Practically Classics Forum

This little tale may be relevant. I took a trip with the owner of a Dax Cobra replica, fitted with the 5.3 litre V12 from an E-type. Driving through Thorne, near Doncaster, the car developed a spectacular misfire. This involved not just spitting back through the inlet trumpets but actually firing th...

There's another tweak that proved useful. Later Essex V6's had a thermostat housing with a cap and bleed pipe connection. I fitted one of these and connected the bleed pipe to a Marina expansion bottle mounted as high as possible in the engine bay. This let the system blow back when the engine was s...

Yet another Scim brewing up...had my share of this. It sounds fixed but here are some more pointers for future reference. * It the used new rad was as original, it was a dual crossflow. This means it had two 'lower edges' to silt up. This makes a good case for anticorrosion/antifreeze mix in the sys...

I'm no Shadow expert but I reckon there are some tests you could carry out. From your description, it's obvious that the relay is being activated wrongly by some feed whose characteristics change with a bit of throttle or selecting P or N while everything's warm. This seems to suggest that the relay...

Yeeehah! Redneck welding! To the sound of Duelling Banjos?

Errr...bit tricky to weld near airbags innit? Mind you, it'd be equally tricky to weld near Sharon Corr.

Or progressively drill out to the root diameter of the thread, then pick out the remaining threads and clean up with a plug tap. That's how we used do it in 1803. The original nipple's centre bore will guide the drill.

Quite so, a brisk whack in the 'nads is an undesirable event.

I suppose it's a tricky one, harvey, and I appreciate your point. You could go all H&S and wear eye protection but few of us actually do this. That said, I maintain pull rather than push is the safer, provided you remember to plan for a slip. A self-inflicted punch in the ribs or the belly is probab...

Some tips that work, from the voice of experience... Sometimes, flicking an air wrench from drive to reverse and back repeatedly will persuade a stubborn fastening. If the spanner or socket isn't a good fit, it'll certainly slip and/or round off the hex. In dire cases, try dipping the spanner in gre...