Started in earnest addressing the “casualties” from the LOG 40 trip. I’ve got a couple of weeks to get these done before heading off to the the Brits in the Ozarks show in Fayetteville, AR.
First up - the passenger door window mechanism failed. The cable didn’t break, but it did come off the lower rear pulley. I figured this would be relatively easy - last year I rebuilt the driver side, using Alex’s clamp bolts, so I had the cable, his bolts, and just needed a new set of pulleys and the fuzzy strips at the top of the door. Those came in from RDE yesterday, so I got started.
Of course, it wasn’t as easy as I thought. I couldn’t get two cables through either clamp, so I must have used both large hole clamps on the drivers side. And when I tried to drill the hole out a size larger, I actually broke the bolt. Argg. So I was left with reusing one of the old clamps. I did my best at guessing how to put 6 ft-lbs on a nyloc nut with an open end wrench. So far, it seems I guessed right. I frayed the cut ends and dabbed them with epoxy, so if I was a little light on the torque, maybe they’ll hold.
It took me maybe 2 hours to get the door lock mechanism hooked up. Does anybody have any tips for getting the outer latch push button actuator rod hooked up? That was the long pole. Here’s my hint - DO NOT try to do this after installing the window lift motor. Do it before. That was probably 1:45 of my problem. Confession - I ddn’t even try to hook up the door lock rods. I never lock any car where entry just requires a knife, anyway.
Two more jobs to do. 1) When I rewired the car, I somehow made it so I only have brake lights when the parking brake is on. So I have to sort that out. 2) It seems like every long trip I run into a situation where the exhaust pipe hits the road. With the Voigt 5-speed there isn’t much space under the tranny for the pipe, so it ends up basically pushed up against the transmission support, transmitting vibration into the cabin., So I’m thinking I need to fab up a better support than the plate that Voigt provides - something that goes up into the tunnel even a 1/2" would do it.
Steve, I’ll remind you that I had this same problem, especially with the TTR large bore (race systems) exhaust. I got around the problem by using the standard transmission support (actually used an upgraded, stronger version from TTR). I rotated it 180 degrees and then dropped it 3/4” with some aluminum spacers. Just gave me enough room for the exhaust. Not sure it buys you 1/2 inch but it was just enough in my case such that there is no contact or rattling/vibration.
Uses existing threaded frame holes and transmission saddle. No frame drilling or fabrication needed except for the spacers constructed from aluminum bar stock. And just longer bolts through the spacers are needed. Positions the transmission in exactly the same place as the Voigt mounting plate but with a little more clearance for the exhaust.
Alternatively fit some sacrifical skid plates either side of where it grounds. I ought to do the same on mine now that there are “speed bumps” everywhere. New tyres gave me an extra 5 mm clearance!
I had never done a voltage drop routine to find an electrical problem before, but I found a gremlin in my Seven that way yesterday. The problem was the battery running down. The first thing I did was to pull a Kubota alternator off the shelf and swap it for the one in the car. Voltmeter verified its operation. But the battery was not seeing the voltage. So I did the drop analysis. From the alternator pos to the battery pos I lost three volts. Then I went segment by segment, and lo and behold, the Longacre cutoff switch was minus three volts! In retrospect, the easy thing to do would have been the drop test first, but it was not in my bag of tricks then. Is now! John
It turns out that the impact rotated the exhaust pipe up into the mount, so loosening the clamps at both ends, rotating, and reclamping solved the problem. At least for now. I’d still like to fab up a mount that replaces the current spacer between the mount and the steel bushing holder. That’s the ultimate solution. Maybe this winter.
Meanwhile, it turns out that that was only part of the vibration problem, and likely a minimal part, at that. The bigger problem is failure of the passenger (rt) side motor mount, so the carbs are banging on the top of the footwell. It’s always something, isn’t it.
I rewired my reversing llamp! The early S2 didn’t have a reversing lamp, though the loom had a wire for it, and I’ve had a microswitch for it at the base of the gear stick for decades. It stopped working some days ago and on investigation I couldn’t remember where the thin power wire came from so replaced it with a more suitable one to the flasher unit. Still no light and I found its 10 Amp fuse had failed! That fixed it.
I then retightened the driver’s side bolt holding the bottom of the dash board to the bodywork (the second bolt is lost) but the left hand side bolt had lost it’s nut. That’s a problem as I have a metal security plate that side but i could just squeeze my little finger in to feel the bolt end, I took out the bolt and threaded a thin bit of stiffish wire through the hole and curved it round to emerge under my plate, hung a nut on it after bending up the wire end and pulled the wire back out carrying the nut to the back ot the dashboard. Jamming my little finger on the nut and pulling out the wire I screwed the bolt back in again so now have a bolt each side again!
The motor mount arrived today, and I got it in in about an hour. It’s a bit frasrating that that I had to use a die grinder to enlarge are the hole so that they mount would fit on my standard block - I mean, aren’t all the block mont attachment points drilled in the same place? Why can’t the mount holes be coreclty located?
Oh well, it’s done now, on to replacing the outer cv boot on the right side. Hopeully that part arrives in the next day or two.
The engine mounts are two engine-side bits of metal separated by rubber; hardly precision. At least one of my mounts awaiting installation has elongated holes on one side to allow for variations.
I go out my garage, and in 200 meters am gone from traffic. The roads around here are magnificent, tight windy and because of the remote area and low population…
One of the reason I live here, sailing, skiing, whitewater and mountain biking.
Got my firewood in, now off to pick some more pine mushrooms!!!
Well, not really. The portion of the mount that bolts to the block is a single piece of sheet metal, folded into a U, with flanges at the sides of the U for the bolt holes. No rubber involved. On mine, those holes are not elongated. And they didn’t line up with the block. I had to hog out quite a bit of metal to be able to bolt it up.
Granted, the holes that bolt to the chassis are elongated, and that’s the rubber isolated member. Even there I had to enlarge them a bit, and again, the rubber isn’t involved in the spacing between those two holes.
In any event, today’s activity was removing the CV drive shaft in preparation for replacing the outer boot, once it arrives from DBE. I found this video helpful after I took the joint apart for cleaning and it was time to reassemble it: youtube.com/watch?v=f_gXjvBArSo&t=337s
Just curious - others that have the CV axles from DBE (or RDE, I believe they sell the same parts) - how have your boots held up? I’ve owned a lot of front wheel drive cars, and never had a boot tear. I’ve got less than 10k miles on these, and one’s gone already. I asked Ken about how common this was, and he was like “it’s common for cv joint boots to fail”. Hmmm…
As has been said above, CV boots on modern cars last many times longer, in harsher conditions, and with more extreme and more frequent displacement angles. I would say it’s either got to be inferior rubber, or has been fitted and secured with a permanent twist which would cause it to fail prematurely.
Last night I refitted the RDent/DBE CV shafts to my car (part of rear end rebuild). I think the car might have ~1k miles on the shafts but quite a few years old I think, boots have no obvious signs of issues. They however are quite stiff rubber and there is no movement of them on the shaft.
The CV joints are some form of VW beetle/Van, so replacement boot should be available cheaply from a wide range of places and in wide range of quality…
When stripping my car I did noticed some loss of grease, mostly on outer joints. This seemed to mostly be from the CV joint to plate joint. So on refitting I’ve used some Aviation gasket sealer on the faces off the cv joints and plates. With the hope this will stop the loss of grease from the CV joints. (This might be a future problem if I need to remove the shafts to fit new boots…)
My new Lucas ball joint boots tore immediately, I am concerned with my 1/2 shafts now too. Though the 1/2 shafts coming from Col at ElanTrikbits I am guessing they may use a different supplier.
Maybe the point is, there was a poor batch of rubber sent out?
I would expect so. All these shafts being based on VW CV joints means there are likely quite a few suppliers of CV boots. My guess would be at some point the manufacturer of the Rdent/DBE shafts unintentionally bought a batch of boot with issues. These were fitted to a batch of shafts that were sold and some time later had issues.
Its likely that a newer batch of boot has been bought and is being used now for the shafts by the manufacturer. So unlikely to be issue with new shafts.Hopefully good quality boots can be found and fitted to the shafts that do have issues and then they give many years of service.
