Unkel Kunkel

No, not the central locking,Tony

Do you like a mystery? Here is a tale of a problem that frustrated me for some months. Something was completely flattening the battery overnight, but only intermittently about every 2 -3 months.Between times it was absolutely fine and could be parked for a week and start instantly.It started to get more frequent. Checked all the usual sources of current drain.Nothing. Did a check to see if draining current - normal limits after the car locked and all systems shut down.So something was happening but only now and again.For most of the time it was absolutely fine. OBD11 code reader - nothing showed up. Would there be a point taking it to an auto electrical place? - but it might be there for a fortnight or even a month and be absolutely fine. So I continued to try without out a fuse for things like radio, locking etc.No progress. One summer night I drove home, locked the car and as I walked to the house I thought I could hear a very very slight whine from the car.(It was barely audible so I knew I hadn’t locked mother in law in the car..).Odd -never noticed that before. I came back an hour later and it was still seemed to be doing it - or was I imagining it? I called my missus over.She couldn't hear it , sighed and went in doors, leaving me crawling around the locked car trying to locate where it was coming from. Weirdly, it didn’t seem to be coming from under the bonnet. But that night .. the mystery was finally solved.Can you guess what was happening ? To be continued- 2200 hrs tomorrow.

An estimate reported today is that there will need to be 25 million charging places in place when/if the petrol and diesel ban comes in. At present there 11,000. I think the old infernal internal combustion engine may will be around for a good long while yet , but many running on hydrogen.( produced by electrolysis from electricity generated by.. oh .err ..hang on a minute ..)

As we all know, the standard seal really isn’t that good and rather expensive. -Need something that is thicker, yet compresses easily (so don’t need to resort to over- use of powerful sealants or adhesives)yet retains its resilience and isn’t affected by oil, petrol and reasonably tolerant of heat - and reasonably cheap. I have been looking at closed- cell matting -the sort sold by Machine Mart and B &Q as “anti-fatigue” floor matting. I have some samples immersed in oil and petrol for 3 months show which show no signs at all of deterioration. It looks promising so far and a “tile” certainly produces a lot of gasket material Just an idea and I have yet to try it.

Apart from anti-lock brakes not really sure how useful some of these things, like cruise control, are. He uses a wind down window which seems rather quaint now. Electric windows are fine for ones which are inaccessible but I have never been convinced for the need of one on the driver’s door, where a winder would be easily reached.

Push chairs and child safety seats are designed with the sole purpose of frustrating and humiliating grand parents who attempt to use them. The bulky child safety seats I bought so I could transport my grand daughters safely when the family visited, came with instructions -or rather unhelpful pictures which were so unhelpful I had to search for U-tube video.The whole construction looked like a scaled down version of something Martin Baker would come up for a fighter aircraft. Contrast with the scary “Junior Car Seat”advertised in the October 1962 edition of “Motor” ! (the Motor show edition which also has details if Vitesse, Spitfire and Herald incidentally)

Other smelly things ... People , you know ,the stale sweat/fags/superannuated underwear ones.. They can walk down several aisles of a supermarket and the smell just stays behind after they have gone.They go on some where else and that also smells really bad after they have left. I guess everywhere they go, all day long it smells bad. There is no limit. Having distributed it generously everywhere they go, how come they don’t just run out if it by say midday, and it have to wait for it to build up again? Puzzling things, smells.

How topics drift is fascinating. Where now?

Bad car smells: I bought my Spitfire from it’s first owner, a delightful old lady in her mid eighties who drove everywhere with her very spoilt little dog on the front passenger seat. As small yappy dogs go, I suppose he was quite cute - but he smelt really awful and he seemed to molt excessively. When I bought the car, her little companion had long since yapped his last. However with my purchase I learnt that it came with the persistent essence of her stinky, beloved little friend. Even after the seats and interior were removed, the floors,the inner and outer rear sills were all replaced and the A posts repaired and the body separated from the chassis and further welding repairs were carried out,I am sure the smell is still detectable when I open the garage. Strange things is smells. .

I know of a farmer who had the literally shocking experience of accidentally triggering his implanted defibrillator when using his arc welder. Although he tried to make light of what must have been a very unpleasant experience, describing it as being like punched in the chest - “but from inside out”, he hasn’t tried it again.

Well, I think you have come up with a business opportunity here - alternative medicine! “Electromagnetic Pulse therapy for aches pains and rejuvenating one’s electro- somatic and psychic aura to combat the effects of toxic semi somnambulism and electromagnetic depletion and ionic imbalance consequences of modern life” .Course of ten pulses and full aura field vitality assessment £850, extra emergency rescue 6 second double applications by appointment - without pre session aura assessment ( but with rapid well- being and dietary toxin awareness screen and personalised crystal orientation advice ) £275.” Please form an orderly queue. It would need a bit of re-paint of course...

This is a bit unusual.Not Triumph, but a motoring workshop curio. Kindly lent by someone to enable the remagnetising of the horse shoe magnets in a very old car magneto. Ridiculously, hernia-heavy, it can only operated for a few seconds at a time with a few seconds interval and anyone who has a pacemaker must be 10ft away.A low pitched hum after the switch is thrown is the indication it is working -and very effective it is to! Made by Crypton ( not Krypton, that’s Superman).

Some really superb advice and tips have been posted by several posters who are obviously very experienced. As a self-taught total amateur (whose original results were so awful they were just absurd) I offer you encouragement- If I got there, you will. I am still learning.Improvement came with practice , practice.practice ..it is now a very satisfying thing to do.I progressed and have done sills floor, boot floor, inner and outer rear wings, chassis out riggers.. Along the way, I learnt: 1. Welder Don't be tempted by “cheap” equipment.I have heard experienced welders not only say how useless they are but how difficult they are to use.Wire feed the main issue. A newcomer will be just get disheartened and either give up or ( from personal experience) have to go and buy a “proper” one. Clarke is good.My 160TM is excellent and on full wack runs off ordinary 13 amp. 2.Gas : Although there must be someone who speaks highly of the results from gas-less mig welders, they seem disappointing for car body work. You will not be impressed how quickly a disposable gas bottle is used up! Go for X Size with regulator and a L/min flow meter. 3.Accessories: After a decent gas mig welder, an auto- dimming helmet was the most important thing I discovered. They are wonderful. 4.Preparation : a.Cleaning to bright metal makes a really vast difference to the ease of welding.Trying to weld through rust and debris will just produce dramatic showers of splattering and sparks, holes and frustration and very poor welds. b.ensure a good earth connection. 5.Fire. At some stage you will at least get a bit of underseal smoking and some little flames. - Yes, you will. Be aware.-Stop and look from behind your mask at regular intervals. It will really spoil your day if you set your car, + - yourself/ garage /house /neighbour’s house on fire. Be prepared - Have a dripping wet rag, some water and a fire extinguisher to hand and if you in a bit of a confined space - an escape route. (Also, if you switch the power off your welder and turn the gas flow up, you have now have an inert gas/CO2 extinguisher in your hand) Keep at it!

I have Tyre pal type systems fitted to three vehicles now. I see them as a reassuring early warning system. This followed an rather unsettling incident in fairly busy traffic on the M6 a few years ago: The major part of the near side rear tyre was last seen as it overtook me, it veering across threes lanes and bouncing off the central reservation barrier as I slowed onto the hard shoulder. This was not a result of not checking tyres In fact, the car had been at a well known tyre fitting chain only the previous day so only 50 -60:miles earlier.Two new front tyres had been fitted and the rear tyres were checked and given the all clear(they were fairly new) On reflection, whilst joining the M6 traveling N off the M56 , some 5miles or so earlier, there had been a faint sound - a faint metallic brief tinkle as if I had run over a small piece of debris -maybe piece of tin can or something - certainly nothing at all remarkable or that unusual. Otherwise, nothing untoward until just before the tyre departure when there was suddenly a vague vibration from the rear of the vehicle and blurring of the rear view mirror which made me instinctively lift my foot off and slow down and change lanes.Whilst starting to do this the tyre remnant sped past, making the cause very obvious . I am sold on the idea that a tyre monitoring device would, I think of alerted me early on to to pressure loss and also the rapid heat heat build up before the incident. Fortunately though,no-one came to any harm, so it was just a nuisance. Remarkably, the wheel was completely undamaged. I was impressed how stable the car( Freelander 2 ) was - suddenly running on three and a bit tyres .

I don’t know. I must confess. I work at a basic level - something either fits or it doesn’t. If it fits - and I means it threads easily and is stable with finger tightening, that is good -and as probably good as it is going to get.If you’re reaching for a big spanner and using a vice - stop kidding yourself. So basic, that some of the bits I will try for a good fit come from jars and boxes of loads of nuts and bolts taken from long-forgotten, dismantled “things”. I do have thread gauges and do use them but just trying a dozen or so will usually result in a good match. This method is not so much UNC, Metric or BSW, UNC but more ADT. Any Damn Thing .

- I am not an engineer, ready to be advised if wrong, but my basic understanding is that old Mr Joseph Whitworth in the mid 19C gave us the Whitworth thread based on a 55 degree pitch and radiused “ trough” The British Standard Pipe thread = BSP is based on that. In 2 forms: - a parallel thread “British Standard Pipe Parallel” =BSPP -a tapered thread “British Standard Pipe Tapered” = BSPT However, In North America, a different system was adopted based on a 60 degree pitch and sharp “troughs” ( not the right engineering term,I know) This was, and still is their “imperial i.e. non- metric standard, for pipe threads. This is “National Pipe Thread” = NPT. Being a taper thread, the T is also taken as being Tapered. In addition to North America, tap and die sets, from elsewhere- from Taiwan for example, will have the American NPT taps, not BSP. 1.I can’t think British cars were ever been equipped with NPT threads, They will have been BSP - whether parallel or tapered. I.BSP and NTP are not compatible, though probably can be “made “ to fit. ( look at Pete’s charts ) 2.A taper thread is designed so that as it is tightened until the the threads start to seal against each other - without the use of a sealing washer, tape or anything, and this should be achievable with very little torque. 3.A parallel thread set up needs a sealing washer of some sort or something to seal the threads as there isn’t the thread -sealing of the taper system. What you need is old Joe Whitworth’s British BSP .... not NTP!

Echo all of the above - Have the earth reasonably close to where you are welding. Some experienced welders ditch the spring earth clamp that comes with the welder and use an earth clamp that is like sort of G Clamp thing to get good earth connection. As a completely self - taught (and still-learning) amateur welder I find the Mig-welding.co.uk site run by Weld Quip continues to be a brilliant help to me. It has excellent “How to do it “ advice on MIG ,TIG, with videos and also things like paint spraying , air tools, compressor advice various discussion forums - and a very speedy mail order service for supplies.

The 1500 is listed as being 790kg unladen. All the oily bits chassis and wheels will be be a sustantial part of that. Doors are quite heavy, 28kg I seem to recall. These are light cars. Something more fundamental before separating the body from the chassis frame : What is your car’s bodywork like ? - If you are thinking about major body panel replacements such as sills and floors , then do these with door gap bracing before removing the body from the chassis frame -and keep the doors on. This can really save you a lot of time - and gnashing of teeth over a distorted shell that the doors will never fit into properly Having done the repairs and got a nice strong body shell, keep the door gaps braced then lift it off with helpers and /or careful use of slings and an engine crane.

These compressor driven guns work on a venturi effect “sucking” up the liquid from the can with the compressor running at a fairly high pressure/flow.These thin cans are not pressure vessels - but with a blocked vent they become one ..briefly. Oft forgot, the basic venturi type “ paraffin gun” can be a versatile thing - with diluted Waxoyl (or your choice,) you can adjust the jet to what ever you want and can give a misty spray that travels several feet.

Recently, I have been looking at Waxoyl alternatives: I bought two aerosols with extensions -just for small jobs and was surprised how effective they were. The Kent wax and the Indasa have a Dinitrol type smell,( not like the white spirit smell with Waxoyl) and is more like Dinitrol in consistency. Kent also do a can for use with a a shultz gun and compressor - £9.05 My gun and probe made by Plastic Padding years ago -and have been refilling the container with Waxoyl.

Heating over a gas stove .. are you just saying that to make me feel nervous?

These things are a real struggle and I have never been satisfied with the fit ! With respect to originality the mere thought of this is heresy, but.. -I have wondered.. would it possible to fabricate a metal “box” for each with a removable top panel for access to the joints and be done with the darned things?

Good to hear all happily resolved!

If the front end - carbs and union joints etc as mentioned above are OK and the smell persists.. -take a look at the back end : -cast an eye over the top of the fuel tank. There is a small vertical pipe which is capped off with a blind ended rubber sleeve which perishes and falls to bits and can be responsible for an elusive petrol smell.If it is that there are various ways to occlude it easiest to fit an 8mm central heating brass heating brass stop-end :

The dark bits are pitted areas that still have rust in them. I think the active agent here is citric acid ,albeit rather expensive ,with additives to gel and keep it in place.Effective, pleasant and safe to use. The answer is - re - application/ wire brush and just keep on going - doing it over and over again, until it looks like grey pitted metal.Then any doubt -do it again. I tend to then apply some phosphoric acid say Jenolite, then dry it to give a dark grey protective phosphate layer - and repeat this a few times too.Dry it with a moderate hot air gun. Any trace -do it again. It is time consuming - but persistence does pay in the end with this job. - You’ll get there!