For the first time in going on five years, I've had the time to do some fettling and also a road trip from Stavanger to Bergen, 500 km r/t. I did a rough consumption estimate and arrived at 0.85 l/100 km (33.2 mpg) on what is essentially a B-road journey at moderate speeds.
Fitted a set of new Hankook K415s to the Vitesse rims (205/65-15) and they're turning out to be rather good, neutral and quiet.
Overhauled the wiper gear and linkage to good effect, much assisted by
codekiddie's excellent write-up. I used some bits from a donor unit and now have two good spindles, i.e. the splined end caps are tightly seated on the axles. A tip which I think helped get the axles lubricated, is that I placed them on the room heater for a while and used a high-end motorbike chain lube, so that the heat helped the fluid creep in under the spindle collar and behind the cog at the rear. I used a light amount of lithium grease on the wire, and Castrol BNS in the gear housing as that was what I had to hand. Didn't remove the motor for fear of damaging the brushes on reassembly. Cut and fitted a piece of car washing sponge to the governor and wiped the diaphragm and terminal connectors with some battery terminal grease. Next, I discovered that the delay adjuster knob was defective, the parts inside it having separated. Managed to find one locally, and I now have a zero to >20 second interval to hand.
Now, one of the enduring pains with this car is an uneven spring load. And I think I've finally found out what the issue is. The car used to be RHD and was converted in the nineties. When I bought it in 2009-10, it sat low on the left rear and I replaced the rear springs with new HD ones. This helped some, but was clearly not enough. Chris York has since suggested that the LHF spring is likely fatigued, so that the RH one is pushing back hard against the left rear, or a misalignment of the body/spring platforms from the factory, to be compensated by shimming.
I've now had a closer look at the front top link brackets, and found that the RH one has approximately 6-8 mm of shims behind it, while the left has +/- 2 mm. I understand these are for camber adjustment. Swapping these should help, and I (still) have that set of NOS top link bushes and road springs waiting to go in. It hasn't helped that the car was retrofitted with PAS along the way, where all the gear save the fluid reservoir sits on the left hand side of the car. The car can buck and yaw on sweeping right-handers. I always felt that this had something to do with a bias left over from the conversion, and am hopeful the car will finally come right when I get this job done this year. I mean, whether LHD or RHD, a car spends most of its miles on the road with one person in it, and should be set up with enough driver's-side bias so that it sits flat. No?
I was also able to secure a complete heater unit with core, which isn't badly rusted at all and looks pretty good. My fan cut out this winter during the fairly intense cold snap in January, when I had to use the car daily. I'm wanting to refurbish the flaps/foam on mine anyway, so rather do a job on a unit off the car, and replace in one go.
Also sourced a good auto prop shaft to use with my LT77, which will arrive this spring freshly rebuilt by Hardy Transmissions Engineering in Esher. I won a job lot of three boxes in pieces plus a carton of new spares on eBay for £175 plus local freight, out of which Bill was able to build one(!) good box for another £530. He also had a bell housing, release arm, bearing, pushrod and remote sitting on a shelf for nominal money. Getting it here now is only a matter of overcoming Brexit factors in terms of customs clearance.
I'm thinking to get a flexible rubber coupling for the prop as well, to help take up slap and any minor vibrations when the box goes in, and make it so that the prop is not fully extended, permanently. Finding one with the right PCD and diameter will be an interesting proposition.