1975 Renault 6TL

[vulgalour]

No, I haven't got it running yet.  I did some other things instead, easy things since I'm just shattered today after the mega long, mega late stint yesterday.  Namely, for the first time in  while, Crapaud went back outside now that the weather can be kept out.  Very, very dusty little car and in desperate need of a scrub and clean out.

 
There wasn't really anything left in the boot; an exhaust system, a mud flap, the side trims.  It did need a clean out as it was full of filler dust and grinder dust and mud.  Same with the parcel shelf and supports, I still have the bits of carpet for the supports, they were just put safely out of the way when I took the picture.

 
I'm still delighted with the headlining.  It's settled out nicely now the fabric has had chance to relax out the few wrinkles there were.

 
Once outside I could get the hose and the soapy water and give the car a bath.  That probably seems ludicrous when you look at it, but it felt pretty horrible to touch with the chalky paint and all the workshop detritus.  I don't mind scruffy, but I can't abide dirty.  This did highlight the windscreen does have a couple of minor leaks, exaggerated by the cloth headlining wicking the water up.  I'm going to put some Captain Tolley's Creeping Crack Cure in as it seems to have a 100% satisfaction reputation by all who have used it.  I suspect the windscreen frame is slightly deformed which is causing this small amount of leaking which became apparent after I'd taken a toothbrush to clear off some moss on the seal and thrown really quite a lot of water at the windscreen and seal to find out how leaky it really was.  Interestingly, the leaks don't correlate with the corrosion I did find on the screen or any visible damage.

 

 
I tried out a few different cleaners on the seats but they were actually really clean, just sun damaged.  They got pretty hot when I was cleaning the car in the sunshine, there's a thing that brought back some childhood memories!  All the glass got the once over inside and out and the whole car ended up feeling far nicer and less inclined to transfer dirt onto clothing and hands.

 

 

 

 

 

 
I will get around to drilling out the old rusted bolts from the mudflap brackets so they can be refitted properly, I've got to cut through the one bolt holding the mudflap on wonkily to get it off the car.  The only thing I couldn't clean was the last of the mud out of the arches, I didn't have high enough water pressure at the unit and I didn't want to subject them to the terror of a pressure washer, just in case.  Instead, I screwed the washer foot pump back down and gave it a go.  I've never tested this, I didn't check the lines or unblock the washer jets, just tipped in some water to see what would happen.

 
Crikey, it works!  It's about as feeble as the wipers, but it works.

 
I'm sure you'd love to see a video of it in action.
http://vid845.photobucket.com/albums/ab ... 605-14.mp4
 
With Crapaud tucked up next to the Princess it seemed the perfect opportunity to get a picture of the whole gang together at last.

[CitroJim]

Bet she enjoyed a bit of fresh air!

[BenC5HDi]

This is the most interesting blog on here at the moment, for some reason. I'm waiting with bated breath for the moment it pops and farts into life, gets an MOT and gets on the road. I think we're going to have to have an FCF meet and greet with it once this happens!

[Stickyfinger]

Still watching....this is great

[CitroJim]

This is the most interesting blog on here at the moment

I'll second that

[vulgalour]

Thanks guys I'm glad it's as enjoyable to read as it is to write.

Only a little update today, I managed to injure myself so I'm supposed to be keeping off my feet for a bit. I'm not very good at keeping off my feet. Decided to see if we could do a test tow-start without attaching fuel or battery today just to see what would happen. I can tell you that in first gear the engine does turn properly. Unfortunately it then jumped out of gear and got stuck in fourth, I got it back into neutral and you can still select all gears - jerry-rigged a clutch cable clip so we can operate the clutch now - but gear selection is decidedly sloppy. I'm going to drain and refill the gearbox and inspect further, possibly put a new rubber bush on the gear selector mech in the engine bay since the existing one is very worn. It's likely I hadn't fully selected first given how sloppy the change is.

No harm done at any rate and a very small step towards getting things timed and fired up. We'll just have to see how I get on this week as to how much more I do. Walking around is pretty painful right now so I think I'll be good and stick my feet up for the rest of tonight at least.

[vulgalour]

Been finding myself very short on time just lately so there's not been a great deal of opportunity to work on the car. That doesn't mean I've not done anything at all, it's just taken longer to get an update together. The very, very important news is that a headlight arrived!


Then we had a weird problem. If you turned the headlights on the new passenger side one would be very dim and go even dimmer on main. We checked the wiring, the bulbs, earth points and the lot and nothing could be found as the cause. Mike then put it all back together and now the driver's side one wouldn't come on at all with dip beam. Curious, I unplugged things and plugged them back in again and hey presto, everything works. Renault + electrics = no surprise there.

Sidelights (which have to be on for the headlights to come on)


Dipped beam.


Main beam. There is a more noticable difference in person.


Spotlights!


I should just about be able to see where I'm going with all of those on. At the rear, the replacement light lens were fitted. I need to replace the driver's side unit completely as the one I was sent has a reflector in it while the one fitted doesn't, Ijust haven't had the motivation to grub around in the still muddy wheel arch to do it. You don't access the rear light clusters from inside the car where all the electrical connections would be nice and clean and dry, you do it in the inner wing where the rear wheels can cover them in crap. Hadn't realised how faded the old ones were until these were fitted.


The horn on the Renault was deader than a dead thing so grabbed a bass tone escargot from the Princess stash which suits the car surprisingly well.


Struggling to find anywhere to put my manual reversing light switch, there's not really any dashboard to fit it to. It does match the interior really well so it will find a spot eventually. The red telltale will be a nice visual reminder that the reversing lights are on. This is the cheaper, easier option to fit as the gearbox reversing light switch isn't compatible with the type of reversing lights fitted to the car, they need a separate switch for reasons that were explained to me but that I don't really understand.


Got the inner sill 'carpets' fitted and plonked the lower parcel shelf in place but haven't had time to bolt it down.

[xantia_v6]

I am guessing that the switch on the gearbox has only one terminal and switches to earth?
If so, you can use it with your normal reversing lights if you fit a standard relay between the switch and the lamps. Diagram supplied if required.

[vulgalour]

Apparently, Mike and my brother know what needs to be done and they've tried very hard to explain it to me with diagrams but I really struggle to understand what they're telling me and get confused by it. It's something to do with the gearbox switch having no power feed, the rear lights needing a different gearbox switch and the car having no provision for reversing lights on the original wiring loom as the ones fitted are aftermarket. They have it in hand, but I haven't a clue.

[vulgalour]

Important things happened today because the starter motor was returned all nicely refurbished.  I had planned to do the windscreen sealing since the new sealant arrived this morning but starter motor playtime was much more exciting.  Turned out the bearings were shot, the arm that engages the solenoid was snapped and it was half full of water.  Now it is not and works lovely.


Then set about putting the hoses back on and finding out what's missing or not.  The carb has a weird set up (to me at least) with a breather pipe from the rocker cover and what I assume is a vacuum pipe from the the manifold to  T piece.  The T piece is broken and the vacuum pipe has a bolt in the end of it but a replacement is already sorted.




Unfortunately after stripping the radiator down and taking it to a local company it turns out that it is knackered.  It's repairable if I can't find a brand new one, I don't want to buy a second-hand one.  The steel crimped section between the plastic ends and the aluminium fins has blown on one corner which is quite likely what contributed to the signs of the car overheating in the past.


Now for the important bit.  The battery was a bit flat when we tried this but nothing ventured, nothing gained, we gave the engine a quick go on the starter.  No fuel in the car and I haven't set the ignition timing, this was just to check everything turned freely.
http://vid845.photobucket.com/albums/ab ... 615-07.mp4

I'm still excited about that.

[vulgalour]

Well, since my last update all was not well. We had spark, fuel, oil pressure, compression but no firing. I'd got to the point where I didn't know what on earth to do and then someone from another forum visited and discovered the timing was off. The upshot of that is a couple of curved pushrods and one really bent one but no other damage. The other issue was that the engine wouldn't turn by hand, it was a little stiff when it went in but after getting lubricant around everything and whatnot the engine would only turn on the starter. That meant hauling the engine back out which I really didn't want to do and the car got put aside for a while. Until today.



Today I finally got chance and was motivated enough to pull the engine out of the Renault and get to the bottom of this problem. Originally I had wanted to get the sump off with the engine in the car, this was thwarted by the chassis blocking access to the sump bolts. This engine is horrible to work on when it's in the car. So I determined to haul it out, which is a big horrible job.

I just knuckled down and got on with it and, amazingly, just an hour and a half later I'd managed to do it completely solo. I didn't even remove the face, but I will be when I put the engine back in because it's an absolute war getting the engine and box out with the face attached.


I found I could leave a lot of things attached which sped up the job quite a bit and will make reinstalling the engine and gearbox that much easier. You can see the flange on the chassis rails which obscures access to the sump bolts here too. The anti-roll bar also prevents you from dropping the sump that far even if you could unbolt it. Horrible.


I cheated with the driveshafts. I need to replace some of the balljoint bolts because, as highlighted previously, I'd put them in 'upside down'. That meant that a couple of the lower ones got bent out of shape and were tricky to remove, unlike the top ones which were unaffected but could do with being flipped around. Not a big deal. So that I didn't have to disconnect and drain the brake system again I propped the hubs up on a pair of spare axle stands to take the stress off the flexible hose.


With the engine and gearbox wheeled indoors I just beat the weather turning. I didn't have a huge amount of time, thankfully I did have a checklist of possible problem areas:

Starter motor - removed and found to be working perfectly fine, as well it ought considering it's only just been reconditioned. This was not locking the flywheel and eliminated as a possible problem.

Gearbox - there was a concern the layshaft could have got stuck. Happily this too was ruled out as it turns freely by hand. I can't say anything about the condition of the gearbox beyond that as it's an unknown quantity.

Clutch - no problems apparent. Clutch fork is still operating the release bearing. None of the visible components have any problems apparent.

At each stage we tested to see if the crankshaft would turn and it wouldn't so we got to the point that the sump was removed for inspection. First thing was to inspect the contents of the sump. Unsurprisingly there's a little bit of sludge that must have been pumped out of the nooks I couldn't get into but no sparklies or chunks of metal or anything that might cause any alarm. There was what looked like grit at first, you can see some in the reflection, but if you squidge it with your finger it's just little blobs of sludge. The oil in the car, which is brand new, is still fairly opaque with just some discolouration from the muck that's still floating around. Not a problem because this oil is only put in to flush the engine through anyway, it's just doing its job.


That only left one area, which was the bearings themselves. Happily, access is really easy to all this. I'm doing it laid on its side rather than on the engine stand as to get the engine to bolt on to the engine stand means removing the clutch and I don't want to do that. This way works just fine. I was very fortunate in that Accord83 on the Retro Rides forum very kindly provided a Renault 6 workshop manual which has all the information I'll ever need including the torque settings for the bearing caps. Here's the thing, I'd set this and the timing according to the instructions in the Haynes manual and not only was the timing wrong but the bearing caps were all torqued up too tight. Doing things by the book is fine, providing the book you're using is actually any good.


I'd already run out of time by this point but I hung on for a few minutes resetting the caps, checking the bearing shells and guess what? Now the engine turns by hand, like it should. Here's where I feel a bit unsure about putting the engine back in the car because last time it went in I as sure the engine turned over by hand, it was stiff but it turned, and then when all the oil got circulated it stopped being able to be turned by hand. This time it turns very smoothly and very freely by hand, everything is well oiled and I'm hoping it doesn't tighten up on me when it goes back in the car. If I can find some way of bench testing it before refitting it I will.

I'll set the timing and build everything up while it's out of the car, just like I did last time, but this time I'll refer to the new Workshop Manual and probably put the Haynes book in the bin where it belongs.

[RichardW]

Well, at least you have made some progress, albeit somewhat backwards! Always going to be easier getting it out the second time as the bolts are free and you know what you are doing. Hope you get it back together and running soon!

[demag]

So you've got spare rods now?

Sent from my Wileyfox Swift using Tapatalk

[CitroJim]

An excellent update Thoroughly enjoyed reading it and feeling a lot of empathy with you over the problems you're encountering..

You know, it is often easier to remove the engine for jobs like this as invariably the work of removing/replacing is more than compensated by the ease of which the issue can be tackled with the engine out... Doing what you just did in-situ, even if the sump would come off, would have been horrible and it gave you a good chance to check other things too...

Looking forward to the next instalment

[demag]

Memories of oil in the eyes Jim. Not nice.

Sent from my Wileyfox Swift using Tapatalk