Three Speed Thread - an update

[High Jetter]

The first one, the front looks like a Corsair?

[eddyramrod]

13 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

The first one, the front looks like a Corsair?

1961-63 Ford Thunderbird

[High Jetter]

Ok, similiar lines though, to the front wings....?

[Tadhg Tiogar]

2 hours ago, eddyramrod said:

1961-63 Ford Thunderbird

 

1 hour ago, High Jetter said:

Ok, similiar lines though, to the front wings....?

The Corsair took its styling cues from the Thunderbird, if not the size or the performance. 

[Three Speed]

here’s another one

[Tadhg Tiogar]

35 minutes ago, Three Speed said:

here’s another one

Shape of the front wings reminds me of the blade of a fish knife - y'know, the one you get at posh dinners.

[Three Speed]

I spent this morning at Staplefield in West Sussex watching the London to Brighton veterans. To be honest I spent more time looking at the stuff the spectators came in. I took the Traction. It was one of five there. Lots of other lovely stuff. Including a very nice FB Victor with  less than 30k miles.

This shabby shed showed up which @barratt may be able to explain. 

These made a nice group.

 

Apparently some really old cars drove past too.

[eddyramrod]

2 hours ago, Three Speed said:

This shabby shed showed up which @barratt may be able to explain. 

Any more pics of it?  A shot of the grille might help.  It's clearly a woody station wagon, built at the end of the 30s or possibly after the war, but on what chassis?  I'm inclined to think it's an American Ford, but these things are slightly early for me.

[Three Speed]

1 hour ago, eddyramrod said:

Any more pics of it?  A shot of the grille might help.  It's clearly a woody station wagon, built at the end of the 30s or possibly after the war, but on what chassis?  I'm inclined to think it's an American Ford, but these things are slightly early for me.

I think we need @barrett to explain. 

[eddyramrod]

Quite possibly.

[High Jetter]

I'd say a yank, with the doors, styling and louvres. Ford or Chevvy? 

[barrett]

I spotted your Traction but I didn't spot you!

By chance this Stanley Steamer, driven by Andy Green the Land Speed Record holder, parked up behind me later on. He was amused to discover he'd parked next to another car (formerly) owned by an LSR holder

 

There were some good cars there as usual, but it's disappointing to see how many people turn up to watch in a modern, making it very difficult to park. I wish there was a bit of organisation here to keep the grockles away, although if all the cunts in Morgans didn't turn up it would be fine.

I saw my two favourite Rolls-Royces, which is always a pleasure. One is a beautiful Mulliner-bodied Weymann 20hp, the other is this great 20/25 built by Schutter & Van Bakel in Holland, in the style of a Voisin for an owner who loved Voisin's looks but was tired of the poor reliability (I think he'd owned nine Voisins previously). The story goes he approached Gabriel Voisin and asked id he would fit a factory body to a Rolls-Royce chassis; he refused, so the owner went to his local coachbuilder in Holland instead. It's in fantastic unrestored condition and a very special thing

There were two other woodies at Staplefield, including this really handsome R-R Twenty (I think) so that's three great Rolls-Royces in one day (I don't really like the marque at all)

 

[Three Speed]

Yes that black Rolls is very nice. Reminds me of one I saw in Coventry a couple of years ago.

The other woodie at Staplefield was a Mercedes if I recall. I didn’t take a picture. It was near this Beemer though.Very nice.

As was this which was parked near mine.

To answer Eddie’s question, @barrett’s woodie is. 1938 Ford.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

2 hours ago, Three Speed said:

.... near this Beemer though.Very nice.....

Baroque Angel?

[Three Speed]

Some weeks ago - even before Storm Eunice - my son needed to get the AA out when the clutch pedal on his Scimitar SE5A went dead. He thought the cable had broken but sadly it hadn’t. The AA man tightened up the cable and normal service was restored. The release bearing had been making a racket since my son bought the car and maybe that was disintegrating? I do not know if they can do that. Another possibility was the clutch fork was broken. This happened (twice) to my own Scimitar 30-odd years ago (it wasn’t strong enough for the Peugeot Diesel clutch it was operating).

Anyway, the gearbox had to come out. My son called a couple of local classic car garages near Cambridge but neither of them would take on the work. One of them said he thought the engine would have to come out to replace the clutch and who knows what else would need fixing? I was quite surprised - I was expecting them to be more interested.

So I said I’d do it. Remembering that I’d had the gearbox out of my own SE5A a couple of times 30-odd years ago I assumed it would be easier on a car with the correct engine. Early one morning my son drove the car down to Sussex from Cambridge and we set to it with the tools.

It turns out that it is not easy getting the box out of a Scimitar with the correct engine. Even getting to all the bolts is hard but the real issue is there is very little room to allow the gearbox to move back (the top of the bellhousing hits the gearbox tunnel) and rotate down (the tail hits the chassis) but, with enough jiggling, out it came.

The release bearing had not collapsed. It was intact but very rough - hence the racket - but the real problem was that it had become dislocated from the clutch fork. One of the fork’s locating tangs had disappeared so the fork had moved. Was this the result of the rough bearing? Maybe.

The spigot bearing in the end of the crank was similarly knackered and the clutch plate was down to the rivets - so it was time to change the clutch anyway.

I had the clutch fork welded up by a guy round the corner who did a great job for not very much and then it was time to put it all back. This was a fight - both getting it into place and getting it lined up. When it was in place I realised the release bearing had moved out of position and the fork had come off its pivot. I had no intention of getting the box out again but I could move the box back far enough that I could get my hand in to put it back together. But although I could get my hand in, I could not see what I was doing and you are trying to line up three features in three planes and that’t too hard to do blind. So I ordered an endoscope. 35 years ago I worked for a company that supplied endoscopes to the medical world for about 25k pounds. This one this cost 56 quid and was an excellent investment. With the endoscope I could see what I was doing which makes a big difference.

After more fights with the gear lever and the starter motor it was all back together with a new clutch cable and my son took it for a test drive round the block. Very smooth and no bearing noise. Once, twice - but sadly not three times round the block. No drive - bugger. We had to push it back onto the drive. Investigation (with the endoscope) showed that the driven plate was not being driven, the splined hub had become detached. This must have happened as a result of the fight getting it lined up - I had been a bit too brutal.

So - I ordered another clutch - this time an LUK one as they get good reviews and were cheaper than the first one. A couple of weeks later, out it all came again. At least this time it was all clean and I knew what I had to do. Then it had to go back together again. This time I used the endoscope to ensure I had the splines lined up and there was no brutality.

These photos show the bearing properly located on its tangs. The pictures were taken using the endoscope, looking from the gearbox side. The lower one shows the repair. 

This whole process must have taken 6 weeks or so although I did take a couple of weekends off to fix my Traction’s brakes and then use it as a wedding car in Devon.

I can’t recommend the endoscope highly enough. I also used it to ensure the starter motor was lined up as one of the bolt holes is out of sight, and also to look at the timing gear and check it is a steel one and not the original fibre type. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08NT4GJ33/ref=emc_b_5_t

It has 2 cameras, both with bright LEDs (which you can control) and connects wirelessly to a phone. Picture quality is excellent from both cameras. You can switch between them or show them both together on a split screen. You can take snapshots and record movies.

Now the Scimitar is back on the road and there's a bit more space on the drive. Thanks for reading. 

[High Jetter]

I got a cheap endo off the bay recommended by Paul Ockenden in PC Pro for around £5. Very useful.

[mercedade]

Aye, I bought a cheap endoscope when trying to diagnose hot start issues on the Rover. Last used when trying to adjust the handbrake adjusters on the SLK, looking through the wheel bolt holes. Mega useful.

[Three Speed]

Quite hot today. A good way to get out of the sun is to hide under a DS. That's where I spent most of the afternoon. A couple of years ago someone said my DS was riding a bit high at the front and I thought now would be a good time to do something about it. I've had this car for about 6 years but have never really go stuck into it. After a bit of reading and googling I still didn't know exactly what to do so I started anyway. To do it properly you need a pit or a hoist. I have a sloping driveway and ramps. Not ideal.

You are supposed to measure the height of the bottom of the antiroll bar from the floor. It's hard to know where the floor is when the wheels are on the ramps so I put some wood blocks on top of the ramps to creat a defined surface. That's a bit scary so I did not do as the book said and leave the handbrake off and the wheels unchocked. I could measure the height of the top of wood blocks and subtract that from the height of the antiroll bar. Using the figure in one (unofficial) manual it seemed that the ride height was to spec. There are 2 official manuals: 824 and 518. The correct figures are buried in 518 and it seemed the car was about 20mm high.

The manual says to loosen and rotate the clamp which fixes the rod to the height corrector to the antiroll bar. I did this and managed to get the car stuck in the maximum height position - the one you use for jacking the car up. I wondered if I had dislodged a connection. Obviously it is impossible to see where the bar goes and how it connects to the height corrector. There is a cover panel which is held on with 5 screws so I tried to remove it. 4 screws are easy to get to but to remove the 5th you have to remove the front wing. I had not done this before. Just 2 bolts hold it on - but actually there are 4 bolts and then you have to disconnect the headlamp swivel cable, bonnet release cable and a bunch of wires at the front and another bunch at the back. Then you can remove the wing. I was a bit rough with the headlamp swivel cable and need to get another bulb.

Now I could then get the cover panel off and see I had not dislodged anything. I did find several grease nipples I didn't know about so I greased them. I also could see that my antiroll bar bushes are, as I had suspected, knackered. That explains the clonking over bumps. 

I set the height to the lowest - depressurised - setting and jacked up each side of the car to the height I wanted to be the normal height. Then started the engine and set the height control lever to the normal position. I tightened the clamp and all is well. Cover panel back on, replace wing and all is well. Except I have no headlamps on the nearside - as well as damaging one bulb I must have dislodged the connection to the other one. I hope I have. Anyway, I think the ride is softer now and the car looks better. 

I need to check the rear height. And stop an exhaust joint blowing. And do a million other things. After I've got the nearside headlights working I'll take the offside wing off and grease the nipples on that side. The antiroll bar bushes look fun to replace. At some point I need to replace a few body panels. And so on... And clean up the driveway. Onwards and upwards.

[Three Speed]

It's been ages since I updated this. I've been using the DS quite a bit. It's been my daily driver through the winter. I was feeling quite proud of its failure to fail - until the end of November when the big red light of doom came on demanding I stop. I was driving back from a meeting in Bristol for a meeting in Sussex and had got as far as Gatwick - so nearly there. 10 miles to go, maybe I could make it? No - the steering went heavy. So I stopped before I lost brakes. It was my first experience of stopping on a smart motorway - luckily there was a yellow painted lay-by.

Apparently you are supposed to use the phone in the lay-by to let the control people know what you are up to - but I didn't. I assumed I had an LHM leak. But no - I found one of the bolts fixing the hydraulic pump had come out so the drive belts were slack. It's funny - since this is an important pump, Citroen sensibly fitted 2 belts. But it only takes one bolt to come out for it not to work. Anyway, I had no tools and couldn't lever the bolt back in so I called the AA. The bolt was still having in there and luckily the nut had dropped into the sticky oily mess i like to keep on top of the gearbox so I was on my way a few minutes after the AA man arrived. Actually we had to wait while he called the smart motorway people to close the nearside lane for me - and the AA man - to pull out. 

So so all was well until today. On my way to work I decided to press the test button for the big red light of doom. I have no idea why I did this - bored I suppose. Or maybe I had subliminally noticed something amiss? The light was working fine which it demonstrated on its own a mile later. Steering immediately heavy again - so I immediately pulled into a cafe car park. A look under the bonnet showed the pump was still in place and being driven by the belt which was throwing leaking LHM all over the place. I had half a litre with me which I poured into the tank but the leak was going to need more than that.  If I called the AA they wouldn't be able to fix this and I'd have to wait for a flatbed so I decided it would be quicker to walk the 4 miles home and come back with enough LHM to be able to drive it back. I came back and gave it another 2 litres which was enough to get it home. I now look forward to a weekend removing all sorts of things to be able to get close enough to find the leak. I don't think it is on the high pressure side as the leak was coming out as liquid rather than an atomised spray. Happy Days. 

[Three Speed]

Ha ha. Not off the high pressure side? It most certainly is. It's the highest pressure pipe the car has - the one between the pump and the regulator. So it gets all the pulsations and apparently work hardens and then fractures. 

To even be able to see where the leak was I had to remove the radiator - which looks like this.

Not a pretty sight - this is the front and most of the copper ribbon on the right hand side is falling off. The left side and the stuff behind is ok so it will do for now. 

The alternator and fan also had to come out so I had a chance to see where the leak was when I spun the engine over. 

I took this photo after I has removed the pipe. I've stuffed blue pair into the pump outlet on the left and the regulator inlet on the right.

This is the offending pipe.

  

And this is the leak - caused by the fan belt pulley rubbing on it. 

So - no sign of work hardening here. I need to make sure it's better positioned when I put the new on back. 

As well as a new pipe I've ordered new belts because they've all been doused in LHM and replacement will be so much easier without the fan and radiator in the way.  Same for the inboard front brake pads. I have never tried to replace them before. They've still got some life left but, again, it looks so much easier without the radiator in the way. 

Hope to get it back together on Sunday. 

[Three Speed]

The new pipe is in. And the belts - all 4 of them. But - of course there's a but - I thought I would take the opportunity to change the front pads since, with the radiator out I could at least see them., and they may have got  bit covered in LHM. 

3 out of 4 came out fine. The 4th piston is stuck fast. I've taken the calliper out and, if I can't free it off tomorrow I'll get a replacement. 

And so I went to the Brooklands Easter Meeting today.  I very much liked this Minx:

And this thing was nice too:

Why have one engine when you can have two:

Of course there were lots of other lovely things there too - most of them were very shiny and a credit to their owners. 

 

[High Jetter]

39 minutes ago, Three Speed said:

The new pipe is in. And the belts - all 4 of them. But - of course there's a but - I thought I would take the opportunity to change the front pads since, with the radiator out I could at least see them., and they may have got  bit covered in LHM. 

3 out of 4 came out fine. The 4th piston is stuck fast. I've taken the calliper out and, if I can't free it off tomorrow I'll get a replacement. 

And so I went to the Brooklands Easter Meeting today.  I very much liked this Minx:

 

 

Mini looks fit too.

[Three Speed]

10 hours ago, High Jetter said:

Mini looks fit too.

it was - as was the Capri next to it. I was quite surprised by just how many Consul Capris there were. After the TR3s and TR6s and  they must have been the most popular car model there. There were so many I didn't take any photos of them. Amazing really given how few were made and how long ago that was - they haven't started making them again have they?

[GrumpiusMaximus]

I saw a DS yesterday on the A2 going down towards Dover and had a bit of a moment.  Stupendous cars.  Even my other half likes them.

Wallet and complete lack of mechanical ability says 'no' but I'm absolutely thrilled that you're using one as a daily and documenting it.  They're brilliant.

[Three Speed]

The DS is finally back together and not leaking. When I tried to fit the new brake pads I found one of the pistons was stuck fast so needed a recon calliper which is now fitted. I started it up yesterday to check the clutch pushrod setting as I had to disconnect this to change the belts (RHD manual change cars have a complicated clutch arrangement where the cable pulls a bell crank which pushes a pushrod which pushes the clutch fork). 
I got distracted by a noise that wasn’t there before and couldn’t work out what it was. I hoped it wasn’t the pump or the alternator but it was coming from that general direction. Stopped the engine, restarted it a couple of times then - oops - the starter relay buzzed and smoke escaped from somewhere near the battery.
Quickly switched off everything and hunted for 13mm spanner to disconnect. Turns out the noise was the wire from the starter relay to the motor solenoid rubbing on the alternator fan making a ringing sound as it stripped the insulation off. Quick fix with tape and a tie wrap and no harm done. Not even a blown fuse 🤨. 
Thanks to Darrin at Citroen Classics for advice of setting clutch. Much simpler than the words in the manual.

Now the DS can back to doing its job of being a car and I can fettle the Traction.
 

[Three Speed]

Time for an update. It’s been a while. Quite a lot to report. I’m not saying any of it is interesting.

I promised myself that I would get the Herald out of the garage and on the road this year. Didn’t happen. I’ve forgotten what I was doing to it before I got distracted years ago. I think it was the clutch slave cylinder. I imagine a number of other things need fixing now. I did recover the hardtop from my brother - it needs the rubber seals replacing. Will renew the vow for 2024. We’ll see if I actually do anything.

The Traction did get fettled a little bit and has put in a lot of miles in 2023 - TOC rallies to Jersey and Devon. The fettling must have been of a high standard as nothing went wrong.

One of the things I did was to fit hazard warning lights. The Traction has also been my daily driver when the DS was not feeling well. Which was quite often…

Having changed the DS front brake pads I thought I should look at the rear shoes. When I eventually got the rear drums off (which took much heat and hammering) I found I had a weeping slave cylinder and also found a rear suspension cylinder boot was shredded - both on the offside. I ordered the parts but didn’t bother to fix it until I started finding green puddles under the rear offside wing. I assumed this was from the shredded boot. I didn’t have time to fix this so just used the Traction instead whilst i waited for some free time to coincide with good weather.

Some weeks later I started to be aware of a knocking noise from the engine. I tried to ignore it but really knew I couldn’t. Its final drive was to get me home from a dinner after work. I took the long way home to avoid Handcross Hill which would not be a good place to get stuck - even with my newly fitted hazard warning lights. No AA trucks were required but the the Traction was now off the road with suspected big end failure and I hadn’t fixed the DS yet.

It was now the New Yorker’s turn to be my daily wheels. I had attempted to take this to the American Car day at Brooklands in May. We got half way there and had an FTP on the M25 just after passing Cobham services. The AA took us back to Cobham to await recovery. This turned out to be a 10 hour wait which was not good.

The problem was a combination of no fuel in the carb and a battery flattened by trying to start it. The root cause of the fuel problem was a perished rubber pipe on the pump inlet - I blame that on E10. I assumed the battery problem was just that the car hadn’t been used much and that the battery was a bit low when we left home.

We made it to Mopar Muscle Day at Brooklands later in the year. Now the New Yorker had to get me to work and anywhere else wanted to go. Driving back from Guildford to Horsham on a dark and stormy night with the wipers, lights and blower on I realised the headlights were getting very dim. This thing is not charging. I had the dynamo reconditioned a few years ago and replaced the regulator but one of them is not doing its job. I haven’t worked out the problem yet but just made sure I charged the battery every night. That gives it enough Joules to get to work and home with the lights and wipers on. I found out about 10 years ago that it will get from Horsham to Bremen on one charge if you don’t need lights. I think there must be some crap in the float chamber as it stalled in the middle of Burgess Hill and took ages to restart.

Anyway, this was the motivation to fix the DS. I replaced the the wheel cylinder and the suspension boot and then discovered that the leak was actually a brake pipe. So that needed another week of driving the non-charging New Yorker waiting for the pipe. I fitted it and fixed that leak - and a new one immediately developed at the front of the car. The steel return pipe had rusted through. Pipe ordered from Germany - wrong one arrived but I made it fit anyway. The DS was now back on the road and I could now pay attention to the Traction.

I had assumed the knocking was a big end and so it proved to be. Two of them. I had hoped that my engine had been converted to shell bearings and that I might have caught it soon enough to not need a crankshaft regrind. Neither of these things was true. I opted to buy another engine. The “new” one is an ID19 engine which means it has shell bearings (the original Perfo engine has white metal big ends). It didn’t come with a head and I have used my old one. I had to replace an exhaust valve as one had a crack. Once I had torqued the head down I realised I had forgotten to fit the cam followers so it had to come off again. I had to modify my flywheel to fit the ID engine. It’s fixed to the crankshaft with 10mm bolts instead of 8mm. I could have done that myself but it also needed a dowel hole added which I could not do accurately enough. More significantly the ID crankshaft is 5mm shorter than the Perfo’s. I had 2mm machined off the back of it and a 2mm spacer made. This gives 4mm clearance between the block and the flywheel and puts the starter ring and the clutch face within 3 mm of where they should be which is close enough.

This whole exercise has given me the opportunity to seal the gearbox a bit better than it was and hopefully minimise the amount of oil I drop on the driveway. Since I have had the gearbox out I have taken the opportunity to add a strengthening plate - the gearbox is the Achilles Heel of the Traction Avant, having the potential to split the casing when the crown wheel fails. The plate won’t  save the crown wheel but will make it less likely that the casing will split.

As things stand, the engine and gearbox are back in the car and I just need to fit the ancillaries and make all the adjustments to the mountings and timing before fitting the radiator grille, bonnet and bumper. Another day’s work if all goes well.

And then I can look at the New Yorker’s charging problem and my son’s Scimitar which is waiting for attention to it’s clutch release mechanism - again. Having invested in an engine hoist I’m going to using it to pull the Scimitar’s engine out instead of wrestling the gearbox out from underneath. While it’s out we’ll take the heads off and replace the valve stem seals which may stop it smoking - and fix whatever else we find.

Meanwhile my son has got himself a 2003 Hyundai Coupe to use while the Scimitar is off the road. It’s a 2003 car with only 45,000 miles on the clock. Of course the window regulator dumped the driver’s window into the door and then the alternator belt snapped soon after he got it. Both things now fixed.

The moral of all this is that, whilst you can use an old car as your daily driver, which both I and my son do, you need to have a back up. And if your back up vehicle is also old, then you probably need a back up for that as well - and so on.

As soon as I get the Traction out of the garage, and before I start anything else, I’m going to tidy up because it’s a real mess. This year, as well as being the year I get the Herald going again, may well be the year I buy a MIG welder and learn to use it. The DS is getting quite frilly and needs tidying as much as the garage does. If things go to plan in 2024 the Traction will get us to Clermont Ferrand for the 90th anniversary of its launch, to Torun in Poland for the ICCCR and to Northumberland for the TOC Rally. So, not much chance for the Herald then.

[eddyramrod]

Wow.

 

Proper stuff!

[Tomtation]

Fab French content 👌

Just had a good read through, driveway envy 🤩

[Three Speed]

I wish the heater worked…