Life has been quiet as far as Lizzie is concerned. This has been due to a gearbox failure on the 24th of December last year. Whilst driving around our village, she decided to pop out of second followed by not allowing me to select any gear whatsoever. Thankfully our local tree surgeon was passing and gave us a tow home but not before being heckled at by a bus driver friend of mine, who happened to be passing in his bus.
Thankfully we had a spare box in stock, although in an unknown mechanical condition. A look inside showed that it at least looked good. With no means of testing it, the decision was made to get the old box off and get the replacement box on.
The old box came off easily but we had issues getting the new box on without resorting to some choice words and some fiddling about. Eventually, the replacement box was on and bolted up. Trying to get the drive shaft on, that was a different story, whatever we did, it would not go on far enough. At this point, we had had enough…
… roll on a month and a long weekend off work was planned to get the drive shaft sorted out. The shaft fitted on the old box, like it should so it wasn’t that. Off with the replacement box and low and behold, it slipped on like it should. Not the box and not the shaft. The box was again fitted to the car but before any tightening up of bolts or replacement of mounts, the shaft was offered up and again it slipped on like it should – it was then left in place!
Once everything had been tightened up, the drive shaft bolted up, the starter reinstalled, etc., the time had come to fire her up for the first time in 5 months or so. The oil and water checks were done but as usual, she was reluctant to fire until the mechanical fuel pump had pumped enough fuel into the carb, necessitating a few cranks to get the go-juice flowing.
With the engine running and a check done to ensure we could get a gear, a tentative run was made in reverse to the end of our cul-de-sac and forward back to the driveway. This seemed successful so off we went for a quick trundle around our village. The video below is a mash-up of a few clips taken from that day, which was not without issue. It should be noted that the clutch felt a lot different from what she was so she was stalled a good few times!
The test run did throw up a couple of issues, firstly the clutch, as can be heard in the video, had an issue, but this was fixed roadside. My initial thought was that the clutch operating cylinder had moved in its bracket, something that had happened during reassembly. It turned out to be the pedal return spring had overcome the resistance of the rubber grommet, all is good now I have cleaned it up and reseated it. It was also noticed that the generator light did not go out, this was traced to a loose wire on one of the terminals… an easy fix. Lizzie also had a wash and brush up to get rid of oily fingerprints.
This was followed by a further loaded test run was undertaken to Usk and this brought up a slight blow on the exhaust gaskets, a simple hour’s worth of work to fix, all of the gaskets being on hand. Another issue was that we noticed some slight smoking from the generator on arrival in Usk. As a precaution, I disconnected the battery whilst we went for a walk. Whatever was wrong, it did not reoccur on the way home, I suspect that the battery needed a good charge after so long not being used and then discharging whilst we were messing about the day before.
With all this work, Lizzie is now set to attend the Golden Valley Vintage and Country Fair on Saturday 8th June.
After the event, I am thinking a bit of degreasing in and around the engine would not go amis.
