FHC resto nr. 173; Choosing the back axle

While spending time in the shed over the past few days I also used the opportunity to select a back axle for the ’76 car. The choice was between one 3.90:1 CWP axles and three 3.45:1 CWP axles. As the original Dolomite Sprint uses a 3.45:1 diff ratio and I really like that ratio on a quick touring car (fitted to the DHC) the choice was narrowed down to three axles. Partly inspired because I want to keep the 3.90:1 axles for ‘t Kreng! So the choice was narrowed down to three;

• CL 11314: from a European spec. Solihull FHC with 72.492 km on the odometer;
• CL 11955: from a European spec. Solihull FHC with 87.173 km on the odometer;
• CL 12290: from a California PI spec. Solihull DHC with 71.823 km on the odometer;

Turned out the choice was pretty easy as there was one axle with absolutely no noticeable play or back lash. This one, and the first one in the list above:

It didn’t look very good from the outside at first glance. But on closer inspection and after it was cleaned a bit, it turned out all the “outside” hardware was in very good condition.

Next job will be attacking the outside with a selection of wire brushes on my angle grinder, followed by a rust converter, primer and satin gloss black paint.

FHC resto nr. 172; Fitting the parcel shelf

One of those tasks that has been haunting me for several years now: installing the aftermarket fiberglass- parcel shelf. And it's been even longer since it was beautifully covered by the late Lambert Craenen, a local old school car upholsterer.

So I'd decided to tackle this job during my current holiday and install it. So, full of good spirits, I headed to the shed last Monday! But after a few frustrating hours, I had to admit my defeat and throw in the towel. The fit of the parcel shelf was so poor that I couldn't install it on my own: While trying to align the front of the parcel shelf with the mounting holes, it went wrong. I had to stretch the shelf so much that it put too much strain on the four screws securing it to the rear to the body underneath the rear window. The result was that all four screws including the plastic distance pieces, were pulled cleanly out of their respective mounting holes. Time to call in the help of a good friend and come up with a solution to fit the shelf.

In the end I decided to tackle the problem with long flat Allen headed M5 bolts together with longer distance pieces for the rear mount. The lower front edge was fitted using the original mounting method. It was still a struggle to get everything in place but we manged it in the end. And it was well worth it, as the pictures in this post prove. Special thanks go to Jos for assisting me today!

Out and about with ‘t Kreng

It’s already been a few weeks ago since I changed the hydraulic fluid in the brake and clutch circuits of ‘t Kreng. But I hadn’t had the opportunity to test the car after the bleeding session. Luckily last Saturday Roger and I had planned to do the (hopefully!?) final reconnaissance of the route for this year’s edition of our “Nachtrit”.

Though I did have some reservations on choosing ‘t Kreng as the car for this tour, I ultimately decided to go for it! And glad I did, as it was a fabulous ±450 kilometres long drive from door to door. And circa 300 kilometres of these were driven on, mostly Belgian, country lanes and back roads.

It was jolly good fun. So much so I did forget to take some pictures from time to time! It was also a stark reminder of how good this car still handles after all those years since she was restored.

Lunch stop in the small village of Barvaux-sur-Ourthe.

Route de Saint-Antoine in Fays

And when I returned home I thought it would be nice to check how these ±450 kilometres would show on the hydraulic fluid of the clutch system. Well here’s the answer. The picture I took directly after bleeding:

And for comparison the picture I took upon returning home with just over 450 kilometres later. Already looking slightly murky. And it clearly shows to me why the hydraulic systems need regular fluid changes:

The cooling system again performed faultlessly!

FHC resto nr. 171; A few rectifications

It’s six months since I last worked on the ’76 car. And as you can read in my blog, there are several reasons for this: ‘t Kreng's water pump, the work on the DHC, and my regular work of course. But with a few weeks holiday ahead of me I decided it would be nice if I could finish the rear of the car’s interior. Time to pull the cover of the car and start to work. But first there were a few (small) jobs that needed rectifying. Starting with the mounting hardware for the brake balance pressure reducing valve. While fitting the steering column I found out I had used the wrong bolt to fit the valve. It was the bolt for the column’s G-clamp, which is longer than the one for the valve. As I had prepared only one bolt of the correct length it was taken from the valve and used on the steering column. But that meant I needed to prepare new fasteners for the valve. Luckily I had a few rusty spares lying around. And with the help of a friend’s blasting cabinet, a blow torch and a small container filled with oil, it was blackened and fitted. Looks quite nice.

Next job that needed rectifying were four small holes in the cabin floor. These needed their rubber plugs fitted. Something I forgot when I fitted the sound deadening pads almost 10 years ago. First Idea was to just open up the holes and insert the blanking plugs. But that didn’t work. The combination of the steel panel, the underbody protection and the sound deadening pads was too thick to fit the blanking plugs. Time to borrow a professional (and very sharp) hollow punch set from a friend to remove the sound deadening pads around the holes. These punches are designed to cut through material when hit with a (big) hammer. Not a good idea on steel panels. But being very sharp punches, they could cut through the sound deadening by simply pushing and turning them through the sound deadening pads. This way a ring was cut loose from the sound deadening pads. And this remaining ring could then be removed quite easily using a pen knife and a small sharp screw driver. And this removed enough material for the blanking plugs to be fitted. Some clear wax oil was used for rust protection.

The last correction concerned the carpet over the transmission tunnel. When I fitted it over the 2024 Christmas period, I wasn’t impressed in the way the carpet ballooned coming down from the top of the transmission tunnel. So I decided to use some fancy high strength “gecko” tape to glue the carpet to the top and the sides of the transmission tunnel. And this worked very well. And it enabled me to perforate the carpet to fit the plastic carpet protector and the mounting bolts for the seats.

The last tasks for this productive afternoon were the preparations for mounting the parcel shelf. A job I've been putting off for a while now, because I'm afraid I'll make a mistake with the dimensions for the holes I need to drill. Measure three times, drill once! The fact that the guy who covered the parcel shelf has died since he delivered this quite nice job, didn’t help! Also checked and corrected the sound deadening panel I made and which fits between the parcel shelf and the rear window. More on that later!

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;