Washng the wife's car.
She does not care whether clean or dirty as long as it runs.
madf
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Engine swap on a mini 1000. Went ok, but two things to remember:
1) Don't forget to renew the valve stem seals. Unless you like looking like a red arrow & burning as much oil as petrol.
2) Check the condition of the rest of the car before embarking- ie make sure that there isn't so little good metal in the floor that it looks like an almost opened sardine can.
Live and learn... in my defence, I was only 22!
Alex.
--
Dr Alex Mears
MG BGT 1971
If you are in a hole stop digging...unless
you are a miner.
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Ditto here, putting a metro 1300 engine & box into a Mini (Clubman, wow, all that extra working space)
mate had got new engine mounts for it and they were an absolute pig to line up, I was jumping up and down on the engine late at night trying to get them to line up. A guy who shared the house with them went to work at 4pm at some local pizza place, did his shift and we were still going this engine swap at after midnight when he returned.
Also swapping a metro rear subframe from one that was totally broken and had been bodged for the MoT to one from my 'spare' metro that was ok but riddled with rust. Of course this meant removing BOTH subframes and reattaching them both (loosely in the case of the car that was going to be scrapped). Spent all w/e on the job, then the neighbours complained because the drive looked like a scrapyard, so had to take the monday afternoon off work to finish the job & appease (slightly) the neighbours.
then the metro with it's better sub frame kept breaking down, ign switch failed due to relay being removed & replaced by a bit of wire, the rad sprinking a leak (but cos I was away home had to get another rad despite having a good one on other metro) then electronic ign module failed, then the starter and finally something else so I scrapped it at that point. I wouldn't have wished that car on anyone.
Still, I did give the spare wheel from it to another mate and when he had to use it discovered that after 10 miles driving down the M3 that it was a remould and the tread was coming away from the tyre......
So I spent all w/e & half of Monday doing the subframe (seem to recall a bracket needed replacing as well so had to get that from Rover dealer) and 3 months later the car was scrapped.
I did also learn the lesson (the hard way) never buy a car thats had more owners than you've had hot dinners, I think it had 12 recorded owners in 10 years.
no regrets about not motoring on shoestring now, would never have the time to do that nowadays.
cheers,
Stu
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Once put the distributor drive gear 180 degrees out of time on a rebuilt "A" series BMC engine in my...............wait for it...........Allegro.........(arrgh, the embarassment).
Spend all Sunday re-fitting the engine to the car, about 8 p.m. tried to start it..........not firing. Realised the mistake, so tried to get around it by swapping the plug leads around..........but one wasn't long enough. So I removed the distributor and removed the drive gear with a spare 9/16" bolt, (it had an internal thread to allow this). Whilst re-fitting the gear, it dropped off the bolt and into the sump....................I clearly remember nearly coming to tears as on this engine the gearbox is where the sump should be.
The next day I removed the engine from the car and managed to extract the gear by removing the diff.
That car used a gallon of oil every week. I eventually sold it for scrap, but not before removing the fuel tank (which I'd only brought 12 months earlier).
I got £20 scrap for the car (minus the tank), £25 for the fuel tank and about £20 back on the tax disc.
The next week I got a phone call.................have you still got that Allegro fuel tank!!!!!!!!!!!! The scrapmen had actually sold the car.
I saw it running about for several months after that...........incredible!
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Rear handbrake pads on a 1964 Jaguar S-Type. In theory you are supposed to drop the whole rear axle and suspension from the car to set them up properly!
The lead lamp is too big to reach what you need to see, your hands are to big to reach things you need to undo and all your tools are too big to fit in the space... but of course hours of knuckle bleeding agony always looks preferable to dropping that drivetrain assy off!!
David
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I used to have to replace the piston rings on my Allegro every 20,000 miles or so. So did 2 engine rebuilds in 3 years/45,000 miles.
Friday night was remove all ancilleries, Sat morning lift engine out & split the unit, then get the block on the bench and remove pistons etc. If things were going well and not too much beer on Fri night could get the thing running by the end of play Saturday (and still go out for more beer).
I did once put too many spacers on the idler gear, so when I re-assembled it all the idler gear was digging into the clutch housing and was horrifically out of line compared to the primary gear and gearbox input gear. It seemed ok, until I took it for a drive and the noise was incredible. but managed to correct my error without taking the engine out again, had to go and get a new clutch housing and new matching set of gears from a scrapper, and took a note of how the spacers went on (you can get the clutch housing off without removing the engine, contrary to what Mr Haynes said).
but whilst it was a tedious and long job (purely due to my own lack of attention as to what was going on), it was still nowehere near as bad as that chuffing Metro subframe saga.
anyway, the bad old days. now we can do those things because we want to, rather than because we have to.....
cheers,
Stu
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