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

[xantia_v6]

Apparently it's catching too...



This could be engine oil or LHM, it's hard to tell because it's dripping off the under tray, so there's no way to see where it's coming from directly. Don't think it's coolant. I'll need to investigate it. There definitely is an oil leak somewhere we need to deal with though as the sump in general looks quite wet.

Hydraulic pump output O-ring?

[Zelandeth]

Apparently it's catching too...



This could be engine oil or LHM, it's hard to tell because it's dripping off the under tray, so there's no way to see where it's coming from directly. Don't think it's coolant. I'll need to investigate it. There definitely is an oil leak somewhere we need to deal with though as the sump in general looks quite wet.

Hydraulic pump output O-ring?

Probably a decent shout. The pump has always been a bit wet with fluid, but she's never dropped anywhere at all in three years, which is why I noticed this one.

The Jag makes up for it!

[Zelandeth]

Not sure if I'll have a chance to do much today but did get an hour or so in yesterday.

Main target was a second pass at trying to get the driver's door on the Jag into a state vaguely resembling weather proof.

Now the easiest solution to this would probably be to build a time machine and go back to prevent whoever replaced the electric window mechanism from being lazy and not bothering to refit the original weather sheet (I found it bundled up in the bottom of the door).

The proper way to do this (and may yet be the road I need to go down) is to remove that to allow me to refit a contiguous sheet across the whole door...however I *really* don't want to faff around with the window if I don't have to as it works perfectly.

After some time and no small amount of swearing we had coverage along the whole door (save for an "n" shaped cutout around the window motor).



There are additional layers behind the interior door handle and speaker void as those are the two areas that I'd been aware of water getting into the car from, so I figured doubling up there from both sides of the door skin couldn't be a bad thing. The main point of ingress at the front appears to be through the wing mirror, so hopefully this should work.

If it does I'll need to repeat the performance on the passenger side as that also leaks - albeit several orders of magnitude less badly.

While I was there I finally got around to finding a replacement for the missing securing screw for the light under the arm rest. Hopefully the lens won't fall off roughly every tenth time the door is closed now.



Thanks to a suggestion from someone on another forum I realised that I'd made a stupid mistake with the wipers. I had completely failed to spot that the wiper arms are sided. With them flipped around I was able to get things sitting far better in the parked position.



Every day's a school day.

[white exec]

Could the wiper park on the driver's side be even better with another one of the passenger-side type?
Just a thought.

If you ever replace a wiper blade again, try getting hold of some Denso ones (eg over a Toyota counter). They are stunningly good - better, I'd say, than Bosch used to be a long tine ago. Available in lots of lengths.

And to prevent rubber blade "set" (where the rubber gets angled unhelpfully on frequently undriven cars, and causes blade judder) don't forget the trick of using a wine cork to prop the arm slightly up, keeping the blade just clear of the screen.

[CitroJim]

Good work Zel It's been a perfect day for it

And to prevent rubber blade "set" (where the rubber gets angled unhelpfully on frequently undriven cars, and causes blade judder) don't forget the trick of using a wine cork to prop the arm slightly up, keeping the blade just clear of the screen.

That's a great tip Chris I must do that with Daffodil's wiper (in the singular, a feature she shares with your BX!)

[Zelandeth]

Could the wiper park on the driver's side be even better with another one of the passenger-side type?
Just a thought.

Not really. It could move it lower down the screen a little, but the tip would be running out onto the seal (unless I switched down a wiper size or two...and finding 12" blades is hard enough these days - I had to order the 10" one for the Invacar online as nowhere locally had one - despite being standard fitment on classic Minis and Series Land Rovers to name two).

I think the steep angle it sits at helps discourage water from running off the inboard side of the wiper back up the screen when travelling at speed too - whether by chance or design is hard to say with Jaguar being Jaguar! Water coming off the passenger side one more often than not goes straight up rather than across your field of view. The tendency for that to happen was one thing I found supremely irritating on the Lada.

Keep meaning to implement a wiper lift solution on the van. It has relatively big wipers (24" I think) and the near vertical screen means that grime always tends to collect under them. Long blades and arms make them badly prone to judder at the best of times.

[white exec]

The wine cork 'lift' really does work. XM used to be a pain with judder (after months of wiper use), but no more.

I vaguely remember a car I once had – could have been the Rover P5 – that had a dedicated "park" position for the wipers: when you turned them off, the wipers did a sweep to mid-position, then reversed direction back down again, to park right out of the normal sweep area. Have an even vaguer recollection of there being a little wedge/ramp/widget that lifted them slightly off the glass while parked. 50+ years ago, so a bit hazy. Bet there's a YouTube video of it somewhere...

[Zelandeth]

The wine cork 'lift' really does work. XM used to be a pain with judder (after months of wiper use), but no more.

I vaguely remember a car I once had – could have been the Rover P5 – that had a dedicated "park" position for the wipers: when you turned them off, the wipers did a sweep to mid-position, then reversed direction back down again, to park right out of the normal sweep area. Have an even vaguer recollection of there being a little wedge/ramp/widget that lifted them slightly off the glass while parked. 50+ years ago, so a bit hazy. Bet there's a YouTube video of it somewhere...

I wouldn't mind at all surprised to find the P5 used the same wiper motor as the Jag. It does exactly the same when you turn them from run to off - reverses the direction of the motor and parks them a good couple of inches lower than the normal swept area.

-- -- --

How am I ever going to tell which car is mine out here...Oh...wait...



I get the impression that while it may have taken a while for us to tick over the first thousand miles the second one will take anywhere near as long...



That's just under 500 miles in two months.

One of the bits of trim fell off the inside of the offside door last time out, so today I decided to call time on the spray adhesive and got some old school goop involved.



The trim was then firmly wedged in place while that sets.



I reckon this will stay stuck a lot better. Can see me redoing most of these in the same way at some point. Summer will be the real tell when things get warm.

Also on the subject of doors...I completely randomly spotted today that the weatherstrip between the two sliding window panes on the nearside (the offside one is missing) was installed backwards...I apparently totally failed to notice that there was a plastic side and a felt side when I installed it. Does a far better job of stopping the draught when the window is closed now!



Only took me approximately two years to notice. Ten points for observation to me. Oops.


Annoyingly it appears that even with the level sorted that we do still have a slight oil leak. It looks like it *might* be actually coming from the oil pressure switch as the whole area around it looks a bit wet.



Have given the general area a good spray down with degreaser so we can have another look after the next trip out to see if it's the culprit. Would be nice as it's a cheap and easy part to change.



Not holding my breath though...My gut feeling is that we're looking at a leak from the crankshaft oil seal.

The belts are in a state as you can see too. They have been loose for a while now...but lately have been getting a bit ridiculous. Aside from the increasingly unhappy squeak every time the starter is operated from cold, it's never good when you can SEE how slack a belt is.



Yes, that is as floppy as it looks. Especially the one nearest the camera.



The reason I hadn't done something about this sooner was simple: I'd been completely and utterly unable thus far to shift the nut on the Dynastart pulley. The belt tension on this engine is adjusted (like on old VWs) by adding or removing shims between the pulley sheaves...so any tension adjustment involves removing that big nut. While there are two holes in the fan to allow you to wedge it in place - the nut was tight enough that these holes were ovalling out from the torque I was applying.

Right up until the point that I *finally* spent an hour turning the back of the garage upside down and unearthing the impact gun.

In approximately 0.3 seconds it buzzed it straight off without it seemed like any effort whatsoever...Didn't even have to lock the pulley...



Sometimes you just need the right tool for the job at hand.

It's not a tool you'll use for every job (and using it for the wrong one can cause you no end of headaches...), but really is an absolute godsend when presented with something like this or trying to get a wheel nut that's been done up by Kwik-Fit to 10,000,000,000 times more tightly than it needed to be. This was less than £50 and for the three jobs I've really used it for so far I reckon has already more than paid for itself in saved time, sweat and spilled blood. Just make sure if you get one to get a good quality set of sockets to go with it.



The other reason I wanted to get this lot apart was so that I could actually clean up the pulley running surfaces...After this engine had spent a good number of years sitting outside in the weather they were unsurprisingly in quite a state - I'm honestly surprised that the belts didn't just self destruct given the state these were in.



Definitely beyond the point of "self cleaning" at this point...so out with the carbide mop. Realistically I could do with a new set of pulley sheaves, but the heavy, rough pitting that will shred belts is gone at least.



The fan hub (which forms the rear face of the pulley) got the same treatment.



Again...It really has seen better days, but is a lot better than it was.

The belts will want replacement now as running on the pulleys in that state has unsurprisingly wrecked them. I'll grab a new pair next time I'm in the vicinity of Motorserv. They're not exotic or expensive so I'm not worried about that. They are at least properly tensioned now though (if anything a little over-tight in the case of the front belt).





Not really too worried - they'll be getting replaced shortly anyway - I'll spend a bit of time ensuring that the replacements are tensioned as close to as per the manual as possible.

Quick test revealed that the "chirp" on activating the starter is indeed now gone.



I had also completely failed to appreciate quite how much noise the belts were making at high engine speeds...The engine is SO much quieter and smoother when revved now. Will be interesting to see if that's at all obvious when on the move - though given that about 85% of the noise you're aware of is CVT and gearbox I rather doubt it.

[Zelandeth]

Decided to have a better shot at cleaning the Dynastart pulleys up on TPA.

There is deep enough pitting that they'll never be perfect, though I think this should be good enough for the job...given that the previous belts lasted the best part of a thousand miles and still worked once the tension was adjusted...if I go through £14 of belts once a year or so I'm really not going to lose any sleep over it.





Especially given they started out like this.



Sadly Motorserv only had one belt (Gates 6262MC for reference) so I'll need to swing by tomorrow to pick up the second one before I can fnish reassembly.

[CitroJim]

That looks better Zel

[Zelandeth]

Task number 1 today... changing rear spheres on the Xantia. Aside from knowing having it done will make the car far, far more pleasant to drive, I really want to get the sphere removal tool back to Jim. I'm utterly paranoid about losing other people's tools so always try to get them back as soon as I can.

Dodged the usual game of chasing the ramps around by doing the job on the lawn. They dig in enough there to stay put.



Still hate getting the car onto the ramps.

Of course because it's the Activa there's a hydraulic line in precisely the right place to be in the way when you're trying to get the removal tool onto the sphere.



Not enough to be a problem, just enough to be moderately annoying.

Offside one first, wound off without too much of a fight



Only slight game I had there was the seal vanishing into another dimension (I did find it eventually) which had me second guessing if I'd got the old one out of the strut for a few minutes.

New one in. That's this side done.



Nearside required a little more persuasion to shift, but I was still able to do it by hand just using the sphere tool. Didn't need to get any additional breaker bar or anything involved. It's really nice working on a car where the previous owner or a garage haven't overtightened absolutely everything.



New sphere on.



Tightened the bleed screw on the regulator back up, checked for leaks then that's that job done. Maybe 20 minutes?

Well it would be if the new spheres weren't flat. Knew it was a bit of a risk being NOS ones from 1998...but was worth a shot. Offside one is passable, nearside one though is just as bad as the one that came off.

No huge inconvenience really, as mentioned above they take about 20 minutes to change and they were given to me free, so I'm really not even in the slightest irked by this development - it's just one of those things that happens when you're tinkering with old cars and old parts!

We'll be playing this game again shortly then.


Second new belt was picked up for TPA today so those have now been fitted. Adjustment seems spot on with the six spacers split evenly with three on each side.



The bit of trim that I re-stuck to the offside door appears to have remained firmly attached overnight - so if I have any more bits coming adrift I know going in what approach to use - basically loads of adhesive.

On the subject of trim, while getting the whole roof lined is definitely a job for "sometime in the future" one bit I really wanted to address was the rear C pillar on the offside, mainly because of an unsightly historic repair there.



Conveniently I had a couple of offcuts left from when I did the carpeting job which I was fed up of shuffling from place to place in the garage. They were just big enough to do this.



Far tidier!

Obviously made a matching one for the other side too.



Have left them both wedged in place while the glue sets. I'd really like to replace the windscreen demister duct, however it's still a way down the list - especially at £25+ a metre!

[CitroJim]

Sorry to hear the NOS spheres were not good Zel

I have some more here so pop round one day and we'll go through my stock and see if others are better...

[white exec]

A lot of rust under there, Zel. Waxing ought to go on the list!

[Gibbo2286]

Your mention of the sphere tool reminded me of this, it's had a fair bit of use over the years but I don't intend to do any more so it's just taking up space so it's free gratis to anyone who would like it.

[Zelandeth]

A lot of rust under there, Zel. Waxing ought to go on the list!

It already is. I'll be doing some on the Jag once I've repaired that rear valance and obviously the BX when the sill is sorted. I'll make sure the Xantia gets some attention at the very least around the suspension subframe.

Sorry to hear the NOS spheres were not good Zel

I have some more here so pop round one day and we'll go through my stock and see if others are better...

No need to apologise Jim, it's just the gamble you take with old stock parts, especially pressurised ones. I'll drop you a message and see what we can arrange.

Not as though changing them again will be too strenuous a task - getting the car onto the ramps is the most long winded step!