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

[mickthemaverick]

Really interestng read that Zel, good news on the Rover's progress to reliability. I also have been sharing the seized bolt issues so I know that feeling of trepidation as you up the pressure Looking forward to seeing both those cars in due course

[CitroJim]

Superb work Zel, excellent A great read

[Zelandeth]

Rain finally stopped today so I could move forward with this.



No. I definitely didn't give it the second coat of paint using the boot as a spray booth.

Also made a point of ensuring that the brake bleeder cracked loose while I had the arm still off the car as dealing with that as it stood would be far easier than in the car if needed.

The hub cavity, spacer, stub axle and rear cover were all cleaned up.



Not really many photos of putting the new bearings etc in as I was absolutely covered in grease for most of it. In fact I feel like I still am despite having washed my hands a dozen times and showered since I worked on the car.

Probably the single most awkward part was actually getting the snap ring back into the groove in front of the outer bearing as it really was a bit beefier than my circlip pliers were designed for. However I managed to not ping it into low earth orbit or embed it in one of my eyeballs so I considered that a win.

Getting the suspension arm back in place was moderately awkward, but honestly nowhere near as bad as I expected. I was able to lift the arm into position and get the inboard bolt started, then have a jack support the trailing arm while I started the forward one. Then was just a matter of evenly tightening them both up. Which takes takes a while as both of the bolts are really quite long. Definitely a job which made me wish I had an electric ratchet.

Then the brake line was hooked back up.



Not thrilled by the amount of tension on the flexible brake lines. Looks like when the camber correction hardware is fitted that an inch or two longer brake line should also be added. I'll look into dealing with that in the future.

I appreciate that the brake shoes can be fitted back onto the backing plate as a single assembly without the need to wrestle with a bunch of faffing about with the springs. You DO need to mind your fingers though as there will be a heap of tension on there.

Then the hub was reattached, the nut torqued up to Very Tight (TM) and the locking tab bent over to ensure it's not going anywhere. All that remained there was to bleed the brakes and put the wheel back on.

A helper would have been handy rather than relying on the Eazibleed (which as usual leaked all over the place). I know I do have one of those far simpler one man bleeders somewhere, but we all know what my garage looks like.



All back together. Glad to report that a test drive revealed no unpleasant noises or anything.

The next task on the pre-MOT was the steering rack gaiter. Seems simple enough. Remove the end nut from the rack, separate it, remove old boot, clean, re-grease, fit new boot and reassemble.



Yeah...the two parts aren't too interested in separating after 39 years. Ideas? I've left it soaking in Plusgas overnight. Guessing heat is probably the answer, albeit very carefully both due to not wanting to damage the rack itself and given the proximity of the fuel tank.

Once that's done and I've given the headlight beam alignment a tweak we should be ready to head to the MOT again. Hopefully!

[CitroJim]

Good work Zel, I know what you mean about grease CV grease is the second worse. The worst by far I ever encountered was some white grease. I believe it was a type of marine grease and the most horrid stuff I've ever encountered..

That recalcitrant nut. Try a rattle gun

[Zelandeth]

Good work Zel, I know what you mean about grease :evil: CV grease is the second worse. The worst by far I ever encountered was some white grease. I believe it was a type of marine grease and the most horrid stuff I've ever encountered..

That recalcitrant nut. Try a rattle gun ;)

The nut isn't the problem, it was pretty tight but came off without too much bother. The issue is the steering link that appears to have welded itself onto the rack.

[CitroJim]

Good work Zel, I know what you mean about grease CV grease is the second worse. The worst by far I ever encountered was some white grease. I believe it was a type of marine grease and the most horrid stuff I've ever encountered..

That recalcitrant nut. Try a rattle gun

The nut isn't the problem, it was pretty tight but came off without too much bother. The issue is the steering link that appears to have welded itself onto the rack.

Ahh, understood, sorry...

[Zelandeth]

Okay, let's have another shot at getting this steering rack to track rod bracket apart.

Attempt number 1. This failed. The puller would always slip off well before getting any real torque involved.



I just loosely put the puller on there for the photo, so I know it's not lined up right there.

The correct tool for this job is for all intents and purposes just a big ball joint splitter. However buying one of those would require spending more money than I really wanted to and waiting for something to arrive, most likely from abroad.

MacGuyver time.

Take one £15 splitter from Halfords. This had neither enough clearance to fit around the steering rack, nor was long enough to fit in place over the threaded section. Well that is until I spent ten minutes mutilating it with an angle grinder.



Remember, it's not stupid if it works!

Did it work?



Perfectly. Removed it on the first try. That joint let go with one HELL of a bang.

The old boot was removed and things cleaned up ready for the new one to go on, which I'd already had long enough to have completely forgotten which box it was in and requiring 10 minutes of rummaging until it turned up.



Much better.



Not quite "done" in that photo though. I didn't initially spot that there's a flat cast into the bracket where the locking washer is meant to locate. So the nut was loosened off again and the washer rotated through 180 degrees since this photo was taken.

Only casualty was me nearly setting myself on fire with the grinder.



This despite me already being kind of paranoid about fire was I was relatively close to the Rover while doing this job and it's proven so far to be by far the most stubbornly not fuel-tight vehicle I've ever owned!

MOT has been re-booked for next Thursday. Shame they can't fit me in sooner, but it is what it is, I know they're always busy. Aside from the usual sanity check beforehand and making sure all the lights etc are working, I need to try to tweak the headlight aim a bit as I think it's still way too low. I'll make sure all the adjusters are properly lubricated before taking it in so it can be easily tweaked at the time if need be.

[CitroJim]

Excellent Zel I like how you've now made a special tool for the job

[Zelandeth]

Few little jobs done today on the Trabant in preparation for the MOT on Thursday.

One thing which I knew for certain needed sorting was the headlight aim. I borrowed the Partner which I know the headlights are adjusted more or less correctly on and made a couple of reference marks on the garage door from a known distance.

Starting point basically had the headlights pointing at the ground about 6' in front of the car. Yeah, this needed some help.



Looks far more sensible now I've tweaked things a bit.



There used to be a huge gap between the lenses and the surrounds, they look more sensible now.



Might need a bit of a tweak at the test when we have the actual beam analyser on it, but all the adjusters are free now so that's only a couple of minutes work, and isn't the sort of thing my tester would mind happening while we're there if we need to.

As mentioned last time, I had to adjust the locking washer for the nut that holds the steering rack to the track rod bracket as I'd originally put it on backwards. Just wanted to provide visible evidence (to myself as much as anything!) that I had gone back and fixed that.



The Easybleed as seems to be standard both leaked fluid everywhere and overfilled the brake fluid reservoir. So I both drained off enough to bring the fluid down to the max mark and tried to clean up the general area so it didn't look like I had a huge fluid leak from the master cylinder.



I'd had a new air filter floating around pretty much since I got the car as the one on it was looking pretty manky. If you wondered what filter these used, here's your answer. Yes, that's also me lazily leaving breadcrumbs for myself when I forget.



Was quite surprised when a current looking Mann filter box turned up, and that the filter itself has a late 2023 date stamp on it given the *huge* variety of applications it's listed for...



I do appreciate how Mann list the cross reference numbers right on the box, that's really helpful.

Spotted one problem starting to develop in the form of one of the driver's door hinge pins attempting to make a bid for freedom.



This was hammered back into place properly. Have to wonder how long that's taken to work itself that far out. Noticeable that the door opens/closes more smoothly now.

Will try to find time between now and the test to give the car a general clean, and I'd really like to come up with a more substantial mounting solution for the front bumper as I can see it's sagging again.

I had a look at the Partner today to see if I could do something about the exceptionally annoying rattle from the engine bay. This did a really good job of masquerading as DMF death rattle for a while before I figured out that it was actually totally benign. Annoying as all hell but benign. One of the mounting tabs has broken off the manifold/turbo/cat heat shield.



I'll need to bolt a new tab on there to secure this as it's going to drive me round the twist otherwise.

The Rover has been subject to a little more testing today as well. Both the fuel delivery and cooling system, and doing a little fine tuning of the kick down cable. This basically consisted of me thrashing the hell out of it up and down one of the grid roads from a standing start to 60 and back again for about half an hour. It didn't actually miss a beat somewhat to my surprise. It really does pick up and go astonishingly well for a 49 year old car. Has scrubbed the brakes up nicely as well as they feel massively more positive now. Does make a nice noise too!

This evening I had a little job to tackle on this little brick of a household appliance.



This is the air conditioner which lives in my room, and is largely responsible for the room being habitable any time other than the deepest parts of winter. Even when it's barely above freezing outside this room will hover in the mid 20s if there's any real source of heat running (such as my PC) even if the window is wide open unless it's really windy. Just a combination of being stupidly well insulated and the window being tucked away inside an L shaped bit of wall meaning there's basically no airflow even when the window is open.

The one recurring issue I have with this thing is that the condensate drain clogs up at least once a year. The point it blocks is actually in the outdoor unit, but because of the way it's built you have to rod it out using a piece of stiff wire from inside. It's a right faff, especially as the unit is kind of structural when it's in place.

This is very much dating from a time when things were still designed to be serviced.



Fed up with the nonsense with the condensate drain - it's now just getting a separate hose to dump outside without running through the umbilical. I suspect it's kinked in there to be honest as even once it's cleared this has always drained really slowly.

I'm taking the opportunity to deal with a couple of other issues while I've got it unearthed as well. Firstly, the logic board has been distinctly senile for several years now and as a result a lot of it has been bypassed. The heating portion is completely disconnected, and the AC circuit is actually turned on/off using the ioniser button, with the power to the relay for the compressor running through the thermostat. It's a cludge, but mostly works. Does mean there's no anti-cycle timer though and it is possible to turn the refrigeration side of things on without the blower running, which will cause the unit to ice up in a matter of minutes.

The thermostat has also very noticeably drifted over the last year or so (it's just a 0-9 control anyway), with it only cooling to about 21C - warmer than I like it to be at night - when set to full. So I'm going to upgrade it's innards. The whole original control board will go. A proper modern digital temperature controller will be installed to replace the thermostat. This has the ability to handle both heating and cooling functions, so I'd be able to just dial in exactly what temperature I wanted. Also has the ability to dial in exactly what deadband you want, anti-cycle timers to protect the compressor and the like.

[] Temperature controller for being the main brains of the operation.
[] Standalone motor starter contactor for the compressor.
[] Contactor for heating.
[] Contactor and trio of relays for blower & speed control.

Will also wire things together in the right sequence to ensure we actually have the safety interlocks back in operation to ensure that the blower must be running for the compressor to start, the heating and cooling cannot run at the same time, and that if the overflow float switch in the condensate drain pan closes that everything will shut down.

Also going to look into replacing the rubber bushes the compressor sits on in the hope of silencing the horrendous rattle it causes.

I can't blame it at all for needing a bit of a facelift. It's 33 years old, and spent most of that life as a piece of hire equipment. It only cost me £60 though (price for a new portable split unit like this is well over a grand) so it really doesn't owe me anything.

[CitroJim]

Excellent! I've used the garage door method to set headlight beam patterns and it works well. Up until not long ago you could still see the chalk marks on mine when I did Bluebell's and using my erstwhile Saxo as the reference...

Good news on the Rover

[Zelandeth]

The upside would be that you would have a DSLR to play with.
Much as losing my complete Olympus SLR cameras and lenses, I would probably not use them now anyway.

About that not having a DSLR...





Oops.

This actually has been somewhat in the pipeline for a while as I have one main job for this camera - and that's for grabbing photos for my website. The one real issue I have with closeup work on my phone's camera is that it has next to no depth of field. So having a lens which I can stop down a bit will be really helpful in that regard.

Should be interesting to have a bit of a play around with anyway. It's "only" 10.2MP, but in the same breath...so has basically every photo I've taken digitally in the last at least five years or so. It's plenty for real world applications unless you're wanting to do a lot of cropping or print things off on large media. I'm expecting the image quality to be pretty decent despite it being pretty pedestrian in terms of specs today and being 17 years old.

Looking forward to testing it out tomorrow, just waiting for a battery charger to turn up and for the strap to go through the wash as it's a bit grubby. Should be interesting. The newest camera that's not a £50 point-and-shoot one by probably about 15 years.

That £50 point-and-shoot Samsung does get a mention though. That thing went through absolute hell and outlived not one but two supposedly ruggedised cameras at work, and went basically everywhere with me for a good five years! Still works too, though it was granted a quiet retirement when I picked up the Huawei P9 which was the first phone which had a camera so good that there was no point in carrying a separate one with me day to day any more.

[CitroJim]

Looks a nice camera Zel Looking forward to seeing what it can do!

[NewcastleFalcon]

Yes, do have the occasional break out from your blog Zel and grace the most viewed and popular thread on the FCF
Picture(s) of the day aka POTD with the odd image. For me the quirkier/abstract/zany/incongruous/generally unexpected and odd appeal. No threshold of relevance/infocusness/ or photographic excellence required

The thread is getting more views than ever (6000 ish a day) which for the fading world of specific car forums is pretty good. Content on the thread in spite of much encouragement is provided only by three or four regular contributors, and the odd entry from yourself would be most welcome.

Neil

[myglaren]

Don't be swayed by the pixel count. Mine has only 8.2 and produces excellent images. I worked with a bloke who had a Leicaflex with only 8.2 megapixies too, superb and better than many cameras with much higher numbers.
It is, as it was with film, the quality of the glass that is important.

Your Canon is a good starting point as there are far more options for slide/neg copiers than I have with Olympus, partly as they withdrew from the camera market to concentrate on scientific optics, their core business.

I did find a couple but need Olympus adaptors for them, also my lenses don't focus quite close enough so would need a dedicated macro lens or a lens reversing adaptor.
This is as close as it gets.

[Gibbo2286]

With all the photo fixing programmes available now the quality of the camera seems less important.