lo-fi

I'd love a capstan winch for my 109, but don't want to pay the silly money they're going for. Luckily, I have CAD and fabrication skills, so here goes making one! At the suggestion of another forum user, I've started using onshape.com. It's like free solidworks, dropbox and github all in one! With an hour of fiddling, this is the result: This is the only tricky part to make. I'll get the pattern 3D printed - probably by shapeways.com as I've used them many times and aways been pleased with the result - then cast in alloy by a local foundry, or have a go myself (I've watched far too many MyfordBoy videos). I have a lovely 62/1 sealed worm drive gearbox lined up to make it all work. I'll keep this thread updated as my experience with onshape.com progresses. I'm certainly very impressed so far!

You'll never get it right across the whole with a simple resistor. All you can hope for is to get the needle in the right place at the important point (proper operating temperature). As others have suggested, it's quite possible you do have a cooling issue, but it'll be hard to narrow down whether this is really the case without a gauge you know gives current readings. Trust the heater - it's probably telling you something useful!

Measure the resistance of both senders in boiling water and compare. This will tell you what value resistor to use if they are different.

Hehe. I'm guessing you're younger than most here? Old TV show where the hero could cobble together anything with duct tape and a Swiss army knife... now used as a verb: To tinker, using items not normally used for this purpose.

Inspiring, as ever Can't wait to see it properly in action

I'd get some advice from good machine shop, but they'll probably recommend a light hone. It is easy enough to do yourself, but won't cost you a lot to get the the shop to do. Get the crank journals checked and maybe polished too, if they have survived without any scoring.

Fair point, but even on the worst set of verniers, you can read whether it's 40 thou over standard size! I have telescopic bore gauges and micrometers going up to 6" (for this very thing), but not the kind of stuff most people have lying around in the garage... Agreed that if in doubt it's best to take it to a competent machine shop, though. Fingers crossed for you.

Run it around clockwise until you stop feeling upward movement and make a mark somewhere convenient on the pulley. Then anticlockwise similarly and make another mark. Do this a few times and you should find it lands at the same two points every time. The point in between the two marks will be TDC.

Ouch. A decent set out vernier calipers should be good enough to tell you what's going on with the bores. Have you checked the big end bearings yet?

Wow, that's quite an illustration of a liner issue! You can see how head gasket after head gasket can fail to solve the issue. Good luck with the rebuild, sounds like you're doing all the right things

That little connection on the manifold between the carbs is the manifold air bleed. You want it plumbed into somewhere it won't let air get sucked back in. I'm running a custom radiator on my S3 V8 and have that little hose running into a connection on the bottom of the Disco expansion tank I'm using. Tough call where to attach it on yours! I'm wondering if you'd get away with teeing it into the hose between the radiator and series expansion tank, but I'm not 100% sure that'll work.

Have you considered the Ashcroft 5 speed kit to mate a short LT77 to the series box?

Could you post some pictures? The outer rings in oil pumps of many engines crack between the teeth - it's probably the most common failure mode for that type of pump - but continue to run for some time like this, though with reduced oil pressure (and often not low enough to trigger the light).. It does wear the soft casings quickly, and once this start happening the rest is inevitable. I suspect this may have been the case with yours. As has been said, the most parts most vulnerable to low oil pressure are the crank journals and the bearings that run on them. It's very unlikely the bores will have suffered much, but pay close attention to the big end journals particularly.

What were the splines like on the R380 output and LT230 input? Wear there can cause what you're describing as the backlash is taken up in the worn splines - they can wear significantly before drive is lost.

So it's a 2.25 petrol 8:1? Those figures sound fine to me.

I'm quite lucky in that respect; my two local places - Safari Engineering and Keith Gott - seem (touch wood) to have avoided that particular trap thus far. At least for stuff that matters. The guy at Safari, when I asked "what brand is it? I hope not Britpart..." replied "Don't swear!!", and I've never been handed a blue bag. Long may it continue!

It's a minefield picking through what's good or not. I recently bought a set of Wipac crystal lights from JGS, which arrived in a Britpart box. I didn't even open it, just sent an email asking for a refund. Got a quick response saying "we get this a lot. Open the box and you'll find the actual lights inside are made by Wipac". Sure enough, yep. And I'm very happy with them! But was a scary moment seeing that name on the box. Series swivel balls seem almost impossible to get hold of without arriving in the dreaded blue. Just done a mates S3 for MOT, but what's in the rebuild kit is soul destroying. Rough finish, carp chrome, bearings that just don't "feel" right. Certainly not like a Timken. All fitted OK, but.... yeah. Don't do it unless you must, and avoid brake parts like the plague is my opinion. Another mate with and S2 made this mistake, and was left with wheel cylinders that leaked badly after 6 months. Then again, I've ordered cheap props in my early naivety, and they've been great. You just can't tell beforehand :/ Trouble is, the more people buy the cheap garbage, the more the rest of the supply line suffers and eventually shuts down due to lack of demand. It worries me that in the end, all we will be left with is Britpart pot luck and no alternative. It will be a sad day indeed. Another reason to spend a few more quid and deliberately avoid IMHO.

Grab yourself a power steering pump and a beefy 12v motor to drive it. Should work like a charm.

Are you sure the injector pump timing is spot on, and is the cold start advance (I believe the Bosch pump on those engines has one) working? Beyond that, I'd get a compression test. This sounds like worn bores/rings to me. My old Perkins was exactly the same - would pour white smoke out until you got some heat in the rings and they expanded, closing the gap and bringing the compression up. On inspection, it was found that the bores were worn beyond the upper limit. I doubt the head gasket would show the same symptoms without showing others, and valves are unlikely to be so heat related. It's not catastrophic if it is bores and rings, but if you get it looked at sooner than later you might escape having to get it bored for bigger pistons and get away with a hone and new rings. All depends what the specs are and what the wear is like.

Yep, had 3.9 serp in the back of my 109 with manifolds and all the trimmings. Sump fits quite well inside an old car tyre to stop it rolling about.

What you're doing there is measuring the voltage over the resistor you're calling a shunt and using ohms law to calculate the current. I=V/R You know the resistance of the shunt and measure the voltage drop over it using a comparator - which you're calling an isolation barrier in your diagram - then amplify the voltage into the right range to drive a gauge of some kind. The comparator will no doubt have some gain built in, so will likely be a single stage. Hope that helps with it being put into standard electrical terms. Old school auto electrical tech is often seriously crude, so be warned that it's unlikely to be accurate. I'd also question why that rather than a voltmeter, though?

Fit some 3.9 heads and a nice cam in the 3.5 is the easiest option, surely? As you've got MS you can tune to get the best out of it.

Possibly correct at time of writing. Info here, suggesting it is possible: http://www.v8forum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5025&sid=2786c8b1d804ed57ba5fc9c940ed78f2 But whether the finished size bearings are the best option is debatable, though. You're relying on the holes machined in the block to be true... there was presumably a reason they were fitted them reamed to finished size at the factory, and doing so, it's reasonable to say, is a machine shop job. Which begs the question: Are you sure they need doing before you launch into it? Easy enough to measure them and worth the price of a set of bore gauges if you don't already own some.

Indeed - that's what I've done. Mocol remote kit, filter mounts to the wing. You get the better crank driven oil pump with the serp too.

For reference, I have my 3.9 serp down as 28" from front of water pump to gearbox mating face from when I did my 109 conversion. I've also seen a 4.6 in an S1 trialer that hadn't been chopped about too much. Was running series box, but I'm afraid I have no more detail than that. I can highly recommend European Radiator Services ltd if anyone decides to go the custom route and relocate the rad like I did.