Felly Fav and Trum. *Wanna see a fupped engine?**

[Yoss]

44 minutes ago, grogee said:

Red hot Favorit action there Yoss, well done. I once spilled a whole container of used oil on my drive, after the wind got under the cardboard I was using to "protect" the drive. 

The stain is still there. I've sold the house now so meh. 

Have you noticed any more oopmh from the shiny new cylinder head or is it business as usual? I always think these things are going to make a massive difference (eg cleaning out the inlet manifold on a diesel) and I can never tell the difference. 

I once forgot to put the sump plug back in one of my Landcrabs and poured five litres of new oil in and straight out of the bottom again which is worse than spilling used oil. This is when I still lived at home so it was in a council car park. I tried hiding it by always parking in that spot but it was quite obvious. 

 

And no  I haven't noticed any real difference in power but I haven't really tried yet as I'm sort of running it in so trying to keep it below 3k rpm. It's a Pierburg twin choke carb (it's actually a Jikov licence built version of the Pierburg. Makes no real difference but knowing it was made in Czechoslovakia makes me feel better). When you really put your foot down the vacuum opens the second throttle and you can feel it pick up and go. That's the bit I've been trying not to use. 

It goes well enough. Being only 850kg helps. 

[Yoss]

A little job this afternoon but one that I think makes a big difference. 

Before. 

After. 

I'd been running around without rear mudflaps for ages. I had picked out the Škoda lettering in white pretty soon after I got it which was eight years ago now but they had started flaking quite a bit.

Then I bought the new bumper a couple of years ago and decided to re do the Škoda lettering before I put the new bumper on. Then of course it sat in the loft for two years as I kept not quite getting round to it. This time I have rubbed down the surface of the lettering and given them a coat of matt white and a couple of gloss so we'll see if they last any longer. I think it transforms the back end. 

I also blacked up the ball hitch cover which was looking decidedly grey against the new bumper. 

Before. 

After. 

[Yoss]

I'm always having trouble with the horn in the Triumph. If I haven't used the car for a few weeks the horn never works. It usually comes back to life with a bit of use but refused to last time I took it out so I thought I'd better have a look. The car doesn't need an MOT but it does need to be roadworthy if I get stopped so it needed sorting. 

The car has an aftermarket Mountney steering wheel which has been on the car nearly as long as I've owned it, which is now more than half its life. The horn push I found separately at an autojumble and took a little modification to fit and work so I always suspect this first. 

But it was not the case this time. I took the cowling off the column and found this purple and black wire. 

So down to the horns. This one is quite accessible, the other one is under the battery so it isn't. One purple wire, one purple and black. So I added another long wire, the blue one in this picture, to the purple and black with a bare end and started touching bits of bodywork. 

And sure enough the horn squawked away. I hadn't heard them for so long it gave me quite a start. I should add at this point I had checked the wiring diagram and it said the purple and black went to earth, so this is exactly what is supposed to happen but it still gave me a fright when it actually did. So I ran the wire to the tip of the steering colomn with the horn push removed and there was nothing. Which led me to think the steering column wasn't earthing properly. 

There is a sort of double UJ between the column and rack with three pinch bolts holding it in place. I had previously fitted an extra wire between two of them and this had broken so I immediately assumed this was the problem. They aren't that easy to access with everything else in place, the bottom one has to be done from underneath by feel but I got there. 

This was taken half way through. 

But after refitting it still didn't work so back out with the long wire and I found it worked when I touched the new wire but at no point above it. So in the picture above you can see a splined section between the two UJs. Well obviously they have got rusty and grotty and are obviously the culprit. 

So to do the job properly would mean taking the UJs out separating them and cleaning splines up  and reassembling which would require removing the steering column which sound like a whole heap of hassle. Actually removing the column is piss easy. As it has an adjustable steering column you just have to unscrew the big clamp at the top and push the bolt out then pull the wheel towards you and keep pulling and it just pops out. But getting it back in on your own is whole different kettle of fish because the UJs just fold up when you put any pressure on them. 

So my solution was a second wire between the top two pinch bolts. Like this. 

So then all I had to do to test it was put a wire between the tip of the column and this brass ring. 

Success. But whilst the wheel was off I thought I'd clean all the contacts up. Like I say it's a bit non standard. 

Firstly we drilled a small hole in the boss. 

To put this brass plunger through. This is from the original Triumph bus sized steering wheel. 

 

Like so. The end of this was particularly grotty and benefitted from a good clean. 

Then soldered an admittedly oversized brass plate on the back of the button for the plunger to contact. 

 

Then if you open the button up you can see the current was supposed to go through the two springs to the button at the top but contact wasn't great so an extra wire was soldered  direct from the flat spring to the button. 

The flat spring clips in to the boss and thus to earth. When you press the button the sort of nipple thing touches the brass rivety thing and completes the circuit. 

So I now have a working horn. Whether it still works next time I take it out is anyone's guess though. 

 

[Yoss]

A fairly simple job on the Favorit but one that seems to have taken about two months. 

I always check my levels before any longish journeys and on one of these occasions I noticed the washer bottle was at a funny angle. Turned out that a metal bracket that is welded to the chassis rail had dissolved. 

I pulled this out. 

 

If I put it back in I found it locked quite neatly in place. Like so. 

 

So my first thought was to try some steel epoxy resin. It might have worked but only had this much left in stock. 

 

Which did lock it back in place 

But as soon as I put any pressure on it (the washer bottle is quite a tight fit) it just broke the rust in a different place. 

So as I needed the car the next day I went for a, sturdier solution. 

I mean it is three bungee straps, I'm not messing about here. 

Now it's quite a simple shaped bracket but to do the job properly it needs to be welded on and I can't weld. I know somebody who can but to get good access would need to remove all the wiring and the headlight and probably some other stuff. And I'm very much of the school of thought of why do it properly when you can bodge it. Especially if it is a quality bodge that will last just as long as the original. 

Here's somebody who did it properly. Making the bracket bigger at the same time. 

But that's not for me. 

Firstly the bit of inner wing by the bracket was a bit grotty so I rubbed it down as best I could, treated it with rust converter then primed and painted it. 

I had checked underneath and the inner wing is perfect, it is just surface rust on top. It obviously stayed wet longer in the V formed by the bracket and the inner wing. 

So my plan was to make a new bracket that folded under the washer bottle and attach it with a couple of small bolts on the large flat surface of the inner wing. 

I cut a template from the rusty stump of the original bracket and transferred that to another piece of metal. 

Test fitting with a spare washer bottle. Note genuine Tesla washer pumps. 

I then primed it with both zinc based Bonda Primer and grey primer and a couple of coats of Adriatic blue. 

More test fitting. 

At this point a friend suggested just sticking it on with Tigerseal. I though why not. I'd already drilled a couple of holes in it but they could give the seal extra purchase and if the seal didn't work on its own it would help hold it in place while I drilled the holes in the wing itself. 

So I marked the desired position with a pen. 

 

Then Tigerseal. 

 

And stuck it on. 

 

Left it overnight and it was still there in the morning. I put my hand under the curved part of the bracket and pulled up. Then I tried a bit harder and used all my strength until I was actually raising the car on its suspension. Well that's good stuff then. God only knows how it works. 

So now I have a properly fixed washer bottle at last. 

 

Et voila

 

The only thing that has upset me about this is that the piece of metal used to make the bracket came from my friends daughters Polo when they cut the roof out to put a sunroof in. I have always been happy to tell anybody who will listen that this is a proper Škoda and there's no Volkswagen in it. We'll there is now.