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A Lucas moment

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I've been driving the car a bit while gradually fixing little things.

Yesterday after a bit of a drive to attempt to calibrate the speedometer (a whole other story for the future), I noticed that the indicators briefly stopped working.

Thinking nothing more of it, while removing the speedo today I opened the centre console to discover that it was full of genuine Lucas Smoke! Very exciting.

On further investigation the plastic surrounding the fuse clip for fuse #7 had almost completely melted and the fuse and clip were too hot to touch.

Presumably there's a short somewhere; I did notice that the radiator fans were running without the car being warm, so that's where I'll start looking.

The trim, on the other hand, looks brilliant.  With a new headliner, carpets glued down, rips and scuffs fixed and new door trim she looks a million bucks.  Putting some Dynamat over the tunnel has improved the noise too, although the cabin is still hotter than I'd prefer.

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Off to the trim shop

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Now that I have the car more or less running, the biggest weakness is the poor state of the interior trim.

Bits are torn or missing, it's all loose and it really just looks daggy.

So off to another highly recommended artisan for a bit of a spruce up.

I'm not doing a full restoration, so only the necessary is being done, but new door trims, sound insulation, headliner repairs and generally sticking everything down will I hope make the car a lot more enjoyable to be in.

All things being equal I'll get her back Thursday week.

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A pleasant surprise

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While I had the bonnet off so that I had good access to do the carbs I also installed a set of kevlar Greenstuff front brake pads.

Being a cynic I didn't really expect much improvement, but to my surprise the sponginess in the brake pedal has gone completely.

To be honest I'm not sure how changing the pads can account for this, and I wonder if in replacing the inlet manifold I have inadvertantly fixed a previously undetected vacuum leak, which has in turn allowed the servo to work properly.  I'm happy enough with the brakes that I'm going to hold off fitting the front Wilwood calipers.

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Fine Tuning

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John Hurley is a busy man, but that's because Kent Town Auto Tune has long had the reputation of being the place to get your car properly tuned in Adelaide.

I had managed to get the car to run well enough to be just drivable and dropped it in for John to tune.

John is incredibly thorough; every component gets taken off the car, tested, adjusted to spec and reinstalled.

Unfortunately when John tested the advance curve on the new Powerspark distributor it turned out to be completely wrong with advance starting too late and not peaking until 7000 rpm.  No point on its curve matched the factory numbers.  After discussion I took John my old Lucas distributor.  He checked and calibrated it and deemed it satisfactory.

Needless to say, the car runs beautifully. The SUs do seem to provide more go to the car, although it's perhaps unfair to compare a brand new set of freshly tuned carbs with an old set of emission control Strombergs. Regardless though they look fantastic!

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On with the SUs!

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Today's work was to install the new SUs, and reinstall my newly painted, non emission controlled exhaust manifolds. I also took the oportunity to clean and paint the sides of the block, and to install a gear reduction starter.

Because of the tight access to the lower row of inlet manifold nuts I replaced all of the lower studs with new ones. This paid a huge dividend as I was easily able to do them all up finger tight before having to get a spanner anywhere near them. This easily halved the time it took to get them back on.

Access to the exhausts is a lot easier and they went on easily, as did the Bell stainless downpipes.

All in all a fairly easy afternoon's work, and amazingly the car started straight away on the first turn of the key! My attempts at tuning however were laughably poor so the car is off to Adelaide's finest SU tuner.

Looks pretty too!

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"All the leaves are brown.."

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With autumn upon us a man's thoughts once again turn to converting a road going car into an unwieldy pile of rolling junk.
With this in mind, I have decided that the time to install the triple SU's has come.
Actually, the real motivator was the awful noises that the starter motor was making.
So flush with enthusiasm I ordered a new high torque starter from Barratts and set to the task of removing the Stronbergs.
As the crossover manifold means that the rear exhaust manifold also needs to be changed over I have chosen to install the rest of the stainless exhaust too.
Removal of the Strombergs was a slow but straightforward process. Locating and removing the dozens of completely invisible nuts concealed under the manifold took a while. So did understanding the baffling arrangement of studs that hold the Stromberg manifold together. Presumably this is to prevent the amateur mechanic from risking the release of valuable Lucas smoke from within it's tortuous interior.
Anyway eventually it succumbed to reason, bad language and a 1/2" spanner.
The exhaust manifolds, which were the ones I was actually worried about, literally fell off in about 5 minutes.

I had to call a friend to work out how to get the starter motor out though. At a stretch I could almost see the head of the bottom retaining bolt, but given that it was the best part of a foot down a 1" wide gap between gearbox and transmission tunnel I had no idea how to access it. I asked Chris, who wisely told me about the access cover in the footwell. Armed with this information I had it out 5 minutes later. The picture below shows that there may be some slight wear contributing to its noisy operation...
Now if the new one would only arrive from Blighty. The Barratts carrier vultures must be out to lunch..

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Phoenix reborn

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After Lord only knows how long off the road, I finally got to take my car on her maiden drive today. We did about 120km without any major incident. At first every press on the throttle had me expecting to see a piston depart via the side of the block, but nothing like that eventuated. No overheating, good oil pressure and absolutely nothing caught fire or even released a bit of smoke. And the brakes work, even if the pedal gives the impression that they don't.

I've had her since July last year, and she came to Australia from California in 2009. Before that the only thing I know for certain is that she was sold on 31st October 1967 to her original owner, Mr Arthur McGill, 965 Mangrove Avenue, Sunnyvale, California. I was a 2yo at the time.

There are lots of rattles and squeaks, half the interior trim is missing, the paint is 5 different colours and the seat frames are knackered. But the engine runs sweetly and the car feels solid and purposeful on the road.

Next job is fitting Wilwood calipers, a proper set of SU's and then it's off to throw money at the motor trimmer.

The last 6 months has cost 100's of hours of hard work and a lot of money. Today confirmed that it has been worth every cent.

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Mea culpa

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Today I took the car to the Dept of Transport to be inspected for road worthiness.

I had heard many horror stories about the DoT inspectors and inspections and consequently I was not confident and a bit on edge.

I had planned to trailer the car, but we were unable to get it onto the trailer because of low ground clearance, so with trepidation I decided I would have to drive it. It never rains in South Australia, unless of course you need to drive an unfamiliar and largely unproven vehicle a long way on busy roads to make an appointment that costs $250 whether you arrive or not.

But arrive we did, and my experience was very tame. Everyone I dealt with was polite and helpful. I had a very helpful exchange of emails before the event with one of the inspectors. The inspector who did the vehicle ID check actually smiled and chatted.

The inspector who did the actual roadworthy inspection was also friendly and complimented the quality of the restoration work done on the IRS. I expected a list of defects to be rectified. But there were none apart from a comment that the RH front wheel bearing was a bit loose, but "nothing that was excessive".
4 hours after I left home, I had a set of registration plates and a big smile on my face.

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Boooooring

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Well.  A whole lot of nothing's going on here.

Still waiting for permission to "modify a motor vehicle".

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Please, Sir...

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The time for action is past.
Now it is time for the paperwork..
Over the weekend I had the engineer and the Historic secretary from the Jag club look at the car. Both have reported favourably.
I have submitted the "Application to Modify a Motor Vehicle" form to the DOT. At some point hopefully they'll reply.
When I have that form back, I can book the car in for a registration check, where they inspect the car to make sure that all the numbers match the paperwork.
If I pass that, then I can book the car in for a roadworthy inspection by the DOT, which is usually like the Spanish Inquisition without the comfy chair.
If I pass that, I can then go to motor registration and actually register the car.
And....DRIVE IT!

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