|
Lud, Herald, Spitfire, etc boxes hardly needed "dismantling". You just undid the right bolts and, really, they fell apart. Not to say that they were weak, just simplicity of design itself.
|
None of that awful pre-torquing and so on... still, there are lots of baulk rings and things that have to go in the right way round...
I didn't know that about Herald gearboxes, although Heralds were said to be easy and fun to work on. Unparallelled access of course. No need to upend the car like gb and his buddy...
Heralds drove quite amusingly too if you enjoyed a bit of sideways or at least tail-wagging.
Edited by Lud on 25/05/2008 at 22:22
|
|
Great fun, single transverse rear leaf spring and negative camber on rear wheels. All a bit weird when matched with double front wishbones and discs on front. Would probably be completely banned these days.
|
I replaced second gear in my (already rotten in the late 60s) MGB over a weekend, at my fathers employers warehouse, using their big crane to get the engine/gearbox out.
Amazingly, the gear(s) were available off the shelf in the local BMC dealers.
|
|
|
|
Jack Brabham put his name to a Herald conversion with a nice Coventry Climax small screamer installed instead of the standard engine and uprated brakes. I'm pretty sure they did something about the rear suspension too, strapping the halves down at least so it couldn't get up on tiptoe and attempt a full pirouette... They would have needed to.
Edited by Lud on 25/05/2008 at 23:03
|
My mate across the road, 2 Minors, one as old as me, wants to set up a business where we provide nice looking classics for weddings etc.
We're a good team cos we're both good spannermen, he can spray and weld and I can do electrics that he can't cope with.
Any hope of getting this off the ground?
|
In terms of gearbox simplicity, the front wheel drive Vauxhalls really were excellent.
All you needed to do was to remove the remote housing from the top of the gearbox, and undo the end cover, and gearbox endplate. Along with the endplate, the two gearbox shafts and selectors then just slid out in one piece - simplicity itself.
As it was the bearings in the endplate which tended to go, it was then a case of drifting out the roll pins in the selcetors, and taking the circlips out of the bearing retainers, and then, you had the two shafts in your hands, ready for the bearings to be pulled off, and new ones to be pressed on.
|
I have vague memories of watching someone rebuilding a Cortina box and the process involved lengths of twine looped around the shafts.
Can anyone tell me if that could be right?
|
I remember undersealing a bubble car in the sixties by rolling it onto its side onto an old mattress.
I also recall repairing a stripped thread on a Honda CD175 cam chain tensioner (I think belts are so much better despite HJ's opinions). It took ages to dismantle the thing, but it just fell back together. Proof that they're designed to be assembled.
|
Many years ago a mate of mine had a V4 engined Consul. The engine blew and he asked me to repair it using second hand bits where possible.
I cobbled one together using a mix of Consul, Corsair and Transit engine parts. Come the time to start it (and he's hanging about watching) tips a gallon of oil in - no dipstick and nowhere to put one ! As luck would have it I'd used a block with no dipstick hole and a timing cover with no hole, if I'd done it the other way round, he'd have had two dipsticks.
Anyway it fired up ok and after a test drive he's impatient to get away, says not to worry about the dipstick, he'll change the oil every month and refill with the correct amount, or top up when the oil light flashes. I saw him a week later and he said "engine runs fine, and it doesn't use a drop of oil".
He sold it 6 months later and the new owner never contacted him to ask about the dipstick.
|
|
In terms of gearbox simplicity the front wheel drive Vauxhalls really were excellent.
Plus that lovely, elegant clutch housing design that let you pull the input shaft back, and drop the clutch out of an access cover without disturbing the transmission. This is one of my favourite pieces of engineering / design on any car that I've come across.
Cheers
DP
|
One dark night in 1994...
me= completely handless. My experience of cars came from driving them, not fixing them. At the time, I'm driving a Mini Clubman, reg circa 1981. Thoroughly fed up with topping up the coolant every day, which was by now pouring from a failing water pump.
Luckily, my local motor factors had both the correct water pump and a Haynes manual in stock; I had sufficient tools to hand, and was just annoyed enough by the leak to want to get on with things.
Its November, and by the time I kick the job off, its maybe midday. Bad weather, natch, just to make things even worse.
I get started. The chap in the shop recommended a shortcut; taking off the offside wheel tackling the job from there after raising the engine slightly with a jack and axle stand, and so I go with that. The rain is cold, hissing it down, and my hands look like corned beef and feel slightly numb.
The job goes surprisingly well. I've wrapped the open pages of the manual in a couple if sheets of clear plastic, but even so, the rain is trying to make its way through. I hit a snag- as the afternoon progresses, it gets darker, and the handlamp I have keeps blowing bulbs with the rain, but I persevere.
Round about dinner time, the pump is on, belts in, and its time to reassemble. Its the reversal of disassembly, Haynes helpfully tells me, and so I do just that. An hour or so later and its done, the wheel is on, coolant is in, and I take it for a test drive.
Its warm in the cabin, but why is it overheating? 9 or so at night now, and I'm really cheesed off, sodden with rain and chilled with cold, and I really dont need this hassle now.
I apply a process of elimination- the thermostat was behaving itself (I think) prior to starting off, so it cant be that....under the car again with the handlamp for inspection. And- I've fitted the cooling fan on backwards, so heated air is not being drawn away from the car. Simple enough to fix- but at this time of night? In this weather? I've really no choice, as I need the beast to get to work the following day, so back I go again into a partial disassembly.
This time I'm used to the work, and things go much more smoothly. The fan is off an on again in what seems like no time. Test-drive time...no leaks, cabin is warm, temp gauge looks fine. Chuffed!
Bed time.
Gary
|
I can remember taking the head off my mini when I was 17yrs. To save time and minimum time off the road I had already stripped off another one from a car in the scrapyard, ground new valves in, springs and port polishing and so on as we did in those days.
Problem was we had an intruder issue. The old man due to his business often ended up with large amounts of cash at home and due to living in a big house on the hill, it was obvious.
His cars could not be expelled from the garage for the same reason and working on the head inside the house was out of the question.
That left the shed, but that had been taken over by our (house defence) Alsation, ( free to roam the house and garden) who one day had just forced entry by chewing through the planks at the side.... At that he had been given the place and a sort of raised platform at the back made for him to lie on.
Now you could visit in there. Even lie on the platform with him,(which he encouraged) but looking at the cylinder head, him looking back from the inside, stopping breathing, turning his head to one side thinking.. made me think twice about trying to work on the `bench` ...
Hence all that luxury and space and the head had to be worked on outside, lapping the valves in piercingly cold weather...
You wouldn`t challenge the dog for his retreat from the house, especially after seeing him chew a plank out of the entrance one day to enlarge it, as though it were cardboard.
That`s how I lost my first `workshop` and bike `garage`, to an opportunistic semi-wolf who had noticed the space after selling the motorbike for a first car.
Regards
Edited by oilrag on 26/05/2008 at 16:27
|
That`s how I lost my first `workshop` and bike `garage` to an opportunistic semi-wolf who had noticed the space after selling the motorbike for a first car.
I know GSD's are a clever animal, and totally loyal, but that was some dog to be buying and selling motorbikes and cars from a commandeered hideout..-:)
I used to take my GSD with me in the truck some years ago, when she became ill, i would pick her up, curled up, and place her on the passenger seat, and she'd be as happy as a pup with two tails.
I wonder how many of the aches and pains we've all got can be attrributed to our lunatic working in all weathers on our cars in those days.
|
As a weird aside, my mate bought a Mini in the late 70's. As a result of my experiences fixing these tiny beasts with my big hands, I declared myself "anti Mini".
His sense of humour converted this to Antimony, and forever after he called me Bismuth, the next element down in the periodic table.
Never fixed his car for him after that!
|
|
Once rescued a pre-war Austin 7 engine from a dump and got it running for installation in a boat. Surprisingly easy. Decided to keep the gearbox as it was: there wouldn't have been much stopping power astern but I got posted before the launch.
|
|
I have a friend - an MSc - who is gathers trollies at Sainsbury - When I see him and ask him "What do you know" he'll reply "the atomic weight of lithium" - strangely appropriate for him; his claim to fame is that he once dined with Douglas Adams before Hitch Hickers - I often wonder whether he was the inspiration for Marvin.
|
Bintang, your memory of rescue of an engine has reminded me.
I drove a bulk grain artic in the 70' and early 80's, and often the farmer would have a sucker/blower powered by a tractor pto to drive said contraption. The tractor engines seldom gave enough power to these things, and even with a 4 inch pipe it could take 2 hours to load 20 or 25 tons of wheat, with the constant blockages.
One farm i often went to near Daventry had cannibalised a ERF truck , and had kept the 14 litre 250hp cummins and david brown gearbox in the chassis, but made the chassis into a trailer to power his 6 inch sucker/blower, the sheer awesome power of that thing could blast any blockage out, and could load the same weight in 20 minutes.
Love a bit of overkill, and good to see quality equipment going to good use long after it would have been weighed in.
|
Sadly, Elf and safety have killed off this kind of engineering enterprise that was a supreme example of recycling.
Maybe one day, when the politicians realise that we need to produce food efficiently in this country, they will relax the rules or starve (actually, in a way, I would prefer the latter but 60,000,000 people would be left to starve before them).
|
Apocalyptic talk dc...
Elf'n'safety in its jobsworth guise can usually be sent off with a flea in its ear provided employment law is not involved. I doubt if it gave the late great Fred Dibnah (hats off please) much trouble. I can't remember what a farmer friend said he had done to a local authority wonk of that sort whom he spotted sneaking about among his buildings, but it wasn't at all nice, and he got away with it.
Edited by Lud on 26/05/2008 at 19:22
|
|
I agree on reflection that great harm has been done by the deliberate, ostensibly health-related elimination of small, (relatively!) friendly local breakers' yards and the outfit like the one in Sussex that I used to pass that sold things like Unimogs, Bren gun carriers and once, memorably, with a price tag of £10,000 (or perhaps £20,000, a large round sum anyway) a wood-fired saddle-tank narrow-gauge steam loco, goodness how I wanted it, but the thought of the cost and labour of laying the track, as well as the problem of persuading my wife's family to have the thing in their woodland made me see sense... Just as well I didn't have the money though.
|
|
|
|
|
|
