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1951 Lanchester LD10 - Rear Wing Removal


vulgalour

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56 minutes ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

Clearly popular enough to be out of stock.

Out of stock for delivery locally to us but two in a local branch it says. Really effective stuff - long, thick, easily pliable and dried rock-hard. Worth keeping in store at home for emergencies. The Trafic had a hole at the point where the exhaust curves under the engine - moisure must have collected there on short runs - I think it was used for local deliveries.

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2 hours ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

Clearly popular enough to be out of stock.

It's available on eBay.  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FIBERFIX-HEAT-WRAP-HEAT-CURED-REPAIR-WRAP-DESIGNED-FOR-HIGH-TEMPERATURE/292076258989?hash=item44011a06ad:g:SsIAAOSw3utY42so

I might try it on the Innocenti exhaust - is it any good at repairing bendy pipes?

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The one we've got is one of those sheet-of-metal-with-a-clamp jobs since it's not really a hole we're repairing, but a completely snapped pipe and we haven't a suitable diameter pipe lying around to sleeve it with.  Should work fine enough for testing and to get us to the exhaust place when we're at that point.  In good news, I've got the donor carburettor in the ultrasonic cleaner and it really is an identical chassis.  Full report on that and it's issues later on when the job is finished.

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Time for a carburettor update.  The donor arrived today and apart from being filthy from presumably years of use, it looked complete at first glance.  The important thing was that the chassis, the one part we'd bought it for, was an identical match to our original carburettor.  The differences between the two is mostly in the throttle mechanism and all of those parts can be swapped pretty easily.

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On the bottom of both is the important bit, 30 VIG-5 tells us that these are the same chassis, the stamp on the top (C1227 for the original, C1010 10/12 for the donor) seems to refer to the external items bolted on so the carburettor can be used with a different car's throttle set up.  We think the donor is from an Austin, though we're not entirely certain.

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The other important aspect was the thread on the donor, which looked to be in excellent condition on the listing and, in person, was slightly better than it appeared in the listing.  Donor first and original after here so you can see what we've gained.  A dry fit of the banjo bolt also demonstrated that the donor has a much better thread than the original.

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After several rounds in the ultrasonic cleaner, the donor chassis was made ready.  We didn't push to get every speck of dirt removed, there really isn't much point, instead we focused on making sure passages and moving parts were nice and clean, which they are now.  While the cleaning was happening, we worked out which bits were spare, checking the condition of the parts on our original carburettor against the donor and selecting the best items.  As it happens, almost everything in our original carburettor is in better condition.

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One item that was a benefit is a small piece of the throttle mechanism, on ours it's worn quite badly while on the donor it's got significantly less wear.  While most of the donor's throttle mechanism is different, this piece and the spring-loaded adjustable balljoint socket piece are the same.

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Another benefit with the donor chassis is that all of the rivets that hold in the float bowl gasket came out quite easily so we could fit the new gasket using the new rivets out of the kit instead of relying on a couple of smears of sealant.202009-20.thumb.jpg.063ae2726752b50bdb1362a11af76993.jpg

We also used the rebuilt float bowl from our original carburettor, since it was in much better condition than the one on the donor, and reassembled everything.  With the newly rebuilt carburettor waiting to go on, the fitting for the vacuum line could be tackled on the car now we had a spare fitting from the donor carburettor as a back up, and that came undone properly without damaging the copper vacuum line or the brass fittings.  We didn't want to have to remake the vacuum line or modify things to take a modern equivalent, so it was good that this came apart without drama in the end.  It also made refitting the carburettor a lot easier since we can screw the fitting to the carburettor rather than the other way around.

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It was then all bolted back onto the car, the banjo bolt being significantly easier to fit than previously, everything was checked as being free moving and we're ready to go this weekend.  There wasn't enough time today to get the car started up so we'll do that tomorrow.  Hopefully this cures the fuel leak.  We would have done it tonight, except that there's no power or lighting in the garage, the car has no rear lights of any sort working at the moment, and the exhaust sleeve needs fitting so that we can actually run the car.  All of this will be easier and safer to do in the daylight before I go to work tomorrow.

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The eagle eyed may have noticed the base on the donor chassis isn't perfect.  It does have a very slight warp to the base which flattens out once it's bolted down to the manifold with a gasket so we opted to leave it alone.  If it proves to be an air leak issue or similar in the future, we'll sand it down flat, otherwise it seemed sensible to leave it.  Also, the gap between the float bowl and the chassis is nice and even, and much smaller, on the rebuilt carburettor, so that's another potential issue resolved.  We did find the missing bolt for the air silencer feed to the rocker cover. Previously, we'd dismissed the very short bolt we found since it didn't match the other bolt in the rocker cover, but it looks like someone has tapped out one of the holes much larger than original and used this short, possibly cut down, bolt in its place.  It's easier to keep it as it is than try and fix this to return it to stock so that's what we've opted to do.

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If you're concerned, stick the thing in the oven at 90 degrees and see if the warp remains.

If it does, wet-n-dry on a pane of glass awaits. The manifold it was bolted to may have warped with age, bringing the carb with it; you want to match and de-stress it as much as possible to what's on your car.

Phil

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Now that I've finished work I can update what was done earlier today before work.  The first problem we encountered was that the carburettor base wasn't actually flat enough and wasn't sealing properly.  Fortunately it was an easy enough task to remove it since we've now had things apart a few times, and I had the onerous task of using a flat surface and wet-and-dry paper to flatten out the base of the carburettor.  It didn't take very long to do, it was just tedious.

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Just a case of going back and forth, then turning it 90 degrees and repeating, until you got as much of the darker surface sanded away as you reasonably could.  There's one spot that was really stubborn about sanding out, we opted to ignore it since it was so minor a deviation and so much of the sealing face was nice and smooth and even we didn't think it would now cause any problems.

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As it happens, it didn't cause any problems and now we don't have a leak from the carburettor base.  We also don't have a leak from the banjo bolt and the carburettor seems to be working fantastically well now, as it ought given the attention it's had.  We did get the car to run off the choke today at least, and got some decent heat into the coolant system which highlighted good flow through the heater so we're getting there, it's just a case of sorting a problem and seeing what pops up as an issue next and then resolving that.  The other thing that was done was to fit the new exhaust bandage thing, a temporary measure just so we can run the car.  the black on the exhaust is from where it was previously split and we know the car has been running very rich before we got hold of it.  With the new bandage on, the majority of the exhaust gasses are now going all the way through the system and out the back of the car, where they should, and the exhaust isn't emitting any smoke so that's also good.

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This weekend we're hoping to flush out the fuel tank to get rid of the old stuff, change the oil, flush out the coolant system, and generally get things in rude health on that front.  We've been having a bit of a problem with sooty plugs today which we think is due to running on the ancient fuel (we know we shouldn't, but it's not doing any harm for the short time we've done it and it's saved us hassle flushing and refilling just while we test) and hopefully some new fuel will cure that issue.  We now know we have oil pressure, good fuel pressure, excellent spark, and the coolant system is working well enough to get the heater pipes hot so we're definitely on our way with this.

The other thing that happened today was a rubber delivery, specifically the new rear screen seal, pedal grommets, and headlight grommets.  As you can see in the following photograph, the old grommets have gone all weird in that way really old rubber does.

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Replacement wasn't entirely plain sailing.  One thing I do dislike about this car is the extensive use of fine threads, it makes undoing anything a chore.  It's also frustrating that every time I go to undo an awkwardly located fitting, none of my spanners fit so I have to resort to the adjustable wrench, as I did to do these.  I'll go into how this is done in more detail in a future post, for now suffice to say that the bolt you have to get to so that you can remove the headlights is pretty annoying, especially if you choose to be lazy like me and not remove the wheel for better access.  Still, the new grommet actually went in really nicely and fits snug to the headlight which seals everything up properly, preventing water getting through the wing.  Annoyingly, after taking care to feed the wires out of the headlight bowl so nothing got snagged or damaged, one of the connectors that splices the new red wire in the above photograph to the original loom fell off, mainly because the old wiring loom section is really brittle so now we have one less working light.  Ah well, there's a new wiring loom on the way (estimated arrival is late October) which will deal with these issues.

We'll see how far we get this weekend, our basic plan is a fluid change, fit the new rubber items (except for the rear screen seal), and polish up the last of the bodywork that needs it.

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Today's plans went mostly as we wanted them to.  The first job was to drain the old fuel out of the tank.  There's a handy, easy-to-access drain plug on the underside of the fuel tank, as is the norm for older vehicles, which makes you wonder what the point of the locking fuel cap really is since it's no hardship to get to and undo the bolt at which point the fuel gushes out at quite a rate.  We got a bucket and a bit of old fuel out and while it was quite yellowed and varnish looking, there wasn't much in the way of actual sediment and bits.  You couldn't see more than about an inch through the fuel in the bucket, all the same.

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The drain plug was refitted and a couple of fresh cans of fuel poured in, then the system was primed and the sediment trap cleaned out a couple of times until the fuel went from this yellowy-brown colour back to the almost-clear of fresh fuel.

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The sediment trap has a mesh disc filter in it, which is the first fuel filter in the system.  The second filter is in the mechanical fuel pump and is another mesh screen type.  There was a small amount of particles on this which cleaned off quite easily, not much to speak of actually in the fuel pump.  The primer lever on the fuel pump does seem a bit weak so we wonder if the spring or diaphragm are tired and due a replacement, we believe there are rebuild kits out there so it's something to look into in the future.

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The third fuel filter is a mesh screen tube around the banjo bolt that goes into the carburettor, so there's not really any need to add any more filters to this system.  by the time it gets to the carburettor there's not really anything to catch.  Our next issue today was the spark plugs fouling really quickly with sooty deposits, as though the car was running much too rich.  We tried resetting the fuel mixture, the idle, not using the choke, and every time we were finding the same result so we headed out to try and find some generic replacement plugs and ended up getting some ridiculously fancy four-point Bosch things since they were the nearest match.  Not massively expensive, the NGKs it came to us with, and the Bosch ones we've now fitted.

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Before starting the car again we opted to change the oil since it was warmed up now and that would make the job a lot easier.  Access for doing the oil change is actually superb, without even jacking up the car, you can get straight to the sump plug and even fit the oil pan under the car.  The long tube to the left is the oil filter, and while we could undo the drain bolt on the bottom, the bolts that hold the filter housing in place are so tight we couldn't shift them so we've saved that particular job for another day.  We'll be doing another oil change very soon anyway since the oil we put in is mostly to clean up what's in there without being too aggressive about it.

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What we weren't expecting was the rate the oil in the car would gush out, hitting the oil pan at such a rate it splashed straight out of it, and all over the drive.  The oil was incredibly thin, like water almost, and while we did at first thing maybe it had got fuel in it from repeated attempts to start it by us and previous owner, it didn't have any petrol smell (either the old fuel or the new) at all.  It also had no signs of water contamination, it was just incredibly thin oil.  The other peculiar thing is that when it came to cleaning the oil up, there was barely any rainbow sheen from it and it didn't really seem to repel the water that much either.  Our theory is that someone has seen the SAE 30 on the oil filler cap and assumed it takes modern SAE 30 which is very different to what Lanchester would have specified back in 1951.  The modern SAE 30 is much thinner and more watery in consistency than the modern equivalent to the SAE 30 of old.  Since doing the oil change and fuel change we haven't had the same sooting of the plugs so that's a good thing.  We haven't taken the sump off at this point, and won't unless we have to for some reason, but it was reassuring to see no bits of note in the oil that came out, there were a few of the usual tiny blobs of old oil, but nothing any larger than a small pinhead and nothing hard or metallic.

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That done, and a short drive later, we discovered that the radiator is only getting hot right at the top so that's probably blocked.  Ran out of time to do the coolant flush today, so we'll see if we can unblock the radiator tomorrow, a job which we're expecting to escalated into having to remove the radiator and possibly replace the radiator hoses.  In the meantime, it was time to sort out the headlight gaskets and learn that there were more items that have been done in a not exactly factory way.  To replace these rubbers, you will first need to jack up the car and remove the wheel, this will give you comfortable access to the one bolt you will need to undo, you can do it without removing the wheel but it's not much fun if you do.  With the car securely supported, you then unclip the fastener on the bottom of the headlight bowl trim ring and lever the ring and lens out from the bottom.

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Unless, like us, you're missing the clip entirely on one side, in which case ease a screwdriver into the gap between the trim ring and the bowl and twist it to pry the housing open carefully.

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Inside the bowl you'll find three wires (on the assumption you're on the original reflector bowl and bulb set up, rather than an upgrade), one connects the bulb to the bowl, the other two connect the bulb to the wiring loom.  Disconnect all three so you can remove the ring and lens and place them out of harms way.  You can then pull the two wires through the headlight stem and into the inner arch.

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With the wires removed, you can then fit a socket on the nut.  In our case it was what looked to be the original brass nut of 22mm on the passenger side, and a totally random steel nut of 19mm on the driver's side.  We also found some of the wiring was original, some was new, and some was a combination of old wiring with new connectors.

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With the nut undone you can then lift out the headlight bowl completely.  Refitting is reversal of removal, the wires are very easy to thread back through so just put the nut and washer back on the headlight bowl thread first to save accidentally stacking the parts on the wire in the wrong order.  Before you do refit the headlight bowl, you'll want to prise out the old grommet, especially if yours looks as bad as ours does.

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With that out of the way, clean up the surface if you need to and then ease the new grommet into place.  A screwdriver can help on the grille side where there's not much space between the wing and the headlight bracket, just for easing the lip of the grommet home.  Aside from the fiddly access, this isn't too bad a job.

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These aren't vital really, we could have easily opted to leave the crumbling old ones in place, it's just nice to make the weather proof items good when they're available, especially given how specific a shaped thing these are.  Very happy with the fit on these and they're a sensible price.

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All that done we decided to give the car one last short run with the new oil to circulate it all.  Happy to report that the new oil and new spark plugs have made the car incredibly willing to fire up (providing the starter motor behaves, that's another item on the shortlist) so we ventured out onto the street to find out how bad the brakes really were.  The answer is that the brakes are really quite terrible and barely stop the car at walking pace, so we're glad they're quite high up our list of items to address since they're clearly well out of adjustment, even with a good shove the engine is overpowering them quite easily.

The only other issue of note was the car bogging down under throttle to the extent that in the little video above, it's at barely more than idle since that's all it would tolerate.  We suspect this is a blocked jet in the carburettor so we'll pull off the float bowl that contains the jets, remove and clean everything, and then reinstall it.  It doesn't take much to block up a jet and it doesn't take much to clean it out.  We are getting a healthy spark and good fuel delivery at idle and the carburettor isn't getting warm even when the engine does (that home made heat shield does its job really very well) so the usual suspects are pretty much ruled out.  If you're careful you can very gently ease the throttle on, but try and sustain it and it will start to bog down again until you drop to idle where it's quite happy indefinitely.

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14 minutes ago, Mr Pastry said:

Nothing wrong with NGKs if they are the correct type.  My book says B6ES.

The ones we took out are NGK BP6ES which look to be different to B6ES.  Not really sure how you work out which plug is supposed to be the correct one, we just went for what was available on the shelf to keep things moving today really, a more aggressive clean of the NGKs we took out will probably make them serviceable again.

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"The long tube to the left is the oil filter, and while we could undo the drain bolt on the bottom, the bolts that hold the filter housing in place are so tight we couldn't shift them so we've saved that particular job for another day"

VG...I think the "drain bolt" is the long bolt holding the oil filter housing bowl on - it runs right through to the block end. It should undo and the bolt draw out then the bowl will detach at the engine end (it may need a smart tap if it is corroded in) - the other bolts are to hold the whole lot on the car...I think...check with the owners club? You will need an oil tray under the whole lot. I always wear nitrile gloves as old oil is nasty stuff.

Inside it may take a paper filter - the long bolt will run through it - or it may contain a mesh to wash out with petrol...I think the former. 

Screw off filters were such an advance - I wonder who used them first...I am guessing in the US? Saved getting oil all over the place and speeded up servicing.

Wonderful posts. Such an interesting car. Now you have two identical carbs you can go for a twin carb set up as a period modification - I'm joking but it did happen in period but mostly to Ford Pops.

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Nice. If you are concerned about fitting a wireless reciever, BPR6ES.

Every step of the way you're making it better. No doubt about that.

If that zenith is anything like any other I've used, ultrasonic bath, airline, carb cleaner, bath, cleaner spray, airline seems to be a good sequence to get them clean.

Tractor supply places are your friend for lubricants, big warnings over the SAE 30W diesel oil I bought due to the high zinc (zddp) content, that and catalytic converters don't mix. This stuff is full of vitamins and minerals your engine needs. Plus it's generally pretty cheap.

That and the big tin of Valvoline grease for the grease gun, because it gonna get through a fair chunk of that in regular use.

 

Phil

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On the oil filter, it's a corrugated felt type that you wash out with petrol.  To remove the housing, you undo a bolt on the top and drop it down from underneath, that bolt on the bottom might not be a drain, but it did work well as one.  Trouble is, we can't undo that bolt because someone has dogged it up super tight, possibly to prevent the old gasket leaking rather than replacing the gasket, who knows.  There's not enough space to get a good length lever in to use physics to undo the bolt either.

As for the plugs sooting up, we're wondering if it's a bit of a red herring because even with the mixture leaned off and no choke, it was still doing it before the oil change.  We wondered if that very thin oil that was in was getting past the rings and presenting as rich mixture rather than oil contamination and it's just coincidental that the oil change and switch to new plugs cleared it up rather than the new plugs being the cause of it clearing up.  It's also odd because it wasn't doing it when we first fitted the carburettor after flattening the base, it was a thing that it started doing seemingly randomly.

I guess we have to put it down to working through the system at the moment and we're going to get the odd hiccup while we figure out what's actually amiss.

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4 hours ago, vulgalour said:

What we weren't expecting was the rate the oil in the car would gush out, hitting the oil pan at such a rate it splashed straight out of it, and all over the drive.  The oil was incredibly thin, like water almost, and while we did at first thing maybe it had got fuel in it from repeated attempts to start it by us and previous owner, it didn't have any petrol smell (either the old fuel or the new) at all.  It also had no signs of water contamination, it was just incredibly thin oil.  The other peculiar thing is that when it came to cleaning the oil up, there was barely any rainbow sheen from it and it didn't really seem to repel the water that much either.  Our theory is that someone has seen the SAE 30 on the oil filler cap and assumed it takes modern SAE 30 which is very different to what Lanchester would have specified back in 1951.  The modern SAE 30 is much thinner and more watery in consistency than the modern equivalent to the SAE 30 of old.  Since doing the oil change and fuel change we haven't had the same sooting of the plugs so that's a good thing.  We haven't taken the sump off at this point, and won't unless we have to for some reason, but it was reassuring to see no bits of note in the oil that came out, there were a few of the usual tiny blobs of old oil, but nothing any larger than a small pinhead and nothing hard or metallic.

SAE 30 is a viscosity standard, it's the same viscosity now as it was when the Society of Automotive Engineers drafted it in 1911. That oil is old and knackered, it may also be diluted with fuel if the engine has been running rich or left with the choke on. Modern oil, even synth, goes the same way if left in long past the service interval;  that said even cheap oil is far better stability wise than the best oil was in 1951, both as a result of better refining technique and also because of better additives.

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Today I got to the bottom of why the car didn't respond well to throttle and it was very simple, more on that later.  The important update was that I attempted to start the car to move it out of the garage, something it's usually totally unwilling to do for me (but not the other half, who this car likes more) and it fired straight up.  Not only that, it responded normally to throttle and I got to trundle around in a little circle and get my first drive of the Lanchester.  First impressions were that it's surprisingly intuitive to use the pre-selector gearbox and the steering is pleasantly weighted. The size of the car felt very easy to place and while rear visibility is really quite terrible thanks to the body style and the tiny rear window, the car didn't feel particularly ungainly.  The brakes are terrible, though this is more a case of bad adjustment than the brakes being terrible by design.  If you really stamp on them hard they will just about stop the car providing you're not doing more than about 5mph.  Keeping an eye on the gauges I noticed the temperature had got very high, so decided I should let the car cool down so that a coolant change could be done.  That's when I noticed the first problem of the day when the car decided to do its level best to change the coolant for me.

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Had I looked inside the car first I would have seen the leak immediately, as it was it took a little while to realise it was the heater matrix that was leaking.

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We knew there was a chance of leaks happening, and surprised it hadn't been worse until now.  I did the jobs in a different order to how I'm reporting them here, so I did some other things before dropping the coolant.  Draining out the coolant was quite easy, there's a brass tap on the bottom of the radiator that you turn and the coolant all falls out.  Frustratingly, I didn't have a container shallow enough so it was a case of using a lot of plain water afterwards to dilute this and wash it away since there's a lot of cats in the neighbourhood we don't want getting their little faces into this.  As it happens, I'm not so sure there was any antifreeze in here anyway, the water that came out was initially quite plain, and then very sludgy and brown, and the sparkling with silver and copper glitter.  The sparkling was not a welcome sight and means someone has most likely put K-seal and maybe also Steel Seal in the system either as a preventative measure, or to cure a leak, or to cure a head gasket failure.  Nothing for it but to clean everything out to find out which item it was going to be.

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It took a while and eventually, the drain tap clogged.  A poke with a screwdriver a few times and it cleared but it was evident there was something in the radiator blocking things up so that meant the radiator ideally needed to come out for a flush.  It also meant I wanted to see what the other coolant passages I could get to without opening up the engine were like.  Unbolting and prising off the thermostat housing, taking extra care to unbolt the water temperature gauge capillary line, revealed that the car did still have a thermostat fitted, and that it was pretty disgusting.

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Not quite as disgusting as the pipe that bridges between radiator, heater, and water pump.  It looked like it was full of leaves, a poke revealed it wasn't and was instead a combination of rust flakes and sheets of something that had dried out and got stuck in here.

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Most of the grey paint on this pipe and the thermostat housing was flaking off so after cleaning out the worst of the rust and detritus, they were treated to some paint stripper.  They need another round, and will then get repainted, probably in black, before being reinstalled.

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I hadn't removed the radiator on this car before and unbolted what looked like the correct items, only to find that the radiator still wouldn't come out.  I'm not sure why, perhaps because I'm used to front wheel drive cars, but I thought the radiator had to tilt back towards the engine to come out, something that's impossible because of the radiator surround.  Rather than take a step back and see how it actually was done, I decided to take the water pump off instead.  This wasn't an entirely bad decision, the water pump is thick with paint and would benefit from a general clean up anyway which is much easier to do with it off the car.  The shorter bottom two bolts were very difficult to access, they seemed hard up against the rubber of the engine mount which didn't seem quite right.  The fan belt was also impossible to remove from the lower pulley.  I'd been warned that the front engine mount being worn could cause this so that's what I suspected I'd find behind the water pump.

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The proper way to remove the radiator is much simpler than I'd actually made myself do it.  There's four nuts on captive bolts at the sides of the radiator which need loosening to allow the pressing that serves as a radiator cap and holds the bonnet catch.

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There's also two bolts that hold this capping to the front grille.

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There's another two bolts that hold the radiator stay bars.  There's two nuts that hold the bottom of the radiator in place, and the drain tap needs the handle removing.  With all these items undone, you can simply slide the radiator up and out of the car, really very simple when you know how.

 

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With the radiator out an attempt was made to flush it, at which point it became clear it was blocked.  A few attempts and it eventually spat out first brown, then black sludge, then I flushed it until the water ran clear and filled the radiator up with a couple of Steradent tablets in it (since that's all I had to hand) to help dislodge any debris inside.  While that was being done, the thermostat was cleaned as much as possible to try and find any markings on it.  The thermostat does appear to work though a replacement will be sourced, it's a generic looking thing and stamped 82, which I assume means it's an 82C thermostat, and not an 82F one.

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With all of that out of the car, the radiator was emptied out and a potential cause for the k-seal being added is that one corner of the radiator is now leaking.  It has much better flow than it did, not great, but better than almost none, and we're going to get this inspected and repaired before refitting it to the car.  At least with this all removed we could get a proper look in the front of the engine bay, and it's mostly good if dirty.  The main issue is that the front engine mount does look as those the rubber has become at least partially detached and the whole engine is sagging down a little.  It's not dropped far enough that the pulleys are touching anything, but it is far enough that the fan belt cannot be removed.

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After the trundle about, the sediment bowl was checked and cleaned out again.  There's much less sediment coming through now, the glass magnifies it somewhat, when it was removed and cleaned out it was little more than thin collection in one corner of the bowl.

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Now that both of us have driven the car and changed gear in it, I felt much happier about disabling it indefinitely to fix the coolant issues.  Taking the water pump off has really helped give us access to that engine mount, an important issue to resolve.  The other satisfying job today was getting the driver's side of the car polished, there's just the roof to go but I ran out of time and energy for that today.

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Now attention will likely turn more towards the interior refurbishment while we source and wait for parts needed to get the coolant system in rude health once more.

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