It seemed like a good idea at the time....
Discussion
So. WedgeFest. 200 miles from my place, plenty of road 'pon which things might go wrong. Probably a good idea to give the old girl the once over then. But that's enough about my relationship with my mother...
So I pulled the Esprit out of the way, cranked open the portcullis and the 390 rumbled into life. Oh no, that's just a passing train....
Now for some time I've been noticing drips of oil on the garage carpet (that's right, the woolly red thing on the floor) and have simply avoided the issue. Today I thought it might be a good idea to actually do something about it, as I don't fancy another V8 rebuild, I'm WAY too old for that sh!t...
Jacked the car up, and encountered another problem: the jack is creeping under load. So I hastily got the stands into place and crawled beneath. The car that is, not the stands...
I think the weep may be from the remote oil filter takeoff on the pump. I wiped as much oil and cack (techie term) from the V8s nether regions, the idea being that I'd be able to spot the leak more easily. Then I identified the corroded exhaust that has been blowing a bit, dragged the MIG set out and bodg... er, effected a repair. Bit bloody annoying: it's a full stainless system to a point halfway up the headers, and it's blowing where the mild/stainless joint is.
Next, I was wiping stray ATF off the transmission (it weeps from the point where the shift rod enters the box (all it needed was a seal but no, Leyland were too tight) when I relaised that the cup that retains the gearlever was loose. Hence the diabolical shifts I'd been having in the Lakes a few weeks back.. I SAID SHIFTS...
Into the cabin, out with the centre console and sure enough, the bolt tab has sheared off the cup. It's done it before; I welded it but obviously not well enough - although in fact it had snapped NEXT to the weld. So I made up a new bracket and welded it to the cup, another job done.
In the process of this I made another discovery: in the Lakes I'd had a drag with an Evo 8, during which I thought I'd broken the 'box due to a hammering through the stick in 2nd gear. Today I realised that what's happened is that the rubber bushes that mount the shift extension to the 'box are not supporting the extension correctly. The bolts are all tight, but the extension is looser than a Middlesbrough schoolie... so when you go into second (or even 4th, as I proved earlier), it drags the extension down until the front propshaft U/J is clouting it! Oh well, at least it's not the 'box.
Before I took the stands out, I thought I'd check the front suspension, and bu99er me, the n/s lower balljoint is clonking. Now I'm sure that I've replaced that at least once in the last 4 years (which is only about 12000 miles) so maybe all the donuts are taking their toll....
Finally, another problem that surfaced in the Lakes (no pun intended!): the rake adjustment lever had snapped off the driver's seat. I blame the lardy git who used to own it; evidently it dug into his ar5e-cheeks so he'd bent the lever sideways, and when Julie moved it when she was driving, the thing snapped. I had to dismantle the seat (the back comes off the base, incidentally), drill out a crimped bush, MIG the lever and reassemble in reverse order, as they say. I took the opportunity to clean all the cack from the dark recesses of the seat and mechanism, and the rake adjust is much better.
I've rounded the evening off by swapping my lathes around, just polished off a Bishop's Finger and a slice of Jamaican Ginger and now it's bedtime.
Tomorrow: balljoints.
Ian
So I pulled the Esprit out of the way, cranked open the portcullis and the 390 rumbled into life. Oh no, that's just a passing train....
Now for some time I've been noticing drips of oil on the garage carpet (that's right, the woolly red thing on the floor) and have simply avoided the issue. Today I thought it might be a good idea to actually do something about it, as I don't fancy another V8 rebuild, I'm WAY too old for that sh!t...
Jacked the car up, and encountered another problem: the jack is creeping under load. So I hastily got the stands into place and crawled beneath. The car that is, not the stands...
I think the weep may be from the remote oil filter takeoff on the pump. I wiped as much oil and cack (techie term) from the V8s nether regions, the idea being that I'd be able to spot the leak more easily. Then I identified the corroded exhaust that has been blowing a bit, dragged the MIG set out and bodg... er, effected a repair. Bit bloody annoying: it's a full stainless system to a point halfway up the headers, and it's blowing where the mild/stainless joint is.
Next, I was wiping stray ATF off the transmission (it weeps from the point where the shift rod enters the box (all it needed was a seal but no, Leyland were too tight) when I relaised that the cup that retains the gearlever was loose. Hence the diabolical shifts I'd been having in the Lakes a few weeks back.. I SAID SHIFTS...
Into the cabin, out with the centre console and sure enough, the bolt tab has sheared off the cup. It's done it before; I welded it but obviously not well enough - although in fact it had snapped NEXT to the weld. So I made up a new bracket and welded it to the cup, another job done.
In the process of this I made another discovery: in the Lakes I'd had a drag with an Evo 8, during which I thought I'd broken the 'box due to a hammering through the stick in 2nd gear. Today I realised that what's happened is that the rubber bushes that mount the shift extension to the 'box are not supporting the extension correctly. The bolts are all tight, but the extension is looser than a Middlesbrough schoolie... so when you go into second (or even 4th, as I proved earlier), it drags the extension down until the front propshaft U/J is clouting it!
Oh well, at least it's not the 'box. Before I took the stands out, I thought I'd check the front suspension, and bu99er me, the n/s lower balljoint is clonking. Now I'm sure that I've replaced that at least once in the last 4 years (which is only about 12000 miles) so maybe all the donuts are taking their toll....
Finally, another problem that surfaced in the Lakes (no pun intended!): the rake adjustment lever had snapped off the driver's seat. I blame the lardy git who used to own it; evidently it dug into his ar5e-cheeks so he'd bent the lever sideways, and when Julie moved it when she was driving, the thing snapped. I had to dismantle the seat (the back comes off the base, incidentally), drill out a crimped bush, MIG the lever and reassemble in reverse order, as they say. I took the opportunity to clean all the cack from the dark recesses of the seat and mechanism, and the rake adjust is much better.
I've rounded the evening off by swapping my lathes around, just polished off a Bishop's Finger and a slice of Jamaican Ginger and now it's bedtime.
Tomorrow: balljoints.
Ian
rev-erend said:Reminds me of the joke about the difference between choir-boys and qu33r boys [non-PC, but it loses its alliterative impact otherwise], and the one about the officer, the businessman and the priest on the Titanic - Streaky
wedg1e said:
I've ... just polished off a Bishop's Finger and a slice of Jamaican Ginger and now it's bedtime.
I'm sure there's more than way of reading this- Streaky
SOunds very dodgy...
Well, job done and I can categorically state, to conclude some uncertainty on a recent thread, that it is MOST DEFINITELY a CORTINA balljoint...£12 a pop, much to the disgust of the motor factors who were hoping it would be the £18 Granada item!
Mind you I remember when these things were only £4 each...
I decided to make a move on tarting up the front spoiler, which I repaired three years ago after the MOT man helped me to drive it into (not ONTO) the 4-poster
So off I went to the friendly local paint factors, armed with TVRs paint code. Trouble is, the car's been repainted more times than the Forth Bridge; silver every time, but several different shades. The spoiler is a different shade to the rest of the car, 'cos it's obviously had even MORE trauma than the rest of it...
On the basis that I didn't fancy trying to find a match from several HUNDRED silvers in the paint chip books, we hypothesised that maybe the spoiler was repainted using the correct code, and they mixed me an aerosol. It's the wrong fg colour. Well, it may be the RIGHT colour, but it's the wrong colour to match EITHER the spoiler OR the car 
So if you see the TVR equivalent of Joseph's technicolour raincoat at the BBWF, that'll be mine
...and now I have a new problem: the car is running like a bag of spanners. Sounds (and smells) like it's massively overfuelling; it won't idle and only runs well when I floor it. Now I suppose the answer is to floor it everywhere , but that doesn't help when you have to sit in traffic and blip the throttle, much to the annoyance of Mr. & Mrs. Numpty and their people-carrier full of sprogs.
Where did I put my matches...
Ian
Edit: dysmilexia
>> Edited by wedg1e on Wednesday 14th July 20:04
Mind you I remember when these things were only £4 each...
I decided to make a move on tarting up the front spoiler, which I repaired three years ago after the MOT man helped me to drive it into (not ONTO) the 4-poster
So off I went to the friendly local paint factors, armed with TVRs paint code. Trouble is, the car's been repainted more times than the Forth Bridge; silver every time, but several different shades. The spoiler is a different shade to the rest of the car, 'cos it's obviously had even MORE trauma than the rest of it...
On the basis that I didn't fancy trying to find a match from several HUNDRED silvers in the paint chip books, we hypothesised that maybe the spoiler was repainted using the correct code, and they mixed me an aerosol. It's the wrong f
g colour. Well, it may be the RIGHT colour, but it's the wrong colour to match EITHER the spoiler OR the car So if you see the TVR equivalent of Joseph's technicolour raincoat at the BBWF, that'll be mine
...and now I have a new problem: the car is running like a bag of spanners. Sounds (and smells) like it's massively overfuelling; it won't idle and only runs well when I floor it. Now I suppose the answer is to floor it everywhere
, but that doesn't help when you have to sit in traffic and blip the throttle, much to the annoyance of Mr. & Mrs. Numpty and their people-carrier full of sprogs. Where did I put my matches...
Ian
Edit: dysmilexia
>> Edited by wedg1e on Wednesday 14th July 20:04
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