10CR Preparations (#4)

It hasn’t been going to plan last week, with most jobs taking more time than planned. But earlier this week I managed to delete another item from the list. But not before an important shopping trip with the Defender 😋

Last week I thought there might be a problem with the main earth points, but on closer inspection it turned out they were all in perfect condition.

This together with two very lazy and out of sync headlamps last Sunday made me take out the multi meter again. And sure that showed what I was expecting by now. Despite hardly any use since my last drive, and with the battery switched of in between, it showed 10,4 Volts now. A drop of a little over 2 Volts in less than two weeks’ time. And during the last two outings the voltmeter had been reading as it always has done. So that should rule out the alternator. Time for a check of the by now just over 9 year old battery at a friend’s workshop on Tuesday. Voltage had now dropped to 8,1 Volts. But more importantly, of the cranking power of 330 A nothing worthwhile survived. Time to say farewell to this battery and get a new one!

Plan for the Wednesday was to put the battery in, and enjoy the car for a few hours. But that was not to be. While cleaning the battery area, I decided it would be better to use the available time to give the car a general check over. I started with a thorough clean of the breather catch tank. Turned out to be rather full of water and oily gunge, which took quite some time to remove (I made a mental note to drain it more often!).

But refitting it also took much longer than expected as one of the bolts at the front of the cam cover didn’t want to go back in properly (I had to remove them because the hose from the cam cover to the breather tank was fitted to these bolts with stainless P-clips). In the end I decided it would be better to remove the cam cover and put in a re-coil to the bolt hole. But with the can cover removed I could wind the bolt fully down in small steps. Though initially it was very heavy. But in the end it turned out the thread was in fairly good shape. And the cam cover could be re-fitted without any further problems. At least it gave me an opportunity to inspect the cam shaft. Nothing wrong there. Actually looking pretty good for a 25 year old engine which has done well over 100.000 kilometres!

After which it was time change the gearbox oil. Before starting with the breather tank, I had removed the drain plug from the ‘box. So it could drain while I was working on different parts of the car. Turned out there was some swarf on the plug. But not too bad. And the drained oil didn’t look to bad either, with no particles visible there. The plug after removal and after cleaning:

Re-filling the gearbox with new oil was rather straight forward as ever. Measure the correct amount of oil (Castrol Syntrans 75W-90) and let gravity do all the work:

With the car jacked up and the gearbox topped up, I also gave the prop shaft's grease nipples a few squirts of grease, another item of the list. So the list now is as follows;

Check wear pattern on front brake pads and address some light squalling under light

braking;

• Check if the carburettors throttle’s open fully and lubricate linkage and throttle cable;
• Clean the leather seats and treat the leather with a conditioner;
• Fuel gauge, the old unit was registering almost empty constantly. See what the change of instrument cluster has had on this fault, I suspect the sender unit in the tank though;
• Buy motorway vignettes for Switzerland and Austria:
• Load the four stages of the route into the GPS and copy the route to a road atlas as back-up (just in case);
• Check and probably replace battery;
• Clean the contact areas of the three main earth point on the car’s engine;
• General service and check of all mechanics, including greasing the prop shaft and a check for any leaks;
• Oil change for the gearbox (Castrol Syntrans Multivehicle 75W90);

It’s now about time I take the car out for some test runs and to enjoy it!