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NickJ's Lada Niva TwinCam


NickJ

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Just a quick little addition, when rebuilding the gearbox I went to fill it with the usual oil I always have and just by chance noticed it was GL-5, the lada manual specifies GL-4 so with all the talk of yellow metal and what not I thought its best to find some GL-4, whats cool is the gearbox now shifts much nicer than I remember but 5+ years of GL-5 doesn't seem to have done any visible damage.

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I'm hoping to go for a warrant this weekend, so have been taking care of small jobs one of which is the speedo, while under the car last week I checked the transfer case end which checked out, then pulled the cluster to check the top end, all looked ok, the cable appears to be in one piece and the dials work when spun with an allen key, hmm. I then thought stuff it and yanked the inner cable right out after noticing that there is a crimp at the top end but not the bottom, I wonder if its been slipping too far down the transfer case? climbing underneath (seems to be the most common place to look for a lada driver before the drivers seat) I slid the cable back in and yes, all is working again, only issue now is I fear if the bottom comes away i'll lose the inner cable, guess thats why there is a tie wire loop on the fittingĀ  :wink:

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Warrant day....

Ā  Ā  Planned to be at VTNZ at 8 to beat the rush, got there a little late after sorting a few issues and the line was around the building to the road, F%^K!! well nothing else to do but get in line and wait. by the time I got to the front it was 2 hours later and I was well nervous. inspection started and I hung around as usual, most inspectors can't work out the lights as the symbol has worn off the switch, gives me a giggle every time. following a long 15min in the waiting room the fella approaches me, its failed and I possibly shouldn't drive it, rear wheel almost came out on him! he happily jacked the rear end up and sure enough the bearing is loose, bloody embarrassed that I never lifted the back up to check the whole time i've worked on it, but he's got a point, bloody dangerous if that came free on the road! being my place is 5 min from the station I opted to carefully drive straight home.Ā 

Ā  Ā  Now the fun begins, see last summer I had the same wheel bearing wear out, as I don't have a press I took the new bits to a well known workshop for assembly, when I picked it up they gave the new lock ring back, saying they had removed the old one ok so re-used it, and assured me its ok? well the ring came loose and the bearing has killed itself and worn the axle down, its buggered. after a few calls I tracked down an old lada thats been under a hedge for the best part of 15 years and so acquired a stack of new bits and the all important new axle best part is the shelter from uv has kept the interior in such good condition I plan on goin back for seconds!
Ā 
Ā  Ā  Few other issues for the warrant, rear lights not working, Windscreen wipers need to work, drivers seat not secured and the indicator rate is too fast.

Rear lights, can't work that out, fine when I checked before and fine when I got home, oh well should be good.

Wipers, thats irritating, work sweet when wet but dry they stick, picked up a spare motor from the wreck and all checks out ok, hmm, will just put some old hard, non sticking blades in for inspectionĀ Ā  :badgrin:Ā Ā 

Drivers seat, theres a problem, somethings always bugged me about them but i've ignored it, having a closer look it would appear the previous tall owner turned the mounts around to get more leg room which messed up the rear latch, turned it all back and she's sweet as, not as shakey and should now pass, rad!

That leaves the indicators, poking around I guessed the indicator relay had fried itself or an earth was loose so started there, all looked good so I popped the relay box open for a curious look and found nothing, testing with a spare also showed the same issue, this faster rate just appeared so i'm now thinking its a bulb issue but being I had the relay box out in front of me I started poking around.....
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Standard lada indicator relay unit (yes it has transistors! lada's are complex as!) Ā guessing there would be a resistor draining one capacitor to set the flash rate, I narrowed the search down to 3 resistors, 2 of which are in series, now making 2, first guess did nothing when changed, I guessed wrong, turns out it was my second guess, the little one above the green capacitor, measuring this to be 750ohm I replaced it with a 1k trim pot and now have an adjustable flash rateĀ  :-DĀ Ā 
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all good fun but I'm even more sure thats not the real problem, but a good distraction.

Ā  Ā  Now for todays gold, needed a new stalk assembly, indicator, lights and wiper switches, went to grab them from the wreck and there was a lovely steering wheel attached so took the whole lot, not totally sure what it is, has a lada badge but i'm sure thats aftermarket, that and the Peter Fitzgerald signature......Ā Ā Ā anyhow, its so sweet compared to what I had.
ā€‹
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I've now done about 100km taking her out to work and am pretty sure i'm a bit lean on idle, as she's hard to start but happily fires up if I pump the gas many times before starting, once going along she's not too bad but still has a bit of lag, i'm thinking larger pump jets should help.

One thing thats really obvious is how well it runs if I shut down for 10 min then go again, i'm thinking thats from a bit of heat getting to the manifold helping vapourise the fuel? thinking about pouring a jug of hot water on to see if it has the same effect.

Static advance is 10deg, checked with strobe and advancing nicely with increased speed, want to try giving a bit more advance but worried it might be too much higher up?Ā 

Current jetting is

Mains 122
Idle 52
Pump 33

Discussion:Ā http://oldschool.co....a-niva-twincam/


Ā 

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  • 2 weeks later...

More success!

I've had trouble with the accelerator pump since setting her up, having no instructions on DRLA I've used a DHLA book to guide me, reading the pump instructions reads, 'turn pump screw UP to increase flow' I read this as do it up, but I guess on the dhla the pump lever is vertical in position? this had the effect of reducing the pump flow in my drla carb, today I thought stuff it, and turned the pumps all the way out, and bloody hell the flow was back to instantaneous, driving home from work it was finally a pleasure to stop at the lights, no longer fearing the car would stall.

And did I mention the sound? who needs a stereo!Ā  :-DĀ  :-DĀ  :-DĀ  :-DĀ  :-DĀ  :-DĀ  :-DĀ  :-D

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  • 2 weeks later...

Fun times with the Lada! up to now with traveling to work i've clocked up 1000km since the WoF :-DĀ Ā really should drive the toyota but whats the fun in that! Fuel economy seems about the same as normal, but my gut says she's lean, first thing in the morning the starting procedure is open the bonnet, tie back the enrichment circuit on one carb, use an alligator clip on the other, start the engine (which is easy as) then drive 5 min before pulling over to release the two levers, no matter how much I pump the gas she just won't fire without, so last week I finished work early and headed out to palmside for a quick chat, the fella there agreed with my thoughts and one step at a time i'm going to try moving the idle jets up a size.

Ziplock bag of expensive stuff on the passengers seat......
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Fitting is a 5 min job, really love the layout of the dells
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All went just brilliant, engine responded to a little more fuel and she now starts without the enrichment circuit, few pumps and its all go, also idle is much more stable and will drive from cold, happy times!

So out to the farm for a burn and a long quiet road for some plug tests...

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1,2,3,4
These are 80kph @ 3500 so hopefully in the main circuit, still a little lean?

Thats when as usual something else pops up, with the bonnet open and the engine running I could make out a clicking noise, must be the slightly loose tappet on number 1 exhaust I think, so back home and have a measure up, call mal and beg for a saturday delivery before christmas....... Once again he delivers and I proceed to wedge a few screwdrivers and extract the shim and replace with the new one, about this time a van pulls up and Ben_10 introduces himself and a mate (Sorry I'm shite with names!!) and have a good yarn while trying to slot the new shim into its new home. The boys headed off and I carried on but while turning the engine over to double check clearances the click is still there and bugger me, its not exhaust its inlet, covers off and sure enough there is a solid click, kinda like a 1/4 torque wrench, not at all a tappet soundĀ  :(Ā  stopping to think all I can come up with is the bucket catching or broken spring, both require the cambox to come off, so

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and everything comes up fine!!! can't see any signs of clashing or broken springs and moving the valve by hand via large lever feels good too, I'm stumped, only option i've got now is a loose shim in the bucket, but I can't feel the click there, bent valve or miss alignment of the cam box, ideas? I'm wondering if there should be any dowels to align them? also I guess a compression test to confirm the state of the valves would be a good idea.

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Also looked at a loose camshaft but that seems fine, no movement when leaning on it with a screwdriver and rotates freely, for now i'm planning on ignoring it, after all its a 30 year old engine, they do make odd noises! that and pulling it apart and giving everything a clean seems to have quietened it down, or am I just paranoid?
Ā 

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Spent the Christmas break in the hills chasing Tahr, saw a few but boy are those buggers keen on going places bipeds shouldn't!

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Anyhow missus sprung this little gem on me after a short treasure hunt in the bush near camp, absolute gold!

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Back home to the city and without anything to do boredom sinks in and I began to fidget, having cleaned up the interior last week, there was one thing left that has bugged the daylights out of my soul, I just can't clean the air vents, so I removed the stereo, heater and fan to pop them out, before and after

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This also let me pull out the heater tap that has seized on, kinda necessary with the current Canterbury weather!Ā 

Another week off with nothing to do could be good for the Lada!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well not much happening, she's running well, found a small patch of cancer which will need attending to before it gets worse and there is something fishy with the carbs, I'll need a good day at it to pull them off and have a play, but overall I'm happy with how she runs, clocking up 250km a week heading out to work and back.

Had a dig around looking for a picture I took years ago and found this gem from when I first brought her and thought I was a 4x4 god, took all 3 vehicles to pull her out and tore the front diff off the mounts as it was stuck in the gravel!

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This weekend its a happy good bye to the square of concrete I rebuilt the lada on, conveniently located adjacent to a perfectly functional garage we didn't have access to :( and hello to our new place with a garage! (hopefully) good times ahead.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Dirty little pirate hooker!

On the way to work today second gear started popping out, I've had this before and is because of the main nut on the output shaft that holds all the gear clusters together, sure enough, I could move the thing with my fingerĀ  :cry:Ā 

So, off work and set about pulling the transfer case out so I could release the donut and tighten the darn thing, only I cant get at the bloody thing with my sockets.

I tightened it up with a cresent after the rebuild but obviously thats not tight enough,

Any one have a 30-32mm tube socket in chch able to help me out tonight/tomoro?

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Thats it, hiding in sight, unable to be touchedĀ  :x

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Well my urgent call has turned to be not so urgent, we had planned to leave tonight to head out hunting, with the current weather we've decided to wait it out and try again tomorrow, fingers crossed the rivers go back down and we can get out for a walk!

Also I messed up, after Mof's great help getting me a decent socket that worked I couldn't find a torque setting in my rush and so guessed from gearbox drawings and that its a M14 thread that I could give it death and be ok, what a silly mistake that was! while re-fitting the TC I found the gearbox didn't spin freely, back to my web-page copy folder for notes on niva gearboxes and sure enough there is a small note, 'torque to between 60-80Nm, careful to check for binding' Ā bloody muppet!

Not wanting to push my luck asking to use the socket again I called into repco on the way home and picked up a 32mm socket to do this:

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Cutty Cutty

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Insert scrap pipe here

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And a quick bit of hot glue

So if anyone is rebuilding a lada gearbox and needs a deep 1/2 drive 32mm socket, give me a call!
Ā 

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With hunting plans now a total mess I took the chance to head up the godley valley for a day, awesome road and good sights along the way, crossing the maccaulley at the start is alway nerve racking but with summer flows its barely up to the hubcaps, had to search out some deeper water to give the underside a proper wash!

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Light show

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Added to my woes there also seems to be bit of a knock coming from around the steering box, have to jack up the front end, crawl under and work that out before it gets worse :(

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So lessons learnt today;

Setting up the twin carbs I was very aware of the linkages and needing to get it right to ensure WOT, I measured all the levers and cable pulls and fabricated parts to suit, in my rush to get it all running I didn't check that I did indeed have WOT, idiot! turns out i've only been a little over 1/2 throttle since the build, quick tighten of the throttle cable and there it is, a noticeable increase in power! Most worthy of the fabrication foibles thread.....
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Shitty shot, but that is all the throttle I've had and thought the performace as ok.....

On a roll of fixing my own mistakes and having had the transfer case out to fix the gearbox I set about checking the shims that line the TC up to the gearbox, the car has always had a shudder on take off especially since I put the fiat engine in, i've lived with it, but it has always bugged me.
The standard method to align everything is bung it in 3rd, TC to neutral and hold at 3-4k for a few minutes with all mounting nuts loose before nipping it all up, this generally gets 90% of vibration out but is never quite right, today I climbed under armed with a straight edge, square and ruler and set about the nerdy-method. This resulted in a few shims less in the TC and a washer in the front diff mount, driving around there are near to no vibrations, long overdue victory there!

Last of all I had to give the dells some attention, with a quick tune I pulled the idle back a touch and have improved the slight hesitation from low revs, I'm pretty sure I've got a few jetting issues to iron out and a small air leak in #2 but that will all be sorted in time, I'm waiting on a few gadgets to help on the tuning side :)
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Love working on these carbs, just joy and simplicity, oh and the battery is only tied in for tuning ;) with the normal position its impossible to access the adjustmentsĀ 

Last of all the knock in the steering was found as play in the idler, I seem to chew through bushes so I'm going to pull that right out and check it for concentricity, I'm thinking that could be an issue, otherwise $20 for new bushes aint that bad.

Ā 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Time for an update....

Flew up north to catch up with family as Christmas was a write off and dug out a 4 speed box to bring down, amazingly it weighed in at 28kg, so a quick round with a socket set and I had it down to two packages and Air New Zealand happily flew us home.

With more time and a clear workbench I began to strip the box down to check on health, replace the seals and get prepared for swapping out, knowing there was a bit of rust from unknown years storage I flushed it out with kero and brakeclean only to find the rust was a little worse, somehow with a light scrub I was surprised to find shiney metal in important places.
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Next step, removing the input shaft & bearing which was not so nice
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And then this:
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Looks like the box has been run dry, the needle bearing between the input and output shafts has melted, only to ooze out and make this mess, that also explains the burnt looking mess on the inside of the casing! I'm quite impressed that all the needles still rotated but the nylon was very brittle and broke out easy with a screw driver, glad that I kept all the bearings from rebuilding the current box, although they aren't the best, they're not rusty!!

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That was all last week, with the day off I made the plan to spend the arvo sorting the box, hopefully swapping this week, pulling her out of the shed I got things ready, went in for lunch and came back out to find a small puddle under the back wheel.
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Not all bad, I have a spare seal, 30min should sort it, but nah, wheel off the ground and its obvious, bearing has gone poop, bloodly lucky it didn't happen up the Godley!

Might be a few more weekends before she's a go again :(

Here's a small teaser, so a mate at uni brought a 3d printer for shits & giggles, being the poor student $200 for trumpets that aren't even a theoretically efficient shape just don't fit the budget. So we made this, first iteration to see if we could actually print the darn thing, and for testing to see how it feels about living in a mist of 98......

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Ā 

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  • 1 month later...

Its been 6 weeks since the lada packed up and I parked her in the shed, today I finally found the time to repair the wheel bearing, so much time I took photos!

Step one, turn the oven to 11 and place the new collar inside;
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Step two, attack the lock collar with grinder, no need to cut right through, leave about 1mm;
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Step 3, give the remaining section of lock collar a good tonk with a cold chisel;
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Step 4, carefully tap the chisel between the lcollar and bearing, not too hard, don't wanna risk damaging the axle, but enough to spread the two apart, if it needs more of a bash, give the collar another tap;
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Step 5, the whole lot should now have separated;
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Step 6, apply anti-seize to the axle, makes the next one much easier, cos I'm cheap I use grease;
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Step 7, drink beer

Step 8, drink another beer and realise days off are rad as F

Step 9, look busy so missus doesn't ask you to mow the lawn

Step 10, realise you left something in the oven cos the missus is screaming, so, with some well sized scrap metal and steam pipe, bash the new bearing into place, important here to only hit the inner race, hit the outer race and you might get more practice next month;
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Finally, WITH WELDING GLOVES ON apologise to the lady of the house who cooks dinner everynight about leaving the oven on high with nothing in it (no wonder she can never find her car keys!) grab the collar from the oven (while boasting there WAS something in there) it should be at least 250deg, but hot as poss will do, race out side, place on axle and bash into place;
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Now put the whole lot back together and get keen to go for a drive but you can't cos the battery is flat and so is the spare, so you jump start with the girly's car and fly off down the drive after forgetting to bleed the brakes............

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  • 2 weeks later...

Pulled the gearbox out today, Metalica black album in there...
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Turns out 5th syncro blew apart at some stage, most possibly the reason why the output shaft lock nut loosened off on me all those days ago (or me messing with it), found the syncro lock ring (whats left of it) in the bottom
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This meant 1st, 2nd and 5th have been floating on the output shaft, and so not lining up on the countershaft quite right wearing the gears down, not the best! worst bit is the countershaft is different on the spare 4 speed I have and so I can't rebuild the 5 speed with what I have! the search is on now for a spare box or countershaft....

I know I hardly use 5th, but it still seems wrong to down grade to a 4 speed!

Ā 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Heaps of fun with alternators this week, had the battery light come on and after a quick poke around found the alternator was the culprit, pulled it out and with a bit more poking found the problem in the solder connection between the rotor coil and contact disk.
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Easy to see the lack of heat from my soldering iron, not being sure this would solve the trouble I went on the hunt for a replacement, just in case....

With a tip off from GovernorSam I headed out to pick a part and found this lovely Lada Samara, with the Fiat alternator's dimensions scribbled on a bit of paper I stripped it down and everything lined up. Should be easy enough to swap the bits over and have everything a go again.
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Turns out thats a no, the rotor was just a little bigger, so plan B kicked in, I crossed my fingers and hoped my dodge as repair would hold out until I sort a better fix later this week, and of course assuming that was the actual fault...

Azzurro sent me in the direction of older model Mazda and Falcons, sure enough, both would fit, also found an Alfa with similar mounts, all internally regulated, but with a much higher rating, good to have options!

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Mazda left, Lada right

And as usual, just as one thing is fixed, another fault pops up, this time the speedo had a shudder then stopped, thinking it came loose from the transfer case, I stopped immediately fearing the fitting had come loose allowing the inner to slide out, but no, all is good, later at home I pulled the cable out to find this
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the fitting at the end has broken, anyone know if this can be repaired, new fitting crimped on or so?

Discussion here
//oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/45307-nickjs-lada-niva-twincam/?hl=lada
Ā 

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  • 2 weeks later...

A few fun fixes this week

Had a hand from Mutiny to solder up the faulty join in the alternator, after getting everything back together it packed up again within 24 hours, with many swear words I pulled the alternator out and ran through the options, in the end I decided to cannibalise the samara alternator and make it work,

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The rotor was about 2mm oversize, 10min in the lathe sorted that out :)

Since I set up the carbs i've been chasing a leak in there that I just couldn't work out, being that it only spluttered a bit on start up I ignored it and just drove the thing but coming into winter the last few cold days has made starting a touch more difficult, in trying new things I experimented with manifold heat, i.e. pour a jug of boiling hot water on it, this seemed to help but then the eureka moment, just as I closed the bonnet she had a cough and I noticed a big spray of water come from between the manifold and carb, aha! so I quickly stripped the carbs off and it was obvious where the leak is, all it needed was a layer of carbon

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I'm not totally sure on the fix but this is my temp (soon to be permanent) fix to see if thats the fault.

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Quick layer of gasket goo between the manifold and paper gasket, I know there are nice o-ring seals around but i'm too cheap for that!

Ā 

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