Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[CitroJim]

Excellent Yes, definitely run on the rich side, especially as it uses petroil (oil in petrol) lubrication... I saw far too many kart engines either seized or suffering scuffed pistons from running too weak...

[Zelandeth]

I did decide to lift the carb needle by another notch. This seems to have got us to the point where you can *just* see a slight suggestion of smoke from the exhaust if you're hanging your head out the door and really looking for it. Based on my limited knowledge of two strokes, I think that's a pretty good indicator that we're where we want to be. I will also read the plugs after a hundred miles or so.

I *definitely* didn't launch the circlip off the needle when I took it off.



Thankfully it didn't go all that far and I saw where it landed so no harm done.

Today the Trabant has gone away for a little holiday with a friend down by Dunstable who is going to address this bit of rust on the offside front...sill? Chassis rail? Chassill? I never know quite how you'd describe it on this car...base frames are weird.





They also spotted another bit by one of the front subframe mounts which will also be attended to while they're in there. We aren't worrying about the bit on the boot floor for now as there's not much point until the leak around the rear screen is sorted, it's miles away from a prescribed area right at the back corner, and isn't doing any harm.

This car is never going to be pretty, but my intention is to get it otherwise as well sorted as we can and knowing things like this have been properly attended to will be nice for peace of mind.

This trip was a little nail biting though in that it was the first time I'd taken the car out of town on a fast road for the first time since I'd changed the engine. Glad to report that aside from a slightly biblical smoke show after five minutes or so because we had clearly wet stacked the exhaust a bit with the local bumbling (and probably with how much oil I chucked into the new engine when I first started it) and it took a bit of time for that to burn off. The difference when buzzing down the A5 now though is like night and day, both in terms of how easily the car will maintain a ~55mph cruise and the noise levels while doing so. It's still by no means a relaxed way of covering distance on main roads, but it feels immeasurably less like it's about to spontaneously disintegrate than it used to.

While the Trabant is away I have been given this to bumble around in.







Because it's traditional for anything which visits overnight, here's a dash-at-night photo.



Occurred to me as I was setting out on the way home that despite having been messing around with classic cars since pretty much since I could walk, that I don't think I had ever actually even sat in an ADO16 until today.

Aside from an incredibly dim witted automatic gearbox it really is quite a charming little thing. It's a LONG time since I was in a car with hydrolastic suspension and I really had forgotten how well it works when it's set up properly. It's not going to beat something like a Citroen CX or DS, but she floats down the road just ironing out undulations and bumps in a way that absolutely nothing modern does.

I know quite a lot of people like to deride BMC products from this era, but it's roomy for the size of car it is, rides lovely, and with an A series up front was all tried and tested mechanical bits. I can see why they're popular in the classic scene and have quite a loyal following. Just a shame they didn't do a better job of corrosion protection of the subframes from the factory - though equally you could make similar accusations of just about any mass market car from the 60s in my experience. As was often the way with BMC though, it never really had the updates during its life span it probably should have had, and was hopelessly outdated by the time it was eventually retired.

It is kind of amusing to see the degree of badge engineering that went on with it though, and the lengths that they went to to try to make the dash in this Vanden Plas badged version look like it's a scaled down version of the one in a Rolls, even down to the black panel over to the right with most of the switchgear on it.

Quite looking forward to getting to know it a bit better over the next week or so. It's always fun getting to spend a bit of proper time with a car you'd never have gone out and bought yourself.

[mickthemaverick]

The VP version of my first ever car, which was the base Morris version!! However I got it when I was 16 and only ever worked on it and sold it before I was old enough to drive!!

[CitroJim]

Wow! I do like that posh ADO16 Zel

[Zelandeth]

I've fallen a bit behind here! Time to get caught up.

Nothing arrives on my driveway without some tinkering going on - or at the very least curious nosing around. This was of course going to be no different.



The owner had made me aware that this car was leaking a bit of oil. Turns out that it was leaking rather a LOT of oil. The whole front of the car was covered, it was literally dripping off the front valance, and had gone from just over max to well below minimum on the hour or so it had taken me to drive home.



The resulting drippage didn't just leave a puddle under the car, it left enough of a puddle that it ran clean out from under the car and off the side of the driveway. Not ideal!

The owner had had some issues with getting the oil filter housing to seal properly when they had changed the filter as the new O-ring was slightly too big. They were pretty sure they had mostly resolved this though, or so they thought. Turns out they had, the filter body to base join looked pretty dry - oil however had found the next weakest point and was basically peeing out between the filter housing and retaining bolt.



The oil was then dripping off there, being finely atomised by the air stream from the adjacent cooling fan and literally spread over the whole front end of the car.

This also turned out to be due to O-ring issues - the one which sat between the body and the washer the bolt sits against and the filter body was clearly too small to be doing anything. Swapping that for a thicker one got that oil tight again.



However I then spotted another substantial leak.



It was weeping pretty freely from around the union for the feed to the oil pressure gauge. This had somehow both managed to almost completely unscrew itself from the reducer boss it was fitted to, AND said boss had mostly unscrewed itself from the block. Simply tightening these both up sorted it. OR SO THOUGHT...

After a run today the nearside of the engine bay was nice and dry. After the car had been left sitting for half an hour or so there was a tiny drip there which I think is due to a slight weep from the crank pulley seal. It's well within the "just keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't get worse" range on something this old. However we did have quite a good puddle on the offside...which turned out to be that the oil pressure gauge union was loose again. Turns out if I'd taken it apart last time I would have spotted the cause. Originally the reducing boss was sealed against the block by a fibre washer. Said fibre washer had completely disintegrated, allowing both oil to leak out and the boss to back itself out. I didn't have any fibre washers in that sort of size in stock, but I did have copper ones - so have stuck one of those in there.



Only been on a brief run so far, but it's looking dry so far. I will keep an eye on that just in case it backs off again but I reckon it will be fine.

Something which I had noticed is that the oil pressure in this car is astonishingly consistent.



Though I did notice something which piqued my interest - that when you go from neutral into drive or reverse that the pressure dropped by about 25psi until the relevant solenoid actually engaged. Had they tapped off the engine oil feed to run the gearbox? Surely not...

It's stranger than that...no, they have run the *engine* lubrication off a relatively low pressure tap from the *gearbox* oil pump. This also explains why the oil filter housing leaked so much from what I would normally have expected to cause a pretty minor weep - that's because the filter is immediately upstream of the oil pump and before it gets to the pressure regulator which brings it down to ~100psi for the gearbox valve body (or 150psi if you select reverse). I hadn't noticed it at the time, but yes - the filter housing is way heavier than you'd normally expect, which makes sense now knowing that.

It's all in all a very strange setup, and very complicated for something intended for a mass market car like this. Surprises me as well that they went to the lengths of making it a four speed unit - a huge chunk of the market made do with three for another twenty years or so.

Stumbled across this in the glove box this afternoon.



Which I recognised from a distant memory as being the lamp holder for the heater control illumination - something I had noticed wasn't working. Which it wouldn't if the lamp holder was in the glovebox.

The fitted lamp was actually physically too large to allow it to be installed, so I went and had a rummage through my stash and found a more suitable candidate.



It is pretty dim, but the controls are so simple that all you really need is something to help you find where they are.



Isn't that just so much more welcoming than any modern car?



She is a bit tired here and there. The gearbox really does want the governor adjusted a bit, as it just bangs straight through the gears so you're in top by about 25mph irrespective of throttle position. The interior has about a thousand rattles and squeaks, and we're not convinced that the nearside front suspension displacer is long for this world, but it really is quite a charming little car.

The ADO16 is a car I'd never really given much thought to before, but it's definitely one I'd consider purely based on the strength of my time with this one.

Just hoping it stays oil tight now!

[xantia_v6]

Is the transmission governor modulated by throttle position or vacuum? If the former, then a tweak of the cable length should do wonders, or perhaps it is completely disconnected?

[CitroJim]

Excellent work Zel Love that car

[Gibbo2286]

A common fail on that auto box is loss of reverse, the blow the seals on the clutch, a lot of work to fix.

[Zelandeth]

Is the transmission governor modulated by throttle position or vacuum? If the former, then a tweak of the cable length should do wonders, or perhaps it is completely disconnected?

In true 60s/70s BMC fashion, it's a solid linkage rather than a cable. It looks like there's a track rod style adjuster on one end - but of course rather than being the relatively accessible one up by the carb it's buried down the back of the engine. There's no vacuum shift modulator on this as far as I'm aware.

A common fail on that auto box is loss of reverse, the blow the seals on the clutch, a lot of work to fix.

Reverse on this one is weak, but apparently has been that way for ages. I imagine the biggest headache in overhauling one of these is simply going to be parts availability. Once the innards are on the workbench it's not really any different to any other auto box - brake bands, a couple of clutches, a bunch of hydraulic solenoids, some shuttle valves and an oil pump. Granted, having to take the engine apart first and find somewhere to store a disemboweled engine while you rebuild the gearbox is likely to be a not insignificant amount of extra hassle too.

[Gibbo2286]

Getting it on the bench and back in is the time consumer Zel. Last one I did was on a Minivan, all that work and the cause one blown O ring, parts weren't a problem at the time there are auto box specialist suppliers.

[Gibbo2286]

For anyone interested the AP auto box story is here: http://www.austinmemories.com/styled-105/index.html

[CitroJim]

For anyone interested the AP auto box story is here: http://www.austinmemories.com/styled-105/index.html

That was a very interesting read Eric

[Zelandeth]

I'm a couple of days behind again...

I figured that it was about time I started actually making some progress on getting the Renault ready to move on. Having ignored it for a year hasn't miraculously made all the faults resolve themselves and gain an MOT, funnily enough. Why does that never work?

Step one was to stick the battery on to charge as unsurprisingly it was stone flat. It's entirely likely dead-dead given how long I reckon it's been flat, but we'll see. If I need to replace the battery it's not the end of the world.



Oil and water levels were both still exactly where I left them. With the charger hooked up, the expected background things like interior lights and the clock sprang to life.



I then made about an hour's work for myself. I couldn't remember exactly what worked and what didn't on the driver's door lock (it has the latch from the rear door on that side fitted as that kept jamming) - turns out the one thing which doesn't work is the key. The linkage however was quite happy to drop into such a place when I tried it and jammed the lock barrel - meaning I couldn't remove the key from the lock. Oops.



No amount of wiggling the key, bashing the door or swearing at it worked. I had to strip down and remove the fluffing door card to reach in and push the offending bit of linkage out the way...which took 5 seconds.

Note to self: Don't do that again.

Next thing I planned to do was replace the bit of fuel line which had decomposed by the pump. However I bought that hose the best part of a year ago, and I'll be damned if I can find it. Have now ordered some more... that's a sure fire way to make it immediately reappear I'm sure. Once that's fitted the car will hopefully be back into a state where it can actually run and drive. My *hope* is that I can find someone to then take it on as it stands. However if that fails I'll jump through the necessary hoops of getting it an MOT first - though if you want it stupidly cheap as it stands (well, once it's running again anyway), I'm open to insulting offers at the moment.

I know it needs three fairly small bits of welding (one bit on a chassis outrigger where someone jacked the car in the wrong place god knows how long ago, and two bits on the inner wings where the seam sealant has failed and the seam has been attacked), a door latch so the rear driver's side door can be opened without having to body slam it from inside while someone holds the handle outside, and a pair of drop links fitted - though I can probably do that given the only tool needed is a pair of circlip pliers and I now have a pair that I *think* will fit.

Rusty bits, photos taken a couple of days ago.





This is an older photo, though given the car hasn't seen any salt, or indeed many miles at all since it was found I don't imagine it's much worse now.



I'll be crawling around on that side when I fit the fuel line so will grab an updated photo then.

The other thing the car really needs is a head gasket. There's some oil contamination in the cooling system, though it's never pressurised it, and the oil has always stayed clean - so it's not failed catastrophically. The car has also never to my knowledge overheated.

It was finding this contamination that had me stop using the car as I didn't want to have it fail catastrophically and cause major damage - so hopefully should just be a case of remove head, clean everything up, have the head checked and cleaned, then reassemble.

Gasket, head bolts, camshaft seals, I think valve stem seals, timing belt etc has already been sourced (I just need to sift it out from this box full of Trabant and Rover bits!).



The radiator also looks pretty tired though is leak free - so when I came across someone who actually had a new Nissens one in stock I grabbed that - that will also come with the car.

It's a really rare car now, and is a lovely thing to drive (or even just sit in!), but I just don't have the time or patience that it really deserves - especially as finding parts is now quite a headache as so many of the breakers overseas I used to use now refuse to ship to the UK. So time for someone else to have a bash at it before it decays any more just sitting on my drive. If nobody will take it on as a project as it stands I will get enough work done to get it mobile with a fresh MOT on it - but I'd really rather not have to invest the time and energy that I really don't have to spare for it to get that done if I can avoid it.

Additional report on VP oil tightness. Definitely improved.



We do still have a bit of a drip for a couple of minutes after parking up on the offside, but orders of magnitude less than it was. I'd say based on that it seems like there's a fair bit of oil in the bell housing that we could be looking at a tired crank seal on this side as well. At least that's what I'd guess without digging any further. It's masses better than it was though, I really wasn't comfortable using the car as it was when it arrived out of concern for other road users.



It seems to be a car which everyone just likes out and about - well, except for the impatient guy in the Tesla who spent ten miles so close to me on the way back from Buckingham that I couldn't even see the front of their car in my mirrors, and eventually overtook me via a gap which really wasn't big enough. He really wasn't amused when ten minutes later I ended up pulling up next to him at the Stoney Stratford A5 roundabout and waved cheerfully to him as I went past and he had to wait in the queued traffic waiting to go down the A508 which was backed up for some reason. It's the little things in life that you have to enjoy...

[myglaren]

[CitroJim]

Excellent! Be good to see the Renault alive again Zel and a shame it's not staying with you - I know just what an absolutely lovely car it is

The Transverse A-Series was never that oil-tight so what you see is likely quite normal now - plus there's always a bit of residue that drips after the big leaks have been fixed...

Where the VDP is parked in the bottom photo is where my Bluebell will be parked tomorrow morning when we visit Costa for our post-Junior parkrun coffee