat bottom instead of the cone shaped tip to them.

When test fitting them they would not fit correctly into the caliper housing and would not thread fully seated.
They were also slightly longer than the oem s aswell.

In the end filed them down to match the oem