Tinkering on 't Kreng

As the weather didn’t look to promising this morning I decided to do some work on ‘t Kreng. The idea was to work on the car in the morning and take her for a drive in the afternoon. First job was to fit some bonnet pins that I have lying around for ages but never got to fitting. So after butchering a rather decent bonnet the end result looked like this;

Although the pins are pretty well located with two rather sturdy washers this is only a temporary fix. When the body will be done somewhere in the (hopefully) not too distant future the large hole in the bracket will be welded up. I also used the opportunity to get the alignment of the bonnet a bit better then it was.

With the bonnet pins in place, the original bonnet catch and release mechanism could be removed. This provides a bit of extra room at the rear of the engine to inspect and work on the coolant hoses going to the heater, rather convenient.

Next job was a small service, new oil + filter plus a check of the usual things. Going over the engine bay reminded me of the fact that since a few weeks when I returned home with the car there was always a small patch of coolant just in front of the LH front wheel. Which meant that either the coolant system is pressurising or the radiator cap is gone. A close inspection showed that the rubber seal was indeed past its prime. Luckily there is a rather large US car parts store in our little village and they provided me with a cap that fitted the TR7’s header tank perfectly. Ok it doesn’t look original but I don’t care to much about that.

As can be seen in the picture the LH suspension turret is starting to get rusty indeed. Not yet very bad, but reason enough to have the body done sooner rather than later.

And by the time I had finished with the service the afternoon rush hour was about to start, so I took my mountain bike out into the forest instead ...

Bleedin clutch

With the gearbox under the DHC more or less sorted the gear change still wasn’t as it should be. So I decided to renew the clutch fluid, hoping that this would also expel some trapped air from the system.

So with some help from Rob we renewed the fluid and completely ruined the working of the clutch. One way or another air had got onto the system and refused to get out. As we were rather short of time I decided to leave the car there and then and return the next day.

Next day saw another failed attempt to get the air out of the system in the conventional way. In the end we concluded that this was probably caused by the fact that the clutch hose on a TR7 is rather long, as a result of which not all the air in the system gets expelled before the master cylinders reservoir needs a refill. During which time the air in the hose has more than enough time to collect at the conveniently placed high point just outside the master cylinder;

(OK, this is not a picture of the DHC, but the routing of the clutch hose is the same)

As the fluid coming out of the system was also rather dark looking I decided to put a new slave cylinder in (the master was rebuilt the last year, whereas the slave was a good used one).

Again bleeding the system proved to be quite difficult indeed, there remained some trapped air in the (top of) the hose. In the end we decided on a rather different approach: we waited a short while till the air in the system had collected at the top and then started pumping the clutch pedal several times. This revealed quite a few air bubbles in the reservoir itself and the fluid level started to drop slightly!

Due to the fact that the air collects right at the top pressing the pedal will compress the air, but it will also squeeze some fluid passed the trapped air. When the pedal is released the clutch itself will press against the slave cylinder which in its turn will move the whole (by now non pressurised) fluid column back up into the master cylinder. Every time taking small quantities of air with it into the fluid reservoir ... Five minutes later there were no more air bubbles and we again had a fully functional clutch.

Historic GP at the Nürburgring

The second weekend of August is traditional the weekend of the historic Grand Prix at the Nürburgring in the German Eiffel. Contrary to last year there was some action on the Friday. Although it was slightly wet so now and then. But at least there was some visibility ...

The best bit of action on the Friday is always a long(er) distance race for historic sports cars and saloons, which is held on the famous Nordschleife. Sadly though (from a photographers point of view) health and safety struck hard here. They erected a safety fence along the track making it rather difficult to take decent pictures, even with a focal length of 400mm ! But I managed to take some decent pictures nevertheless;

The entrance to “our” camp site, the “Fat Sausage” club.

Corvette over braking into Breidscheid.

E-type in the pouring rain coming out of Eschbach.

More rainy action.

Firing up for the Friday night BBQ and a few beers.

As a result of the beer not everyone looked at his best next morning.

Parking brake German style.

Lotus 7.

And a very nice black ‘Vette.

BRM tuned Lotus Elan.

Don’t mention the war.

Big German in a big German car and an armful of opposite lock.

Into the evening sun.

Fierce Mini battle.

Pondering or wondering what went wrong.

Nice drift.

Fire spitting TVR Griffith.

Getting rather dark during the evening race.

Axed.