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

[Zelandeth]

Tentatively calling this one resolved.

Had a look earlier on today and there was definitely an eccentric on the cam, and it looked to be intact from what I could see.

The arm on the pump looks to be fine.

Bit of wear but nothing I'd expect to cause issues functionally.  No plastic end piece or anything on here on any of the new pumps I saw on sale so I don't think anything is missing.  I do wonder about a spacer on the block as it really would help with heat management, but looking at how the rigid fuel line lines up it doesn't look like there was ever one there.  Plus I can't see one in any of the diagrams I have.

A bit of experimentation continued, and I discovered something.  The pump would expel fluid through the outlet with great enthusiasm - however what it wouldn't do was suck anything in through the intake.  Leaky valve...

Said valves were changed when the pump was rebuilt - that was a pig of a job without a vice to hold the pump body in as removing the old ones eventually required quite a bit of violence.

What did I eventually discover on closer inspection?

A bit of bloody dog hair wedged in the suction side check valve.

I blame my "helper" who was assisting me during the rebuild process.

With said hair removed, the pump reassembled (again), and refitted (again) I'm glad to report that we had a proper flow of fuel at the outlet again.

Everything was connected back up sans any bodgery from yesterday.

and I went out for about half an hour of driving around in circles without any incidents.  Right up to the point where the car which had been running flawlessly cut out without any warning - halfway around a dual carriageway roundabout.

Mercifully I was pointing downhill at the time so was able - amid much honking of horns, wound down windows, hurling of profanities and rude gestures at me - to slowly roll out of harm's way.

And people ask why I want to move.  

Positive wire to the coil has come off.  The connector was quite a loose fit so gave it a nip up with the pliers and it now stays in place properly.  I will probably replace all the connections to the coil in due course as a couple aren't pretty.

The coil etc needs some attention anyway.  Now I know I've got the Pertronix Ignitor setup in the distributor, that changes a couple of things.  For a start it's designed for a coil with a 1.5 ohm primary resistance (which this isn't), and shouldn't be run via a ballast circuit (which this is).  So I'll need to look at sourcing an appropriate coil and removing the ballast from the circuit.  That may well go a good ways to explaining why the spark isn't quite as lively as I'd expect from a system like this.  I also need to gap the pickup properly as it's currently far too close to the magnet.  Just realised I'd meant to do that this afternoon but managed to forget.

Despite that minor hiccup, the car seems to be running fairly well again.  I've tweaked the kickdown cable a bit again so it now will actually drop into 3rd when just bumbling around on idle in residential areas rather than being totally absent until over 40, but still changes at sensible seeming points when actually under load.

Getting there.  

Given the time of year, next up on "broken stuff I really need to sort" is likely to be the heater blower, as being able to demist the windscreen on demand would be nice.  Hopefully that's not just a solid block of rust.

Also hopefully I don't need to dismantle the entire car to get to it...

[Zelandeth]

You know I called that fault resolved?  Yeah... about that.

First thing today I wound up swearing at the fuel pump again as I discovered that it was now leaking from the base gasket.

Thankfully it stopped once I got in there with a stubby wrench and got a little more tension on it.  Without having to remove it from the car yet again.  A job I am thoroughly fed up of doing!

With my confidence boosted by yesterday's good running we went out to drop off a whole bunch of oil at the recycling centre.

Aside from the temperature getting higher on the gauge than I would have liked before the stat opened (the joy of aftermarket parts?), things were going well.

Right up until about 90 seconds after that photo was taken.

That "fixed" fuel pump has only gone and completely stopped pumping now.  Previously when it was playing up I was still getting *some* fuel, so you could nurse it along even when it was acting up.  Today, nope.  Nothing.  My guess is that I'm going to find that one of the valves has unseated itself.  That however is purely going to be to satisfy my curiosity, it clearly just doesn't want to live, so that pump will shortly be getting chucked in the scrap metal bin.  Not without a certain degree of vindictive pleasure I might say given how much time I've wasted on it.

Electric pump and blank off plate have been ordered, along with a few other bits and pieces.

Thankfully a friend of mine only lives a few minutes away, so salvation arrived driving a Nissan Pixo and gave me a run back home (seriously, I was like five minutes drive away) to grab a couple of things to hopefully get me going again.  Especially as recovery was estimating about two hours of a wait.  Made it clear to the operator that we would be trying to get the car going in the meantime, and would call them up to cancel recovery if we were successful.  I also asked for them to get the recovery agent to give us a call for an update before actually dispatching.

Grabbed all of the testing setup from a couple of days ago - which thankfully I hadn't reattached to TPA yet.  One very quick and dirty get-me-home bodge was thrown together.

Janky as all hell, but it worked.  Car didn't miss a beat on the way home.

Really frustrating when gremlins like this appear as it runs this smoothly now when actually getting fuel.

Which shows I think that we are actually making progress, even if it maybe didn't feel like it this afternoon.

Shout out to Reeve's Recovery too.  Contrary to the call handler's estimate, they called to say they were in the area and would be with me in less than 30 minutes - right about the point at which we got the car going.  They were really polite though, even though they had basically just wasted their time because Autoaid hadn't passed on my message asking them to call us.

So, hopefully in a few days we will be back up and running - without that blasted fuel pump.  

May use that opportunity to drop the radiator off to be recored, will see how time goes.  Or I may tidy this setup a bit more.  Main thing I need to do is to get an ignition switched wire into somewhere accessible in the engine bay.  An additional component I will be ordering will be an inertia switch to kill power to the pump in the event of an impact.  Any vehicle using an electric fuel pump really should have one fitted.

[Zelandeth]

Perfect weather for working on the car.  Not.

However the overwhelming stink of raw fuel whenever even vaguely near the P6 told me that the mechanical fuel pump was likely leaking (again).  Discovering upon checking, well over a gallon of fuel in the drip tray meant this was something I couldn't just leave until the weather got better.

Especially given looking at the forecast it looks like that will be sometime around June 2024.

So in we went.  Again.

This utter pain in the tail has now officially been permanently relieved of duty.

Well, aside from plugging the hole in the block until the new pump and the blanking plate get here anyway.

Temporary electric pump has now been secured reasonably solidly by attaching it to the washer bottle with several zip ties.  I'm not proud of it, but it's only going to be in here for about a week or two and it's not going anywhere.

Also brought some sanity to the wiring - which literally was just stuff I had grabbed from the box of random bits of wiring to test the theory that I had issues with the mechanical pump a good few days back.  I'll be completely redoing this for the new pump once it's installed (and I figure out where power will be sourced from), so I just chopped off the excess and routed things a bit more sensibly for now.

Oh, and added a fuse - which makes me somewhat less nervous.

Apologies for the duct tape.  Didn't have any insulated connectors on hand and given it was absolutely tipping it down when I did this, getting out the heat gun and necessary extension lead to run it seemed a poor decision...so duct tape it is.  Note again, this is a short term workaround, NOT a proper fix.  It may end up getting attacked with heat shrink tubing anyway as it's making my teeth itch.

At least as things stand it's in a state where the car can safely be run like this until the new pump is fitted and even more importantly is no longer actively leaking fuel.

[SiC]

Why not just use the Hardi that you already have there? Of course with a bit better fitting. I haven't looked up the specs but I'd thought it should be able to keep up with the max flow rate of a V8. 

The other just looks like a Facet - hopefully genuine and not one of the many cheap knock off equivalents about. 

[Zelandeth]

17 minutes ago, SiC said:

Why not just use the Hardi that you already have there? Of course with a bit better fitting. I haven't looked up the specs but I'd thought it should be able to keep up with the max flow rate of a V8. 

The other just looks like a Facet - hopefully genuine and not one of the many cheap knock off equivalents about. 

The fact that I already have the necessary bracketry in place for it on TPA (a Lada Riva Ignition coil bracket if you wondered) and the pipework there is arranged for it is a large part.  Plus I know for certain that it runs that engine spot on.  I also don't know how well suited this pump is to a pull through application, though admittedly the gravity feed here means it's not having to do a huge amount of pulling.

Fact that I don't want to redo all the bracketry and pipework on TPA is a large part of it though!

[SiC]

Ah I didn't clock that it wasn't off the spares shelf and nicked from another vehicle.

I don't know the code of that one (they do vary a bit) but those fitting types I've seen on the Hardi pumps specced for a Moggie. They have their pumps in the engine bay, higher up than the fuel tank.

The one I put on my MGB sucked my finger up pretty well when I ran it on the bench! They're essentially a diaphragm pump with check valves like the mechanical engine pump.

Sufficient flow rate would be my only real concern for that particular pump. I imagine a V8 will need a fair bit of flow. That said, an MGB B-Series is quite capable of doing sub 20mpg! Usual is 25-28mpg if you're doing well. (At least when I'm driving mine, but that might be how I drive it...)

[Zelandeth]

Current fight? Car insurance yet again. After nearly a week I finally managed to wrestle a confirmation of my no claims discount out of Adrian Flux from the cancelled policy from the Caddy. I've never known a company fight me quite so much in letting me actually cancel a policy...none of your sales nonsense is going to change the fact that I've SOLD THE CAR the policy relates to! Also managed to cost me nearly £50 in fees somehow, based on prior experience with them can't say I'm surprised.

Now having five years (which should be 15 if it weren't due to a prior foul up on the part of Adrian Flux - and people wonder why I don't like them) NCB available, I'd like to apply this to the policy on the Peugeot, because you know...saving money. Not expecting it to be much, but as it's costing me north of £600 a year every little helps.

Now here I'm running into another headache. That isn't a change which you can make to the policy using any of the options to edit things through 1st Central's web portal. So I phoned them...apparently their online only policies are something handled completely separately so they can't make changes to it over the phone. I'll need to use the web chat thing to ask for assistance. Guess what's currently not working...Just going to go bash my head against a wall a few dozen times. The operator on the phone said that one option would be to just cancel and recreate a policy with the new details...For which the quote she gave me was £130 more expensive than the existing one...with exactly the same details, just plus five years of NCB applied. Obviously plus the various fees which would be incurred. I had to try really hard to continue being civil at that point.

Why seemingly with the singular exception of Hagerty are insurance companies so utterly impossible to deal with?

[Zelandeth]

Given the weather I've not been doing too much car related this last few days.  Especially as family are off work this week so I've been trying to be social.

Wanted to tick something easy off today though so with parts having arrived, I went out and tackled this functionally unimportant but visually annoying issue.

Much better.

Do really need to secure that bit of trim to the right of the pedals too.

Little details, but that was something which drew my eye every time I opened the door.

The new fuel pump has arrived so I had a bit of a ponder where it will go.  Most likely candidate at the moment is here.

An otherwise unused void which is about as far from the heat of the engine as I can get.  Not 100% decided, but likely somewhere like that.  Should be pretty invisible once in place there too.

Final job for the day was investigating the lack of a working heater blower, or at least the most simple possible cause of said problem.  Actually getting to the blower as far as I can tell basically means removing the heater box, which comes out from the outside.  Fun.  That WILL likely need to happen either way as the foam seals on the air distribution flaps will inevitably have decomposed to near nothing by now.

Figured checking for simple causes such as manky contacts in the fuse box would be worthwhile first before I committed to too much work.

Well that wouldn't help...

Somewhat to my surprise, cleaning that up has resulted in the blower motor immediately springing back to life.  No unpleasant noises (yet) either.  It's working on both speeds and seems to be shifting an acceptable amount of air for a ventilation system from this era.  

While they're meant to be on separate fuses, this switch lighting up suggests that the rear window demister has also been tied into the same fuse.

Which wouldn't have helped the issue of overheating fuse holder contacts.

Given I've found several contacts in that fuse box to have issues I can see if being replaced going forward.  Especially as I'd like to add a couple of additional separately fused feeds in the future.  I'd also rather be using blade fuses simply because the old glass ones are difficult to get hold of in an emergency these days.  I do always try to keep spares in the car, but Murphy's Law states that the one day you need one in the middle of a trip will be the one day you borrowed the spares for something else.  I'd really rather be reliant on spares that I can pick up at any Halfords or even most motorway services in a pinch rather than something I need to order in specifically.  The only factor I've found around here which still carries them on the shelf is a 40 mile round trip away.

Halfords do have them on the shelf - but only in 1A and 5A ratings, which isn't particularly useful when it's a 25A fuse that's blown, leaving you with no lights due to a short that you've now fixed.

Speaking of lights, this one randomly decided to start working again today.

It's not worked on either of the door switches until today.  I like self-healing faults!

Having a working heater blower though makes the car a lot more usable outside just the summer months as it means I've half a chance of actually keeping the windscreen demisted on a rainy day.

[beko1987]

Could stock up for cheap from FoD victims too on fuses if their blade ones, then dunk them in the ultrasonic for free! 

I've got ones I took from my puma before asm lifted it onto the truck. Sadly running out of the wire from it, I cut the entire long run of loom out with all it's various sized wires and have been living off it ever since! I don't even know what the sizes are I just went through the bag until I found the right size

[Zelandeth]

6 minutes ago, beko1987 said:

Could stock up for cheap from FoD victims too on fuses if their blade ones, then dunk them in the ultrasonic for free! 

I've got ones I took from my puma before asm lifted it onto the truck. Sadly running out of the wire from it, I cut the entire long run of loom out with all it's various sized wires and have been living off it ever since! I don't even know what the sizes are I just went through the bag until I found the right size

There's already a box in the garage of something like 50 each in all of the common and some less common ratings.  Just made sense to me to stock up so I knew I'd always have them on hand.

Especially back when I had a couple of cars with a hard to track down intermittent short that took me a while to track down.

[beko1987]

Reminds me of my 206 where frozen wiper blades would blow the fuse. Which was shared with the lights. 

Went through alot of fuses in that car. Saw the flash once one cold morning

[mat_the_cat]

You may be able to find a direct replacement fuse box with blade fuses - I was able to do so with my Land Rover by searching by the original Lucas part number.

It was on an US site called Torque Resto who listed a few replacements.

[PhilA]

You can run a ballasted coil on the Pertronix, just requires a separate +12 feed to the module.

Do that on mine, the Pertronix is working less hard and the coil gets less hot. Both a win.

 

Phil

[Zelandeth]

22 hours ago, PhilA said:

You can run a ballasted coil on the Pertronix, just requires a separate +12 feed to the module.

Do that on mine, the Pertronix is working less hard and the coil gets less hot. Both a win.

 

Phil

Interesting.  The comment I made was based on an instruction manual from their own website.  

As it is just now the whole lot is running on around 7V, so that at least will want to be corrected.

Regarding the fuse box, I'll just be using something which fits nicely in the space and has appropriately oriented connections.  This is an area where practicality and functionality will be taking priority.  The original part will be kept with the car in case someone in the future wants to return everything absolutely 100% original.

[PhilA]

1 hour ago, Zelandeth said:

Interesting.  The comment I made was based on an instruction manual from their own website.  

As it is just now the whole lot is running on around 7V, so that at least will want to be corrected.

Yeah, I ran a wire from the ignition side of the ballast resistor to the Pertronix red wire, the ballast resistor out to the + of the coil and the Pertronix black to the - of the coil.

Settles an unhappy tach down too.

 

Phil

[Zelandeth]

One of the things I plan to sort with replacement of the fuse box.  The ballast - at least according to the manual I have - is actually incorporated into the wiring to the coil.  So the Ignitor module will want its own feed.  

The lack of readily accessible 12V feeds in the engine bay of the P6 has been quite a surprise.  There really is very little in there which is accessible without hacking into the wiring loom.  I'm used to cars from this era having half the electrical system in there, but there's just not much there on the P6.  Which I imagine explains why (HT leads on mine aside) the engine bay looks so tidy.  It's devoid of so much spaghetti which tended to plague the engine bay of many 70s cars.

Speaking of simplicity...I have just spotted something looking at photos which is more simple than it should be.

That radiator end tank should contain a heat exchanger for the automatic gearbox...but it's noticeably absent here. This is a manual radiator.

Fine... I'll add an oil cooler to the shopping list (new radiators seem to be hard to find so that's likely to be the easier option).

[Zelandeth]

Not likely to be a huge amount going on over the next few days, I've managed to come down with an absolute stinker of a cold which has utterly knocked me sideways.  I was pretty surprised when the COVID tests I've done came back negative as that's how bad I've been feeling.  Today though I forced myself outside for half an hour to do *something* mainly as a distraction if nothing else.

The mechanical fuel pump has now been removed and the blanking plate installed.

I found a convenient hole in the inner wing to mount a bolt to (looks like it was originally intended as a wiring pass through - guessing for the marker light which would have been on the wing on US spec cars) which has basically decided where the new fuel pump will be living.

The hoses need to be redone, particularly the discharge side line to the carbs as it's now too short.  That one is an old line that came with the car anyway so would be getting replaced as a matter of course - I just don't currently have any the right size in stock.

Testing the new pump next to the Hardi one showed that it shifts nearly double the amount of fuel, so probably is better suited to an engine which I'm sure can be "a little thirsty" when being driven in a spirited manner.

I had noticed even when running the previous electric pump (I've not wired this one up yet) that when the car had been idling for any period of time that I was still getting quite severe fuel vapourisation issues.  I think I've finally tracked down probably the main reason for that - and that's that the fuel return line is plugged completely solid.  That's one of the main ways that this issue is handled on this car, by simply keeping enough fuel flowing through the lines in the engine bay that it doesn't (in theory) have time to boil off.  Obviously with that line out of the picture the flow rate is far, far lower (especially at idle), which is why the fuel winds up starting to boil off before it even gets to the pump.

The fuel supply changeover valve is only a couple of inches away from the offside exhaust manifold, and the feed from that then runs right over the top of the bell housing and along the nearside of the engine block - so there's plenty of opportunity for things to get hotter than ideal.  I've definitely not discounted the idea of altering that routing somewhere down the line as it really just seems to be asking for trouble with modern fuels.

The immediate problem though is a clogged tank return line - and short of replacing the whole thing (which is most likely what will eventually be necessary) I'm not sure what to do about that.  As with everything else aside from the bit between the fuel pump and carbs, this is all made in nylon and metal lines.  I have tried the obvious thing, blowing back through it with the air line, and 115psi air didn't even touch it, so it's a pretty solid blockage.  I've also tried rodding it out at the engine bay end (as the line does make a near 180 degree bend immediately so I was hoping that might be where the issue was), and it's definitely clear for a couple of metres (the longest bit of stiff enough wire that I had to hand).  The lines are easy enough to access under the car as everything is in one bundle that runs along the offside chassis rail until they vanish upwards somewhere in the vicinity of the rear axle.

I pulled a couple of the trim panels inside the boot off to see if I could clearly see where the lines went - the answer being no.  However I did discover more work I'll need to do.  I'd commented on a couple of occasions that for a 70s British car that I had found the wiring in this thing to contain a surprisingly small number of bodges.  Apparently I need to revise that to clarify that the *front* of the car is surprisingly free of bodges.  The rear, not so much.

Given the telltale holes in the parcel shelf, we know that there's been an aftermarket audio setup in here at some point.

I'm hoping that between that and the tow bar most of this hackery is accounted for and as such will be pretty easy to tidy up/re-run as necessary.

That green wire that's been cut and is just flapping around in the breeze between the fuel tank and trim panel is green with a brown trace - which I believe marks it as the feed for the reversing lights.  Which would definitely explain why they don't currently work.  I remember it being mentioned that there had been issues with the tail lights on this car in the past so finding this wasn't entirely surprising really.  However it's a job for another day as I've neither the time nor energy to go chasing that any further today.  Sure with a bit of time, a wiring diagram and a multimeter we can make sense of it.  I'm sure once I've deleted obsolete speaker feeds and the dodgy looking tow bar wiring it will make far more sense.

Unfortunately you can't (as far as I can see) get to the feed/return lines on the fuel tank from in the boot.  Guessing that's an under-the-car job then...Yay, that will almost definitely ensure that I get a face full of unleaded while investigating things.

[Zelandeth]

Starting to feel *slightly* more human today so spent a few minutes poking the fuel return line issue.

I'm assuming that there is an orifice somewhere in the return line to ensure that there is sufficient pressure delivered to the carbs.  The absence of anything at the engine end to that effect leads me to believe it's probably at the tank end.  Most likely in the arrowed fitting.

Looking at that more carefully, I see that it's actually feeding the fuel back to the tank via the feed for the reserve pickup.  Actually not a bad idea...it saves having to have another pass through into the tank, and should also help prevent debris from gathering around that outlet.

Now I know I have good flow through the reserve outlet from the tank, so that's fine...the issue is going to be likely in that metal line going into the fitting.  Which I've confirmed based on a couple of photos does need to be accessed from underneath the car.  So that's going to be quite a faff - as I'd be willing to bet good money that the back axle is going to be precisely in the way.  However it needs to be dealt with.  

As a workaround in the meantime I *may* be able to cobble something together using one of the vent lines.

I have tried applying vacuum to the line as well in the off chance that it may be able to pull anything back out of it, but no dice.  So we'll need to continue doing some battle with it.

[Crackers]

9 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

So that's going to be quite a faff - as I'd be willing to bet good money that the back axle is going to be precisely in the way.  However it needs to be dealt with.  

From memory (when mine sprang a leak from the capped-off return line, that I never got round to reinstating) you should have access if you can get the car in the air high enough. Doing it from under the car on the ground was dreadful for access. 

[Zelandeth]

6 hours ago, Crackers said:

From memory (when mine sprang a leak from the capped-off return line, that I never got round to reinstating) you should have access if you can get the car in the air high enough. Doing it from under the car on the ground was dreadful for access. 

Thanks.  That's kind of what I feared.  Everything is going to be in the way.  Still don't understand why they didn't use a top or side entry tank!  This setup is far more awkward!

[Zelandeth]

Fuel line I'd ordered arrived this morning to replace the rubber lines up front on the P6 which are unlikely to take kindly to ethanol.  These on the other hand shouldn't care.

Bought through Glencoe.  Not the cheapest, but with so much counterfeit stuff floating around and all of the motor factors I've found so far just selling at best R6 rated hose, just seemed the safe option.

Fuel line routing has been tidied up a bit.

Not saying I won't revisit it in the future possibly, but that will be some day when I'm feeling less under the weather and it's not looking as though the heavens are about to open.

That jubilee clip on the top connection on the pump needs replacing with a proper fuel hose clip aside from anything else - I just couldn't find one in my stash the right size.

[Zelandeth]

Had a look to ascertain precisely how awful access to the fuel return line was at the tank end today.

Well at least I've now found it!

Lines from left to right are return, reserve and main feeds.

Access with the car on the ground though is basically non existent.  Our target is basically in the centre of this photo.

I do not fit through that gap.

Think with the car on the ramps it should just about be doable, albeit still bloody uncomfortable I'm sure!  Alternative I'm pondering is jacking the car up and pulling the offside rear wheel - not sure if that would give us sufficient access.

The plan such as it is at this point is basically to crack that connection off and see if fuel comes out.  If the answer is yes, the blockage is in the line between the engine bay and the tank - if not, hopefully we can clear it by poking a bit of wire into the fitting.  Failing that, I'll need to get a whole bunch of fuel cans and drain the tank so I can pull the whole lot out to attack off the car.  Sure that will be a barrel of laughs.

[SiC]

Looking at its proximity to the wheel, my vote  would be to jack/support stands the complete arse end up and take the wheel off to go that way. One of those jobs that may not be particularly fun with petrol/dirt in the eyes/stubborn connections/risk of line fracture when moved. Wouldn't want lack of physical movement and access make it more difficult. 

[Zelandeth]

20 hours ago, SiC said:

Look at its proximity to the wheel, my vote  would be to jack/support stands the complete arse end up and take the wheel off to go that way. One of those jobs that may not be particularly fun with petrol/dirt in the eyes/stubborn connections/risk of line fracture when moved. Wouldn't want lack of physical movement and access make it more difficult. 

Probably going to be my first port of call anyway.  Especially as I won't have a helper on hand and getting a car onto the ramps single handedly always feels exceptionally sketchy.  Plus the ramps are currently firmly wedged in the far end of the garage and I really don't want to have to unearth them as I'm pretty certain that they've become structural since they were last used.

This is a job which is inevitably going to result in the spillage of at least some petrol - so doing the work from a position where it's landing next to me rather than directly in my face if possible definitely sounds more desirable.  It doesn't half sting if it goes in your eyes.  Being able to deploy a catch pan under the car is a bonus too, I obviously can't do that if I'm where the pan really wants to be.

[Zelandeth]

Errands to run earlier, so of course I took the most sensible car.

The weather being something actually resembling chilly today has reminded me however that I still haven't got around to attempting to flush out the heater core.  Having at least some vague suggestion of a heater would be appreciated at this time of the year and it's currently doing absolutely nothing.  The heater box itself is barely lukewarm, so I don't think we have any appreciable coolant flow through the core at all.  Given how choked up the supply pipe was when I changed it that doesn't really surprise me.  I really should have flushed everything when I changed the coolant lines, but was kind of racing the clock then and just wanted the job done back then.  On the plus side it's the highest point in the system so doesn't involve having to drain anything beyond the heater itself.

I have checked and confirmed that the valve is opening/closing when the controls are operated (or at least the actuator arm is moving - whether the valve itself is totally blocked is another matter entirely) so it's not something really simple like that having stuck.  I'm really not expecting a huge amount of a heater from a car of this era, but currently it's doing nothing so obviously needs some attention.

[Zelandeth]

Been out and about again today.  Wasn't as enjoyable a drive out of town as I'd have liked because everywhere was a bloody car park.  Think in about three hours driving I actually engaged the overdrive maybe twice.

I definitely need to do something about the exhaust again as the car is definitely trying to asphyxiate me again.  The exhaust paste I splodged on there did last a lot longer than I expected to be honest, but has clearly flaked off again.  For the sake of £125 I'll probably just cough up for a new silencer.  The rest of the system looks fine, just the end plates on the silencer that have gone.  If I take it off and try to weld it up I'll most likely just end up blowing more holes in it and making things worse.  I also absolutely*despise* messing with exhausts, so having a solution which involves me only having to mess with it once definitely is favourite.

Trying not to spend money on a car I'm planning on selling...but equally maintenance needs to happen.  Which reminds me it's also due an oil change - given that means buying 10 litres of oil that will sting a bit too!

[RichardK]

In terms of checking for blockages on fuel pipes...

My old Golf Clipper used to regularly conk out at random. It had a rusty fuel filler pipe and eventually would inhale some rust and block the line.

My solution was a bicycle pump with the tapered nozzle for inflating blow up toys. Shove it on the fuel line under the bonnet (I had a box of spare filters so I changed the filter at the same time) and burp the tank by sending bicycle pump air up the pipe.

You'd hear the bubbles when it had cleared the obstruction. Basically making the Golf do a bath fart.

Giggling at that generally made up for yet another breakdown in the dark/rain.

[Zelandeth]

20 hours ago, RichardK said:

In terms of checking for blockages on fuel pipes...

My old Golf Clipper used to regularly conk out at random. It had a rusty fuel filler pipe and eventually would inhale some rust and block the line.

My solution was a bicycle pump with the tapered nozzle for inflating blow up toys. Shove it on the fuel line under the bonnet (I had a box of spare filters so I changed the filter at the same time) and burp the tank by sending bicycle pump air up the pipe.

You'd hear the bubbles when it had cleared the obstruction. Basically making the Golf do a bath fart.

Giggling at that generally made up for yet another breakdown in the dark/rain.

If this was a suction line I reckon I'd have had a better shot at that working - however all I think I'm doing by trying to blow through this line is wedging the crud even more firmly in place.  I did try blasting through it with the garage air line but it didn't even think about letting any air through.

Definitely is a good tip though and one I have used more than once when first trying to resurrect something.

EDIT:

Went back out this afternoon as I had 20 minutes to have another poke at it.  One of the problems I'd been having trying to blow through the line before was that because everything is screwed together hard lines, not having a matching fitting to hand was that it was really hard to get a good connection on there with an air line.  I did spend a fair bit of time rummaging around to see if I could find the necessary male fitting to allow me to hook things up, but failed to locate one.  So I made an executive decision and just cut the nylon line somewhere that it's not going to be readily visible.  Didn't really want to, but the splice will be absolutely fine, and it allows me to have a better shot at blowing the line out.  If the blockage does turn out to be IN the line rather than the tank union I'll likely need to replace it anyway.

That hose is a very snug fit on there, so it will be absolutely fine (obviously clips will be correctly applied - I just don't have any to hand right now as the package with a whole assortment of them in has gone AWOL thanks to the wonders of Evri, guess I will be getting those from Halfords then). 

This meant I could actually get an airtight connection to the air line (and not having people in the house on work calls meant I could run the compressor to actually get the tank fully charged).  Sadly even with the full 120psi on tap, not even the slightest hint of movement, the line really is properly blocked.  Now I have a better connection available I will have a bash at sticking a vacuum on there when I next have a chance, but realistically I need to get under the car and start pulling things apart.  I suspect we're going to find up finding that it's internal corrosion in the assembly that brings all the lines together at the bottom of the tank that's closed things up, but I guess we'll see.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't pondering capping off the offending lines and engineering an alternate return line to get us going until the weather is better and/or I have the opportunity to tackle this job on a proper set of ramps.

[Zelandeth]

A plan has been hatched to deal with our fuel return line problem until such point as we go in to replace the in-tank assembly.  Which given the fuel gauge sender is also dead I've decided to just get done.  As such there's really no point in faffing about trying to clear the return line orifice - which if it's as small as I'm expecting probably isn't going to work anyway. 

I'd had this idea rattling around in the back of my mind since the end of last week, but only had a chance today to have a look to see whether it's a viable solution.

The area of my interest.

This is the breather line which emerges from the top of the tank.  Helpfully a push fit connection on the later cars, the early ones were threaded unions like the rest of the fuel system, which would have probably kicked my idea to the kerb.

Obviously I can't just hook the return line up to there as the tank needs a breather.  However what I think I can do is use it as an entry point to the tank.  That's a pretty large bore line and it simply exits the car underneath (I believe in the vicinity of the offside rear wheel), there isn't a roll-over valve or anything fitted.

I established that it's quite easy to thread some copper brake pipe into the tank through the breather line such that it will go a decent distance into the tank, keeping it well clear of the breather port itself.

If I thread that into the nylon line outside the car and run it all the way into the tank there, that gets me something to which I can easily attach our return line to.  Pretty simple to crimp the copper line a bit to introduce a restriction to emulate the function of the original orifice if we need to.  Aside from slightly reducing its capacity this shouldn't in any way impact the function of the tank vent line - which with the shape of the tank and filler being as they are isn't likely to make any real difference to anything.  I might need to fill it a little more slowly, but that's a trade off I'm willing to make.

Doesn't involve any mods to the vehicle itself either, when we go in and replace the in-tank sender and feed assembly we can just pull the copper line back out and chuck it back into the "that might be useful one day" pile in the corner of the garage.  Just need to make sure everything is properly secured in place and that we make sure there's a drip loop on the bottom of the line where it emerges from the breather in case any fuel gets forced out there during filling the tank (it shouldn't) so we can make sure it drips somewhere harmless rather than ending up dripping on the brakes, exhaust or anything else likely to get hot.

Yes, this is absolutely a bodge, which is something I generally steer well clear of when we're even vaguely talking about fuel systems.  However I'd like to at least think that this is a reasonably well thought out one compared to some from my past!

[Zelandeth]

Turns out there are two breather lines attached to the tank, I'd not spotted the one to the left.

Some quality metal work by whoever put the speakers in evident there too - which I found when I stabbed myself on it.

Turns out that the breather line on the right is blocked somewhere.  The tank fitting is fine, but I can neither blow through nor suck through the line which vanishes into the car.

The one to the right on the other hand is properly open to both atmosphere and to the tank.  This arrangement is quite different to the setup shown in my manual, likely as this is a later car.

I think based on the fact that we clearly do have one working and emphatically not working breather, I'm just going to make my life easier and steal the tank port for the clogged one entirely for my return line and to cap the breather line off in case they are connected together elsewhere behind the tank and it ends up being a route into the boot for fuel vapour or raw fuel.

Also found this floating around in the back of my engine bay not attached to anything.

Anyone know what it would originally have been connected to?

The top of the loop where it sat when in situ can be seen here.

I'd originally thought it was a breather for the gearbox or something like that until realising it wasn't connected to anything.