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TripleRich

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TripleRich last won the day on June 3 2023

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    Welding the Granada

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  1. TripleRich

    FOTU 2023

    Really enjoyable day, excellent variety of stuff on show. Car went down well and got some lovely comments. It was a challenge getting in, we queued for over an hour. The Granada got a bit warm but held on with some help from the heater blower. Poor P6 behind me was loosing coolant and had the oil light on by the time we reached parking. Drive there and back was excellent. Sat at 70 most of the way, 148 miles covered with no problems.
  2. I've since found the original used followers in my pile of spares while doing a clean up. If these Kent Cam followers give me trouble I'll be fitting the originals
  3. Over the past week I've covered 382 miles. Most of this was 30 mile trips to work and back with a show at the weekend. Been checking everything carefully along the way. So far it's been good and the new cam followers seem to be doing their job. I'll be keeping an eye on the clearances to see if anything is developing but so far it's been driving well. A lot of the driving has been very stop start with lots of accelerating up to 60 or 70 and then coming to a stop again. Doing that has returned just under 25mpg and the coolant temp has stayed solid despite the rather warm weather. I've done a small amount of tuning & timing tweaks as I progressed through the week. Since getting the car finished in 2021 I've covered almost 3k miles. Last week I stuck it in the air after work to give everything a good check over and touch up any paintwork etc. I've never actually put this car on a proper ramp so it was very nice to be able to go through everything standing up. Some small spots of surface rust were starting to appear on some of the bolts, brake fittings, brackets, exhaust and fuel tank. I went over each bit with a wire wheel, some rust treatment and a can of paint. I also cleaned and degreased any gunk and oil spills from the past two years of tinkering. Very happy with how its doing underneath especially with how much rain it's been driven through. Cars of this age will deteriorate quickly from show standard underneath just because of how exposed everything is to the elements. Of course its needs are constant so I'll continue to post updates of various repairs and issues that come up.
  4. It's doable without removing the diff. You need the take the massive bolt out that holds the diff to the car and sit the diff on a jack. You also need to remove the 4 bolts holding the extension casing to the rear beam and disconnect the driveshaft. Then split the diff from the extension shaft casing. You should be able to push the extension casing forward and roll the diff backwards on the jack. Gives you just enough room to remove the coupling.
  5. Cheers Dan! Its been a challenge but that's what I was expecting. Not used it as much as I would have liked due to work & endless maintenance but it's been fun. Although the lifters falling apart did piss me off!
  6. Next up was something rather more serious. Over the past thousand miles or so I had to start adjusting the valve clearances frequently. So much that I could do the entire job in 25 minutes. The engine would start to rattle a bit, I'd tighten the tappets a bit, the engine would shut up before rattling again after several heat cycles or another hundred miles. Some of them became quite concerning. Specifically exhaust on no. 6 which always needed a turn. I knew what this probably was and being a V engine it's a bugger to check. So I blew most of the engine apart to remove the followers. Sure enough they are buggered! Some much more than others, at best these have done 2.5k miles. Two words, aftermarket SHITE Now in fairness I never followed the traditional cam break in procedure for this engine. To get a fully rebuilt engine to immediately start first time and run at 3k rpm for 20 minutes with a fully blead rock solid cooling system is rather more difficult than you might think. So long story short this engine did a fair bit of cranking and idling before being driven in anger. This may have contributed to the short life of these followers. However (and luckily) the cam itself was just fine. This is a new old stock Ford cam to the standard profile for a 2.3 cologne. Despite the followers beginning to fall apart the cam has shrugged it off and it certainly seems to be made from far higher quality materials. The crazy paving pattern is the last of the black protective coating wearing off (which is supposed to happen). Cams for these engines are usually aftermarket and of the mild, rally or race variety. I bought a set of followers and a mild cam from Kent Cams. While the original cam looks fine and has only done a few thousand miles I didn't want to risk it and was curious about fitting a mild cam instead. The 2.3 is not known for its speed and a bit of extra power would be nice. I put the engine back together. Followed the cam break in procedure and instantly regretted it. The mild cam has an awful lot of valve overlap for a "mild" tune. This caused a huge amount of scavenging at idle and generally made the engine run very very poorly. No amount of tuning would improve it and I couldn't get the idle to reliably go below 1k rpm. On the road it felt nasty and would try and cut out at every junction. I was rather disappointed because that meant... Take the whole bloody engine apart AGAIN... I put the original profile cam back in. Reassembled the entire engine and checked everything thoroughly along the way. Result! It runs lovely again and the noisy valve clearances are long gone. Back to its old self and I'm looking forward to putting in some more miles. The Kent Cam lifters have been broken in according to the instructions twice now as a precaution. I hope they stand the test of time as the alternative lifters are either unbranded or from a company I've never heard of (like the first set). I've also done several oil changes along the way and checked said oil upon draining for anything nasty. I'm using 10w 40 from Millers with additional ZDDP additives. While these bits are the main issues I've had over the past year or so I've done lots of other small cosmetic and mechanical jobs such as... Curing the break squeal with the correct clips on the pads Replacing the boot trim with a mint undented one Fixing a vacuum leak from the air box General cleaning/degreasing and painting to keep the engine & underside looking good A lot of the issues that have cropped up since putting the car back on the road have now been resolved. I've learned a lot along the way and with each fix the car gets more trustworthy and nicer to drive. Although there have certainly been some rather frustrating moments/long days.
  7. Next up was some tuning/ running improvements. In general the engine starts and runs well but the more I got to know it the more I noticed every tiny hesitation and misfire. Nothing serious and my passengers never noticed anything but I wondered if I could try and get rid of it. I'd been using the original style distributor and coil with points up to now. I decided to fit electronic ignition. At first I fitted a cheapo accuspark set from eBay into the original distributor as an experiment. This did improve the general running of the engine but I've seen them go pop before on customers cars although it's rare. I used the car like this for a bit and ended up going for a complete powerspark distributor & coil. This has the added benefit of removing the original distributor and whatever wear it has from the equation. The original distributor was reassembled with points and chucked in the boot as a roadside spare. I wired the new distributor in such a way that you can't tell it's fitted and can quickly fit the old one in the event of a breakdown. I've done about 1k miles since then and it's been very good. Certainly has a stronger spark and is easier to start etc.
  8. Next problem was rather more frightening/squeaky bum time... While doing about 30 in a village I started slowing for a junction. This resulted in the brake pedal suddenly dropping straight to the floor! Pushing rather hard and using the handbrake I managed to stop. Some quick diagnosis at the side of the road showed the front circuit of the master cylinder to have failed. I still had the rears but it certainly doesn't stop well on just the rear drums. All the lines & flexis look good and I'd lost no fluid. This was disappointing because I had gone to the trouble of fitting all new/NOS braking components to the car. The master has not been available for many years. You can only buy a slightly incorrect aftermarket one instead. This is the correct ATE one for a Granada with proportioning valve, it's new old stock but until now it had worked just fine. So I took it apart and found the issue. The front seal had a chunk out of it. However the bore is mint and the seals hadn't gone hard. Upon reassembly with new seals it became apparent that the seal is easily damaged during the reassembly process. You can catch the end of the bore and rip/turn the edges of the seal. I put it all back together and blead the brakes. They felt better than they ever have before so I suspect this unit always had a slightly damaged seal. Several hundred miles since then and it's been just fine.
  9. Second issue... After living with the car for a while I started to pick up on a few more things. General driving about at lower speeds showed the rear end to have a bit of a clonk/jerk when coming off the cutch or doing a slightly sloppy gear change. The issue was this coupling that connects the diff to the propshaft being worn out. Apparently it's quite common on the Granada for these to become quite sloppy. It's part 36 in the diagram. Bugger to change it on the driveway but after a few hours I had everything back together with a new part. This significantly improved the general refinement of things and made the car a lot nicer to drive. I work about 30 miles from home so the daily commute continued to serve as the shakedown route for finding more issues.
  10. It's been ages since I've updated this thread but that doesn't mean I've not been busy with the car. In fact I haven't really stopped, it's needed something almost constantly since my last post. I'll do a series of posts going through each job in the order they cropped up. Despite fully restoring the car it's still 48 years old. Keeping it going/ ironing out the teething problems has been quite a challenge. First issue... Outside lane on a duel carriageway doing 70ish. Big pop through the carb without warning and it instantly died. Wasn't interested in restarting but thankfully I was able to coast into a layby and have a look. My first thought was timing gear failure causing the engine to jump a few teeth and loose time. Moving the distributor about managed to get it going again and I limped it home. Blew the front of the engine apart to have a look and was relieved to see everything was fine. Further diagnosis revealed the issue to be much simpler much to my relief. The rotor arm had somehow walked up the distributor shaft and come out of the keyway. After a while it spun far enough around to conk the engine out. I pressed it back down again and the engine ran fine. An easy fix. Despite the annoyance of tearing into the front of the engine for no reason it was nice to see everything was good & working well. Another few hundred miles and I was onto the next issue...
  11. I might have made the odd scene with shite...
  12. Not the first time I've heard that haha. Glad you enjoy it!
  13. 375 miles covered since the last post. I put the daily driver in the garage and used the Granada instead. Its been very enjoyable and I've been keeping a close eye on how its doing. Since FOTU I've noticed a very slight hesitation just as you get on the throttle. It only existed in 3rd gear going from a 30 to a 60 and was barely noticeable so I didn't think too much of it. Last week on the way to work it turned into a more severe splutter/ hesitation at various speeds. Only when slightly on the throttle and you could just power through it. Knew it wasn't right so decided to take a look. First thing I found was a slight vacuum leak from the line running between the carb and the airbox. The airbox is very old so I wasn't surprised, blocked it off and adjusted the tune. Went for a drive and it wasn't that so I set to looking at the ignition as its running points and a host of ancient NOS components. The points were starting to pit a fair bit. I'd expect them to be better than that given the mileage. Usually means a bad condenser so I replaced both. I gapped the points and set the dwell. Handy to have this book as a cologne engine with points wasn't available on UK Granada's. It should be 38 degrees according to this. Went for a drive and it wasn't that so I decided the swap the coil. A weak one can cause issues with acceleration and while I had my doubts it only takes a minute to test. Went for a drive and sure enough it wasn't that so I changed the spark plugs just to be sure and it wasn't those either. I'd been thinking fuel for a while but didn't investigate as the fuel system is spotless and has been filtered since day one. The filter is before the pump for max protection and the pump is a new item. With the ignition system out of the picture it must be fuel related so I took the carb top off and removed the float to check the jets. Wedged in one of the main jets was what looked like some blue gasket sealer. No idea where that came from as I didn't use any on the restoration but there it is. The rest of the carb was squeaky clean so I put everything back together and went for a drive. It was indeed that starving the engine for fuel. I reckon I've picked up 15HP! It's always something stupid and I'm glad to have found it relatively quickly. I'll use the car again next week.
  14. I did just over 200 miles on a mix of roads and used 33 litres of fuel. I'm sure 5th gear is really helping the figures. A German roadtest of a 2.3 Granada got 32 mpg on a long run at a constant speed. Around town it was right down in the low 20s.
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