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

[Zelandeth]

So yeah, today's thoughts can largely be summarised by a single image.



I am not amused.

Evidently, a month or two back when I piped up the fuel pump on the Rover, I failed to notice that the hose clip on the output side of that filter had bound up rather than tightening on the hose properly. This remained unnoticed until this morning when I discovered that the hose had come loose (imagine I probably disturbed it yesterday) and had at some point during the night started to drip fuel onto the driveway. This continued for several hours until I woke up wondering why the entire house absolutely reeked of petrol. Of course our driveway drains towards the house, so the fuel had run that way (assisted no doubt by the rain last night). We've had the windows open all day and it's better, but the smell is absolutely still here.

I am really, really, really annoyed with myself for missing that. Especially on a safety critical component like the fuel system. Everything should have been double checked. That could have been so, so much worse.

In better news, the prototype fuel return line seems to be working just fine. I had the car run fully up to temperature today without any signs of fuel vaporisation problems as we would usually have been seeing.

I suspect I am going to have to add a pressure regulator though. The original return line features a tiny orifice in the fitting where it feeds back into the tank (probably where the line is clogged), so I'll need to emulate that, as without a restriction on the return line it does cause the car to run lean. Hardly the end of the world, and I had kind of expected as much.

The biggest headache with this setup actually was trying to find a suitable way to get a line from under the car into the boot where my return line goes into the tank. None of the holes in the boot floor actually go all the way through, just into double skinned sections. Eventually though I found a way to get there via a wiring pass through into the cabin, and then via a grommet under the rear seat. Then I could just join up with the main bundle of pipes and wires which follow a frame rail.







The pipe sits well clear of the seat base when it's in place. Hard to see in the photo, but there is a grommet protecting the pipe where it passes through the floor pan too. It sits nicely up against the rubberised seam sealer once the sound deadening pad is dropped back in place so it's not moving around.

I will be re-making this in proper fuel line if this is proven to work, I just don't have enough in stock at the moment so wanted to test the theory with what materials I had to hand and I've been tripping over that spool of brake pipe for about a year and a half now. It was basically chosen because it was the easiest thing I could find to join to the existing nylon line exiting the carb fuel feed.

Given that this isn't intended to be a long term solution, I didn't want to go drilling holes in anything for this. The fuel gauge sender/feed/return assembly in the tank will be getting replaced when I have the time and inclination to pull the tank, but that's not today's problem and I'd really like to resume the shakedown period in the interim.

[CitroJim]

I am really, really, really annoyed with myself for missing that. Especially on a safety critical component like the fuel system. Everything should have been double checked. That could have been so, so much worse.

Don't be Zel, we're all human and as they say, 'to err is...'

We've all been there, and as Mike attests, I know I have - on too many occasions... A shame to waste all that petrol but as you say, it could have been a lot worse..

Has the smell now gone from the house?

Good to see some Rover progress

[Zelandeth]

Somewhat grumpy.

Ordered the head gaskets for the Trabant on Wednesday from a UK seller "because it will be quicker than buying them from Germany."

Have they even been dispatched yet? Nope.

Would they have arrived from my usual seller in Germany by now? Yep. Definitely by tomorrow.

Annoying.

Wishing I'd at least shuffled cars around first as the Rover is currently trapped behind the Trabant which has its engine currently in bits, and the Rover is actually almost in a state where we could tentatively try another test run, just need to actually wire up a slightly less shonky power supply for the fuel pump.

[CitroJim]

That's bloody annoying Zel

I'm out and about today - I'm doing some work at The Bowl - so if you'd like a hand to manually shuffle the Rover and Trabant around, let me know and I'll call in...

[Zelandeth]

Should be fine Jim. It's not a high priority anyway and I'm pretty sure the Trabant is so light I could shift it single handedly if it came to it!

Edit: Pretty sure I hear the very early stages of a wheel bearing starting to drone on the Partner. Will need to jack up each corner and see if I can figure out which one is responsible.

If that turned out to be responsible for the vibration under braking (not a warped disc, it's too high a frequency to be that) that would be really nice as that's been an irritation ever since I bought it.

[CitroJim]

Edit: Pretty sure I hear the very early stages of a wheel bearing starting to drone on the Partner. Will need to jack up each corner and see if I can figure out which one is responsible.

Hydraulic press here when you need it to swap the wheel bearings Zel. Do both as if one is on the way out the other side won't be far behind...

[Zelandeth]

eBay seller still hasn't dispatched the head gaskets for the Trabant I ordered on Wednesday afternoon. I am not amused. Main reason I ordered from them rather than abroad was so they'd get here quicker. If I'd ordered from Trabantwelt the parts would be in my hands by now. Yes I'd have paid through the nose for postage, but this is one of those cases where it doesn't matter whether I'm paying £5 or £50, without the parts I can't fix the car! Looks like I may have sourced some via the owners club, let's see how that plays out.

I dislike unnecessarily having to wait on things, so grumpy Zel is grumpy.

So I replaced the rear mud flaps.



Car originally had them fitted as the remains were still there. Which is nice as it meant I could just punch out the original rivets and reuse the holes and didn't have to drill anything. A worthwhile addition I think, not so much for my benefit, but with the state of the roads around here, if it helps stop me putting a stone kicked up through someone else's windscreen it's worth having them. Front ones probably will get done tomorrow if the weather plays ball and I get a spare half hour.

Here's a better look at that fan shroud I mentioned earlier. Lot more going on here than a simple tin box.

Here's looking in from the fan side.



And from the engine side.



The shroud on the Invacar engine is vastly more simple, though I guess in that case a huge amount of the cooling load is actually handled by the oil cooler, so provided there is enough air flow through that the rest is less important. Whereas here you need to try to ensure you've got the right balance of flow rate across all surfaces at all points in the rev band.

[Zelandeth]

Still no sign of the gaskets ordered from eBay.

Thankfully, a member of the owner's club just half an hour up the road bailed me out with a full engine gasket set they had going spare. Cheers for that if you're reading this!



With gaskets in hand it was a matter of about 20 minutes to get everything put back together. Probably could have been quicker, but it took me a while to figure out exactly how to shuffle the cowl back into place properly.

It looks like an engine again!



Additionally to the replacement of the blown gasket, the previously missing bit of pipe between the fan cowling and exhaust manifold shroud has been replaced with the correct part.



I had previously wedged a bit of pipe in there but it didn't really fit. I can report that as expected this being properly in place has a major impact on the efficacy of the cabin heater, which was already making a pretty good showing of itself. It's definite proof that there's absolutely no reason an air cooled car can't have a good heater.

Additionally the rubber seal between the fan and shroud has now been replaced.



I couldn't get this to stay put before. Pretty sure that's because it was meant to attach to the inside of the fan housing rather than the shroud - which you can only do once the shroud has been unbolted. The airflow through the gap now actually pushes the seal into place more firmly rather than blow it out. Still a bit of air leakage there but it's orders of magnitude better than it was.

Still have the gasket sitting here for the other cylinder.



Well it's actually back in the bag with the rest for safe keeping.

I'll go back in and do that as a preventative measure shortly along with a thorough external clean of the engine. However it was raining sideways the whole time I was doing this work today so I just wanted to get the job done as quickly as was reasonably possible. Preventative work wasn't a high priority, and it's only about 15 minutes work to pull the cowl off, so not like I'm wasting a huge amount of time.

Glad I looked up the torque specs for the head nuts - only 42NM, so I'd almost definitely have over tightened those if I was doing it by hand without the torque wrench as that's really not all that tight at all.

Seems to be back to it's old self now I'm glad to report.

[CitroJim]

Excellent!

Zel, seeing a shot of your ParnerLingo and it's stalks there, would you like to make an appointment next week to look again at your cruise control and perhaps a look at your desolder tool?

Let me know before my calendar fills up Tuesday and Wednesday are already full but other days may be good.

[Zelandeth]

Oh look what landed in my inbox this morning...

I'm suuuuuure that's what happened...Yes, couriers regularly get back in touch with the sender to tell them that they've lost a package. They absolutely didn't forget about the order for a week and then realised they only had half the requested amount in stock. Nope...That definitely wouldn't be what happened.

Cancelled the order, I'll just include a pair with the next order from Trabantwelt to keep as spares. They're 1/4 the price on there anyway!

How's Monday looking, Jim? Abby needs the car for work on Wednesday and if I could have it with working cruise for her for then it would be nice. Not critical though.

[CitroJim]

Monday's good Zel I've a telephone consultation at 1330 and Polly's in for her MoT all day so avoiding around 1330 will be perfect. Looking forward to seeing you

[Zelandeth]

Had a chat this afternoon with my usual MOT tester regarding the rust in the boot floor of the Trabant. He agrees with me that it's well outwith a prescribed area so won't be a problem. That's good news for me as it takes the urgency off fixing it. That's a job I'll definitely be farming out to someone with more skills than me. Probably get that and the rear windscreen surround sorted at the same time. The rust in the screen surround is definitely how the water is getting into the boot I have confirmed, so it must be actually holed under the rubber - can't say I'm surprised given the state of it.

Test is booked for the 7th, so should give me time to get the steering rack gaiter changed and properly sort the headlight aim which is still on the low side I think.

If you're reading this Steve, sorry for bringing the workshop to a standstill when I arrived due to everyone's curiosity!

[CitroJim]

If you're reading this Steve, sorry for bringing the workshop to a standstill when I arrived due to everyone's curiosity!

I expect it brought most of the town to a standstill Zel!!!

[Zelandeth]

Made a point today before the rain (again) arrived to go over the rear suspension on the Trabant to ensure everything was tight. I just didn't trust it to be given how many things I'd found not to be.

Sure enough, first bolt I touched was less than finger tight. Not as if these are holding anything important in place.



Likewise the forward mount on the trailing arm was pretty loose. Nearside ones did actually have some tightness to them, but still nowhere near what I'd call "tight enough" for the application. I have to wonder if that's what the clonk from the rear end I'd been blaming on either the bootlid or rear seat when driving out of my driveway was...all I know is the car didn't do it when I pulled out today.

I'm sure there's a large degree of placebo effect going on simply knowing everything is bolted up tightly now (and the wind has dropped) but the car definitely *seems* to feel a lot more stable when driving in a straight line now.

I'm going to give the front end a similar going over at the weekend.

Having noted that there was quite a bit of slack in the throttle cable when I did the head gasket (the cable bracket attaches to the front of the fan cowling) I actually checked and adjusted it today. Just a little slack in there then...



That's definitely made the car feel more responsive.

Annoyingly the rubbing noise from one of the rear wheels has returned. Even more annoyingly I can't now make the car do it with the wheels in the air. I do note that the offside wheel bearing is definitely more rough than the nearside, not enough I'd worry about it but certainly worth keeping an eye on. Guess I'll need to pull the drums at some point and see if I can see anything amiss. I can't feel it through the car or brake pedal, but the noise like a dragging brake shoe is definitely there. Worth looking in to as I've had a car shed a brake shoe lining before and that was quite exciting when it randomly locked the wheel up without any prior warning. I'd rather not have that happen halfway around a roundabout in MK.

Any further ideas for doing anything useful were quashed but yet more rain arriving. Didn't stop me using the car for the afternoon's errands though and once again making the moderns look huge.



Could we quit it with the rain now please? Our whole front and back gardens were about 1/2" underwater today as the ground is just so saturated. Aside from anything else I'm sick of having to mop up endless muddy paw prints every time the dogs go outside!

[Gibbo2286]

I once employed a young mechanic, built like a brick sh house but I had to send him on his way because he seemed incapable of tightening things up properly, had to follow him round to make sure the wheel nuts were tight on anything he serviced.