jonroberts

Hi Vin - looks like your lower wishbone bushes are too big between the mounts ? Do you have any photos of the links prior to re-bushing them ?

Everybody has his own technique but in the aviation world electrical connections are crimped only. The reasoning behind that is, if soldered, that the wire wicks up the solder and creates a spot where flexible meets rigid. Unless the wire is retained in position, it is more susceptible to fracture at that point than just crimping alone. I guess if you can keep the soldered area to the spade end of the crimp only you could avoid that.

When I spoke to Garry Kemp about his nitrile gaskets he was explicit they must be fitted absolutely dry, no sealant, nothing. Mine have started to move about a bit and are beginning to leak because of that but they are so much simpler to install or refit than the paper gaskets I'll continue to use them. Of course if your covers are warped then that's going to frustrate you. Test fit without a gasket and run a feeler gauge all round the perimeter to determine high/low spots you may be able to dress out.

The Lucas originals are dead simple to rebuild and parts freely available but I bought one of these 65A Ebay specials a few years back as the price was too attractive. It failed in less than a week due to poor assembly of the brush assembly in manufacture. I fixed it and its run perfectly ever since.

Paul. The chassis and mechanicals look in remarkable condition to me. Somebody's definitely been there before for some resto work just by the new nyloc nuts that are visible. Is there any way of getting some kind of 'index' page to the photo's you are linking to ? It's a bit of a pain having to click each photo individually. Or better still, pay Bibs for a membership and upload the photos here for us to all enjoy 🙂 You can add that to the cost itemisation of course! The danger of external linking photos here is that if the external site goes away for any reason, all the references are lost forever and your blog becomes a far less useful. I've seen this happen with a couple of other interesting resto projects both on this site and others.

Any help ?

Pedal box does have the two set bolts on the front. Here is a photo of mine when I first pulled it :

So what did you do AFTER lunch then Paul ?

Good luck Paul, this one is in a poor way - but at least you have sourced the ash trays. You'll need them when you take up smoking. BTW, I know where there's nice white one you can rob bits off.... 😆

Haha, looks like it. To be honest I don't even remember seeing him there - he's in my blind spot and way too close ! @Hornsey Boy I use my S1 weekly, any weather. The more I use it the better !

Yes, all the S1/2/3 including Turbo cars have the same column. In my search for what car this came off, @Paul Coleman found it was the same column as a Viva HA and of course a Jensen Healey. The top bearing has a Delco part number (7981056), which of course is no longer available. But unless the bearings are damaged by water/rust the amount of wear they get should be negligible.

Hi Clive. Not sure if the Elite is the same column as the early Esprits, but if it is, the upper bearing is held in a pot-metal housing fixed to the column by four screws. Remove the steering wheel, indicator stalks, circlip and spring, four screws then twist the housing anticlockwise and it should pull off the end of the column. You may need a puller - I didnt. I washed the the bearing out in petrol to assess where the wear was and as you can see in the video it wasn't the bearing race. After drilling and glueing the bearing case in place I re-packed the bearing with grease (from both sides as it is a double row bearing) and re-fitted. All the play was taken out once reassembled.

I discovered the steering wheel was missing two 3mm x 45mm roll pins which release the indicators. For the first time in my ownership (25+ years) the indicators now self-cancel. 😃

The play in the top steering column bearing was not wear in the bearing race. It was the security of the bearing in the pot-metal casting - basically the bearing was floating in it with no firm support. Since this appears to be a sealed component with no replacements available, it presented a challenge ... top-bearing.mp4 Solved by drilling four opposing holes through the outside of the casting and injecting with hot glue to fill the void. Problem solved - now I have a steering column with no lateral play in the top end.

Long time no posting as everything has been fine with the car. I put this down to regular use - it gets a decent weekly drive out, rain or shine. For a long time now I've had annoying squeaks and rattles somewhere from the front end when driving over uneven surfaces. I've not been able to ascertain whether it is internal or external to be honest and might be a combination of both. I suspect its internal around the heater area as the whole front end was rebuilt with new bushes and shocks a year back and the noise existed prior to that. I've also checked the security of the chassis mounting points to the bodywork and they are all still tight. A 'bounce' test on the front doesn't really reveal anything other than some body creaks, so in this period when I can't drive the car much I bit the bullet and pulled the dash out so I can sit in the passenger side to identify the area of the noise while somebody else drives the car over a bad surface. During my removal of the dash whilst pulling all the items that have to be pulled to get it out, I noticed that I have some small play in the upper steering column bearing. I've noticed this before and it makes a rattling over uneven surfaces, so I'm going to investigate what can be done about that (if anything) without replacement of the whole column.