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

[RichardW]

Our MK2 16RS had an auto choke carb, terrible thing! Suspect that MK1 might be afflicted with the same. Nice vid of the rev counter there as well.

[Zelandeth]

Well I didn't see that coming!



I was expecting a battle of biblical proportions to get these off. Nope...They just unscrewed absolutely fine. No huge explosion of LHM when they came off either so the diaphragms are probably still intact.



New spheres went on without any issue, even though the nearside one is a little obscured by the rear silencer.



She has rear suspension again now! Huge step forward.

Unfortunately now being in a position where I was giving serious scrutiny to the rear end of the car I did spot an issue. We do have an LHM leak.



Initially I thought this was coming from the seal on the sphere I'd just changed - but fluid only appears here when the brake pedal is pressed, at which point it appears in quite significant quantities. Looks like we've got a failed brake line then. Not sure if the BX has the same little spiral of brake pipe behind the caliper that the Xantia has - if it does, that's got to be the prime suspect as I've seen that rust out on several Xantias where the lines were otherwise spotless.

Wonder if this might be the fault which originally took the car off the road?

Whatever took her off the road, she's got a step closer back to it today.

[Hell Razor5543]

Yay! Good news on the spheres. I doubt it will take you long finding where the LHM leak is.

[Zelandeth]

Yay! Good news on the spheres. I doubt it will take you long finding where the LHM leak is.

I'm hoping that it will be pretty obviously visible once I get the respective wheel off. My guess (and that's all it is at this point) is that it's going to have rusted through where the pipe sits in that little plastic clip on the top of the suspension arm. That just looks like a perfect muck and moisture trap...Will need to replace the whole line at the end of the day anyway as if I remember rightly splicing in repairs to hard lines on these cars is frowned on isn't it?

Unless there's just one spot which as apparently sustained physical damage I'm pretty much expecting at this stage to wind up replacing all the rear brake lines - which looking at the routing will be an absolute barrel of laughs.

[CitroJim]

Wow That's a great result with the spheres Zel

One of those cases where you fully prepare yourself for an epic battle and they choose otherwise!

[Zelandeth]

The LHM leak is definitely somewhere up above the nearside rear suspension arm.



Didn't have time to get the wheel off to investigate today - the offending line is totally obscured by said wheel so no clear view of it today.

You may recall a few months ago I finally got the correct indicator stalk fitted to the Invacar and took the opportunity to move it over to the left hand side, which makes far more sense from an ergonomic perspective. This did however leave a rusty patch where the stalk assembly used to sit.



This has been bugging me for some time...now I've got new grips it sticks out even more. So took the opportunity to splash some fresh paint around.



Won't be quite that shiny once it dries, should tidy things up a bit though.

Edit:

Yep, that looks a bit better!



Not perfect if you peer at it too closely, but it's a lot less scruffy.



Just helps make the interior look a little less shoddy I think.

[Zelandeth]

Package arrived this morning to allow me to finally hopefully properly sort the throttle cable on TPA.



I know I probably still have a load of cable somewhere in the garage...but this was all of £0.88 a metre so I wasn't going to lose sleep over trying to find it. The important bit is the cable end being the right size to fit the twist grip.



Which is one of these. For future reference when I forget.

I fed the cable through from the cabin end as I've always found it behaves better doing it that way. Every time I've tried feeding it from the engine bay it ends up snagging on something.



Then trimmed the cable once it was attached to the cable end. This has to be done before fitting to the twist grip or it's not possible to slot the barrel in.



Then basically just put things back together before securing it and trimming the excess at the carb end.



I've left enough excess that if it snaps right at the barrel in the future that I'll have enough cable to repair it.

For the first time I have a throttle which is bodge free and has a nice smooth action through the full range. That will make driving nicer.

While I was in the garage I tackled something else I'd been meaning to do for a while - finding somewhere out of the way to stash a spare CVT belt.



That will do nicely. Despite what it looks like in the photo it's sitting clear of the brake lines to frame right, it's resting on top of the master cylinder at the rear. I'll be finding a spare 17mm spanner shortly and leaving that attached to the belt, meaning I'll have everything I need to change a belt at the side of the road if I ever have one fail out of the blue again. Not really expecting it as I'm sure that was down to me using an ancient belt that had been poorly stored, but it's an easy eventuality to prepare for so just seems smart.

[CitroJim]

Good work Zel That's a much better job on the throttle now

Good idea to carry a spare CVT belt How easy is it to swap on the side of the road if it fails mid-journey?

[Zelandeth]

Good work Zel That's a much better job on the throttle now

Good idea to carry a spare CVT belt How easy is it to swap on the side of the road if it fails mid-journey?

Ten minute job.

[] Slide seat all the way forward & remove headrest.
[] Remove service hatch.
[] Undo locknut and wind tensioner off (17mm nut).
[] Slip new belt on.
[] Set tensioner back to original position (10 1/4" between pulley centres).
[] Put service hatch back in.
[] Put seat back to the correct position.
[] Continue journey.

They're pretty beefy belts though so hopefully shouldn't be a troublesome component. I'll see how this one is looking after a few months of regular use, at £30 odd I don't really mind if it turns out to be an annual consumable.

[CitroJim]

Ten minute job.

Excellent Somebody properly thought that out! Makes a nice change...

[Hell Razor5543]

I think an engineer realised that, as this was a car for invalids, making it easy for said invalids (should they choose to do so) to maintain and repair it would be a good idea.

[Zelandeth]

Would actually be less of a hassle with the standard seat in as that makes getting the service hatch out a lot easier. I'm really lucky that it's *just* possible to wrangle it out around the Xantia one with the headrest removed, backrest tilted fully forward and the seat slid all the way forwards.

Generally serviceability isn't bad, the only real headaches tend to be simply because the car is just so small. I think in the days of fleets of these being in service they tended to just pull the power plant as a unit of there were any significant issues. Getting the whole thing out involves three bolts, I think three wires and a fuel line, then the whole thing lifts out.

Running repairs were pretty few and far between though. One of the biggest criticisms attached to the earlier Villiers engined Invacars was around the subject of reliability, or rather the complete lack thereof. The Model 70 was a complete revolution in that regard and in service had a very good reliability record - and it's not hard to see why when you look at how over-engineered a lot of parts are...especially by the standards of a microcar from the early 1970s.

With the exception of the addition of dual circuit brakes I've not felt the need to touch the mechanical design. Faffing with the ignition system capacitor setup was purely dealing with how poor availability of replacement service parts of decent quality is in 2021. Everything else I've done really has just been improving the refinement a bit.

The additional instrumentation is personal choice. I just like knowing what's going on.

Fact is it's a really fun little thing to drive so the refinement improvements just make me want to drive it more.

[Zelandeth]

Just a quick bit of work done today between the showers. With TPA having passed the 1000 mile mark a week or so back a service was on the cards, a few bits of which have already been done. Today though was the turn of the ignition system.

The points and rotor arm were still the original ones which were on the engine from KPL when she was originally dragged out of a field. However as the ignition system just worked I'd left things alone! Now the engine is in a car in regular use though and I've tracked down a source of the right parts it's time to sort that.

New points in and the gap set to the correct 0.4mm.



New rotor arm was then fitted. This is quite a different style to the one which was on here and is a bit taller. Looking at the old distributor cap though it does look as though it was only just touching the lower edge of the contacts in the cap, so I do wonder if the fitted one was correct.



A new distributor cap then finished things off in this department, the proper one having finally escaped from its extended stay in customs limbo.



The eagle eyed among you might spot that the air filter has also been changed. It's only got 1000 miles on it, but having been present during all the painting, filling, sanding painting (repeat several times) I figured it was probably worth changing. Only the finest OEM parts used of course!



I was not really expecting there to be any obvious change to how the engine ran as she's always seemed quite happy. The idle is definitely noticeably smoother though!



Whether there will be any difference when actually driving will need to wait until a test drive happens.

Two jobs coming up in the engine bay. First being that I really need to adjust the fan/dynastart belt tension as the rearmost one is flapping about quite a bit. Before I can do that though I need to figure out where in my disaster area of a garage the impact gun is as everything else I've thrown at the nut on the fan pulley has failed to shift it. The second job is to fabricate a proper battery stay. The bungee cord and zip-tie solution was absolutely fine when TPA was primarily held together by duct tape and hope, but those days are a fair way behind us now and it's *really* bugging me. Shouldn't be difficult to come up with something, just has taken a while for it to get to the top of the to do list.

[Zelandeth]

While it was a bit breezy really for driving tiny three wheeler vehicles with a kerb weight roughly equal to that of a postage stamp today, I wasn't about to let that get in the way. I wanted to see if the last few jobs I'd done on TPA had any impact on the way she drove. So she was the chariot of choice for today's errands.



Short answer is yes.

I definitely wasn't getting quite full throttle before. Most noticeable when cruising at 60 now, there wasn't a huge amount of travel left (it was very mushy anywhere beyond about half throttle) whereas cracking it open at 60 now results in a very distinct additional bark from the intake and the pace being picked up quite a bit quicker. Wasn't doing any real higher speed testing though today as the roads were too busy and it was too windy.

She is definitely running smoother too...which is nice even though I didn't really realise there was any improvement to be made there beforehand.

By complete random chance when I pulled up back home today the odometer stopped showing 427 - appropriate for an AC built car!

[mickthemaverick]

By complete random chance when I pulled up back home today the odometer stopped showing 427 - appropriate for an AC built car!

Perhaps they should have called her ' The AC Grass Snake'