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

[CitroJim]

That's quite magical Zel

[daviemck2006]

Thats a beautiful dog Zel. Just what I would have if I could. It would be seriously unfair of me to have a dog though, as I would be unable to take it for the walks it would need. I just have a loan of my daughters collie on occasions. He would have destroyed that bit of cardboard in about 3 nanoseconds lol

[Zelandeth]

This little package arrived this afternoon.

Was a little tricky to tell from the sales page on eBay, but it does look to be a pretty much perfect match for the original heater ducting still present on the car.

Didn't take long at all to get the missing ductwork reinstated.

I think the original duct was actually routed up into the inner wing down behind the battery, coil and voltage regulator. However I can't really see any particular reason for this so opted for the more economical route which will get in the way less. Getting the battery in and out is already enough of a faff without adding any more congestion to that corner. It's not as though anything will get stretched like this as everything to which the duct is attached here is all rigidly fixed together.

When I first started my old VW T25 up after it had been left sitting for about ten years the amount of crud that came flying out of the heater vents was truly comical. I was expecting much the same here, however that wasn't the case. All we got was this little bit of foam out of the demister vent.

While there's good flow through the cabin heater vent, the windscreen demister is less impressive. It's quite likely the duct is still full of crud though, and the flaps in the control box are a bit stiff. I'll pull it out for a good clean, lubrication of the moving parts and a quick lick of paint at some point soon.

This is apparently one of the more difficult Invacar bits to get hold of, so I'm very glad that it's both present and in working order.

Don't worry about the lack of hose clips on the fuel hose you can see in the above image. That hose is literally just sitting in a fuel can at the moment as there's no tank on the car. The fuel system will all be properly sealed with appropriate fasteners when installed. I'm planning to get some marine grade fuel hose for that given the issue I've had with the stuff from pretty much any motor factors perishing in next to no time lately. At least this thing is a bit less of a fire risk than most Reliants as it doesn't have the carb hanging right above the exhaust manifold.

Given that I didn't want to play automotive Tetris, I wasn't really able to back the Invacar out the garage, so having it running long enough to test the efficacy of the heater meant I had to deploy my extremely technical solution for stopping it filling the garage with exhaust fumes.

The tailpipe on this thing vents directly out the offside of the vehicle rather than out the back, so if not reversed out of the garage it does a good job of filling the garage with exhaust fumes. This results in the lounge smelling of car for several hours afterwards...hence my having come up with a way to convince the fumes to vacate the premises. For all it's hilariously crude, it seems to work.

Speaking of exhaust fumes, I made sure to have a CO detector in the cabin during this test as the exhaust heat exchanger had never been proven before - glad to report that it never twitched during the test. I will fit one in the cabin as a matter of course though as it just seems a sensible safety precaution.

The heat exchanger actually seems to work very well. I was only keeping the engine at a fast idle, I imagine the exhaust will run far hotter with the engine under load. Even so, the air coming from the vents was positively furnace like. I'll tick that off as a result I think.

Before I packed up for the afternoon I finally got around to sorting one of the really minor issues I'd identified with the Xantia. The nearside outer tail light had a small crack in the lens. Not really an issue as it didn't let water in or anything, but I had a good used replacement floating around in the box of bits of Citroen, so seemed daft not to change it.

The seal on the back seems to be in far better shape than the one that came off the car too which I don't reckon can be a bad thing.

Nice when a 30 second job is actually as quick and simple as it should be.

I think the next thing I need to do really is to have a bit of a tidy up to I can see what I'm doing. There are a ridiculous number of tools, boxes of fasteners, bits of various cars etc in the Invacar and scattered over the garage at the moment which is making it impossible to find anything and is just generally hindering me in getting stuff done...so I should sort that.

[van ordinaire]

Not being able to find stuff (my constant position) drives me to distraction & the amount of time I spend (waste!) searching infuriates me - & yet, I can never bring myself to use time in which I might be able to something "useful" on ensuring the next job takes less time - & is infinitely less stressful.

Your reference to the jury rigged fuel supply for the Invacar reminded me, I think Northampton Auto Rads (NAR) do fuel tanks which, I'd imagine,would be more convenient than Thornton Heath (?). However TH is not too far from me (when I'm in London) so, if you do go there, & you need it collected (or the old one dropped off, as a pattern)let me know & we can probably work something out.

[Zelandeth]

...I think Northampton Auto Rads (NAR) do fuel tanks...

Thanks for that! I'll give them a shout and see what they say.

[Pug_XUD_KeenAmateur]

glad to see the low-tech exhaust gas removal system Zel, my sort of solution

[Zelandeth]

glad to see the low-tech exhaust gas removal system Zel, my sort of solution

Think having been involved with Ladas in one way or another for the last 30 years has rubbed off on me! Basic but effective is usually my preferred solution.

Really need to get the garage cleared up though, the amount of junk on the right hand side is truly ridiculous. As is the pile of scrap just outside the front door...a trip (or ten) to the tip will definitely be needed soon to get shot of that.

I hadn't realised quite how much was there because it had been buried by leaves! Digging around for bits of Invacar last week unearthed a lot of stuff I thought had been skipped ages ago...

[Zelandeth]

Today I could potentially have got something useful done...but me being me, ticking off a minor cosmetic job was my preferred option.

The gaping hole in the top of the dash being the target of this afternoon's attention.

Long term, taking the dash out and swapping it for the spare one I have is the proper solution. However between seized fasteners, the general fragility of the dash and the fact that everything on the spare dash will need to be swapped over, that's not a job I'm looking forward to.

Short term though it's time for a bit of a bodge.

Let's go grab a bit of Foamex board, cut it to size and bolt it to the top of the dash.

Not going to win any prizes for beauty, but to my eye at least it's less visually offensive than the huge split that was there before. It has also vastly improved the structural integrity of the dash. Operation of the switches for the headlights or wiper no longer makes the whole thing creak and wobble.

Surprised it's the first time I've used this stuff for anything on a car to be honest.

[Zelandeth]

Going to give someone a lift somewhere this afternoon revealed the battery in the Activa seriously struggling to start it. It got it going but only just.

Returning from the quick run out I grabbed the multimeter. We're showing 14.25V off load at idle, and 13.95 with everything electrical on. As such I'm reasonably confident the charging system is doing what it should be. I know I've done quite a few short trips lately and the car was sitting for a couple of weeks waiting for the ball joint to be swapped, so it might just be a bit low because of that.

I've connected the charger up and will leave it overnight then see how things go. The charger showed "LO" as the charge status when connected so it seems to agree that it's pretty flat. Fingers crossed a good overnight charge will be all it needs.

When retrieving the multimeter from in the Invacar I noted that the nearside door now does seem to "just work" as it should, without having to spend five minutes fighting with it every time you want to open/close it. So hopefully the offside one will do the same once it's actually had some use.

[van ordinaire]

Things DO improve with use, to wit the tailgate on my Xantia (although previous owner had a young family, so difficult to believe it didn't get regular exercise) &, more particularly, the rear wiper,which was a declared fault by vendor - & now works satisfactorily (but I'm reserving judgment on the washer jet)

[Zelandeth]

Things DO improve with use...

See also basically the entirety of my van...which travelled further in the first month of my ownership than I think it had in the preceeding ten years if I remember rightly! By the end of that period it really didn't feel like you were driving the same vehicle.

Be interesting to see how the power unit in the Invacar responds to being similarly dropped back into doing hard work after a couple of decades buried in a hedge...

[van ordinaire]

I have history of doing that, in fact everything I get hold of has to get used to a completely different lifestyle.

This Xantia, for instance, the previous owner had it 4 1/2 years & did no more than 12,000 miles (a wedding in France, trailering his brother's GS oop North - & bringing his 2CV back but otherwise pottering round East London, shops, the tip, that sort of thing) I've had it not quite 4 weeks, it's on its 3rd visit to Devon, yesterday I took it to Woolacombe & today for some exercise over Dartmoor.

Now the C15, as far as I can make out, spent the year before I got it, taking a plumber, & his kit, from home in Gravesend (Kent) to various jobs around West London; the 2nd weekend I had it, I drove to Berlin (the 1st time)! That pretty well set the tone/pace of its new life. Now when batting around Europe or flitting down for a weekend at the seaside, I think about that rather tedious 1st drive, up the M2 to London, when I'd just bought it because, now, it does run so much better which I can only put down to regular oil & filter changes - & use!

[Zelandeth]

I remember heading up the A5 heading back home from Bletchley, it's on a very slight hill after you've joined the carriageway.

The day after I got it, 42mph with my foot flat to the floor in 4th was all she had to give. These days she will quite happily cruise up there in fifth at 60mph (which is what I usually treat as "cruising speed" as it's where she's happiest) with power to spare. It's astonishing how much difference just having "blown the cobwebs out" can really make...

In my head I picture bigger old school diesels as being most prone to this, but that's purely based on my experience messing around with old buses and such.

One particular example that sticks in my mind was an old National which hadn't moved in something like five years before we turned up to drag it back into the land of the living. Of course rather than get it recovered, we turned up, got it started, checked that everything "more or less" worked, stuck trade plates in the window and drove it home. The entire offside rear wheel and the lower two feet of the bodywork behind the exhaust was completely black. Despite that though the thing wasn't smoking at all by the time we got to his yard...All six cylinders had joined the party as well rather than the five and a half we had at the start of the journey.

[Zelandeth]

So after yesterday's very slow cranking episode in the Activa I left the battery on charge overnight. Exactly the same this morning. Oh well, time for a new battery then. Checked and it was sitting at just over 10V off load - that'll be a cell having gone short then.

Hmm...£143 from ECP/GSF for an identical Bosch replacement. Let's see what Costco want for it. £68 including the VAT and I could just grab it there and then rather than faffing around ordering stuff. Obvious course of action really...

Production date of 10/18 so doesn't look to have been sitting on a shelf for massively long either.

Will get it fitted tomorrow morning when I've refreshed my memory on the arcane rituals needed before disconnecting the battery in a Xantia as it's been a few years. Gives me a chance to give the new one a top off charge overnight anyhow.

I reckon she's always been a bit slow cranking on the first start of the day as long as I've had the car, so am curious to see if that remains the case with a new battery.

Means I can finally replace the mismatched + terminal cover too!

[CitroJim]

Zel, yes, she was always a slow cranker at first... It's worth checking the battery cable terminals crimps again just in case they're going high-resistance... There's a long thread on here somewhere about it...

Basically, see if they get warm under heavy load and check for a voltage drop across them when cranking... The crimps have been known to go high enough resistance and get hot enough as a result to cause fires...