[KkVaidya]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Not sure what you mean, which image are you referring to?

The hose marked in picture below:

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by KkVaidya

The hose marked in picture below.

That is the air inlet tube, from the air inlet filter to the inlet of the carburettor. If you looke closely you can see a large hose clamp, which attaches it to the carburettor.

Here you see it from a slightly different angle.




Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Yesterday I drove over to spanner mate Peter, with two carburettors and some tools in the boot!

Time to put these things back on and start up this 50 year old Jaguar.

We completed the last few jobs on the carburettors on Peter’s workbench.







Putting the carburettors back on the engine was fiddly, but not difficult:

Before:



After:



On purpose we left of the air inlet filter and a bunch of other hoses related to the emission system. We just wanted to see if after all this work, we would have fuel leak free carburettors and whether the engine would start.

So with all the important and relevant bits tightened up, Peter turned on the ignition. We could hear the fuel pump starting up, which was good. But then fuel spewed out everywhere from the front carburettor. We took the cover of the float chamber off and I adjusted the float valve arm a tiny bit, which would ensure the fuel valves gets closed properly in the up position. Worked well.

Attempt two and we pretty sure this would work, so I rolled the video camera!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GSlvEmOiGk

We were very pleased. After more than four years, we managed to bring this engine back to life. Obviously, we still need to do a lot more in terms of adjusting and finetuning. And that is before we start on the list of (many) other things still to be done on this car.

I had to leave early, because our grandson Ben was coming to stay with us for the night. And I had promised to take him on a bicycle ride, go to the play ground and eat an ice cream. So we did!



Ben loves sitting in all my cars!!

Today Peter called. He had started up the Jaguar again. Drove it to the local petrol station. (Because one tank was empty and the other was half full with four year old petrol)



He also gave the Jag a quick wash, which was really needed.



One small additional job though. During this first outing, there was a loud bang and the muffler exploded!! The engine is running very rich, so that can happen. A well, on the to-do-list!



Anyway, very pleased to have this car running again. Still lots of work to be done on the engine and other bits.

This week I will probably pop over to my friend Berndt to work on his Austin Somerset (which won’t start) and his Mini ( which won’t honk!).

Still waiting for the clock spring for my Jeep. So I can fix the horn/airbag alar and cruise control which are all not working due to the broken spring, currently under the steering wheel.

Jeroen

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

It's Weird Being The Same Age as Old People

Love the T-shirt! I guess I can relate to that

[Jeroen]

Given most of the content of this thread some of you might have gotten the impression that I am completely adverse of anything new and change in particular. Nothing would be further from the truth. Change happens to be my middle name and I am a life long self confessed nerd that will happily jump on any new technology band wagon.

Hence, it should come as no surprise that we have gotten ourselves our first EV!! I will repeat that once more; I have gotten myself an EV. I will admit, it is second hand. Well actually, probably more like third or fourth hand. Who knows, who cares. I found it online on Marktplaats, sort of the Dutch equivalent for Ebay.

Dave, the owner, had put the add on a couple of days ago. Looked fine, decent asking price and only about 25 kilometers from where we live. In my contacts with Dave I learned he had done quite a bit of work on it during recent times. A couple of important upgrades and safety features.

He told me it goes like stink!! "We have yet to run out of battery power, range is simply not an issue". "Kids love it”

It has hydraulically operated brakes, all round, ventilated discs! It has a massive 36V battery and sports six gears and a fully digital display.

This afternoon I went over to see it and take it for a test drive. Long story short, I bought it on the spot. Dave was a very pleasant guy and we conducted the whole transaction in less than half an hour.

Here we have it, with Mrs D. in the driver position!



Our very first EV. I say EV, electrical vehicle, because this is an electric cargo bike. The cargo being kiddies, more specifically our three grand children! Very precious cargo, so nothing but the best will do obviously!

The full story is as follows;

Last weekend our daughter, son in law and their two children came over to stay with us for two days. We had a lovely time. Our eldest granddaughter Bella is just over 3 years old and Lucy is just over 3 months old. I love them both dearly, but you can’t do much with babies. But Bella I can take out. So I put her on her little seat on one of my bicycles and we go for a ride and some adventures. We took the little foot ferry, went on the train, stopped at two cafe’s where they have kiddie play areas, ate ice cream, and visited two different playgrounds as well.

Also, Bella gets to eat a lot. Because no matter what time of the day, or whether she has just eaten, as soon as we leave home she says: Opa, I am hungry. Which is kiddy speak for Opa I want a nice cake, ice cream or something like that. A few weeks ago when my wife took her out she had forgotten her wallet and could not get her anything to eat. So now, when we strap her in the bicycle or car seat she will always check: Opa do you have money?

Very rewarding Opa-time!

In the evening with both grandchildren in bed, the four of us had dinner. My daughter told me I might get an email informing me I had won a bakfiets!?

Apparently, the HEMA, a sort of supermarket here, had a special action. You can nominate somebody that you believe deserves a bakfiets. My daughter had used every emailadres in her contacts to nominate herself!! Including my email!

I told her, what are you going to do with a bakfiets, I thought you did not like them much? Where are you going to put it, it won’t fit in your garden shed. She said it was for free and she would worry about the details when she (or one of us) had been informed of winning said bakfiets!

This made me very proud. My girl being very very Dutch. The Dutch and I say this with authority and proudly, are by far the cheapest people on this earth.

It is truly remarkable. One of the most prosperous nations of the whole wide world, but if somebody starts handing out free matchboxes or stickers or pens, within minutes there will be riot. People will kill to get their hands on anything as long as it is free. Everything that is ultimately bought and paid for, is discussed afterwards for generations as “way too expensive”. Dutch people never have a good deal. It was either free or it was way to expensive really! There is no middle ground.

But discussing bakfietsen made me think. We recently had our grandson Ben staying with us as well. And sometimes we have all three grand children here at the same time. So I started looking for used bakfietsen for sale in the neighbourhood. It had to be second hand. A premium bakfiets, electric, will cost more than what I paid for my Jeep!! I kid you not.

Anyway, drove over to nearby Zaltbommel, took a testdrive, had a bit of discussion with Dave, knocked off Euro 100 from his asking price and stuck it into the back of the Jeep.



With my Alfa Spider still at Marc, I have a bit of extra space in my garage. So I will be giving it a proper service. When braking it pulls a bit to the left and I also felt it was a bit wobbly. So I need to check it out properly.



Mrs. D and I are very pleased with this new purchase!

It is in very good nick. Dave had put new side panels in and also additional materials so the kids can’t hurt themselves.

Different seats for different (age) grand kids



Six speed derailleur, looks in very good condition, chain looks new.



Left brake is for both front wheels and with the little clip you lock it. So it also a parking brake!



It has what I would call a functional style, more so than an aerodynamic style.



It is surprisingly big and heavy. It weight, with battery attached, well over 45 kilograms and is almost 95 cm wide!



The little hood sits on two steel frames which can be easily removed. We believed in toughening up our grand kids, so we probably take them "top down”. Gets them used for when I start taking them out in my Spider!



Two headlights, battery operated! (Did I mention my middle name is environmental conscious?)



The “cockpit” with hand operated brakes, six speed gear lever and fully digital E motor and battery controls!



This coming Sunday Bella and Lucy are coming over so I have my work cut out for me. I also need to help my friend Berndt with his Mini and his Austin Somerset. My Jeep’s clock spring should also arrive. This retirement thing is wearing my out!

Jeroen

[aah78]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

One small additional job though. During this first outing, there was a loud bang and the muffler exploded!! The engine is running very rich, so that can happen. A well, on the to-do-list!

I used to have similar issues with my lovely 1978 Triumph Spitfire 1500.
Generally would be running very well. But sometimes, out of the blue, she'd start with a BANG!
Initially, I thought the exhaust manifold came off but over time got used to it.

One time I was driving around and smelled a faint burning odor - the wiring loom for the dashboard lights started smouldering just because I touched the dimmer.

She was a peach otherwise and I loved working on her but unfortunately, I just didn't have the time to put in the effort and had to sell her along-with a bunch of accessories that I'd purchased for upgrades.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by aah78

I used to have similar issues with my lovely 1978 Triumph Spitfire 1500.
Generally would be running very well. But sometimes, out of the blue, she'd start with a BANG!
Initially, I thought the exhaust manifold came off but over time got used to it.

One time I was driving around and smelled a faint burning odor - the wiring loom for the dashboard lights started smouldering just because I touched the dimmer.
.

Spitfires are lovely little rag top cars. Very easy to work on and spare parts availability is better than when they were new. But old cars can and will surprise you now and then. It’s part of its charm, as they say.

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Started on the few little jobs on the EV bakfiets.
Does it show I lived and worked in India?



Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Yesterday I went over to my friend Berndt to work on some of his cars. He has among others, a nice little early 80s Mini. It is due for its APK, the Dutch MOT variant. And for some reason the horn was not working. That is an immediate fail. Berndt had worked on it with another friend, but could not find the problem.

Eventually I managed to trace it to a very simple case of some corroded mass contacts.



Next we returned to the grey Austin Somerset. You will have seen this car before. We worked on it, prior to sorting out Berndt favourite black Austin Somerset Ollie. We had overhauled the fuel pump on this one, but could not get it to start for some reason. So today was all about understanding what is wrong with the grey Somerset.



As it has been a while since we worked on it last time, we just started with the basics. Do we have fuel. We took of the float chamber of the carburettor and put the ignition on. Fuel came out, so our overhaul of the fuel pump was successful! One point for old gits!



Next we concentrated on the ignition system. Here is an interesting “modification” Berndt made 10 years ago or so. He had lost the ignition key. But he had a spare ignitionlock and key. So he simply bypassed the original ones and ever since you start this car by opening the glove comportment and turning the key on this ignition barrel!



As we were checking various things, it came back to us that we had messed up the order of the spark leads. But irrespective of what lead goes where, we did not get a spark on the plugs, the leads or the contact breakers.

We fiddled about a bit, I took endless continuity and voltage measurements.

We discovered a bunch of half loose wires, corrosion etc.



Fixed it all, still would not start or even spark on the contact breaker. So we decided to pull the distributor out completely.



With it on the workbench, again we found several small problems. One thing that surprised me is we are measuring almost 15 kilo ohm across the carbon central pin that provides high voltage to the rotor inside the distributor.





Berndt had five old spare distributors and I checked every one. It appears that all modern ones have zero resistance and all older ones have considerable resistance, even up to 45kohm. I am not sure it that is normal? Anybody any experience with 70-80 years old distributors?

We had to leave it, as I needed to go home to fix our bakfiets. Next week Thursday we will continue and I will try to find some answers on the distributor.

Just a quick and final update on our bakfiets and then this thread will return to cars.

by and large, spannering on bicycles is pretty straightforward. Berndt lend me a set of his narrow spanners. Especially on pedals and axles you often need these special very thin spanners.





I found an even better position to work on the bakfiets than the typical on its side Indian position. I like to refer to this as the Dutch Position!



My main worry was the main bearing that connect the frame to the “bakje”. It is just a very simple roller bearing, much to my surprise and open type? When I checked I found the main nut holding it all together was loose!! Took all but 30 second to fix!! Very happy with that.





I also checked the two steering dampners. Removed the bolt and moved them up and down. Lots of resistance, these are both fine. Very important, makes a huge difference on how stable it will steer. I did find that they had used normal nuts on the bolts. Which is incorrect, either it will be to tight or to loose and nut will come off. I have boxed full of bolts and nuts. So I found myself the correct (self locking) ones.





Next I took out the left front wheel to fix the play on the bearing. These are traditional bicycle bearings with individual balls. Usually once you have a bit of play that means one or more of the balls have cracked. Tightening the bearing will only make things worse.

Here is where Berndt special tools came in handy. Unfortunately, it being Berdnts’ tools and Berndt being a British Car Classic enthusiast, the spanners were imperial size. But with a bit of improvisation I managed to loosen the locking nuts and adjust the bearings.



The trick is to leave a tiny bit of play in these bearings. I think these will do fine for a short while. At some point I will take them apart and overhaul them properly.

Also, one of the spokes had broken on this wheel. So I popped over to my local bicycle shop. These are very small spokes. The guy helped me out, by cutting a long spoke to size and threading it again. He had a very cool little machine for cutting the thread!!



Putting the spoke back in, meant I had to remove the rear sprocket, easy with 8 bolts.

Here you see the wheel, with the new spoke and my special spoke-tightening thingy still attached to said spoke.



Next I took both front hydraulic brakes apart. I had noticed it was pulling to the left. But the pads look pretty new, so I just cleaned both discs very thoroughly with brake cleaner and cleaned up the pads with a bit of 1000 grit sandpaper.



I also opened up the bleed valve on the right hand brake a tiny bit. It seems to have made a considerable difference. Brakes straight now. I will get myself a proper bicycle brake bleed set and some of these thin spanners. Just in case.

I took the bakfiets for a proper test run. Did about 6-7 km. runs very nicely. The electric assistance on the highest setting is phenomenal! I look forward to taking my grand daughter Bella out on it this Sunday!

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Couple of small things done on my cars and getting parts for jobs to come.

I drove over to Marc the other day to check up on my Spider. Marc is waiting for a new Air mass meter and fuel pressure regulator. That might have very well caused the running richt. Wait and see, he should have it all ready end of next week.

The key fob of the Jeep was not working properly anymore. Opening the doors worked fine, but closing not so much. So I openend it up:



Doused it in electro cleaner.



That did the trick, all is working fine again. Admittedly, not one of my most complex spannering projects, but still.

I got a call the other day my clock spring has arrived! So I took my bicycle and rode over there. Nice 65 km tour.





I will be putting in my Jeep soon. I have been talking to Peter about the Jeep and the piston slap. We decided to go ahead and open up the engine. Well, at least take of the sump so we can look inside the engine and check various bits. Taking the sump of a Jeep is quite the challenge. Not sure how we are going to do it.

I also picked up a new rear crankshaft seal from Edwin. Mine is leaking and whilst we have the sump off, we might as well replace it.



When I got back from Edwin I reversed the Jeep into my garage and drained the engine oil right away. So it is ready for the sump to come off. The other day I picked up this large plastic tray. Somebody had left it at their bin, so I took it. Perfect for catching oil under the Jeep!



Peter is coming this Friday so fingers crossed on getting the sump off and what we will find. I think it can be either the piston, bearings on the corned or the something with the rockers. We will see!

A couple of days ago I got a text from a mate of mine Niek. He had noticed a very nice scale model 1;18 of my Mercedes. I know this brand and I have a very nice Alfa Romeo Spider from them. Identical to mine! They have started producing the W123 a few years ago, but till recently never in my colour! Now they are, a limited series of a 1000 models.

So I called my model car expert friend Berndt and he ordered it for me through his whole sale channels! It might take a while to arrive.



I have also picked up a new engine!! Well, a plastic model engine. Stay tuned for more.





I’m off to see Berndt now, we are going to have another go at getting his Austin Somerset to start! Wish me luck!
Jeroen

[Jeroen]

This week a lot of fiddling with many cars!!

On Wednesday I met spanner mate and classic car valuator extraordinair Peter close to Amsterdam. He had been invited by a client of him. I sort of know him. And our dads knew each other. The guy is a complete classic car nut and has build a very impressive collection of about 22 cars. Total value close to 4-5 million Euro’s. And he is still selling and buying more.

This guy now and then throws a party for friends in his garage. Very nice, very informal, food and drinks provided. And of course endless car talk. So very nice afternoon.

On Thursday I cycled across to the next village to help my friend Berndt and his Austin Somerset, that still would not start. As you will have seen on this thread we have spend considerable time on this 70 year old car. Anybody claiming that old cars were simpler to work on, needs his/her head examined. I long for a OBD port to plug in my computers.


Actually, if you run into problems fixing anything in life, not just cars, it is often a good idea to just leave it for a while. Sometimes the solution comes to you easily when you restart an hour, day or week later. Spoiler alert, this approach failed to deliver results.

So it was back to basics. We checked and double checked we were getting sufficient fuel at the carburato. When we started the engine the spark plugs were getting wet with fuel, but it would not start. So somewhere in the ignition system something is amiss.



I had brought my trusted multimeter and I checked every connection I could think of and then some. But we were not getting spark, not on the contact breaker let alone on the spark plugs themselves.


Once again we took the distributor out to have a better and closer look.



We pulled it apart so I could also test the capacitor. You really need to perform three test with a multimeter to get a decent view of a capacitor. You always discharge a capacitor before testing. The internet will tell you you need to be very careful and use a resistor, but on these capacitors I just short circuit it with a screwdriver. If you measure ohm, initially you should see a decent value and within seconds it should rise to infinite. This one did not, it got stuck around 800 k-ohm. Which I way to low. So I never bothered with the other test. Berndt had three more similar (but not identical) distributor. Checked the capacitor of one, seemed alright and put that back in. I have no way of telling it has the correct value. The one thing my multimeter can’t do is measure capacity. (note to self; next time at HBM buy another multimeter!)



Along the way I also discovered the same problem on the capacitor sitting on the coil. I just disconnected it, because it is to minimise interference on the radio, nothing else. We were not concerned about the radio.

We spend a long time checking once again all connection on the distributor cap.



As before I am measuring about 14k-ohm across the center carbon pin. We checked a few other and measure the same. It seems odd to me, but for now I will accept that this apparently is correct.

We tested several times, in and out with the distributor, checking spark on the contact breaker and spark plugs.



On the upside, we are getting extremely good at removing and installing distributors into old Austins!

We did get some spark. I got hit twice with high voltage because I was’t paying good enough attention to what I was doing. And it was gorgeous weather. So we happily kept fiddling.



Berndt and I are both retired, so as long as our wives don’t need us, we keep playing with our cars.

In the end, Berndt also found a brand new set of contact breakers. We fitted those too.





I can’t remember when I installed new contact breaker! All my cars, including my 1982 Mercedes W123 and 1986 Alfa Romeo Spider already have an electronic ignition. And the last time I worked with Peter on his old classic Jaguar XJ6, S! we replaced the contact breaker with an electronic version.

Even so, long story short. This thing won’t start. There is something wonky going on. Lucas electrical systems are well known for incredible bad design. It all looks so easy. But honestly, from a design point of view, it is all crap. There is not a solid electrical connection in this system. At the best of times it is pretty wonky to start with.

Well, next week we might have another go!

Today, Peter came to help me on the Jeep.

I have written several times on the piston sound ominous sounds during cold start. Whereas all experts agree on two things: it is definitely piston slap and you should not do anything about it till it get really worse when the engine is hot.

Well, I am nerdy engineer, with plenty of free time and I don’t agree. So time to pull this engine open. We decided to pull the sump cover first. That would give us access to the underside of the piston, we can check for all kinds of play on the pistons, piston rods, bearing and so on. Also, the rear crankcase was leaking and I wanted that replace too and it also means the sump has to come off.

Problem is getting the sump of the 4.0L engine is a massive job. If you check some youtube video you will think it is easy enough. But all those guys have given their Jeeps considerable lifts. My susponsenion is complete stock. And then the sump gets stuck in between the engine, the front axle, track rod, steering bar and a whole bunch more.

Peter had brought his floor jack, a proper proper professional car jack. It took the two of us to lift it out of his car and carry it into my garage.



He also brought two “little stepladders” which were very convenient to work on the engine with it being lifted up. Also, I had asked him to bring various sockets I do not have, in particular imperial sizes. Believe it or not. American car manufactures standardised all their bolts/nuts on metric sizes from pretty early on. But now and then I find a bolt on this thing that is imperial. The bolts holding the sump in place for instance!



Peter also brought one of these mechanic floor boards. We found it did make it a bit easier working underneath the engine at the front. But most of the action took place further to the rear where it would just reduce your reach too much. Better to crawl on the concrete floor on your back, unfortunately.



the Haynes manual suggest a different procedure for removing the sump compared to my official Jeep Cherokee workshop manual.

Us being us, we came up with a third procedure and I will be publishing this on all the worldwide Jeep forums. For the few guys like me, who don’t have a lift on their suspension!

Unbolting the sump is straightforward enough. Getting it out from underneath is impossible. It has a very weird shape and of course, in the deep part of the sump the oil pump, suction pipe and filter also are in the way.



Haynes actually suggest to remove the bolts of the oil pump and extra the pump with suction pipe through the side. But we felt that was way to risky.



We needed to find a way to drop the axle as much as possible. That is why we had the two big jacks. We also disconnect the shock absorbers and the stabiliser bar. Finally we figured out we also had to remove the track bar. With all of that removed we managed to wiggle the sump cover out from the engine.



Here you see it in all its glory!! I was very very relieved we managed to get it out.



If you look at the number of bolts, nuts and brackets we had to undo it doesn’t look like much. This is all!



But trust me this job is a real PITA and really out to be done with the car on a hydraulic lift. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen for me. Berndt and Niek, my Alfa friend both have lifts and have often offered it to me. The problem is that we rarely know how long a job will last. This might be a bit more inconvenient, well actually for two old gits like Peter and me it is literally back breaking! But it gets the job done. And know we can move on a start diagnosing where this noise is coming from.

The good news: There were no piston skirt bits in the sump!!

Peter is returning sometime next week, I will do some trouble shooting by myself and check the internet for some more thoughts/suggestions

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Last Thursday I went over to Berndt to figure out why we could not get his little Austin Somerset to start. Spoiler alert, it is still not starting.

I had checked with Peter and looked up some information on the Lucas Distributor and I was pretty convinced that we had gotten the wiring wrong somehow.

So we pulled the distributor once more, and fixed all its wiring. Did all the electrical tests known to men.



But still no spark! We checked various other parts, swapped some more parts. But in the end I could not come to any other conclusion we have to start getting some new parts. Everything Berndt has in stock is at least 30 years old.



So Berndt has ordered some new parts which should arrive early next week and we will have another go at it. This is getting ridiculous, I don’t think I have ever had to spend this much time on a simple points-ignition!! To be continued as they say.

Berndt also helped me pickup my Alfa Romeo Spider from Marc. More on the Spider in a minute.

Yesterday I spend the whole day fiddling with my cars. Endless number of little jobs. Very satisfying, very happy fiddling with my cars all day.

First job of the day was to make another shelve to display my ever increasing number of model engine.





Next I topped up the engine oil on the Mercedes W123.



And look at this, the Spider back home!!! Very happy with it.

Marc has done a lot of work on it. He has swapped out the air flow metering unit, the fuel pressure regulator and the O2 sensor. He checked the injectors, they were all working fine. He took the Spider for several extended drive tests, with him following the Spider and giving instruction to one of his mechanics in the Spider. Looking at the smoke from the exhaust, during acceleration, engine braking and so on you can deduce a lot.

As I had mentioned earlier, we were suspecting the engine to run too rich. With too much fuel being injected into the cilinders, the engine lub oil “washes away”.
Marc also checked with the manufacturers of the piston oil scrape rings. They told him that on these rings it is not unusual to see oil usage up to 4-5000 km initially.



The whole engine is re-tuned, sounds and drives fantastic! Marc also rechecked everything in the alignment and suspension, because the Spider still has a tendency to pull to the left under hard braking. It looks like the rear axle is slightly off. Marc was going on holiday and the Spider is perfectly drivable. So we will look at this after his holiday. On the Spider the rear axle is held in place by two trailing arms and is kept centred by means of a so called Diabolo rubber on top of the differential connecting it to the chassis.

Each trailing arm has two large rubber bushings pressed into them. Over time these rubbers all wear out. We could not detect any real play, but it is probably best to swap both arms and the Diabolo rubber. I will do this job myself with Peter.

We did this same job on both our Spider more than 20 years ago. We managed to do both Spiders in one afternoon, working in front of Peter’s then home near Amsterdam. We hope we haven’t forgotten!!

Before I took the Spider I had taken everything out of the Spider’s boot. I carry quite some tools and parts and I might have a need for some it, whilst the Spider was at Marc’s. So a good moment to sort out everything and put it back into the Spider.



My Spider tool kit and box of many useful bits.



Not sure if I had shown this nifty little device already. A foldable, silicone funnel.





Checked all the various diagrams and so I have with me in the Spider. These days we can always look up all our manuals online. I keep everything in the cloud. But some stuff is best to have on you.



I love going through all the tools, bits, parts and so on. Very relaxing, always brings back many memories of places we went to (and where we or somebody else needed some spannering)

This is the absolute minimum I have onboard the Spider always.



There is also this secret hidden compartment that will be filled to the brim when we go on long drives, with more stuff.



I also had a quick rummage through my main spares and stock cupboard. I more or less know what I have, but it is good to go through everything now and then to refresh my memory. I also needed to find some parts for the Spider to take with us to Scotland in 6 weeks time. And find the various parts we were going to need on the Jeep.



Main parts for the Jeep, sump gasket and valve cover casket. I knew I had them somewhere.



I had also cleaned out my wardrobe earlier this week. Which means I have some more rags! It took me about an hour to cut all my shirts into proper size rags, cut aways zippers and buttons and so on. well stocked on rags again!!



Fired up my compressor and checked the tire pressure on all our cars (5 cars, that is 25 tires, including spares)

I had noticed a little problem with my old trusted multimeter. It has this little foldable stand. It had broken off. Real shame, because having your multimeter sitting at an angle is very convenient.



So I made myself two new metal pins to replace the plastic bits that had broken off. Lathe to the rescue!!



Very simple shape, took all but two minutes on the lathe.



I drilled tiny pilot holes in the little plastic stand. Used my very old propane burner (at least 40 years old) to heat up the pins and pushed them in place.





All done, looking good!!



Put everything back together and good as new. Dare I say it, better than new?





I love fixing these old things. Very rewarding. I have at least 6-7 digital multimeters, but this one is my favourite. For no other reason, I have owned it the longest. I am not quite sure how old it is, but I think I bought it when I was in my teens and still working on my electric model railway!

[Jeroen]

When I was all done I realised one important item was still missing from the Spider. Our official Dutch Alfa Romeo Spider Register umbrella. This is an important part of our standard Spider kit.

I searched everywhere and could not find it. I thought I might have left it in the Spider and maybe it got left in Marc's workshop. I went back into our home to call him. As I opened the kitchen door I noticed it in the umbrella stand (where else).

Notice this umbrella has a special shape, rectangular.



It is the perfect fit for a spider. As you know we aways, and I mean always drive top down. As long as you are driving the rain, snow, sleek will blow over the cockpit. But in case you have to stop, say for a red light, you will get wet. That’s when you break out the umbrella like so:



Mrs. D is in charge of umbrella deployment when we are out on the road. She is very good at it. The most important part is to very quickly take it down as my foot hits the accelerator. Or it will be acting like a drag-chute!!

I also had to tackle a bit of a messy job. Cleaning up the sump cover of the Jeep.

Which means lots of chemical cleaning first.



I managed to get all the dirt and grime of the in- and outside. Used my pneumatic wire wheel to rough it up a bit and remove some rust. Cleaned it all with brake cleaner and took it outside for a bit of painting.



As is tradition, I am using Hammerite spray paint on it. I checked it can handle temperatures up to 160oC. If my engine oil ever gets that hot, I have more serious trouble than paint peeling of the sump!!



Three coats applied, each 15-20 minutes after each other.

Before and after!!



Gave the little flex plate the same treatment



Checked my new versus old bolt and cleaned up the nut to go with this bolt. These bolts are so called 10.9 quality. That is a little higher quality than normal bolts. These 10.9 bolts have higher strength and tend to used to bolt things down with high torques, such as steering boxes and in this case the Jeep’s track rod.

I usually replace them rather than re-use them, better safe than sorry.



I also cleaned all the tiny bolts, studs, nuts and rings from the sump. Put them all in the sonic cleaner.





We will need to re-install all these bolts and studs lying on our back underneath the Jeep. So better make sure all of them turn easily!!

This is what it is all about. Doing some checks on the pistons, cilinders and bearings. also replacing the rear crank seal.



I am waiting for Peter to arrive as I am typing up this post. Wish us luck!!

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Yesterday spanner mate Peter arrived promptly at 09.30. We always start with a coffee and catch up a bit. Today we wanted to accomplish at least two things on the Jeep.

Replace the rear crank seal and once and for all, figure out if this engine does have piston slap and if so, which piston is doing the slapping!

First thing we had to remove the main cap bearing brace. This is sort of a strong strip of metal bolted to all main bearing. You need to undo all 14 nuts and it comes off very easily.



Here we are looking up into the engine. On the right the front, you can also still see the balancer (and front crank shaft seal) I replaced a few months ago. You can also see the cam rollers.



The lubrication engine oil pump. You can also spot the starter motor. We had to remove it to get the sump off, but we did not disconnect the wiring, so it is hanging vertical next to the engine from a piece of string!



Here we are looking at the rear end of the engine. We can see the so called flex plate and the starter gear on it. Notice the starter motor on the left. Notice the bolt in the flex plate? These were the flex plate bolts and I had checked them myself a few weeks ago. We decided to recheck them. With two persons it is a little easier. Peter could turn the engine from the front and fix it whilst I tightened all five flex bolts.

You can also see the last bearing cap. This needs to come off to extract the seal. Simply undo two nuts and wriggle a bit on the bearing cap.



A closer up look at the rear bearing and flex plate



Me underneath the Jeep. I would end up spending hours and hours underneath the Jeep.



With the bearing cap removed. You can still see the upper half of the seal in the top part of the bearing case. The procedure is to take a small punch and punch it out. I have read about this several times. Most people experience the seal to be very stuck. So you really need to whack it hard, once it moves it comes out easily, but the tricky part is to break it free.



Here you see the main bearing cap on the workbench. The lower half of the seal is still inside. You can also see (part of) the brace. (It has already been cleaned here)



This is how many of these rear crankshaft seals work. They tend to be two halves, because obviously you can’t just hook a circular seal onto the rear side of the crankcase. (You can on the front of course, with the balancer removed).



First we decided to check for piston slap. Just to re-iterate; Piston slap is generally caused when the cold running clearance (piston-to-wall clearance) is large enough that when the piston rocks from side to side in the bore it “slaps” the side of the cylinder and causes noise.

This particular Jeep engine is well known for this phenomena. It is caused by excessive wear on the piston. In my case you can clearly hear it on a cold start, but when the engine is properly warmed up it is completely gone. We have checked the compression and also checked the insides of all cilinders with my little mini camera, but could not find anything.

It is not uncommon for the pistons on these Jeep engine to break the skirt of the piston. That was definitely not the case on mine. We did not find any debris in the sump.

Usually piston slaps occurs on the cilinder number 6 or 5. Because these are the cilinders furthest away from the cooling liquid pump. So they have, relatively, speaking, the poorest cooling.

I did not take any photographs of us checking for piston slap. But it is very simple with the sump off. I took two very large screwdrivers and stuck them inside the piston, one on each side of the crank. And then I just push one and the other to see if I can detect any wobbly movement in the piston. We did this in various piston positions and different pistons, with Peter cranking the engine.

It was very obvious I have a tiny weeny bit of wobble on the last piston, nr 6. It was very difficult to see, but I could definitely feel it.

So we decided to take a break, have another coffee and talk through our options. The fact remains that this piston slap is very minor and goes with the engine properly warmed up. Almost all Jeeps suffer from a bit of piston slap. Many with far less mileage on them then mine.

There is only one remedy for piston slap. Replace the piston. According to the official Jeep procedures, you are supposed to replace all piston and not just one. But I have seen and read enough to be fairly confident, we can replace just one.

Taking the cilinder head of the Jeep is supposed to be very easy. This engine has an underlying camshaft. So no issues with timing gear, chains and so on. But if you take the head of a 25 year old engine off, that has done well over 320000km it is naive to think that is going to be an easy job. One or two of the head bolts stand inside the cooling liquid to name one potential disaster area.

Also with the piston out, it still remains to be seen what the inside of the cilinder will look like. Going by what we know and have seen so far, it should not be to bad and I should be able to hone it myself. Replacing the piston rod from the old to the new piston rod requires some special tooling and knowledge. Neither of which I or Peter have.

In the end we decided to just replace the rear seal and leave everything as it is. We have at least diagnosed the noise to be piston slap, we now also know it is cilinder/pistion 6 and we can see no other visual problems on the cilinder and or piston as far as we can se.

I am going to talk to a few Jeep engine overhaulers. See and hear what their experience is with taking the head off and replacing a piston. We will replace this piston in the not so distant future. We know exactly how to take the sump off. We have invented our own procedure for that, so we are happy with all of the outcome so far.

Before putting anything back together we needed to do a lot of cleaning.





Peter took care of all the bits we had taken off and I dived under the Jeep once more to clean the mating edge of the sump and the bearing cap.

Peter did an outstanding job on the bearing cap and the brace and all the bolts and brackets.



It is really important to clean all surfaces extremely well. Whatever seal or gasket you put in, it won’t seal, or will start to leak very quickly if the surfaces aren’t clean. We probably spend the better part of an hour and a half to get everything clean.



We checked the official procedures for fitting the seal and the sump gasket. It also requires the odd dolup of liquid gasket. I was convinced I had the correct liquid gasket. Could not find it. I did find a tube of some sort, but it had hardened. Luckily the car parts shop 10 minutes down the road from us was still open. As soon as the guy handed me the liquid gasket I recognised the shape, it was not a tube and I knew where I had put it. Sure enough when we came back home with the new liquid sealer, I walked straight into my garage and picked up the old liquid gasket.



The official procedure for installing the sump and gasket calls for special dowels. Which we did not have. It made sense to do it this way. But all the threads on this engine appear to be imperial. And I have many many many bolts and nuts in stock, but all metric!! So we skipped that.



You do need to think it through up front on how you are going to re-install everything. Once you place the dolups of liquid gaskets on the surfaces you need to get going.

We took the sump gasket out of its package and had good look at it. It is sort of soft plastic and it has little aluminium spacers inside the holes.



We decided on the following procedure. First put the sump back underneath the engine. Leave it to rest on the axle. Put the gasket on top of the sump and push the sump upwards to the engine and put all bolts in.

If you read my earlier post you know it took us a long time to figure out how to take sump off. So we were ready for another fight with it. But it went back underneath in less than a minute!!

Seen from the side



Seen from the front



Do you notice which I just happened to notice??? Yep, we forgot to put the bearing cap brace back on!! So off comes the sump one more time. We were lucky to have spot it before we had put the gasket on and tightened it all down!!

We bolted the brace back on, torqued all nuts to correct spec. Shoved the sump back in over the axle (We are getting pretty good at this now). Positioned the gasket. Put the liquid gasket in place and lifted the sump, with the gasket in place up. To make life a little easier on us, we put one of our jacks underneath the sump to hold it in place, pressing very lightly to the engine block.



We checked all the bolt holes for clearance, correct positioning and the correct orientation of the gasket. Looked really good, so put all the bolts and studs back in. We could not figure out where the studs went. We forgot to take some good images. There are a few studs that hold various brackets. We just wanted to finish the main job, so we left that for me to figure out another time.

Lots of tools out!!



With the sump properly tightened and all bolts and studs torqued correctly we poured the engine oil back in. I mounted the starter, very straight forward.

Earlier we had taken all six spark plugs out. This allows for much easier turning of the engine. I decided to start the engine without the spark plugs and the ADS relais pulled as well. This allows the lub oil pressure to build up properly without the engine firing up.

Oil pressure came up nicely, so Peter put the spark plugs back in.



Jeep started fine, idled fine and of course we heard the piston slap too! i still have to finish up a few small jobs. We concentrated on all the jobs that would take the two of us to complete. So tomorrow I will probably finish up all the remaining things. Next is a test drive and to check we have no more engine oil leaks!

It took us all day, working from 09.30 till 17.30 with a few coffee and a lunch stop. Hard work for two old, not so agile anymore, gits. I must have gotten underneath the Jeep and crawled out again a billion times, if not more!!

But very pleased with ourselves. Mrs. D could not believe we got ourselves so dirty and sweaty without fixing the piston slap!

[Thad E Ginathom]

Hah! Peter with the dead-blow hammer, Jeroen with a very serious pair of pump pliers: dangerous men!

I did a tiny job on my Polo yesterday. The clips had broken off one dashboard ventilator, metal over melted-plastic posts: the plastic posts had broken away. I used a combination of superglue and sodium bicarbonate, which turns the runny glue into an instant-setting gap filler. Not a neat job. And, although it has survived the tension on the clips during refitting, I doubt that it will survive the road. Never mind: the new unit is 5k Rs, it is worth trying.

But I could not help thinking of the painstaking work that you do, on a daily basis!

I wonder what glue you would have used? I do have JB Weld, but it would have been almost impossible to apply pressure while it set. It would have been less brittle than my superglue mix. What do you think?