Mjit
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Posts posted by Mjit
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On 01/06/2020 at 22:27, dougbgt6 said:
Some people prefer a voltage gauge rather than an ammeter, ALL the current goes through the ammeter so some heavy cabling is required. But I do like an ammeter!
Doug
I seem to remember reading that it's an ammeter for a car with a dynamo but a volt meter for one with an alternator.
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Not too big a job to check the oil feed.
- Remove the rocker cover. Place upside down somewhere clean and that you won't kick it.
- Remove the rocker shaft assembly, working the nuts off a turn or two at a time, rather than wanging one nut all the way off, then the next, etc. Put the rocker assembly inside the rocker cover.
- Give the top of the head a good wipe down with blue towel to remove the collected oil.
- Move cats, children's fingers, etc from the engine bay and then the coil LT lead (so there's no spark).
- Spin the engine over on the starter to get the oil pressure up and you SHOULD get oil starting to trickle (NOT gush 3ft in the air, just trickle) out the hole where the rear-most rocker shaft pedistal would sit.
If you have oil:
- Refit the rocker shaft.
- Regap the rockers.
- Refit the rocker cover.
If you DON'T have oil but are lazy:
- Refit the rocker shaft.
- Regap the rockers.
- Refit the rocker cover.
- Refit the external oil feed.
If you DON'T have oil and AREN'T lazy:
- Drain the cooling system.
- Remove the head.
- Find/remove the internal oil feed blocker from the top of the block/underside of the head.
- Refit, etc.
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Remember too that you're dealing with carbs/mechanical distributor/40 years of bodging and wear and tare so 'close' or 'good-enough' migth be as good as it gets. You MAY have the carbs set correctly at idle, but modifications/wear/someone fitting random needles and springs in the past means you don't have the correct mixture at higher RPM.
If you're just trying to check the Colortune mixture is correct check your carbs for lifting pins. If fitted use these to lift the piston a little bit and listen to the engine note. Up + stays up = rich. Down + stays down = lean. Up but drops back = correct. The amount you're meant to lift is ~1/4" and the first time you do this it's best done with the air filters off, so you can see there's some free movement of the pin before it starts lifting the piston/how much push is required to lift it 1/4". After that it's best done with the air filters on, as they do restrict airflow slightly and so affect mixture.
If you're still not happy you have things right you need someone with a CO2 meter and to get measurements at a few points. For a road car I'd say one at idle, one around 2,500RPM, and one around 3,500/4,000RPM, as that's the sort of range most of us actually do our driving in. If you're someone who regularly goes nearer the red line than that then add a fourth measure at higher RPM. One tip here is that if you have a twin exhause make sure you block one while taking the measurements. Doesn't need to be air tight, just enough to stop one pipe robbing from the other - on my car we found a huge difference between the two exits (of a 4-2-1-2 system) down at idle, fixed by someone putting their size 9 boot over the end of one pipe. From that you'll be able to see where across the RPM range you're lean/correct/rich and start playing with different needles to get it correct across the board.
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Also while white light is a mix of all the different colours of light, that doesn't mean all white light is 33% red/33% green/33% blue, so shining the white light from two different sources through a green lens doesn't mean you're getting 33% of the light going in coming out for every different type of white light bulb.
Green is one of the 'better' colours, with similar levels of green in the light from an incandecent bulb to a 'cool white' LED and actually daylight levels for 'warm white' LEDs. It's a different story if you use one for say a brake light LED, where incandecent bulbs are strong but both 'cool' and 'warm' white LEDs very weak.
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Powder coating is about the best way to apply paint to protect metal...IF it's done correctly. More often than not it isn't.
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Think you can tighten all the diff->car and spring->diff bolts and the damper nuts with the car up in the air. The others you can shove the bolts through and run the nuts up till they're starting to clamp, then drop the car on to its wheels and rock it back and forth a bit while pushing down on the boot to settle the crazy initial camber. That done squeeze under and tighten the nuts. If you love your torque wrench as much as me it's then back up in the air for the final torquing.
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I've got a lowering block (started with 1" but decided it was too much and happy now on 3/4") and having had the spring/block in and out a few times for one reason or another I'd say you're just making trouble for yourself if you dowel the block to the diff. It's hard enough jiggling everything in and out as it is, would be a bloody nightmare if both the block and spring were dowelled!
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The people powder coating your chassic SHOULD have plugged all threaded holes, if not all holes with bungs before spraying the powder to prevent this. As they didn't you'll need to get yourself a set of imperial taps and dies and re-tap them as NonMember has said.
The process I'd follow is:
- Start by using a parts manual to work out which nuts and bolts go where.
- If you have a bolt to do in a painted hole start by grabbing the dies and find the one that matches the bolt. Assuming you were sent the correct bolts you now know the correct thread size, avoiding any miss-prints, etc.
- Swap that for the corresponding sized tap and start running it in the painted thread with little or no pressure, though maybe a little more pressure to intially break the paint surface. Running the tab through the paint surface should be easy and the less pressure you're using the more likely it is to catch the existing thread, rather than try to cut a new, cross one. If you're needing to use any real force/facing any real resistance the tap's probably trying to cut metal, not paint, so abort and try again.
- Usual rules apply - screw the tap down one-and-a-half turns/back off half a turn/down one-and-a-hald/back off half/... till your out the other side or bottom out/run out of thread (sudden big increase in effort required to go any further.
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As a starter disconnect the handbrake completely by popping out the split pin from the clevis pin. That takes it 100% out of the equasion.
After that it's hard to say from the pic but I'm not sure that IS the correct nut. There should be a long "U" (ish) shaped fork at the end of the hand brake cable that has holes through it. This goes over the rear drum operating leave and you drop a clevis pin through the holes in it/the operating leaver. This "U" piece is then attached to the end of the hand brake cable via a square nut inside the U and a plain nut on the cable side, and it's that connection you want to be adjusting - losten the plain nut and you can spin the square nut/U fork up and down the threaded section on the end of the cable, effectivly making the cable longer or shorter.
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22 hours ago, Badwolf said:
I just ordered 10 of the appropriate sized white led bulbs off fleabay and replaced all my panel lamps on my spit. Cost me coppers. No problems at all up to now, and much brighter. I do have a cheap 'Maplins' 12v buzzer across the terminals of the indicator warning bulb for extra audio warning so that may have some effect on voltage and stuff.
Well your first mistake is buying the wrong colour LEDs - https://www.classiccarleds.co.uk/blogs/news/why-you-should-not-use-white-leds-behind-coloured-lenses
Having tried both (I too went the eBay route before finding Classic Car LEDs) I can say the coloured ones do work a lot better than the white ones.
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My yellow Spit's made it on to Google's satllite view - https://goo.gl/maps/gw4becJg9Eqqof1H6
And my working (red) and dead (blue with stripe) 2000s are there too - https://goo.gl/maps/vFxXYQvvPfkBQnzf7
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I went for an even simpler approach - I left the dizzy sat there. Sure it probably saps a little bit of engine power but does help confuse people when I open the bonnet, as "no dizzy" is easy for the brain to spot but the fact the plug leads don't actually connect to it, less so.
Also means swapping back to coil/points can be done at the road side if things go wrong...but not had any issues in getting on for 10 years and don't even know if there's still a coil/points in the boot any more! This does get the lockdown 'tinker' devil going though - could strip out the mechanical advance mechanism and save maybe 0.001BHP!
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There's a couple of things here.
1. You shouldn't need to make any changes to the bulb holder wiring to (physically) fit an LED bulb, just remove the old bulb and screw/push-and-twist in the new one. Sounds to me like you have the wrong LED bulb. I can recomend www.classiccarleds.co.uk/
2. If the bulb's wired the same in a Vitesse as it is in a Spitfire then just swapping bulbs won't work. Certainly in the Spitfire the repeater bulb gets current going through it in different directions depending on turning left or right. Fine for a filament bulb but will at best only work turning one way with an LED, and in all likelyhood kill the LED when you turn the other.
3. I'd have thought you'd be OK just swapping the repeater bulb to LED from the low resistance side. It's replacing the 4 corner bulbs that tends to drop the resistance too low to trigger the original bi-metalic flasher relays correctly.
3. Is the repeater bulb NORMALLY dull in a Vitesse? In my Spitfire I replaced all my indicator bulbs with LED, swapping the flasher relay to an LED-compatible one and, at least initially the repeater bulb to an LED too. I was making the change to improve the 4 corners, rather than the repeater and have to say the old filament bulb's now back in the repeater - it was so bright I basically blinddblinded myself every time I used the indicators driving at night! Unless the Vitesse is known to have a poor repeater I'd suggest you migth be trying to treat the symptom, not the disease.
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21 hours ago, dougbgt6 said:
Driven twice to the post box in two months, but today 400 miles to Scotland! OMG!!! There are some lunatics about, rules no longer apply apparently.
What, like the fact in Scotland, unlike England, the rule is still "Only esscential journeys"...? Unless you actually did just do 400 miles TO Scotland and not cross the border.
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I was in my 2000...which looking underneath on my return still has a *!#$ing gearbox oil leak!!!!
First run post gearbox rebuild lost most of the oil...because someone had forgotten to tighten the overdrive solonoid 😒
Second run post gearbox rebuild was dripping a little, which I put down to over filling, doing it with just the front jacked up.
Yesterday run...not overfilling then. Queue a lunch time jacking the car up and getting under to try and work out where the hell it's coming from, as it isn't obvious. J-type working perfectly but wondering if o rings could be leaking...which means all the oil pooring out while trying to swap it for one of my spares 🙄
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Currently on the weekly run (i.e. parked in the supermarket car park and right now queueing to get innto the supermarket itself).
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It should be similar to the Spitfire MkIV/1500 ones so:
The panel is only DIRECTLY held to the dash frame by a stud and nut near the top on the far right side, and a tab that goes behind the centre dash panel at the top that the top/right centre dash screw passes through.
It's then held indirectly, to a greater or lesser degree by almost everything on it! I think the bigger holds are:
- Eyeball air vent - think the retaining ring for this clamps vent->dash->dash frame.
- Have a feeling the choke cable may go through a dash frame hole too.
Then you have everything else that needs to be unscrewed from, or unplugged to release wires.
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OK, worked it out - you just need to give them a firm poke with a jewelers screwdriver from the non-springie side and they pop out.
Was being a bit too careful with it before and looking for some hidden pin or something that had to be removed to release them (that doesn't exist).
That's another lock-down evening's entertainment sorted
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On 08/05/2020 at 09:57, poppyman said:
I have just done the same on my Stag, matched everything to the ignition key. It is an easy job but a bit fiddly, take them apart on a tray then you can find the bits you will drop.
Tony.
Looking to do the same on my saloon. Have one of the barrels out of the car but can't work out how to remove the pins. What's the trick?
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A bigger hammer is always the answer (though PlusGas rather than WD40).
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I'd echo the "What have you tried to remove it" question.
For me a big hammer and a very long drift (so you're swinging the hammer somewhere you have enough room to swing a cat) have always worked. If you've tried that and it didn't work...try a bigger hammer
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Humm, if you're swapping the drive shafts how far have you gone stripping things down?
I'd guess there's not much extra you need to unbolt between where you are and dropping the whole diff out the car. Changing the diff. oil's then just a case of turning it upside down and letting it pour out the spring stud holes.
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15 hours ago, AndyTV8 said:
I am almost certain that Peter James (as an individual) was a senior member of the Footman James Company many a moon ago. He then chose to leave and set up his own company which is Peter James the current TSSC insurance panel member
...... Andy
Yep, Peter James set up Footman James, then sold it out ~10 years ago to one of the big insurance companies.
He then set up Peter James then set up the Peter James insurance company basically doing exactly the same thing Footman James used to do.
Think I read on here that he'd sold Peter James a year or two back too? -
On 27/04/2020 at 11:22, Pete Lewis said:
never forget the bedding requirement its simple
2) Following Bedding Procedure for M1144 / M1155 / M1166 initial brake test start with 3 – 4 light applications from 30mph down to 0mph.
After these, follow the steps below according to Material.
M1144: 6 / 7 medium pressure applications 70mph down to 30mphThis is a great theory but I'd question its practicality, unless you happen to own a private road/race track.
1. 3-4 light applications from 30mph down to 0mph. OK, might be able to manage this one, though would have to be careful about what time of day so my road is quiet-enough to do it without someone driving in to me.
2. 6-7 medium pressure applications 70mph down to 30mph. Humm. Well I live in London so no roads near me where 70mph is safe, so looks like I need to drive on old pads to near a motorway, then change the pads at the side of the road. Even then I can't help feeling trying this on the M25 would end up being "6-7 medium pressure applications 70mph down to 30mph, or until an lorry plows in to the back of you at 56mph".
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Gauges.
in General
Posted
I though it was down to the fact the output of a dynamo was related to RPM so drivers needed to be more aware of their electrical load, so needed to see the current being drawn via an ammeter. An alternator can respond to changes in eletrical load independent of RPM so drivers are more concerned about the battery being charged or drained, whc=ich a volt meter will show you.
Though I would also accept they are cheaper/lower risk to fit and the above is just the marketing BS used by the motor industry to sell the switch to the public.