1979 Capri 2.0 "Ghia " - Spraying Bumpers / New TCAs

[cjhillman]

Hey guys cheers for chiming in on this so quick. I just went out an took the washers of these and ran around with the K&N off/taped so nothing can move. Not these, was something I thought it might be as there is play in these washers.



How do I check the plates in the dizzy? I'll have a google and go and look to see if anything is oddly moving. It has been out recently I think at a garage but it made this noise before. ITs leaking a bit of oil at the base/engine area so I know it needs a seel.

The way I can discribe it on the feel of the noise is its like the pinging on my Escort. That rattles (but a different sound slightly) at the point where you change gear and just start to press the accelerator a bit hard. If you let off it goes away and if you push through it it does too. It is possible to hold it doing this sound say in 4th at low rpms.

I do wonder if its a vacuum leak. I just changed the top carb gasket but havent done the base plate ones yet as I want to change the fuel pump before then. Top one is getting a bit damp again.

It did make this noise pre fuel pump i'm pretty sure. I think its like the last horrible noise left after replacing bearings here and there. In the begging the rear axle masked it I think.

Hoping to take it to Ace Cafe tonight but I also seem to have a break imbalance now pulling to the center of the road on the first jab on the pedal.

[cjhillman]

Just took the top of the dizzy cap off and there is play in the rotor arm/ without it... isnt this normal for the weights to move for the advance though?

[peteh1969]

Yes that's normal Phil was refering to the clamping plate at the base of the dizzy that stops it turning if the bolt that screws into the block is loose.

I think it may be the electric fuel pump, releaving pressure as it's every 5/6 seconds the noise occurs which pump did you fit?

[cjhillman]

Jun 2, 2021 15:18:36 GMT peteh1969 said:

Yes that's normal Phil was refering to the clamping plate at the base of the dizzy that stops it turning if the bolt that screws into the block is loose.

I think it may be the electric fuel pump, releaving pressure as it's every 5/6 seconds the noise occurs which pump did you fit?

Its a tiny cheapo fuel pump that the garage fitted to try and cure the fuel draining off problem. Would it not do it on tickover if is this pump though? I'll go back to the manual one soon for safety reasons.

I decided to head down to Ace Cafe tonight for the Hot Rod evening. The car made it easy there and back plus another 3.1 Capri turned up. That was mind compared to mine but its all good, I'm chuffed with my Capri.

It was leaking oil down the block around exhaust manifold 3 again (thought it had stopped this) and a bloke there with a Cortina said he just had his rebuild due to that. Either way nice to drive about. Maybe I should save up for an ST170 engine

[peteh1969]

It depends on the fuel pump they fitted and electric pump does not react as quickly as a mechanical pump to the change in demand and when you are at idle it can pump the fuel in at a constant preasure and un like a mechanical pump when you add a demand for more fuel it still pumps it in at the same pressure regardles of the demand, where a mechanical pump increases the flow as the engine speed increases as it is engine driven.

But as I'm typing this it occurs to me that if the presure is too great from the electric pump it it can cause the needle valve to stick under demand and chatter as it fills the float bowl which could be the niose you are hearing, I have come across this before on a pinto fitted with a single weber 45 DCOE carb that was used for grass tracking back in the 1990's.

Re fit the mechanical carb and see if it goes?

Looks like you had a good evening at the ACE.

Nice

[cjhillman]

Cheers peteh1969 . I was going to re fit the manual pump today after doing a compression test but, it was too hot and I realised i'm going to have to take all the fuel lines off to see what will fit as they're all cut for the electric fuel pump. I will get round to it soon just not today. I want to change the oil again too as I think it suffered from all that bad Carb action. Also, I realised I did the compression test wrong too (didnt put the throttle down when cranking).

I decided to take it to work this evening rattles and all. It wasnt too bad on the drive over, lots of stops and starts which seemed to make the car slightly reluctant to come out of gear on every other change, just a slight tug needed, better on the way home. Its usually really positive. I also noticed lately the clutch feels slightly creaky when depress... could be me being oversensitive BUT If its not this pump I wonder could it be a broken clutch spring rattling or something down that area. There seems to be a sweet oil leak down at the bottom of the bell housing... just thinking. the pedal travel is quite high so i guess it needs adjusting or a new clutch at some point, it seems to pull ok but you cant light the tyres up unless its wet.
Lastly on the incline up in to work it started missing again a bit, I gave it all the horses it had and then it seemed ok...

Sounds like i'm moaning but I do love driving this thing round in the evening. Tom Petty on loud, sun roof open and the burble of the sportex exhaust is pretty cool.

5mph never looked so quick   

[cjhillman]

Well its been a while with this one. I've focused a lot of my time in getting my career back on track, messing with the Escort and buying a van that turned out to be total curse word. For weeks i've wanted to adjust the clutch on this car.

The clutch pedal always was quite high up along with the biting point in comparison to the Brake Pedal. It means when you pull off in 1st you sound like a learner driver most of the time. When you floor it I don't see the rev counter going up etc like if the clutch is slipping so I guessed it could be adjusted .

Aft winding the adjuster back out, its a lot better. I'm actually wondering If I should have adjusted it out even more. the bite is around 3/4 of the way up the pedal (maybe a bit lower) and is making it a lot easier to drive. I didnt want to go too far at first as the cable looks like it could slip out of the clutch fork? if its got too much slack on it. There is still some tension on the end of the cable to the fork... maybe I will try going a bit further and see what happens.

From what i'm getting from the Haynes you should get an a assistant to help, didnt have that luxury so just went for it. It says 4mm of travel at the pedal which it seems I have now... did I do well?

It can do one wheel peels now but annoyingly the "weird noise" is still hanging around once warmed up and i'm getting a clunk going into 3rd sometimes.

Of course i filmed it all...

[cjhillman]

I adjusted the clutch again yesterday so the clutch fork has some slack by about 1mm, the pedal was strapped to the steering wheel and now it doesnt squeak half as bad. The pedal travel is about 1 & 1/2 Iches off the floor now which is miles better. I cant understand why it was ever adjusted like it was? unless I've got it horribly wrong Where it used to be like a learner driver pulling off now you can do a wheel spin. Of course the noise is still there, I changed the base plate gaskets to the carb and the old gaskets were quite wet ( as well as the new top carb gasket) so, I'm not sure if the floats still arnt right and its excessive pinging i'm still hearing. For now its back on the drive but I might drop it off at the garage over the next month with the specific instruction of fixing this ing thing

[cjhillman]

Did a bit of work on the Capri this week. On the quest to find out this noise, I looked at the alternator and water pump for noise and remembered the bearings in the alternator are far from great so... off to be refurbished.

DBJ in Uxbridge did this for me and did an excellent job! Obviously this is a pic from before it looks like new now.


Unfortunately It wasnt the cause of the problem which was a bit of a shame. After getting home and having a brew/cooling off time. I went back out, tightened the only U clamp up on the exhaust and tightened the exhuast manifold as Cylinder 1. Then I took out the clutch cable from the fork and threaded it the other way round the steering rack so it wasnt binding, I job I should have done ages ago. I then tightened this so the fork was held tight but not under load all the time. Went for a drive.... no noise!!!... for about 5 - 10 mins then it came back a bit but it was much better. I think it could probably be the exhaust as it must take a while to warm up whatever it is.

After this I decided to go down to Ace Cafe that eve but at this point the noise was back pretty much to how it always is.







I headed home after realising nothing was on, at this point the breaks felt like curse word. They were quite rough under braking which I can only put down to the horrible 3.0 brake discs that I either need to replace or see If I can get machined down. You cant swap these cheaply which I think I've mentioned before but It would be a nicer car without this problem .
I was also getting a 'churping' noise on corners and under braking which I'm guessing is the Pads moving about? When I fitted them to the M16 callipers they didnt seem to be locked into place like my Escorts pads.

I've been offered some drilled 3.0 discs on facebook which are second hand, not sure if I should go with them or if its a waste of money.







Lastly I noticed that the transmission tunel and inside of the car was getting really really hot on the way home! I'm sure it has a lot of oil in as i filled it up. There is a leak on the bell housing but I think its from the engine as you can see it higher up. The plastic around the gear lever and handbrake was really hot to the tough... not noticed that before but then again I don't drive it too far.

I will say I am enjoying this car with the adjusted clutch and without that noise its really nice, with decent brakes it will be a much better. 

[cjhillman]

Me and a pal spontaneously used my Car for a photoshoot the other day. He is a great photographer so it seemed like a good trade off, I got some pics and he got a blast around in a 79 Capri listening to Tom Petty





I went to open the sun roof for a little more light and realised I'd made myself another job. On inspection it looks like the tray with the headling on had creased.




Also looks like this has bent which goes over the plastic part of the cable. Straightened out now so fingers crossed that works. 


Before I put the lid back on I hoovered all this rust up. Looking inside the roof it doesnt seem to have come from that. I'm wondering if it was off a pervious sunroof as this one seems to be a dark metallic blue. 

[cjhillman]

last week curtesy of nickwheeler (massive thanks again mate!!!) I got my hands on some 2.0 struts to swap out the 3.0 ones that were on there until today. Also got a free rocker cover from Tickover on the way back too so started off with a light de grease of it all.




After striping the hubs down and ruining at least one of the seals, I ordered new bearing kits, discs and pads so it should be good for a fair few more miles now. 





All nice and new... I was a bit concerned about tapping out the bearing races but its was easy enough in the end. 







These ball joints took a bit of getting off. Had to use a splitter in the end.











The second tie rod took a bit of a beating... hoping I can file these enough to get the nut back over it. Right now I've lowered the car back down to see what the ride hight is like. 



Its a little higher at the front on standard shocks but maybe it'll settle a bit once I can move it. Down the line I might put the 2.8 springs on there that Nick gave me too but I don't have spring compressors and just wanted to get it on the road with nice brakes. 


The only problem I've got is the wheel nuts I have when tightened up don't fully meet the wheel. the studs are a little longer than the old ones. 

[nickwheeler]

Oct 31, 2021 19:25:42 GMT cjhillman said:

The second tie rod took a bit of a beating... hoping I can file these enough to get the nut back over it. Right now I've lowered the car back down to see what the ride hight is like. 

Ideally you want a thread file to sort that buggered thread.

Next time you break a ball joint(and I haven't used a balljoint splitter in years), loosely screw the nut back on before you start hammering away. This will protect the threads, and stop the joint springing apart if there is any tension on it.

The steel wheels use a slightly different, shallower and plain nut compared to the deeper and covered alloy ones. You could: acquire the correct Ford ones, although most us threw them away years ago; get some aftermarket and slightly longer nut; poke a hole in the stainless cover of yours, which is quick, cheap and effective - and a bit of a bodge and very ugly

[cjhillman]

Cheers Nick. Yeah I remember you saying. I was bashing away with my hammer for ages, neightbours look and misses asking me what the F*** I was doing. I've done it before but they wouldnt budge this time. 3 of 4 came off fine but I think I just rushed this one and nackard it... will file it down tomorrow.

I might try and find 4 open ended nuts for these, at some point I want to swap out these wheels for bigger ones like we talked about but I don't know if i'll get anything in the next week or so. Something you might know by the way, do slot mags need a different wheel nut or would these chrome ones work ?

[kevins]

If you have not driven it it will sit higher a the front the swing of the arms holds it up a bit when you lower it off a jack.

I don't think you will easily get longer closed nuts, open ones should be easy enough though.

[cjhillman]

Ok so gave myself half an hour to file down this thread seen as I'm at home. In the end I just took off the top two threads with a hacksaw then cleaned up the nut and thread with some light oil. don't know why I didnt do this yesterday... I think got a bit tired.

I also took a decent file to one of the pads that was getting stuck which is now sorted. I'll do the other side once the new nuts turn up... not much use doing all that until these nuts turn up as I still need to tighten the bearings etc. (I want to do this without the pads so I can get a feel for it)

[cjhillman]

Well I got it all back together by touch light. I heard there was a local meet this morning so wanted to try and make it.

I filed the pads down a bit more and they seem ok now. Tightened up wheel bearing a few times finger tight and tried to get them just right. Tried doing them till pinch tight then back off a 1/4 turn but it seemed I ended up in the same place as finger tight with very slight movement on the hub.

Went for a quick drive and it wasnt that pleasant. At first I was experiencing a rotating rubbing through the accelerator pedal which now seems to have gone away (guessing that was a stuck Pad) but it was pulling to the middle of the road more than ever now which I'm guessing is the tracking. I'm going to it tracked up asap but I did notice a lot of creaking coming off the drive and going around some tight corners... wondering if the top mounts or Ball joints are a bit shot?

Either way I went out to the meet this morning as it was only 10 mins away. It was great as another white Capri showed up.


... really enjoying the ride hight!! (excuse the bike )

[capri6]

CJ nice car. Whats it like to start this time of the year - does it start ok in the mornings? Thinking of buying a capri as a daily driver but have early starts for work. Looks like yours can take a while to start sometimes?

[nickwheeler]

Nov 8, 2021 8:28:09 GMT capri6 said:

CJ nice car. Whats it like to start this time of the year - does it start ok in the mornings? Thinking of buying a capri as a daily driver but have early starts for work. Looks like yours can take a while to start sometimes?

That's easily sorted by fitting the fuel return line to the tank rather than blocking it off as shown in earlier photos. Obviously the carb, auto choke and ignition timing need to be right, but that's hardly difficult.

[cjhillman]

To be honest mine starts pretty well now. As Nick says the fuel return pipe and I guess more constant use. The fuel in mine drains off a little bit sometimes so you’ll crank it for a while, stop, crank again and it fires.
I’ve got a massive battery on mine too so it doesn’t slow down cranking . It’s got a manual choke but it doesn’t work very well (yet to sort that).even without it I can keep it going with a bit of gas pedal.

[kevins]

I've always found an electric fuel pump makes the world of difference to starting on cars with a mechanical pump on my Elan you could run the battery flat before the mechanical pump filled the twin carbs.

For years my dad had an electric one in parallel with the mechanical one on his scimitar which he used just for priming, that worked a treat too.