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scooter

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Posts posted by scooter

  1. Modern tyres contain much less natural rubber @ 15%, than days of yore.

    Heavy truck tyres contain much more, @30%.

    Although modern polymers provide an excellent alternative, no one’s found a synthetic compound with the flexibility and durability of natural rubber.

    See your old rubber bushes lasting 50 years and new replacement failing in a few years. See modern tyres often failing MOTs through cracking after a few years.

     

  2. So Scooter, Don't touch old engine oil, don't breath in while filling up, don't use asbestos brakes?

    I was exposed to asbestos in huge quantities during my time in the Merchant Navy lagging boilers and pipes, 40 years on, nothing.

    It's really an overrated issue for brakes. I actively source nos asbestos brake pads and shoes, they are vastly better than repro ones.

     

    Do you decarbon your own engine using scrapers and such like? Really nasty stuff that carbon, full of nasties. Commercially, you would dip the head to remove it and treat the residue as hazardous waste.

  3. You have a vastly higher risk of contracting skin cancer from old engine oil than you ever have contracting measothelioma from asbestos brakes.

    Do you fill your car up with unleaded petrol? It contains Benzene, an agressive carcinogen that you breath in in large quantities while filling up.

     

    The issue with brake fitters was down to using airlines to blow dust out of the brakes constantly, day in, day out that put large quantities of asbestos dust into the working environment they were breathing in every hour of their working day.

     

    Very simple precautions remove any risk to infinitesimal.

     

    Wash out the brakes with brake cleaner rather than brush or blow out the dust, use a dust mask.

     

    They have still to find a superior material than asbestos for brake linings. Some of the synthetics have a higher friction rating, but they are scary expensive, they wear at a frightening rate and destroy disks with equal rapidity.

  4. Way bay in the 60s there was a 100,000 mile oil consumption test done by Shell it involved a good few popular cars from Hillman Minx to Vauxhall Cresta, many didnt get to 100k and I believe only the Minx

    still did more than a 1000 per pint others were appalling

    tried a search but can only find books about it no online copies,,,,,, unless you know different????

    A combination of very poor oil technology, poor metallurgy, poor surface finishes and loose tolerances.

     

    We forget how poor old cars were when new. Who now talks of 'getting a good one' if they have bought a new car that doesn't drink oil and leak like a sieve!

     

    Modern oils and machining technology, along with better rings and bearings allows us to dramatically improve these old engines.

  5. Scooter,

     

    I remember my Dad regularly buying cans of oil along with the petrol. No screw-cap plastic bottles then - they either had a tear off foil strip or you punctured the lid with a screwdriver, so it all had to go in.

     

    Wayne

     

    Aye, you always had the rack of 1 pint tins of oil beside every petrol pump.

  6. Hi All,

     

    My Mk3 GT6 gets through about 1 litre of Millers 20:50 engine oil every 1000 miles. There are no significant oil leaks (now) and the engine doesn't smoke. Is anybody able to tell me if this is a "normal" oil consumption rate or should I be concerned? The engine has done ~55000 miles and the block hasn't been touched.

     

    Cheers

     

    Wayne

    A pint a month was much the norm for cars back in the day. You routinely checked your oil when you filled up with petrol and topped up as needed.

  7. It's all good getting more heat out of the radiator as long as it can get out of the engine bay.

    Note how the factory fitted cooling vents on the side of its factory cars to allow the heat out.

    The aerodynamics of old cars tends to produce a high pressure area under the front of the cars that produces a dead air zone in the engine bay. A chin spoiler improves things significantly.

  8. Shafts, high quality sealed bearings and ceramic seals to rebuild pumps to far better than they ever were new standard are available from bearing factors.

     

    If you are fitting a new impeller, make sure you turn down the fins that go across the middle of the aftermarket ones. It causes turbulence and cavitation reducing efficiency.

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