Monday 27 September 2010

Big Wheels keep on Turnin

Its been a hard couple of weeks for Bitsa... well over 1300 miles in just over two weeks.

This weekend, it was Carlisle, two weekends before it was Oxford.

I can't honestly say she's done well in the reliability stakes - I've had to replace:

Rear wheel bearing
Bottom cam sprocket and woodruff key
Crank pulley
8 fan belts (see also the crank pulley, the issue has now been resolved, at one point I realised I was spending more on fan belts than fuel a mile). Its also amazing how fan belt prices vary, from £2.15 to £6.46 for identical length belts, depending where you buy them.

For some reason, I've done a lot more motorway than normal this month, including travel on:

M1
M6
M40
M53
M55
M56
M60
M61
M62
M67

Which isn't bad going, as sometimes she goes for months without touching anything more than the local duel carriageway.

Along with the latest fan belt, I've bought a new oil filter, and an oil change is planned for the weekend, as its getting rather overdue. I'm going to move from 10w40 to 20w50, in an effort to reduce the problems with low oil pressure at idle (which problems are probably related to a worn crank, if I can find the cash once the S1 is running I'll be looking at rebuilding this engine again with a reground crank, as the rest of it is in good shape)

In other news, the 3.54:1 diff is now in, she is geared a fraction tall now, especially when laden, but it does make motorways nice and relaxed (until I get to long hills anyway).

Wednesday 22 September 2010

The late Front Crank Pulley



It seems it has met the axle once too often for its own good.

As a bodge to end all bodges, I've welded the crack up to buy me another week or so while a replacement is sourced... (big thanks to FenTiger on this one).

Longer term plan is to make up a pulley with a smaller diameter, using a 2.25 waterpump pulley, as then it should be clear of the axle...

Saturday 18 September 2010

3.54:1

I spent a good chunk of this afternoon dismembering a 110 back axle for the the differential.




It would have taken about 10 minutes, had the pinion nut not been so tight I failed to shift it with a decent 3/4" drive socket and bar. Eventually, I lost patience, and split the nut with a hammer and chisel (handy skill to develop, this is the second time in as many weeks I've managed to do this to seized nuts without wrecking the thread the nut is on). After that, I could take the main diff unit out, followed by the input shaft and pinion... not forgetting its crush spacer.

I tend dropped the prop from Bitsa, to find not only could I undo the nut, but it had come lose, and the diff input bearings had loads of play in them... as it was getting dark, I decided against fitting the new diff until tomorrow, and just tightened the nut back up. Driving home from the farm, the howl on over-run that I had assumed was a knackered prop has much diminished.

You are meant to go to lots of trouble setting the diff up in a "new" case, but having talked to others it seems that in practice it you swap all the bits as a set, it will be fine.

Hopefully she will be much nicer on the motorway on 3.54's, although I suspect the peaks will prove a bit painful until I sort out the turbocharger.

In other news, I now own loads of 9.00x16 bargips, (4 medium worn ones for sale cheap if anyone wants them, I've ended up with 9 in total), and am now sorting out getting hold of a set of rims to fit them to. The super tall Bitsa looms... no more getting stuck descending Chapelgate step.

Friday 17 September 2010

Sibbertoft











All in all, a good time was had. I've a nasty feeling Bitsa may need a new alternator however...

Sunday 12 September 2010

Compare and Contrast



I had been having problems with the timing drifting... and finally took the cover off the cambelt at Sibbertoft while at OLLR's "All leafer weekender" event, as she took to refusing to start, and there was no movement left on the pump atall... Big thanks to Pete(Nightmare) who ran me to a "local" parts place about 40 mins away for a new pulley and associated bits... and then helped me put it all back together.

Once it was running, I had a great time getting covered in mud - I'll post about that later.