My '72 P6 V8 is back in use on UK roads and once again wearing its silver on black 'K' plates!

Point of view - would a one year old battery in a car that's not really been used much be at full charge at any given point without a top up or trickle charge? Four hours is a while though.

I might have some brake pads for you if you like 8)
 
4 or 5 hours with the lights on will completely flatten a new car battery as more than 60 amp hours will have been consumed with the headlights on. ie dead flat batt. :roll:

I would love to see a video walk around of your car with the internals such as upholstery and of course under bonnet to.

Graeme
 
Graeme, once I've found and banished the squeaking birdy noise, re-hung the doors so they shut properly, fettled a few other panels, had the angry-removal-of-encrusted-bird-poop-from-freshly-washed-paint scratches polished out of the bonnet and the hood scoop repainted in the right shade of Admiralty Blue, plus a few other niggles to boot, I'm keen to make a video. Perhaps even at Race61 (or Race76?), in a fortnight, at Finowfurt, where with a bit of luck I'll take a turn down the 1/8th mile dragstrip. Then again perhaps not, I don't know if I'll get it fixed by then and I'm loathe to grenade my autobox especially in front of a crowd of onlookers. A mate of mine has a camera mount for inside the car, another mate might be able to lend me an external camera mounting rig, yet another mate is a video producer/director, and a mate-of-another-mate is a r/c drone camera operator, so if I can call in a few favours and work a few contacts I might yet get something interesting made. Don't hold your breath, but watch this space.
So after a full charge with a slow battery charger the car sprang straight into life. Hope the battery wasn't damaged by going flat. Is that bad for a car battery?
 
Graeme, once I've found and banished the squeaking birdy noise, re-hung the doors so they shut properly, fettled a few other panels, had the angry-removal-of-encrusted-bird-poop-from-freshly-washed-paint scratches polished out of the bonnet and the hood scoop repainted in the right shade of Admiralty Blue, plus a few other niggles to boot, I'm keen to make a video. Perhaps even at Race61 (or Race76?), in a fortnight, at Finowfurt, where with a bit of luck I'll take a turn down the 1/8th mile dragstrip. Then again perhaps not, I don't know if I'll get it fixed by then and I'm loathe to grenade my autobox especially in front of a crowd of onlookers. A mate of mine has a camera mount for inside the car, another mate might be bable to lend me an external camera mounting rig, yet another mate is a video producer/director, and a mate-of-another-mate is a r/c drone camera operator, so if I can call in a few favours and work a few contacts I might yet get something interesting made. Don't hold your breath, but watch this space.
So after a full charge with a slow battery charger the car sprang straight into life. Hope the battery wasn't damaged by going flat. Is that bad for a car battery?
 
Today a mate helped me fettle my doors, which I've been meaning to tackle since this time last year! 3 hours later they shut properly, sit flush, the lines are much better, even the window frames look better and we didn't touch them at all, just shimmed the painted parts a bit differently and moved the fittings in the door apertures until the locks work correctly. Much better than before, hopefully no more helpful drivers in the adjacent lane will feel the need to tell me my rear doors aren't shut properly! Kind enough, but it had become annoyingly repetitive. We managed to fettle the bonnet better too, no longer looks like there is a slot to post letters through on the passenger side! Took a couple of washers beneath the drivers side hinge on the base unit to get it sitting better than ever before.
Touch wood the squeaking brakes have been rectified by tightening the leaking rear flexible hoses on the right hand calliper, next I have to retouch all the paint that the brake fluid leak had lifted as it dripped down off the diff, and got spun onto my only-just-installed greased DeDion tube! I've got a set of Unipart pads for the front, had been on the shelf at the former main stealer long enough to aquire quite a layer of dust. Hope the rears I've ordered won't turn out to be Ferodo... My mate reckoned I could comfortably file more off the edges of the pads to cut down squeal, so I'll try that too.
The Delrin 'bushed' rear arms at the boot wall just keep coming loose and making an unnerving racket like someone juggling ball bearings in a small metal box. I've dug out a pair of trailing arms with the standard rubber bushings with steel sleeves, they'll get a brushing up and hopefully fitting them will silence the annoying clattering over cobbles, of which there are enough where I live.
The front inner top link urethane bushes seem to have given up the ghost already, the flanges at the top inner edges are no longer flush but sag towards the engine bay on both sides... Did somebody remake these properly in rubber with a metal stiffener? I'd like to order a pair. Dreading compressing those uprated shorter front springs but those inner top link bushes need to get retified.
The uprated front shocks seem to be performing perfectly, I'm pleased to say. Threadlocked the big locknuts one turn tighter still, they're snug now.
I even replaced the rusty mesh atop the NADA air filter with a stainless steel mesh, repurposed from a kitchen sieve! Now the top of the engine is sparkly rather than a rusty embarassment. Must be worth an additional 10mph top speed! ;) Took me a year to mull it over, and finally no longer than fifteen minutes to cut and fit in the metal frame, and clamp in place. Looks pukka!
Another mate of mine polished out my birdy-poop scratches with his proper polishing machine, and liberal use of 3M Finesse It finishing material plus Red&White Paint Protector. He told me to wait another year for the paint to cure before I can apply wax. Shame as I had hoped to get the car hand pinstriped this weekend at the car show I hope to attend. Still, the striper is a mate of mine too, it will wait...
Won't be at the 50th anniversary bash this forthcoming weekend, but will show and shine, and maybe even 1/8th mile drag race, at Race61 near Berlin on an old Soviet military airfield.
 
Last few days I went hunting for the squeaking noise that has been driving me barmy for over 1500 miles already! I swapped the pads for new ones which I filed the edges off of, and applied liberal amounts of copper grease to the reverse and the anti-squeal shims. Now I have original Unipart on the front and Ferodo on the back. These rear pads have a bit of black plastic or rubber where the wear indicator wires emerge from the pads. The ones I replaced had already frayed and broken off at the same point, where they weren't reinforced with extra plastic or rubber. Delighted to report that at long last it no longer squeals, and brakes properly without dragging or pulling to either side. The inner pads I took off the back looked as if they had experienced uneven wear, only part of the pad were meeting the disc, a good 40% or so looked untouched!!!
Next week I'm going to venture further afield than the daytrips I've made in the car since getting it registered. A jaunt down to Bavaria is on the cards. It is ten years this weekend since the 40th anniversary meet at Blenheim. The engine from the car I attended that meeting in is now the powerplant inside the '72 car I've restored. I've done everything I wanted to do to a P6 since I went to that show, bar putting some proper miles under the wheels in the country I emigrated to a decade ago. Time to scratch that itch, and put my faith in the car I've rebuilt. I just upgraded my ADAC (like the AA) membership to include accomodation and recovery.
What should I take with me in the boot on a 1000km+ journey, to be on the safe and well prepared side? I've got my trusty Halfrauds metric and imperial ratchet and socket box, a set of imperial wrenches, some screwdrivers, jack and wheelbrace, and orange indicator lenses in case Plod gets upset with the red ones. What should I procure tomorrow before departing Tuesday?
 
Hi Al,

If the water pump is fairly new then skip this one, although you could take some coolant in a bottle. Spare coil, selection of fuses, some bulbs for indicator, stop lamp, side light as you never know when one might fail. Spare hoses and a fan belt. Chances are that you won't need any, but it is always better to be safe than sorry.

Ron.
 
Since I last posted anything on here I have enjoyed a thousand-plus mile return trip to southern Germany, without a hitch, and including some high speed motoring at night on the Autobahn. Also a few weekend jaunts to scenic spots around Berlin, and a fair bit of urban driving, schlepping a friends photographic equipment to and from a photo shoot I have been involved in. Alas, the other day, in admittedly very hot weather, after about half an hour of stop start traffic, all of a sudden the car conked out at the lights, and I ended up getting a helpful push across the busy junction from a couple of friendly policemen. The fuel pump was delivering fuel, but the engine just wouldn´t fire back up??? After a few minutes it did, and normal service was resumed. I made it to the photo shoot, but six hours later after the car had cooled off the same thing happened on the way home, annoyingly just short of my garage. Going up an incline before a bridge power fell off, it sounded as if it was only running on a few cylinders all of a sudden. It cut out in motion, and would not restart in N or P, I had to coast over the bridge and down the other side before finding a parking spot and pulling over. A half hour wait and it sprang straight into life and made it safely back to the lock-up. Most mysterious. I´m thinking dodgy coil, maybe? I noticed that on the one side where two wires meet and share a spade connection, the L-shaped plastic boot had melted. Can´t be right. So, what do I do to check? I do not have a spare known good coil to replace this one with, so I guess buying one would be a good idea and could eliminate that from the list of possible problems? What do y´all reckon?
 
Fuel vaporization would still be my call even though there was apparent fuel delivery, as this was the case in my recent problems ( problem solved when i reverted to mechanical pump).

Graeme
 
MIne went down on to the 4 cylinders fed by one carb a while ago. I took the other carb off , couldn't find anything wrong but blew through the pipe linking the carbs to the pump and I'm sure some crud came out .Now running on all 8
 
I suppose it might have been the dreaded vapour lock, as it was a really hot day. I am actually away on vacation at the moment (I know, I shouldn´t crow) and I dare say when I get back to Berlin at the end of the week the weather will be much cooler, so I will take Blue Trouble for a spin and see what happens. I have never run the tank down to the absolute end of reserve, and I did blow compressed air through the new lines I fitted when I rebuilt the car, but that doesn´t mean there isn´t crud in there. Perhaps I fuelled up with inferior juice last time, come to think of it I did stop at a less-well-known brand of filling station. Should really stick to the more expensive Shell stuff, although I dare say the extra octane is wasted really.
Actually I am not delighted with the slightly sagging and deformed bit of plastic pipe linking the two carbs, and would quite like to re-do the fuel lines with something more substantial. Currently the fuel comes through a 10mm rubber hose, up next to the now-redundant bracket for the original reserve tap (I now have the tap at the back of the car, next to the leccy pump, like the NADA cars were set up), then through a bit of plastic piping which just loops above the intake manifold and curls round to the pick-up point in front of the passenger side carb. I would like to route it over the gearbox bellhousing and beneath the passenger side exhaust manifold, like the original set-up, then up from where the mechanical pump used to be and back to the carbs. I would prefer to replace the line between the carbs with a flexible hose, perhaps with a braided outer. Something else to think about changing this forthcoming winter. Anybody here suggest the best place to get suitable hose and fittings?
 
The car kept stuttering to a halt again on Saturday, so I ordered another Facet electric fuel pump and fitted it this afternoon. The right angle brass inlet and outlet fittings are leaking where they thread into the pump body! I tightened them to 'really tight' and pointing in the right direction for the set-up. Am I missing a trick here? Is there some sort of tape like plumbers use for threaded fittings to make 'em seal properly, which is petrol resistant?
 
PTFE tape seems to have done the trick. Thanks. Dare say the Permatex would be more expensive. I don't know if it is even available here.
 
Does anybody with the appropriate software fancy suggesting the best needles for my engine set-up? I have a 10.5:1 3500 auto connected to a BW35 box. The pistons and rods have been balanced. It has .020" overbore. Standard P6 heads and rocker gear, Kent 214 fast road cam, breathes in through a pair of SUs HIF6s wearing a NADA air filter. This has a snorkel which breathes fresh air from the long central NADA scoop on the bonnet. Exhales through a standard exhaust system from cast automatic manifolds through two boxes to the tail pipe.
:?:
 
It's all gone very quiet. :?:

I've been avidly reading your posts, thinking that there must be more to come until October....Then silence.

Has something (bad) happened?

Geoff D.
 
Hello Geoff. I'm pleased somebody actually reads my ramblings! Nothing bad has happened, quite the opposite, I've been enjoying as much Rovering as possible of late. I've just ordered a set of Vredestein Snowtrac 185/80R14 winter tyres to get mounted on my black powder-coated steel rims, which I'll fit with 'S' trims. My heater matrix is leaking, mostly to the road but annoyingly also into the drivers side footwell via the hole for the accelerator shaft through the bulkhead. Good thing I have the optional extra large front rubber mats, if I keep the drivers mat shoved far forward it seems to be saving the new carpets from getting soaked with coolant. I've ordered a re-cored matrix, and a replacement rev counter, as mine unexpectedly bit the dust the other week. Typical, having already sold my spare rev counter! I discovered the car doesn't start if the rev counter isn't fitted, even if it doesn't actually count the revs any more! I somehow managed to break the instrument illumination whilst taking the old rev counter out and then putting it back in, hope that'll be an easy fix when the replacement instrument arrives. Hope I can get the heater matrix swapped without having to remove the bonnet, wipers, scuttle panel and air filter as per the workshop manual. I've been told it is possible with the heater box in-situ, we shall see. I've a set of urethane bushes on order for the rear suspension trailing arms, might quieten things down when I get shot of the way-too-hard-and-bloody-noisy Delrin bushes I have fitted at the moment. Who knows, the new urethane bushes might actually arrive this winter!? Some suppliers need their memories jogging a few too many times before they post stuff, but hey, mustn't grumble eh? We've been enjoying a mild and mostly bright and dry autumn, I've made a few trips to some of the scenic lakes around Berlin to walk in the woods and admire the colours of the autumn foliage. On the afternoon of the late Ian Wilson's funeral I went for a fast blast, so as to contribute somehow in spirit athough I wasn't able to attend his memorial service.
Nobody replied to my previous query regarding what needles to try in my SU carbs. Wish I could remember which Forum member has the software to calculate that!
Gotta go, footie time, Gunners vs Chelski... :)
 
mrtask said:
Nobody replied to my previous query regarding what needles to try in my SU carbs. Wish I could remember which Forum member has the software to calculate that!
Click to expand...
That would be Mr Rockdemon himself :wink:
Jim
 
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