Spyder restoration - long time coming

[peteracs]

One last point from my trip to Laon was I arrived home late, around 1:45am on the Monday, which meant most of my drive home in the dark. The new Ring bulbs I bought for the dipped headlights (still standard wattage) were excellent and give a nice white light similar to modern to cars rather than the old yellowish ones. So very happy with the change.

Peter

[Ferrit]

Geeze just looking through your last few posts has added a couple more items to my 'must do' list.  Gear linkage and headlights.  Really useful tips and information as always.

Mark

[peteracs]

Hi Mark

On the gear linkage, depends if this has been done already, usually easy to spot if the balls and bushes in the rods look crap and there is any play, then you should replace them. Not the simplest of jobs in situ, but doable with patience and makes it a much more enjoyable experience. Worst case with old worn out bushes is not being able to get fist, second or fifth.

There is also the small link rod at the front attached to the bell housing which can be worn out, but not so critical unless the bushes have completely gone.

You can get parts from Mark for the main rod bushes and the small link rod. See

https://353652584127257704.weebly.com/store/c15/Transmission.html


Peter

[peteracs]

Test drive completed and now have a decent positive gear changes, probably the best I have had since putting the car on the road. Time will tell if it beds in and becomes less so, but hopefully will stay as enjoyable as it is now.

Also no further oil appearing near the sensor, so hopefully that is fixed, just need to do a bit of a clean up around that area as a reasonable casting of oil on the block etc.

Next job wash and hoover before Sunday.

Peter

[peteracs]

Hi

Having missed out on the LMC Sunday sadly, I decided to see if I can improve the lumpy idle. So off came the carb and out came the compressor. The thought was that it is running lean on idle, but not during normal driving, so the assumption was that there was some sort of limit to fuel getting to the idle jet. I could unscrew the idle adjuster out without it really getting too rich it appeared. So some time using the air pressure to try to blow out all the jets just for good measure. After that reassemble. During this phase I decided to check that when I floor the accelerator it actually opened the second choke butterfly fully, result was it only half opened it, so a bit of adjustment and that was sorted. Not the end of the world, but nice to have it doing what it should. After a test drive the idle is better (I think, very subjective), so leaving it as is for now.

No other jobs planned and the car is booked for its bi annual MOT on Friday.

Peter

[peteracs]

First in the door at the MOT test place. All passed no advisories. Only comment was that the front caliper sliders probably need removing and cleaning/lubricating as there was a little too much resistance in his view. So easy job which I will get done over the next few days. I had previously done the rear ones earlier in the year, but the fronts had not been done since before I put the car back on the road in 2020/21.

Peter

[HFStuart]

Excellent news. MOTs may not be necessary any more but it's a great opportunity for a second set of eyes to give it a look over.

[peteracs]

That has always been my thought. I also had replaced the dipped beam headlight bulbs where I had to adjust them to get the cap off the back and as part of the test he checked I had set them up correctly.

I had the opportunity this afternoon to take off the front calipers to clean the sliding parts. The lower sliders/inserts were still ok, but the top were quite dry and in need of a clean. However when I looked inside the piston I noticed a small amount of oil in both of the calipers. This had come from the small hole in the base of the piston. It is there to provide air to equalise the pressure if the rear mixed circuit fails and the piston moves relative to the rear mixed actuator. There should not be any oil in the chamber. The brakes still work fine, no binding, but the calipers will need to be stripped and new seals fitted. This is not a trivial undertaking as will take a reasonable amount of time to effect the new seals. So a job for the future....

Peter

[peteracs]

Hi

The Spider has been hibernating since August. Apart from playing with the intermittent wiper design, I had two jobs to do, one was reseal the front calipers as mentioned above, that will be early next year just before I start using the car again, the other was the drivers seat. I had noticed earlier this year that there was a wire which had become dislodged in the seat base and was pressing up on the leather. It would eventually work its way through and make a hole, so took the seat out and took off the springs underneath and just managed to grab the offending wire and bend it so that it was well out the way. The wire was fastened into the seat base support, so could not be removed, but the end is now well out of harms way. Seat restored to the car and took the opportunity to fire it up, which after several weeks was very painless and a bit of movement to change the tyre position and that was it until the next visit.

Peter

[peteracs]

Been a while since I posted on the Spider, it has been dry stored over winter with the occasional engine start and wheel movement. So with the forecast these few days being warm and dry, I decided to take the plunge and strip the front calipers and reseal them in an effort to resolve the leakage from the piston breather hole. This was one of those jobs I had been putting off for ages because I know the front ones are a bit of pig with the two piston design, specifically the central retaining clip and separator, the first being a pain to get out of its groove and the latter often a pain to force it out. My method for the circular clip is using various dentist tools through the fluid inlet hole to get it started and then using other dentist tools to get it fully out of its groove. This part went okish, the real pain was the metal disk separater which on one of the calipers needed the housing warming before it would budge. To get them out I use compressed air introduced into the fluid inlet, initially in the front one to get the piston out, then in the rear to force the rear pistons and at the same time the separator. The separator took several goes of pushing the rear piston back and applying the compressed air to free it.

Eventually both were rebuilt, though the central separator never seems to seat fully even with significant pressure due to the sealing ring I guess. Time will tell if I have solved the problem. I took yen opportunity to refresh the brake fluid to the rear calipers as well as I had to bleed all round to finish the job. I had previously sucked out all the fluid in the reservoir. The brakes on a quick test feel ok, though will probably have another run through of bleeding when more dot 4 arrives as I only had a litre bottle.

After this I did the annual oil and filter change, so the car is all fit for going out, but will now be put away until June as hopefully off to France in May.