Lady Charlotte - 1966 2000SC

Hi Dave,

Gee the Osram bulbs certainly make a difference. Nice sharp detail, exactly what's needed when driving at night.

Ron.
 
Yes Ron, it's a much less stressful drive to and from work in the dark, wet conditions we have here just now. Cleaning the inside of the windscreen helps too :roll: . It's surprising how much grime builds up on the inside over time.

Dave
 
You may have noticed that we've had some stormy weather in this neck of the woods lately :shock:

I drove back from Ayr last Thursday evening through some of the worst conditions I've ever driven in. The 1 and a half hour journey took me twice that long, with lightning, hail, snow, driving rain and gale force winds all making the conditions pretty tricky. So you can imagine that the windscreen wipers got a fair bit of use that journey and about halfway through they started to go a bit slower than usual. They kept going long enough to get me home safe but I decided to have a good look at the motor and linkage over the weekend to see if anything was amiss. It's a fairly straightforward job to remove the whole assembly; prise off the wiper arms, remove the large nuts and washers on the spindles, remove the 4 self-tapping screws that hold the front valance on and remove that. That then leaves the large nuts and washers that hold the linkage to the base unit under the windscreen and a single nut securing the motor mount to the top of the steering box. A bit of manipulation and the whole assembly comes out from behind the heater box. Remember to disconnect the 4 bullet connectors that supply the motor. As always, its a good idea to take lots of photos for reassembly later.

This is the whole assembly on the bench



The motor removed - it's a Lucas DR3A motor that is fairly common on cars of this era. A "rebuilt by Lucas" sticker indicates some previous work.



Flipside of the drive gear housing, note the orientation for reassembly.



Lots of old grease - yuck! Perhaps the reason for slow running?



Drive gear removed



Drive gear housing showing motor worm gear



The motor housing is secured by 2 long screws (the third secures the earth wire to the motor body)



Cover off to reveal innards.



As always, take care with the brushes etc when removing the motor components. In this case there are 2 screws that secure the field windings to the motor case. Once these are removed the field windings and rotor can be withdrawn from the case.




All looks good so a good clean to remove any surface contaminants is all that is needed here. I cleaned off all the old grease too. A couple of points to note for reassembly. I believe the self-park on this assembly is achieved using a conductive wiper on the top of the main drive gear and 30 degree cut-out in the conducting ring on the reverse of the drive gear cover as so.




That's why it's important to note the orientation of the cover and the drive gear before removal. Putting these back in the wrong orientation would (I think) completely screw up the start and stop positions of the wiper spindles. The drive gear was packed with fresh grease ready to go back together for a test run. The linkages etc were all clean and free to operate so it certainly looks like it was the old grease making the motor drag. It might have been something to do with the outside temperature too.



Motor connected to test run it and all is ok :D



The whole assembly was then rebuilt and refitted to the car. The wipers got some use today and all is well.

You can see that this is a bit different from the cable drive system that later cars have and that you may have seen similarly stripped down in another forum member's posts.

Dave
 
Very nice job! It feels so good to do a job like that and make the system give it's best. And give you piece of mind while you are waiting for the next blizzard.
Regards, Barten
 
It's been an exhausting weekend for Lady C :roll: :) . Her MOT is due at the end of this month and one of the jobs I needed to do was sort out the exhaust. I fitted a stainless steel replacement rear silencer in October last year after the NOS mild steel rear box disintegrated 2 years after fitment :shock: .



Lady C is one of those 1966 cars that could have had any one of about 5 different exhaust schemes fitted. I got her with a 2 can, 4 section system comprising: straight through front downpipe, straight through second section, third section intermediate silencer and lastly an oval shaped rear silencer. The stainless steel replacement rear silencer didn't quite follow the profile of the original and had a circular can, but I managed to make it fit until I could afford the corresponding intermediate silencer that would make a good fit.



It wasn't ideal as the exhaust touched the body behind the wheel arch, and the top suspension link would ocassionally make contact with the exhaust when setting off, but it worked for now. I bought a stainless steel intermediate section last month and set about fitting it this weekend, and sorting out the rest of the exhaust system to fit. The stainless intermediate has a longer entry pipe than the original so the straight through second section needed to be shortened.



This gave me the opportunity to try out my new welder. I'd been struggling with an old MIG welder with a worn wire feed so decided to treat myself to a new, modern machine.



This one is great and so easy to set up. It takes the larger 5kg wire drum and has a euro torch. Makes a very good job and is a joy to use. As I was removing the entire exhaust it became apparent that the front downpipe was also past it with several pinholes and a detached mounting plate. I have a NOS replacement section, but it has a silencer. More on that later. Once I’d figured out how much of the second straight through section to remove (measure twice, cut once) I welded the flange onto the shortened section and offered everything up for fitting.



It was then that I realised that the original bolts would not be long enough for the thicker flanges on the stainless sections. So I bought some longer M8 zinc coated set screws with washers and nuts and replaced throughout the entire exhaust system.



Looking down on the new front downpipe with silencer



...and from underneath.



Stainless steel intermediate with integrated hangers. The old silencer was hung with a clamp which is now redundant.



New stainless connected to shortened mild steel section



The rear hanger has been replaced with a new stainless item to finish the job.

It’ll be interesting to see how long the front downpipe lasts and if the silencer has any effect on performance and/or fuel consumption. Now that it is finished I’ve essentially got a 3 can scheme 3 system with later intermediate and rear silencers.



To finish, here's my other new toy



18V cordless impact driver. Picked this up on Amazon last year during their black Friday sales. Great for stubborn nuts and bolts and makes removing them far less stressful :D

Dave
 
That looks like a cracking MIG welder, you will notice the difference between hobby migs and professional spec ones, you will think you had beeb welding with boxing gloves before.

Did you fit a bump stop on the new exhaust? Later cars where they fall apart end up with knocking exhausts against the boot.

You can get mini front bump stops which are perfect replacements.

Colin
 
arthuy said:
Did you fit a bump stop on the new exhaust? Later cars where they fall apart end up with knocking exhausts against the boot.

You can get mini front bump stops which are perfect replacements.
Click to expand...

No Colin I didn't, but that's good to know thanks.

Dave
 
I've had quite a bus weekend lying underneath the good Lady sorting various jobs and giving her a major service. For me, a major service gets done every 10,000 miles, which I cover in roughly 7 or 8 months. As well as all the usual service items I wanted to replace the diff front pinion oil seal. The diff has always leaked from the front so it's a job I've been meaning to tackle for ages :roll: . No pictures I'm afraid, but suffice to say that it was fairly straightforward. Disconnect prop shaft from diff, remove drive flange bolt and drift off the flange, dodging the oil running out the front of the diff. Prise old seal out with screwdriver, fit new seal and flange, torque to 35 lb ft, refit prop shaft, fill diff with oil. Easy peasy he says :D . Still took me 3 hours to do all that. Hopefully there will be no further leaks, fingers crossed.

As part of the service I also wanted to check the condition of the main bearings. It's been nearly 20,000 miles since I last had a look at them and with the recommendation to replace them at 50,000 miles (Lady C has now done 84,500 miles) I want to make sure they don't wear too much before I get a chance to replace them. Obviously I'm simply removing a bearing cap and looking at the bearing in that, so I don't know what sort of condition the bearing on top of the crank is in. I could have slid a couple of the easier ones to remove out, but then I might as well replace them if I'm going to that extent. You could probably argue that I might as well replace them all if I'm removing all the caps anyway, which is possible with the engine in situ, but I know that No 1 main is particularly tricky to remove due to the pressure on the crank from the lower timing chain so I chose not to at this stage.

So after another 20,000 miles how do they look? Surprisingly good I think. Here they are in order with comparison photos of No 2 and No 4 from the last check done at 64,000 miles.

No 1, front



No 2



No 2 from 20,000 miles ago



No 3 (centre), this one is actually just starting to show some copper in the upper left quarter



No 4, still with that groove



No 4 from 20,000 miles ago



No 5 , rearmost



So perhaps showing a little bit more wear than previously, but still pretty good, and nowehere near as much as I'd expect from an 84,500 mile engine. I think this is probably due to the engine oil and filter change every 2,500 that I do, but perhaps I've just been lucky.

My plan now is to pull the engine out at 100,000 miles and replace all main and big end bearings. I've also got to replace the side plates and the rear crank seal too. Job for the summer next year then :)

Dave
 
It's the bottom main shell that takes the load, so if they're OK, then so will the top ones. (Barring any manufacturing defect).

Removing the tension from the bottom tensioner makes removing the front top main shell a lot easier.
 
I’ve been beavering away doing a few jobs on the good Lady over the last few weekends. First job was to identify which universal joint was clicking merrily away. It had been getting steadily worse over the weeks and as always (even with the window down) it’s not easy to pinpoint where it’s coming from ie prop-shaft or drive-shaft. After getting under the car and having a good spin of everything it turned out to be the outboard drive shaft UJ on the nearside ie passenger side. After confirming I had a spare I swapped the offending joint and all is quiet again. The joint was completely dry and binding badly. Probably explains why she’s been using a bit more fuel and struggling to accelerate up gentle inclines in top gear. Once the joint caps were off what was left of the needle bearings fell out in a heap of powdery mess. I checked back through my records and discovered I last replaced that particular UJ 35k miles ago. Let’s see how long this one lasts.

The job for this weekend was to fit a tacho pod. I’d acquired a couple of good used tachos and a pod some time ago.



Both tachos are RVI so wouldn’t work with my electronic ignition. I knew that there were conversion kits available so I had a chat with a supplier and ordered a kit to do the job. It’s a fairly straightforward job for anyone with basic soldering skills. All the instructions are very clear and there is a video on Youtube to help.



The tacho I chose to convert is a later RVI 1050/06A. It has a roll-top bezel which has to come off to gain access to the inner mechanism. Take care when removing this as it’s easy to crack the glass if you apply too much pressure. I used a small screwdriver to prise the bezel away and flat nose pliers to straighten the edges so it can be removed.



Once the bezel is off, unscrew the 2 brass screws on the rear and the whole mechanism comes out.




The needle is then eased off, I used a fork and covered the face with paper to avoid scratching it.



Remove the 2 small screws holding the face on and remove the face.



The entire sensing circuit board is to be replaced, which requires snipping off the moving coil supply wires (black and red) and the power supply for the instrument (yellow). 2 screws hold the circuit board to the moving coil and once removed the circuit board can be discarded.






The replacement board screws straight onto the same place as the old board. Solder on the red and black wires for the moving coil and leave them quite long in case they need to be swapped over (more on that in a minute).



Snip one of the thick, white old sensing wires off the old circuit board and solder it onto the new board. Solder the yellow +12V supply to the new board and at this stage connect it to a 12V supply to check the moving coil moves in the correct direction. If the polarity is correct the coil will jump, if not then it won’t move. Everything is explained in the instructions and the video on Youtube is very helpful. Once everything is connected up the face and needle can be refitted ready to calibrate the tacho. The supplier provides a calibration lead for the job and the appropriate calibration files can be downloaded from his website. Without getting too technical, the calibration process involves applying a certain frequency input to the tacho and adjusting a small variable potentiometer to make the tacho read the correct rpm. Once complete the mechanism is fitted back into the case and the bezel is gently bent over to hold it in place.

Here’s the finished tacho pod fitted.



I needed to route the sensing wire for the tacho behind the instrument panel so I thought I’d remove the dash top to gain access. I had a bit of hassle with the dash top as it wouldn’t come off. The workshop manual says there is a screw behind each A pillar cover and a single nut and bolt to the left of the clock mount. Once removed the dash top should come off. Well mine seemed to be stuck behind the instrument panel. Is there another fixing behind the instrument panel? I didn’t want to remove the instrument panel as the speedo cable is a right pain to reconnect, but I had no choice as the dash top just would not come off. The only other issue I had was that there wasn’t a securing bolt for the left hand side of the tacho pod to affix to the dash top. Both clock fixings are too far to the right to be used so I’ve improvised and used a tie-wrap to hold it in place until I can make a small bracket.

After driving around today I found the tacho under-reading slightly so have adjusted it further in the car whilst checking the engine rpm on a multimeter. I’m very pleased with the end result. The supplier I used can be found here. He also sells on eBay.

Dave
 
So, the next wee job on the good Lady is to replace the front brake calipers and pads. You may recall a couple of years ago I replaced the front disks as they'd become excessively corroded on the inner faces. I figured at the time that the inner pistons on the front calipers were perhaps sticking and so not applying even pressure on the disk. I removed and inspected both calipers and apart from fitting new seals to the pistons they looked okay. The Lady's braking performance has been extremely juddery at the front end and after inspecting the disks I found that they'd done exactly the same as the previous ones. So it was time to take more drastic action and replace the calipers. I ordered a set of replacement calipers with stainless pistons from MGBD and whilst waiting for them took the old brake disks that I'd kept to a local machine shop for a skim.

The calipers arrived last week, along with replacement pads and 2 new copper brake pipes to fit. The replacement calipers were from a later 2200 and had metric threads so Mark Gray kindly provided replacement brake lines at no extra cost :D cheers Mark, now that's service! I had a spare set of new flexi-hoses so replaced them too. So the first job was to get the front end up on stands nice and stable so I could work away safely. Now it's been a while since I've put the car up on stands as I usually put the front end up on ramps when I do an oil change. I jacked the front end of the car up and positioned the stands in the usual place under the A post just below the jacking tubes with a big block of wood to spread the load. You can tell what's coming now can't you :roll: Yes, as I gently lowered the car down onto the stands there was a sickening crunch as the block of wood on the driver's side punched straight through the bottom of the sill :evil: :( . With the upcoming trip to Dublin with the Rover P6 Club looming I was slightly annoyed, but perhaps happy that I'd discovered this before Thursday. More on this later, back to the brakes. Some piccys for you

This is the driver's side before removal




The disks outer face looks good



The inner face not so good



The pads, inner on the right



Old and replacement calipers




Old and replacement brake lines



The job itself is pretty straightforward so didn't take too long



Those eagle-eyed among you will see that the pad retaining pins are quite long. I didn't order a new set of pins and springs as I tend to re-use the old ones. The old calipers had thicker pins which I didn't realise until I fitted the replacements. I had a spare fitting kit for the V8 and used the pins out of that.



The other side looks much the same so no piccys there. Right then, back to the hole....bugger, no piccys uploaded yet so they'll have to wait.

After removing all the rotten metal, which was paper thin and clearly a previous repair over old rust :evil: will people never learn... I made up a replacement section of about 10 inches long to weld in place, which was duly done. I also took the opportunity whilst the front wing was off to replace the pop-rivets holding the wing to body seal in place as a few of them had fallen out. It was pretty warm over the weekend so once the repair was done I gave it a couple of coats of Dinitrol underbody wax and flooded the inside of the A post and sill with Dinitrol Cavity wax.

All is well again and the final few prep jobs for Dublin will be done on Wednesday.

Dave
 
Hi Dave,

Did you replace the discs also or did I miss that bit? I never realised that the braking surface could disappear like that on a disc. :shock:

Lots of good work going on there I must say.

Ron.
 
CIMG7294_zpsmjys8srq.jpg


Just for information, I would always fit the anti rattle springs so that the long center part is on the outside so clamping more of the shim close to the pad backplate, and a benefit is also that at the ends don't interfere with the "R" clip that holds the pins in place. If you look at your "before" picture, that's how they look to have been fitted then.
 
SydneyRoverP6B said:
Did you replace the discs also or did I miss that bit?
Click to expand...

Ron

The last time this happened I kept the old discs as there was still plenty of meat on them so to speak. I took them to a local machine shop and had the surfaces skimmed back to flat and refitted them. I will do the same with the discs that have come off and keep them as a spare set.

harveyp6 said:
Just for information, I would always fit the anti rattle springs so that the long center part is on the outside so clamping more of the shim close to the pad backplate
Click to expand...

Good point H, I hadn't noticed that. Interestingly these pads have a metal plate clamped to the pad backing plate so I haven't refitted the shims. You can just see one of the clamps under the anti-rattle spring on the outboard pad. Not sure what difference that will make but I've now done around 600 miles with these new pads and all seems well.

I've also uploaded the piccys of the hole in the sill I repaired. It'll be all too familiar to many here :roll:







There's not a lot I can do about the corrosion on the inner sill at the moment so I'm hoping that flooding the area with cavity wax will help stave off any further deteriotation. I'm pleased with the welding along the side of the repair, but the underside is not so good. The joys of welding upside down on less than perfect metal. It's solid though and the coating of underbody wax will have filled in any pinprick holes.

Dave
 
A bit of de ja vu for you there Dave.

Regarding the upside down welding, I am getting similar results. Would love to know the secret, perhap tilting the car so it isnt dead level may help, i didnt have the same results with flux cored wire. Waxoyl is interesting when you come back to weld the sills.

Least you will manage the club run.

Colin
 
arthuy said:
A bit of de ja vu for you there Dave.

Regarding the upside down welding, I am getting similar results. Would love to know the secret
Click to expand...

Yes Colin although this car is far more solid than my V8. In terms of welding upside down there are 3 things to do:

1: make sure the metal is absolutely clean. The biggest problem with that is what might be on the upper surface. Sometimes there's just no way of knowing or for that matter cleaning it.

2: increase the wire speed over normal horizontal or flat welding

3: increase the flow of gas as 2

Number 1 is the biggest problem.

Dave
 
Great read and very interesting with the tacho, ive put a different electronic ign in mine so maybe thats why it dosent work. Keep up the good work
 
Folks

Your thoughts on the following would be much appreciated.

I have a few jobs to do on the Lady C's engine: both side plates, mains and big end bearings, fit new VW engine mounts, investigate the hellish rattle that I reckon is coming from the bottom timing chain. I've given myself 5 days to do all of this starting next Wednesday and I had resigned myself to pulling out the engine to improve access to everything I need to get to. Having done extensive reading on this forum as to the pros and cons of doing all of these jobs, and bearing in mind that I'll be on my own, am I better off trying to do them with the engine in situ and only pulling it out as a last resort? (I have also bought a front and rear crank oil seal so was planning on replacing those too). Also if I do pull it is it easier to pull the engine and gearbox as a unit or to split them and pull the engine only? (I know I would have to split the engine and gearbox to replace the rear crank oil seal). Remember that Lady C is a reasonably early car so the gearbox does not have the cast alloy plate for the remote arm. Does this affect the angle at which the engine/gearbox combined has to achieve to come out over the slam panel? What are my chances of being able to get the engine/gearbox back in safely on my own?

Is the bottom chain and all its components accessible with the engine in situ? I notice that there's an access plug behind the water pump inlet, does the water pump have to come off to get to the bottom chain tensioner or is this plug for access to the timing chain sprockets? If I wanted to replace both chains is that possible with the engine in situ? Does the head have to come off to do the top chain? Does the bonnet really have to come off to get the engine out or can I prop it up high enough with a long stick to clear. Early bonnets are double skinned so probably heavier (although I could support it with the engine hoist whilst removing :idea: ) than S2 bonnets (I can lift one of them on my own).

I don't have an issue with pulling the engine as that level of work doesn't faze me at all. I'm looking for some thoughts from the combined wisdom of those who have done these jobs before.

Thanks

Dave
 
I'd only remove the engine as a last resort, although replacing the rear main seal would perhaps tempt me. You don't have to remove the engine and gearbox as one unit, you can remove the engine leaving the gearbox in place.

The head doesn't have to come off to do the chains, and the engine doesn't have to come out either.
 
Blimey H that was quick.

No sooner had I posted than the email alerting me to a response pinged into my inbox.

Okay, so it can all be done in situ. I bought the crank oil seals in expectation of pulling the engine, and because there is a leak from the back of the engine, but it's a negligible amount of oil so it doesn't have to be replaced. I guess it's just a matter of removing anything around the engine that is likely to impede access. Hmmm KISS principle applies :D

Dave
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top