ThePog

I found some grease and lubed it up, but wof man will give it a proper squirt.

Righto - to work. The new A arm is a drivers side one, and I needed a passenger side... So I pressed the trunion and bushes out, this looks way better I can tell you; Then I carefully pressed it into the A arm; Then I had to sort this shit out, it is the bracket holding the retaining nuts for the top bolts, the threads were really tight when i pulled it apart and this got a bit muntered; There is some small benefit to buying a company that is older than the steam age, there is a lot of semi useful shit lying around. In this case 7/16ths by 20tpi tap and dies. This allowed me to clean the threads up all purty, then I welded the plate back together; Sweet. Then i totally forgot to take any more pics. Suffice to say a minor amount of fucking about later, things looked like this; Happily back on its own 4 wheels. I thought I would drive it home, but the battery was a bit flat So I left it charging up, wof will be achieved tomorrow :smile:

Look what just arrived on my desk bitches! Not bad service at all.

Well I have taken a punt and ordered a NOS upper arm from Australia, will be coming over on DHL so theoretically will be here Thursdayish. No doubt it will arrive at lunchtime Friday, giving me a couple of hours to sort it out.

It is on the cards, but shit there must be untold humbers sitting in paddocks waiting to be pillaged. I have so many feelers out right now I am feeling like an octopus orgy.

Just spent an hour emailing, ringing and texting every fucker in NZ who has even a sniff of humber parts. Smash palace, the dude in the Humber Hillman club magazine, every bastard on TM. Will await results. Will plan on taking the ute. Will pretend that 1997 is oldschool enough. Will be crying inside.

So yea it does get difficult... Went in to work to press out the bushes today, I had a quick go and it was super obvious that both bushes needed to be pressed out at the same time, hence I needed to support between the actual collars so i didn't munter the A arm. My first go at a support - this was clearly going to crush the A arm, so I had another go which was way more successful. And this is the unfortunate result, the trunion ends are threaded, the bushes are solid and threaded to fit onto the trunion, and at one end both the bush and thread are completely fucked. I can get this assembly brand new, but it is out of the Netherlands and unlikely to arrive before the end of the week. So I just missioned out to just north of Nelson where my nice WOF man had told me there was a Humber sitting in a paddock, I found it and then found the owner, who understood but didn't want to part it out... but he thought he might have a spare front subassembly lying around and said he knew of someone in Blenheim that had a whole lot of Humber parts and would try and find his details. Might be a bit of a stretch tho, so I might be driving the work ute to Hanmer, at least there will be room for a couple of bikes now. Alternately one of you GC's needs to find me a good passenger side top A arm off a Super Snipe or a Humber Hawk and post it to me STAT.

Na, rubber in steel sleeves..

Tidied that shit up as much as I could given my lack of care for shiny things, its hidden by the bumper mostly so like, whatevs; So it went for a warrant today..... and failed Top front suspension arm bushes on one side are fucked, need to press that shit out and find something to replace them with, I am investigating many many possible options, but it might get difficult..... As you can probably tell, the car is immobile right now...

Weldy weldy Cleaned that up today and applied a bit of filler. It was weird filler with stainless fibers in it that Sidewaysickness had lying around unused. It had still not gone off properly after a couple of hours so I reckon tomorrow I might be chipping that shit off and applying normal stuff. Found the transmission dipstick underneath the carpet behind a hatch, will check the levels when it is warm one day. Inching closer to a wof.

Fuck you are a saucy wench

Actually I wanted your help because I am very old and decrepit, grovelling under old cars is a young man's game. My back has not yet forgiven me the exertions.

You know you love it. I genuinely wished you were there today. I would gladly have paid money to get that cross member back in...

Righto, gearbox mounts. The most suitable ones I could find were about 10mm shorter than I wanted so I thought some packers were in order. Also there was probably not going to be enough room behind there for an M10 nut once I had drilled the holes... So then I thought this could happen; Sweet. It was a bit difficult to get them positioned in the holes cos of the angles but brute force was the way here. And after quite a considerable amount of fucking about with alignment tools and hammers etc I had this; A quick test drive showed no discernible improvement in the ride, but it is more likely to get a warrant now. Late edit; I should have thought about it some more and not welded the spacers on, drilled and tapped another hole in the center of the spacer and just bolted them to the existing hole in the mount. Bit late now and that shit should outlast me anyway. It will be years before it needs more loving.

It has brakes now, it turns out i could have solved it in 3 mins by adjusting the stop on the brake pedal. Oh well. I ordered Sidewaysickness to remove my gearbox mount cos he is my little bitch. That lump was an engine mount once. I shot into town and with minutes to spare managed to get some suitable isolation mounts that I will put in place of that pile of non-specific shite. Also these are sandwiched between the gearbox mount and the body, Such a British solution to the problem of the gearbox mount sitting too high, why not change the mount itself? Anyway, gearbox mounts should be sorted tomorrow, then i shall finally crack on with finishing the rust repairs. Then I check gearbox fluid levels and take it for a warrent. Then I see if the front seats wont fold backwards and provide me a lush leather bed for Hanmer. Then we see about some slam.

I have pulled the master cylinder and there is nothing obviously wrong, it was new a couple of years ago so should be fine. However, the yoke that hooks up to the pedal was cut off the old one and welded to the new pushrod. I am guessing that it was made a wee bit long and so is not returning enough to release the seal to the reservoir - this is the only thing I can think of bar a problem with the seal itself. I will check many things then put it back together.

And I just went to check - pumped it up and cracked the connection to the master cylinder and it released the brakes. So logic dictates that the master cylinder is at fault.

Yea I am starting to wonder if some crap got stuck in there when the fluid got low. Trawling the internets for a diagram of it right now.

So I have just checked something and the pressure does not release when the vacuum tube is disconnected, it only releases when you crack the outlet pipe of the servo. I don't know what this means, but it probably means the problem is not what i think it is.

Maybe. There is a circlip groove in there for retaining the piston, but there was no circlip in there. Thinking on it tho the piston could not move any further back than it does already. I first assembled it with a circlip, but the seal washer stack behind it seemed too compressed so second time I left it out. Also the first thing after the circlip is a spring and there was no happy seating for it with the circlip in place. I have been thinking to put a heavier spring into the air valve setup to help the control piston return and equalise the vac pressure at idle. I have also just read that removing one of the two o rings on the control piston might free it up enough.. Checked all the piston stuff on the old servo and it looks ok, just need to go through the poppet valve bits. I shall push forward on both fronts.

Some fucking bullshit now, I bled the brakes, shit is still grabbing on. So I thought I would check out the other, old servo, had about half a liter of fluid in it. For lols when I pulled the vac stuff off the cylinder, the whole lot shot out across my dark and nook laden shed. Fucking fuck. I have collected all the bits and compared it to an exploded diagram and I think I have it all....

must have been grumpy, put my rant in the wrong place

Took the servo off, I figured I had better go through it again and make sure I had not bolloxed something more obvious Then I cleaned up the bore of the control piston with some 1500 grit and a pencil modified for the job of flappy holder thingy; That little arrow head thing is probably the issue, it is not moving up and down it's bore and letting the vacuum equalise with no brakes applied. There were some minor other things - There was a circlip that was maybe supposed to be holding the piston in (but wasn't there when I pulled it apart), I put one in but the extra stack height between that and the vac chamber had caused a washer thingy to deform a bit, so I left it out. Stuff cannot go anywhere anyway so i think this is better. I also replaced the bolt that clamped the two halves of the vac bit together as this was a bit stripped and probably not letting it seal 100%. I mounted it all back in the car but ran out of time and brake fluid, so bleeding will need to wait for another day. If this does not work I might need to look at sorting the old servo.

Already started the visual mods - paint stripping via liberal brake fluid application... Also Jones you fucking idiot, it no longer smokes when you start it for some reason.

You are such a dick Jones.