Sunday, May 13, 2012
Back Up And Running
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Apologies for the lack of photos. I started off the day by jacking the car back up and giving it a
good going over and bolt-check. Mostly all in order apart from a missing rear damper nut! I found
an old one in the garage, but will have to get a couple of nylocs for this job I think - something
to keep an eye on. With that done, I set about refilling with fresh coolant, and bleeding the system. This went ok and soon enough I was all done. I later took the car out for a short drive to make sure that everything was back to normal, and it seems to be. And the end result was just a possible drip or two from the crank seal... hmmm... better than it was before though, so I'll see how it goes. |
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Bit Of A Battle
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I did a bit more on the car yesterday evening, but it started to become hard work - in trying to
disconnect the steering rack and column, the pinch bolt just wouldn't budge. I ended up spending
too long having to chop it up and beat it out. The battle continued today... Having been off and picked up the required new parts - oil seal, timing cover gasket, and new pinch bolt - I set about the job. First tricky bit was getting the crank pulley bolt undone. In the end I resorted to wedging the breaker bar against the garage floor, and breaking the torque using the starter motor. So after a short while I had the cover off, cleaned up, and then refitted. |
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Getting the pulley bolt done back up turned into something of a challenge. I couldn't get enough torque
against the compression of the engine, even with the brakes wedged on. So I had to remove the
starter motor so that I could block the ring gear. However, to remove the starter motor, requires
the engine to jacked out of the mounts so the motor can clear the footwell. Then I found that it
wasn't quite far enough, the carb heatshield was against the drivers footwell. So I ended up having
to remove the carbs to make space, which in itself in an incredibly fiddly job. After far too long, and alot of swearing, cursing, and stomping about, I managed to get it all back together and ready to receive some coolant. |
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Thursday, May 10, 2012
Might As Well Get On
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Having realised that I can't do the timing cover without removing the radiator, as I had hoped, I decided to get on with further dismantling this evening. So I dropped the coolant (and managed to not spill much), and removed the radiator. I made a start on undoing the steering rack so that it can be moved out of the way - I'm again hoping to not actually have to remove it altogther - but got a bit stuck with disconnecting the column. |
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Back In The Garage
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So, it's been a while... Nothing much has happened in that time,
mostly winter, where the car sat in storage off the salty roads. It
has been out a few times this year, on a couple of trips, but I have
been wanted to fix the crank pulley oil leak, as I don't want to
make alot of mess of the engine bay again. Meanwhile, I have been
working away on the other car project... But, a time slot has appeared, the other project is away for a couple of weeks having some work done, so I have moved the car back into my garage to have the oil seal replaced, and a general bolt-check over. To that end, I set about starting work. First thing was to get the car jacked up and onto the axle stands. I then spent a while trying to remove the fan. This was very fiddly as I could only just get at the bolt heads, and only once I'd done this, I realised that the fan won't come off with the radiator in place (I thought it might just fit)... which means that the radiator has to come out... |
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Saturday, December 03, 2011
Times Up?
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Not written anything in here for a while - there's not been alot to report, I've been using the
car on occasion for getting around locally, and haven't had any further issues since installing
the fuel filter. I've been lucky with the weather, but the roads have been gritted a couple of times recently, which might spell the end of using the car for a while. After some overnight rain cleaned the roads up, and they dried out, I ran a couple of errands in the car this morning. Afterwards I decided I should put some anti-freeze in it, so drained the water out of the cooling system, and put a mix in, and got it bled. Then just time for a quick clean and a blast with the hose around the underside. We'll have to see what the weather does as to whether it will get another run out this year, but I've managed just under 200 miles since it hit the road, so that's a nice run-in. |
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Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Fuel Filter
| So I ordered an inline fuel filter, which arrived today, so a quick hour in the garage this evening to get it fitted. I have done it in a semi-temporary way for now, partly to ensure that it all works, and also whilst I think of the best place/method to attach it. It is plumbed in and tie-wrapped to a few points to hold it in place - I gave it a quick test and it seems to work ok. |
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Monday, October 24, 2011
A Minor Breakdown
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Nice weather again yesterday, so I went out in the afternoon for a bimble around. After a while,
as I was driving through a village, there was a pretty distinct smell of petrol. I stopped to have
a look, and sure enough, it was coming out of the rear float chamber at a reasonable rate. I left
it to cool down a bit, and set about a roadside repair - I removed the lid of the float chamber
and blew through the valve, as I could see some crap in the bottom of the chamber, so this was
probably the problem. It was, but the problem then moved to the front one, so I ended up doing
the same to that! Fortunately, it stayed dry all the way back home. So this evening I removed them again to clean the float chambers all out. You can see in the photos there is some detritus in the bottom, which I think is from when I stripped a fuel hose pushing it onto the rigid pipe. I took the needles out to check them, the rear one seems ok, the front one is a bit scored, but they seem to seal ok to blowing through them. I also took the gauze filter out of the fuel pump to ensure that was clear - it has a small hole in it which is probably how the rubbish is getting through. Put it all back together and started the car - will have to see how it goes... Will think about fitting an inline filter near the carbs to prevent further roadside issues. |
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Saturday, October 22, 2011
Hit The Road!
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There's been a couple of hold ups this week on getting the car finished. Firstly, the trim strips which
I re-fixed last weekend, didn't stay fixed for long. Although the tape did, as I had to spend another
hour or so removing the tape from the car again. I've ordered some different tape to try, but not
got it yet, so that job will have to wait. Secondly, I had some problems with the wiring of one of the front indicators when I re-fitted them after the painting work. I spent an age trying to diagnose it, it seemed to be a problem in the connectors into the loom, so eventually I decided I should replace the connectors with something more modern. So after a few evenings work, I got them all done and seemingly working ok. |
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With that done, that's it! Well, that's it for now. Time to get some miles on the car and see
what goes wrong. So I pushed the car out this morning and gave it a quick wash to get all the
dust off it. Also cleaned out the inside and the glass, so it's looking fairly tidy now. It
could use a proper clean and polish, but all in good time. I took the car out for a while, and put about 30 miles on it without any problems, so that's good. More miles to come tomorrow whilst the weather has perked up a bit again. |
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Sunday, October 16, 2011
Finishing Off
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Finishing off takes ages. But I'm almost there now, I think. Well,
for some value of finished, of course. Anyways, first job for today
was a second coat of underseal on some of the areas under the floor
where the welding was done. This was followed by a second coat on
the wheel arch edges. I ran out of time yesterday to start on the
lower edge of the sills, so I prepped them and got the first coat
onto them. After a bit of a break, I was able to get the second coat on the sill edges, and then remembered that I needed to put a coat of underseal on the inside of the inner arches - particlarly where the washer bottle sits, as this is a classic rot spot. |
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Since I'm nearly done, I decided to give the wheels a good clean
while they are still off the car. They are starting to look in need
of a refurb, I suppose it has been about 20 years since they were
done! They are ok for now though, something to leave until spring I
think. Final job for today was to re-do the trim strips along the top edge of the sills. They have been starting to come unstuck for a while, so I needed to remove them, clean up all the sticky mess left behind, and then re-apply with double-sided tape. Hopefully they'll stay put... |
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Nice Day For It
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But not for still working on the car... well actually it wasn't too
bad, a nice day is always a good but of motivation for getting it
finished. So yesterday I managed to get a couple of coats of paint
on under the arches - as expected, the prep took a couple of hours,
and painting a couple of minutes. So today I continued by removing all the masking and refitting the front lights (which I had removed to make the painting job easier. |
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I then did a coat of underseal along the bottom of the floor... oh I also forgot to mention that I had done the seam sealing along the edge of the floor the other day too - I've really been cracking on this week. With that done, I got a coat of black onto the edges of the wheel arches. This took a little while as I was being very careful with it, but the results make quite a good difference to how it all looks. |