Not the start of the driving season ...

With February behind us, the mandatory three month hibernation for my TR7's is over for another year. And because I am enjoying a short holiday the plan was to give 't Kreng a short check up in the morning, and take her for a ride in the afternoon. All under the pretence of preparing for the first event of the  year "De Nacht van het Oosten" just over a week away.

As the car had behaved rather well last time I drove her I didn't expect much wrong. My main worry were the front bearings but they turned out to be OK. So I changed my attention to the fluid levels; coolant and brakes were up to their normal level. Not so for the clutch fluid. After removing the cap I was greeted by a rather empty reservoir ...

A quick inspection under the bonnet and in the interior with a small torch, showed that the master cylinder had no visible signs of any leaks. Safe to assume the leak was elsewhere. And there is not much else on the car were clutch fluid can leak, the slave cylinder. As this cylinder (as usual) was covered in all sorts of oily muck it was impossible to say whether it was leaking or not. So only one way to find out. And that is by removing it. With the two mounting bolts removed I carefully took the slave cylinder of (as in not to dislodge the push rod). Once free of the push rod the damage immediately became clear as a fair amount of fluid spilled out through the opening of the dirt cover ...

Initial plan was to use some new seals to rebuild the slave cylinder, but whilst searching for the correct seals I found two reconditioned slave cylinders in the same box. So I opted for replacing instead! Sadly it wasn't as straight forward as that. With everything cleaned and the new slave cylinder firmly in place I found out that the connecting hole for the flexible hose was deeper in comparison to the old cylinder. As a result of which I couldn't fully tighten the connector. At that time I remembered that the guy who made the flex hoses for me many years ago also supplied some copper seals, just in case. Glad that I remembered where I stored them.

Sadly there was nobody around to help with bleeding the clutch so with everything connected up it was time to store the tools and pull the cover back over the car. And time for a closer look at the leaking slave cylinder. Glad I made the decision I did, as there are some score marks on the piston the inside of the old cylinder has some patches of rust and scoring of the bore ...

Hopefully back on the road soon!

Fame ...

I had planned to use a trip last Saturday to help Roger moving his Mk1 Saloon as an excuse to commemorate the fact that it was exactly 10 years ago that I started my blog. And as he was part to blame for that I already had a title ready: "It's all Roger's fault". Together with a picture or two of the job we carried out that day. Sadly I forgot to take the necessary pictures, as a result of which I dropped the idea.

But when I got home from work this afternoon I found the March issue of Practical Performance Car Magazine in the mail box. And guess what's on the cover and stars as this month's "Built not Bought" ...

Edited 2020-02-21: As it is exactly 3 years ago that this story was published in Practical Performance Car magazine I have added the full article. Enjoy the read!

FHC resto nr. 50; Parts sorting

Over the past month or so I have resumed work on the FHC. With the bulk of the work being done consisting of trawling through all the boxes with assorted parts I have acquired over the years, and select the best ones for use on the FHC. So far it has turned out to be rather time consuming, especially with the parts scattered over three different locations! But getting there slowly but surely.

The parts that will be powder coated are sorted now. Although I am still missing the exhaust bracket that fits to the rear of the gearbox (UKC2499). Also the early (Sprint) air box first needs a little bit of TLC before it's ready for its new finish ...

Remains the biggest lot, the parts that will be galvanised. Here I have still not decided what to do, go for the more original approach and have them (gloss zinc) galvanised in yellow or have them passivated in black like I used on the DHC ...

Luckily there's still some time to go before I have to make that decision, and in the meantime I can continue busying myself with the making of a stock list of all the parts that need galvanising ...

... and carefully capturing all sorted parts on camera. Not only for record's sake, but also to help me with matching all parts together afterwards ...

FHC resto nr. 49; Heater rebuild part 1

With the work on my Defender almost finished for the time being, I am slowly picking up work on the FHC again. This weekend I disassembled the heater in preparation for its rebuild. As all steel parts will be shot blasted and properly coated I picked the heater unit closest to hand. It actually has been lurking in the cellar for longer as I can remember. But it was more than good enough to rob it of its steel parts ...

It all went fairly straight forward, although some of the steel spring clips, keeping the various flaps in their correct position, had a mind of their own. This made removing some of the clips rather awkward. Knowing you have some spare parts left certainly helps here.

The same could be said of the pop rivets that had to be drilled out. Some were so badly corroded that they had lost their clamping power. So as soon as the drill got a grip they started spinning! Luckily I have a very small Vice Grip that could be used to lock them, thus enabling me to use the drill to the other end ...

Of course lots of pictures were taking for future reference whilst I took the heater apart. I won't bore you with them all ...

And 4 hours after I started, I had a large pile of parts lying beside the work bench. A close inspection of these turned up some damage to the lower half of the plastic heater casing. So that one was discarded. Luckily some loose parts from another heater unit yielded an undamaged casing. Also the heater's matrix showed clear signs of a leaking core, though none were visible around the infamous rubber seals. But the matrix  will be replaced too. But that will get a rather non original substitute ...

So at the end of the day I was able to add another few parts to the ever growing collection of parts that need a new coating ...