project Blackboilersuits Bodging Blog - Morris Masochism

[SiC]

I absolutely love rebuilding SU carbs. For me it's one of the most satisfying and rewarding jobs on a classic British car. 

[GeorgeB]

18 hours ago, blackboilersuit said:

Not as much as yours does though! If you want to have a bitch about other people, please do it elsewhere.

Sorry about that. I enjoy this thread so get excited when a new post appears.

When it is as dull as that one it annoys me a bit.

[blackboilersuit]

The Toledo still had sealed beam headlights and one of them blew on dip not long after I got the car. So what to do? Dolomite 1300 headlights are a straight swap and have a regular H4 bulb fitment. Downside is they are only available from Rimmers as a complete assembly with the back shell and cost £118 each! While not adverse to spending that much on car parts I didn't want to just yet as the headlamp mounting panels are 50% metal and 50% bran flakes and hope. I will address this in time but wanted a cost effective interim solution. Internet wisdom suggests Bedford Rascal headlights can be made to fit so I rolled the dice and spent £34 on a pair delivered to my door.

They are 10mm higher and wider than stock so the retaining rings and adjusters don't fit. They do fit perfectly straight into the bowls though and can be held in with a mixture of old and new hardware that still allows for a degree of adjustment for alignment.

The downside is that the front of the lens sits 30mm further back in the car than before so the bowl needs to be packed out from it's mounting panel on spacers.

It does look half devent (from a distance) though. While it was apart I rubbed down the grills and sprayed them with some generic silver wheel paint and polished the bumper.

Next up was to fabricate a wee bracket to hold some relays

....and wire the hi/low through them to take the strain off the headlight switch.

And there you go, nothing award winning and it's still a 30ft car but it's well enough done to last a long while and has functioning lights with replaceable bulbs. I even used lucas bullet connectors to tie into the existing wiring so no original parts have been hacked!

[blackboilersuit]

Bit more Toledo love. Had to wait a while on them being made but these beauties arrived in the post.

New front engine mounts. One of the ones in the car was in tatters making the engine sag too low and bounce around too much at idle. There are only 2 choices for replacements. Cheap repo parts that are the wrong hardness of rubber and will be toast inside a year or these beauties that are the correct shore hardness of poly mated to stainless backing plates. £80 a pair but worth every penny.

A pair of jacks were deployed and they were replaced one at a time. The totally foobar one came out in two pieces.

The other was still in one piece but starting to go bad. Original metalastik so a fair old age.

Made a massive difference and worth every penny. 

With the engine now sitting firm again I could then replace the fan belt. The one on the car was 35mm shorter than standard and I think may have been fitted to stop the alternator hitting the battery with the engine bouncing around on worn mounts. Downside of this shorter belt was you couldn't get #1 spark plug out with the belt on. Correct belt fitted and the alternator still clears the battery and all the plugs can come out. Which is handy because I wanted to pull them to make setting the valve clearances easier.

Check out how clean this valve gear is.....

Clearances were all still pretty much spot on so to celebrate I painted the rocker cover.

Before sticking it back on with a new gasket and giving it a quick run up to temp to charge the battery.

Next up is to replace the engine ground strap as the original is too short for the non-standard battery, do an oil and filter change and then some test runs and plug checking to get the freshly rebuilt carb set up. After that it's coolant flushing and heater hose replacement but that can wait until we get some better weather again.

[blackboilersuit]

Bit more Toledo tinkering over the last few days.

First up I cashed in a ton of nectar points to get a DA polisher from Argos for a net cost of £0.00.

I then set to with a bottle of metallic t-cut chosen because I'd had it lying around for over a decade so it too cost £0.00. Net result was I ended up looling like a smurf...

But the bits of the car with good paint looked jolly good indeed.

These pics were taken after giving it a coat of MER polish post t-cut. Again the polish was chosen because it'd been lying around forever.

Next up was replacing the perished heater hoses. The two 90 deg elbows were replaced with silicone elbows and the two longer shaped hoses were just replaced with good quality coolant/fuel hose. Hopefully they'll last longer than the repo ones that were on the car and falling to bits.

The install of the reversing light last year had been somewhat rushed so next I tidied up the wiring and fitted a nice looking lucas copy switch and nameplate both courtesy of ebay. For the time being they're just stuck onto the plate that holds the USB charger for the dash cam that used to be in the car. I also wired in a 12v buzzer so I don't drive off down the road with it switched on.

After that I spent a couple of hours driving around, pulling plugs to check colour and adjusting the carb. It's not perfect yet but it's good enough for now. Ever so slightly on the lean side up top but the engine would like to be leaned out ever so slightly at idle. I replaced the jet when I rebuilt the carb so I think the next port of call will be to take a look at the needle. Just me being a bit picky though, for now it runs and drives just fine without pinking or running hot so no sense of urgency.

 

[High Jetter]

OOF

[Split_Pin]

Nice job on the polishing, looks grand.

What's the score with buying silicone hoses? I need some new ones for the back of the Cavalier's inlet manifold but they bend at quite an acute angle. Can you choose from a range of diameters and angles off the shelf?

[blackboilersuit]

12 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

Nice job on the polishing, looks grand.

What's the score with buying silicone hoses? I need some new ones for the back of the Cavalier's inlet manifold but they bend at quite an acute angle. Can you choose from a range of diameters and angles off the shelf?

You sure can. Just search ebay for "silicone elbow" to see what's available. Large variety of diameters and different degrees of bend. You can also get aluminium joiners as straights and bends which make replicating more complex stock hoses possible.

I bought these ones simply because it was a big UK based supplier with massive feedback selling branded parts. 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/45-90-Degree-Silicone-Hose-Bend-Pipe-Elbow-Air-Water-Boost-Intercooler-Pipes/401823561758?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item5d8e8cf81e:g:SO0AAOSwfmFeKsKt&amdata=enc%3AAQAFAAACcBaobrjLl8XobRIiIML1V4Imu%2Fn%2BzU5L90Z278x5ickkTboA95HSvGa1O5UmCCGJLqaj4cwQYPnk2YPtj1vnojEGf%2BPF9VK4ylLbt7jnRbupsIIbVIkVD9RfXWZ3RTCQWMOdMzHifmihUGC0hr7I4BNkDiHkeuKlRaI9wZwrakPZDRDU%2BIHg2ZSl8j5X3R8pljDKYJVDD0kBCTOe3GuaZf4cGTL4uKrsqcogpON%2BNkq8R%2F6uZdH5OO%2FNeiEGkIVOnO%2B5c8CYwKGV9X%2FTQvmPbWG2AOttz%2Fj9ED5boGhFmBhl8eo4l3EAblcS3ALAO7f5i5BVCt1%2B1g55pAL6%2FyxdCoRQ4jkVoVAZ0EWEC9%2ByJRuWB%2F5ma%2FaIT%2Fe6IVb7azQaBrJvMPGUFQCOe4gfq966aZgyCywn0gplTTM4PLp07xdEuLsdzCwRNKTwbrXocgk0PVPGK3oX71pIvT5Vanz25tl7nm%2FDYvaJQF7Fdtyh5mTVJuIrkQUOQ4Wvu%2FvkVk0YHZeWMZPMGDmO%2BzPZaQ6JNnnkM8Nr7MxduQSYBAjCtYZgyYRTPLvkUKSoizL%2F7U7gFDzsPJsoVr25FczU8mGPVg%2BlEDG9dLp%2Bul6dZdeLdVRYBmWw%2FjUzMeFHAEqLgI6ne2WQCfz4cC3N8c%2BfxSIGR7blBHDlgI290HGa1CH%2Bf%2FtXJZN9u69oyVMrF%2F97fgZ%2B5XzfCEBYnrsvQjLP3BQp90Kv5ObcXg6IhtpHOkP2g%2B5HWnfGJlMW%2B6jEI01IxgIrlFl7g%2ByQDdEFEQrwCIfSfPE8k05DaAqceLasIlXk1tMyJ6HE6yqrSOHo4FGrE1i%2FAw%3D%3D|cksum%3A401823561758f44796b0fbb74734981bd2faac1ed7ee|ampid%3APL_CLK|clp%3A2334524

 

[Split_Pin]

Cheers chap, I'll get on it!

[blackboilersuit]

So the Saab made a return to the fleet a few weeks ago after being out on loan to @captain_70s for the last six months.

First order of play was to address the random refusal to start issue as documented in the captains thread. 

Code reader wasn't giving any clues...

But the culprit seemed pretty obvious. Symptoms were sometimes not cranking in the start position, sometimes cranking but not starting and one time cranking, not starting but then bump started as soon as the clutch was lifted. Everything pointed to a faulty ignition switch.

Haynes rate getting to the ignition switch as a 3 out of 5 spanner task on the difficulty scale. Can't be that hard can it?

Yes it can! Getting the gear change mechanisim disconnected was a real swine as the connection is inside the big anti theft gearchange unit that holds the ignition switch. Eventually swearing and determination paid off and the unit was removed.

New* switch was obtained from ebay.

And was transplanted into the base of the unit.

Back in one piece and Saab goes vroom once more. Might be a heap but it's still a very fast boosted heap. 

Other minor repairs included a broken key being invisibly* mended with lockwire and araldite.

A broken number plate was also replaced as my driving is bad enough in this car so I don't need anything else to draw the attention of the law!

A rattle from the back turned out to be a broken exhaust hanger so that got a little attention from the welder.

Two issues remained. An airbag fault caused by something in the passenger seat and a fault with the Xenon headlight levelling system. I checked all the obvious things, connections etc in both but to progress these issues really needs the car to be scanned with Tech2 to pinpoint why it's unhappy. 

At that I did the sensible thing and sold the car! A friend was in need of a cheap estate with a bit of MOT and is a serial Saab fondler so knows the score with all the faults and foibles. 

I'd always planned to move the Saab on this year as part of a 2021 fleet rationalisation. With the year almost 50% gone I can now say that the fleet reduction plan to sell one car and one bike this year remains on plan. This will probably end badly with a drunken ebay purchase in December but for now I'll celebrate the success......

 

 

 

 

[sdkrc]

🙏 praying for a drunken eBay purchase. 

Toledo looks superb.

[blackboilersuit]

Very long time without an update, my bad! Not a lot of tinkering has gone on at boilersuit towers for many months as work has been really busy in the second half of the year and I've been focusing on long overdue work on the house and garden when I wasn't working. A month ago though I noticed some uneven tyre wear on the Accord and investigation showed an upper control arm ball joint had a bit of wear.

Arm was pulled out with greater ease that first inspection suggested would be the case.

Then the ball joint was removed with the assistance of fire and an air hammer.

New giant g-clamp style ball joint tool was procured from eBay. A snip at £50. 

Despite the kit coming with a "comprehensive" set of sleeves to suit "most applications" a 3/4 whitworth socket still had to be added to the mix to press in the replacement joint.

To finish the repair a scrappy special wheel and tyre combo was added. Rim was in mint condition and the rattle can repaint is a perfect* colour match for the rest of the wheels.

It's a few days away from 1 year since I bought the Accord and thus far I've racked up 11k miles in it. It's now got a weak clutch that slips if you boot it from low revs in a tall gear (like I used to do all the time - doh!). Apparently a very common problem with this model. Changing driving style to drive with a few more revs and not touch 6th gear below 80 means it still works ok and returns 42mpg. 1500 miles like that with no further deterioration so we'll see how long it lasts. Clutch is a mare of a job and would be £750 without flywheel and £1350 with at a local garage so hopefully manage to keep going as is for a bit. It's a great do everything car though so I'd still be tempted to fix it if it came to the crunch.

Sonic the Toledo has been used a fair few times during the year and remained 100% reliable after getting some love through last winter. Off the road for the winter now to keep it away from the salt unless some emergency transport is required. Still gets started every 4-6 weeks just to warm through and charge the battery. Always fires straight up as if it was only used the day before. I do love having a second car that just works when you want it to. That's a bit of a novelty for sure!

 

[Squire_Dawson]

If the headlamp is same as those on Allegro I have some spare.

[Tickman]

On 6/20/2021 at 10:45 AM, blackboilersuit said:

This will probably end badly with a drunken ebay purchase in December but for now I'll celebrate the success......

Still a few days left...

[blackboilersuit]

3 hours ago, Squire_Dawson said:

If the headlamp is same as those on Allegro I have some spare.

The headlight glass is the same as the Allegro and early Capri's amongst others. The problem is the mounting bowls/clamp etc are unique to the Toledo and 1300 Dolomite and finding a good used set of them is difficult going on impossible. Mine might be salvageable but I'm putting off looking at them again until I've welded some actual metal into the front panel to make it worthwhile having headlight adjusters! Once I get to that stage I'll be sure to give you a shout if I can make do with just new lamp units. The current rascal units are adjusted down enough to not risk dazzling oncoming traffic so I'm going to live with the current setup for now while I try to work through the "still to do" list this coming spring/summer.

[blackboilersuit]

3 hours ago, Tickman said:

Still a few days left...

I'm working Mon-Fri this coming week so Hogmany will be the last chance for drinking heavily while in charge of an ebay account.............

[blackboilersuit]

It's been a hot minute or two but here's a long overdue update on recent fleet happenings....

As alluded to on his thread I've now become the proud new owner of @captain_70s old 740 after first rebuilding the headlights and replacing/welding up most of the exhaust system to get it through an MOT. 

Since that time there's been a few improvements....

Screen wash tank removed, cleaned and a new rear pump fitted along with some tailgate plumbing got the rear washers working for the first time since Moses crossed the Clyde.

Occasionally reluctant starter replaced with an eBay special although I have kept the original Bosch unit for potential future rebuilding.

Next followed a minor breakdown when a squawking alternator belt turned into both alternator belts leaving the chat and being stranded due to no water pump. @captain_70s came to the rescue and we managed to get the car going with a single belt he found in the stash of useful nic-naks in his garage.

The reason for the lost belt was a missing tensioner so I fabricated one the following day and fitted new belts.

The car then had a full machine polish, I used a pad on a drill as a rotary polisher instead of my DA polisher because the paint was so bad it needed aggressively cut back. 

Just the roof took 4 hours! But the results when the whole car was done were worth it...

The heater blower resistor had long since left the chat and is made of unobtainium. Fortunately there was just enough space to modify the heater box to accept an 850 resistor which is readily available.

Next up was fixing the central locking for one of the rear doors that had never worked. Turns out the rod to the outer handle and looked to be correct was actually on backwards. Took half a day to figure that one out but it's all working now.

Next on the must-do list was a new prop centre bearing. The one fitted was known to have been damaged while fitting and although still working I wanted to replace it before going on a long trip.

And that long trip was last weekends 750 mile round trip to Snetterton to be pit crew for a 2CV race team in the 24hr race as documented here in another thread. While there wasn't much chance for sleep for a lot of the weekend, when then there was a chance the Volvo made for a great bedroom...

That's the basic round up of the 740 this far. There's still loads of room for small improvements and minor repairs but that'll be taking a back seat for a few weeks as there's more automotive shenanigans afoot for later on this week. Watch this space.....

 

 

[Matty]

4 years surely qualifies for a thread from the dead award. Volvo looking mint mind, good to see you back on these pages 👍

[High Jetter]

37 minutes ago, Matty said:

4 years surely qualifies for a thread from the dead award. Volvo looking mint mind, good to see you back on these pages 👍

Aye, but he's helped several shiters on their threads. A good egg, we need to hear more

[captain_70s]

On 30/08/2026 at 22:10, blackboilersuit said:

As alluded to on his thread I've now become the proud new owner of @captain_70s old 740 after first rebuilding the headlights and replacing/welding up most of the exhaust system to get it through an MOT. 

And have since fixed all the things I've spent the last 4 years systematically ignoring... 🫣

[blackboilersuit]

In a moment of madness more scrap has been required....... I couldn't see a tired old dog without a decent home so have become the proud* new owner of @320touring's Morris Oxford.

It arrived on a truck and now makes for the perfect* three* car fleet.

The original plan was to drive it home but it's a very sad car. I tried to resurrect it last week and long story short it looks like the head gasket has blown out most likely from it being overheated a couple of years ago when it ate the fan belt and had no water pump. 

The oil was contaminated but without sparkles and after a fresh sump of 20w50 it built 35psi oil pressure on the starter easily so I have no concerns over the state of the bottom end. It's definitely not a happy pixie and is chuffing out the rocker like a stationary engine though so it wasn't for driving anywhere. There's a full gasket set in the spares stash so I'll pull the head off it (fnarr) and assess the situation. Not looking to restore it at a first pass, just turn it into a runner.

Work started this afternoon and the radiator, blower, alternator and horns have been pulled out to make space to degrease and clean everything before the engine comes to bits. 

It's well past being a great car but there's a useable car in there somewhere that just needs coaxing out. Stay tuned for further updates........

[320touring]

Glad it's gone to you! Expecting it will see significant improvement in short order😃

[High Jetter]

Excellent, she'll be running in no time.

[blackboilersuit]

Time to crack on again......

The bay and engine were both filthy making the weilding of spanners a fairly unpleasant job. Time to do something about it before starting the engine strip. All the openings were blanked with inner tube rubber & jubilee clips together with various bits of hose. 

First of all I spent 45minutes scrubbing everything with petrol and various brushes. Some of the oil & grease looked to be decades old so I wanted something that could soften it up. Next was 45 minutes of scrubbing with Screwfix degreaser. Then 20 minutes with the power washer and a blow down with compressed air.

Before...

After...

The pictures don't do justice to the level of transformation. I really want to work on it now!

Before starting the engine tear down there were a few other things I wanted to look at.

First up was to fix* all the leaking door and window seals. This repair* was applied to both sides of the car.

Stops things getting worse while I address priorities so I'm calling it a win.

Next up was to look at the brake/clutch master cylinder. Like a minor this is under the floor in the chassis rail and the cover looked like it hadn't been removed in a hot while! I have all the parts to go through all the brakes but wanted to assess just how bad things were.

Took a while but I managed to get the screws out and the plate off. 

Assessment is rough but not immediately dangerous so brakes can stay #2 on the list after the engine for the time being. Major relief also fealt after finding the chassis rail was solid!

While it was apart I cleaned up the worst of the loose muck & rust on that section of floor. Gave it a quick acid wash and then slapped on some zinc primer with a brush. The cover has some rot so that'll be welded up and painted before it goes back on. 

That was it for today. Weather forecast is pretty dire for the next few days but hopefully there'll be a gap in the showers to keep cracking on with it.

 

[blackboilersuit]

My weekend was pretty busy but here and there I found the odd hour to knock out a few small jobs on the Oxford. 

First up was to weld up the master cylinder cover, paint it and then refit it with new hardware and a foam gasket.

Next on the list was something that had been doing my head in since day one. The outer drivers door handle was falling to bits, the inner handle was sticking and the window wouldn't move.

The front end of the handle should be held by a retainer that bolts to the door. It's a rubbish design and the only advantage is being able to remove the handle with a single screw that's under the door seal without having to take the door card off. I tried to adjust the original handle then swapped it for a spare but it was still the same.

The front end of the handle has a hole for a rubber stopper that's supposed to hold it into the retainer. This hole is just the right size for an M5 helicoil.

I helicoiled the spare handle because it was the rougher of the two, fitted a stud and made a missing rubber seal from a piece of old inner tube. Everything fitted and it's as solid as a rock. 

Next up was the sticking inner handle. As well as seizing up with corrosion the torsion spring for the detent was broken. First up was to clean and lube the lock and handle mechanism.

Then I fitted a small tension spring onto the arm of the original torsion spring to make it work. Not quite as good as the original but good enough and 100% better than before.

The faulty window was down to 50% of the runners and guides having turned to bran flakes and then left the chat. Not a quick fix so I'll make do with a quarter light only for the time being.

The one remaining inner panel was refitted with foil tape in the futile hope it might keep some moisture off the door card.

Then the door card was refitted and scrubbed clean with degreaser and the window was attacked with glass cleaner.

Not perfect, not all fixed but an efficient use of time to get maximum benefit for minimal effort. I've got a big list of these little 30min or 1hr jobs to keep plugging away at. They'll keep the project moving when I don't have time for bigger chunks of work. 

Talking of bigger chunks of work. I started in on the engine today so that'll be the next installment. Watch this space.....

[blackboilersuit]

And so it was time to start in on the Oxfords tired old engine.

Plugs out, I wonder why cylinder #3 wasn't firing 🤔

Head off, oh that'll be why......

I wonder why piston #4 has so much oil sitting on top of it 🤔

Oh, the cylinder wall looks like the hull of the Bismarck.

The cylinder damage is obviously very old, looks like a rust seizure from water lying in the cylinder. All the bores have a big ridge so it's seen a few miles. For the purposes of the current mission though nothing is a disaster. The goal is to get the engine back to being a rough runner that'll start reliability. It's always been a tired and smokey old bus and we can still get back there with hard work but minimal spend. A lot of scrubbing later and it's cleaned up ok.

Both a and b series  blocks can be prone to "pulling up" the threads for the head studs and unsurprisingly this was evident so all the stud holes were countersunk to keep the surface flat.

Then the deck was taped up to keep it clean and all the carbon & sludge cleaned out the timing chest. The drains to the sump were stuffed with rag to stop the sludge going where it shouldn't. Scrapers, brushes, WD40 and LOTS of compressed air were deployed but eventually everything inside the timing chest was clean.

Once the chest was cleaned I pulled all the lifters, wire wheeled the carbon off and refitted them with liberal amounts of fresh oil. They're all lightly worn but still perfectly serviceable which would suggest the cam is too.

The timing chest covers show the extent of the carbon & sludge build up.

After soaking & scrubbing in petrol, then degreaser then washing and wire wheeling they look a bit better.

Next the head had all the studs removed, threads cleaned up and all the crap was wire wheeled off.

Valves out and the laborious process of lapping in burnt exhaust seats began.

Much like the bores the head really needs a proper refurb but is still within the realm of salvaging a rough runner for close to £0. The whole car is tired so I'm making the best of what's there without going crazy to get a functioning car in as short a time as is practical. The inlet valves are all saveable but the three exhausts that are still whole are burnt beyond lapping. I've ordered 4 new old stock ones for £27 delivered so this repair is not going to break the bank. While I wait for them to arrive I've spent nearly 5 hours with the twiddle stick lapping in the burnt exhaust seats with one of the old valves. Cylinders 1 & 2 are fine. Cylinder #3 (with the burnt out valve) has three cracks in the seat but they're localised to it'll still do a turn. Cylinder #4 exhaust valve seat has sunk like the Titanic and has one small crack but it too will still do a turn.

The inlets still need to be lapped in and then the new exhaust valves lapped in so there's still a bit of work to do. 

Yes it's all rough as feck and definitely close to end of life for a lot of parts but I'm still confident I can build an engine capable of doing a couple of hundred miles a year while I work through the rest of the car - even if it burns a gallon of oil in the process!

Stay tuned for more boring tales of wire wheeling fasteners, chasing threads and lapping valves.........

[captain_70s]

It is quite impressive this car ran at all with bits of valve missing and no cylinder walls!

I remember it a year ago settling down to a steady 850rpm idle despite a good 50 years of neglect...

Do we think this is a coveted Riley engine or just a boggo B-Series with the wrong rocker cover?

[blackboilersuit]

It looks like its a Riley engine by the size of the exhaust valves. There was also a bracket for a non-Oxford air cleaner bolted to the head and the documentation that came with the car has a photo of a different engine in the car in times gone by. That was pre @Squire_Dawson owning the car so a decade or more ago. Looks like a pukka Riley engine, all be it an utterly fucked one 😂

[2flags]

Look forward to seeing how this gets on! Good work so far.

[blackboilersuit]

Lots has happened since the last update so let's start with body and interior.

The remaining door locks were stripped, cleaned, lubed and adjusted. All the doors now open from inside and out. All the windows need new runners & seals to work again so that's a job for much later on.

With the door cards getting cleaned next up was the seats. Scrubbing with white spirit followed by scrubbing with Screwfix degreaser worked the best of all the methods tried and boy did they need it!

The overall result was quite rewarding though.

Next up was the glass. Not only was it filthy but there was a bit of historic grinder spark damage inside and out on it all. A blade lubed with glass cleaner took care of that and it's all sparkling and clear now. 

Then I sacked off the abomination of a 90' rubber aerial from the scuttle panel, replacing it with a grommet held in with tiger seal.

That's it for this post. Next will be engine work updates.