Zel's Fleet Blog...Rover, Renault, Peugeot, Trabant, Invacar & Sinclair C5

[Zelandeth]

Loose bolts on the suspension!! how many miles did you do since you bought it??
I'm with you on the rain, since October I've been working outside and I'm getting a bit bored with it now.. one of my fields is now a lake.. I keep thinking I ought to get a boat...

Far too many. Virtually everything on this car that's been touched even vaguely recently seems to have been loose. Which is why today the front end is now getting the same attention.

[gazza82]

I'm with you on the rain, since October I've been working outside and I'm getting a bit bored with it now.. one of my fields is now a lake.. I keep thinking I ought to get a boat...

I'm on the top of the side of a small valley and my back garden is waterlogged so goodness knows what it's like for the houses at the bottom.

Good old Chiltern chalk and clay doesn't help


Everytime we get a downpour now the road is basically a stream. Can't remember the last time the council cleaned the drains either

[Zelandeth]

Wanted to further investigate our mystery noise. I'd originally thought it was a brake dragging, but the fact that the noise didn't come and go with the application of the brakes meant that didn't quite make sense.

Didn't take long to find it (funny how when it's not raining and windy you have more patience).

Nearside rear wheel if I spin it is silent and will keep spinning for several tens of seconds. Offside on the other hand will stop after a couple of rotations, and you can hear something dragging. Particularly when the wheel starts to move. Not sure how well it comes across on camera.

https://youtu.be/hWCWZI_wRT4

While this sounds like it's a dragging brake, it isn't. With the drum removed the hub itself behaves exactly the same, the issue there is with the wheel bearings. Which is somewhat annoying as the inner bearing on this is a bit of a pig to deal with as the stub axle needs to be removed from the back of the hub. Fair enough, except for the shock absorber and its carrier being in the way.



That grey plastic cap is covering the rear of the stub axle, and shows what needs to move (towards frame left) and how the shock absorber is right in the way. Not particularly difficult, it's going to involve dismantling a lot more stuff than I'd really like. I believe the "correct" way to do the job involves removing the whole semi trailing arm assembly from the car. Which admittedly isn't a massive headache for me here given that I know both of the main mounting bolts move! However I need to figure out how on earth to compress the spring safely without involving sketchy nonsense with bottle jacks and axle stands...I've never had to play that game with leaf springs before. Especially not ones arranged like this.



Guess it would be a good opportunity to clean up and protect the trailing arm(s) and to clean and grease the spring anyway as that definitely would benefit from being done. If I can figure out how to de-tension it without killing myself anyway. I emphatically dislike doing jobs like this, however know that getting a garage involved will take several weeks.

On the plus side, the rear brakes look to all be basically brand new just like the front.



Didn't actually need to remove the hub nut to remove the drum I later realised. Just a grub screw that holds the drum to the hub.

At least it's such a light car it's a doddle to jack and is laid out on such a way that it's really easy to support safely when working underneath.

I did notice that there's one other bit of quality repair been made to a bit of the boot floor in one spot.



The underside actually looks in good shape aside from this bit, which is all down to rust that's come from inside the cabin because of the water ingress issues having been there for so long.

Guess I best go get a set of wheel bearings ordered then!

What are the odds of winding up with two cars both needing wheel bearings at the same time? Aren't cars fun?

[Dick]

Mmmm crusty

[Zelandeth]

Mmmm crusty

Indeed, though being honest the car is by and large astonishingly solid. Virtually all of the rust save for that bit by the rear windscreen I've found in this car has been due to water ingress rather than the usual rot you'd expect from a car of this age.

-- -- --

Time for an update, we've fallen behind a bit.

-- -- --

Time for an update. Let's do this car by car as that's likely to be least confusing.

Partner: Continuing to do car things. The wheel bearing really hasn't got much worse, you can definitely hear it but it's not bad. Which kind of supports my theory that it's got a ding in the race or something from when the hub had the bolt extracted rather than being a wear issue.

I did however end up driving around in circles for a good ten minutes. Why? Because you only get to see this line up a couple of times in a vehicle's life.





Rover:

Having stolen the fuel pump from the Invacar again, I figured it was about time I tidied up the power supply. I was still using the piggy backed feed from the starter solenoid back from when I bodged things together when it broke down on a previous occasion and I shoved an electric pump on as a get-me-home fix. Not a long term solution.

A proper ignition switched feed was sourced from the heater blower fuse on the fuse box (which already had a spur running from it for the radio, so I nicked that), and routed it properly to the pump following the factory wiring loom. Even using all the factory wiring clips.



That's a bit tidier. I still need to add the inertia switch, but that's a ten minute job, and I want things working reliably before adding another potential point of failure.

Those of you who have followed all of my trials and tribulations with this car will remember me finding this thing randomly floating around down the back of the engine when I pulled the heads off.



This was pretty quickly figured out to be the transmission vent line. Evidently whoever last had things apart never reattached this. To whoever didn't take the opportunity to reattach it while things were substantially apart, I hate you.

It's just a bit awkward to get to. Can you see where the line attaches?



Zoom in.



Zoom in further...there it is!



Absolutely no way on earth the semi-rigid nylon line was going back on there working on the ground. With it on a proper lift it would merely be massively awkward. As it is I can get about 1.5 fingers onto the thing, never mind a whole hand...I spent half an hour fighting with it before giving in.

So it's had a bit of fuel line stuffed on there and looped up and back down vaguely like the original line.



You'll have to take my word for it that it's attached at the gearbox end. Getting that on there only took me about twenty minutes of swearing.

The fluid was also a *little* on the low side.



Not helped by the fluid level checking method in the handbook being wrong. It says to check it cold with the engine off (hence the whole..."check cold" text on the dipstick). This is wrong. It needs to be checked at operating temperature with the engine running apparently. Took this much to get it up to the right level.



Also worth noting that these gearboxes do NOT take normal Dex II/III fluid. They need type F fluid. Surprisingly, Mileham's had a few (admittedly rather dusty) bottles on the shelf. Don't imagine they'll be bothering to re-stock those! It looks, feels and smells the same as what's in the box so I'm reasonably confident this hasn't been filled with the wrong fluid at least.

Also apparently the heater box is missing a bunch of screws.



Don't think I have any others that are short enough in stock so will need to buy some.

So far the fuel system still seems to be cooperating. Though I do need to adjust things a little as the warm idle is way too high, at about 1000 rpm in neutral. Should be nearer 750 - or lower if you can get the engine to reliably idle slower, to reduce the "thump" when selecting drive/reverse.

Following day I had to run some errands and decided to take a brave pill regarding my choice of transport.



Proof it has actually moved!



Made it home again too. Without breaking down. In fact without adding anything else to the to do list.

Annoyingly, the oil leak hasn't miraculously fixed itself.



That's going to be a barrel of laughs to fix. It's the gasket behind the oil pump/filter housing that needs to be replaced. It's just *slightly* awkward to get to.



I took a quick video to show the progress to date. I literally just wedged my phone between the dash and the windscreen, so low production quality! The loud bang about halfway through was me closing the glove box which decided to fall open and scare me half to death completely randomly.

https://youtu.be/ofaokqz6skk

So...

Oil leak is the big priority for the sake of other road users. I'm not comfortable driving it further until that's sorted. Other high priority items will be getting the radiator recored, the remaining original coolant lines replaced and the tyres need to be changed as they are definitely flat spotted. Only really noticeable above 50, so not a huge issue for local use, but definitely want doing before any longer trips - they're absolutely ancient anyway so they want changing anyway.

I do actually feel like I'm making progress now at last rather than just chasing my tail, which is nice.

However, you remember the fuel leak which caused a small environmental disaster and caused our house to stink of fuel for a full week? Guess what reappeared this afternoon? From exactly the same spot...Yep, the same bloody leak.

I think the root cause of the issue was actually down to the fuel filter itself. This had no ridge on the end of the hose barb, and I think the hose was just sliding down from the 8mm to 6mm section. Said cheap and nasty tiny filter has now been consigned to the bin and a larger, better quality one has been fitted.



It was immediately apparent once the hose was connected that it was far more secure even before the hose clip was done up. Said hose clip has also been replaced to be safe. I've had that happen before on one of these but thought at the time it was a fluke. They're getting binned though now.

Will I be obsessively checking these connections every single time the car is used for about the next year? Yes. Absolutely.

Also really really need to get some black HT leads.


Trabant:

My box of several different sized pullers had turned up, so battle commenced with the Trabant wheel bearing replacement.



Honestly not sure if I had loosened it when I tried to remove it last time, as it just slid straight off with relatively little effort this time round.

Not maybe quite as bad as I was expecting given the noise this was making, but yeah this clearly isn't as clean as you would like to see.



Even more to my surprise, the lower shock absorber bolt unscrewed with any drama.

Couple of people had mentioned that removing the handbrake cable *before* starting to remove the trailing arm was a good way to save your sanity, so I wasted far too long trying to figure out the correct way to dismantle the brakes. Got there in the end though. Reassembling that won't be at all awkward I'm sure.



The self adjusters in this are really quite clever. A really simple sliding ratchet arrangement which is built into the shoe retaining pins. They can move outward away from the piston, but not inward - so the force of the shoe moving itself works the adjuster. It's really simple, but looks to me like this should be quite reliable.



The brake line itself was the next thing to be disconnected.



Of course because I am highly intelligent, I parked the car such that I had to lay in the Rover's oil puddle while doing this. Well done.

Then it was literally just a case of unscrewing the two trailing arm bolts. I did support the bottom of the hub with a jack to ensure any remaining tension on the spring was supported. There wasn't much, but there was definitely a bit of tension left. Just enough I'm sure to make getting everything back together an absolute pain.

Something definitely missing here!



Oh, here it is!



The shock absorber mounting bracket also then needs to be removed from the arm as it gets in the way.



I was really worried these bolts might snap, but they thankfully didn't. Did protest a bit, but they came out. The rubber cover the revealed the cause of our issue. The inner bearing had clearly suffered water contamination based on the amount of rust that fell out.



Pretty sure this was the cause of our issues as the outer bearing didn't seem to be noisy.

The stub axle could then be knocked through the back of the hub. This is seriously chunky looking for a 600kg car. Can of Plusgas for scale.



The inner bearing can just be pushed out the back of the housing with a suitable drift. The outer one comes out from the wheel side - after you've found and removed the circlip hiding in among the slimy old grease under the seal.

One set of knackered bearings. The thing on the left is the spacer which sits between the two.



This needs to be cleaned up, then I can set about (carefully) installing the new bearings.



Now I know how it comes apart hopefully should go back together a little quicker.

Having now seen how it comes apart, I reckon you *could* do this with the trailing arm still on the car, but it would be way, way more awkward - and the additional stress and swearing probably isn't worth the half hour or so it might save.

Would have been a bit silly not to get the surface rust on the suspension arm treated and a bit of protection applied while it's off the car. On goes a coat of Vactan.



Then some topcoat.



Another coat will go on tomorrow before stuff goes back together. Nothing special, realistically probably not going to make a bit of difference, but I feel better for having it done.

That was where we were on Sunday. Fast forward to today...

-- -- --

Rain finally stopped today so I could move forward with this.



No. I definitely didn't give it the second coat of paint using the boot as a spray booth.

Also made a point of ensuring that the brake bleeder cracked loose while I had the arm still off the car as dealing with that as it stood would be far easier than in the car if needed.

The hub cavity, spacer, stub axle and rear cover were all cleaned up.



Not really many photos of putting the new bearings etc in as I was absolutely covered in grease for most of it. In fact I feel like I still am despite having washed my hands a dozen times and showered since I worked on the car.

Probably the single most awkward part was actually getting the snap ring back into the groove in front of the outer bearing as it really was a bit beefier than my circlip pliers were designed for. However I managed to not ping it into low earth orbit or embed it in one of my eyeballs so I considered that a win.

Getting the suspension arm back in place was moderately awkward, but honestly nowhere near as bad as I expected. I was able to lift the arm into position and get the inboard bolt started, then have a jack support the trailing arm while I started the forward one. Then was just a matter of evenly tightening them both up. Which takes takes a while as both of the bolts are really quite long. Definitely a job which made me wish I had an electric ratchet.

Then the brake line was hooked back up.



Not thrilled by the amount of tension on the flexible brake lines. Looks like when the camber correction hardware is fitted that an inch or two longer brake line should also be added. I'll look into dealing with that in the future.

I appreciate that the brake shoes can be fitted back onto the backing plate as a single assembly without the need to wrestle with a bunch of faffing about with the springs. You DO need to mind your fingers though as there will be a heap of tension on there.

Then the hub was reattached, the nut torqued up to Very Tight (TM) and the locking tab bent over to ensure it's not going anywhere. All that remained there was to bleed the brakes and put the wheel back on.

A helper would have been handy rather than relying on the Eazibleed (which as usual leaked all over the place). I know I do have one of those far simpler one man bleeders somewhere, but we all know what my garage looks like.



All back together. Glad to report that a test drive revealed no unpleasant noises or anything.

The next task on the pre-MOT was the steering rack gaiter. Seems simple enough. Remove the end nut from the rack, separate it, remove old boot, clean, re-grease, fit new boot and reassemble.



Yeah...the two parts aren't too interested in separating after 39 years. Ideas? I've left it soaking in Plusgas overnight. Guessing heat is probably the answer, albeit very carefully both due to not wanting to damage the rack itself and given the proximity of the fuel tank.

Once that's done and I've given the headlight beam alignment a tweak we should be ready to head to the MOT again. Hopefully!

[Zelandeth]

Okay, let's have another shot at getting this steering rack to track rod bracket apart.

Attempt number 1. This failed. The puller would always slip off well before getting any real torque involved.



I just loosely put the puller on there for the photo, so I know it's not lined up right there.

The correct tool for this job is for all intents and purposes just a big ball joint splitter. However buying one of those would require spending more money than I really wanted to and waiting for something to arrive, most likely from abroad.

MacGuyver time.

Take one £15 splitter from Halfords. This had neither enough clearance to fit around the steering rack, nor was long enough to fit in place over the threaded section. Well that is until I spent ten minutes mutilating it with an angle grinder.



Remember, it's not stupid if it works!

Did it work?



Perfectly. Removed it on the first try. That joint let go with one HELL of a bang.

The old boot was removed and things cleaned up ready for the new one to go on, which I'd already had long enough to have completely forgotten which box it was in and requiring 10 minutes of rummaging until it turned up.



Much better.



Not quite "done" in that photo though. I didn't initially spot that there's a flat cast into the bracket where the locking washer is meant to locate. So the nut was loosened off again and the washer rotated through 180 degrees since this photo was taken.

Only casualty was me nearly setting myself on fire with the grinder.



This despite me already being kind of paranoid about fire was I was relatively close to the Rover while doing this job and it's proven so far to be by far the most stubbornly not fuel-tight vehicle I've ever owned!

MOT has been re-booked for next Thursday. Shame they can't fit me in sooner, but it is what it is, I know they're always busy. Aside from the usual sanity check beforehand and making sure all the lights etc are working, I need to try to tweak the headlight aim a bit as I think it's still way too low. I'll make sure all the adjusters are properly lubricated before taking it in so it can be easily tweaked at the time if need be.

[Dick]

You have been busy! I have modified several tools to make them do stuff they weren't designed for.. a bit naughty I suppose, but necessity is the mother of invention..

[Zelandeth]

Few little jobs done today on the Trabant in preparation for the MOT on Thursday.

One thing which I knew for certain needed sorting was the headlight aim. I borrowed the Partner which I know the headlights are adjusted more or less correctly on and made a couple of reference marks on the garage door from a known distance.

Starting point basically had the headlights pointing at the ground about 6' in front of the car. Yeah, this needed some help.



Looks far more sensible now I've tweaked things a bit.



There used to be a huge gap between the lenses and the surrounds, they look more sensible now.



Might need a bit of a tweak at the test when we have the actual beam analyser on it, but all the adjusters are free now so that's only a couple of minutes work, and isn't the sort of thing my tester would mind happening while we're there if we need to.

As mentioned last time, I had to adjust the locking washer for the nut that holds the steering rack to the track rod bracket as I'd originally put it on backwards. Just wanted to provide visible evidence (to myself as much as anything!) that I had gone back and fixed that.



The Easybleed as seems to be standard both leaked fluid everywhere and overfilled the brake fluid reservoir. So I both drained off enough to bring the fluid down to the max mark and tried to clean up the general area so it didn't look like I had a huge fluid leak from the master cylinder.



I'd had a new air filter floating around pretty much since I got the car as the one on it was looking pretty manky. If you wondered what filter these used, here's your answer. Yes, that's also me lazily leaving breadcrumbs for myself when I forget.



Was quite surprised when a current looking Mann filter box turned up, and that the filter itself has a late 2023 date stamp on it given the *huge* variety of applications it's listed for...



I do appreciate how Mann list the cross reference numbers right on the box, that's really helpful.

Spotted one problem starting to develop in the form of one of the driver's door hinge pins attempting to make a bid for freedom.



This was hammered back into place properly. Have to wonder how long that's taken to work itself that far out. Noticeable that the door opens/closes more smoothly now.

Will try to find time between now and the test to give the car a general clean, and I'd really like to come up with a more substantial mounting solution for the front bumper as I can see it's sagging again.

I had a look at the Partner today to see if I could do something about the exceptionally annoying rattle from the engine bay. This did a really good job of masquerading as DMF death rattle for a while before I figured out that it was actually totally benign. Annoying as all hell but benign. One of the mounting tabs has broken off the manifold/turbo/cat heat shield.



I'll need to bolt a new tab on there to secure this as it's going to drive me round the twist otherwise.

[Zelandeth]

Today was mostly spent waiting for a landscaper who never turned up. Being essentially unable to leave the house and not feeling I could get really stuck into any big tasks, I picked away at a few small ones.

Firstly was doing a bit of tidying in the garage. You can't really see much for it, but the mountain of stuff on and behind TPA has really shrunk a lot. She was pretty well buried before! Most of this lot accumulated when I was doing the head work on the Rover.



Still some stuff under the car, but the engine cover is clear now, meaning I was able to hook up the battery charger. Hopefully actually get her out again sometime in the next few weeks.

Actually putting a lot of that lot away will happen once I've backed TPA out of the garage. Trying to get to where anything lives is just such a pain with the car there - which is why I wound up creating such a mountain of tools etc there in the first place.

Still no sign of the landscaper, so I moved on to Trabant tinkering.

Given she's in for the MOT tomorrow I wanted to make sure everything obvious was checked and do a little cleaning and tidying.

I did find we had one brake light out so got that changed. Everything else checked out.

The windscreen wipers were still parking in a slightly odd spot, so I tweaked the position of the arm on the spindle which has fixed that. I also did a little more contortion to tighten up the last two nuts holding the motor onto the bulkhead, so that's securely fastened in place and no longer makes annoying clicking noises each time the wipers change direction.

I grabbed the vacuum cleaner and gave the interior another quick going over. It wasn't too bad, but I'd tracked in a fair amount of dead leaves, plus there was the usual omnipresent layer of dog hair, despite neither of them ever having been near the car. Bit better now.



This bit of loose trim in the rear of the cabin was bugging me.



Obviously missing a trim clip there which I duly replaced. I bought like 40 of these and think I'm down to about half a dozen left now.



Not perfect, still a bit floppy towards the back seat because the panel is water damaged, but it's a lot better.



I then set about trying to remove some of the plethora of oily fingerprints which the car is basically covered in. The paint had a lot of ingrained dirt everywhere too.



Things escalated. I started polishing things - as that ended up being the most effective solution for removing it. Safe to say this definitely makes a difference!



These cars never had a high gloss paint finish even from the factory - it's kind of halfway between an eggshell and gloss finish. It's cleaning up pretty well all things considered, and is looking a lot better where I've gone over it.



Amusing looking at the side photo in that the car is a completely different colour now. It's definitely shifted from "off white" to properly beige.

Started raining after I'd wrapped up. Imagine it's been a while since the paint did this.



This car is never going to be a show winner, and I'm not putting tens of hours into polishing every millimetre, but I'd like it to at least look cared for.

To that end I'd really like to do something permanent regarding the crack in the front of the bonnet. Which because of where it is is a bit tricky. Might be easier to just get another bonnet and have it properly prepped and painted.

Oh, look what I found thanks to a member of the owner's club.



The paint on it is absolutely knackered, but I didn't see any cracks or large chunks missing at a quick glance. It was free though so I wasn't going to quibble over it either way. I'll take a closer look at that sometime in the near future.

What will the MOT bring? We'll have to wait and see. Rust is my biggest concern - I really haven't had a really good dig around the whole underside, so quite likely there could be rot under there I've not spotted.

The Partner is booked in to a garage to have whichever wheel bearing is making a noise sorted on Tuesday, so hopefully that will be sorted soon. Though we will then the following week have the fun of getting that through an MOT - which *hopefully* shouldn't be too painful.

[Zelandeth]

This is always a bit nerve wracking even when it's a car you know well. Doubly so though when it's the first time you're putting a 40 year old car through the test. This afternoon it was time to find out whether I'd be getting a pass certificate or an expensive to do list.



The end result?



I'll take that!

Tester was actually very complimentary of the condition of the underside of the car - which is a bit of a surprise when you look at how scruffy some areas are topside.

Glad to have this back into active service. It's only been a week but I've really been missing buzzing around in this little car.