Zel's Motoring Adventures...Volvo, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & A Sinclair C5 - Updated 13/11.

[Jikovron]

With low compression and a mild cam your aswell to keep the small carb otherwise with a large carb the throttle response becomes somewhat woolly and mid range pull drops off due to the reduction of intake charge momentum past the inlet valve at peak at the optimum peak torque range.

you say a bike carb would be wrong for this but they seem to have huge capacity for airflow changes, I fitted some keihin CVK 36 carbs from a 600cc bike to my 1600 k series and they didn't even need any jet adjustments to run as expected  but of course that said not every CV carb will play ball with different engines out of the box but you dont know without some experimentation! 

[Six-cylinder]

On 7/18/2020 at 10:57 PM, Zelandeth said:

Something which has been bugging me for a while is that all of the fuel filters from the motor factors around here have the opaque (or at least mostly opaque) cases.  I've never been a fan of these as you really can't see what condition they're in unless they are REALLY clogged.  I far prefer using filters with a clear body.  To this end I bought a little stock of clear filters online.

 

That is a good idea buying them 10 at a time,  I am always scratching about for a fuel filter so I have now ordered a packet of 10.

[LightBulbFun]

9 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Ah ha!  The 40 in the Solex carb is probably where I'd got it (the 32 in the Weber is the Venturi size).

 

2 hours ago, Jikovron said:

With low compression and a mild cam your aswell to keep the small carb otherwise with a large carb the throttle response becomes somewhat woolly and mid range pull drops off due to the reduction of intake charge momentum past the inlet valve at peak at the optimum peak torque range.

you say a bike carb would be wrong for this but they seem to have huge capacity for airflow changes, I fitted some keihin CVK 36 carbs from a 600cc bike to my 1600 k series and they didn't even need any jet adjustments to run as expected  but of course that said not every CV carb will play ball with different engines out of the box but you dont know without some experimentation! 

if all else fails I do know someone with a literal pile/table full of Model 70 carburettors! 

(fit 2, then you can go around telling people you have a 2 Door AC with twin webbers fitted )

[PhilA]

https://www.ecotrons.com/small_engine_fuel_injection_kit/400cc_to_800cc_engine_fuel_injection_kit/

 

Worth consideration?

[Noel Tidybeard]

fit an 1 1/4 SU and be done with it

[LightBulbFun]

off topic question but one to do with (yet another!) a potential forum bug im chasing, but did you mean to nuke all these photos in this post?

  

On 4/25/2020 at 4:10 AM, Zelandeth said:

Not been much going on car-wise today.

I was going to wash the van however the moment I turned the hose on the end immediately snapped off the union on the pressure washer (the plastic fitting on the washer has cracked).  The hose of course then took on a life of its own, skittered off across the garden, soaked me, then had a go at the postie who was walking down the path at the time (thankfully he thought it was hilarious), then drowned the extension cord...and tripped out the RCD.  This went down well with the rest of the household who were all on conference calls for work at the time. 

Fine...I'll come back to that tomorrow.  At least I hadn't got as far as setting the long ladder up yet.

Annoyingly while checking the tyre pressures I've noticed that the rear tyres are starting to perish.

Not bad bad yet, but I'll definitely need to be keeping an eye on them.

The front ones look fine, but given the weight on the back it's not surprising they're showing their age first. I did want to check if the exhaust being ahead of the nearside rear had caused that one to perish first as I know that's an issue that's been mentioned as an issue (Cobblers I think), no visible difference between them.

Dated 2014, so they're pretty much due a change on age grounds anyway, even though they only have a few thousand miles on them.  Anyone got any good experience with van tyres?  If there's no huge preference I'll probably just aim for Uniroyal as I've never had any complaints about them before.

Since early in 2017 I've had a little cluster of computers running a distributed computing client which split its time between SETI and Rosetta (they do protein folding type science).  SETI have suspended their home based program as of the end of March, so everything has now been redirected to Rosetta.  I shut down most of the systems a couple of months ago to save power as our bills seemed to have been creeping up a bit.  However as Rosetta are directing most of their efforts to COVID19 work at the moment I figured this was a good reason to get everything back up and running.

Any sysadmin will tell you that computers tend to be surprisingly reliable, even if worked hard, if they're left in a steady state.  However if you go switching things off that is tempting fate.

Two dead CPU fans, one dead power supply, one dead hard drive and one mystery motherboard failure which appears to be a corrupt BIOS or something.  At least that's only an old Celeron so no huge loss!

Power supply and hard drive were both sorted last week, however I'd been waiting for the CPU fans to arrive for the two laptops.  They arrived this morning.

First up was the Lenovo.  It's based on an i7-3612QM, and has suffered very much from the "high powered laptop problem" in that the heat has turned a huge amount of the case brittle, it was retired from daily use when something went awry with the memory controller so it will only properly address one RAM slot.

It's a fiddly machine to get into and back together, but it was back up in less than an hour.  Obviously took the opportunity to clean the heatsink out (even though it was pretty clean) and change the thermal compound.

The next one up was an old Compaq.  That one's only an Athlon II-300M, but it's generally been a consistent and reliable old slogger.

This is an easy one to get apart and by laptop standards is pretty easy.

This one definitely *did* need the heatsink cleaning!

The thermal paste was...toast.

It's never good when it needs to be chipped rather than wiped off!

With a bit of effort though it was cleaned up and was soon back up and running.

Imagine these would have been written off by most folks for the sake of less than £20.

Suffice to say the second system is running far cooler with a clean heatsink and thermal paste rather than chalk.

 

 

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, LightBulbFun said:

off topic question but one to do with (yet another!) a potential forum bug im chasing, but did you mean to nuke all these photos in this post?

  

 

Haven't touched that post since the day it was posted... definitely haven't fiddled with any of the attachments.

[LightBulbFun]

9 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Haven't touched that post since the day it was posted... definitely haven't fiddled with any of the attachments.

thats what I thought, I had noticed a few of my pictures here and there had gone missing  just like that

that i was pretty sure I had not deleted or such myself!

@tobyd you might want to look into this cuz it seems something server side is deleting/breaking the URL to photos/attachments! 

(they give me 404 errors when I open them in their own tab)

 

unless they are just broken/missing on my end?

[Zelandeth]

7 hours ago, Noel Tidybeard said:

fit an 1 1/4 SU and be done with it

I think one of the biggest limitations with this engine in stock form will always be the inlet manifold.  There's a very long distance between the carb and the cylinders - and the first thing the charge hits after the throttle butterfly is a completely square 90 degree bend.  That's never going to do any favours for gas flow.  Bit of a shame really as the head design on the engine itself is really decent.  Probably why seeing figures in the 75bhp region for the 650 version in the hands of those who know these engines isn't that unusual.

I would be curious to see how it would behave with a variable jet carb though, I'm sure there's quite a lot of science out there which tells which engines will suit which type of carb the best, but that's witchcraft beyond my knowledge!

I'm not rushing out to change stuff just for the sake of it, but my intentions for this car are to get it reliable and usable, so something that's not going to be a long-term maintenance headache is the biggest draw...if it were to free up an extra horse or two that would purely be a bonus. 

9 hours ago, PhilA said:

https://www.ecotrons.com/small_engine_fuel_injection_kit/400cc_to_800cc_engine_fuel_injection_kit/

 

Worth consideration?

That's really interesting.  While a lot of people might dismiss the idea of fuel injecting such an old school engine as this...Given my experiences with the Lada though it's definitely not something I'd dismiss.  The improvement in driveability there was like night and day...and despite all the nay sayers, once I got the lambda sensor problem sorted out (which was down to a design flaw in the ECU it turned out!) I never had to touch the system again...despite the fact that several bits were still lashed together messily as proof of concept!

Biggest headache probably for the Invacar would be the lamdba sensor.  There's nowhere aside from the silencer body that sees flow from both cylinders.  Thinking about it though...with a TBi type system that doesn't really matter given that both cylinders would be seeing the same mixture so if the mixture in one is correct they both should be.

Could well be an interesting experiment for a future date.  I've said it a lot of times, there are quite a few far tidier examples out there than TPA so I feel a bit less reluctant to experiment.  If she was a minty fresh example I'd feel far less inclined to alter anything.  As she's well beyond scruffy I'm a bit more willing to play around with things so long as they're not irreversible.

[PhilA]

Single lambda sensor where the two exhausts collect isn't too much of a problem. Being as the engine has so few cylinders each pulse coming in should be readable on a narrowband at anything up to about 6000 RPM so you know which pulse came from which cylinder. On a TBI you'd be able to precomp from each pot to keep it in balance- the average of which would be very useful on the long drawn out, high load runs you use to get up to speeds above about 30.

[Zelandeth]

I am extremely sore now and my knuckles are bashed to hell.  This is why.

Four new belts.  Well...two new belts and two that were changed a few weeks ago put back on.  This took the ENTIRE AFTERNOON.

Whoever was responsible for the belt tensioner design on this car was a complete and utter sadist.  They're awkward to get at (except for the one for the air con belt which you can clearly see above), which you kind of expect and accept going into the job.  The location of them means that you can get about 1/18th of a turn on the nuts at a time, having to rotate the spanner by 180 degrees between each movement.  This is annoying...but especially so given that the threaded rod used in the adjusters is of a ridiculously fine pitch for the application.  This meant that it took me more than half an hour of knuckle grazing, smooshing my face up against the front splitter and swearing to back the alternator belt tensioner off enough to actually get the belt off.  This one is even more annoying as you have to do it completely blind unless you're lucky enough to have a vehicle lift on hand.  Just having it parked on static ramps is no good as you need access from both above and below...

There's absolutely nothing difficult about this job...it's just incredibly tedious.

I honestly hope that I never have to do this again...it was a truly horrible job.

Unfortunately, I may well have to do it again...because guess what...

I think I know why the compressor clutch failed now.  Look very closely at this image...

See anything amiss? 

Yep...The compressor shaft is sodding bent!

I'm going to back the clearance off to the point that it clears it fully when the clutch is disengaged and see if it will still pull in well enough to drive the compressor (it's currently dragging on one side making a particularly unpleasant noise).  Long term though, I need a new compressor.  There goes another £300.  Well...£400 given I just spent the best part of £100 on a new clutch assembly.  Balls.  Ah well, that's how these things go sometimes.  She's worth it at the end of the day.

Moving to the van, I randomly unearthed something in the loft yesterday which will save me a few quid on the planned upgrades.  You may recall me speaking recently about plans to improve the audio system in there as the little 100mm speakers just aren't able to hack it once you've got an OM.601 howling away at any real speed (no, my exhaust doesn't help...).  My intention is to leave these to handle the higher end stuff to keep a decent sound stage in the cab, but to bolster things with a pair of 6x9" speakers somewhere convenient, probably in the front of the lockers immediately behind the front seats.  However I was reluctant to spend money on speakers right now given there are a few quite big expenses coming up...so I was really happy when I stumbled across these, forgotten in a box in the loft.

I bought these back in 2007 as part of a kit including all the fittings, wiring etc and both the sub and amplifier which are still in use, hooked up to my stereo downstairs.  I'd completely forgotten I still had these though, I thought they were still in the Saab which I passed on to a friend years ago.  While they're not exactly a prestige name as far as I'm aware they definitely exceeded my expectations performance wise.  These should do nicely in the van I reckon.  They're a lot less conspicuous than they were when new as after a couple of years in use the almost neon green colour of the cones faded to what you see now.

I'm usually try to avoid cutting holes in things, but I like my music and there's not really much option if I want some better speakers in place.  The position I'm planning to install these will be about as discreet as I can possibly make it though.

[Angrydicky]

Interesting to see your motorhome came from Brownhills. My parents Y reg Sprinter based Rapido came from there as well, originally.

[Jikovron]

Aircon compressor 

Is this any good? 

[Zelandeth]

5 hours ago, Jikovron said:

Aircon compressor 

Is this any good? 

Well spotted, I very rarely look at the classifieds over there (or anywhere for that matter).  Have dropped them a message.

This appears to be the fuse in line with the electromagnet which pulls the clutch in.

Rather concerned that after a couple of minutes it started smoking.  I've measured the resistance of both magnet coils I have and they're within 0.2 ohms of each other, so I don't reckon there's anything amiss with that side of things.  It *does* pull a lot of power though...the coil reads 4 ohms, so assuming 14V give or take, that's somewhere in the order of 55A...so I do wonder if I'm just seeing evidence of an ancient thermal protection device failing.  Or a decade of grime burning off it...though I could see the metallic part visibly glowing a dull red through that hole in the top of it.  It is slightly alarming how weedy the wiring to it is given the current involved though!

Other guess is that the system would normally keep the compressor on a pretty light duty cycle, and it's taking exception to running for more than a minutes or so at a time.  Seems unlikely though...

As for how far out of true the compressor shaft is, here's how big the gap on the wide side is with it adjusted to give clearance on the tight side so it doesn't drag.

Yeah, that's stuffed isn't it!  It does still pull in when requested, but that will be putting huge loads on the clutch springs and the damper assembly - most likely why the original one disintegrated.

I am tempted to give this thing a couple of belts with a hammer to see if I can persuade it back in the right direction.  Not as though there's anything to lose at this point is there given it's already stuffed.

[Zelandeth]

Something which has always let the interior down was the steering wheel.

Finally got around to throwing some leather dye at it today.

That looks a thousand times better I reckon.

[mat_the_cat]

5 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Rather concerned that after a couple of minutes it started smoking.  I've measured the resistance of both magnet coils I have and they're within 0.2 ohms of each other, so I don't reckon there's anything amiss with that side of things.  It *does* pull a lot of power though...the coil reads 4 ohms, so assuming 14V give or take, that's somewhere in the order of 55A...

That seems unfeasibly large to me - mine takes about 4 amps!

[Zelandeth]

Let me double check those numbers, I measured them a while ago and it's entirely possible I've dropped a digit in my memory.

Edit: Nope.

Old magnet coil:

New coil:

Of course my math is assuming they're just dumping 12V straight into it...no idea if it's ballasted or anything like that...plus the resistance will creep up a bit when it warms up, but not massively you'd think.

Edit to edit...idiot of the day goes to me.

V=I*R.  Therefore I=V/R.  14/4.6=3A.  Oops.  Blindingly obvious what I'd done when I actually looked at the numbers for more than ten seconds.

[dozeydustman]

14v/4.5Ω = 3.11 amperes?

[Zelandeth]

8 minutes ago, dozeydustman said:

14v/4.5Ω = 3.11 amperes?

Yep, realised about ten minutes ago I'd got the formula backwards in my head!

[richardmorris]

6 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Yep, realised about ten minutes ago I'd got the formula backwards in my head!

55A would need cabling like doc brown used in back to the future from the clocktower.

[dozeydustman]

8 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Yep, realised about ten minutes ago I'd got the formula backwards in my head!

We all have brainfarts from time to time.

Would that shaft straighten out with some carefully applied heat and  careful used of an engineer's vice?

[Zelandeth]

31 minutes ago, richardmorris said:

55A would need cabling like doc brown used in back to the future from the clocktower.

That was kinda my thinking, hence being rather alarmed at how spindly it looked!

 

27 minutes ago, dozeydustman said:

We all have brainfarts from time to time.

Would that shaft straighten out with some carefully applied heat and  careful used of an engineer's vice?

Maybe... it's tricky to say though.  Question really is whether the seals and bearings on there would survive the application of any heat.  Given it isn't leaking like a proverbial sieve I'm guessing the bend is outside the compressor body at least.  Due to the magnet, freewheeling pulley and clutch it does hang quite a long way out from the body.

It looks like we've secured another new in box compressor for £130, so given we've no real idea of the condition of this one...and given the physical damage we're seeing here it's definitely not unreasonable to think we might see reliability issues in the longer term...it seems that just replacing it is probably the more sensible option.  Especially as I'd really like to get the line between the compressor and condenser rebuilt and I need to remove the compressor to extract that anyway because of how it attaches.

The old one could make for an interesting teardown candidate aside from anything else.  I've pulled apart a few static refrigeration compressors before but never an automotive one so I'm curious to see how they compare.

-- -- --

Further to my issues with the Invacar refusing to idle and generally carrying on when applying throttle, after it backfired through the carb and nearly burnt my eyebrows off again this afternoon I decided that it was pointless to try to deny the fact that the carb just needed to be cleaned properly again.

On the plus side, having had it off before it took a lot less time to get to this stage than it did last time.

One slightly manky carburettor.  I never really put any effort into externally cleaning it last time...will try to get it looking a bit cleaner this time before I put it back on the car.

As soon as I started stripping it down it became apparent that this was definitely needed.

The fuel inlet strainer...

This is what was shaken off it and out of the well around it.

While the float bowl looked clean, there was quite a lot of this grit in there too.

Into the cleaner it goes.

I could actually get more of it submerged in one shot than this if I tried, but this works well enough.  It's left to run through a full 30 minute cycle before I rearrange things to submerge a different area.  I'll probably give the base two additional cycles of the top and bottom halves given it's where most of the passages are.  Everything will then be blown out before it's reassembled and put back on the car.

The fact that the cleaning solution had after only a few minutes visibly turned darker and cloudy shows it's doing something.

Final thing for the evening was to turn some attention to the front of the van.  It's now looking like this.

I've got some top coat to go on tomorrow.

The vinyls are still there under the paint, my intention is to paint those back in afterwards using the lines as a guide.

Long term the panel will be replaced ideally, but that should keep things presentable for now.

 

[jonathan_dyane]

Send me a PM if you’re interested in a better secondhand bonnet for the Merc, I know where you might find one!

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, jonathan_dyane said:

Send me a PM if you’re interested in a better secondhand bonnet for the Merc, I know where you might find one!

PM sent!  Thanks for the offer of that info.  I know Coastal Motorhomes have them in stock, but £150 for a bare panel is a bit steep when it's a purely cosmetic issue.  Especially when a bit of filler will probably keep it going for a good few years yet.

[Zelandeth]

One slightly cleaner carb back in place.

Not sure if I ever posted the full carb details before...so for those who are interested in such things here you go.

I had a feeling that the adjustments on this were a mile out as when dismantling it I found that the idle mixture screw was only held in by about two threads.  When I put things back together I went with the usual starting point of two turns out (I've generally found that's usually a setting that's close enough to get an engine to run so you can start adjusting things properly).

After dancing between the idle mixture and idle speed screw we settled at a reasonable idle showing this on the CO meter.

I would ideally have liked to see this a little richer but it will do.

Annoyingly 1 out of 4 times when you go to open the throttle she will hesitate and spit back through the carb before the engine picks up.  The accelerator jet is working and is squirting fuel nice and straight down the carb throat.  It's just as though she's running too lean as soon as you try to transition between the idle jet and main.

We'll try a test run tomorrow and see how things are.

It seems that thes cars were always somewhat prone to doing this, though I don't see that that means that they all *should* do that if the fuelling is correct.

Something I've always noticed is totally absent from this car is any form of pops and crackles from the exhaust on the overrun, which always tends to suggest she's running a bit on the lean side.

[bobdisk]

22 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Something which has always let the interior down was the steering wheel.

Finally got around to throwing some leather dye at it today.

That looks a thousand times better I reckon.

What did you use? My BMW looks as bad as its got so filthy !

[Zelandeth]

38 minutes ago, bobdisk said:

What did you use? My BMW looks as bad as its got so filthy !

Afraid I've no idea...it's an ancient tin which has been floating around in Abby's sewing and craft supply box for years from prior to her moving over here in 2006.  It came up in conversation that I was wishing I could sort out the discolouration and she appeared ten minutes later with it and suggested I tried it.

[LightBulbFun]

3 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Not sure if I ever posted the full carb details before...so for those who are interested in such things here you go.

ohh interesting Im not sure I have noticed the T before, I wonder what it means does it mean anything in the general sense or is it some sort of application/customer specific modifier? 

interestingly googling 32ICS10T made these 2 pop up, its very interesting how it specifically mentions Invacar... (if ya search steyr puch they do have the other 32ICS's too https://classiccarbs.co.uk/?s=Steyr+puch&post_type=product but only the 32ICS10T mentions invacar)

https://classiccarbs.co.uk/product/weber-32ics10t-carburettor-factory-jetting-for-steyr-daimler-puch-invacar-493-cc-mod-1976

https://classiccarbs.co.uk/product/weber-carburettor-32-ics-10-t-steyr-daimler-puch-invacar-500-cc-diagram

(and there is interestingly supposedly one that is just 32ICS10 without the T and it is NOT listed for Invacar https://classiccarbs.co.uk/product/weber-carburettor-32-ics-10-steyr-500-cc-dl-diagram )

3 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Something I've always noticed is totally absent from this car is any form of pops and crackles from the exhaust on the overrun, which always tends to suggest she's running a bit on the lean side.

interesting, I wonder if it was done intentionally to limit power somewhat? the Model 70 was always a de tuned setup rather than tuned per say, so I wonder if they intentionally made things run a bit lean or something? just like how you tend to find the ignition tends to be a little retarded

as mentioned from what little info there is out there there may be 2 versions of the 32ICS10, I do wonder if it was 32ICS10 then 32ICS10T? but what Have seen the later 32ICS10 does have smaller jets I think, but once more I have never seen the carb of an early Model 70 to compare part numbers etc sadly

 

[Zelandeth]

I really should look what the ignition timing is set to for the sake of curiosity...Not that I'd expect to have any better luck than Dollywobbler did adjusting it given that I know that KPL spent the best part of a decade at least without an engine cover on. 

Deliberately running the engine lean would be a very poor decision from a long term reliability perspective, especially on a small air cooled engine where thermal management is always something you need to keep an eye on.  Running it lean will make the engine run far hotter than it needs to and lead to bigger issues with problems like pre-ignition - though I suspect the relatively low compression ratio saves us problems on that count here.

I guess the relatively limited miles most of these cars would have done, and at low speeds probably would have meant that it caused few issues though even if this were the case.  It's hardly proven either, just a purely anecdotal observation on my part.  Without looking at real world data on a rolling road to see what the mixture is actually doing under load it's an observation that's worth absolutely nothing.  Does make me wish I had to hand a couple of comparable alternative carb setups from the period to try purely for the sake of experimentation.

[LightBulbFun]

54 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

I really should look what the ignition timing is set to for the sake of curiosity...Not that I'd expect to have any better luck than Dollywobbler did adjusting it given that I know that KPL spent the best part of a decade at least without an engine cover on. 

Deliberately running the engine lean would be a very poor decision from a long term reliability perspective, especially on a small air cooled engine where thermal management is always something you need to keep an eye on.  Running it lean will make the engine run far hotter than it needs to and lead to bigger issues with problems like pre-ignition - though I suspect the relatively low compression ratio saves us problems on that count here.

I guess the relatively limited miles most of these cars would have done, and at low speeds probably would have meant that it caused few issues though even if this were the case.  It's hardly proven either, just a purely anecdotal observation on my part.  Without looking at real world data on a rolling road to see what the mixture is actually doing under load it's an observation that's worth absolutely nothing.  Does make me wish I had to hand a couple of comparable alternative carb setups from the period to try purely for the sake of experimentation.

ah interesting  

yeah was just a thought on my part, I dont know exactly how Model 70's where setup in period whether they where run lean or rich or such, I mean from what I have seen as I have mention  the ignition timing was apparently sometimes retarded as a crude way to limit power, but I sadly dont know much details on their state of tune carb wise, the workshop manual does not seem to mention anything specific IIRC, and what specifics there are is for the 32ICS3 which does not do us much good here sadly!

 

although it is interesting you mention the fact it would/could cause pre ignition issues, because of this that I posted in my thread recently  (although from what I understand pre ignition and pinking are technically 2 separate things)

On 7/14/2020 at 9:23 PM, LightBulbFun said:

and speaking of driving looks like Brian (owner of MPH759P) is having fun in his! 

if you click on the link you will see he had to back off due to pinking and apparently the rear engine cover trying to make a bid for freedom!

https://www.facebook.com/brian.palmer1/videos/10217328936803788/

as per the comment I left its interesting to see that he is suffering from pinking issues, with a compression ratio of 6.7:1 and timing thats generally somewhat retarded I would not expect pinking!

but who knows whats been done to it since it came out of Ministry Service in 1997! (I just hope the dizzy aint seized ...)