Six Cylinders Motoring Notes - The Italian Job

[hairnet]

Some punto's and tipos then ?

[hairnet]

Entrance fee for Chris..........

[Tadhg Tiogar]

1 hour ago, hairnet said:

Entrance fee for Chris..........

No Tunnock's Teacakes?

[beko1987]

I've moved into stage 4 of my hopefully quick cold, and have gone all bunged up over the last hour. Hopefully tomorrow it'll un-bung again, my sinus's will empty and it'll be job jobbed on Thursday BUT.... I can't make any promises. 

Posting this not out of sympathy (although please feel free) but because I said I'd pick LBF up from the chop choo stand... Might need a plan B there, I'm really sorry

There's probably a bit of covid paranoia in it too... Amy went and did my shopping today because I didn't want to be all sneezy and dribbly in Aldi, I'd get lynched! 

[Andyrew]

17 hours ago, flat4alfa said:

Would love to again but I've felt so guilty all these months for returning it borked....

I had seen you about locally when you had it. 

 

[chaseracer]

I thought that was @Mrs6C!

[hairnet]

1 hour ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

No Tunnock's Teacakes?

funnily enough i went to get petrol for the bike onthe way home and bought some wafers :D

 

[LightBulbFun]

43 minutes ago, beko1987 said:

I've moved into stage 4 of my hopefully quick cold, and have gone all bunged up over the last hour. Hopefully tomorrow it'll un-bung again, my sinus's will empty and it'll be job jobbed on Thursday BUT.... I can't make any promises. 

Posting this not out of sympathy (although please feel free) but because I said I'd pick LBF up from the chop choo stand... Might need a plan B there, I'm really sorry

There's probably a bit of covid paranoia in it too... Amy went and did my shopping today because I didn't want to be all sneezy and dribbly in Aldi, I'd get lynched! 

pretty sure a runny nose is symptoms that you dont have CV19, so I would not worry about too much

but I appreciate the heads up I hope you get well soon!

 

@Mrs6C would you be able to pick me up from the station if Beko is unable to do so?

 

[Zelandeth]

Yep...someone has been in here before.

Mercifully there was enough head left to get the correct sized screwdriver to bite.  That screw will be replaced on reassembly.

[bobdisk]

13 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Yep, that's precisely where my logic has been going.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the idle mixture screw has been wound way, way, way open to try to compensate, getting it so the car will just about idle.

Would also tie in with the fact that she really struggles until she's fully warm if she's missing half the idle circuit.

I've got a hunch about the running issue.  I note that there's a solenoid on the carb - a solenoid which is currently connected to nothing...and which appears to have an open circuit coil.  If that's something to do with the idle circuit this could be causing all sorts of trouble. 

Can you confirm which model of carb is fitted so I can look up a diagram to confirm what that solenoid is supposed to do? 

16 hours ago, Talbot said:

That's most likely an anti-dieseling solenoid.  It needs power from the ignition circuit to allow the engine to idle properly.  When power is cut to it, it's supposed to shut off the idle mixture jet to prevent run-on.  I've had all manner of experience with these twin-sequential carburettors on various Fiat heaps over the years, and have had to rectify some quite awful bodges.  It's possible that if the anti-dieseling solenoid isn't working, someone has attempted to use other adjustments to allow the engine to idle.  Might well be worth seeing if that can be made to work, as it's rather essential to the operation of the idle mixture system on these.

I seem to remember our old VW Beetle had a solenoid on the carb. When off, it stopped all fuel getting through the carb, so the engined stopped. A safety feature . The Daf has one on its carb, but it is supposed to be something to do with "emission control", but cant figure out how its supposed to work.  Both are Solex carbs.  They were connected to the ignition +12v supply to the coil. Both functions were considered fairly advanced for cars of the 1970s

[beko1987]

49 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

pretty sure a runny nose is symptoms that you dont have CV19, so I would not worry about too much

but I appreciate the heads up I hope you get well soon!

 

@Mrs6C would you be able to pick me up from the station if Beko is unable to do so?

 

No your right, I've got no other symptoms, it's just the same week of poorly I get every year as summer turns to autumn. It'll happen in march/April next year too. 

Equally I feel like shit too so that may be a consideration, but who knows, I'll keep an eye on myself over the next few days 

[richardmorris]

4 hours ago, Six-cylinder said:

That one lives Wiltshire way, but this is the local one you are probably thinking of?

Yes I had two Deltas and a Ypsilon in my field that weekend no wonder I call it the Field of Dreams!

Not exactly lookers were they.

[flat4alfa]

4 hours ago, hairnet said:

Some punto's and tipos then ?

You mean Pandas and Bravas, shirley.

[flat4alfa]

2 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Yep...someone has been in here before.

Very likely while still in the warranty period

[wuvvum]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54081131

We'll have to make sure we're out of the FOD by midnight on Sunday...

[Mrs6C]

10 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54081131

We'll have to make sure we're out of the FOD by midnight on Sunday...

Six of us remaining there will be OK! ?

[DoctorRetro]

7 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54081131

We'll have to make sure we're out of the FOD by midnight on Sunday...

The odd thing is, I've just looked at what the current rules are, and it seems to suggest that the 30 people limit was from two households only and that multiple household gatherings was always 6 people. 

So have we been breaking the rules anyway? 

 

[Mrs6C]

4 hours ago, LightBulbFun said:

@Mrs6C would you be able to pick me up from the station if Beko is unable to do so?

Shouldn't be a problem if we can do around 10.30am as last time...

[LightBulbFun]

1 minute ago, Mrs6C said:

Shouldn't be a problem if we can do around 10.30am as last time...

Awesome thanks good to know  

 

[Mrs6C]

7 minutes ago, TheDoctor said:

The odd thing is, I've just looked at what the current rules are, and it seems to suggest that the 30 people limit was from two households only and that multiple household gatherings was always 6 people. 

So have we been breaking the rules anyway? 

 

No. There is nothing in the actual legislation about 'two households only'. We are within the law.

[wuvvum]

I'm glad someone knows what the rules are!  I lost track some time ago.

[DoctorRetro]

9 minutes ago, Mrs6C said:

No. There is nothing in the actual legislation about 'two households only'. We are within the law.

I've just read the legislation document on the gov.uk website and sure enough, no mention of the 'two households' bit.

So the BBC website is talking bollocks. No wonder there is so much confusion... 

[Zelandeth]

Trevi update!

A slight problem generated by having fixed the vacuum leak found yesterday was that it had dropped the idle speed a touch - which given how badly the car was missing at idle resulted in there basically being a 50/50 chance of the engine stalling every time you came off the throttle.  I tweaked the idle speed up a little to compensate for this.  I need to look up the details for the carb to confirm that I've done that the correct way...but either way it worked and has stopped the stalling nonsense I had yesterday.

Here's the details of the carb, courtesy of my phone as I couldn't get my head into the necessary location to read this!

Hopefully those in the know will be able to confirm whether this is reasonably well suited to the car or not.

If that solenoid is meant to have a needle or other metering device attached to it I suspect that's going to be the source of our problem as it appears that the entire plunger assembly and whatever was once attached to it is missing.  This makes sense as the main jet side of things seems to be working just fine - when you give her some beans she picks up smoothly and especially at the top end feels nicely punchy as you'd expect from a Lancia TC engine.  It's just the idle that's screwed up.

I'm not going to delve too far into this issue as it's kind of beyond the scope of what I was planning on - but I'd like to be able to at least give an idea of what's going on for the final report I'll hand back with the car.  One key bit of information I wanted was to see whether she was overfuelling or underfuelling at idle.  Out with the gas analyser.

Well that won't be helping matters.  The red section on the gauge is the general range expected for carb fed engines...I have a sneaking feeling that the whole idle circuit is fouled up and it's running from dregs from the main jet.  Especially as adjusting what appears to be the idle fuel screw has absolutely zero effect on anything - so I put it right back where it started out and left it well alone.

It's obviously a fuel mixture issue as you CAN make the car idle smoothly by manually choking the carb with your hand (carefully).  She sounds really lovely then actually!  Is just starving for fuel if left to its own devices.

Unless when I look up the service/adjustment guide for the carb there's some blindingly obvious adjustment that I've missed I'm leaving this well alone and simply noting down "Carb needs attention" and leaving it at that.  She starts, drives, stops and doesn't stall every time you stop at a junction - basically back to how she was behaving when she arrived here.  Just with all the air now entering the engine via the carb rather than sneaking in through leaks.

 

Right...Enough faffing around with running issues I wasn't told to look into!  Onto lighting issues.

First one was a nice easy fix!

Dirty lamp holder contacts.  Sixty second fix.

Next up I needed to start pulling the dash to bits.

To be honest this has to be one of the easiest cars I've had to tackle a job like this on.  Half a dozen easily accessible screws and the whole face just lifts off the dash.

A further four release the panel which holds the warning lights and switchgear, likewise four release the instrument cluster. 

There's even bags of slack in the wiring harness and speedometer cable so disconnecting them is a doddle, and with the steering wheel adjustment dropped down to the lowest level it just lifts out.

Before I started on the instrumentation though I wanted to take a closer look at the heater air distribution controls, which I wasn't sure if had any provision for illumination.

Hey look a that!  It even highlights which mode it's in.

Neat.  That's one more thing ticked off then.

Dirty lampholder.

While peering at things back there I was able to confirm that the main swithgear was in fact lit by a single light source and fibre optics.  I'll dig my way in to that tomorrow and look to replace the lamp in it to see if we can get a bit more light out of them.

On to the dash proper.  Getting at a few of the lamps on that is a bit of a pain as Lancia decided that it would be smart to position the control module for the gauge pack on top of several of them.

So you have to unscrew that to get to four of the lamps.  Not the end of the world as it takes all of five minutes to remove and reattach, but it's still the sort of design decision that makes you roll your eyes a bit.

Doesn't this look a bit happier now?

Not bad illumination at all.

I did annoyingly managed to nudge the tripometer reset while I was manhandling the instruments in and out of the dash.  Luckily however I had taken precautions against that and noted down the reading before that.  If that reading is being used to track fuel economy, you need to add 34.2 miles to the reading.

In addition to the illumination, the fuel warning light apparently was also out beforehand, it now lights as part of the test sequence at startup.

What I didn't realise was that the car *knows* when there is a light out on the dash.  The big red warning light now lights up green when you turn the ignition on rather than red!

Shouldn't be a problem to get this finished and back together tomorrow then tackle the remaining to do/investigation list.

[] Investigate fibre optic illumination to see if there's any improvement to be made.

[] Investigate non-functioning rear fog lights.

[] Reassemble dash.

[] Attack a few key areas with Vactan.

[] Cooling system drain, flush and refill with proper coolant.

[] Get a proper photo for the Dash at Night thread.

Oh...Pretty sure I found all the necessary bits in the glove box to reassemble the lower heater vents on the dash as well so will put those back together before screwing the dash back together.

Have been quite enjoying getting to work on something new.

 

[Six-cylinder]

It is very strange sitting here reading the adventures of our Trevi!

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, Six-cylinder said:

It is very strange sitting here reading the adventures of our Trevi!

Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to get a couple of jobs done so I can provide the reports!  These are the sort of jobs I enjoy so I've been having a great time.

Just a shame I've not been able to come up with a quick solution to the horrible idle, would have been great to be able to hand it back running smoothly.  Sadly I suspect that the carb needs going over by someone who knows their secrets more in depth than I do.  Plus I'm not going to go poking it too much given that I don't want to immobilise the car!  It's annoying now, but that sounds like a job for over the winter when she's tucked away in storage.

[richardmorris]

11 hours ago, TheDoctor said:

I've just read the legislation document on the gov.uk website and sure enough, no mention of the 'two households' bit.

So the BBC website is talking bollocks. No wonder there is so much confusion... 

Well the gov.uk website says the same. different to the legislation.

 

What is changing?

, up to now the only ceiling set in law was 30 people. 

 

[Tadhg Tiogar]

11 hours ago, TheDoctor said:

.... the BBC website is talking bollocks. ... 

Wouldn't be the first time 

[Yoss]

Aren't we all one big family anyway? ? Although family isn't the same as household I've just realised. Ah well, nice try. 

[Tadhg Tiogar]

49 minutes ago, Yoss said:

Aren't we all one big family anyway? ? Although family isn't the same as household I've just realised. Ah well, nice try. 

At least you can self-isolate with the layout in your attic 

[Six-cylinder]

Last year my BMW 735i went to a local garage for service, MOT and look for the bomp, bomp noise from the rear because Hubnut was going to take it to Wales and my favourite garage were already doing a job for me. I got it back with a fresh MOT nothing found maybe it is the trim.

Today I have collected my 735i with a fresh MOT from my favourite garage and they had to change a rear shock absorber mounting as the centre had pulled out of it. Strange thing is there was a new top mounting in the boot and I can't remember who gave it to me.

I got a fright when I pulled in the take the picture at a Milton Keynes open space car park, as I drove along a row of cars parked in bays a small van started reversing out at me. Lots of horn and it stopped!