Zel's Motoring Adventures...Peugeot, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & A Sinclair C5 - 09/06 - (Finally) unburying TPA...

[Zelandeth]

Today I did a bit of prioritising of that list.  Not least because when I had *everything* in the basket I was looking at a total of north of £700.

We've gone for the thermostat, full coolant hose set and a couple of inexpensive items like the light gasket sets.  

I'll do the brakes in one hit hopefully once the P4 sells/when the car will largely be off the road anyway during the winter proper.  There's nothing on there which I believe is in danger of imminent failure based on my inspection, just things like the hoses want to be done before they degrade any further and I want to future proof the system against problems having the chance to develop.  While the rear discs look sub par, the rear brakes *are* contributing and the handbrake will hold the car on a reasonable gradient.  I had a look yesterday and they have scrubbed up quite a bit from the original situation, but really do still want changing.  Realistically, the salt is going to be here in the very near future so she'll not likely be leaving the drive for a while once that happens.

The cooling system though given the state of a couple of hoses is more in danger of sudden catastrophic failure in my opinion (bottom hose in particular feels rather squishy and has visibly ballooned a bit at one end) so I'm getting that ticked off first.

[Zelandeth]

Well that makes the decision on the radiator easier.

That's dribbled quite a bit over the last 24ish hours.

Definitely leaking from at least two locations towards the bottom centre of the core in addition to the hole we've spotted on the one end tank.

Plus you can see that the fins have started to go right at the bottom.  If it was just one leak I'd have a go at brazing it up, but with several issues already identified in less than 40 miles of driving it's just time for a new one I think.

[SiC]

I always worry most about animals licking up anti-freeze leaks too. Definitely happens and definitely is fatal to the poor critter. 

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, SiC said:

I always worry most about animals licking up anti-freeze leaks too. Definitely happens and definitely is fatal to the poor critter. 

Yep. I only buy the stuff which states on the bottle that it contains a bittering agent to eliminate that hazard.  Even so there's a closed top oil drain bottle under there now.

[grizz]

Sublime ride.

Thanks for the surprise pickup.

Buy this car.

[Zelandeth]

On 17/10/2023 at 21:42, grizz said:

Sublime ride.

Thanks for the surprise pickup.

Buy this car.

It's a tricky one as yes, I'd like the space back and don't really know what my plan would be with the bodywork long term.  Equally, I really do enjoy driving it.

Big box of stuff turned up for the P6 this morning.  The vast bulk in terms of volume was a full set of coolant hoses.  Additionally there were a full set of light gaskets, full set of stainless steel screws for all the light lenses as virtually all of the heads on mine were mangled, a thermostat and a pair of wiper blades.

The front indicator/sidelight units were both about as capable of keeping water out as a sieve.  The gaskets having long since turned to plastic was the reason.

They were also about 1/4 the thickness of the new ones.  Sadly the above one has had one of the screw risers snapped off, so I'll need to either replace the assembly or figure out an alternative arrangement with a bolt from behind the assembly or something like that.

The tail lights also weren't water tight as evidenced by the condensation.

These turned out to be completely missing the gaskets - so this should be an improvement.

Also threw on the new wiper blades.

I know these modern repro stainless blades aren't great, but I wanted to have a second set of them on hand so I could have a go at rebuilding the original ones I had with new rubber blades in case I wreck them.  The stamping of the ones I took off is definitely far superior to the replacements.  They do clear the screen acceptably though for now at least, and this isn't a car I'm likely to be using a huge amount in poor conditions anyway.  That's what I have a modern daily for.

I've been looking into the options regarding the radiator.  Off-the-shelf replacements don't appear to be available.  No huge surprise to be honest.

There are a couple of suppliers offering exchange units for around the £300 mark by the time you've factored in two way postage etc.  Alternatively there's a well reviewed company over in Kempston who can recore this one with an uprated core for around the same money.  Which is probably the option I'm leaning towards.  Being less than half an hour from home rather than having to entrust things to the postal system is a big plus, and being able to support local businesses always appeals to me.  They can also carry out a repair to that end tank no problem, whereas those offering exchange parts I imagine may object to that damage.  So that's likely to be the route I take there.

...If it ever stops raining so I can properly get back to it again anyway!  

[mat_the_cat]

I've used these before (either bonded and/or screwed to the backing plate) when a screw riser has broken off, although it does bug me more than it ought to have mismatching screws!

[Jenson Velcro]

1 hour ago, mat_the_cat said:

I've used these before (either bonded and/or screwed to the backing plate) when a screw riser has broken off, although it does bug me more than it ought to have mismatching screws!

It should be possible to do something with a short length of nylon bar. Pilot drilled both ends to take a self tapper or similar, and fixed at one end through the back of the unit.

[Zelandeth]

6 hours ago, mat_the_cat said:

I've used these before (either bonded and/or screwed to the backing plate) when a screw riser has broken off, although it does bug me more than it ought to have mismatching screws!

This is pretty much exactly what I'd been thinking - Or at least a close relative.  I have hundreds of the little risers normally used to space PC motherboards off the case, shouldn't be hard to fabricobble something to do the job with a few strategically placed nuts and washers and some epoxy to secure it to the back of the casing.  We will definitely be figuring out something to repair the existing assembly given that I just about choked on my coffee when seeing what the clusters seem to sell for.  Guessing corrosion is a common issue with them then.

[Zelandeth]

Been feeling really rough today but wanted to get something ticked off the to do list.

Thermostat change seemed a valid target.  I'd already tested the bolts and confirmed they would move without a fight.

As it was quite crunchy and had a split at one end only being stopped from growing by the hose clip I took the opportunity to swap the top hose while I was there.

The old one wasn't by any means the worst I've seen but was pretty manky.

That poor gasket looks to have been reused many times over.  I did note that the bleed hole in the original one was positioned at the bottom - whereas it really should be at the top.

Idea being that any trapped air is then able to find its way past the 'stat without leaving it air bound which could cause it to fail to open.

Worth noting that after I took that photo I did dog off several layers of silicone and instant gasket off the sealing surface before bolting the housing back in place.

Not thrilled about the quality of the moulding of the new top hose, the radius of the curve leading to the thermostat housing is too wide so it wants to kink there a bit.  Not badly so and once the system has a bit of pressure in it definitely won't be prone to collapsing, but it's a bit disappointing nevertheless.  Sorry I didn't apparently get a photo of that.  Admittedly, several of the current hoses on the car aren't the best fit either - the heater hose you can see below the thermostat in the above photo is basically wedged in place.  Will see if the replacements are any better.  I may be able to improve the fit of the new hose by just trimming the end a bit as that will naturally straighten out the bit that's trying to kink a little.  I'll take another look at that when I'm feeling a bit more human.

I didn't have the opportunity to take the car for a road test today but the temperature at idle stabilised around here.  Which doesn't look unreasonable to me for a car that's stationary.

Hopefully it sits somewhere reasonable when we're actually moving as well, though that will need to wait till the weekend to find out.

Interestingly at one point while I was keeping an eye on this during warmup the fuel gauge visibly twitched two or three times.  I'm (probably vainly) crossing my fingers that we might have a dead spot on the potentiometer and that as the level drops a bit we might see it spring back to life.  I know the gauge itself works and we've got a good ground connection between the tank and body, so the sender is our issue.  Wishful thinking I know, but I'm going to cling to it for now given how much of a pain getting to the sender will be.

Have noticed I do have a slight weep from the top radiator hose connection so imagine there's some gunk trapped in there.  Radiator will be coming out pretty soon anyway so I'll likely be leaving that be until then as it's a tiny weep.

[SiC]

If its in the green, then its probably fine right?!

Maybe the float has fallen off the sender? The P4 was like that and also the arm seized solid. Presumably where it was seized from sitting for years, the float decided to part company from the arm after a fight with it refusing to move.

[Zelandeth]

Just now, SiC said:

If its in the green, then its probably fine right?!

Maybe the float has fallen off the sender? The P4 was like that and also the arm seized solid. Presumably where it was seized from sitting for years, the float decided to part company from the arm after a fight with it refusing to move.

Hopefully so.  I also haven't a clue how accurate or not the gauge is.  It's just always a little unnerving while you're still learning what the normal behaviour for a given car is.

Hoping the float hasn't fallen off as that will mean gaining access to sort, and given the access panel is on the bottom of the tank that sounds like a world of pain!

[Zelandeth]

See what I was meaning about that top hose?  

Radius of that bend at the thermostat end as moulded is too wide, it's essentially trying to connect to a space roughly halfway between the thermostat and the driver's side rocker cover.

Nevertheless, topped up the coolant today and went for a proper test.  Seems to sit around here when driving normally, albeit after peaking quite high on the gauge before the stat opens.

This is higher than I'd generally expect on a car of this age, especially on a coolish day and when I'm still treating the car pretty gently. 

Though I have zero prior experience with a P6 so I've no reference to know what's normal.  I also don't have huge confidence in the accuracy or otherwise of the gauge as it certainly doesn't feel or smell to me to be running warm - so I'm leaning more towards the gauge just being a little on the pessimistic side.

I'd just tend based on prior experience with cars old enough to have an actual gauge rather than some lying ECU controlled nonsense, for the temperature gauge to generally sit probably somewhere covering the 8 of 85 unless you were sitting in traffic.

Open to feedback from others who know these cars better there. 

We do seem to actually have some heat from the heater which is nice, albeit no blower yet.  Haven't had a chance to investigate that yet.

[SiC]

Have you got an IR thermometer? I usually keep one hanging around in a car until I can be fully confident in the gauge accuracy. Checking the hoses and non shiny surfaces for temperature. 

You can usually recalibrate the Smith gauges pretty easily. Have it going through a known resistance (manual should say), 10v source and then between the two calibration dots. Admittedly I can't see those two dot but possibly hidden behind the bezel?

[Zelandeth]

25 minutes ago, SiC said:

Have you got an IR thermometer? I usually keep one hanging around in a car until I can be fully confident in the gauge accuracy. Checking the hoses and non shiny surfaces for temperature. 

You can usually recalibrate the Smith gauges pretty easily. Have it going through a known resistance (manual should say), 10v source and then between the two calibration dots. Admittedly I can't see those two dot but possibly hidden behind the bezel?

I have been meaning to check via my IR thermometer via a couple of places.  The radiator end tanks being painted matt black is helpful there.

There are indeed dots there on the gauges.  Here's a contrast enhanced closeup.

It is worth noting that the 10V rail on this dash is probably more stable than it originally would have been given I've replaced the dead bimetallic regulator with a semiconductor one...

I had idly wondered what those dots on a whole bunch of gauges were for, calibration makes a whole lot of sense.

I am going to need to take the instrument panel apart again anyway...

1. The clock needs adjusting as it currently runs quite substantially slow.

2. The main beam indicator only works about 50% of the time.

3. The speedometer wobbles, so the trip/odometer drive needs cleaned up and treating with new grease.  I really ought to do that on the P4 as well...remembering what an absolute swine of a job getting the speedometer cable reattached to the back of the head was however is putting me off that idea.

4. The inside of the cover really needs cleaning.

5. The ammeter currently doesn't work...need to investigate.

So looking up the calibration procedure for the others will definitely be added to that list.

[Zelandeth]

Looks like the gauge is at least reasonably accurate.  Highest temperature I saw measured on the top of the radiator end tank immediately adjacent to the inlet was in the low-mid 90s after the car had been warmed up and then idling for about 20 minutes.  If my math is right the boundary between the green/red sections of the gauge is near as makes no odds 100C, and we were sitting a little below there.  

While I had the IR thermometer out I did a check on each branch of the exhaust manifold.  They were all within 15C of each other, which suggests to me that we've got pretty even contribution being made by all cylinders.  Kind of wish I'd done that before doing all the work on the heads now as it would have been interesting to compare.  At least it's showing me what I want to see now at least!

One reason I wanted to do these tests, aside from confirming the engine was running in a safe zone temperature wise was so that I've got a baseline to compare to when I get the radiator re-cored.

While I think about it, am I right in thinking that there was no lower fan shroud fitted on these cars?  I know I don't have one, but I don't believe it's missing.  

Did run into an issue when I subsequently took the car out to cool it off a bit before shutting down in that after two or three minutes driving it started to cut out under load.  Felt like fuel starvation.  Engine would idle fine, but fall flat on its face if you gave it any sort of throttle.  Idling for a minute or two got me another minute or so of normal driving before it would happen again.  Which makes me think fuel delivery even more as during a period of low demand the float bowls were being able to refill.  Of course as soon as we got into our neighborhood where I had somewhere safe to stop the problem immediately disappeared.  Go figure.

Rebuilding the fuel pump has always been high on the to do list, so that's now been moved to the top of the to do list as failure of that would result in exactly this sort of behaviour.  I did check we didn't have a vacuum forming at the tank end and we didn't.

I just need to figure out a reliable way of stemming the high pressure jet of fuel that's going to want to escape as soon as I disconnect the inlet side of the pump.  Going to investigate if I have any random fittings of the right type as just sticking a hose on there which extends above the height of the level in the tank would be the easy solution.

[Zelandeth]

First contact with the very oily enemy.

After a fair amount of consideration we went for the "have a piece of hose the right size and stuff it on the end of the hard line" approach.  Worked well actually, only lost about half a pint of fuel I reckon, all of which landed in the catch pan.

This allowed the oily mess to be extracted once the outlet hose was disconnected.

Think it's fair to say that this lot was past its best.

This definitely wouldn't have been working for much longer.

The oil seal on the pushrod had also turned to plastic.

Reassembled with new parts and back in place.

Unfortunately I managed to drop the pump and get it wedged between the block and inner wing while trying to reassemble things, so only caused a *minor* ecological disaster due to the amount of fuel spilled.

The fuel unfortunately decided to hit the side of the dropped pump and just sprayed pretty much everywhere except into the catch pan I had in place under the car.  I knew we managed removal of the pump with far too little mess.

Ran the car up to temperature and we've not got any leaks.  Pretty much as soon as the thermostat opens we start getting bubbles in the filter still, which is fuel boiling off in the line between the pump and filter.  It's right in the air path from the fan so does get plenty toasty.  I'm going to lag it with some reflective foil tape to see if that helps.

I also zip tied the coil supply cabling to the engine steady.

This previously was determined to wobble around about 1" away from the exhaust manifold which just seemed like A Bad Idea (TM) to me.

Not sure if I'll have a chance to get it out this afternoon to see if the problem from yesterday has been solved.

[Zelandeth]

Hmm...still bogging down terribly under throttle when loaded.  Adding choke appears to improve things.

Checking condition of the points etc now as I've played this game before and spent a long time looking for a fuelling issue on another car that turned out to be an ignition fault.

A lean mixture takes more energy to ignite than a rich one.

[Zelandeth]

For some reason the edit function is refusing to work for me on my phone today.  So apologies for multiple posts.

Apparently I'm *not* checking the points.

Arse.  Someone has gone and put a surefire cause of a future breakdown where there should be a set of points.  Great.

I get it, when it works electronic ignition is superior.  However quality of aftermarket systems, especially these days seems to be patchy at best, and it's damned near impossible to fault find them if something does play up.

Checking, cleaning and adjusting if needed a set of points a couple of times a year *really* isn't that much of a chore.

My experience with aftermarket systems has thus far been universally poor.  The only hit I get for that number on the pickup suggests this is a Pertronix setup.  I'll need to do some digging to see if there's any adjustment/checking procedure.

I have noted that there is a slight weep of fuel from the reserve fuel changeover valve.

It's not dripping or anything, but the whole thing is damp.

There's an O-ring in here which unsurprisingly doesn't play well with modern fuels.

Changing it with a Viton one will generally be a fit and forget solution.  Should be a matter of removing a grub screw, pulling the core out, swapping O-ring, then reassembling.  Assuming the core isn't resolutely seized in the body.  Which this one is.  That's a job for another day as it's a bit of a pig to get to, buried down behind the driver's side head.  If I'd been smart I would have overhauled this while I had the heads off... hindsight is 20/20 and all that.

[Stevebrookman]

Cracking car!

Had a 3500S 30 years ago. Don’t know if the engine had been breathed on but it was extremely quick and would wheel-spin in 2nd in the dry. Bought it off a bloke in the pub who had blown the original 4 speed box and couldn’t find another. I knew a bloke who had taken a 4 speed out of his and put a 5 speed in so £40 later the 4 speed box was mine.

Found a place in Yate that scrapped lots of these and replaced all the rusty doors and panels-ended up multi coloured.

Easiest way I found to do any work on the rear brakes was to drop the driveshafts off the discs-10 min job which made working on the brakes easy.

They were known for fuel vaporisation and I bought an electric pump from  Yate just in case-but never needed it. One solution bandied about  if the pump was too hot  and no water available was to pee on it-apparently it worked!

 

[Zelandeth]

Who thought this was a smart place to put a fuel changeover valve?

Right pig to get to.

As this is the highest point in the system aside from the carbs and is on the suction side of the pump, a leak here could well be drawing air in.  Especially as I could see that it was weeping - turns out looking at it closely this morning there was a drop ready to drop from the arm.  So it has been leaking more, just evaporating before I could see the evidence.  The sticky residue around it suggests it's been doing so for A Long Time.  

I'd picked up an O-ring yesterday that was, according to the internet, the right size.  More on that later.

I did eventually manage to get it unseized, at which point a solid dribble of fuel emerged from around the valve core.  Pretty much as expected.  This did mean that I could at least remove the core to replace the O-ring.  Or at least it would have if someone hadn't previously completely rounded the head of the bolt used to retain the cable off so I could detach that (needed to get enough clearance).  

After wrestling with that for (and I'm not kidding) nearly an hour I just ran out of patience and cut the cable.  The end was already kinked so it probably wouldn't have worked properly anyway - I'm just filing that under acceptable losses and will replace the cable core.  Sometimes you just have to know when to call it quits.  I think I may well actually have a suitable one floating around somewhere - it does need to be a solid rather than stranded core though as it needs to be able to push as well as pull.

With that out of the way I was able to wiggle the core of the valve out, at which point an absolute torrent of fuel appeared, which initially was the colour of black tea, I'm guessing the gunk from the reserve line that's probably been in there for the last couple of decades.  My original plan to cap it off failed as I'd not accounted for the vacant grub screw hole.  Eventually I resorted to a bolt with a rubber glove wrapped around it which stemmed the torrent to a mere dribble.

That O-ring, 9mm ID and 2mm thickness, that the internet had said was the necessary size?  Way too big, no way it was ever going to go into the body.  

After a rather panicked scramble around, I found one which did the job.  It's not properly fuel rated so isn't a long term fix but it's got the system fuel-tight again so I can order one that is definitely the right size.  At which point I will measure it and confirm the exact dimensions for future reference.  

This is all that was left of the old one.

For now though I'm confident that we're not drawing air in there.  Unsurprisingly this has had precisely zero impact on our issue, though it did take a little longer to manifest today, when I just drove out and we warmed the car up while driving, whereas yesterday we were pretty much up to temperature before I pulled out the driveway as I'd been keeping an eye out for leaks.  Again my eyes are drawn to that spark module.

I did check and we *seemed* to still have a reasonable spark when I tested it hot, but I don't actually have a proper tester with an adjustable gap so it's hard to quantify how much it's changed.  Wouldn't have said it was the strongest spark in the world (hello P4), but it seemed reasonable.  I may borrow a coil from somewhere to test that by substitution as that's an easy one to eliminate at least.

I'd usually do exactly that with points/condenser at this point as that would pretty much prove/disprove the ignition system as a cause.  Unfortunately the spark module currently fitted is a roughly £100 part, so just grabbing one to test by substitution isn't ideal.  Though I do admit I'd breathe easier knowing I had a spare in the car anyway given my prior history with aftermarket electronic ignition systems...so maybe I should just buy one.

One more simple thing I'll check tomorrow is that we haven't ended up with water in one or both of the float bowls.  I really, really doubt it, but we did have some pretty torrential rain on a couple of days last week and the fuel cap is on the top of the rear wing, and it's reasonably easy to discount.

I did wonder if the ignition timing had shifted, but it's still exactly where I set it, and I have definitely secured the clamp on the distributor.

[Zelandeth]

Well that would do it.

A 3.5 litre V8 isn't going to run on that under load!

Reckon we have a sticky or leaky suction side valve in the pump.  I can't blow back through it, but that's precisely as much volume as it looks like, and it's developing absolutely no pressure whatsoever.

Will borrow the pump of TPA to just prove we don't have a huge restriction in the supply side, though given the willingness of fuel to pour out when I had the pump suction line removed when I was working on it, I rather doubt that's our issue.

Bit puzzled though in that I did manually actuate the pump before fitting it and it definitely shifted a decent amount of fluid then, likewise when I took it off that's how I purged what was already in it.  

[SiC]

Presumably the tank pickup gauze, if it has one, isn't clogged too?

If the inline filter got that filthy, I wonder what might be in that tank. 

At least with the sender on the bottom, it will be easy to empty and flush it without dropping the tank - if it comes to that. 

[Zelandeth]

We definitely have a pump or pump drive issue.  The original fuel filter that was in the car was really badly discoloured but there was actually virtually no gunk in it.  The inline one I've had in there since relatively early on has only collected a minute bit of rusty sediment.

There is no pickup screen on the main outlet, only on the reserve - though we get no difference irrespective of which feed we're drawing from.

If you actuate the pump manually it pumps strongly, both a good volume and with decent pressure, so it seems that it simply isn't being driven properly when in the engine.

I'm assuming there isn't supposed to be a spacer present between the block and pump?  As that would impact where the actuator arm contacts the cam which drives it.  The manual I have helpfully has zero diagrams or photos which would be helpful there.

I don't have a good photo of it, but the actuator arm doesn't look excessively worn to my eye, there's a shinier spot where it obviously runs, but it looks just like all the photos I could find.

Not really sure what I'm looking at here.

I'm guessing the thing roughly centre frame is the fuel pump cam, and the cleaner line is where it runs the pump.

I'm just really puzzled by how this was working at one point but suddenly isn't any more.

Have to wonder if I've maybe found one of the faults which wound up with this car being parked, as I could see this being a really annoying one to try to diagnose if you didn't have a bit of patience and bits and pieces on hand to test theories with.

The electric pump shifted in about 20 seconds more than the mechanical one did in a couple of minutes - and that's pulling *through* the mechanical pump as I couldn't bring myself to unbolt the thing from the block yet again to bypass it, though I will before we do an actual road test tomorrow.  Have run out of time for today now though.

This however seems to have proved that we don't have a restricted supply actually from the tank.

Which I kind of knew already given it flows out merrily at the pump both inlet and outlet under gravity alone.  Just the mechanical pump isn't doing anything meaningful.

Edit:

I've just had a thought. 

This is an SD1 engine core, we know that based on the engine number.  The SD1 if my memory served correctly never used a mechanical fuel pump.  Is it possible that the casting on whichever bit of gubbins this fuel pump is trying to run on simply doesn't have the eccentric moulded into it? 

I'd established that the fuel tank was brimmed when I got the car, so maybe it was just gravity feeding itself up until the point where the level dropped to more or less level with the carbs and now we're having issues.  Seems a bit of a stretch, but I've seen stranger things happen when people mix and match parts before.  Eliminating a machining step definitely sounds like the sort of thing that would have happened in the days of BMC involvement, even if it meant they were actually making two rather than one type of parts...because BMC.

I need to borrow a helper tomorrow to watch through that hole when someone cranks the engine and confirm if the eccentric that the rocker arm is meant to run on actually wobbles as it should do.  As that definitely would explain why the pump isn't pumping if it's trying to run on a non-existent cam lobe.

[PhilA]

Lone Wolf 4000!

(To answer your question no, the SD1 cam was ground round, not eccentric).

 

Phil

[bobdisk]

@Zelandeth If the SD1 used an electric pump, why not blank off the mech pump hole, and use an SD1 type electric pump? I suspect it might be an SU pump like in your pic. 

Just about all mechanical pumps I have seen have a heat insulating spacer between the engine and the pump.

The Daf manual says it must not be left out when replacing the pump

 

[Six-cylinder]

16 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

I need to borrow a helper tomorrow to watch through that hole when someone cranks the engine and confirm if the eccentric that the rocker arm is meant to run on actually wobbles as it should do.  As that definitely would explain why the pump isn't pumping if it's trying to run on a non-existent cam lobe.

I have to visit my favourite garage tomorrow and will be returning through MK at early lunch time if you want me to stop by?

[SiC]

A marked wood stick in the hole should show a min and max movement. 

Some fuel pumps have a plastic cover on the lever that people remove thinking it's packaging. However it's part of the pump mechanism that protects the cam lobe from excessive wear. Removing it alters the lever position that the pump operates on. 

[mat_the_cat]

My original RV8 engine was an SD1 block, but fitted with a suitable cam to drive a mechanical pump, so the engine number doesn't necessarily mean it's incorrect. I binned the pump as I had the opposite problem, but in the past (different engines) I've been surprised at how little movement the cam provides versus the full range of movement possible by hand. I wonder if it's simply tired, and operating by hand is masking that as you're moving the arm more?

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, Six-cylinder said:

I have to visit my favourite garage tomorrow and will be returning through MK at early lunch time if you want me to stop by?

No worries, not going to make anyone else stand around in the rain! 

Realised that there's actually no harm to be done other than possibly a bit of oil leakage just running with that open, so can just check it that way.

I do have a remote starter button buried in the garage somewhere, but last time I definitely remember seeing it was in the shed at my folk's place.  In 2012.