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

[Zelandeth]

The more I think about it, the more I think based on prior experience they may well come off. Something I've kept discovering on this van is that the fasteners are generally of really good quality.

Between a sharp drill and sharp chisel I'm sure we can deal with the split pins. Plus I have access to a MAPP gas torch now too so can get the thing *properly* hot if I need to.

This evening's task was to figure out what on earth was going on with the brake pad wear warning system. For those not familiar with the brake warning light on the dash of a Merc T1, it performs two tasks. One is linked to a float in the fluid reservoir as on any vehicle. The second function is the brake pad wear indicator. The light only comes on if either the fluid is low or if the pad wear sensors are triggered (and during a self-test when the ignition is turned on, extinguishing when the engine is started). It is NOT a handbrake warning light.

There is a sensor in each pad, essentially a wire stuffed into a hole that's drilled into each brake pad. You can see the tiny hole just to the right of the central groove in the friction material.

Mercedes T1 front brake pad, showing drilling for pad wear sensor

These are not fitted from the factory and have to be inserted and glued in place when the pads are fitted. Now, this hole is blind on proper OEM pads like these (made by Ferodo in this case), but I have seen "off brand" pads where that hole goes all the way through the friction material. What can happen then is that the wear sensor can go all the way through, poking out the other side, meaning the sensor can wind up touching the hub of the disc, giving a false reading to the monitoring system.

Given the behaviour I was seeing I had a sneaking suspicion that this was going on in my case. Should be quick to check at least.

The old "wedge a bit of wood between the brake pedal and steering wheel" trick was used to ensure the light stayed lit until I found (or failed to find) the offending sensor.

Also useful for checking the actual brake lights.

While I was situating the pedal wedging device I noticed something odd on my hand.

Why is my hand wet?

Blue tinted water... there's only one place that will be coming from...and suspect number one is right in the neighborhood.

Hey look, more parts to buy!

Figured I'd find this only a couple of hours after getting these parts ordered!

Expensive trip to the parts desk!

Unplugging the first three pad wear sensors did nothing, however when I unplugged the last one the light went out and stayed out. We have a false positive from the last sensor. I have temporarily disabled it by putting an insulating sleeve over the pin in the connector. I've still got three working sensors, and it's not hard to keep tabs on pad wear. I imagine they will last a decent length of time anyhow given the relatively light duties she's going to be doing compared to normal commercial use a van might see.

I'll hopefully get her booked in for an MOT in the next day or so to *hopefully* confirm that I don't need to buy anything else.

[Zelandeth]

Assuming that Parcel Force don't foul up this delivery (they have managed to mess up all three this month so far so I'm not holding my breath), my new exhaust for the van should be here tomorrow.

Got slightly sidetracked today by another project while it was raining. Another one of those things spotted at the side of the road which I had decided required investigation before it was either rescued or getting put in the electrical equipment bin at the recycling centre (rather than dumped at the side of the road).

It had actually been forgotten about in the boot of the Activa for a couple of weeks. I had clocked that it was A: an audio amplifier of some sort and B: that it weighed a tonne. That was as far as my observations at the time had gone.

First look today revealed is to be a rather more businesslike amp than anything else I've had. It's a Spectra 90/D power amplifier...400W stereo or 800W bridged...

Let's have a look shall we. I'd already got the (seriously scruffy) cover off by this point while I was checking for any signs of damage or distress.

Spectra 90/D Power Amplifier first checkover

No obvious signs of the magic smoke having escaped, though I wasn't really expecting much to be honest. Most amplifiers like these usually have a plethora of protection circuits that usually prevent major meltdowns unless it's something blindingly obvious like the mains transformer having overheated. Usually if something has gone awry you'll just find that one channel is shut down or the whole thing will refuse to power up. This can actually make fault finding an absolute nightmare sometimes as they will often trip out before you can get any useful readings.

Couldn't see anything amiss. It was quite dusty in the case (as is pretty inevitable it seems for any electronic equipment with a fan in) but not too badly really. No signs of any overheating anywhere, no signs of water ingress (despite the case being quite rusty on the surface) or anything like that.

The only signs of trouble I could see were that the volume control pot for channel 1 had become detached from the front panel (sorted by doing the nut on the spindle back up) and that the nut holding the wire on to one of the speaker output posts had come off. This was found rattling around in the case and was reattached.

Was a dead channel due to that nut having come off the reason it had been binned? Well only one way to find out. Plug it in and see what happens!

Okay, not quite. A couple of sanity checks were done - checked the earth bonding was good and checked there was no leakage to earth with the Megger. All seemed good.

Turning it on resulted in an almighty "thud" from the huge toroidal mains transformer (I don't want to know what the inrush current is - the 40,000uF of smoothing caps probably have something to do with it), the fans starting up nicely and after a second or so a couple of relays clicking purposefully.

We have...lights!

While I had it powered up this gave me an opportunity to check that there was no DC present across the speaker terminals (that's a quick way to kill speakers). Absolutely nothing according to either analogue or digital meters...this is good.

Couple of lights to tell me it's alive but that's about it. I took that opportunity to take it outside to blast as much of the dust out as I could. It's a substantial bit of kit...

Spectra 90/D amplifier internal layout

I needed an audio source and some speakers. Specifically I needed some speakers I didn't care about in case there was a fault present that resulted in them being blown into the next county.

Conveniently I remembered having bought a set of speakers something like ten years ago for a project I had never got around to doing...not exactly hifi but they'll prove if it works or not.

I honestly can't remember what I bought these for.

The input is via either 1/4" jack's or XLR plugs. I'll just go grab some connectors from Mapl...oh. No I won't because they don't exist any more. Great! Amazon it will be then. In the meantime I came up with a truly diabolically dodgy aux cable adaptor to plug an iPod in.

No I'm not proud of this

This either...

Horrible hack. This is all signal level stuff though so there aren't any safety issues at least.

Let's feed it some audio and see what happens.

Blinky lights are good

It appears to work absolutely perfectly. Obviously it's barely ticking over here driving a pair of speakers rated to 70W RMS/120W peak at volumes limited so my ears don't bleed, but it played happily for a couple of hours.

The case was a mess.

This "needs help" I think

I didn't bother doing anything about this earlier as it seemed daft to spend time on it in case it turned out to be a very heavy door stop.

Now it's proven to be working it seemed worth tidying it up a bit.

Hit it with the carbide mop...

Old paint and surface rust off

Nice coat of hammered black paint.

Mmm shiny...

All back together, looks rather nicer I think.

Looks like a bought one

Never ceases to amaze me what people throw out! This took all of two minutes to fix, and half of that was opening the case.

[myglaren]

That should amuse the neighbours while you are elsewhere

[Zelandeth]

This morning (astonishingly, exactly when it was meant to) a very large, heavy cardboard box arrived.

One very heavy parcel

Now I've been here before, so made a point of assembling everything on the floor before going anywhere near the vehicle. Especially on bargain basement eBay specials like this.

Like a heavy three dimensional jigsaw puzzle

This showed a few things. Firstly that the downpipe is indeed different to the one on the van. A little annoying as I was kind of hoping to avoid touching that based on the pain and suffering I've been through trying to get downpipes separated from manifolds in the past. Secondly was that the slip joints were really tight so would definitely need spreading out a bit before putting them together. That's definitely something I was glad to discover inside rather than while trying to slot things together on the van.

Well let's make a start then. First contact with the enemy...

Somebody hand me my Thermite...

Astonishingly, five minutes later this was in front of me.

Well that's a first for me!

The bolts just...unbolted. No heat, no power tools, no fuss. I'm slightly baffled by the concept of a downpipe to manifold joint coming apart without hassle! Not going to complain though.

A large amount of faffing around then ensued while I figured out which hangers went where (as this system is a significantly different layout to the one which came off), figured out exactly what order I needed to put things together in, and battered things with a 4lb lump hammer to correct a couple of bend angles.

Pretty much what I expected from a cheap exhaust to be honest...three hours of *making* it fit followed by twenty minutes actually putting it together.

Eventually we got there.

Job done

Had to alter the tailpipe to sit a little lower on account of the grey water tank. Just need to get a bracket put together for the last hanger there...had hoped I could do without it (the system is plenty well supported) but the tailpipe vibrates and buzzes like mad at idle, so it's needed to help damp that vibration.

Starting it up astonishingly revealed it to both be gas tight and to not be touching and buzzing against anything. Was rather surprised though when I touched the throttle and was presented with a very throaty exhaust note. I have a sneaking suspicion that this bargain basement silencer doesn't actually contain any baffles.

This is the kind of observation which is worthless without evidence isn't it...

[Youtube]7RBjg_PRXrw[/youtube]

Not that I'm complaining...that's a nice noise I think...one straight out of a few decades ago.

Yes she's a bit smokey, hasn't left the driveway since October so she needs a good run. Usually runs clean as a whistle.

Thankfully it's not boomy as that would get annoying in a real hurry I reckon on a long trip. I'll be curious to see how it actually sounds on the move though. Obviously that will have to wait until the trip to the MOT station as it's currently out of test so I can't exactly go out for a quick test run.

Wasn't actually that hard to fit really. Bit annoying that the fit needed a little "gentle persuasion" but not really surprising at this price point, and I don't think I've ever fitted an exhaust that was anything less than maddeningly awkward. Well...save for the one on my lawn mower maybe.

Feel confident enough to get it in for a test now, was a bit worried that the remains of the exhaust would wind up going through somebody's windscreen before. Plus a shiny new exhaust should hopefully show the tester I'm actually willing to put some work in to looking after the van...the invoice for £300 worth of genuine parts for the known fail items should give a decent impression too I'd hope.

[Zelandeth]

That could have been a lot worse.

Failed on 2x TREs and drag link ball joint obviously. Also the prop shaft CV boot which was known but forgotten about going into the test, rear brake imbalance, high nearside headlamp aim and missing rear reflectors.

The missing reflectors is an odd one as they're integral to the tail light lenses...don't want to be seen as arguing with the tester...but sorry mate you're wrong there. The tail lights are configured right now exactly as they left the Mercedes factory.

Propshaft CV boot is a simple fix, tester confirmed that quickest way is to just unbolt the centre bearing carrier and lower the propshaft until the slip joint separates.

Rear brake imbalance...blarg. The garage can have that one to sort. I'm not faffing with brakes against the clock. Especially as I seem to remember the self adjuster on these being fiendishly complicated.

Headlight aim, fair enough. I fitted a new light a couple of days back and hadn't even looked at the aim so far (it's on the to do list for the weekend).

I'll do the propshaft CV boot, headlight aim, probably stick on a couple of trailer reflectors as it's easier than arguing with the tester, and will give the ball joints the opportunity to come apart. If they do I'll swap them, if they put up any fight though the garage can do it on Monday.

Looks like we've got a reasonable chance of being ready for Thursday.

The exhaust is frankly hilarious. It's a real proper old school "BraaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAmmmm..." Through each gear just now...

[Pug_XUD_KeenAmateur]

good luck for Thursday!

Clearly you know about solid state electronics... is there owt I can easily do with a seriously crackly Volume Control on Daughter's small Music Amp; without breaking out the Soldering Iron

(I can solder now, thanks to those FCF members who posted on the relevant thread a while back, but I'm in no hurry to do so).

Its Branded, but very old. Turn the Volume up and it crackles like crazy and if you're unlucky you lose all output.

[myglaren]

Try winding it vigorously back and forth - may fix it and if it doesn't then nothing lost.

I have a 70's Sonab receiver here that periodically will splutter a bit or generate a lot of white noise.
The cure is to rotate all the knobs back and forth a few times and press all the buttons.
After that it will be fine for a couple of months.
The controls are all sealed so I can't spray Solvitol into them and they are seriously expensive to replace.

I have also an Electrocompaniet pre-power amp and the (motorised) volume control will do the same thing and the same procedure fixes it. No other controls on that one

It was like that a few years ago and I had it re-capped and a new volume control fitted - took weeks to track one down and it was >£200 on it's own.

The harmon/kardon amp never gives any trouble and that was the cheapest of the lot

[Zelandeth]

Let's see what we can do to take a few chunks out of the MOT remedial work list.

First target is going to be the propshaft slip joint boot. It's been in the garage now for a few months waiting to be fitted...let's get to it.

This has been on the to do list since last summer...

Initially my plan had been to minimise the degree to which I had to dismantle things - hoping that I could get away with simply dropping the centre prop bearing assembly. Unfortunately it turns out that this doesn't give enough clearance to separate the splined section on the rear prop from the socket on the front section. Shame as I'd already removed a couple of bits of the exhaust (which I fitted a couple of days ago!) for access. So had to put them back together again. On the plus side, this did give me the ability to check the state of the bearing on the centre prop carrier - it's silky smooth and has no detectable play in it.

The reason I had really been hoping to get away with removing things from the front was that I really didn't want to have to try to get the bolts out of this.

Why do I get the feeling these bolts won't want to move...

There's no leak here - things had been sprayed down with Plusgas shortly before I took the photo. I was forced to pause at that point as the nuts on the rear flange on the prop were 15mm...a size which I knew for a fact I lacked a spanner in. No way to get a socket on there because of the proximity of the universal joint...You can *just* get a ring spanner onto the nut on four of them, but a socket was a non starter. This meant that I had to make yet another trip round to Halfords to pick up a spanner.

I wasn't sure whether the entire prop was balanced as an assembly or if the front and rear sections were done separately...so I marked the rear flange to ensure that it was reassembled in the same position as it was removed (I had the handbrake on and the van in gear to ensure that neither end could move).

Because I really don't want to spend the next six months tracking down drivetrain vibrations

Once all the bolts were removed the rear of the propshaft was lowered to the ground. It's heavy and especially in the confined space under the van is a bit cumbersome, but isn't impossible to manage single handedly. I did want to make sure that I didn't just whack the splined section on the brickwork of the driveway when I withdrew it though so grabbed an old cardboard box for it to drop onto.

Really don't want to damage this...

It was then withdrawn from the socket in the front section until it dropped onto the box,

There we go...

While being careful to protect the splined section it was a simple matter to then remove it from under the vehicle.

This seems somewhat over engineered for 78bhp...

On the plus side, it's much easier to work on the prop with it actually free from the van. Especially getting the original metal sprung clip that was holding the remainder of the old boot on off.

Not much left of the old one!

One shredded boot.

The remainder I believe to be finely atomised and spread over a stretch of the A421 just outside Buckingham.

I then gave the splined joint a thorough clean to get rid of all traced of the old grease and any contaminants. Then it was given a liberal coating of CV joint grease (I must have had that pot going on 15 years now) and the new boot slipped into place.

Ready to go back on the van

I gave the bolts all a quick scrub with the wire brush to clean the threads up before getting ready to reassemble things. I'm pretty sure that there was some sort of thread lock used during the original assembly, so got mine out ready to be used during assembly.

Because a propshaft falling off halfway up the M6 would be bad.

It was a pretty simple (if slightly physically awkward) process to slot the propshaft back together and bolt the rear flange back together. By some complete fluke I actually managed to get it lined up perfectly on the first try!

The boot was then fastened in place. This would have been done using metal clips originally but I don't have the special pliers you need to fasten them so a couple of cable ties will have to do for now. I will look to get a pair bought in though as I'd obviously like to get the metal clips in there - they were supplied with the boot after all.

Job done for now

That done it was time to tick a few other things off.

The "missing rear reflectors" was a bit of a head scratcher as they're integral to the tail lights - though if the lights are on it would be easy to miss.

Yes, there is a reflector there...

The reflector is plain to see if the camera flash is used.

See...reflector

I'd rather not argue with the tester though, for dug out a couple of reflectors that I had floating around in the garage and stuck them on the back.

Hopefully that will keep the tester happy.

The headlamp aim was unsurprisingly miles off given that I had fitted a brand new headlight to the nearside a few days ago. Didn't take long to adjust that back to something resembling a normal beam pattern.

Nearside headlight no longer pointing skywards

One thing I was reminded of standing there with the engine running is that I really need to fix a proper patch onto the air cleaner assembly as there's a hole in it.

This makes a heck of a racket

This is on the outside of the filter element so isn't important from an air filtration perspective - it does however result in a boomy resonance from the induction side of things which sounds like a blowing exhaust and is quite tiresome. Might see if I can get that sorted before we leave on Thursday.

Final thing I did for the day was stick a little trim on the exhaust.

Not that shiny stuff is really a priority.

... doesn't mean I won't fit it though!

A joint effort between it being because I thought the finish on the really cheap exhaust wasn't great so I wanted to tidy it up, and also to shift the tailpipe out slightly so it was venting slightly past rather than directly in front of the rear wheel. Not that the exhaust gas temperatures are particularly high from this engine, but I'd rather not cook the tyre.

Tomorrow I'll see if the ball joints want to play nicely...I'm guessing not given how easy everything has been so far...Karma is surely going to come back and bite me at some point soon!

[Zelandeth]

Not much to report. Was busy this afternoon so only had an hour to devote to car stuff.

Decided to see if the track rod ends would play nicely as if so swapping the the rod would be the work of a few minutes.

After 29 years... probably going to be a challenge to shift.

It was immediately apparent that the split pins weren't interested in moving. Fine, that's a fight the garage can have tomorrow. I'd really rather not immobilise the vehicle fighting with it.

I did however spend a bit of time scraping thirty years worth of congealed brake dust impregnated grease off the back of the hubs and axle.

That's just nasty...

The work of the garage should be sped along by the fact that they don't need to separate any of the TREs from their respective linkages as there is an entire new drag link and tie rod complete with new TREs ready to go on. Should allow them to copy the alignment settings easily as well which will save a few minutes.

All proper genuine parts of course. Nice to see stuff still coming in old school grease paper even today.

Ah, that new "part that's been buried on a shelf for years" smell...

Hopefully we'll have a fresh MOT in the next 24 hours.

[Zelandeth]

So I had really been hoping the rear brakes were going to be a simple "strip, clean, possibly new shoes, adjust, reassemble, retest" job.

Had a call this afternoon. Both drums are stuffed (presumably it's been run for ages with the handbrake dragging), shoes were obviously equally stuffed *and* both wheel cylinders were knackered (one weeping, one seized). Oh joy, more £££s to spend.

Why do I get the feeling I'm going to be massively lucky if I get out of this job with change from £500...was already £300 of parts in before the brake issues!

[Hell Razor5543]

But when she is done (and got a nice, shiny MoT) think on how much money you will save not having to use hotels or B&Bs!

[Zelandeth]

It's kinda the silver lining I'm trying to look on. The vast majority of these issues are down to a combination of poor prior maintenance and disuse. So hopefully going forward she should not need attention in these areas for a good long while. Not that I'll be short of a to do list anyway - the cab is essentially a collection of patches held together by some bits of rust, so there's plenty of work to be done there!

Just a bit of a kick to the teeth when you've already bought a whole bunch of parts to have something come in from totally left field like this. I knew the brakes didn't feel great, but still well on par with most vans of the era of felt like, especially with a body which can hardly be described as lightweight!

I never really realised until quite recently how much longer the wheelbase is compared to most of the 2/300 series T1 vans. Never mind the rear overhang too. It's really not a small van by the standards of the 1980s. Obviously, give it a couple of years and it will be dwarfed by a Vauxhall Corsa though.

[Hell Razor5543]

I never really realised until quite recently how much longer the wheelbase is compared to most of the 2/300 series T1 vans. Never mind the rear overhang too. It's really not a small van by the standards of the 1980s. Obviously, give it a couple of years and it will be dwarfed by a Vauxhall Corsa though.

You mean it isn't already!

[RichardW]

Probably need new pipes as well.... had that on a ZX which some buffoon had stuffed the rear brakes up on causing a cylinder to pop out, and a badly fitted shoe to mangle the drum - all of which meant new drums (inc bearings!), shoes, cylinders, pipes and adjusters - and I only just managed to recover the stub nut thread as they had even managed to muller that. bet you're glad you didn't set off on that bit of the job now!

[Zelandeth]

Ugh, hadn't thought about wheel bearings... let's hope they're not integral to the drums on this as that will probably be another £200 or so...

Pretty much expecting the pipe between the wheel cylinders and the body to axle flexis to be mangled getting the cylinders off, though I feel by now that I think I'm due at least one nice surprise!

Not expecting to hear anything today as Tuesday is their HGV/PCV MOT day during which I don't believe the workshop runs for any other jobs.

No...the exhaust on the Lada blowing more badly wasn't quite what I had in mind...