Having to rewind to June to remind myself exactly where we were with this?
After a brief bit of reminding myself what was and wasn't removed/disconnected we got stuck back in.
Alternator was detached and tucked out of the way - the main terminal was threatening to pull the post out rather than unbolt do I just left it connected - there's plenty of slack in the wiring to do this once unclipped from the guides on the bell housing and crankcase.
In my sights next was the carb. I'm not absolutely certain it needs to come off to pull the unit, but it sits quite close to the front panel so I figured there was a chance of it causing clearance issues. Cables needed to come off either way, so for the sake of two additional nuts there didn't seem to be much reason not to pull it off.
The ignition pickup was disconnected (made easier by the connector I added a while back) and the old fan belt was then pulled. This has reduced the amount of "stuff" we need to contend with quite a lot and made the already small unit look far smaller still.
As the bolts holding the starter motor in place also double as two of the bell housing bolts, that had to go and hang out with the alternator for a while. That cost me by far the most time as I had to go and excavate a fair portion of the garage to find a suitable hex bit for them as they have Allen heads. They were also absolutely wicked tight.
Don't do this by the way in most cases. It's a good way to break wiring. However the wiring to the starter on this thing you could probably lift the whole car by.
The cover on the points box was also removed to give a bit of extra clearance at that end of the engine. The one engine mount directly under it was unbolted followed by the remaining bell housing bolts. All four of them. I kept thinking I must have missed one. After only a small amount of swearing later while I figured out exactly which direction things needed to be twisted to fit through the available space, the engine was out.
It is indeed quite a tight fit to get it out between the inner wing and the gearbox in situ but it's entirely doable, contrary to what a couple of things I've read suggested. Which I'm pleased about as anything which saves me from having to mess about with CV joints can only be a good thing.
As far as weight is concerned, yes it's a reasonably heavy chunk of metal. However it's absolutely reasonable to lift it by hand so long as you've planned it out and are a bit careful. Once out the car and you can get a better angle on it it's really not hard to pick up or carry around. It's a lot lighter than the starter motor on a Gardner 6LXW - that much I can tell you!
Ignition pickup bits have been removed and safely stashed for transfer to the new unit.
Helpfully is all keyed so you'd really have to try to fit it wrong - the only actual adjustment needed is to ensure that the ignition triggers with the piston 2mm before top dead centre.
You may recall me mentioning that I was kind of curious to examine the clutch to see if we could see any evidence which would suggest a reason for the judder. Yeah, we didn't need to look too hard!
While the friction disc doesn't look bad, both the pressure plate and flywheel are pretty horrendous. There are several clear hot spots and some very deep grooves in there on both surfaces. Thankfully none of these parts need to be reused so it's not an issue and it's nice to see a likely cause. The release bearing actually looks near enough new, though as I've got a new one I'll change it. The one coming off is entirely good enough to keep as a spare.
Probably 45 minutes or so (and a decent chunk of that was me finding a hex bit to undo the starter motor bolts) to get from where we started to having it out and the bits I need to transfer removed. Tools used:
Only thing we used initially stripping the engine down and removing the whole top end not shown here was a pair of circlip pliers to remove the clips holding the wrist pins in when pulling the pistons.
Really do wish all cars were this simple to work on!
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In other news, another big box arrived yesterday.
A box I'd been waiting on for a long time as it had been in transit for nearly a month. eBay's own shipping program from abroad is useful as it deals with all the customs nonsense, but man it's slow!
In here is something I'd been promising myself for years but kept baulking at the price tag attached.
Which if you know your computer keyboards is immediately recognisable.
It's a very subjective thing, but in my opinion Northgate have made the outright nicest to type on keyboards that have ever been out there. This being the top of the tree that they made.
They are also absolute tanks. This thing makes my IBM Model-M feel positively flimsy in comparison, and that's not easy! In addition to a thick steel internal chassis, it's all fastened to an additional steel base plate which weighs more than most modern keyboards in itself - it's well over 2.5kg all in. Not one for a small desk either!
I was lucky enough to have one of these at work for a couple of years (found behind the stationary cupboard when we did a major tidy and rearranged a few things, having been there since the mid 90s based on how deeply buried in the dust it was), sadly cut short when IT upgraded my workstation while I was off site and they swiped it! Have promised myself I'd buy one ever since. This one popped up recently in near enough as new looking condition, and I decided it was time. They're only going to get MORE expensive as time goes on...and they're fluffing expensive as it is.
This one clearly hasn't seen much if indeed *any* use.
Note caps lock and control being in far more sensible locations than we've got used to. When did you last use caps lock? For my part I can't recall any time in the last five years other than having hit it accidentally. Control on the other hand I use all the time. If you prefer those keys in their conventional positions, no problem. It can be changed by DIP switches on the back, and alternative keycaps (and branded key cap pullers) come in the box.
Other layout oddities include something which made using Excel (which I did a lot at work) waaaaaay less annoying. A dedicated equals key as part of the number pad.
It's one of those little things which you really don't notice until you've had it and then had to go back to not. The altered arrangement of the cursor and page navigation keys makes a lot of sense - it's basically identical to that on the number pad so combines cursor control and page navigation rather than having to shuffle your hand back and forth - but without needing you to turn num lock on/off - giving you the best of both worlds. It's something that I'm sure not everyone would like though.
Probably the single most obvious thing about it though is the plethora of extra function keys. Your normal 12 are over on the left (as IBM originally intended and I've always preferred), the 12 across the top (labelled SF1 through SF12) are user programmable. Handy - and definitely something which gives it visible presence on any workstation.
Unfortunately...it doesn't work!
The LEDs blink once as you'd expect when power is supplied, but that's it. Of course as with basically any 30+ year old bit of tech bought from a private seller on eBay there's no comeback - and the costs of returning this to the US would be absurd anyway. Given that depending on the DIP switch settings this can be used with a whole variety of systems (IBM PC-AT/PS2, XT, Tandy 1000 series, Amiga 2/4000, and a few I'd never heard of), I do have to wonder if someone has plugged it in with them set wrong and blown something. I seem to recall that connecting XT keyboards to an AT or vice-versa was a big no-no back in the day despite using the same physical connector.
On the plus side, aside from the actual contents of the EPROM, everything on the controller is readily available and it couldn't be easier to work on.
Just a pretty ordinary 4-bit microcontroller running the show and a scattering of 74-series logic. So assuming someone hasn't done something which has fried that EPROM hopefully we should be able to sort it. If that ROM has gone though we're likely in trouble given that I doubt the image of that is going to be easy to find these days. I do need to do a couple of checks first though just to make sure we don't have something daft like a duff socket or cabling problem - or indeed that the cable in the box isn't the right one - just because it has a PS/2 style plug on the end doesn't necessarily mean anything back in the early 90s! It may well be that simple after all.
Hopefully we can get it going...but it would have been nice for something I buy to NOT need me to start out ownership with a repair just for a change!
Wish I'd have known about ImageX's vintage/collectable camera fair. I'd have loved to have joined you! Maybe the next one...
I've been busy trying to fix my old Praktica but fear it's a bit of a lost cause as it looks to have a worn-out shutter curtain. I've learned loads though about stripping and reassembling old-school SLRs and will be doing a write-up in due course - you never know, I may even report success!
Trabby back on the road by the weekend then 
