Three Speed

Great photos indeed!

Looking back at mine I only seemed to take pictures of DS engine bays as I wanted to compare the gap between the suspension sphere and the air filter. That tells you all you need to know about me.

Car of the show for me was the blue DSuper5 URB225N. It was so quiet and so clean. Even under the bonnet.

Glad you made it and it was good to meet you and chat @wesacosa

Crossing your fingers must have worked.

I hope you made it back ok and were not caught up in the Dartford Crossing bridge being closed. I hope you weren’t the cause!

My son’s C2 was quite bright.

I went to a car show in Devon on Sunday and saw this XL1 diesel electric hybrid. Had no recollection of them before but a search suggests they are known to some Shiters here. 250 built. The owner of this one was very protective as it seems the interior can get very scratched because it is made of lightweight fragile material. So he was fending off kids who wanted to climb in. He said it does 150mpg.

Don’t know if this helps @vulgalourbut last weekend I re stuffed my seat cushion on my Traction Avant as all the horsehair had fallen out and the springs were making their presence felt in my bum. I got new hessian and foam from Woollies but forgot about the rubber webbing which had completely disappeared from the seats. Rather than wait and do the job properly I used tie wraps. I’ve done about 300 miles in the last week and it’s fine so far. Not sure how your seat is constructed - or how long this will last.

12 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

Have you signed her up for a photography course yet? No idea, possibly Maxi but could be narrower than that.

I think it may be a Herald 13/60.

2 hours ago, maxxo said:

just parked up, was sitting in the car making aphone call

once that ended i opened the door

cue the front end slamming down and ramming into the stops

why it's done that i don't know

My DS did that once several years ago. Never happened again. I think I was turning the steering wheel. which was already on full lock. The system pressures are coordinated so that if you are low on pressure you lose suspension first, then steering then brakes. So I think turning the wheel caused a demand for fluid which was given up by the suspension which no longer had enough to keep afloat. if that makes sense. I would imagine the XM would behave similarly but with added clicking of relays. 

10 hours ago, High Jetter said:

Wipers suggest RHD?

Ah - but French. This is my RHD DS.

42 minutes ago, Andrew353w said:

Did you clock if the DS was RHD or LHD?

Looks like a leftie to me.

I followed Borat today

I like this

https://baevantare.co.uk/
 

Alfa Romeo Zagato 

Campagnolo you say…

seen at Brooklands, just along from the Standard Pennant mentioned earlier.

13 hours ago, High Jetter said:

Les Searle car accessories? Dim memory there

I know what you mean but no, this Les Searle provide huge earth moving equipment and also haulage of large things. 
They have a fine collection of steam traction engines and an Reo Speedwagon which trundle around Sussex quite often.

A couple from recent dog walks…

Some weeks ago - even before Storm Eunice - my son needed to get the AA out when the clutch pedal on his Scimitar SE5A went dead. He thought the cable had broken but sadly it hadn’t. The AA man tightened up the cable and normal service was restored. The release bearing had been making a racket since my son bought the car and maybe that was disintegrating? I do not know if they can do that. Another possibility was the clutch fork was broken. This happened (twice) to my own Scimitar 30-odd years ago (it wasn’t strong enough for the Peugeot Diesel clutch it was operating).

Anyway, the gearbox had to come out. My son called a couple of local classic car garages near Cambridge but neither of them would take on the work. One of them said he thought the engine would have to come out to replace the clutch and who knows what else would need fixing? I was quite surprised - I was expecting them to be more interested.

So I said I’d do it. Remembering that I’d had the gearbox out of my own SE5A a couple of times 30-odd years ago I assumed it would be easier on a car with the correct engine. Early one morning my son drove the car down to Sussex from Cambridge and we set to it with the tools.

It turns out that it is not easy getting the box out of a Scimitar with the correct engine. Even getting to all the bolts is hard but the real issue is there is very little room to allow the gearbox to move back (the top of the bellhousing hits the gearbox tunnel) and rotate down (the tail hits the chassis) but, with enough jiggling, out it came.

The release bearing had not collapsed. It was intact but very rough - hence the racket - but the real problem was that it had become dislocated from the clutch fork. One of the fork’s locating tangs had disappeared so the fork had moved. Was this the result of the rough bearing? Maybe.

The spigot bearing in the end of the crank was similarly knackered and the clutch plate was down to the rivets - so it was time to change the clutch anyway.

I had the clutch fork welded up by a guy round the corner who did a great job for not very much and then it was time to put it all back. This was a fight - both getting it into place and getting it lined up. When it was in place I realised the release bearing had moved out of position and the fork had come off its pivot. I had no intention of getting the box out again but I could move the box back far enough that I could get my hand in to put it back together. But although I could get my hand in, I could not see what I was doing and you are trying to line up three features in three planes and that’t too hard to do blind. So I ordered an endoscope. 35 years ago I worked for a company that supplied endoscopes to the medical world for about 25k pounds. This one this cost 56 quid and was an excellent investment. With the endoscope I could see what I was doing which makes a big difference.

After more fights with the gear lever and the starter motor it was all back together with a new clutch cable and my son took it for a test drive round the block. Very smooth and no bearing noise. Once, twice - but sadly not three times round the block. No drive - bugger. We had to push it back onto the drive. Investigation (with the endoscope) showed that the driven plate was not being driven, the splined hub had become detached. This must have happened as a result of the fight getting it lined up - I had been a bit too brutal.

So - I ordered another clutch - this time an LUK one as they get good reviews and were cheaper than the first one. A couple of weeks later, out it all came again. At least this time it was all clean and I knew what I had to do. Then it had to go back together again. This time I used the endoscope to ensure I had the splines lined up and there was no brutality.

These photos show the bearing properly located on its tangs. The pictures were taken using the endoscope, looking from the gearbox side. The lower one shows the repair. 

This whole process must have taken 6 weeks or so although I did take a couple of weekends off to fix my Traction’s brakes and then use it as a wedding car in Devon.

I can’t recommend the endoscope highly enough. I also used it to ensure the starter motor was lined up as one of the bolt holes is out of sight, and also to look at the timing gear and check it is a steel one and not the original fibre type. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08NT4GJ33/ref=emc_b_5_t

It has 2 cameras, both with bright LEDs (which you can control) and connects wirelessly to a phone. Picture quality is excellent from both cameras. You can switch between them or show them both together on a split screen. You can take snapshots and record movies.

Now the Scimitar is back on the road and there's a bit more space on the drive. Thanks for reading. 

I had the honour to work in a BL dealership as a holiday job in about 1978 or 79, preparing new and used cars for sale. The steam cleaner would find any water leaks and loose paint / badges.

Rover SD1s still had the original cheapo badges on the bonnet and boot. They also had extra helpings of glue on the carpets which I had to get off and a dent (well, a wobble) on the front nearside wing between the wheel and the door about which I could do nothing. Otherwise they seemed to be screwed together ok.

I had to prep a Marina (in two-tone beige no less). You could tell how worn the press tools were by then on the boot lid which had a different profile at one end than the other. Neither matched their respective rear wings.

I prepped a "new" white 2-door Toledo which had been "up on the farm" for over a year before someone remembered it was there and sold it. That took more time than the new owner would have liked to know about. 

The proud owner of a new Range Rover got a bonus sunroof and vinyl roof when the mechanic put it up on the lift and forgot it was a bit taller than normal cars. 

The car I enjoyed most was a used yellow Spitfire 1500 which I spent ages working on. It looked great and sold immediately which made me quite sad. 

Happy days. 

4 hours ago, New POD said:

Wait. She fled Britain when shed was 13, when she allegedly made some one a sex slave. Okay.  Some mistake ? 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manacled_Mormon_case

I think the former Miss Wyoming may have knocked a few years off her age. Born 1949, unless she lied to Wikipedia too.

I remember the sex in chains thing as it happened just round the corner from our house. I was a teenage lad and it rather captured my imagination.

I had a 2003 156 1.6 sportwagen. Did over 130k miles in about 10 years. Loved it. Glad I had it. Wouldn’t have another though.

18 hours ago, DVee8 said:

So - how many bricks can you get in a mini?