back on the road again

 Driving an old Morris isn't all Housewives Choice on the radio and bowling along Devon lanes in search of cream teas and ginger beer, you know.

Sometimes, maybe.

Grubbing around underneath the car on a winter's day is a whole lot less fun, but sometimes inescapable. The rattle that had been coming from the front wheel was getting worse. I'd thought it was a worn rubber bush in one of the trunnions (trunnions are the things that connect the upsy-downsy bit to the lefty-right bit on the front wheels. Sorry, but sometimes you have to use words like 'trunnion' and 'kingpin', because otherwise there aren't any convenient words available).

It wasn't that, though, it was the damper. The damper has an arm that connects to the top of the wheel assembly, and smoothes out the up-and-down motion as the wheel rides over bumps or leans into and out of corners. It's got a little hydraulic piston inside it, that damps the motion. Hence the name.

Anyway, the damper had come loose from the bulkhead, and the retaining bolts and the place they screwed into had been damaged beyond repair.

So there was much quiet intaking of breath at the thought of the narrowly-averted disaster of a wheel collapsing at speed. And 'O no! How am I going to fix this?'. There was quite a bit of that, too.

When I  finally got going, and had all the stuff I needed (after cycling miles and miles all around Bristol, to the Charles Ware Morris Centre on the southern fringe of the city (UNF bolts and recon damper), Bristol Tools (ace shop on the Gloucester Road) and Stone's Fastenings in Old Market (ace nuts and bolts shop in Old Market)) ....finally, as I say, getting the bit between the teeth, it was quick and straighforward.

I drilled two big holes in the cross-member, to get access to where the retaining bolts go through. Then drilled out the worn threads of the bolt holes. Then inserted extra-long bolts, and secured them with nuts and spring washers. Job done.

You can only see one of the holes in this picture, because the torch is sitting on top of the other hole, illuminating the bolt end there. See?

Here, by the way, is what the damper arm looks like if you take away the wheel assembly. The trunnion sits on that pin there, with a couple of rubber bushes sleeved on.

getting a bit hot

 

Folk who drive around in old old cars will be familiar with the occasional need to do something a bit proactive for the car's welfare. My parents recalled the traditional ritual of radiators boiling over on Shap Fell, before the M6 tamed that bit of Cumbria; for my part, no summer would be complete without our having chugged up Telegraph Hill on the A38 west of Exeter, at about 15 MPH, with a queue of frustrated motorists behind, all the windows open and the heater going full blast to try to keep the water temperature down.

I've been watching the temperature gauge closely for ages; I replaced the radiator four years ago, after some serious overheating resulted in a cracked cylinder head; everything was running fine until a few months back, and then I started to see the operational temperature creeping slowly upward. And this hot weather pushed it up beyond 90C the other day; and it's a real bind driving around with the heater on in a heatwave.

So I took the radiator out and backflushed it, and shook all the loose bits of matrix out, and hoovered the whole damn thing, and stuck it back. 

Situation improved, but I may install a summer thermostat; a 74C one arrived in the post yesterday....

bendixed

How to free up a jammed Bendix drive

Problems never come singly, do they? I was driving Katie across town the other day, for her Meeja course, and on the way home there was a faint sense of hiccuping from the engine. I pretended not to notice, because I had drawings to do. But that afternoon, repeating the journey, it developed into full-blown indigestion, and the engine kept cutting out, so that I was constantly juggling the choke and bump-restarting the engine as we coasted along. Katie was oblivious, as we'd stopped at Wai Yee Hong, the chinese supermarket, and she was munching her way through a box of Pokies while listening to her iPod, which was audible to me as that hissy sort of sound that was peculiarly annoying in the circs. So I stuck on Jean-Luc Ponty. Take that, popster!

Worry, worry. Was it the ingition system failing? I started with the simplest job- replacing the HT ignition coil with the spare one. No difference. I took the top off the carburettor float chamber. Loads of crap in there. So I took the carburettor off and stripped it down; the piston was grubby and prone to sticking. So I cleaned everything up and lightly lubricated it, and stuck it all back together, and it worked properly.

Then yesterday I was coming back from Mal's, where I'd been doing some chainsawing, and I'd just switched the engine off when I thought "I'll have a look under the bonnet, and check the mixture." So I engaged the starter. And, because the engine hadn't stopped turning, there was a horrible graunching noise. 

I stopped the engine, and turned it over by the cranking handle. Graunching noise was still there.

I cursed.

Then I took the starter motor out, and checked the teeth on the flywheel.

Blessedly, they were both in fair condition; but the Bendix drive on the starter was jammed. The Bendix bit is that cylinder thing with the cog on it, on the spiral grooves on the shaft in the picture there.

After scratching head for a bit, I compressed the spring on the end of the shaft, using a couple of Mole grips. Then banged it a bit. And it sort of went SPRONG, and the Bendix relocated itself at the right end of the shaft. 

And I breathed a sigh of relief. And cleaned the whole thing with surgical spirit, because Bendixes need to be clean and grease-free, otherwise it'll all end in tears again.

This is what a healthy starter motor looks like.