Bruce the FWD

[Pauldaf44]

Long distance ish test run complete 70 miles. It did fine a bit sluggish on the hills so I will check the tuning later. Oil pressure holding 50psi at high speeds 40psi round town and 30psi on tickover so I think thats fine. Temp held solid on 1/3rd of guage no matter what. Only thing that was a bit worrying was whilst on overun at 20mph, down a steep hill behind a tractor. I spotted a few puffs off blue smoke out of the rear view mirror. I did notice when I had it apart that no 3 bore was a bit worn so im not all that suprised.

[JPB]

Smoke on the over run is probably valve guide-related, I'd expect it to smoke under load if there were symptoms of bore wear to be seen.

[Spunkymonkey]

Yep, on over-run it sucks down through the valve guides cos the throttle's closed so lots of vacuum. When you open the throttle you then get a sudden puff of smoke as it clears, then back to clean. If you have the finger-fit valve springs then a set of Ford Pinto "top hat" valve seals can be fitted with the head on and a bit of rope down the bores to hold the valves in place. They're a bit of a tight fit but do go on - only do the inlets though, you don't need seals on the exhausts cos it doesn't suck through them

[Pauldaf44]

AHHHH Bruce blew through his rocker cover gasket this morning. Luckily because ive been watching the oil pressure gauge like a hawk recently I managed to switch it off before oil pressure dropped dangourously low. A new gasket and lots of sealing compound and some fresh oil and all is well again. Watching that oil pressure gauge suddenly plumet from 50psi to 10psi was a bit of a brown trousers moment though. In the mean time I also fiddled with the timing by ear and guess what its running much smoother, quieter and more powerfully now. The blown gasket looked like it hadn't compressed in a few places and had clamped down unevenly. Well lucky no damage done to my recently pampered engine. Oh and with the timing and mixture reset and a new rocker gasket all signs of blue smoke have dissapeared.

[JPB]

How would a leak from the rocker joint cause the oil pressure to drop? Are you saying that it leaked so much that it emptied the sump, via the gasket, so quickly that you hadn't picked up on a low dipstick reading the day before?

[Pauldaf44]

Dipstick was good before I set out and still within limits when I stopped. Replaced the gasket and all was well again presure wise. It lost whatever amount is signified between the 2 marks on the dipstick. Maybe an air bubble in the cappilery tube?

[Spunkymonkey]

Air in the capilliary wouldn't cause it cos even though it's compressible it'll still transmit the same pressure from one end of the bubble to the other. It'd just need a little more oil to flow into the pipe to make up for the compression - like getting more pedal movement on a brake system with air in it but the brakes still work fine as long as the pedal doesn't reach the floor.

[Pauldaf44]

More bad luck!!

I went out yesterday and treated Bruce to a new set of windscreen wipers. This morning I took it out again, a bird flew into the windscreen broke a wiper off which was subsequently run over by the car behind, and absolutely mangled up the wiper arm and a brand new blade that hadn't even swept the screen once.

Brilliant just brilliant

Can anyone supply me with a new arm. The car will need everything on the passenger side that comes after the round splined bit of the motor.

[1300dolly]

Dont the wiper arm screw onto the splines?

[Pauldaf44]

Dont the wiper arm screw onto the splines?

yes it does

[1300dolly]

Ahh ignore me , i thought you said the arm had come off. Mr Dolphin may have some in stock.

[Spunkymonkey]

Straighten it - it's only a bit of bar with a spline one end and a spring the other. Oh, and should be able to sort your indicator switch over the weekend

[NickMorgan]

How's the bird?

[Pauldaf44]

How's the bird?

It flew off but by the fact that my wiper arm was snapped in 3 and the thingy bob that clamps the sliding bar to adjust for different length blades has dissapeared it got to have been hurt. The arm is not repairable. Ive a sneaky suspicion it wasn't the right one for the car anyway as the blade fitting was different to the drivers side and it looked a lot newer

[NickMorgan]

Pesky birds! There are two shooting estates between where I live and where I work. They release thousands of pheasants that haven't a clue about the outside world. Some days I will see twenty or thirty dead ones on the road on my five mile commute. Despite my best efforts to avoid them, so far I have hit three. One broken headlamp, one broken headlamp washer and one cracked windscreen - three dead pheasants!