Sweating the Small Stuff: Cooling, Pedals and Insulation

When building or restoring a kit car, it is often the little details that make the biggest difference to how the car actually drives and feels. This week, I spent some time ticking off a few of those smaller jobs that had been lingering on the to-do list.

First up was a minor but annoying issue with the cooling system. I had noticed that the coolant cap overflow dripped a little bit and consistently lost a very small amount of water over time. After taking a closer look at the cap, I realised the issue. It was the short neck version of the classic radiator cap you typically get on these cars. They actually come in two different lengths, one with a long neck and one with a short neck. It turns out my thermostat housing should have been fitted with the longer neck cap all along. Swapping it over to the correct longer version completely solved the bubbling and water loss problem.

While I was still working on the plumbing, I decided to replace the heater control valve for the cockpit heaters. The old unit technically still worked, but it had become very stiff and seized up over the years, meaning it did not really operate properly from inside the car. Swapping it out was an easy job.

Moving inside the car, the original pedals were looking incredibly tired, with the rubber grips heavily worn and literally falling off. To fix this, I bought a fresh set of aftermarket bolt-on pedals and installed those. It is a simple visual upgrade, but it makes the driving experience much nicer and provides a lot more confidence underfoot.

Finally, I started putting in the last bits of sound and heat insulation across the cockpit floors. The goal here is to try and reduce the amount of road noise and engine heat that inevitably soaks through the floorpans and the firewall. It is a slightly fiddly job measuring and cutting the material to size, but it will make the car a far more comfortable place to be on longer runs.