Getting back on the road

Certainly seems the case. Funny thing was I had the first time this summer. The rings all bedded in within 20 miles, except cylinder 2 and that took 500 miles to bed in. Even then I started having low compression on very cold startups. Hence me pulling the piston again. The new rings bedded in immediately, all I can think was the other rings were faulty from the get go.
 
Brakes felt a little off the other weekend. Sure enough found a bit of brake fluid on the pushrod to the pedal. So I ordered new seals for a company called custom spares in Bedford Hills in NY. Pulled the master today and was happy to find it had been resleeved in the past. The old seals were certainly past their best. New seals in and a quick bleed. Brakes feel great again. Old seals only seemed to last 2/3 years. Couldn’t find and any issues with the bore of the cylinder. I did hone it a bit to be safe so I’ll keep an eye on things. Maybe the old seals had been damaged during fitting. I’ve noticed that sleeved cylinders can have a knife edge to the sleeve which can cause issues with the cup washers. I made up a cone from copper pipe that held the seals and made sure they wouldn’t be damaged going in this time around.

Sort of glad about the sleeving as US spec cars had dual circuit brakes so the master is unique.
 
Well, the follow up from last week's master cylinder rebuild. The master cylinder is fine now. However, when I pulled the car out of the garage on Sunday morning the reservoir had dropped about 15mm. On the US export cars they have a shared reservoir for the tandom brake master and the clutch master cylinders. This is attached to steel pipes leading down to the cylinders (the reservoir is mounted on top of the steering box behind the carbs LHD remember?). I guess with the work on the master cyl I had disturbed these and they had started leaking down the back of the pipes. You should have seen the smoke screen when I started the car!

Fortunately I had some 1/4" fuel line I could use to replace them all. Careful draining of the reservoir with a siphon tube and not touching the pedals meant I was able to fix it without having to bleed the system again afterwards. Drove the car quite a bit afterwards and all seems good now.

Upshot of this is I now have to strip back and repaint the chassis rail where the brake fluid damaged the POR15 engine bay paint (I didn't think anything would get that!).

In other news, the brakes feel better since the master cylinder rebuild. But still not quite right. I've checked the servos. No fluid in the vacuum chamber, both air valves operating as they should, pedal sinking when you start the engine. All good there.

No leaks in either front or rear calipers. I rebuilt the rears about two years ago and they have been trouble free since then. THe fronts I've not rebuilt, but they seem to be operating correctly. I probably should rebuild them at some point just because they are an unknown quantity.

But, I did find the leak on the left hand output shaft of the diff has become much worse. There was quite a bit of gear oil flung around the disc and caliper (yes I tasted it to be sure, my wife doesn't know this about me yet). So, new oil seals ordered from Jeff at Wins along with new pads as teh old ones are badly contaminated. I can make up a new thrust collar on the lathe if need be but I'm working out how to make the special tool to pull the collar off without risking damage to the output flange housing.

Its all fun isn't it? At least I feel like I have a reason for the brakes not feeling 'right' now.
 
Be careful using fuel hose for brake fluid. I used to use Gates fuel hose for the reservoir hoses, but noticed one day that the outside of the hoses had water beading all over them, the fluid was permeating through and attracting moisture.
The stuff that is brake fluid safe is EPDM hose.
 
Well, the brakes hadn’t felt right in the last month. Sure enough, the small weep on the left output flange of the diff had become a full on leak. The disc was was nicely lubricated by gear oil!

I’d ordered a new pair of seals and a new set of brake pads. I’d also ordered some steel to make a new thrust collar as I know they are NLA.

Today I pulled the output flange assembly off the diff. I’d bought a puller set that was similar to the original rover tool. Predictably it did nothing and turned itself into a banana in the process. So much for amazon Chinese-ium.

The Rover manual mentioned that early collars with no groove could be turned off on the lathe. So off to my machine shop in the city, when there I set it up on lathe and turned off the old collar. (First pic)

The second pic shows the dismantled flange assembly.
Third pic shows the remains of the collar. It was so tight on there I could only remove it when it was down to this.

I turned a new collar in 12L14 steel following dimensions from a drawing from the Rover Car Club of Canada. Only thing missing from their drawing was a lead in chamfer. I’ll post my updated drawing when I’m on a proper PC and not my phone. Final pic shows the new collar in place after assembling the new seal.

No wonder the old one leaked, it was hard like bakerlite and actually shattered when I removed it.

Then the drive home (another 40 mins, yay) and a battle royale getting the driveshaft bolts lined up and secured. Total time for all the work: 10 hours. But I know it’s fixed, new pads and brakes feel great again and no leaks when I got back from the late night test drive. Job done and I’m now watching Star Trek with a pint.
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Drawing for thrust collar if anybody needs them.
 

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Nice work.
I wonder if it would have been possible to split the old colar in order to remove it, using a small cutting disc in a dremel.
 
Great post and outcome.
Perhaps you could put up the seal and bearing info, then this could be a sticky for the complete job ?
 
@Demetris it’s actually not great access to the bottom of the collar. Also, the bearing is in good condition and I wouldn’t want to contaminate it with carborundum from the disc.

@cobraboy I got the seal from wins so don’t have a cross ref for it. Maybe @Aqualung has the cross ref for the bearing?

@Aqualung yes, I have a six jaw chuck with reverse jaws fitted minus one jaw to clear the brake caliper bracket. That gave me easy access to the sleeve without worrying about damaging the splines. The bearing was in good condition so I kept it in place.
 
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I’ve always noticed the leading edge of my bonnet would move when at highway speeds. Also I felt like the bonnet drooped on one side when on the stay. After looking at the X shaped cross braces I noticed the rivets at the leading edge were pretty loose.

I ground away the heads of the old rivets. Normally I would drill them out but with the outer skin being just above them I didn’t want to risk blowing through and denting the skin. I put in new aluminium pop rivets and it’s amazing how the bonnet stays still now.
 

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It is a while now that i want to do something like this, but in a more thorough way. Remove the bonnet, drill the rivets of the cross brace, remove and clean the insulation pad, paint everything and reassemble with new rivets. Also try and tighten up a little the hinges.
 
Finally fixed the slow charging on a Beryl this evening. After reading Roy Wilson’s thread here with his problems I read up on the charging circuit. One item that came up was the 6RA relay can cause issues with a weak supply to the field coils. I took the relay, gently pried open the casing and used some fine wet and dry on the contacts. After refitting the relay I started her up, idle voltage went up from 13.8v to 14.3v! Result! I found the slow ignition light was caused by the AL spade connector on the alternator had come loose and was barely making contact. Connector back on and the charge light extinguished immediately on start up. Not bad for 15 mins work.
 
Managed another little job today. The brakes still didn’t feel 100% right even after the replacing the bad diff oil seal. The only parts I’ve never rebuilt on the brake system was the front calipers. So off they came. Sure enough one of the pistons on the passenger side caliper was pretty stuck in there. In the end a combination of 100psi air and friendly encouragement from some big pliers I was able to get it out.

The old pistons look to have been rebuilt at some time in the past, they were (once) rather nice nitrided jobs. I’ve replaced the seals and used new stainless pistons. They feel a lot better, and the slightly wooden brake feel the cars always had has finally gone.
 
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There’s always something to fettle on Beryl. My wife maintains that I look forward to the next suspect noise and can’t wait to order parts and have the car apart. She may think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment, to paraphrase the BBC House of cards.

We did a 230 mile round trip with some classic friends last weekend. While driving I could hear a deep whine on long left hand bends on the right hand side. So, as mentioned above, Monday comes and I ordered a new front wheel bearing kit from Mark Gray. The kit is handy as it has both bearing sets plus the grease seal and a new split pin.

I got home this morning from Cars and Coffee. The hub was pretty hot, 90°f vs 60°f on the left hub, another pointer to a bad bearing. I pulled the wheel, brake caliper and hub.
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The large inner bearing race has two notches behind it cast into the hub. I was able to drift it out with a screwdriver and lump hammer. The outer small race was another matter. There’s very little to get a purchase on to drift it out. Even with a spacer to use with a press. So after a 20 minute session trying lots of options I got the Dremel die grinder out with a small slitting disc. With that I carefully put two slots roughly opposite each other in the race. Then using the screwdriver and lump hammer I was able to shatter the race at two points and get it out. Result!
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I used the press to get the small race in but the large one is more recessed and I didn’t have a drift big enough. So I took the old large race and ground off some metal off the outside with the angle grinder. Once I had that it was a doddle. A quick job with a hammer and drift put the seal in and all was good.

Putting it back together with plenty of grease and a new pin I went for a test drive. She sounded okay but there was some noise at sub 10mph speeds. I whipped off the wheel and backed of the nut a little. I hadn’t giving the bearings enough runout. Now it’s at 0.004” and she’s quieter than I’ve know the car. It’s amazing how you don’t realize how noisy something is until it’s gone.
 
Next time, if you have access to a welder, run a bead around the inside of the race, and when it cools, it will shrink ever so slightly and allow you to remove it easily.
 
Next time, if you have access to a welder, run a bead around the inside of the race, and when it cools, it will shrink ever so slightly and allow you to remove it easily.
Good to know. Although the problem wasn’t it was stuck, it was more that there was no way to get a purchase on it to remove it. This method wasn’t too bad to be honest.
 
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