Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[Zelandeth]

I arrived here with a case that was about 30% full. It is now very definitely not 30% full...130% maybe!

Family member has just offloaded a small mountain of photography kit on me, what I can physically find room to pack reasonably well being the limiting factor.

I'll try to go through and actually inventory what's in there later on, but I know there's a bunch of accessories to go with my Minolta 7000, a 7000i body, a couple of Pentaxes and a bunch of lenses, and cameras from Ricoh, Nikon, Argus and Zorki, probably plus others I've forgotten.

Taking bets now on how far over the weight limit I am...

This is the sort of thing I'd rather not put in the hold, but most of it is in its own travel cases inside a well packed suitcase which will be well padded by my clothing around it. Plus I don't really have much choice...shipping would be just as if not more risky and would be north of $200...

[Zelandeth]

What have I found myself hauling home unexpectedly then...

In no particular order.

Bag number 1.





Minolta XG-1, a slightly more modern light meter, matching flash and some lenses. Toyo 28-75mm, Minolta 50mm, Toyo 28mm, and an 80-200mm I forget the maker of.

Bag number 2.





Ricoh XR-P & lenses. Ricoh 35-70mm, Soligor 24-45mm & a Vivitar 70-210mm.

Oh, and this Minolta Autopak 460T which got stuffed in this case because it fit there.



Bag number 3.



Now isn't this a wonderful contraption?



In the case are also a period flash gun, light meter, and probably most useful for some of my other cameras, a standalone rangefinder.



Bag number 4.



Somewhat battered looking Minolta 7000i and lenses. This one was probably the most immediately of interest as even if the body in there was useless the rest will all work with my 7000 anyway.

Especially this.



There were also Minolta 35-105mm, 50mm and 35-70mm lenses and a matching Minolta flash in there.

Bag number 5.



Which contained this very clean looking Ricoh rangefinder and various filters and adapters.



There was quite a bit of space in there so it also became home to a Pentax ME Super.



Bag number 5.



More Pentax, a K1000 this time.



Along with 50mm and 80-200mm lenses and a matching flash.

There are also a few loose cameras.

This oddball thing just for the sheer obscurity factor.



I can't for the life of me remember who made this one. Yes, I did remove the add on viewfinder for safe transport.



Edit: Have checked and it's a Yashica Electro 35.

A very clean looking Zorki 10. I think I do have one of these, but this one is in far, far better condition.



Finally...I think, a Nikon FG-20. Which feels really tiny compared to many of my SLRs.



I think that's the lot...probably have missed a few things though. Don't imagine any of it is particularly valuable, but it's nice being able to share this hobby with another family member and let some of it see the light of day rather than just spending another 20 years buried in a cupboard.

[bobins]

Note for Zel - I have a screwdriver the same as the one in this photo apart from it has a red band rather than a yellow band. It's yours if you want it, though the purists might argue it's not correct It's a 'Stanley' brand one.

Certainly wouldn't say no to getting the right screwdriver back in the toolbox. Wouldn't surprise me if I had a very similar pair of pliers floating around somewhere. Currently 3000 plus miles away from the garage though so can't exactly go rummaging.

No probs, PM me an address to send it to and I'll pop it in the post

[Zelandeth]

Ugh, it should not take nearly two hours to transfer between Heathrow Terminals 3 and 4...

The trains have gone to pot and no one seems to have a clue what's going on so we kept getting sent in circles or dead ends. Exactly what you want when you've just got off a (horrible) overnight 8 hour flight and are hauling around a 45kg bag which has lost a wheel en route.

We had to do the transfer as due to the short notice we booked this trip on meant we basically took the flights that were available, there wasn't any choosing involved - which meant we departed from T4 and returned to T3. So the car was at T4.

If we'd known it was going to be such a massive faff we'd have just packed Chris off in a taxi to T4 and had him bring the car to the pick up point...however we kept thinking we'd found the last link in the chain before ending up back at square one again.

Then we eventually escaped the airport...straight into a queue on the M25.

I am officially ready to be done with this trip. To be honest I was before we'd even checked in on the way out...I seriously do think if I felt it was viable I'd just say no and stay home next time.

On the plus side the next familial visit will be my mother in law visiting us on this side of the Pond, which I am looking forward to (we get along really well), so hopefully no further trips abroad this year for me. I hope. Like really hope.

[Michel]

Next time, catch a 555 bus from T3 to T4, takes about 25 min. Or the Heathrow express/Elizabeth line does a free transfer between the CTA and T4, just need to get a free ticket from the machine. There's also the inter-terminal train, also called the Heathrow express, which I use all the time but no one seems to know about!

You can also use the tube, you use contactless but won't be charged.

[Zelandeth]

Both the Elizabeth line and the Tube were having issues - but the folks at each of these modes were directing people back towards the others.

To be fair, not likely to be an issue in the future as we only ended up needing to do the transfer because we booked these flights with about 3.2 seconds notice.

We've not been at all impressed with Delta this time round though, so may well look to change airlines next time round. They've always done pretty well in our book before, but did nothing to endear themselves to us either direction this trip.

[Zelandeth]

While the trip home was pretty awful we got there eventually.

Of course that means it's time to get stuck back into this.



Spot the difference.



First new door seal is in. Looks a bit healthier.





One down, three to go. You can still see a little daylight around the top of this, but it's far better than it was. The wind noise is still there, but has been reduced by several orders of magnitude.

I did notice when getting back from the test run I could smell a bit of coolant, sure enough it was dripping from the hose to the heater matrix.



The staining there suggests it has been for quite a while. The hose actually just pulled straight off as it had compressed so much under the clip. Lost about 50ml of coolant changing this as it's the highest point in the system and the leak was positioned such that it had let the water drain down into the rest of the system.

I've noticed that she does have a bit of a miss now and then, especially when cold. While the surprisingly good impression of a V8 burble at idle might be amusing on the right car, it needs sorting. Investigation has shown that we have a really weak spark on no 1. Which is interesting as I know the previous owner has already done some fault finding on this. We seem to have an absolutely solid spark at the other five cylinders (my eyes have just about stopped spinning from checking that), however removing the plug for no 1 at idle when cold does nothing. Removing the bakelite lead holder entirely from the equation (as they have a tendency to go electrically leaky) we still have a very poor spark from that HT lead. So it basically has to be the lead itself or the distributor cap I think - that's the only thing not shared with other cylinders I think.

Ran out of time today, but hopefully that will be pretty simple to sort as there's only so many variables involved.

Also noted this when I got back from a run this afternoon.



That's oil. Quite a lot of oil. Not quite as much oil as the Jag used to mark it's territory with, but close. I was initially concerned this might have been coming from the rear main, but I'm not so sure now. I'm not expecting this car to ever be 100% oil tight, but that's a little much.

There's definitely evidence of quite a lot of oil running down the right hand side of the block towards the rear.



Also oil having visibly pooled on top of the inlet manifold in the same area.



I'll need to remove a couple of things to investigate though as that side of the engine bay is rather busy.



Wondering if it might be something as simple as a wrecked intake valve cover gasket given it does look quite well squished where I can see it towards the rear. No idea when the valve clearances were last checked anyway so would definitely not hurt to check those anyway. Helpfully one set need to be done stone cold, the other at full operating temperature.

I'm just waiting on coolant arriving so I can get the rest of the cooling system hoses changed.

[Zelandeth]

The occasional miss had developed into something more solid this morning. Would still clear at higher revs but I had a pretty solid miss on number 1 at idle. Investigation showed I barely had any spark from the lead at all.

Initially my suspicions were trained on the HT lead itself or the cap. This is an old style cap with the screw terminals to connect to the leads. So a few potential areas for issues, though it looked very clean underneath.

In the boxes of bits there was a brand new, newer style cap and lead set. This looks quite out of place in the engine bay, but was at least really useful for testing.

Guess what...absolutely zero difference. So I did a bit more digging.



Fixed it!

The root cause of the issue here was actually really simple - there was basically no points gap. The heel was barely touching the lobes on the distributor shaft at all, I'm really surprised the car was running at all.

A test run was completed successfully.



The car is definitely running far better now. Both in terms of the engine feeling more generally willing and definitely running far more smoothly.

Next step is to pull the air cleaner off and see if I can pin down where that oil leak is coming from. Hoping for upper timing cover gasket as that's a relatively easy fix.

[CitroJim]

Good fault-finding on the spark issue Zel and hoping that oil leak will be easy enough to resolve...

[Gibbo2286]

A common problem on the old points Zel omitting to lube the distributer cam burns the heel of the points and the gap closes.

[Zelandeth]

Had a spare half hour today after the rain had moved on so set about investigation of the oil leak.

A full top end gasket set is on the way, but I'd like to get a better idea for certain of where this is coming from. The gasket set includes everything needed to do the head gasket - which I'll likely need to do at some point to deal with this somewhat crusty looking O-ring.



My initial reaction there is "surely it would be easier to remove the water pump..." But apparently they're renowned for snapping bolts, so the head is probably the lesser of two evils. Plus I don't know for certain if you can actually manipulate things into position when slotting the pump into place. I guess the assumption would have been that back in the day you'd have the head off relatively regularly for decoking anyway - obviously less of an issue with modern fuels and oils. I'm not going making work just now though, I'll deal with that seal when it becomes an issue or when we can include it with other work.

For now we're after the (primary) oil leak. I'm sure there are several, but there's only one actively making a mess right now so I'm concentrating on that.

I'm kind of used to when dealing with engines of this sort of age which haven't been meticulously looked after taking off the rocker cover and having to hunt in among the slime and tar to try to find the valve gear. So was pleasantly surprised when this was what greeted me.





I'd be happy finding an engine that's ten years old that's that clean.

Unsure whether this was the cause of THE leak, but it definitely can't have been helping anything.



Three very clear splits in the cork seal there.

I've done a bit of a bodge to see if I can improve that until the new seal arrives.



Absolutely is not a fix. I'd just like to see if the leak is at all reduced before the seal kit arrives. Stripping things down to this stage takes all of about ten minutes so it's no huge hassle. Just waiting overnight for that sealant to set before I give it a test.



Did spot one little bit of work for the weekend though.



Note the bits of bare copper visible. Especially on the larger wire to the left - that's connected directly through to the battery negative, maybe via a fuse if we're lucky. Yeah I think I'll be deploying a bit of heat shrink tubing there.

A little wiring correction already made its way onto the to do list today. I'd noted that the nearside tail lamp was behaving oddly, with the brake and running light functionality seemingly reversed.

Turns out it's because the wires simply were connected backwards on the lamp holder. So a 30 second job to sort.





Prior to my work on the ignition system yesterday I'd found this to be quite a cold blooded car. She needed a good dose of choke to catch properly and wanted it for quite a while after starting to not stumble and miss under load. Today, started absolutely instantly on all six, and was happy with the choke fully in after less than a minute. Quite a contrast.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be reporting back on a fixed or at least vastly reduced oil leak. Fingers crossed.

[Zelandeth]

Yesterday I ticked off a small job in that the bolts securing the fuel filler neck were missing. Not exactly a strenuous job to sort that one.



Likewise fitting a replica tax disc - just feels odd not having one in the windscreen, so may as well make it look period if possible.



Only one job done today, sadly still suffering heavily from jetlag so by the time I'd got the day's tasks out the way it was about all I had energy (and brain) for.

All four doors on the Rover now actually have door seals again. Rather than decomposing goo which was once rubber.





Simple enough job if rather tedious.



The bag is just a bunch of recycling I ran out of time to drop off today.

I think I've tracked down one of the main reasons for us suffering from such horrendous wind noise.



The passenger's front door needs adjustment, it's sitting a good 1/4" too far out at the top, so is actually sitting proud of the gutter.



So even with the new seal in there's quite a gap there still.

The driver's door has also dropped a bit probably due to wear on the hinge pins.



That I'm not massively surprised by on a car of this age to be honest. That one at least *mostly* seals now.

The doors do close with a decent chunk now rather than metallic clatter. It's also reduced the apparent level of rattles in the cabin by about 70% as the doors no longer rattle around like a garden gate on a windy day. A quick test run also confirmed that the really intrusive wind noise is now very clearly centred solidly on the front passenger side door now too. So adjusting that gap is definitely going to be high on the list.

[mickthemaverick]

Good progress there Zel, it's coming on nicely. It does occur to me that your blog title could do with an update as it currently has at least 3 ex-vehicles and is missing 3 curremt ones!

[xantia_v6]

It is probably an opportune time to point out that (at the present time) users cannot change topic titles except for recently created topics. Forum moderators can update the titles and will do it on request.

Maybe we can improve the situation after the next software update, but I can't promise anything yet.

[CitroJim]

Yesterday, during my 4 hour marshalling stint on an A428 roundabout I saw two Rover P4s

Both similar colours to yours Zel. I was hoping one was going to be you but both were driven by those of very advanced years who were likely drawing their pensions when the cars were new... Bought with their retirement gratuities no doubt!

I guess there was a small meet going on nearby as I saw a few other very old cars, ones I did not recognise, and a red MG Maestro Turbo in concours condition...