BXProject

Yup, booked in for an exhaust to be made on the 16th May. Found a place on Anglesey that has good recommendations, and popped round to see him when I was in Bangor getting my eyes poked. Ever heard of HIB Exhausts? I could get it done sooner but I've booked a trailer for that weekend, so seems pointless hiring it twice.

Got a fuel leak from one of the carbs but waiting for a gasket set, still need to paint behind the rear bumper & put it on and the wheels desperately need aligning, although I can at least do a better job visually - one's out by over an inch! Steering seems a bit heavy, but maybe I've been spoilt with PAS in recent years.

My gearchanges could be a little slicker too, but the downside with a van linkage and a car length gearstick is that there's bugger all leverage. So a bit of a manly gearshift, and there's so little movement I'm not certain whether I'm actually in a gear or just between.

Oh, and I'm one wheel nut short, which is a bugger but it'll do for now. I'm still buzzing today from the fact I've actually got it moving!

Got a (marginally) better video today, and took it up and down the Canolfan Trywyrn access road a few times. Much to the surprise of the tourists who were rafting...

V8 with no exhaust, nice!!!

Well done Mat. Its hard work pulling out a project you've had for years and actually getting it done

Well, it's broke already. Failed fuel pump, at least it's not pumping when driven from the cam. I can get fuel through and the engine to run for a short while if I pop the pump off and work it by hand, but that may just be that I'm moving it further on each stroke than the cam lobe is?

Need to get it sorted by Thursday night!!!

Check out the diaphragm. You can get spares (or you used to) or try putting an extension on the rubbing pad on the arm. I've used a piece of brass roughly 12x6x5 thick. Just drilled and tapped 4ba and held o with 2 screws.

Failing that it's a new pump or mod to leckie mate.

That's a good idea about the brass, but an electric pump is on the way. I did look into rebuilding it, but there's two types of pump - one you can take apart, one you can't. Guess which one I have...

With hindsight, when I drained the oil it was quite thin so wonder if it could have been contaminated with petrol via a leaky diaphragm?

mat_the_cat wrote:one you can take apart, one you can't. Guess which one I have...

the one you can take apart?

It's that long since I worked on old petroly stuff they were all strippable then

The only differences were, one was all metal with a central bolt to take it apart or a glass top held on by an arch screw clamp the diaphragms were held by 1/2 a dozen screws round the body.
The only other difference was where they were bolted to the block they had either 2 or 3 bolts.

As most were made by specialist companies an bought in by the manufacturers, the hole pitches were the same and quite often were interchangeable. I've fitted one off a Hillman minx to a Ford 10 before now.

This is the rebuildable type:



and the one I have looks like this:



Maybe I could have opened it up but didn't rate my chances! Interesting what you say about compatibility, it hadn't crossed my mind Oh well, this time tomorrow should be up and running again, then down to Devil's Bridge at the weekend to surprise a few people

Yeah. It's crimped on you would have to wreck it to get it apart.... modern rubbish mutter mutter,
Even the pump arm is pressed steel shit. The old ones were a casting.
The glass topped ones were best, you could see the juice flowing.

Philhod wrote: Even the pump arm is pressed steel shit. The old ones were a casting.

Mmnh Not sure about the merits of that statement Phil. The pressed steel arm in the top picture is a rivetted lamination and likely to endure working stresses for longer than a casting. Cast Iron has phenomenally greater compressive strength but not angular or tensile strength.

The levers are usually alloy designed for the job, but they do sometimes become brittle through porosity.

Back in the old days, a lot of them were solid brass!

The ones I was describing were made of british standard brass with a slightly higher copper content lowering the Zinc %.
It is a substitutional alloy, meaning atoms of the two constituents can replace each other within the same crystal structure. It actually becomes more like a bronze without the Tin.
Basically this means that it has reduced creep signatures, is tougher ( stress break point is considerably higher) and much improved wear characteristics.
Thats why I described the pressed steel as rubbish. The originals were made for puppose didn't break or wear out, in fact the ones I described a repair for earlier, were later mild steel efforts that did wear.

fuck me, its a v8 granada

Actually a fair few Grandads with dead 3.0 V6's, ended up invaded with Rover 3.5 lumps in.

Just gos to show how great Hyundai are

First proper test drive tonight!



That was part throttle, changing at 3000 pm or so. Which was more than enough to start with.

Feels quick, but with lethal handling though...steering was VERY light on the move and bizarrely as soon as you turned the wheel it wanted to turn more in that direction rather than self centring. I was going to drive somewhere to get the alignment sorted, but the nearest place I know of is 30 miles away, so might have to trailer it there unless I can get it a little closer at home.

August BH weekend is the deadline, so really want to get it on the road at the start of that month to iron out any problems.

Well TBH Mat, once you got it in there and running the handling was always going to be a challenge.
I was going to suggest Jag rear springs and a couple of A bars, otherwise it's probably going to twist the chasis all over the place, pushed hard.