Renault 6TL "Crapaud"

[vulgalour]

That's the one.  Going to find out exactly how much it is to repair the existing one, £80 is rather more than I have spare.

[Eddie Honda]

My wager is it'll be more than 80 to repair.

[vulgalour]

I'm expecting that too, in all honesty, but it costs nothing to ask.

[PhilA]

Plugs out, does the oil pressure light work? Charge the battery and try again, see if you can make it go out of toy so. You should certainly hear the pitch of the starter change as the pump and bearings load up (good thing).

 

Then put it all together and try again

 

Phil

[KruJoe]

The separate reverse light switch is brill.

GR9 for giving tailgaters a slight "WTF" as you're pottering about town at 24 mph.

[Noel Tidybeard]

the reversing lights being the wrong type for a gearbox switch sounds a bit billy bullshit tbh

 

gearbox switch will be either 1. switched earth or 2. switched live

 

1.  run wire from switch to lights earth side and use ign switched live feed to lights
2.  earth lights to car and ign live thru switch to lights

simples

 

the period switch would be gr9 for the auxiliary front lights and MUST* be fitted to the right of drivers right knee

[purplebargeken]

Dolomite and Toledo radiators have the same in and out bits/layout. Not sure of dimensions though.

[vulgalour]

Did a tiny bit more today:

Bolted anti-roll bar back on

Replaced flexible fuel hose between the pump and the hard fuel line in the inner wing

Put a couple of litres of fresh fuel in the tank

Mike helped me remove and refit the windscreen with some glazing sealant to hopefully resolve the leaking seal

Counted how many jubilee clips are needed

Fitted the radiator and fan temporarily more so bits don't get lost

Cranked the engine a few more times with freshly charged battery, discovered it has lots of lovely compression

 

 

Then ran out of time so couldn't do any more.  I'm away this weekend too so I probably won't get it running now until next weekend but it is very *very* close.

[RayMK]

The weekend after this one is Shitefest......are you still planning to attend?

[DeeJay]

He'll be there in the 6.

[jonathan_dyane]

I don't know how you can stand the suspense! It's killing me...

[vulgalour]

Sure, I'll bring it to Shitefest, WCPGW?

 

 

 

 

might be lying

[michael1703]

Alright vulgenstein, what's occurring, all this spiffing weather and no progress report?

[vulgalour]

No time and less motivation.  I stuck some new plug leads on it today and I've got the local motor factors hunting out a correct wet coil for me to see if they can beat the online price (they usually can).  Then we'll see.

[vulgalour]

New coil arrived.  Fitted it.  Still no spark.

 

Checked for spark both from the a spark lead and the king lead and no joy.

 

A cursory inspection revealed a piece of wiring that looks like it might have a substandard repair section which could be the root of the problem.  If not, well, I've got a Renault with an electrical problem. In other news, the sky is blue and the sea is wet.

[nigel bickle]

Flick the points, see if you get a spark then. Oh, and clean them, iy will much improve your chances

[vulgalour]

Points had been cleaned and gapped correctly and thought to be the problem if the new coil didn't do the trick.  Bypassed them by sticking a plug in the king lead but still no spark.  I've got some new points in the post, once they arrive I'll fit those, Mike's offered to check the wiring side of things and we'll make another attempt.

 

You can only imagine how frustrating it is to be this close to it running.

[Eddie Honda]

Get the old condenser back on it

[nigel bickle]

I'll still bet it's the points. Have you properly isolated the live low tension? If the wire isn't properly spaced, it'll earth itself and you never get a spark.

 

Hence my suggestion, flick the points with the ignition on. If you get a reaction, great. If you don't, check the low tension wiring. I 'll wager you've a damaged or missing spacer.

[vulgalour]

The condenser hasn't been touched, it's still the one it came to me with (another failure point, I suppose).  I'll give the points flicking a go when I'm at the car again which might be this weekend, it might not.  Electrics are not something I'm confident with, I find them baffling.  Happily, Mike is far more comfortable with them so I'll get him to help out.

[nigel bickle]

Condenser usually buggers the spark, but doesn't kill it completely..

[vulgalour]

Been a while but I finally got some time in on the Renault today and, luckily, my brother was free to help out too.  We wanted primarily to find out why we were getting no spark at the plugs.  We went about it methodically with brother doing the multimeter stuff because he understands electricity better than I do.  We did find that one of the wires to the coil was badly damaged so spliced a repair in to resolve that.  The negative and positive wires on the coil were also the wrong way around.

 

When investigating:

Battery - reading 12v or so

Wires to coil

- not connected to coil, 12v

- connected to coil and ignition on, 10v

- connected to coil and cranking engine, 8v

 

We determined that the battery was weak at this point, partly because it wasn't cranking so well, so we got the jump leads and ran them to the Rover for a bit which we tested some more but while the battery power improved, the figures were much the same.  Next, we looked at the leads.

 

New leads - 2v

Old leads - 2v

 

That seemed very low and when cranking it dropped to 1.8v  There was also no spark at the plugs even though we were getting power through the leads, not even a weak spark.  A look at the book and a mention of fiddling with the points jogged my memory of someone mentioning 'flicking the points' which we tried, and discovered no spark still.

 

We were pretty baffled at this point.  We swapped between the new and old leads, two different known good batteries (one of which is brand new) and two different brand new coils all with the same result.  Then my brother noticed entirely by accident that the points looked wrong with the spring part touching the body of the distributor.  He removed and refitted the points and we suddenly had spark and no more massive drain of volts!

 

Time was running out so I knew it was unlikely I'd get things running, but we tried anyway.  We learned that the ammeter and fuel gauge don't do anything so that needs investigating, the dash fan sprang back to life which was nice, and the fuel pump is pumping fuel to the engine.  We got as far as the engine proving it has spark, fuel and good compression, even putting a little puff out of the exhaust manifold.

 

Sadly that was it.  Really very close to running now, it just feels like it's a case of getting the various fluids run through and getting timing set up and that sort of thing and we should be away.  No pictures because, well, there was nothing to take pictures of.

[nigel bickle]

What did I tell you, top of this page

 

Timing next, then it'll start coughing. Well done

[vulgalour]

It's taken me this long to put the info into action.  Once it's running, I need to spend about £200-300 for a set of tyres and a new radiator, fit the exhaust and try for an MoT.  Ammeter and fuel gauge aren't necessary for an MoT but it would be nice to find out why they don't work.

[nigel bickle]

It's a Renner, there WILL be other stuff.

Don't let it out you off, you're nearly there- if you built the lump right..

[vulgalour]

I'll find out whether or not I have when I drive it I guess.  Turns over nice and freely with no horrible noises so I'm cautiously optimistic.

[320touring]

This needs to meet with my CX..

 

2 finer pieces of french engineering you'll never see

[purplebargeken]

So close.........

[ruffgeezer]

What tyres does it need?

[vulgalour]

175/65/13, from memory.