Ah, November 2010...remember it well. Well, actually I don't, do you? What happened then?
Over at IL, the last lumping around for a while when the container contents got moved to the Dutch barn. Another chassis job and work starts on reinstating Rover after her engine went kaput in a spectacular way...
Over at Central, several of the fleet receive a good fettling and Matt calls an Essex DAFs monthly meeting. It went well but we've since struggled to get everybody together on one day, so that has fallen by the wayside, shame. The bunting came out in the parts barn and museum and is still there to this day.
Ooh, and The Mushy Vee arrived too...little did we know about her future fate and the rust that lurked beneath...
First posted 7th November 2010Hello all, and welcome back to the badlands and this time I'm a happy Grinder!
Saturday was to see a return to Island Landrovers for yours truely. As you'll recall, there was a small matter of emptying a 40' container of Landrover spares into Martin's new dutch barn which, together with the chassis job he's working on at the moment will allow space to get Rover in for her engine swap.
Talking of which, the chassis job is going well. It's certainly at the rolling stage now and Martin has painted up the axles and installed new brake lines. The customer has opted to replace the suspension, with new shockers and parabolic springs/new shackles. It's all looking rather nice.
I took the train over and Martin collected me from the station. There was some tea and sarnies before work could commence. Then a good customer, Paul (of the pheasant hunting fame) turned up.
He's a nice chap and bought with him an Essex firework. Basically you take the gunpowder from a katherine wheel, pack it into a kinder egg shell, insert fuse and tape the lot up with gaffer tape. You then bury it in a heap of sand and gravel, light and retire! I missed the actual explosion but if your speakers are on then you get the idea. Don't try this at home kids!
Welcome to fireworks, Essex style! ;D
Tomfoolery over, we cracked on with moving stuff. It doesn't look like much but the chassis is unbelievably heavy and cumbersome. The axles at the rear of the container incredibly heavy too. Most of the heavy stuff was winched out by the landie and put on a pallet lifter. It was pretty back breaking stuff though.
There was a lot of small stuff to move too. It took an age. Strangely, in the darkness I was suddenly aware of not being alone. I turned around to find that a golden retriever had wondered into the container and was stood looking at me. Quite surreal!
Eventually though, we got the container emptied.
The barn earlier, before we started:
And how it finished. I was to make it home about 10pm Saturday night. This morning every muscle in my body ached.
Up in Essex North, work continued on Dan's 55 coupe. The electrics are still an enigma. All is fine in the daytime but the headlamps at night soon drain the battery. All seems fine with the alternator and the battery is receiving what the alternator is pumping out. Dan's been through the wiring to and from alternator and battery, voltage regulator amongst other things. As soon as the lights go on the battery drops to 11V, so now a bad earth in the headlamp circuit is suspected and is worthy of further investigation.
Meanwhile, over at Central, Matt started work on Laura. Fear not, the dragster look is for a reason. Matt's not contemplating tubbing the inner arches and fitting oversized wheels...
...it was all to get to this...
...to allow him to remove this...
...and fit a replacement.
The job is pretty much finished except for a slight alignment tweak to the back box and re-fitting of the exhaust rubbers.
Once that job is finished Matt will turn his attention to the non-existent brakes. That will just leave the welding before she can return to the road. Thanks Howard for sending the spare keys and papers.
Matt also found time to put new HT leads on the blue 66 saloon.
Today was to see Matt and Dan head to Essex South to look into Gavina's rough running. Having drunk the obligatory tea and discussed all things Daf, our attention turned to the sulking Gavina. As suspected the fault lay with the points. I had replaced these before getting feeler gauges so an adjustment was needed. Whilst at it, the spark plugs were removed, cleaned, re-gapped and reinstalled.
Problem fixed, I took her for a test drive down to the local supermarket as I also needed to stock up on No 1s. Matt and Dan followed me in Goldie.
Although I didn't take her over 30mph as the roads did not permit it, she does feel much better now and I am quite happy that she is running nicely. So, I'm a happy Grinder.
Dan shows his approval of J. Sainsbury...
Well, that's all for now.
Cheese,
33G.
First posted 17th November 2010Hello all. I make it badlands o'clock, so once again a hearty welcome back to our weekly round-up of what's been happening in our region of Dafland.
Well, Saturday was to see Essex Dafs try to amass as many members as possible to Central. Regretfully Andy and Hadyn were unable to attend due to other commitments, but we still managed to get six of us together, and I think it's fair to say that a good day was had by all.
I arrived at Central just after 1pm to a bit of a traffic jam. Needless to say Matt was there in Goldie and Ken had arrived, keen as ever just in time for Matt's first tea of the day! ;D There was also a brace of Fiat 500s, Eric's lovely 'TOY' Abarth and Steven Ball's courtesy car from the local Fiat dealership who managed to dent the bumper of his Punto during a routine service.
It was total gridlock!
There was much tea and banter drunk and we all got on with some Daffing.
Ken continued work on Passionwagon. In preparation of the forthcoming welding the homespun interior had to be partially removed to grant access to the fuel tank which was removed before I arrived.
That's the nice clean topside you can see in the photo, but the underside is quite clean too. There is a dent in it and the plan is to use compressed air to try and pop it out again.
Of course, the fuel was emptied out first. Yes, this picture is of the fuel, not the oil!
That done, I got on with stripping some of the sealant from the rear of the panels surrounding the cut and Ken cleaned up his cut lines from his last visit.
Matt continued work on Laura's exhaust and managed to finish it, all but connecting up the central cotton reel rubber. Later Matt and Dan were to start investigating her lack of brakes. They started at the back and saw that she could really do with new brake cylinders. They also found that she must be any early 66 as she has drum front brakes. Perhaps she may be tax exempt even?
I continued work on Snowdrop's engine and built up the clutch. Then Dan arrived and bought some of the parts haul with him which we stashed away into the parts store where I was working on Snowdrop's engine.
It was at that point that I was having trouble lining up Snowdrop's clutch drum. There was much head scratching by myself, Dan and Eric. It was only when we looked closer that we found the clutch shaft was bent. It was then we realised we'd been trying to fit Dilly's clutch drum which had been replaced at the Spectacular after finding it was bent!
;D
Luckily Matt had one more left and that proved to be a little bit of a tight fit. In the end there was much greasing of the shaft and we had to put in with a fair bit of persuasion...
Eric and Dan finished off whilst I drunk more tea and scraped more underseal from Passionwagon. Meanwhile Snowdrop's clutch drum was then bolted onto the block and once done all the clutch spline was free to rotate nicely. There's just the clutch housing to heat exchanger bolts to finish the job.
In between all of this Ken tried out some of his valeting kit on Passionwagon's dashboard and really brought some of the sparkle back. I've seen that little blue bottle in use first hand Joe and yes, it does produce some great results! Ken gave Snowdrop the blue bottle treatment and she now has a dazzling dashboard.
By then we were starting to loose the light and so it was that our Daf/Fiat/Hyundai convoy headed down the road to The Old Courthouse Inn for a shandy and more Daf talk. We couldn't all park together so I only took a Daf photo, strange that...
It's not often we get to have a beer together and being that there are now eight of us, Matt thought it was high time. Not everybody had met each other (and that still remains the case with Andy and Haydn), and a good hour was spent at TOCI. Many Daf matters were discussed and it was decided that we should have one day a month when we are all able to go to Central, play Dafs then have a pint and a natter. Of course, anyone is welcome to return as often as they like!
Still, a great day was had by all and a commemorative photo taken of the super six (well, the fabulous five really as Stephen Balls nominated himself as photographer being allergic to camera lenses ;D)
All too soon it was time to depart, so we bid our farewells and trundled home.
Sunday was to see Matt back at Central 'flying the flag' for Daf. Ok, yes, it was us. The crazy price isn't so bad when the cost is spread amongst a group and besides, they will look good outside the barns at the next Essex weekend.
We would have thought the DOC would have bid for a club stand - perhaps they have some already...
Still, it would be rude not to hang them out. There was enough for one side of the parts barn....
As well as in the museum.
This will be enough to cover the front for our next event and left two pieces over, one of which will be going up at Essex South sometime soon. The forth bit has gone for a burton, just where did it go to.... ?
Matt also found time to finish building up Snowdrop's engine.
It is now residing in Snowdrop's embrace, awaiting installation.
Matt then turned his attention to racking out the Norfolk spares. There was a fair amount of toot in there, like an exhaust doing a swiss cheese impersonation, but some good stuff amongst that lot too. Having the spares barn nicely organised gone are the days of just finding a space. Everything has to be racked out properly, but the barn is far better for it.
The 66 seats weren't great, but the drivers one, aside from being a little grubby only had one hole so this was swapped for Animal's driver's seat which was well overdue for replacement!
Well, that's about all our news for now!
Cheese,
33G.
First posted 23rd November 2010Welcome back all to our weekly round-up of the happenings of Essex Dafs this past weekend.
My weekend was to start early as I had taken Friday off work to start work on Rover's engine swap. Work didn't start until 3pm when we hitched Rover onto Martin's trailer and then there was some running around to get a helicoiling tool and on to the fastner shop to get some bolts to match. These for helicoiling the replacement engine's pulsair cylinder heads. An emissions kit would have attached through these holes and we planned to helicoil them and put in some bolts with threadlock. Then we get to the fastners shop and they don't have the bolts to match the thread.
So we buy their fastner kit as time was against us and they had bolts which matched the thread pitch of
their tool (half the price of the other retailers now useless tool which we had bought).
Anyways, over to Island Landrovers where Martin tells me that project Greenie needs moving to the Dutch barn. Grab the air line, put air in the tyres whilst Martin changes her battery for a good'un. No start. So, out with farm jack, bump Greenie's back end around until she's facing the roller shutter. Get Landrover, winch Greenie out. Eventually we managed to tow start her and get her in the barn. Then there was a rolling chassis to move about. All back breaking work and why is it, when there is a slope outside your workshop door it has to be sloping the wrong way? ;D
So work commenced at around 11:30 Friday night. Martin got to Helicoiling the heads which he completed, whilst I removed the bonnet (with Martin's assistance, Rover bonnets are rather heavy and cumbersome), radiator, disconnected electrics, inlet manifold and exhaust, we were both going great!
By which time it had turned 3:30am on Saturday morning, so we decided to call it a night, erm morning then...
Needless to say I didn't have too early a start on Saturday, but went back early afternoon to resume battle. I turned up just in time to see the couriers waiting for an extra pair of hands to offload another galvanised chassis. Yes, Martin has a second chassis job on, except this one needs to be completed within a week!
Hence the need the previous afternoon to get the vehicles moved about. We really needed to crack on with Rover and kick her @rse out the workshop on the pronto. Once Martin and I and the two couriers wrestled the chassis out of the back of the van. God are they heavy!
Eventually we cracked on and got the engine and gearbox separated and the engine mounts off. Sorry for the lack of photos by the way, I was really going for it and didn't want to stop for anything (even tea!
).
Now the engine has been pulled is a good time to start taking some photos, I'm on the homeward stretch...or so I thought.
Out with the old, in with the new?
The old engine is the pile on the right, the new on the left and awaiting parts to be swapped over. I've got a good feeling about this engine. Look how clean that valley is, it looks like it's been acid dipped. The shafts and rockers are clean too and how about that timing chain. The oil seals and core plugs look new too. She turns over on the crank lovely. It's like somebody has done the work and never used it.
And that, fellow Daffers (and perchance Rover fans) is as far as we got. The reason? Well, we all know that the engine broke, but we didn't know what the damage was, until we pulled the engine. Hmm, that flywheel looked p!ssed.
Further examination showed that the crank must have snapped and the flywheel end come upwards causing a half inch long crack in the block eminating from the oil seal. We then discovered that as well as committing hari kiri the selfish barsteward had damaged the gearbox input shaft. So now I need a new gearbox also.
Rover was pushed out onto a grassy area in the company of the trailer which brought her there, and she remains there to this day, awaiting a gearbox replacement. I think I've sourced another LT77 which is meant to be in good condition but minus its bellhousing and gear lever extender so I'll have to swap them off mine. Deep joy...so the end of tinkering for the weekend for me.
Matt has had better luck over at Central. Snowdrop was receving her attention on Saturday. She has swapped places with Mimi to be easier to pull into and out of the museum. It's only right too, as she will be the next one to return to the road.
Matt's finished bolting up her engine Ken, when did you say you were coming back?
Then Matt's attention turned to the exhaust. We knew the front box needed replacing and we do have one replacement, but it needs a bracket welding.
The rest of the exhaust isn't looking that great either. Matt thinks he can sort out a rear box, has anyone got a central section they could spare her?
Matt also got around to sorting out her number plate mount. I'm afraid the number plate is not up to much Ken, you'll need to invest in another, sorry. Still, it's not all bad news, as Matt has replaced the rear bumper for you.
Before:
After:
They were then put away for the night, Mimi nose first but she did park under her own steam.
Sunday I was too busy feeling sorry for myself but Matt and Dan paid a visit to the new Essex Dafs overflow facility. Andy met them down there.
Ladies and Gentle Daffers, may I introduce you to one of the three new Dafs to recently join our fleet, the Volvo 66 affectionately known as 'The Mushy V'. ;D
I don't know all of the details on this one but I'll do a photo feature for a future Essex Dafs post. She is fairly solid and straight. There are a couple of rusty spots, there's a little bit on the trailing edge of the boot and this little bit here, but nothing nasty.
There's a couple of little things, all easily fixed.
She's without ticket but Matt thinks it won't take long to get her back on the road. She was not a runner due to a suspected faulty fuel pump. Matt had brought a replacement and that was swapped over. Animal loaned her battery and she was turned over, but from a fuel can as the tank seemed to be empty.
A charged battery and a fuel can of fuel, plus the customary brake and exhaust work should see her fit for the road again.
Next weekend I plan to stay away from Rover. Hopefully I will have a better weekend to report as I will be playing Dafs (if it doesn't snow!).
Well, I guess that's all for now,
Cheese,
33G.
First posted 29th November 2010Thanks John!
Welcome back all to the weekly round-up of the world that is
Before I continue I should mention that Matt's mobile has gone on strike with regards to texting photos, so I apologise in advance that there are lots of non-DAF photos, should anyone feel mortally offended.
Christmas comes once a year, and as a strange simily due to NHS penny pinching so do dental check-ups. Personally I've seen no need to change dentist, even when I've moved house several times since I was first on my dentist's patients list at the age of six. Now the practice is half an hours' drive from home and even with an early appointment I would feel like I would be taking the berties, the time I would arrive at work. Therefore I always elect to take the day off work (as I did on Friday) and I always have things to do which I have previously deferred to 'dentist day' in a half hearted and non-backsided way of making myself get around to doing things.
Said things were completed in the morning before I left for the dentist in Gavina. I arrived there safely enough and it must be said (touching wood as I do, as talking of her in such a manner always promotes an unhealthy belief in superstition) she has been running rather well of late. Yes, she has the odd mis-fire and the exhaust is mildly blowing somewhere, but these are all character building qualities and only add to her ample charms. I was only mentioning to Matt today the irony, in that I bought Gavina for the commute to and from Martin's (Island Landrover) workshop for Rover's conversion from 2600 auto to 3500 manual. At that time she had problems so I mothballed her for later and bought another cheapo for the commute. Now Rover's engine has gone pop she is finally doing the job she was bought to do, albeit belatedly. But hats off to her, she hasn't missed a beat (well, not too many anyhow)!
Anyway, I digress. Having had my time in the chair, the rest of the day was mine. So set Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird to full blast and off to Island Landrovers to continue work on Rover.
There I was to meet with Martin and the workshop was looking very cramped. Regular followers of this thread will remember that Martin was working on a chassis replacement job. Whilst work was underway he was contacted by another Landrover owner who also wanted a chassis replacement on his Defender on the proviso it could be completed within a week.
This is no small feat and Martin now has a new work method. With the use of block and tackle the body, once unbolted from the chassis is suspended via plates bolted to the bulkhead (welded in this case as the bulkhead requires some welding and paint in any case) and the rear sitting on a scaffolding cradle which is raised in stages using built in bottle jacks, all custom made by Martin.
It so happened that Martin was at the stage of installing the axles to the new galvanised chassis. This really is heavy lifting with an engine hoist, axle stands and farm jack being used to carefully align everything. It's quite heavy going work so I was happy to lend an extra pair of hands.
That done and Martin underway with attaching more items to the chassis, I got underway with removing Rover's broken gearbox. One of my major bugbears with her is the low ride hight, meaning only trolley jacks with low saddles are any good. I got the front jacked and 12" axle stands under the wishbones. Then underneath and onto the job, disconnecting the four bolts connecting the gearbox to propshaft. How lovely it would be if it was a simple spline job like our DAFs!
Three bolts were a simple spannering job to undo, then came the fourth which was inaccesable due to being above the propshaft and me lying beneath it. Also said bolt was not accessible through the top of the transmission tunnel. Cue second jack under the rear. Rover chassis are really quite stiff and there is alarming suspension travel at the rear. There was a good 12" between the top of the wheel and the arch before the wheel came off the deck and allowed me to rotate it, thus rotating the prop shaft and bringing the inaccesable bolt into play, leaving her supported by one road wheel and one axle stand, as she had clean lifted off the other one!
I wasn't able to remove the gearbox on Friday though, darkness came all too soon and even having disconnected wiring and the gearbox mount it was fouling on the exhaust system. I was cold, my back was aching and I really didn't feel inclined to remove the exhaust, so resolved to get the bar steward out the next day.
Saturday morning I arrived over at Island Landrovers full of renewed enthusiasm and some new ideas. With some careful leverage and jacking, and having removed the gearbox bracket from the gearbox itself, I was then able to stand in the empty engine bay and lift it over the exhaust manifold. By this time Martin had arrived and between the two of us we lifted it out. We then defrosted the pipes for the taps, broke the ice in the toilet and defrosted everything before having a brew! ;D Yes, the pipes going into Martin's unit are lagged but those inside aren't, therein lied the problem...
At least the weather had brightened up by then and I found a nice sunny patch outside to start stripping the parts from the gearbox which I would need to transfer onto the replacement. It's then that one of our bus neighbours turned up in this rather nice Lincoln Convertable.
Apparently it had been owned by a Japanese collector before spending 20 years in a museum, when the current owner obtained her. She wasn't a minter, but certainly clean enough to be daily driver without worrying
too much about picking up the odd scratch etc.
Even in the cold weather there was a warm front down south when the owner showed me one of the Lincoln's party tricks!
The owner told me that the classic insurance is cheap, carefull driving gets - just about - fuel consumption in the low double figures from the seven litre (or should that be 'liter') engine and he hasn't taken it above 65mph as it gets a little wallowy!
Here's the money shot for most of us petrol heads (or 'gear heads' for our friends stateside).
For a 1960s car the amount of kit compared to what was offered to us europeans is astounding. Airconditioning, electrically adjusted seats, electrically adjusted quarterlight windows, etc etc. When I asked to see in the boot (which has surprisingly little space when the roof is stowed) imagine my surprise when told 'sure, let me just fire up the engine first...') to which a swich was flicked and the rear hinged boot flicked open on an electric ram!
Having been pleasantly distracted, I continued with stripping Rover's gearbox.
Here's the broken input shaft
Oops...
You are a polite bunch. Nobody told me I'd duplicated a photograph in the last report. Here's the close up of the replacement engine.
Martin was meant to be leaving early for a Motorhead concert, but decided it might be a good time to get the engine/gearbox into his chassis and asked for help whilst I was there. The ground slopes away from the workshop so some brute force is needed to get the hoist up the slope and into the workshop. A Landie engine gearbox combination is no lightweight and we were almost scuppered when one of the hoist's front wheels got caught on a washer! Eventually it was all in on the mounts.
Over at Essex Central it was Goldie's turn to receive Matt's attention. First up was to investigat the knocking noise eminating from underneath and first manifesting itself a couple of weeks earlier on their way home from Essex South. It transpired that Goldie has been a naughty girl and thrown off both central exhaust rubber hangers. A trip to Halfrauds was required for replacements.
Next up was to investigate her fuel guage which was working intermittently. The sender unit was investigated for bad earths. Stephen Balls arrived and took various measurements of 'A' and 'B' body roofs to enable him to modify the 66 webasto sunroof that he acquired follwing the advertisment on this forum for use on his 31 restoration.
By the time I let Matt know I was free to come over it had become dark and Matt was inclined to pack up for the night, so Gavina and I headed home for the evening with the hope of earning early arrival brownie points from Mrs G.
This morning I was to receive a visit from another Martin, a fellow SD1 owner from the Brighton area. He had an LT77 gearbox for me which he agreed to sell me for £100 delivered in his tuned 4.6 'white whale'.
Martin had an LT77 gearbox in the White Whale whilst it was a 3.5ltr and whilst the box can safely handly +/- 200bhp, any more runs the risk of stripping teeth, which it did. So he knew a Borg Warner T5 was in order and whilst waiting to acquire one, he inserted another LT77. He assures me that he has treated this very gently to keep the car on the road and that it worked well enough, aside from the usual cold crunch going from 1st to 2nd gear, a design fault of these gearboxes. Having checked that the input shaft was freee to rotate in all gears with no notchiness or clunking sounds, the deal was done. Best of all, it is a later model from a vitesse, so not only does it have tapered needle bearings but also a vitesse speedo drive so for the first time in ages I will have an accurate speedo, as the vitesse alloys Rover wears are slightly different rolling radius to the 2600 alloys.
Now I need to attach the bellhosusing and gear selector extension from my dead gearbox along with the rear mounts/bushes and Bob's yer uncle, Fanny's yer aunt.
The rest of my day was taken up with family stuff.
Matt on the other hand endured a chilly Central and continued work on Goldie. This time the fuel guage itself was checked for bad earths. Matt tells me he's cleaned up both ends so hopefully problem fixed. He also found time for adjusting her fan belt.
It was then Snowdrop's time, and I am pleased to announce that her engine is now in all its mounts.
The rest of the time was spent gathering spares, so: Lewis, we have your high beam stalk. Johh, we have your front panel. Sam, we have 18 trim clips and an ignition barrell with key. Joe, we have your engine mount. Have we forgotten anyone?
And I guess that's all for now folks!
Cheese,
33G.