Fitting new GPS part 2

After enjoying the car over the past two evenings, I started in earnest with the car’s preparations for this year’s 10 Countries Run today. And I started with a job that I have postponed for a pretty long time, fitting the loading and mounting dock for the “new” GPS device. Why? Because I hate removing the dashboard of these cars. Not that it is a difficult job, but rather time consuming. And there will always be a few things that will throw up a fight. Mostly because they are difficult to get to. So I came prepared and had scheduled to only remove the dashboard from the car today, and start fitting the GPS dock this weekend.

The first part to throw up a fight was the gear lever surround. As usual that refused to cooperate. But it needs to come out before you can access the centre console. Quickest and easiest way to remove the surround is disconnecting the handbrake cable from the back axle so the hand brake lever can be pulled up higher, giving enough clearance for the surround to be removed.

With the surround out of the way I removed all fasteners from the centre console. But left it in place because there are a lot of electrical connections hiding behind, including the radio. Of which I am still searching for the keys to remove it! Instead I decided to remove the steering wheel and the column switches in preparation for the dashboards removal. And after an hour and a half all fasteners were removed and connectors disconnected. Of course a lot of pictures were taken of how wires were connected, and all screws and bolts were stored per part or area of the dashboard.

After which it was finally time to remove the dashboard from the car. Leaving lots of space around the heater and a boot full of parts.

As I was by now well ahead of schedule I decided to have a go at mounting the GPS’ docking station. I had mentally prepared that this would be difficult and it was. But as I knew what could go wrong that wasn’t much of a surprise. And by the end of the afternoon the docking station was fitted to the dashboard. Sadly the mobile phone I was using as notebook (Samsung S8 Edge) decided to randomly add various effects to the pictures, which I didn’t ask for. So I owe you these images!

10CR Preparations (#1)

At last found some time and a bit of decent weather this evening and yesterday’s evening for some test drives. All in preparation for the upcoming Club Triumph’s 10 Countries Runs, which will be run in early September. Was good to be out in the open at last and being able to enjoy the fine weather and the driving. But there are a few issues that need addressing before the 10CR. Some caused by the car’s fairly long period of inactivity, some noted earlier but forgotten to address, and some new …

So after returning home from a lovely drive I decided it would be good idea to draw up a list with all the (mostly small) jobs that need to be addressed within the next few weeks;

• The first problem arose yesterday evening when I wanted to start the car, and the starter motor quickly lost power. Multi meter showed 12,45V at the battery, so the connectors and earth points need a thorough clean. It did start afterwards without any problems though;
• While driving there were some squeaking noises coming from the (polyurethane) lower steering column bush. A squirt of lubricant should get that sorted;
• Another problem that emerged were the new brakes. They were not what I’d call confidence inspiring. But after some 100 miles it looks like the pads are slowly bedding in, as the brakes performance has been improving gradually with every driven mile;
• Fuel gauge still registering almost empty. Maybe a good clean and inspection of the area might show up what’s wrong;
• After changing the choke cable last year the choke light now refuses to switch of. Either remove the bulb or disconnect the wires from the switch;
• Have a look at fitting LED bulbs for the dashboard instrument lights. This job can be combined with the dash out job of fitting the GPS mount and power supply;
• Also have to look into the throttle pedal, as it felt as if it was restricted somewhere, and not giving WOT. Not good if you have some Alpine passes to negotiate 😇;
• And still waiting for the PAS system, though time is running out for that conversion …

More small jobs on the DHC

Or the list of 10CR preparations slowly gets shorter. In my previous post I mentioned that there was a something wrong with the new brakes. During a very short test drive (12 kilometres over quiet rural roads) last week, the brakes behaved quite randomly. Under braking the pedal would either go almost to the floor, behave as if everything was absolutely fine, or it would be a bit spongy. And sometimes the car would pull to the left under braking. There was one clear similarity in the brakes behaviour: it was completely random. As I had bled the brakes on my own, my first thought was that there still was some air in the system. So I decided to have another go at it, time to get my assorted bleeding tools out again!

But this time I asked for some assistance. With one person putting pressure on or pumping the pedal, surely helps with getting trapped air out of the system. And as I had expected, when we came to the right hand front calliper there was some air coming out. After which the pedal’s feel did improve significantly. Result! Though I have to admit that this car still lacks the precise brake pedal feel of ‘t Kreng. But that is down to the fact that the DHC is still fitted with the standard drum brakes on the back axle, where ‘t Kreng is fitted with discs.

The syringe pictured above is normally used to empty the clutch master cylinder and re fill the clutch reservoir. This time it was used to top up the brake reservoir too. As it only needed a small amount of fluid to get it on the prescribed level using the syringe was much easier than using a full bottle!

With the bleeding completed (hopefully as I haven’t driven the car yet) I switched my attention to the back axle in general and the hand brake lever arm’s dust covers in particular.

With the rear of the car supported on axle stands it was time to get the tools out to disconnect the hand brake cable and remove the old dust covers.

Did I write dust covers? Well it is probably better to call that the remains of the dust covers, as the picture below clearly shows. They were in a pretty sorry state! Rather annoying really, bearing in mind they were only fitted last year!

But before fitting the new dust covers I first inspected and cleaned the rear brake’s system, including the handbrake cable’s forked ends and axle pivot point. Nothing wrong with the shoes and their mechanism, though the sometimes hard use of the car over the past few years, has finally managed to attack the paint on the brake shoes!

Remained the final task of fitting the new dust covers, which with the correct tools was pretty straight forward. I wonder how long these covers will last …

One final task remained. After the car’s MOT last year  I found that the fuel hose going into the fuel pump was porous, and leaking fuel as a result. As the hose between tank and solid pipe was the same age as the one that perished last year, Therefore an inspection of this hose wasn’t superfluous. I needn’t have worried, the hose still was in good condition. Did I mention that a Defender is really suited to act as a tool and parts support 😜

So the to-do-list for the 10 CR now looks like this;

·         General check and service;

·         Fit and connect GPS bracket (=dash out job);

·         Fit PAS in combination with a quick rack (order in progress);

·         Check rubber fuel lines at the back;

·         Replace brake master and servo;

·         Replace front discs and callipers;

Another small job on the DHC

While looking through my parts earlier this week I also stumbled across some NOS hood frame covers for the DHC (WKC3643-WKC3646) which I acquired somewhere in the past. I remember that at the time I gave it a try to fit them. But thought better of it, as it looked like the hood had to come off to change these covers. As a result of which I stored them away. And forgot about them. Till earlier this week that is when I stumbled across them again.

Although there’s hardly any visible difference, in the picture above of the old and new right hand covers, in reality the new ones look much better. Especially the sides hidden from the camera are scratched. And as by now it looked like an easy task I decided to fit the new ones (no point in storing new parts if there is a car that you can use them on! And I did have a few spare hours because I had to return from a trip with the DHC because the brakes were not what I’d call confident inspiring. More on that later!

So back to the original post, fitting the frame covers. That of course meant removing the old covers first. Although I had new plastic spreading rivets lying around somewhere (but where?) I made sure the old rivets came out undamaged, so they could be reused. And with a thin drift and a light hammer that wasn’t too difficult. All eight rivets came out fine.  I also managed not to lose any of the spreading inserts. And to aid access to the rivets I put up the hood partially.

Fitting the new covers was the proverbial “piece of cake”. But while working on the hood frame it became clear that somewhere in the not too distant future it has to come of the car for a proper clean and a new coating. Also the original straps have seen better times!

FHC resto nr. 79; Looming challenge

This evening I used a visit to the shed with a friend (who was in search for some spares) to have a look at the next job scheduled for the DHC: checking and refurbishing the wiring looms. The plan has always been to use one of my later (main) looms I have lying around, mainly because they have same extra fuses thrown in for free. But while fitting the heater a few months ago I had a proper look at the bulk head of the ’76 FHC. That’s when I first noticed that a few holes in the bulk head were missing, including this one, for the gearbox loom (the rather oil and heat affected grommet pictured in ‘t Kreng’s engine bay):

For comparison this is the same area (though slightly more empty) of the ’76 FHC:

Luckily the connector is inside the cabin and there is what looks like a suitable hole nearby in the transmission tunnel to feed the wiring through. So that shouldn’t be too difficult to adapt. Wishful thinking I presume!

And comparing the two looms didn’t reveal any insurmountable problems. Only the grommet for the bulkhead passage is much smaller on the earlier loom, while the hole looks (almost) the same diameter. Well at least changing grommets shouldn’t be too difficult, especially as I plan to change all connectors outside the cabin for modern weather proof items.

And the two wiring looms I used for comparison. Both will not be used, as I have a much better one in storage somewhere 😇 First a later loom, in this case from a Solihull car:

And the original, and soon to be discarded, loom that came from the car. Though it will get a second life in something completely different:

Various small jobs on the DHC

After the brakes and fittings were successfully sorted last week, it was time for some smaller servicing jobs. To start with the renewal of the fluid in the clutch system. Bearing in mind I had no assistance, I first emptied the reservoir on top of the clutch master cylinder with a large syringe and cleaned out all the rubber muck that had gathered there in the previous two years since I did this job. After that it was simply a case of topping up the reservoir and pump the clutch pedal till the reservoir was almost empty and then quickly close the bleed nipple. By the second time I did this, the fluid coming out was clean and without any air bubbles. Time to quickly close the bleed valve again and switch to another minor task in that same area. Check the oil filter for leaks.

During the renewal of the oil and the oil filter a few weeks ago, I encountered a small problem while removing the old filter. Trying to unscrew the filter resulted in the adapter plate turning too! Turned out that the filter seal was stronger than the adapter plate’s seal. Resulting in the plate turning underneath the mounting bolt. After unscrewing the filter less than a ¼ turn broke the seal between filter and plate. In theory this could have dislocated the seal between adapter plate and engine block. So just to be sure I fired up the engine and let it idle for a few minutes. An inspection afterwards revealed no leaks. Though the area could do with a proper clean to get rid of some older oil and road grime …

Next job was bleeding the brake system. As with the clutch system I had to perform this task without assistance. Though it is slightly more time consuming this way it all went pretty smoothly. Starting with the rear brakes, I filled the brake fluid reservoir, opened the bleeding nipple and pushed the brake pedal down  a few times to start the fluid flow. Keeping an eye on the fluid level in the reservoir, I continued until clean fluid without air bubbles was emerging from the bleed hose. The same procedure was successfully repeated with the front brakes, though I have to admit that lying alongside the car to keep an eye on the bleeding hose and pressing the clutch or brake pedal by hand is fairly hard work!

While working on my cars I usually store the various parts that are coming off in the boot. And that is when I noticed that one of the screws to fix the number plate light was missing.

Originally they are fitted using small plastic screws. As these were all badly damaged when I removed them in the context of the car’s restoration I decided to use small steel screws instead. But to prevent damage to the light armatures I didn’t tighten them down fully. In combination with a slightly worn spring clip meant one screw managed to escape. To prevent this from happening again I pinched the clips back together and decided to place small rubber O-rings under the screws’ head to prevent the armatures from cracking. Will see how it holds now.

Another fault that came to light while working on the brakes were the dust covers for the hand brake levers where they pass through the back plates.

As you can see from the picture above they were well passed their prime. Nothing to worrying were it not that these were renewed only last year. So another (be it small) job to grace the to-do-list. But not before finishing of the work by cleaning the wheels in order to get rid of some road and brake dust. Hopefully I’ll be able to take the car for a drive tomorrow!

Brake repairs for the DHC part 6

Or the first job in preparation for this year's edition of Club Triumph's 10 Countries Run almost finished. Last weekend I fitted the various new or reconditioned parts of the brake system to the car. The only job left was fitting new brake pipes. Though two of the four pipes could be re-used I decided to renew all four of them. And I was lucky in that I had an appointment for my work that brought me very close to C&C Parts yesterday. So I thought it rather convenient to spent my lunch break at their premises, to order the new brake pipes and to rectify the faulty brake master cylinder. Despite it being a rather short break, I left there with all parts needed to finish the DHC and a bit more ...

And with the weather being rather fine today it was time to get the tools out again. But before I started on the brake pipes I decided on an alignment check of the callipers. This was prompted by the fact that the discs that came of the car were clearly worn down more on the outside than on the inside. And indeed the callipers were standing a few millimetres to the outside of the disc’s centre line. Luckily C&C Parts had supplied two extra spacers just in case! So these were quickly added to top mount, between calliper and stub axle, after which the spacer already fitted between steering arm and calliper was moved to the other side of the callipers mounting lug. Still not perfect but much better compared with the old setup that has graced various cars over the past 20 odd years. The picture below gives a slightly distorted view as the camera was slightly of centre from the disc. So the offset looks far worse than it is in reality!

With the callipers sorted it was time for the final task of the day, bending and fitting the various pipes. As can be seen in one of the previous pictures I have opted for cupronickel or cunifer pipes. Corrosion free and fairly easy to bend in any desired shape! I started with the ones for the callipers, as these would take longer to bend into the desired shape because I didn’t have a template for them. The left hand side took 15 minutes the right hand side 5, so could be worse!

After that the two pipes from the brake master cylinder were the proverbial piece of cake, with most time spent on searching for the a correct round shape to match the radius for the front/inner pipe. Turned out it was staring me in the face all the time, a spray can with WD40. And of course I spent some time in getting the two pipes to run as parallel as possible 😇

Remains topping up the system and bleeding it, including flushing the clutch system. But for that I’ll have to seek some assistance. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish that somewhere early next week. And the to-do-list for the 10 CR has been slightly shortened;

1. General check and service;
2. Check rubber fuel lines at the back;
3. Fit and connect GPS bracket (=dash out job);
4. Fit PAS in combination with a quick rack (order in progress);
5. Replace brake master and servo;
6. Replace front discs and callipers;