Progress on water pump

Had a go at machining the mating surface of the water pump impeller. Actually the plan was to go over to a friend to ask him if it could be done on his lathe and when he would have time to do it. Five minutes later it was ready;

Will polish the surface with some very fine (1600) emery paper before putting it all together with a recondition kit.

Also found out during the water pumps renovation that a ball joint separator tool is perfect for removing impeller remains from the pump shaft!

Ruined water pump

Under the pretention of resupplying the spare parts a bit I had a go at reconditioning the water pump I took out of ‘t Kreng in September. To start with I tried to remove the impeller from the shaft. After some not to heavy taps on the top of the shaft with a hammer I could see that the shaft had moved a bit … I had progress. So I continued with the tapping. Until the impeller suddenly fell apart in 5 pieces. Damn, I hate jig saws!

Looking at the surfaces of the cracks I can only conclude that the quality of the casting isn't that great. It looks rather brittle with quite a lot of crystals in it. And yes it was an aftermarket item, not an original Unipart one.

So while I was working on Renés Dolomite today I rummaged through his parts attic and found a pump with a fairly good impeller and a completely knackered shaft (missing a few teeth). Ideal, as the shaft of the pump I wanted to recondition is in pretty good shape. And this impeller came off without a problem.

As you can see it looks a bit rusty but that’s only very light surface rust. Only thing that needs to be done is machining the mating surface for the seal lightly to get it smooth again.

't Kreng's front suspension upgrade (old news)

As I am ill at home at the moment I’ve time to put some older info in my weblog which has been lying about but wasn't used yet. Might be old news put maybe someone finds some inspiration from it!

Under the pretence off further improving the handling of 't Kreng I had a go at the front suspension last year. As I had ordered some new front brakes and they took a while to arrive I had some time to work out a new front setup. For this I used the following starting points;

• Front struts with adjustable spring platforms;
• Replace original thrust collar (part nr. UKC329) with a proper thrust bearing;
• Use universal 2¼ inch coil springs, for easier choice of spring rates;
• Stiffen up the front as much as possible;

To start with I got myself an adjustable coil over kit for an Opel Corsa (as these had the smallest inside diameter from the available kits). After which I hacked up some perfectly good OS front struts;

And welded up the threaded tubes. As the inside diameter of the Corsa tubes was slightly larger than the outside diameter of the struts I had to make up some slim rings. These went between the strut and the threaded tubes to centre these and fill the gap to allow for a better weld.

After the welding was done it was time to move my attention to the top of the conversion. As I had decided on some decent and simple "off-the-shelf" thrust ball-bearings (standard SKF item) combined with the 2¼ inch coil springs I needed something to house these. Something to replace the standard TR7 upper spring pan. A few hours behind the computer solved the problem;

To keep the weight down as much as possible I used an aluminium alloy for the spring pans. And while I was working at the spring pans I thought it a good idea to also replace the sub frame mounting rubbers with solid aluminium alloy ones. Knowing someone who knows how to use a lathe certainly helps with this kind of work. The end product certainly looks good;

And by the time these parts were finished the dampers and the springs I ordered from AVO had arrived. So as I now had all the parts for the suspension struts it was time to get them assembled which was rather straightforward;

And after that there was the (seemingly) extreme long wait for the brakes to arrive, so I could assemble everything and fit it to the car. When they did arrive I started with dismantling the old suspension and brakes from the car. First thing to do was fit the alloy spacers between sub-frame and chassis leg. Here I found out that I had overlooked something. The original rubber mountings have steel inserts. The top ones of which were binned because the hole in the spacer was ø12 mm. As a result the original lower inserts were too short, which is bad as you can't machine something on! So a pair of new inserts were made for the sub frame’s front lower mounting bushes. On the right the original one, on the left the new one;

I also used the new alloy spacers to lower the sub-frame and thus the engine by some 5 mm by simply making the spacers 5 mm thicker than the original ones. And as the suspension is completely adjustable any geometry changes resulting from this lowering can easily be adjusted;

With the sub-frame mountings sorted it was at last time to put the new struts and brakes on the car. As expected this was rather straightforward;

So after everything was fitted it was time to bleed the brakes (and align the callipers at the same time). After which it was a matter of tightening the calliper mounting bolts and putting the wheels back on. Before I could start with any testing I first had to set the ride height properly. To get it were I wanted it I had to wind down the lower platforms quiet a lot though. As they are so far down they are only a few mm’s free from the inside tire wall, but then that's more than enough.

The odd thing is, on both sides the fitted length of the springs is more or less the same (225 lbs/inch, free length 254 mm) being 181/179 mm respectively). Also the distance between lower spring platforms and axle are the same. But there is nevertheless a difference in ride height off 10 mm between left and right;

But as the car doesn’t behave strange I still don’t worry too much about that!

10CR 2007 Day 3

Having had a rather nice diner and fully rested we left the restaurant just after 10.00 pm. To start on the last and most difficult leg of this 10CR, the long nightly haul across Germany. From the 2005 edition we had learned that driving large (monotonous) stretches of Autobahn at night was a recipe for problems. That’s why Roger had worked out a nice and easy route, using secondary through roads (so called Bundesstraßen) as far as possible.

We firstly headed over the Austrian Bundesstraßen in the direction of the little and rather picturesque German border town of Füssen. If we’d driven this road by daylight I could have posted several pictures with nice alpine views, but alas it was dark! Luckily the roads were in very good condition, with clear markers and nice flowing corners. So the driving was relative easy but nevertheless entertaining.

Despite missing an exit near Reutte we crossed into Germany in good time. As we didn’t fancy searching for fuel in middle of the night in deepest darkest Germany we first took a stretch of the A7, just to be sure we had enough fuel for the ”inland” stretch. This also gave us the opportunity for a little nap before carrying on .

We eventually left the A7 to join the B312 which we followed all the way till its end near Stuttgart. This was actually quite a nice road to drive. For the rest nothing much happened if it hadn’t been for this red GT6 standing beside the road in the middle of a small sleepy village. Turned out to be Don Cook who had some problems with his alternator, but thanks to his mobile phone the rescue forces  were already on their way. And indeed they turned up within 5 minutes. After chatting a bit with them we carried on, as there was nothing more for us to do then stand in the way.

The only downside of taking the Bundesstraßen instead of the Autobahn is that you’re passing lots of villages and small towns, and they all have permanent speed traps. Good to know, but waiting to get caught speeding nevertheless. While driving into the town of Bibberach over the B312 there was a speed limit of 70 kmh. Then the B312 turned left and the speed limit dropped to 50 kmh. The moment I saw this I also noticed that the traffic light a few hundred meters away changed to red. So I just let the car freewheel to the lights. Wrong idea as a flash by the side of the road proved ... bugger! I was doing less than 60 kmh. at the moment so I hope they won’t bother to sent it across the border. A German friend told me the fine won’t be more then € 15,00, I hope she’s right!

To keep us awake there were some drunken youth’s (probably going home) who thought it rather pleasant to walk in the middle of the road in complete darkness !!!

But eventually, somewhere in the night we reached Stuttgart where we joined the A8. By the time we passed Karlsruhe I could feel some sleep coming up. So after fuelling up we put the car in the car park and slept for an hour, before we hit the Autobahn for the last approximate 250 km to the Nürburgring. At dawn we had our last stop, this time for breakfast. After this we carried on to the Nürburgring where we arrived at exactly 8.00 am. Over the last hour or so the weather had really deteriorated in true Eiffel style, wet, windy and chilly. The few crews that had arrived were all looking slightly ... euhh ... sleepy!

(To avoid humiliation I felt I had to make him unrecognisable 😜)

As it was not really the best kind of weather to hang around for too long Roger and I decided to call it a day and decided to do the last bit of the route as per the roadbook. For those of the entrants that didn’t do this part through the German Eiffel, Luxemburg and the Belgium Ardennes, you really missed a very nice bit of driving! Luckily the weather cleared slightly and the roads dried up a bit, so we didn’t have to hang around too much. Which nearly resulted in a head on collision just before entering Luxemburg. While being chased by a local in some small hatchback I went into a lefthander a bit to spirited, clipping the corner too much. The guy coming from the other side was actual running wide so we more or less met head on in the centre of the road. Luckily for me easy to rectify, of the throttle and a short dab on the brakes and I was back where I belonged. When I looked in my mirrors I could just see that the other two cars just managed not to hit each other as they came to a standstill, but the chase was of.

After that it was into Luxemburg for a cheap fuel stop and over familiar roads up to the continental finish in Rolduc where we arrived just before 2.00 pm.

As there were no cars at the parking yet we thought we were first but it turned out that the manager at Rolduc had decided it was better to park the cars in the courtyard instead of the parking lot.

After putting the car to rest the only thing left to do was instructing some Triumph minded friends who were volunteering to help with directing everyone into the rather large complex, have a shower and make my way to the bar which opened at 4.00 pm. Till date waiting for pictures of that evening, saw lots of flashes but no pictures. The bar eventually closed, an hour before the last team arrived, at 1.00 am in the morning.

As we were only an hour’s drive from home we were in no hurry to get started next morning!