Papa Smurf

I hope it might be a better colour match. The Rimmer Pageant Blue is miles out

Doing a bit of body repair and grabbed the next can of Rimmer Pageant Blue to finish off and it turns out to be a can of white paint that’s been mislabelled! Is this a first?

Very delayed update (nightmare getting time to work on this…). Think have finally resolved this issue. Pulled gearbox and reassembled lever arm pivot so it has lost its “slop”. Also replaced slave push rod and noticed the new one was a few mm longer than the old one. Final part was to find some 40mm washers on eBay that could be put under the throw out bearing to push the front of bearing out a bit (link for these below). After much measuring of bearing face relative to bell housing front face and clutch fingers relative to back plate of engine I went with 4 x 1mm thick washers. The 20 miles or so covered since then seems to have suggested this has worked. Reasonable clutch action and no rattling clanking or squeaking… some photos below… ebay link for washers: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224326415431?var=523117972356

I will try but think it is the clutch lever because looking under bonnet I can see the clutch lever pivot pin dancing around in time with the rattle..

Anything that fixes it without having to take the gearbox out again is a win in my book!

I am sure you have seen more of these than I have hot dinners but I have posted on here before about this. see photo of the old throw out lever that suffered a bizarre failure in that the pin connecting the rod from the slave seemed to fail, the end of the con rod then rubbed on the release lever and eventually punched through the back of the release lever (all prior to my ownership). I replaced release lever with one bought from eBay. My suspicion is that the geometry of the new release lever is ever so slightly different to the old one (they looked the same to the naked eye) and this is why I have a rattle.

Yep, has been like it for a year now. It’s more rattly than budgie noise, so I think it’s more loose than some others. Have been putting off the interior strip down to get to the slave cylinder…

Hi Pete, I have had this since replacing broken clutch lever arm. Do you have a link / part number for a suitable spring?

My car came with both types of mirror, square and bullet. I ended up putting bullet ones on as the plastic plate fitting of the square ones looked so shonky. The bullet ones are rock solid when fitted but rubbish vision wise..

Thanks again, got it now…. Screw up the threads to put the whole geometry closer to normal, but watch am not over extending shock. Longer term, if want to run low (although I’m not planning to go racing and some of the country lanes near me are quite bumpy) would need shorter and stiffer springs. Plus a lowering block on the back would rotate the whole car a little bit about the front axle (to sit it’s backside down) and assist in lifting the front anti roll bar a bit

Thanks all, so I take from that that I could “unscrew” the adjustable rings on the dampers allow the spring to expand a bit (as it seems to be compressed), make the spring/damper component longer, which will raise ride height a little bit. But should be careful when doing this that the spring expands as anticipated and the damper does not reach last 25% of its travel.

Some more pics of front suspension assembly and ride height

Colin, I’m not sure it’s as I bought it earlier this year. Will take some better pictures

Hi all, next issue is that the front end of my Spit 1500 seems to be quite low. With two adults on board every bump in the road triggers a holding of breath awaiting a nasty scraping sound. The u bolts holding the front anti roll bar seem to be taking the brunt of the impact (see pic) and probably need replacing before they fail as they look perilously thin…. I think the front suspension is adjustable (see pic), and seems to have been set low to give some camber on the front end. So is it just a matter of screwing the rings so they compress the spring and push the front end up a bit? Anyone got a good reference setting of how high off ground it should sit? At the same time the back end looks a bit high and I’m toying with fitting a 1/2 inch lowering block. Any thoughts on this?

Fixed! Needed column length adjusted to stop fouling of boss on cancelling mechanism, reset steering wheel on boss as the pin holes did not line up with cancelling mechanism and ground down 1/8” drill bit to act as the pin to activate self cancelling mechanism. This revealed probable reason why the pins had not been inserted. The other pin hole has the remains of a roll pin in that must have sheared off in such a way it means it’s stuck in there forever.