What did you do to your E-Type today? (Part 1)

Looks nice. Too nice. Ready for some rock chips.

2 Likes

Did the 3.8 come with the foam piece above the radiator? I thought that was on the 4.2’s? When I looked in the parts manuals I couldn’t find foam for the 3.8 radiator, just the 4.2’s. I may be looking for the wrong item or maybe I missed it? I haven’t seen pics of a 3.8 with foam above the radiator…but I have no idea if what I’ve seen is stock or not?

BTW, I LOVE Vonnegut.

Congratulations…she’s stunning! Nicely done.

1 Like

It didn’t no, but people add them if it needs help with cooling. Even more important than that I think is to have foam weatherstrip between the shroud and the radiator to maximize the airflow created by the fan. Mine had had nothing there when I got it so the shroud leaked like crazy.

Oh man that looks gorgeous. I’ve never seen one in blue.

Hmmmmm… OK, 3.8 guys, does i.dt have the foam piece above the radiator?

The things I don’t know could fill a book.

LLoyd

A step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.

Kurt Vonnegut

It had to be that color. My S3 is the same. I guess I like the color !

For some years the steering wheel in my car has had a little up/down movement. Not a lot, certainly not enough to prompt a comment during its annual safety check (MOT).

However…

Last Tuesday, while reversing the car out of the garage I heard a graunch and some clicks as I turned the steering wheel. Suddenly there was a lot of movement up and down in the steering wheel. But, very little side to side.

This is what I found when I stripped the steering column.


Two very worn bushes, one completely destroyed. The lower bush had become very brittle and dry and had turned to dust.

Also in that photo are the contacts for the horn, both are showing signs of considerable wear and will need to be replaced, eventually. Lastly, a very battle scarred striker (for returning the indicator after use) is showing signs it has been repaired before. This will also need to be replaced. But not today as all I had on the shelf were the two plastic bushes.

Cleaned, repainted and greased where required, the column is now back in the car, and everything is working well.


Steering wheel is more sturdy that it has been whilst I’ve been the car’s carer.

One final thing. There was no sign of a felt bushing at either end of the column, not even any debris. I dont know if I need to fit them or not.

Last shot, after a short test drive.

Hopefully you didn’t apply grease to the plastic bushes right? I made that mistake once and they disintegrated. I don’t think you should have expected to see felt bushes. Felt was the initial bush material on early cars and they went to the plastic ones because the felt didn’t last very long.

No fun pictures to go along but my Sunday was spend de-squeaking my belt. After measuring with a straightedge I finally found out why it’s been like this. My generator pulley was out of plane with the water pump. One thin washer behind the front mount for the generator bracket solved it for good.

I also vanquished another annoying rattle. One of the little fasteners on my soft top rails had come just loose enough to vibrate like crazy at speed and it resonated through the nearest bow making it rather a challenge to isolate.

2 Likes

No grease there. only on the splined sliding section to provide a little lube and the splined end into the UJ to protect from rust. And the split collar where the steering wheel attaches, just to keep them in place while mounting the steering wheel.

Interestingly, the steering column UJ has a threaded hole in the centre of the spider. So I wound in a grease nipple, pumped a few times on a grease gun, and removed the nipple.

Found the oil leak I was chasing. It was close to the through stud: there is a gap in the gasket, right near that stud. Degreased and worked some PU gasket material liquid in. Won’t be able to tell if it’s worked until tomorrow.

Fit new motor mounts.

Changed one set of bootlid springs.

1 Like

Finished the bootlid springs and refitted the lid.

Changed the Clutch slave, and all 3 fluid reservoirs.

Fiddled a bit with a Rolls.

The PU sealant seems to have fixed the gasket leak.

Fitted copper washers to the studs underneath. They had split washers (thanks, Bubba).

Cleaned out the pedal box, put in new clutch spring, mounted the clutch cylinder and brake master cylinder,
cleaned 2 fluid bottles, polished the heat shield and contemplating about cleaning out the rear fluid bottle.
Anybody think the rear brake nipples can be frozen and difficult to loosen?
Thanks

I don’t think I’ve ever broken off a rear bleed nipple. I have had problems with the long nipples on the saloons front Lockheed calipers though.

packed the wheel bearings and dumped a pound of brand new grease on the work bench when the spring on the bottom of the grease gun released as I was fitting a new cartridge.

Then I installed new hubs and rotors and successfully fished the “camel sized” cotter pin through the “eye of the needle” in the hub and in the stub axel.

Oh, I HATE when that happens!

1 Like

Never say die. Today was the 2.0 version of fixing the ignition light flutter… I thought I had it fixed with a new SNG solid state version, but a long drive proved me wrong as it flickered all the way home, stopped from time to time, and started again. It wasn’t lost on me that the battery was fully charged, voltage was correct and that when the cooling fans kicked in the flickering stopped.

Putting that together with the fact that I had a new AGM D35 battery in the car, I put my two trace oscilloscope on the AC Stator lead (AL) and the other on the negative side of the alternator field wire. Sure enough, with a fully charged battery, the regulator’s On/Off cycles were a short duration with a long time off as the voltage decay on the AGM was slow when it gets hit with that short 60 Amp step. The off was long enough at full charge to flicker the ignition light on the solid state 3AW.

Thinking about it, the analog version has the heated wire and thermal arm that would provide a longer time constant of average AC voltage integration than the Solid state version does, which had a 0.2 uf capacitor in its resistor bleed circuit.

So I took the 3AW apart and replaced the 0.2uf with a 4.7uf. Works like a charm and bridges the longer decay time in the circuit.

As a footnote, I guess my problem is that the car as rebuilt is equipped with its 60A alternator and I’ve replaced a lot of the lighting with LED’s along with efficient electronic CSI Ignition . As a result, beyond the one second it takes to crank it to life and recharge, the battery is basically always fully charged.

2 Likes

Wiggs,
do you use bearing race drivers and if you do are they steel or aluminium? I bought a set from HF and they didn’t move the races very much then I thought, being aluminium, they didn’t transfer the force to the race as efficiently as steel would. I ended up finishing the job with punches.

I used large steel sockets: available, AND multi-use!

EDIT: loooong ago, on a separate thread, I promised a pic of the tool I use to remove races…without waving my hands, I hope all can grok how it works, by the photo.

1 Like