Garage Vacation day 4

Today was a good day. Noone's car broke down, so I could work on my own car. :)



This picture is of a set of later Lockheed brakes for the Jensen Healey. These, now that they've been cleaned, sandblasted, painted, and reassembled will go into the current project car. It may seem a little silly, as I'll wind up putting disk brakes in the back later on, but I figure they'll work just fine until I get around to that.

Tomorrow is Turkey Day, so everyone have a safe and happy holiday. I'll be taking a day off from the garage to stuff my face.

Jody

Garage Vacation: Day 2 & 3 update

Yesterday night was spent doing a number of things. For starters, after having removed and replaced the spring caps (coil top) on the spitfire numerous times the dirt and grime on them finally got to me, so into the sandblaster they went! All cleaned up with a coat of POR-15 and they looked much better.

While I was out there I managed to get one side of the rear brakes assembled for the Jensen Healey. I need a couple more bits to do the other side (washers and circlips from Ace).

My buddy Chip came over and we put some new pads in the front of his contour. The transfer went well, but there was a very spongy pedal afterwards. Now the problem in bleeding his brakes was that the bleed screw on the passenger side was busted. So, that's all she wrote on work that night.

Today was spent finding a shop that could deal with the Triumph springs. I finally ended up at the MG Shop in Tempe, AZ. They'll be setting the springs for me tomorrow and I should have them back into the car tomorrow night.

A friend was having problems with her Saturn Vue. All I can say is bloody GM engineers need to be shot, repeatedly! The car needed some goofy ignition switch which was an annoyance to remove, but fairly easy to install the new part. The challenge, however, was the built in car anti-theft. To reset the GM anti theft you have to attempt to start the car, and leave the key in the on position. Then you wait 10 minutes until the security idiot light goes out. Once it does you remove the key and repeat. You have to do this a minimum of three times, possibly four. The fun part, if you don't get it started immediately then it faults again and you have to start over. Well, I guess it works, because I will never steal a Saturn. It's not worth the effort!

With that resolved we opted (Chip and I) to try and get the remains of the broken bleed screw removed from the caliper. 3 hours and a number of broken bits, ez-outs and the like later we finally opted to go buy a new caliper. Chip just got back to the shop after hitting autozone, so it's time to go back out and get the caliper installed.

eesh, one step forwards, two steps back!

Jody

A Tribute to Sir Joseph Lucas

I was pointed to this silly, yet wronderful little gem earlier today:

A Tribute to Sir Joseph Lucas.

If you've messed about with British cars, you'll appreciate this!

Jody

Garage vacation

Once a year, generally around Thanksgiving, I schedule myself a week's vacation with a single destination: The Garage (or as it's termed around here, "the Lair of Repair"). This year's goals are finishing up the alignment solution on mum's Triumph Spitfire and getting some good progress around the Jensen Healey.

We started in on the Spitfire yesterday, but I keep forgetting that the diameter of the springs combined with the shock absorber simply do not fit any known standard spring compressors. I even upgraded my current set to a better larger unit. But, the clamping arms are always too big for the springs. I'll be removing the existing assemblies again today, disassembling them, and running them up to my local tire shop to be mounted. Hopefully that should correct that last of the issues there and we can put some new shoes (tires) on the car.

The other issue that has been ongoing with the Spitfire is the fuel system. Nothing super suprising there. There's a little gunk in the tank (varnish, etc) and the driving is knocking it loose and clogging the fuel filter. That, in addition to old rubber fuel lines was allowing air into the system when the pressure was too great.

One of the tricks to dealing with this is to rig up a 2-liter soda bottle with a length of fuel line drilled through the cap. You also need a small vent hole near the top of the bottle. You fill the bottle with gasoline, and connect it up near the engine end of the fuel lines, cover the vent hole and squeeze the bottle. It will use fluid pressure to force gasonline backwards through the system and into the fuel tank. In theory, this should push any blockages out of the way and allow fuel to flow regularly again. It may be annoying to keep a stock of fuel filters in place and have to swap them frequently, but if there's only a little crud in the tank it's far simpler than pulling the whole arrangement and re-doing it!

Jody