Bleeding The Brakes, How Hard Can It Be?

This morning I thought I would go out and do some more work on the car, beeding the rear brakes. Now this isnt my first time bleeding brakes so I expected everything to go fine, ish.

I hooked everything up and let the pumping begin, after having to fill the MC twice and still getting nowhere I thought something was wrong, lool under the car and fluid is pouring all over.

I havent connected the rear passenger side pipe to the hose!!!

Get the car back on its wheel and lift the other side and set to work on the rear passenger. I decided to replace the hose but thats not straight forward as the old ome had to be cut off as it was stuck fast. So after that and fitting the new hose I connected it up only to find the bottom pipe was leaking. New pipes needed, great. Needless to say at that point I called it a day!

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Well alot has happened since I last posted including alot of things that a most likely cant remeber. The car was taken off the road about 6 months ago when the back end was stripped off and the diff seals done at Willow Triumph, I also have the rear trunions freed up. The rear U joints have been replaced and then the car was pretty much neglected and not put back together. So just before the Christmas break I managed to get some motivation and get back to work and the car was put back together and on its wheels in a matter of days. Thankfully it's been a mild winter otherwise it would still be on the axle stands. Anyway with a bit of persuasion the car roared back to life, however with no tax or MOT I cant take it for a little rise, probably a good thing as I still need to bleed the brakes.

Next to tend to are a few little holes in the boot floor and then I will have a look at pannel gaps etc.

I am however quite tempted by this kit

http://www.sammio-spyder.com/sammioncordite.html


Then comes the question; do I got for a heavy, thumping 3.5 V8 or a light revy 4AGE 1.6 (possible 20V)?

Oil Leak From Pulley

I noticed last night that I had a few drops of oil from the front near the radiator, upon further inspection it seemed it was all over the chassis and dripping from there from the timing pulley.
Not having the time to fix it I took it to Willow Triumph who confirmed this and said he could fix it today.
Radiator off, pulley off, timing cover and fan off. Timing chain and sprocket off, all re-fitted with a new gasket, seal and timing chain and its hunky dory now however I was told that I need new steering rack mounts and rear tie bar bushes so I'll get those ordered and fitted in the coming weeks.

Little and often, hopefully that's the way this project is going!

Start Of The Work 2011 - Gaskets

Welcome back and Happy New Year.

Work on the Spit' has been pretty slow at the moment, I adjusted the fuelling over Christmas only to have to do it again as I replaced an exhaust manifold stud that wasn't in so want to make sure that there wasn't an air leak.

At the same time as having the head gasket done the thermostat gasket was replaced with what I can only describe as a new paper thin gasket. Needless to say this didnt last very long, so a trip to Sportscar Supplies (Newcastle) saw me with a new gasket which you can see is considerably thicker.

Waking today I found the weather was terrible, windy, rainy and generally not nice. Leaving it until about 3 I had my chance (although I had to contend with working in the windy dark.) At the same time I also replaced the exhaust manifold/down pipes gasket (which I got from Willow Triumph) The one I took off was, erm, crispy to say the least.

All done now and hopefully work will speed up so I can get some more updates.

Head Gasket Mk 2

So after replacing the head gasket it managed a whole 8 yes 8 miles before the car died and showed symptoms of the head gasket blown again between two cylinders.
Due to work and not having the time I sent the car to a local garage that I know to be reputable. There the head was skimmed and pressure tested and head gasket replace, exhaust to manifold gasket replaced and also the water pump housing gasket replaced.
Just as I went to collect the car they discovered a small hole in the pipe coming from the back of the water pump to the heating pipes. This was at 5:00pm on a Friday afternoon, does law. 30min minutes later and a quick trip to see Tim at Willow Triumph and a replacement had been sourced and was being fitted. 30 minutes later and the car was back to life.
The next day I changed the HT leads for some red silicone replacements and using a timing light I set up the timing to 10deg before top dead centre (BTDC) the car is now running great.
Hopefully I'll get a picture of the ruined head gasket up soon.

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Busy Weekend But Still Defeated

Well after two busy days working on the car, this evening I have decided that I just cant wait until next weekend to look into it further so its going to the garage to get fixed.

I had a complete power failure a week ago and the car would no longer start and it turned out that the head gasket had gone between the first and second cylinder (the photo shows the gasket upside down.

So that was replaced along with the rocker gasket and the inlet/exhaust gasket.
As the coolant had been flushed I also filled it with Holts Speedflush ready to fix it further the next day.
I took the car for a quick drive as per the Speedflush instructions but when I arrived back home the coolant was boiling. Hmmm?

The next day the coolant was flushed and replaced with proper coolant. The water pump was checked by removing the fan and the pump from the housing to check it turned okay. The thermostat was tested by putting it in water and heated to check it opens at the desired temp (around 82degrees C) I also replaced the thermostat gasket at the same time. While the fan was off I changed the fanbelt which turned out that the old belt was only ever so slightly stretched compared to the new one but still it's changed now.

So then the radiator was flushed through with clean water, re-fitted and filled with coolant mixed 2 parts water, 1 part coolant. The coolant was Halfords Silicate (IAT) type which is the preferred type of coolant over organic acid technology (OAT) coolant which is no good for older cars.

Next on the list, replace the points and condenser. These are both straight forward, simply two screws to take the old out and new put in its place. The screw that holds down the points is what is used to set the points gap, with the red part (in my photo) of the points pointing at one of the high points of the rotor, slide the points so that the gap opens and using feeler gauges the gap is set to 0.015" and the screw is tightened.

Next on the hit list was to change the spark plugs. The replacement plugs that I bought were NGK's where as the ones currently fitted were Champion.
Obviously changing spark plugs is straight forward just make sure you use a spark plug socket as you don't want to damage them. So out came 4, 3, 2 and, wait there. I cant get into one because of the alternator. So that had to be slackened off again and the fan belt taken off the alternator pulley so I can slide it out of the way and access is gained. Surprise surprise the plug in 1 is an NGK, it would seem a previous owner/mechanic couldn't be bothered to go through that little bit of work to replace plug 1.

So now that all of that was done I started the car and all was hunky dory apart from a little water getting out of the pipe that connects that thermostat housing to the top of the radiator, no problems, to the box of spares that came with the car.

Now to reap the rewards and take the car out for a drive. No more than a 3 mile run as I wasn't sure I was even going to get back as the car had no power at all. Once back I tried to re-start so I could use my shiny new stroboscopic timing light to adjust the timing but it wouldn't start. Maybe doing it statically first? So I tried to crack the car by hand but it wasn't moving due to the compression, so out came the plugs again and I managed to turn it but couldn't see the mark so I got an assistant to turn the car over to turn the wheel a bit quicker and hopefully see it. At this point I was shot at from cylinder 4 what turned out to be coolant in the cylinder, bad news.

At that point I decided to give up, I'll be calling the garage tomorrow and hopefully get it collected.

With any look the water wont have been compressed and snapped a con rod but either way watch this space.

Replacement Starter Motor

After the AA call out, being a few hours late for work and not wanting to drive around in the other half car which has flowers on the side I decided to replace the starter motor on the Spitfire when I returned from work.
I already had a second hand starter motor which I had ordered previously from Dave at Spitfire Graveyard. I bought this when the car wouldn't start previously but started eventually with a jump. By time I was home it was cold and plenty dark but I was already committed, this job was getting done.

Car pulled under the security light and wrapped up warm I was ready to go. I unbolted the top bolt, relay wire, removed the aluminium engine guard to access the bottom bolt and as soon as that was off the starter was ready to come straight out. As you can see from the pic the two look a bit different but my brain was so frozen I thought nothing of it. Offering the new motor up to the engine it was to small! I was not happy. Straight inside E-mail to Dave to ask how to have the "mix up" corrected as soon as possible. When I went back out I had a closer look and realized mine had a fitting spacer that obviously came off and fixed the problem. Oops, now to send a rather embarrassed E-mail to ignore my previous one.

The real test came this morning when I tried to start the car in the cold. It fired straight away with no issues and the car seems to run a bit quieter strangely.

Success, now onto the next item on the list.

It would seem I spoke too soon, about a mile away from home the engine started ticking/knocking then as I pulled up it spewed coolant. I've been told a few things to check so will have to get on that one at the weekend.