A TR7 16V

I went to see if I can swap the clutch pedal and bracket, cos it looks a fairly easy job. I checked that all the screws will undo, and they will. However, the split pin was so solid in the clevis pin on the end of the master cylinder piston rod, the head came off first. There's enough of it left it won't fall out, but I've got to buy something to at least replace it. Does anyone have an opinion on the differences between these master cylinder rubber boots: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/371709323800?fits=Model%3AHerald&hash=item568b9a2a18:g:-6gAAOSwzYtglAuh and these: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/254854572363?epid=1816907236&hash=item3b5684294b:g:ut0AAOSwR5BbBUWJ ? Graham

These 13/60 ones seem exactly the same, except for the bracketry for the brake light switch. That may stop the pedal coming up fully when used for the clutch. But thinking about it, the clutch pedal in the car is very near the same height as the brake when it's on the switch. And with no switch, the pedal would, if free from the master cylinder, come up well over an inch higher than the normal position, i.e. above where the clutch pedal stops now. So I assume there's some stop on the master cylinder or that end of the linkage. I can see how to fix the wear in hole in the clutch pedal for the master cylinder clevis pin - just use a bigger one. But fixing the wear in the holes in the bracket for the pivot pin has me a bit flummoxed. And that set would want a new bush and pin to make it tight as well. Graham

I just looked more closely at the hole for the clevis pin to the clutch piston rod fork on this set I just got, and that's got quite a lot of wear. It's ovalled by about 1mm orthogonal to the length of the pedal, which would be about 5mm play at the centre of the pedal pad. So that would need the set drilling out and a bigger pin/bolt fitting. Whereas the same hole on the brake pedal looks fine.

No flats on either pedal pin and all holes in brackets are round. Is it different with diff models? It might be sledging hammering an egg, but I suppose I could drill a small hole in the bracket, replace the pin with a bolt of the right length shank and a nylock, and use a lock washer with two tabs, one in the hole and one on a flat of the bolt head. Depends if there's a standard bolt size the same as the pin or if I would need to get a bush made special. Graham

I will look for this hole for the fulcrum pivot pin if it stops raining long enough. Any body got a picture of where it is in a Herald? On the issue of the pedals, I got the other set, and the hole for the pin in this clutch pedal bracket is a little bit worn - the pin is rotating in that hole, not the pedal rotating on the pin. That's even though the pin's not ceased or even stiff in the pedal bearing. Whereas, the brake pedal is turning on its pin, and the hole in the bracket don't seem to be worn. So, I was thinking of putting the replacement in and looking at fixing the one that comes out. I guess I can see if there's much difference while I'm doing that. But supposing there's not, is there any problem in putting this brake pedal and bracket in, instead of the clutch one - other than I would need to take the switch off and maybe bend it's bracket out the way a bit to let the pedal come up fully? Also why are the holes in the bracket for the spring in different positions on each side? I'm pretty sure the problem with the one in the car being slack with the pedal full up is that it's in the RH hole and should be in the LH one. I doubt that makes any difference to how well the clutch disengages though. But maybe another rattle got rid of. Graham

Well I realized you meant the fulcrum pivot pin for the clutch fork and its tolerance ring. But I can't do much about them easily and right away. Whereas I can easily look at the pedal and its bits n bobs to see if I can at least postpone the car going off the road to have the box off, etc. I'm sure somebody (Colin I think) recently pointed out the axiom that you should always look at the things that are easy to fix first, without too much consideration of the probability they are the problem - but put it a bit more pithily. Graham

Is that the holes in the fork or the hole in the top end of the pedal arm that wears, or both? I've ordered a set of used arms, springs, brackets, and bolts, that were listed as being in very good condition. No clevis pins though. I'll have a look at the pins and holes I've got when I'm ready to replace the clutch set.

Slotting the bracket holes would help. But I'd still want a spare to work on. I see the pedal pin bushes are available on eBay. What wears most though, that bush, the pin, or the bracket? Graham

I've had a bit more of a look at the clutch pedal and there seems to be a lot of slack in it when it's up. So much so that the spring is well off being tight at that point. Is that normal? It looks like this is a combination of slack in the hinge pin on the pedal and in the junction at the end of the master cylinder piston rod. I reckon that if I take out that slack, I'll get the clutch to disengage with the rubber on the pedal at a point something like 1 cm before where it does now. It don't sound a lot, but maybe it will be enough to make it all feel better. However, I don't want to risk taking that apart while I need the car. So I'll want another pedal at least, and maybe the bracket the hinge pin is in, to play with for that. Graham

I looked at the pedal pivot as the easiest thing to fix. Couldn't see a problem there, but I did find the carpet had slipped down the inside of the bulkhead and folded up along the top of the ridge just under the pedal. I think that was stopping it a bit early - perhaps against that ridge so more than just 2 carpet thicknesses early. So I pushed it up and made sure the pedal goes into the recess above that ridge properly. That seems to have at least improved things. I may have to look at gluing it up against the bulkhead if this really is the cause and repeats again. While I'm still not ecstatic about how far down the pedal has to go down to properly disengage the clutch, and the need to push it so that it's further than flush with the ridge between the floor and bulkhead; now there's no sign of it dragging and slowing the starter when that's operated in gear. I've only checked it with everything cold, and I did notice the problem when everything was well warmed through. So I'll see if there's a thermal aspect to the issue next time I've chance. Thanks for the advice. Graham

The clutch on my 13/60 seems not to be disengaging properly and perhaps getting slowly worse. I can still get all the gears, including reverse, but that can be a little crunchy. It's most noticeable that with the pedal all the way down and starting with it in gear, like when it stalls at a junction, etc., the starter motor is clearly under more load than when it's out of gear - pretty sure there's no extra load on the starter with the clutch down not in gear, cos I keep forgetting I'm not starting the wife's Chrysler, which needs that. So what's the likely problem, wear in the actuation mechanism somewhere or hydraulics? I did check it's all topped up in the reservoir on the master. Pumping the clutch seems to have no obvious effect. Graham

Filler? I just knocked the dents out and painted thickly over them. I don't see any thickness of unadulterated filler being much use on the bit of bonnet over the engine, what with the differential expansion an'all. I reckon that's why the PO's efforts blew - it were near 1/4" thick in parts. I find Hammerite Smooth still works fine, either as a spray or brush on. I've got a set of silver painted wire wheels that are brushed into the nipples and rim holes and sprayed over. They've bin 'seasoning' for a year in the back garden, with the splines filled with grease and the spinners laid on top, with no problem other than me finding the motivation to get some tires swapped onto them. The furniture on all the gates round the house and garden are painted with black smoothrite. I've also bin mixing nearly Damson and touching up the herald with it for about 4 years now, and it's doing fine apart from every time's a slightly different shade. I've bin doing the Doly with it since I got it, so long ago I can't remember when that was. It was better when it were in Inca, which some idiot had repainted it, cos it was near enough the Smoothrite yellow out the tin. The mimosa it is now needs some blue and it's still not quite right. Think it needs a drip of beige too. I also much like the No1 primer from Nobel. BTW, whoever had repainted the Doly in Inca had missed enough Mimosa to prove it was an original first 2000ish car (or a shell from a later c. 1977 Australian export). And there are enough proofs underneath of it being from before the 1976 update too. Like the rear antiroll bar and the way the front overriders fitted. But they added chrome door straikes and seats with head rests in re-building it, and I had to rebuild the front on a later lower panel and front bumper after an accident. Graham

I've had a bit of a look at the front bracket between the frame and the bonnet, and the right hand one has been "repaired". I'll look better later, but now I'm distracted cos a great lump of PO's filler fell out the bonnet while I was mucking, and I need to mix more nearly Damson in Hammerite Smooth, find an old brush I don't like, and paint the area of rust that's appeared on the bonnet top. You can tell these Heralds are made of better stuff than the TR7s. There's obvs been water under the filler for years, and the steel's not gone through. Graham

Can't get a measure from the pin to the bonnet that's useful. But I measured from the bottom of the U to the point on the bonnet that would be about vertically above when shut. That's about 16.5 inch on the low side and 17.5 on the high side. Which is about the error I'm looking to fix. So it looks like that's where the problem is. Don't know if that helps me much though. Graham

I didn't think of that measurement. If there's time between showers, I'll have a look.

I think the top of the front overrider has been backed into on the side that's low. It leans back relative to the other. And the crossmember looks a bit bent down at the outer edge on the other side. But none of this is a problem. I'm only really bothered that it goes, stops, and turns well enough. Well, its nice the lights and wipers, and such work as well. And I like that the hood don't leak noticeably. Doing this stuff just fills in a bit of time in which, otherwise someone find actual work for me to do. Graham

I've ordered one of them 555 pulse generators. At £1.99 its cheap enough to see if I can get it to run with a space of a min or so, and a mark less than the time to sweep the wipers in a proper deluge. Otherwise it would sweep several times at normal speed for each pulse. It'll want a transistor added on the output to drive a 20 or 40A relay. But that won't be hard to wire in circuit. Graham

Well I tried that on the side that's low, and I might have got a mm or 2. But it's now absolutely as high as it will go without being too far forward. And even when it is too far forward, it's still not high enough. So it's down to dropping the other side about 3/4 to 1 inch with longer straps.

Is that applying some bending force to the crossmember? Cos I'm not at all sure that's flat to the ground - not that the car's on flat enough ground to be sure. But I am sure the bonnet is about 3/4" closer to the lower front panel ends and crossmember on the right than the left. And I think that's most of what makes it look skewwhiff. Graham

So, am I right in thinking I can undo the bolt behind the overrider and rotate these slotted brackets round to raise/lower the bonnet with the adjustable stay keeping the bonnet from moving fore and aft? That is, I assume, within the limits of the bonnet frame hitting the crossmember, and the slot in the brackets being too near tangential to the arc of the stay, when the stay won't stop it moving vertically and I have to turn them over so the slot is on the top/front end, which will lock. Graham

Seems improbable, given the 555s on a board with all the caps and trimmers to run down to 1Hz are as little as £1.99 inc. P&P from the UK: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/265241859968?hash=item3dc1a59780:g:jUsAAOSwSjJg~TXD. I admit I'll have to do some trial and error to find the right cap value so it runs 60 or 100 times slower, and then solder in that cap and the leads to a dash mounted pot. But I bet I'd have more than that to do in making a microcontroller drive a relay in pulses at a rate set off at remote pot (A to D?), even if I get one on a board that will take 12-15V. Can it be done with clockwork? Graham

I haven't looked if there's a crush tube or such around the hinge pin. Though that pin does have a nyloc nut on it so the hinge can be free. I think what should then stop the pin moving in the slot is the adjusting rod from the front suspension top - with the two opposite hand threads on the adjuster in the middle. If the slots are angled so they aren't orthogonal to the length of the rod, that will also stop it moving up and down by stopping it moving fore and aft. To be fair, I see that the slot on the high side of the bonnet is nearly at right angles to the rod, so that one probably wouldn't move up and stay very well. But as I want it further down, I might get away with a longer slot.

So one of them on the high side should let me drop that side. If I can mount so the slot is more nearly vertical, so the hinge point is the same distance back, but a bit lower, that'll do as well. So how hard is it to access the top, unslotted bolt on these brackets? I couldn't see how that end was fixed, so I guess the cover for the front crossmember has to come off? That may be a problem for me, given the amount of rust. If you had a batch made, any left and if so how much for one? Graham

Can I lift one side of the bonnet on the herald without moving it forward, as the adjustment on the hinge would do? There are a number of issues in this: the overrider on the low side leans backwards at the top, but the slot in the adjuster is at a shallower angle than the one on the higher side, i.e. it's moved forwards at the top or upwards at the back. I think it's possible that side has been backed into by another car at some time, but why the overrider and adjustment have gone opposite ways seems odd. The first pic is the low side, which might move up a little on the adjustment, but with the bonnet up, as in this pic, the frame is touching the crossbar already and it is definitely too far forward when at the other end of the slot. The second pic shows how much lower the hinge and frame seem to be on the high side, which seems a bit odd too. Graham

If I was looking at building a module with variable pulse rate - I'm assuming that pulse duration isn't very important, as long as it's not too long, because the wiper motor self powers until it returns to park -, then I'd look at modifying one of the 555 pulse train generator PCBs on ebay for less than £5 from UK suppliers. That includes ones where there's a pulse width control. A mod would be needed because they only seem to go down to 1 Hz and this circuit probably needs something like 1/60th of a Hz, maybe a bit less, to something around 1/2 or 1/4 of a Hz. I expect that would be just a case of adding a cap in parallel or replacing one with a larger one. I've a fair selection of medium sized ones leftover from building some crossovers that will probably do. The circuits, or one near enough, should be available on line somewhere. I'd get it right with a LED on the output. It would also need one of he pre-sets changing for a pot on flying leads. I haven't looked at mounting that in the hole where the wiper switch/pump fits, but I expect it can be done with the right sized washers, etc. But I still wonder if the Land Rover unit gives a usable intermittent rate even if it's not adjustable. That should be a fairly easy installation between the switch and the motor, with or without the wipe on wash connection. Graham