Renault 6TL "Crapaud"

[vulgalour]

Mr B, you're welcome to come and do it for me whenever you want.  I'm sick of the sight of it to be quite frank.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

I'm moving to Alfreton soon, if you wanna move back to Bolsover I'll happily pop up of a weekend and do a bit on it with you!!!

[vulgalour]

I think I'd rather take the engine out and put it back in again a couple more times than move back to Bolsover, if it's all the same.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Ha!!!!

[ruffgeezer]

Not sure what ballpoint it is but if it is on a taper, you can apply force to the back of the taper whilst trying to tighten the nut and it might just get past the tight thread.

 

If it is a bottom arm ball joint, I put a scissor jack of doom under it and apply pressure to it and rarely struggle to get the nut wound on or off.

[vulgalour]

It's an upper ball joint, which is my next job.  Just thought I'd pop in and post this video to annoy a few people

 

 

Not getting fuel to the carb at the moment, not sure if that's because there's not enough fuel in the car (likely) or if there's something blocked (also likely).  You can at least suck air through from the pump but you can't blow air down to the pump so I assume that means the pump is probably still okay.  S'funny, last time I was here I had fuel and spark but the timing was off, now the timing seems okay I have spark but no fuel.

 

Waiting on Mike appearing with some fuel to see if we can get it to go today.

[plasticvandan]

Save the battery man! Wait for fuel.

[michael1703]

I want to this car running and driving and sporting some tinsel before Christmas

[vulgalour]

Right.  So Mike came back and we hooked up the jump leads and tipped some fuel in.  It appears the fuel pump has died or is blocked because it's definitely not pumping fuel.  However, when we put a bit of fuel in the carb we did get a cough out of the engine, just not enough fuel to get it running.

 

Too dark and cold now to get the fuel pump off but I'll do that tomorrow.  I suspect the diaphragm is knackered or it's just blocked.  Otherwise, things look very promising.

[conkerman]

Such a tease. Proper French!

 

Sent from my Vodafone Smart ultra 6 using Tapatalk

[michael1703]

Saw this and thought of vulg

 

[vulgalour]

See, I told you Walt Disney made engines!  And you didn't believe me.

[Rocket88]

I reckon Vulg had this running 3 months ago, and he's just teasing...............

[PhilA]

It doesn't sound like there's a whole lot of compression going on there. Got a gauge to test it with? Valve clearances set?

 

Phil

[vulgalour]

There is compression, you can feel it when turning by hand.  I don't have a compression tester at home, only at the unit, if it's available to use I'll get Mike to bring it back so we can find out what the compression is.  I have no reason to believe there's a compression issue, all the same.  It is a rebuilt starter and it's pretty powerful compared to a tired old one.

 

Valve clearances were done before the engine went in the car, but I'll recheck those to give you peace of mind on that one too.

 

Honestly, I reckon it's just the fuel pump playing silly buggers, or a blockage in a fuel line or something of that sort.  Everything else is doing what it should, it's just that fuel isn't getting delivered.

[scaryoldcortina]

It doesn't sound like there's a whole lot of compression going on there. Got a gauge to test it with? Valve clearances set?

 

Phil

That's the same starter motor that managed to spin it over despite the crank shells being on wrong.

[vulgalour]

We got the same guy to do the starter on the Princess, the end result is very impressive, probably better than new!

[PhilA]

Fair enough. I'm just used to hearing it as a repeating wawawawawawa rather than wauoowawauooowawaooo

 

I hope you prove my lugholes wrong!

 

Phil

[michael1703]

You could gravity feed it from a can, I wouldn't trust it on fuel being pulled from a manky tank

[vulgalour]

There are two back up plans.  The first is to connect an electric pump to the fuel line that runs to the mechanical pump to see if anything can be got from the tank and if not then I'll hold off removing the pump.  The second back-up plan is a gravity feed.  Going to be loud when it starts up too because another thing I haven't connected is the exhaust, just in case I have to pull the engine out again.

[purplebargeken]

Gravity feed is always a good plan in this situation.

[ruffgeezer]

It is tomorrow now, is it running yet?

[vulgalour]

Think we found out why fuel wasn't getting through.  Off to get some supplies to work around the blocked (but seemingly otherwise working) fuel pick-up now.

 

[Mr_Bo11ox]

blimey that's a crispy old thing

[nigel bickle]

That's de facto for a long time store. A foot of clear plastic tube on the external pipe will do to get it running.

 

Whilst you track an original I often boil wash mine in an old pan. The heat turns the glop liquid(ish) again. Dig it out with a length of old coat hanger,rinse and repeat till clear. Then refit till you can find a new one.

 

C'orse the fuel gauge will be nadgered - but it is anyway!

[vulgalour]

Another day, another failure to get the car running.  Sorry to disappoint there.  However, I do at least know what was causing the issue with fuel not getting where it should.  Because absolutely nothing was coming out of the pipe I did what I should have done ages ago and pulled the pipe off the sender and removed it from the tank revealing immediately the problem which is a missing filter bag and a completely clogged pick up line as well as lot of sludge.

 

I know, I know, I should have dropped the tank and flushed it all through and checked this before even trying.  I didn't, this is the result.

 

 

 

It didn't look like rust, so I let it all dry out before doing anything about it and it now looks like it's covered in what I assume to be refining sand.

 

I'll clean it up as best I can so at least it can be used to suck fuel up if not tell me how much is actually in the car.  The fuel gauge has worked, once, while I've had this car so I'm hopeful this can be salvaged.  It will of course need a new filter bag too since that's either dissolved or rolling around in the bottom of the fuel tank somewhere.

 

With the sender out, I checked that there is definitely fuel in the tank, which there is, you can just make out the reflection of it.

 

Bought a couple of fuel filters, the only ones the shop had, connected one to the fuel line and dropped a length of hose in the tank then connected the electric pump to the other end to see if it would pull fuel through.

 

Unfortunately, the fuel line that runs the length of the chassis has a blockage in it somewhere.  Mike's going to bring the little compressor home so we can blow the line through back towards the tank to hopefully clear it and we'll retry a start with the current fuel filter set up.  If the old sender does clean up and work then that's great, I'll get it refitted.  If not, I'll look for a new one in the new year, I shan't have the funds for one before then.

 

I'm getting, at most, 3 hours play time a day on this car and that includes any errands Mike needs to run me on to pick things up.  It's really frustrating as I'd like to get a lot more done in a day, there just isn't time with the short nights and no space in the garage if I had the car in there.

[DeeJay]

Looking at the state of fuel related stuff I'd drop and clean the tank now.

Blow through  the pipes while the tank is off otherwise you're stacking up more gunk to clog up your filters.

[vulgalour]

I'm going to run it on a remote fuel source first.  I can blow the lines through without dropping the tank as the line isn't connected to the tank.  Once I know it's running I'll drop the tank but I don't want to drop the tank until I've put the rest of the car together as time and space are at a premium here.

[danthecapriman]

Great job on this one so far.

 

I'll echo others and recommend you don't try driving it around as it is.

This is more or less exactly the same issue I had recently with my Mercury. I got the engine rebuilt and just started using it. While the engine was spot on the sludge and sediments in the bottom of the original fuel tank, probably from the cars long lay up in the US, started to dislodge and break up once the car was driving again. The movement and sloshing around of the liquid in the tank stirred up all the crud in there and after a short time blocked the fuel pipes, fuel filter and wrote off a fairly new fuel pump!

I managed to get it going again but it blocked solid two more fuel filters within a handful of miles.

 

In the end I bit the bullet and bought a new tank, new pump and had the entire remaining fuel system stripped and cleaned. It cost a fair bit but if I'd have done what I should of straight away and flushed the old tank out it wouldn't of happened.

I was lucky I could get a new tank cheaply, I wouldn't imagine these Renaults will be available anymore?

 

I'd seriously consider getting that tank out and washed out, and blow the lines out too before it ends up causing you more grief once the cars in use again.

[vulgalour]

Right then, I had a go at cleaning up the sender to see if it was salvagable and I think it is.  Once it had dried out, most of the grime was quite powdery, sandy stuff and could be literally brushed off with an old toothbrush and no cleaning agent.  There is some surface corrosion to the mild steel components but nothing terminal.  The tattered remains of the old filter bag completely disintegrated so I need to find a replacement but other than that, it's all good.  The blockage in the pick pipe was quite minor too and cleaned out with welding wire, I then ran some water through it to check it was flowing freely, which it is, followed by some WD40 to make sure it was all dried out.  The rubber sealing ring is still supple so should be reusable and the float is free moving and submerging it in water didn't result in any bubbles coming out or water going in so I assume they're both good.  The float arm moves very freely now too.  Usefully, the little square of orange you can see to the side is a removable panel that slides out of the main body of the sender so you can clean out all the sediment from inside it.

 

 

The float tang and the resistance wires (at least I assume that's what they're called) are all in surprisingly good shape with no corrosion to speak of and what corrosion you can see in there is just on the steel backing plate and looks worse than it is because of the flash and things still being a bit wet.

 

This stands a fighting chance of working I'd say, which I wasn't expecting when I pulled it out of the tank.  I'll get the multimeter on it tomorrow (it's not here at the house) to see if it is actually doing what it should.  If it works, the only thing I'll need to find is a small replacement filter for the pick-up pipe.