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

[admiral51]

Sorry Jim but i think you may have just landed yourself into a whole heap of trouble

"Easy test - suck on it and see if you can draw horrible tasting pertroly/oily air through it..."

Now taste is a subjective sense, me thinks you may need to demonstrate the taste buds you have in person

Colin

[mickthemaverick]

I think it's possible you may have found a much quicker test for Covid there Jim, if you suck a vacuum pipe on your dizzy and can't taste petrol/oil then you may have Covid!!!

Of course if you already have Covid you won't be any good at checking your advance retard!!

[Zelandeth]

Ignition system will obviously be first port of call. Ignition amp will probably be first on the list as it's something that I can test by substitution really quickly and simply. Distributor will get a good going over obviously, as will a lot of things I imagine!

Nothing huge to report today. Just took the HT leads back off TPA and gave them a clean and wipe down with some silicone spray to help keep the water off.



While I was at it I made a spacer out of a couple of cable ties to keep the lead to the nearside cylinder and the king lead separate. I'm sure I've got some actual spacers from back in my "grab anything not welded down from an old Saab in the scrap yard" days somewhere in the garage, so it'll be replaced with a proper one one day.



Really do need to actually order a new distributor cap and rotor arm already!

[CitroJim]

I think it's possible you may have found a much quicker test for Covid there Jim, if you suck a vacuum pipe on your dizzy and can't taste petrol/oil then you may have Covid!!!

Of course if you already have Covid you won't be any good at checking your advance retard!!

I shall see if I can patent it

I've had Covid and know exactly what it's like to loose both sense of taste and smell Great way to loose weight as you just don't want to even try to eat...

And as the sensations return food tastes revolting and everything smells odd... Takes a while to resolve...

Sorry Jim but i think you may have just landed yourself into a whole heap of trouble

"Easy test - suck on it and see if you can draw horrible tasting pertroly/oily air through it..."

Now taste is a subjective sense, me thinks you may need to demonstrate the taste buds you have in person

Colin

I should revisit this Colin and post-Covid the taste experience when testing the capsule may now be different!

[Zelandeth]

Thursday delivery date has now been confirmed with both the current owner and delivery agent. The BX will be getting picked up on Wednesday and then should arrive with me somewhere between 0900 and 1000 on Thursday morning.

Regarding taste, the worst I've done lately was managing to get a mouthful of diesel when re-priming the heater on the van a while ago. By no means whatsoever the worst taste I've come across (I think EP90 probably wins there), but it took DAYS to get rid of it!

[CitroJim]

Thursday delivery date has now been confirmed with both the current owner and delivery agent. The BX will be getting picked up on Wednesday and then should arrive with me somewhere between 0900 and 1000 on Thursday morning.

Excellent, all the best for it to all go smoothly

Ever tasted LHM? It has the most disgusting taste ever

[Zelandeth]

Thursday delivery date has now been confirmed with both the current owner and delivery agent. The BX will be getting picked up on Wednesday and then should arrive with me somewhere between 0900 and 1000 on Thursday morning.

Excellent, all the best for it to all go smoothly

Ever tasted LHM? It has the most disgusting taste ever

Yeah, LHM is up there with EP90 for me. The thing when I got diesel in my mouth though wasn't so much how foul it was, which to be honest wasn't really notable beyond "unpleasant" really, it was that it was inescapable for days afterwards! At least LHM is absolutely vile but you get rid of it pretty quickly.

Managed to spill a bunch of EP90 on the exhaust manifold of the Lada once (the steering box, which takes EP90, is helpfully positioned about 0.3 nanometres from the manifold on RHD cars), and the stench as it started burning off was beyond words. I literally had to do an emergency stop, bail out and just wait for it to clear.

[admiral51]

Sorry had to Google EP90 and seems it is the same stuff that comes out when you remove the half shaft on a HGV when it is about to be towed, that stuff is only comparably to the nuclear waste produced by babies.

Do not ask about the taste, suffice to say the smell of both lasts for months maybe decades

[Zelandeth]

Yesterday afternoon I had a bash at sorting out the ball joints which there was some play in, the worst of which was the one between the steering knuckle and the drag link. Didn't take much work to find that!



It turned out though that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the ball joint...The nut just hadn't been tightened up properly, the clonk was the taper moving against the seat rather than actual play in the joint. I got at least an additional two or three turns on it...Then surprise surprise, there was no play in there any more. Having a closer look revealed that they were all like that with the exception of the one I'd already changed.

Back to today - I wanted to finish up the work on the brakes. This meant making the adjustment to the brake yoke assembly to account for the different rest position on the new master cylinder. The easiest solution to this I'd figured was to drill a new hole in the yoke slightly further back, and slightly further up to provide a little additional mechanical advantage to account for the fact that the new master cylinder has a slightly wider bore (which in theory would make the brakes heavier to operate), though the other reason for moving upward slightly was to ensure that I stay well clear of the original pivot point, the last thing I wanted was to have a drill slip cause damage to that - plus one of my goals with pretty much any of the improvements or modifications I've been doing should all be things which can be reversed in the future should I/any future owners want to. A blob of weld and a bit of paint will be all that's needed to get rid of this hole if someone was so inclined.

Before I could do that though I needed to get the yoke detached from the car (as the support frame is in the way of where I'd be wanting to drill). You don't actually need to remove the steering tie rod, indicator wiring etc - just these two bolts (one of which required a LOT of effort to initially crack off).



With these out there's enough reach on the wiring and flex in the steering tie rod ball joints to rest the yoke against the seat to work on it.



I actually did this the right way for a change, using a centre punch, small pilot drill and progressively drilling out to 8mm (which is pretty much spot on what the original hole was measured at).



Tidying up from doing this and getting ready to reassemble things, I then dropped the pin from the clevis and lost it.

Or rather I *thought* I had dropped the pin and lost it.

Can you see it?



How about now I've turned the flash on?



I wasted the best part of half an hour hunting for that blighter...which I had of course actually put back exactly where I meant to, right next to where I was working.

On the plus side, while crawling around on my hands and knees I *did* find the similar pin which I lost from the gear linkage back when I did the engine swap!



So that's a bonus, I'll get that cleaned up and refitted next time I've got the rear service hatch out.

Now I had fully expected getting things back together to be a pain. Having moved the pin forward in the yoke meant that there was no longer clearance to get it into the hole it needed to go into. Eventually a combination of a bit of levering to flex the yoke to one side and loosening the master cylinder off got it in there. It was a bit of a faff, but I knew that going in. This isn't something that you're going to need to remove all that often (hopefully!) so I'm not too bothered that it's a bit fiddly.

With things reassembled I was rewarded by a much more reasonable feeling brake, and after another thorough bleeding session (turns out there was still a lot of air trapped in the front circuit) and we were rewarded with this amount of travel.

Brakes fully released:



Brakes firmly applied:



That looks (and feels) about perfect to me. I can get about another 3/4" if I really hang on it.

I think we're now at the point where I need to find out if this whole messing around has been a gigantic waste of time or if my brakes still work (I'd not complain if they're better too!).

I need to run a couple of errands tomorrow, if it's not tipping it down with rain I will probably treat that as my test run.

So...What's been done since she was last out?

[] Distributor condenser remotely mounted and remote start switch fitted. Can't 100% remember if that was actually done before or after I started pulling things to bits now!

[] All brakes cleaned, pads de-glazed and adjusted.

[] Offside rear wheel cylinder replaced (due to seized bleed nipple).

[] Split circuit brake master cylinder (Triumph Spitfire) fitted, requiring slight modification of yoke.

[] Rear brake flexible lines replaced.

[] Driver's seat frame bolted to rear runner to stop it wobbling.

[] Got rid of a few kg of flashband from the rear service hatch.

[] Sealed the bungs around both the heater/choke control cables and gear linkage.

[] Cylinder head temperature gauge installed.

[] Front mud guard removed and straightened out (still need to re-fit that).

[] Dayco HP2020 CVT belt fitted.

Aside from a bit of miscellaneous wiring tidying I think that's everything...Hopefully I've not made things worse than they started!

Clear a few bits and pieces out of the way then we should be all set for a test drive tomorrow.



Determined to get this sorted out before I get...sidetracked...by the arrival of another vehicle later in the week.

[Zelandeth]

Before I could conduct a test drive of the Invacar (which involved a run out to get essential supplies) I had a couple of minor jobs to finish. Reattaching the front mud guard and draining off a bit of brake fluid as the pressure bleeder as usual left the reservoir too full.

Job done.



Mud guard is still a bit scruffy but given the location I think it's absolutely fine.

Also found an ideal stowage location for my cover prop (which is actually one of the old floor mat retaining strips).



So on to the test drive. Well, after ten minutes of car Tetris anyway. Slightly concerned by whatever on earth this is under the Jag that it left behind when moved.



Nothing has visibly dropped, though given the capacity of most of the fluids on this thing that doesn't mean much!

Answers on a post card? Wondering if there's just enough oil leakage that it's emulsified with the recent rain?

I have proven that there's ample room to park the inbound BX behind the Xantia.



If the Jag and Xantia can fit there, Xantia and a BX should have room to spare.

In the Invacar we got almost exactly 20 miles covered today.



Which I think gives the game away that the test was successful as otherwise I'd have turned around pretty much immediately and headed back to base.

Instead we got all the errands run without incident. Yes I diverted by 1/4 a mile to take a couple of photos to prove she's actually moved.





Observations:

Really wish I'd done this sooner. The difference in braking performance really is night and day. Previously you had a degree of free travel followed by an inch or so of very firm travel where all braking effort took place.

Now there's more travel - but delivering progressive braking throughout. It used to be just about possible to lock a wheel if you absolutely threw your weight on the bars, but it took a lot of effort. Now I'd say the effort required to deliver that amount of braking force is on par with any other car that doesn't have ABS. The overall feel of the brakes is *massively* more confidence inspiring.

Regarding locking up the wheels that was something I was most concerned about, so one of the first things I did was find a deserted bit of industrial estate and do a bunch of 30mph emergency stop tests. She isn't any more prone to locking up than anything else without ABS, and there doesn't seem to be any tendency for the front to lock up overly easily. I think the forward weight shift under heavy braking helps there. I wasn't able to detect any tendency for control to be compromised at all.

Limited to 50mph at the moment while the new belt is run in, but braking down from that sort of speed for a roundabout/junction is no more effort than in the Jag or van. The brakes honestly feel pretty decent now.

Handbrake is fully applied seven clicks out it seems, and is quite capable of stopping the car, no slower than in any other car really.



Obviously she's not been worked particularly hard given I've got to obey a 50mph speed limit for the first 50 miles of the life of the new belt, but I was pleased at the cylinder head temperatures we were seeing. Bumbling around at low speeds it sits pretty solidly at about 125C.



Highest I saw on a long uphill stretch was 165C. Perfectly reasonable numbers, and it seems to be pretty stable.

Interesting to see that - I'm assuming because it's bristling with cooling fins - that this engine doesn't seem to suffer the sort of heat soak issues I'm used to seeing with water cooled engines. The Xantia is particularly bad for that, the temperature on that if you come back to start it up after a brief stop can be quite alarming. This just seems to immediately start dropping in temperature from the moment the engine stops. Which being a thermocouple gauge you can actually see as it's self-powered, so doesn't shut off with the ignition.

Speaking of confidence inspiring...I honestly had no idea how much the seat was moving around before! That actually staying put really does make the handling feel far less wayward, as I'm not subjected to an inch or two of what feels like oversteer every time I change direction. It was also apparently a source of several rattles.

I can't say I noticed a huge difference in the steering, though it *might* be slightly more stable in a straight line. Hard to say how much of that is just placebo effect though.

Brake fluid level reassuringly hasn't moved at all during the journey.



Glad that fluid is staying where it belongs!

On the subject of fluids, it looks like I might have also been successful in sorting the gearbox oil leak. Bit hard to tell because of historic deposits, but this area would normally be visibly wet after a run, rather than just "a bit oily." The upper part in particular you could usually see where it was running down from the top cover plate join.





I will obviously monitor that to make sure the oil continues to stay where it belongs.

While I'm still treating it gently at the moment I can't say I can tell any difference so far between the HP2020 belt and the NOS actual Invacar one which came off. Will keep you up to date on that.

Here's a brief snippet from the first few minutes of the run out. This was done by attaching the phone to the rear view mirror with rubber bands...better than the actual proper phone mount, but still horribly shaky. Plus it meant the mirror wouldn't stay put. That was the main reason I called time on video and pulled over to stop it, I wanted my mirror to behave given I was going to be doing a lot of stops/starts for a few minutes.



It's early days but the initial impressions are that these improvements have been precisely that. The braking performance improvement in particular and having a seat that stays put both make a *huge* difference in the overall driving experience.

Can't say I notice any real difference in the noise levels having pulled the flashband off the service hatch. Definitely not worth the few kilograms of extra weight for all the difference it was making.

Today also gave me the opportunity to do something I'd meant to for ages... actually get a photo of all of the cars together in one shot.



They're all filthy...but better than nothing!

Of course in two days this group will be out of date and I'll need to get an updated one!

Given there's been quite a bit of work done there it feels quite good to actually have tangible improvements coming out of it.

[CitroJim]

Awesome stuff Zel Another most enjoyable read

[mickthemaverick]

Just a thought Zel, could that stain be from washer fluid which has frozen. Maybe cracked bottle or pipe in the cold?

[Zelandeth]

Just a thought Zel, could that stain be from washer fluid which has frozen. Maybe cracked bottle or pipe in the cold?

Don't think so...the washer fluid is nearly radioactive looking neon yellow/green...Though I'll check to confirm if it's dropped anyway! Is about the only thing I didn't look at.

[Hell Razor5543]

Graham Hill was less than complimentary about the AC Invacar. I suspect he would probably be less critical of yours, Zel.

[mickthemaverick]

While browsing this morning I came across the perfect accessory for TPA Zel, I know you like originality but there is a place for improvement as you have already shown with the brakes so I think you should consider this addition:

BFTW

and then your car would look like this:

Spoiler: show

Own creation from Zel's original