Zel's Motoring Adventures...Peugeot, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & A Sinclair C5 - 27/06 - 70s British car with electrical gremlins? Surely not!

[Zelandeth]

A lot of good and useful information here. 

The single biggest headache it looks like I face regarding just buying a load of parts, stripping down and rebuilding this unit is the damage to the valve port faces.  Photos don't really show quite how rough they are.  Machining out that damage (assuming there's not already enough material missing to render that impossible) isn't a job that I know of anyone kitted out to deal with.  It was definitely something that concerned me when I saw the state of them, and a couple of people in different places have also raised red flags with that damage.  So we need to add crank case to the shopping list. 

I have taken the belt drive off and spun the engine over and the bottom end is definitely grumbly.  There's also a distinct tight spot which comes around every few revolutions.  That actually ties in with a noise the engine has always made which was definitely engine speed related, but had always sounded more like something associated with the fan or alternator.  It was engine speed related, but wasn't as quick as once per revolution.    Not exactly sure what's causing it - but it definitely shouldn't do that.

Currently scoping out a couple of possible engine options in the UK to just see where it leads.  One of them was removed from the car in "good running condition" when they took things apart to do the always popular Wartburg swap, so depending on the associated price tag that might be a decent option.  I'm not really expecting a good candidate to turn up, but it's an avenue which I think is at least worth investigating.  Yes it's entirely likely that anything I pick up is going to need something doing to it, which is why the price tag will be a big factor in anything that's an unknown.  It needs to be cheap enough that I'm not going to be overly bothered if it turned out to be a total loss as I know I'm rolling the dice there.

Given that the valves are held against that surface under spring tension it does look like the case on these engines is always going to be somewhat vulnerable to damage in the case of contamination getting in there.

I certainly can't really see me looking to move the car on in the near term.  It puts a big smile on my face, doesn't take up much space and has generally proven so far to be pleasingly easy to work on. 

Looking at how I worded things earlier as well I think I need to clarify that I don't think the prices Trabantwelt are asking for the full rebuild kit nor the ready to go engines they're offering are unreasonable.  The fact that they're offering that level of support for a car that's not seen production for 34 years and has a relatively niche appeal is pretty incredible, and while they're not cheap that is just par for the course if you're doing something like rebuilding an engine - and you're always going to pay a bit of a premium for that degree of convenience. 

The first results in a (very) quick Googling for a re manufactured A-Series immediately turned up results of £2500+ for a 998cc engine sans gearbox, which makes the prices for TW's engines look pretty attractive.  Yes I know there's more work involved in rebuilding a four stroke engine - but conversely some of that work is less specialised (read: Crankshaft overhaul on a two stroke) and it's definitely a wider market, so I don't think it's an entirely unfair comparison in all honesty.

So watch this space.  I'm going to give it a few days to see if anything turns up before we make a definite call on the way we're going.

 

This afternoon I decided to have a look into seeing if we could do something about the oil leak on the Rover.  It's kind of hard to tell exactly where it's coming from but all evidence suggests the join between the oil pump body and filter housing.  The vast majority of the oil seeming to run down and drip off the bottom of the filter itself and the cap over the pressure relief valve.  Or it might be the filter bypass valve looking at the location...It's clearly a piston/spring type pressure regulating valve of some description.

This would be a lot less of a pain to deal with if Rover hadn't put this...thing...right in front of the oil filter.

Yes, that does get precisely as in the way as it looks like it will when changing the filter too.

You can see how many small bolts hold the assembly in place by looking at the replacement gasket.

I eventually figured out that a 3/8" wrench was a perfect fit on these - after spending a good 20 minutes digging through toolboxes while cursing the fact that Rover hadn't discovered the joys of the metric system in the early 70s.  Unfortunately that's about where the good news ended.  I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get a wrench on the "back" two bolts.  On in particular I can barely even touch between the amount of structural metalwork in the way and the oil pressure switch boss being in about the most unhelpful place imaginable in terms of trying to remove this assembly.

It doesn't look like removing the filter will actually help the bolts that it looks like it interferes with in the photos are actually accessible - and the filter itself actually gives me something to hold on to while I'm trying to remove the thing from the car.

I did notice though that - even using a pretty stubby wrench as I was - that at least four of the bolts were not all that tight at all.  So nipped those up a little and ran the car for a while to see if it helped.  After 20 minutes or so (however long it took me to go over the seats with leather conditioner again), evidence suggested that it maybe had helped...We definitely didn't seem to have the regular drip or two every second off the bottom of the filter anyway.  We did still have a drip every ten seconds still coming off the bottom of the oil pressure relief valve housing.  Which when spraying the area down with brake clean (which was then immediately blown in my face courtesy of the cooling fan), looked like it might be seeping out around the cap over the valve - the copper washer there looking a bit mangled where I could see it.  So I figured I'd pull that and swap the copper washer and see if that improved things.

Rookie mistake.

First off - I should have checked that I had any replacements that were big enough.  I don't.  Also failed to realise that the washer is actually captive on the cap, though that could just be be that it's distorted and has become somewhat oval over the years.  It's clearly been on and off a few times from how badly scored the surface is.

Second big mistake - What removing this of course then did was allow all of the oil to drain out of the pump.  What don't Rover V8 oil pumps like doing?  Priming themselves!  So I likely now NEED to remove the housing from the pump so I can pack the blasted thing with petroleum jelly so the thing has any hope of actually pulling prime and supplying the engine with oil when I next start it. 

Was one of those moments where I realised that I'd done something really daft right about the moment I did it.  Getting that thing back in there with how much tension is on the spring by the way was also an absolute pig of a job.

So until I can figure out how to get that apart I've successfully immobilised not one but two of my cars, with the third boxed in between them.

I'll have another bash at it tomorrow.  Will try making up an adaptor to spin the pump with a drill and see if it will prime but I'm not holding my breath - and aside from cleaning the surfaces up and removing a couple of burrs on the copper washer I've not actually changed anything so I'm still expecting it to leak anyway.

So not a very successful afternoon today - but some days are just like that.

Definitely was missing the Trabant's ease of access to most things and the fact that it seems to use a total of about half a dozen sizes of metric fasteners throughout the whole car.

[TrabbieRonnie]

Well done Zel, and glad you like the wee Trab enough to persevere 👍

[GlenAnderson]

I was going to say that a Warburg engine in a Trabant is on my list of “things to do prior to packing in doing stupid things”…

[kevins]

When I had oil pump appart on my Range Rover It primed easily enough, I think there is still enough oil floating around inside for it to prime.

 

[Zelandeth]

3 hours ago, kevins said:

When I had oil pump appart on my Range Rover It primed easily enough, I think there is still enough oil floating around inside for it to prime.

 

Guess I'll investigate tomorrow then.  Just know it's something I've read about in many places that these engines can be really finicky about.  Not having much experience with them I'm just being a bit paranoid I suspect.

The question does still remain of how many laws of geometry I need to figure out how to suspend to get that pump/filter housing off to replace the gasket.  

4 hours ago, TrabbieRonnie said:

Well done Zel, and glad you like the wee Trab enough to persevere 👍

It really has been a car which has surprised me in that regard.  For all it has a plethora of flaws, it's just fun.  

The fact that it pretty much immediately became my go to for local runs more or less the moment it arrived here says a lot in that regard I think.  

[Zelandeth]

I saw a couple of people mentioning backfilling the pump via the oil pressure switch port.  So gave that a try.  This turned out to be a bit of a mistake as given how things are oriented you really can't get anything much in there, and also because it turned out to be a gigantic faff to get the bleeding thing back in again.  There's about room to get a skinny 10mm spanner in there, not the 24mm (or whatever the imperial equivalent is - 24mm fitted perfectly) that's needed.  So a lot of swearing was involved, but got there in the end.

Tool making time.

One Rover V8 oil pump priming tool.

Distributor marked up so I could get it back in the right place (I failed), pulled out of the way  and that attached to a drill used to spin the pump.  For reference, it goes clockwise.  At least in this application.

Glad I took that approach.  It took well over a minute with the drill running fairly quickly before it eventually took prime and started to generate pressure.  Cranking/running the engine for long enough to build that would have been extremely uncomfortable.

Getting the drive slot to go back into the bottom of the distributor shaft also caused a certain amount of swearing, as it can obviously only slot into place in two orientations and it turned out to need to be pretty precise.

Initial start up attempt revealed that I'd obviously not marked things as accurately as I'd hoped as it was instantly apparent that I had way way too much advance and the engine was trying to spin itself backwards while cranking.  I gave the distributor a highly technical twist of "about that much" in the appropriate direction and the car started as normal.

Have never been so happy to see a light go out and pressure register on a gauge.

I'll need to pull the timing light out at some point, as currently I've just set the timing purely by ear.  It seems happy enough at least.

Testing reveals...Our leak definitely appears to have been significantly improved though it's definitely still there.  As I kind of expected.

Of course it wouldn't be this car without it presenting at least one new fault during a run.

Outside:

Inside:

Left hand indicator light on the dash has failed.  Percussive maintenance failed to resolve this, so looks like I'll need to pull the panel apart to either sort the contact or change the lamp.  I have been wanting to investigate the totally non functional ammeter for a while now as well so not maybe the worst thing if I can do both of those things at the same time.

At least I've got back to where I was before I started messing with things yesterday!

Given how crap the access is I may well see if I can get a garage to take on the oil pump gasket replacement - I get the impression that having the car on a proper lift would make the job merely "fscking awkward" rather than being seemingly geometrically impossible as it looks while laying on the ground.  That said, will probably find that nobody wants to touch it because it's not routine servicing something less than ten years old...

[GlenAnderson]

24mm, 15/16” AF and 1/2” WW are all close enough to each other to be interchangeable.  

[Zelandeth]

12 minutes ago, GlenAnderson said:

24mm, 15/16” AF and 1/2” WW are all close enough to each other to be interchangeable.  

Sounds right.  I found a 15/16" socket but sadly there wasn't enough room to get a suitable driver in there.  So had to do it 1/3927420th of a rotation at a time with the spanner.

I hate imperial measurements.  I know you get used to certain things being certain sizes, but not just being able to know immediately that "oh, this is slightly too small, I need 'n'."  Is really annoying.  If 12mm is slightly too small, then I need 13mm...not having to do mental gymnastics while rummaging in the bottom of the toolbox.  It's not quite so bad if you're using sockets as they're all laid out in sequence - however that's not always going to be the case.

Disclaimer: I am dyslexic and really struggle with mental math at the best of times, likewise memorising numerical patterns - I still can't do any but the absolute most basic multiplication in my head to save my life - this was the bane of my bloody life in secondary school.  But this may be a major part of why it winds me up so much!

I keep meaning to get a complete set of new, matching spanners covering all the usual sizes you find on British cars and just label the damned things from 1 at the smallest and increment heading upwards, as that would likely vastly reduce the "rage digging" that goes on when I've found that 7/16" is slightly too small and I don't know what I'm looking for!

[High Jetter]

I get 24mm & 15/16 being roughly the same, a smidge under 1". How does that equate to 1/2” whit tho?

[Noel Tidybeard]

you need a Metrinch socket set if you can find one for the right money

[LightBulbFun]

17 minutes ago, Noel Tidybeard said:

you need a Metrinch socket set if you can find one for the right money

Ditto, I got one a few years ago, based on recommendations from this very forum on how deal with the unique fastener situation that is the Model 70, (without having to get a 200 piece advanced Halford set that would be too heavy for my fragile arse to lug about anyhow)

and its worked very well so far for me   Invacar for scale!

well I have not really used the spanners side of things so I cant speak for those, but the socket side has worked very well, I usually just eyeball for the right size and if it does not fit, just go up or down a size and then ill quickly find something that fits snuggly and gets the job done  

[bobdisk]

@Zelandeth   Have you ever heard of an American tool called a "Tite Reach"  (American spelling!!) If you can get a socket (and its size adaptor) on your target , but not turn it, this tool works to turn the socket.

https://tite-reach.com/

 

[GlenAnderson]

11 hours ago, High Jetter said:

I get 24mm & 15/16 being roughly the same, a smidge under 1". How does that equate to 1/2” whit tho?

1/2” Whitworth is 23.4mm across the flats of the hexagon. 15/16” AF is 23.8mm across the flats. 
 

Whitworth sizes are based on the outside diameter of the thread. So a 1/2” Whitworth nut/bolt has a 1/2” thread, and you grab the spanner marked 1/2” to fasten it. The logic is fine when you think about it, and in some ways is more intuitive than the metric system where you need a 10mm spanner for an M6 fixing. 
 

Where things get a little more complicated is that BSF fine thread fixings used the next size down hexagons, and sometime around WW2 those slightly smaller sizes were standardised for the coarse Whitworth threads too. So a 1/2” Whitworth spanner is likely to be dual marked as 1/2”W-9/16”BS, and will actually have a 9/16” thread. You normally only encounter “proper” Whitworth fasteners if you work on pre-WW2 stuff, and even then only if everything is still original. 
 

The common spanner sizes on vehicles are 3/8” , 1/4” and 5/16”, which are the ones associated with 1/4”, 5/16” and 3/8” thread sizes. 
 

I get the frustration with the size increments being a bit of a challenge, but the more you use them, the easier it becomes to make the steps in your head. 
 

Admittedly, I have had forty years of practice, but I don’t find it difficult to eyeball the difference between a 5/16” UNF fitting, that needs a 1/2” AF spanner, an M8 one that needs a 13mm, and a 5/16” one that needs a 1/4”WW, even though they are only a few thou different (they’re actually 12.7mm, 13mm and 13.3mm respectively).

[Zelandeth]

8 hours ago, GlenAnderson said:

1/2” Whitworth is 23.4mm across the flats of the hexagon. 15/16” AF is 23.8mm across the flats. 
 

Whitworth sizes are based on the outside diameter of the thread. So a 1/2” Whitworth nut/bolt has a 1/2” thread, and you grab the spanner marked 1/2” to fasten it. The logic is fine when you think about it, and in some ways is more intuitive than the metric system where you need a 10mm spanner for an M6 fixing. 
 

Where things get a little more complicated is that BSF fine thread fixings used the next size down hexagons, and sometime around WW2 those slightly smaller sizes were standardised for the coarse Whitworth threads too. So a 1/2” Whitworth spanner is likely to be dual marked as 1/2”W-9/16”BS, and will actually have a 9/16” thread. You normally only encounter “proper” Whitworth fasteners if you work on pre-WW2 stuff, and even then only if everything is still original. 
 

The common spanner sizes on vehicles are 3/8” , 1/4” and 5/16”, which are the ones associated with 1/4”, 5/16” and 3/8” thread sizes. 
 

I get the frustration with the size increments being a bit of a challenge, but the more you use them, the easier it becomes to make the steps in your head. 
 

Admittedly, I have had forty years of practice, but I don’t find it difficult to eyeball the difference between a 5/16” UNF fitting, that needs a 1/2” AF spanner, an M8 one that needs a 13mm, and a 5/16” one that needs a 1/4”WW, even though they are only a few thou different (they’re actually 12.7mm, 13mm and 13.3mm respectively).

Thanks for that.  I'd often wondered what the logic behind some of them was.

Sockets I don't struggle with so much as I have a decent combination set, and all being in one box I can pretty easily just grab what I need visually.  It's just spanners where it bugs me.  Best thing I can probably do is to just grab "the usual suspects" and keep those separated on pegs on the wall like the 8-23mm metric range live on, rather than having to dig through the tool box every time.

Feels a bit strange this...feels like I'm actually bringing a bit of class to the car parks of the area using the Rover rather than dragging the tone down as often seems to be the case with my fleet!

Oil leak is definitely vastly reduced.  A drip or two a minute is on the "needs to be sorted but the car can be used" list.  Before I wasn't comfortable using it at all really out of concern for other road users, particularly those on two wheels.  Still going to try to get it booked in somewhere to get that sorted as soon as I can though.  Had another look at it today and I just can't see how you'd get to it.  Maybe if you jack the engine up a bit or maybe pull the radiator and grill and go in from the front?  Nah, someone with better tools and a proper lift can have the fun of this one.

Really do need to address the issue of the square tyres as well as they currently pretty much preclude exceeding about 50mph due to the amount of wobble that then starts happening.  That may have to wait until after we've sorted the Trabant's current engine issues though.

[Zelandeth]

Somewhat idiotically, I didn't make sure that the Rover was drowned in wax before the winter.  This was a mistake.

Likewise the Renault (which I do confess to having been kind of ignoring and hoping it will miraculously fix itself for a while) was even worse.

Spent a couple of hours trying to make things a little more presentable.

Of course something fell off the Rover.  Because Rover.

Looks like it was being held on by the world's smallest blob of super glue.  Will reattach that shortly.

Hopefully this will make the driveway look slightly more presentable in the eyes of our neighbours.

[LightBulbFun]

On 23/12/2021 at 19:56, Zelandeth said:

On 23/12/2021 at 19:01, LightBulbFun said:

of course this comes at the expense of lamp life, would be interesting to get some to directly take some measurements of tho! (anyone got a spare Ulbricht sphere? LOL)

Sadly not any more...I had got a pretty good setup which worked as a crude one in the flat in Aberdeen.  The (tiny en suite) bathroom was all white aside from a pale grey floor and I figured out that with a good light meter taking an indirect reading off the wall furthest from the light source and some maths from a known source I could get a pretty good relative reading - an arbitrary number which was easy enough to convert to lumens.  Obviously it depended on how close to the expected output the 40, 60, 100 and 200W incandescent lamps I used to create the reference curve were to their specified values in terms of giving an actual lumen output - but it worked well for comparing the relative output of two sources and tracking lumen depreciation over time.

well! if you dont mind a road trip to Belgium I know where you can get one or 2 FoC!  

 

[PhilA]

Re wrench sizes. I bought multicoloured ones. Yellow is smaller than blue. Orange is smaller than yellow. 

Etc. That might help some. 

RV8 pumps usually only fail to prime when they're totally empty. A small amount of residual oil and they normally manage unless they're really utterly dead. Looking at the pressure you got there I'd say yours is ok.

Good luck with the dash.

[Zelandeth]

Okay...driving the P6 through built up areas at low speeds with the windows down, the really deep burble just off idle definitely puts a grin on my face when it gets bounced back by surrounding buildings.

Of course because it's this car we couldn't have a journey without something new cropping up.  Today it was the temperature gauge deciding it wasn't going to join the party.

Perfect on a hot day!  Suffice to say this increased anxiety levels tenfold while driving.

Looks like we have an issue with the power supply to it as I'm only seeing 1.3V at the sensor.  Which I promptly broke the terminal off.

New one added... sadly hasn't fixed the gauge.

Not that I really expected it to given the voltage reading.  My guess is that the 5V regulator for the instrument panel (which I rebuilt using a solid state regulator) has died.  Usually this would be made obvious by the fuel gauge also dying, but as that doesn't work anyway it's harder to be certain.  Not going to have time to look into this today anyway.

Very exciting news to me though was that after having the enging idling for a couple of minutes while I fiddled with that was that I had no oil drips!

Coolant drips instead!  Which appears to actually be coming from around this top radiator hose.

Once everything is cooled down I'll pull it, make sure the surface is clean and maybe move the hose clip a little further along the stub.  That end tank has obviously seen "some repair work" in the past so I'll be making sure there's not a crack or other damage to the hose mating surface which would cause us issues.

There is a tiny weep from a porous spot you can see in the photo, I think this drip is totally separate to that though.

Did get a nice photo while out though.  Right up to the point I realised the bonnet wasn't fully latched.

Guess I'll need to snap that again then!

[beko1987]

I guess the pain with modern solid state stuff is a "bit" of it could have failed to one circuit but still be providing/leaking/shorting power to another? Whereas a proper unit would just fully die and kill everything the polite way

[Zelandeth]

4 hours ago, beko1987 said:

I guess the pain with modern solid state stuff is a "bit" of it could have failed to one circuit but still be providing/leaking/shorting power to another? Whereas a proper unit would just fully die and kill everything the polite way

Given I was measuring with a digital multimeter it could just be picking up residual from other systems - the signal lines for this run right by the alternator so could have been picking up all kinds of noise from there.

Will need to pull the panel out to investigate further.  May just be a cheap regulator being a cheap regulator.  Wonder if I might have been smart to put a couple of transient suppression caps on the input and output given how noisy the electrical environment in a car is.

Just a bit annoying that I have to pull the panel out to get to it.  Getting the speedometer drive reattached I seem to remember being a right pain.