But before starting on the engine I first finished the steering wheel, by fitting the spoke's padding.
Over the past few days I have been working on the engine and gearbox. The engine was fully rebuilt and slightly tuned quite a long time ago. Actually it was fitted to the DHC in June 1993, and between then and the summer of 1998 (when the car was taken off the road) it covered some 50.000 kilometres. The gearbox is the original ‘box from ‘t Kreng. Have forgotten when I fitted that to the car, but probably in ‘95 or `96. By now it has covered somewhere between 100.000 and 120.000 kilometres.
When I last drove the car both engine and ‘box behaved as they should. Only the clutch had a tendency to stick when the engine was cold. So that was the first thing to check. With the ’box removed there wasn’t anything obviously wrong with the clutch or the release mechanism.
OK there was some dirt on the splines and inside the release bearing carrier but not enough to cause the sticky clutch in my opinion. But when I took the release fork out I found that the slipper pads needed quite a bit of force to rotate them due to excessive contamination. With all parts cleaned thoroughly and with a thin film off grease on the moving surfaces everything moved freely so hopefully it should be OK now.
Over the past few days I have been working on the engine and gearbox. The engine was fully rebuilt and slightly tuned quite a long time ago. Actually it was fitted to the DHC in June 1993, and between then and the summer of 1998 (when the car was taken off the road) it covered some 50.000 kilometres. The gearbox is the original ‘box from ‘t Kreng. Have forgotten when I fitted that to the car, but probably in ‘95 or `96. By now it has covered somewhere between 100.000 and 120.000 kilometres.
When I last drove the car both engine and ‘box behaved as they should. Only the clutch had a tendency to stick when the engine was cold. So that was the first thing to check. With the ’box removed there wasn’t anything obviously wrong with the clutch or the release mechanism.
OK there was some dirt on the splines and inside the release bearing carrier but not enough to cause the sticky clutch in my opinion. But when I took the release fork out I found that the slipper pads needed quite a bit of force to rotate them due to excessive contamination. With all parts cleaned thoroughly and with a thin film off grease on the moving surfaces everything moved freely so hopefully it should be OK now.
The clutch cover and driven plate were in pretty good condition (and with only 60.000 kilometres behind them they should) so they were cleaned and put aside to be re-used, together with the various engine mounts I prepared.
With the transmission and mounts sorted I set to work on the engine itself. I first attacked it with some degreaser in an attempt to clean it up a bit. Result isn’t brilliant, but then it is a well used, but also very sound engine, so it’ll have to do as it is. Next on the to do list was getting a fair bit of play out of the throttle linkage. Original design isn’t brilliant so I adapted an old Weber linkage I had lying around. Hopefully it is going to work as putting the old linkage back will be quite a fiddle with the engine in the car. But first impression is that the action is much smoother.
And to finish on a high note I ended this working the day with refitting the gearbox. First thing (of course) was refitting the clutch assembly. Which isn’t that difficult as long as you use one of these simple, little and cheap tools ...
With the transmission and mounts sorted I set to work on the engine itself. I first attacked it with some degreaser in an attempt to clean it up a bit. Result isn’t brilliant, but then it is a well used, but also very sound engine, so it’ll have to do as it is. Next on the to do list was getting a fair bit of play out of the throttle linkage. Original design isn’t brilliant so I adapted an old Weber linkage I had lying around. Hopefully it is going to work as putting the old linkage back will be quite a fiddle with the engine in the car. But first impression is that the action is much smoother.
And to finish on a high note I ended this working the day with refitting the gearbox. First thing (of course) was refitting the clutch assembly. Which isn’t that difficult as long as you use one of these simple, little and cheap tools ...
And with the clutch assembly in place and properly aligned, putting the gearbox back on was fairly straight forward.
Would have been quicker and easier if I had some help, but that is for tomorrow, when René is coming over to help with putting the engine back in the car.
Would have been quicker and easier if I had some help, but that is for tomorrow, when René is coming over to help with putting the engine back in the car.
And to finish a good days work I found out that several of the threads in the head for the exhaust manifold have been stripped, so need a recoil. Luckily I have a Helicoil set at home, so that is on the to do list for tomorrow too ...
No comments:
Post a Comment