Thursday 16 November 2017

Beating the Bushes.

Panhard Rod bushes. Little bits of rubber and a steel tube, all encased in a tin skin. Ought to be easy to change, I thought, until I read the Haynes Joke Book and realised that a 20 tonne hydraulic press might be a good tool to have lying about the workshop...








Yeah, OK. That aside, I decided to go ahead and try it myself. Getting the rod off wasn't too difficult but there isn't much room underneath the engine and one of the nuts was 'kin tight. There's not enough room to get a socket onto the nut so I used an adjustable wrench on that end, and a 22mm socket and breaker bar on the bolt head. Not recommended practice, but I was going to bin the bolts anyway. All out, and the bolts were "shouldered" and well in need of a change. The soft bits, once I'd cleaned the dust off, turned out to be blue Polybushes. These are often considered to be "better than the originals", partly because they're easier to fit without the need for the aforementioned 20 tonne press.





The bush at the chassis end had a tiny amount of play in it, but enough to hear a "click" when I was swinging on the rod underneath. From what I've read, this might be a source of the "wobbly wheel" we've been trying to cure for months. As the cost of a genuine new set, plus bolts, was less than getting all the wheels rebalanced, I thought it was worth a try. At a guess and based on what little reliable evidence I uncovered during the saga last year, these bushes had done about 20,000 miles.






They wouldn't push out so I burned them out with a blowlamp. A smelly, messy job but simple enough. Now to press the new ones in. Being the original rubber ones, I reckoned I could get them in using a bench vice and a couple of suitably sized sockets to do the pushing. Now, unless you've got a nice big vice, I wouldn't recommend this - as I turned the screw I could almost feel the metal wanting to explode under the pressure. However, it worked right up to the last 3mm or so, when I had to change to a slightly different diameter pusher...This then slipped and crushed the sleeve of the bush....oh dear! Or words to that effect.


Now, if I'd been anywhere remote then I'd have cleaned up the damage and carried on, but clearly not in this case. Once I'd got the damaged bush out - and this took an hour and a lot of smoke and chiselling - I was now faced with a choice - use the Polybush kit that I already had or have Ian Watt's team get another "proper" bush and press both of them in using a proper press. I chose to let the professionals do it. This involved a 48 hour delay as not one motor factor or dealer within 50 miles had another bush except the local Landrover dealer. And it cost FOUR times the price of the one I'd damaged, the alternative being to wait until I could get another by mail order.


Refitting the rod was simple enough although since I couldn't get a socket onto the nut I'd need a better way of tightening it - putting the torque wrench onto the bolt ain't a good idea. This required another investment of nearly a tenner at Halfords for a 22mm ring spanner. As there wasn't enough room underneath to get a decent swing on the thing, we had to get the front end on ramps and make a lever to put on the spanner...











...and since I didn't have a Sorcerer's Apprentice handy - Sue was busy - I needed a 3rd hand....





You can see that there's no room for a socket on the nut (at the back).





I had to guess at the 88Nm the nut needs. When I took the rod off the NS was quite loose compared to the OS, so I gave them a half turn past "V Tight" to make them "F Tight" and I think that'll do. A quick test drive and ....result! The wobble is no more! Cost? Well, given the need to buy the spanner and the very expensive new bush the bill came to very little less than if Sandy had done it all, but I've learnt a little bit more about Landrover fixing and that's always a Good Thing. He made no charge for the work he did, either. Polybushes? Despite all the hype I don't think that, in this case anyway, it's worth fitting them unless you happen to have a problem away from a decent workshop. I'll carry mine in the spares box because I won't need a press to fit 'em but I probably won't need to repeat the job for a long time yet.





Another good reason for doing the work myself is here:








This is the NS track rod end. If I hadn't been underneath doing the Panhard rod, I'd never have seen this. Given it was cold and wet I almost put this job off but eventually persuaded myself that I might as well get on with it since my hands were dirty anyway. Because at least one of these things seems to need replacing before every MoT test, I had a stock of spares on the shelf and the job took less than an hour. I'll still need to get the wheel alignment checked properly, though, since the outside of the NS tyre looks like it's getting a scrubbing, more so than the other side, anyway.




The last task was to clean off the oily gunk under the sump and oil filter. The reason for this was stated by PITA as a "leaking sump gasket". I discovered a few weeks ago that the oil was actually coming from a split in the crankcase breather hose so this has been replaced and we no longer have a little spot of oil underneath everytime I park. Cured? We'll wait and see but it looks good so far.





Friday 10 November 2017

Oh the joy of a frosty morning and a cold spanner....

It's getting to that time of year again, cold and damp, and any thoughts of major work have been put on hold. With Elly in the garage there's only just room to close the door so working around her is difficult. However, there are some jobs that'll need doing before our trip next year so the local garage might get some more business since any major, or even minor work has to be done outside on the gravel and with little protection from the weather....

Fairly high on the Job Priority List will have to be the persistent fuel leak. Having chased this leak all over the place and sorted out various points that were clearly not as tight as they should be, we found that when we filled the long-range tank there were drips from the forward edge of the main tank. When the fuel in the LR tank dropped to about 10 litres - a guess since there's no gauge for it - then the drips stopped. Mike proved this by filling both tanks, moaned about the leak again and siphoned about 25 litres out again. I'll tell yer, sucking diesel through a plastic pipe is unpleasant enough anyway, but when you've got a beard for the stuff to splash into, well....makes a glass of wine taste a bit odd for a while. Anyway, the leak is coming from the top of the main tank where the fuel return goes in - or not, in our case. 


this diagram came from  https://www.landroverworkshop.com/diagrams/fuel-emission-systems/fuel-air-inlet-systems/fuel-tank-pump-and-mountings_53500


The cause is either a broken pipe - part 20 in the diagram, a broken seal (part 21) or a loose connection, all of which need the tank dropped to fix. With no ramp or sufficient muscle, this is a professional garage job. We'll just have to pick a time when the tank's almost empty. It's going to be expensive but the alternative is a smelly rear end, just like last time and not pleasant to sleep and eat with the smell of leaking fuel even if it's only a drip every minute or so. The fuel spreads out over the base of the tank and soaks up dust, which soaks up more fuel and so on until the whole of the underside of the tank, chassis and crossmember are thick with it. It'll be a good time to renew all the rubber pipes since they don't look too great either, and we'll do a proper job using proper parts on the tank breather (25-27) which we had to sort out in France this year.

Now that we've moved the Engel onto the "middle shelf" the Stealth Camper option is open again. With that in mind we've had another thought about blackout curtains. The curtain rod arrangement between the front and back worked but it was untidy and awkward to use. We need something that just fits onto the windows. Mike raided the scrapyard at work again and came home with a few metres of what looked like brown string. This is basically a fridge magnet - quite literally. 



If you strip the seal from a fridge door and cut it open the stuff inside is a strip of magnetic rubber that is strong enough to hold thin material against steel surfaces. Et voila! - the new blackout blinds! Made from bits of old tent - the really light stuff. The bits of Elly that aren't magnetic just had some bits of the brown string glued to it to fool the magnets that hold up the blind. If carefully fitted we've checked from the outside and no chinks of light leak out and because they're black the telltale sign that there's folk in residence isn't so obvious.
 


 We'll do something similar to hold midge netting in place as well. The doors and side windows get this treatment while the windscreen has a foil heat reflector painted black on the outer side and held in place by the sun visors. The blinds don't offer much in the way of heat insulation though, so we may still have to make some radiator foil - type liners for cold weather living.

Moving the fridge has meant we've lost the storage space for the spare gas bottle.


 We saw some very neat external carriers on some of the rigs at Stratford so we've made up something similar - but much simpler - that uses the ladder as a basic frame. The rest is made up from mild steel strip bent up on the bench and the hinge is a leftover from some DIY project.





The whole thing is rock-solid when closed with a bolt and wingnut, the other nuts are the anti-tamper square ones and there's a padlock to make sure we stay the rightful owners. With the roof tent in place we don't use the rear ladder anyway, so now it's working for a living.





The doors have had the security lock treatment but the windows are still vulnerable. Not much we can do about the front windows but a bit of work with the welding torch and Mike made up some grilles for the back that should at least make a casual tea-leaf have second thoughts. 


It was also a good time to finish off the inner door paintwork to match the outside and get rid of the previous owner's attempts to do the same but with a pot of Dulux and a yard broom. This aspect isn't really very important, but it's just a lot more rewarding to do the job properly instead of getting a little bit more irritated every time we look at something that we just didn't bother to do right the first time.



We've had yet another try at fixing the roof lining....this time we had to strip off everything previously glued - or rather, not glued - to the rear roof panels. We looked at buying some self-adhesive "egg box" sound insulation from Noisekiller but it's quite expensive and probably not very easy to clean either, so with loads of thick closed cell foam lying about we've tried again using that and some different glue.




This'll be the 4th attempt, having tried just about everything short of tile cement!

The bit over the cooker has radiator foil glued to it to provide a wipe-clean surface. We'll see how long it takes for this latest attempt to fall off!



Our requests for stickers to a number of off-road equipment suppliers has had some success. It'd be unfair to name those who didn't bother to respond - not even a "no, go away" - and that's disappointing. It might make the decision easier when it comes to spending money on replacement parts, though. Those who did respond - and some were very generous with their stuff - will get a mention at some point, either directly or in pictures, as well as some of our cash. A big "Thank You" to everyone who helped make Elly a little more "personalised".😎

Mike's been wanting to do a bit more painting - adding a stripe or two to Elly's flanks, but that will have to wait until the weather gets warmer/drier/less windy....next summer, in other words, and perhaps not even then. Oh, for a bigger garage!

....and finally....the Wobble is back. Despite having had both front wheels balanced there's still a really annoying "steering wheel wobble" at 50-55mph. This is just the speed we tend to spend most of our time. Having checked everything else, Mike is homing in on something called a Panhard Rod. I can see his legs sticking out from underneath, on the gravel, in the rain.....