DHC repairs #18: RH rear floor and bulkhead

This afternoon I again received a set of photographs from the workshop to report on the progress so far of the DHC’s body work repairs. And as the title of this post indicates, in the past week and a half, repairs have been carried out on rear of the right hand cabin floor and the adjacent section of the rear bulk head. A selection of pictures to illustrate the work done. Clearly a fair amount of more work than first anticipated!

More TLC for ‘t Kreng

Part two of the general service and maintenance check of ‘t Kreng, which was carried out over this weekend. With the most important job being flushing and bleeding the hydraulic fluids. From a mileage point of view this wasn’t really necessary. But both clutch and brake fluid were well over three years old. Where my normal interval for these fluids is two years. So time to call on the help of a friend for a traditional flushing and bleeding session!

Starting with emptying and cleaning the clutch cylinder’s reservoir. And this immediately showed why regular hydraulic fluid changes are absolutely essential. The fluid I sucked out of the clutch cylinder’s reservoir was almost completely black. Forgot to take the picture but the one in this earlier post gives a good indication on how it looked! After that the reservoir was cleaned and filled was fresh brake fluid (Bosch DOT4). Flushing and bleeding the clutch system was left till later though.

We moved to the brake system instead. Starting with the removal of the brake master cylinder’s pressure failure switch. Always tricky as this one is by now old and brittle. But I succeeded to remove it intact. Probably helped by the anti-seize paste I used when I re-fitted it a few years ago.

With that hurdle successfully out of the way, we could start flushing and bleeding the brake system. Starting with the front brakes which are fed through the rear chamber of the fluid reservoir. This chamber was also first emptied with a small manual suction pump, after which it was filled with fresh fluid. And the flushing/and bleeding could begin, starting with the front calliper on the right hand side. For both sides together, we used twice the contents of the rear chamber. No air came out.

As the reservoir’s front chamber can’t be emptied with my simple pump (a large syringe type affair) we had to empty this chamber by pumping the brake pedal with one of the bleed nipples at the rear open. My assistant was a bit overzealous though, emptying the front chamber too far. Which resulted in some air being drawn into the system. Luckily the air could be bled very easily though one of the two bleed nipples at the back.

Next job was flushing the clutch system. With the reservoir filled with fresh fluid, and the old fluid still in the pipe, it should be clearly visible when all the old fluid was expelled from the system. It was! But just to be sure all the old fluid was expelled, the contents of a full reservoir were flushed through the system after clean fluid came out of the master cylinder. Job done! Actually the biggest problem here was removing the rubber dust cap from the slave cylinder’s bleed nipple underneath the car! It had collected some oil, resulting in a rather slippery dust cap.

Next on the to-do-list where the wheels. They would certainly benefit from a good clean. Rather straightforward with warm soapy water and a collection of different brushes. I did need a shower afterwards!

Final job on the on the to do list was cleaning the two earth points behind the head lamp mounting panel. Hardly any oxidation there, only a lot of paint. So I cleaned away the paint around the mounting points and refitted the earth points using some copper slip to prevent future corrosion.

And the final job for the day was cleaning the steering wheel and treating it with a leather conditioner. The lack of use in the recent years had dried out the steering wheel’s leather cover. And after well over thirty years of service (it started life with me when I fitted it to a Mini Cooper, in 1994!), it could do with some tender loving care. It did soak up quite a bit of leather conditioner fluid.

Oil Change for ‘t Kreng

Found some time and motivation to start on a somewhat belated general service for ‘t Kreng. My heavily modified Sprint engined FHC TR7. First job was an engine and gearbox oil change plus an oil level check of the back axle. So after ordering the necessary oil, I “booked” one of the 4 poster lifts at a friend’s workshop, to make life a bit easier!

For the oil I went for my usual choice of Valvoline VR1 Racing 20W-50 for the engine and fully synthetic Castrol Transmax Manual 75W-90 for the gear box. For topping up the back axle (with a Quaife ATB diff) I used the also fully synthetic Castrol Syntrax Universal Plus 75W-90. I used this oil when I changed the oil in 2012. The engine oil filter as ever a cheap and readily available Bosch P2056 spin on filter.

With the car on the lift it was rather straightforward. Added bonus of working in a fully equipped work shop has the advantage that small parts like sealing rings for the various fill and drain plugs are readily available. But there is also proper equipment to collect the old oil and oil filter without making an oily mess of it!

Draining the engine and gearbox oil was straight forward. As was the removal of the old oil filter, using the correct tool. The oil level in the back axle turned out to be slightly over the mark, so didn’t need topping up.

But that’s where the “disadvantage” of being a friendly workshop showed itself. I was not the only one that was using it. So by the time I had finished my work on ‘t Kreng, the work on this rather lovely Jaguar wasn’t finished yet. Time for some more coffee!

So it was a little later than expected that I returned home. On the scenic drive home the car behaved rather well though there again was the small hint that I need to address some oxidation in the wiring. Some connectors and earth points to be more precise. At a traffic light the engine’s revs briefly dropped below their normal value, and the low coolant light briefly flickered into action. So just to be sure, on returning home I did check the water pump area. It was bone dry! But there was a slight hissing sound somewhere near the header tank. Turned out to be coming from the left hand top corner of the radiator. So it is now official. After almost 30 years of faithful service the radiator has sprung a leak. Luckily it is a very, very tiny leak so far, so no priority there. But fitting a new radiator is now slowly making its way up the to-do-list!

As can be seen in the picture above, of the area where the leak is, there is hardly a sign of coolant leaking. There’s only a tiny damp area visible. Something to keep an eye on.

DHC repairs #17: RH rear wing

Received another set of photographs from the workshop last Monday. They are from the repairs of the right hand rear outer wing. Turned out to be a slightly tricky repair because I want to retain as much metal from the original body shell as possible. And that includes the car’s original VIN number in the right hand side boot gutter.

It turned out that, despite an old sloppy rust repair and some serious rust to the rear of the outer wing’s wheel arch, the inner wing was in pretty good condition. No work needed there! For the rest pictures below should tell their own story;