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Stanky's Geep - fire sale


Stanky

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Handbrakes have to be separate to the normal wheel brakes. MOT & other regs say it has to be a secondary braking system rather than part of the primary.

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Today a magical device arrived at work for me, a present from a kind fellow shiter on loan to do a very important Job.

 

This is what awaited me after dinner

 

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I had a starter motor with a 3-hole end plate and a 10 tooth pinion, which had a nasty worn armature, and a bendix spring compressor.

 

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Its a crap pic but you can make out the 1" wide strip about 1/2 the way along from the left end. This spins with power applied, but not fast enough to get the engine running. It also seems to have power problems as it sparks like crazy applying jump leads and seems to rob the engine of enough power to get the spark plugs to fire at the same time.

 

I got an almost-identical unit, with the same part number, free off a guy on ebay, the downsides were that the pinion gear only had 9 teeth and the mounting plate was a 2-hole one apparently for BL applications? On the plus side the armature was in much better condition, as were the magnets in the casing.

 

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To free it all off, so i can swap the mounting plate and pinion gear, you have to compress the bendix spring to reveal a tiny circlip, which when released allows the whole lot to come off one at a time like a metal pull-along stack-a-teddy. At least in theory. I squished the spring with the incredibly handy, and impossible to buy these days it seems, spring compressor.

 

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Observe the circlip. This came off without too much drama, and most importantly, without pinging off into the dark recesses of my shed.

 

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So, I removed the top washer, spring, bottom washer, and bendix tube thing, putting them carefully in order for when I needed to reassemble. The last bit was the pinion gear, which was a total dick. The shaft of the starter motor is splined, with 4 big grooves. The pinion gear has 4 cutouts which allow it to slide over the grooves, however these had gone out of line which was presenting a problem. I didn't want to smash it up, so I patiently put it to one side and did the same with the other motor.

 

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On this one, the stuck bit from the 10t pinion was fine - it just slid off, leaving me the naked armature and shaft (fnarr etc). I went back to the 10t one, and realised that if I twisted the pinion gear with the whole thing at a slight angle, I could get the toothed section to rotate around. 20 minutes twisting back and forth enabled the sodding thing to actually let go. Finally!

 

So, as you can see the armature on the 9t motor is much cleaner.

 

Next, all I had to do was reverse what I'd done already - 3-hole mounting plate on. 10t pinion gear on. Washer on, compressed spring on, top washer on, clirclip on, right?

 

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Wrong. Because I am a cretin, you will see that I'd fitted the mounting plate the wrong way up. I'd also managed to knock the STUPID PINION TEETH OUT OF LINE WITH THE GROOVES AGAIN. So another 15 minutes twiddling with the stupid thing allowed it to let go. I swapped the mounting plate around, refitted the pinion gear, bendix, washer, spring, top washer and circlip.

 

Then I realised I'd put the spring in the wrong way around and I had no acccess to the bolts to undo the compression. FFS. Off with the circlip again, flip the spring over, washer on, circlip on.

 

What a kerfuffle! What ineptitude!

 

To be sure, I connected up the starter to one of my batteries, but because I'm a lazy git I CBA getting the jump leads so just used 2 fat bits of wire. The motor burst into life with a shower of sparks, and as both of my hands were occupied with holding wires, the starter motor made a determined bid for freedom as it whirred into life.

 

Next, I carefully reassembled the other casing, armature and bits and bobs of the 9 tooth pinion gear - making a less good one of these. It still works and might be of use to someone who doesn't want to start a grumpy crossflow engine.

 

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I labelled them up with chalk, then because I have no sense of normality I decided that I may as well refit the 10t starter in the dark and rain. I rolled about in the pitch black on the drive but managed to get the starter fitted without it slipping out my hands and smashing my face in. The bolts holding it in want tightening up properly, but it seems to be a job well done for now.

 

Thanks for reading, and apologies for the crap quality of the pics. Grubby hands i suspect didn't help

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As good a measure of sucess as I have ever seen.  A starter motor in the face is remarkably uncomfortable*

 

A gearbox isn't comfy either, as I almost did once with a mitsu colt. I just moved in time & it landed on my shoulder trapping me under the car.

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Right, fuel pipe and whatnot has arrived, as well as several pairs of gloves - exactly the sort I was after - courtesy of Doug. Thanks Doug!

 

I was thinking about a replacement brake master cylinder. It seems that the Girling one is very hard to source so i had a think about what other options I had. This is what the bit that connects to the brake pedal looks like

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I think anything with either 2 or 3 circuits will be fine. The bore of the old one was 3/4" as far as I'm aware.

 

So, what do I need to look for? lots of the ones I saw had a threaded actuator rod (this must have a name?) thing rather than the fork and pin arrangement I have here. It looks like this is no good and I need one like the one I have here to be able to fit it to the pedal end? are the mounting holes a standard width apart?

 

Sorry, I know literally nothing about brake master cylinders. I am not in the slightest bit precious about originality, just something that:

 

1. fits

2. doesn't make braking binary

 

Ideally with three circuits, but I can live with 2.

 

Can anyone help? Ideally cheaper than £50 all in. Series LR ones are <£10 for instance.

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Progress report 20th January

 

Today was all arse about face. The weather report said It'd be wet in the morning, then dry(er) in the afternoon. So I occupied my morning with indoors stuff, liek going to the library with my daughter and going shopping. During this time, not one drop of rain fell on fareham. I got home, played gran turismo for 15 minutes then went outside to play with the Geep. It then pissed down for 3 hours. FFS.

 

However, interesting* progress was made...

 

I lashed up the wiring again, stuck the better of the two sub-optimal batteries in, having made sure the carb float bowl was full of pez. To begin with, I just used the jump lead from the battery positive to the starter motor. This was what i was met with

 

 

That sounded like a cough to me? And a puff of smoke from a failing exhaust pipe joint...

 

This is progress!  The engine was spinning over quicker, it was clearly sparking so I twiddled with the dizzy to change the timing a bit and see what happened. To begin with I turned it the wrong way and it made it worse. So i turned it the other way, and tried again. I switched the ignition on (and noticed that the rear lights seemed to be permanently lit...) and gave it another shot, having squirted some pez down the carb... I was also running a line to the carb from a petrol can as attempt 1 had drained the float bowl. Prior to this I'd churned it over with my hand on top of the carb to draw fuel out the can and refill the float bowl.

 

 

Another cough, this is almost like I know what I'm doing! Next up I took some time out to properly refit the cabling to the starter motor rather than the jump lead, as I couldn't turn it over and film a the same time (as this was obviously a priority). Then, I got it all ready (I'd left the dizzy where it was from try #2) and luzzed some more pez down the carb. I bridged the terminals on the solenoid with a screwdriver (hence sparks in bottom left corner) and...

 

 

HA HA! mutha_funker fired up! That definitely counts as firing and running, right? at this point, the battery ran out of juice. Curses! But still, the thing is now capable of starting and running. Had I posessed three 15 foot arms I'd have been able to prod the accelerator pedal too, or tweaked the throttle spring thing on the carb and it'd potentially have run longer. This will have to wait for tomorrow when the battery is charged back up, but this is major progress!

 

By this point the rain had declined to drizzle, and since I was wet through anyway I though I'd sort out the fuel pipes. The 6mm pipe from fuel pump to carb was horrible. It was some kind of semi-rigid 4mm pipe and was cracked and generally horrible. I pulled it off the fuel pump having undone the jubilee clip

 

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I'd bought a metre of 6mm hose in the week, so tried fitting this to the fuel pump outlet.

 

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it was very tight, so I boiled the kettle and bunged the end of the hose in that for 5 minutes. It then went straight on. I did it up with a jubilee clip. For some reason, the jubilee clip had gone oval so I had to squish it back circular in the vice, but it went on OK and did up. Its a bit fiddly and not hugely interesting so no pic.

 

I left the other end off, as it's currently rigged up for the gravity feed from the pez can.

 

Then I took the hose off the end of fuel tank pickup. I'd also got 3 metres of 8mm fuel hose, so I ran this along the old pipe, cable tying it as I went. I have some proper 18mm p-clips arriving next week, which I can use to secure it properly but this will do for now. I connected it up with a jubilee clip to the inline filter I bought the other week and its a lot better now. I tried churning it over on the little (and crap) battery and it squirted a bit of pez out the end of the 6mm hose so it seems to be working as expected now.

 

I had a quick look at the back of the passenger side brake drum and see the lever that the cable operates. I'll have a crack at this tomorrow as I ran out of daylight at this point. It seems easy enough to access though. What does it need? penetrating oil and a pair of grips to unseize it?

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Yeah I must admit I'm a long way from Fareham but my arse was twitching watching the sparks after reading about how you've got something jerry-rigged to get fuel to the carb. Glad it's coughing though, well done!

 

My rationale was that I was working in the pouring rain, on the opposite side to the heath robinson'd fuel can, and I had emergency water bucket to hand it was probably 50.0001% safe. Starting it on the key will be safer than the method employed today I hope!

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Blooming marvellous!

 

Tip from a mate of mine regarding tight pipes - bash the end of it flat on the ground repeatedly with a large hammer - no, I thought he was having a laugh, too, but it really works - the bashed bit will warm up quite a few degrees and be pliant enough to go on where it wouldn't before.

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Small jubilee clips go oval......useless on small diameter stuff especially on thin wall pipe. get some fuel line clips.....they stay round.

 

Given it runs with fuel tipped in you maybe need to check/clean the carb.

 

Try looking down the choke and operating the throttle.....you should see a jet of fuel chucked in by the throttle pump

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Further Exciting updates! Today, brakes.

 

So, as the engine fired yesterday i thought I;d have a look at the non-functioning passenger side rear handbrake. I;d stripped this down a few weekends ago and cleaned it up, but it wasn;t working which vexed me.

 

Today, in the pouring rain (again) I decided that I'd strip it again and see if I could work out what was wrong. Suspect #1 was the lever on the back of the the drum, apparently these seize with lack of use and so pulling the handbrake lever does nothing at the 'action end'. Trolley jack in, jacked it up, axle stand in, wheel off. Drum off.

 

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All the springs! So, out with a screwdriver and needle-nose pliers and start popping them off. The top and bottom orange ones came off without too much struggle, however this one

 

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was a complete git. Eventually it came out with a bit more force and nurdling with a screwdriver than I'd really have liked to use. Then, the shoes were only held in with some funny little pins with little springs and plates like washers on the end. It took me a while to realise that the little washer/plate things had cutouts in them and the pins through from the back of the drum had teeth on the ends - it was a case of rotating the washer/plate things until the teeth lines up then the springs sprung off and I could remove the shoes.

 

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Access! Next up was to work out why the handbrake did nothing on this drum. There were 2 pegs on this bit (apologies for not knowing the technical terms) which looked like they should actuate the shoes independent of the cylinder, so I guessed this was the handbrake mech. The pegs operated on two rivets/studs and didn't move at all - so careful application of penetrating oil and wiggling with my plumbers wrench eventually had them moving again. this took a little while to do, but eventually seemed to pay off.

 

You can see how grotty there are here, the left one (leading edge) was less grim than the right one, which took a lot of wiggling to ease off. eventually they both freed up to an amount I deemed acceptable. Now it was a case of reassembly.

 

The previously difficult spring was even worse to try and re-locate. This is a very strong spring in a very awkward place!

 

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Eventually, through way more luck than skill I managed to get it to locate and pushed it in with the screwdriver. There is probably a tool that makes this job a piece of cake, but I definitely don't have one!

 

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Next I reattached the orange springs top and bottom, these were dead easy to refit. i got one upside down but it easily came out and went back in the right way up again.

 

With this all back together I put the drum back on, refitted the wheel, bolted it up, pulled on the handbrake and tried to rotate the wheel

 

 

No resistance. BUGGER IT!

 

So, while the stiff lever was clearly an issue, this was not what was causing the non-functioning of braking on that wheel. it must be further 'upstream'. I had a look and i think i see the problem now. The cable from handbrake goes to the drivers side drum via a t-piece. The t-piece had a separate tube that runs to the passenger side drum. I think* what should happen is that pulling the handbrake lever pulls the driver side drum lever directly, but should also tug on the pipe that runs to the passenger side. this is held in with an extrusion which looks like it once had a bush on it, the bush is sadly no more - so the passenger side tube, which should be held rigid can move. I need to fix this, so it is held in place, forcing the cable that runs inside this tube to be pulled rather than the tube itself. A bit like a dead mans handle on a mower - the sleeve is moving but the inner cable is not. This needs to be the other way around, the sleeve/tube has to be held rigid and the cable within needs to move.

 

Does this make sense? Anyone know what I need to google to get a bush for the mechanism? Or if I'm talking rubbish? I'll get a pic of what I'm rambling about later when it stops raining.

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