Starting to re-visit things now.

May 22nd 2016

So far the work on the car has been just been re-newing things, repairing things and re-fitting them. Except the alternator and water pump which are new installations really.

Water Pump changes

I was concerned that the new water pump position was too high and would lead to air locks in the coolant. I took it off and tried it all ways to find a position to mount it lower down. The distributor is the big problem as it is in the way. The best option was to rotate it about 100 degrees clockwise and have the bottom hose from the rad curl around the distributor to reach the inlet. This meant getting the outlet pipe altered, but it now leads straight down to the engine block connection, which is an improvement.


This is the new position with the inlet below the pump body. You can see I have cut down the radiator shroud, moving the rad forward, to give clearance to the nose of the water pump. This involved fitting a new electric fan which is slimmer than the original, because the other one didn't fit anymore.

The inlet hose curls around the (old and knackered) distributor

This isn't the end of this story, but more of that later.

Front axle mounted

I got the front axle back on with all the new spherical end joints, and boots on the rack and stuff. Getting the mudguard stays re-aligned so the mudguards covered the wheels was a bit tough as they were solid bar, not tube.

Sump

In passing, you may notice the sump is bright and shiny.

This wasn't always so. In fact it was a gungey mess and had some oily gungey mess in one spot which led me to think it had a leak.

Cleaning it up showed some brazing on the original extension to the rear of the sump, but also some "dob".

Dob is usually used to stop a leak until later. In this case it seems to be very much later.

The wire wheel showed it to be car filler. Not my favourite solution to oil leaks.

Removing that showed a minute leak at the end of the run of braze.

Not the end of the world, but now it was off, it needed fixing. 

I don't have brazing gear myself and neither does anyone I know well. So I made a MIG repair and actually got it to seal. Braze and MIG welding don't really work together. 

It held a cupful of petrol in the sump overnight with no signs of leakage, so that'll do for me.

So, a bit of paint and a mysterious bit of angle iron at the front and it was ready to go back.

This is where it was going to fit . Nice to see it was pretty clean in there. The colour of the oil I took out didn't lead me to expect that. 

There does seem to be a welded repair on the right of the oil pump, but I'm not asking why. There's no-one to tell me anyway. Neither was I going to crack the big-ends to look at the bearings as we all know where that leads to. It has nearly 80 psi when cold and that'll do for me. 

It's nice to see the pick-up pipe extended to the back of the sump extension. Good for avoiding oil starvation thrashing up steep hills.

You can also see the vertical legs, which I attached to the new engine mounts. They will support the sumpguard, when fitted.

So now you can see what the angle iron on the sump is for. It will support the front end of the sumpguard. I reasoned that as the thin steel sump had been taking point-impacts for 40 years the spread load of the weld securing the angle and the alloy guard would give the sump an easier life.

That's my theory.

(You get quite a good idea of the new engine mounts in this shot)

Sumpguard

As we have seen the front mounts I may as well describe the fitting now. 

The two mounts at the front will take the main impacts. The guard will continue to the tailshaft of the gearbox with more mounts there, attached to the tailshaft mounts on the chassis. This will leave quite a long unsupported section of the alloy guard, but at that part of the car it's more to do with "sliding over" things than bouncing on them. If I'm wrong I can add more mounts later.

The "U" shaped bit here is what carries the tail shaft and is bolted to the chassis at each end (It's not bolted up tight in this shot so the nylocks are not gripping)

I've added the two legs to bolt the alloy sumpguard plate to.

This is the plate 

The nice gentle curve was achieved by parking my car wheel on one end and lifting the other end of the plate up!

And this is it in place....

You can see a small kick-up at the rear end as well (same technique). This is to help prevent catching the back end of the guard when reversing off things.

At some point someone has coated the underside of the gearbox in a rubbery paint. Possibly to help protect it against damage? I'm not into scraping paint off gearboxes. Maybe later.

This is how it is fitted at the front. The very front edge is behind and above the axle and should never come into contact with anything.

Moving on.  The back brakes.

The brakes I took off were very poor.  The pads had come away from their backing plates and the discs were badly rusted, which I mentioned in the first post in the blog last December.

I was going to get Green Stuff pads from EBC, but refurb costs are spiralling now and some unused, old stock, standard pads on eBay came winging their way to me for £5 including postage. At £40 less than EBC pads, I just couldn't say no.

eBay has been a wonderful resource for this job.

Cleaning the calipers and a touch of matt black paint made it all seem clinical at the back end.

The discs (£10.70 on eBay) are also 2mm thinner than the Ford spec discs. That makes putting the new pads in and fitting quite a bit easier. 

Even the bleed nipples came undone easily! See those wheel studs? Too short. I needed some more. 

You may have spotted a body panel fitted as well in this shot. It's got to the stage where I need at least the back ones on to fit things to.

This progress meant that I was also ready to mount the fiddle-brake levers, along with their new 0.625" master cylinders.

Before

Without all the pipery for the remote reservoir they look a lot neater.

More shiny panels 'round't back. (And some new Veale Industries mudguards.)

All looking a bit fresher looking

That's a point: The exhaust

One thing that was obvious when I got the car was that the manifold branch pipes from the Imp manifold we absolutely jiggered. 

The Imp manifold is in reasonable condition, but after that it's a bun-party of solder, braze and exhaust paste holding together some fresh air.

I spent quite a time trying to find some 30 degree mandrel bends in 30mm pipe. Not easy and not cheap. Then whilst rummaging in my "spares" pile I came just what I needed. Together with a "Y" piece I begged from an exhaust centre (not brand new) I managed to make some longer manifold pipes. I would have liked to lengthen the primary pipes as well, (for better torque) but didn't want to mess about with what is probably quite an efficient Imp header.

The pipe bends were a great find, can you guess what it is yet?

Of course. They are wheelbarrow handles. I had a spare wheelbarrow frame stacked against the wall.

The outlet on the silencer must have been strangling the engine. It was just 1", with a right angle bend

So I cut that away and used a bigger swept bend I had in my "useful items" pile.

So. here it is.

Well that's it for the moment. 

Sorry about all the pics. If you connection is steam-driven it will have been a bit slow to load.

I still have the wiring to touch on, which includes a new distributor, and more on the cooling system front.

Oh, and the trailer.

Here's a taster....