Some Assembly Required – Shake Down

Last month I was excited to announce the First Start and First Drive of the 63 Etype restoration project. Now that the car will move down the road under its own power, I am entering a phase known as Shake Down. During Shake Down, you are looking for “issues”, hopefully minor, that need to be dealt with in order to pronounce the car ready for routine use. After driving the car just a short distance on the road in front of my house, I already had a list to attend to.

The first item was a given. The rubber suspension bushings on the front of an Etype are of a type that are gripped firmly from the outside and the inside, with movement of the suspension taking place by twisting of the rubber. In order to place the rubber at its best neutral position for the suspension movement, the workshop manual directs you to place the suspension at its “mid-laden position” before tightening the nuts that fix the rubber bushings into position. Due to some concern over the suspension settling during the first drive, I left all my bushings loose. This resulted in some unsettling “disconnect” between steering inputs and the direction that the car took. I knew this going in and the first drive was gentle in this regard. As soon as I got back from the initial drive, with the suspension “settled”, I reached into the front of the car and tightened the clamping nuts.

The rest of my list included
-Dash light illuminated indicating that the generator was not charging.
-Speedometer stopped indicating, shortly into my 2nd outing.
-Oil pressure gauge not indicating.
-Fuel level gauge reading not plausible.
-Evidence of oil leakage at the oil pan.
-Something “noisy” at the front of the engine.

A few weeks later, I had resolved most of these issues. The something noisy turned out to be the spring loaded idler pulley for the fan belt. It is not a showstopper issue, which is fortunate as a new pulley has to come from England. The oil leakage investigation involved a technique that I have not used before, which is to add a special dye to the oil and inspect the potential leak points with a “black light”. This created a startling image of the oil leak path (see photo below) with the oil streaming down from the oil filter area. It turned out to be a bad sealing ring at the connection of the oil pressure sending unit.

The fuel level gauge reading was not plausible, in that it went from showing an empty tank to having it pegged to full, after adding 5 gallons of gasoline. I pulled the sending unit from the tank. It “bench tested” fine. I ultimately determined that if I rotated the orientation of the sending unit float in the tank by 180 degrees, it was working correctly. The oil pressure gauge turned out to be annoying. I had purchased a new product from Caerbont Automotive Instruments that promised to provide modern technology in a gauge that was faithful in appearance to the 60 year old original. Unfortunately, our wires got crossed somewhere and I had the wrong gauge package for my positive ground car. I am still waiting for the appropriate gauge to be shipped.

The speedometer problem was a little bit of a mystery. I quickly determined that the cable that enters the dash area and attaches to the speedometer was not turning. Ugh, as the most likely culprit was the right angle drive back at the transmission. This required taking my beautiful center console out to allow access. When I pulled the right angle drive, the short drive cable between it and the transmission was mangled. I had a trouble shooting discussion with Dick Maury over the phone. A strong clue was that the trip odometer had not budged off of 0.0 miles. Dick said if/when the trip odometer gears get jammed, it will create a hard stop to the rotation of the cable and the weak link is the short cable I found damaged. I think I have found the problem in that the reset cable that sets the trip odometer back to zero might have been holding the trip odometer in the reset position. I got a new right angle drive and the long cable from the drive to the speedo from SNG. I am doing some pre-testing with the car on the lift, running, in gear. Both the trip odometer and the regular odometer are now registering distance. I have decided to leave the reset cable off.

By far the most time consuming effort was trouble shooting the generator and its voltage regulator. I am posting a long “how-to” article on my website but the quick story included bad bearings and shorted windings in the generator and a totally bad voltage regulator. I was able to repair the bad windings and install new bearings in the generator. Amazingly, NAPA sells a “semi” reproduction voltage regulator for this car. Its internals have been simplified to some extent but it remains an analog device with magnetic coils and contacts that make/break as required to keep the voltage and amperage in range. The wiring connections match up perfectly. I was able to install the plastic case of my original Lucas voltage regulator over the new one. No one will be the wiser! BTW, you may ask about converting to more modern devices. I did not consider this route because all the devices available would not be visually original to any judge with an experienced eye. My goal is a very authentic car.

So Shake Down continues, although thankfully the list is getting shorter. Amazingly, after 4 1/2 years, my list of things to do to complete this restoration is getting very short!