Well, if I do say so myself, yes it went rather smoothly, despite the stupid heat!
Engine took a little under 2 hours to pull out. Not very good with the photos again, I always seem to be in a rush working on this car, so much to get done the whole time!
Taking the bell housing off the gearbox to get at the seals was simple enough. Removing the one seal was not, it was one of the rubber bonded to a metal shell type seals, that had been driven down against a step. No way to get in from the otherside and tap it back
After fighting fruitlessly at trying to cut or chisel the shell out, Ian and I had the idea of using my home made scrap heap challenge style slide hammer and a spot of weld to pull the shell out. It worked a treat, but them the hammer is a little oversized for the job!
That tiny ring on the left hand side of the photo was the seal, haha. This was the slide hammer set-up I built to try and shift the stuck suspension bolt, and failed..... I'm not looking forward to ever having to get that bolt out.
After getting the seal out, it all went back together rather easily. After a short run, I had a look under the car and......
Success! The only oil dripping now is definitely engine oil, not gear box oil. And most of it appears to be coming from the bell housing to block seal at the top behind the head. A new leak
but at least one I can try and external fix on. To be honest, I probably wont bother, she's down to a standard classic car 'marking its territory' leak, rather than doing exxon valdez impressions.
In minor news I also fitted a new washer pump, something i needed for the upcoming MOT and also quite useful to be able to clean the screen. £5 off ebay, job done! Came with instructions on how to fit to all sorts of old BL stuff, gotta say not sure you really need instructions for a washer motor....
On a slight tangent, oddly I've noticed very few dead insects compared to usual, I wonder if its the shape on the screen being so steeply raked. In the same though, its amazing in the hot days how quiet it is with the windows open, none of the usual buffeting even at motorway speeds
Other success stories are the speaker grills now superglued into their holders so they don't randomly pop off if I'm on a bumpy road and similarly new locking clips for the window winders so they no longer decide to come off in my, or more usually my passengers (just as I tell them the car might be old but it's not gonna fall apart), hand.
While I was taking pictures, I liked this one. I'm pleased with the de-bumpered look and the mix of black and crome in the grill currently. Temporary indicator solution needs attention badly though.
Well that's every last shred of good news I can think off, onto the bad.....
Anything to do with metalwork comes under the banner of 'bad' currently. I spent hours the other day with a tape measure trying to work out why she's wonky.
Once she's sat on axel stands on the subframe, the front and rear edges of the subframe and level with each other, and the body is almost level to the subframe (give or take a couple of mm) but the wheels clearly sit different heights off the floor, and the wishbones aren't level. The dampers control the suspension droop, so off they came.
Absolutely identical, swapped the left to right for the hell of it, no change. booo. Measuring the suspension mounting points they all seem the same give or take a couple of mm, same for the wishbones.
The more measuring I do, the more i'm starting to come to the conclusion its just that she's had so many structural repairs done over the years without proper bracing, she's just not as square as she once was.
I really want to sort her properly, but I also know that really that's probably a proper strip her back to a bare shell, with a new subframe and the pulling her straight. A serious off the road for months big cost kinda job. It's tempting just to space my rollers differently from left to right till she sits level and not worry about it, I'm torn. I feel like i'm doing her an injustice to bodge it and forget about it.
I made a start on playing with my roller heights by adding a 20mm spacer to both sides, she's now comfortably off the bump stops and looks about right on the low side. I think I'll make up a 10mm spacer for the high side and see how that levels her out for the short term.
Please don't judge the workmanship, once I've got the spacing I want, I plan to go back through and make this a more elegant solution, possibly remaking the rollers to the exact height I want.
In other bad news, I really really really need to do something about the rear arches, the scrubbing of the right rear tyre over bumps is driving me mad, and not doing the tyre much good either. I've just gotta decide which leaves I want to flip this time and break out the spanners really. I've currently got the 3rd of 6 leaves flipped, counting the main leaf as leaf 1. I'm tempted to try the 5th and 6th leaf flip that Fulvia 75 mentioned, or do I just go for the 4th leaf and see how that sits. hmmm. Once I've got the height right then I can make the arch to suit.
In further bad arch news the front left arch has died.
This was the one which had only minor metal work issues but quite deep filler on and in my haste to get the car back on the road I just fixed the metal work and put fresh filler on.... big mistake. Now the cars lower I needed to do some light arch rolling on the front, and this resulted in a big chunk of filler breaking off. It mustn't have bonded to the metal right, and tbh serves me right. At least it's made the choice of which arch to alter easy. The right arch I made from scratch last time is still looking great and I'm really pleased with, so I'll have to do the same on this side soon.
At this stage it's kinda a good job the painting failed as most of the hard work painting gone down the drain........ It's gonna be a mad rush to get her MOT ready I think. I need to get this ride height nailed this week so I can make a start in the rear left arch over the weekend, that's my only chance of being ready I think.