Killajoules Series 80" upgrade project

It worked 😁

Cool!!!

I was looking at finding a hard ball bearing the same size so we can make a
Weld on ball I'm sure mine will be knackered aswell

So your competing at the next trial?

This turned up at work today . I should probably get hole of full service kits for the slave cylinders and give at a thorough service etc when I get round to an installation.

Does anyone have an inlet manifold in the local are for a 2L lying around that I could modify, e.g. drill and tap a vacuum take off into?

Need to check out my Brake reservoir and replace if nothing else, probably need to bleed the brakes too Jai.

OK, looking a bit more closely at the photos I have taken recently I can see that the current brake configuration is what looks like an early Series 2 Brake master cylinder and a Series 3 plasic reservoir which needs replacing due to a small hole in the lid and possibly a cracked output pipe causing all the fluid to spill.

It looks like all these are running 3/16" brake lines to Series 2 axles.

I currently have a spare inlet manifold winging itself to me from a LRSOC colleague that I can hopefully intall the vacuum takeoff.

Next will be where and how to best mount the servo, and a full set of slave cylinder service kits for the drums.

there is Still a master cylinder on my series 1 god knows if its any good. can get the old man to throw in in the lathe and get some new seals Should really get it off before it gets destroyed as they fetch a premium refurbished apparently..

This weekend I have mostly been servicing the brakes.

The front brakes so far proved relatively easy, the dust covers had all swelled over time and fell off when the shoes were removed, however this has led me to understand the hidden issues with bleeding TLS brakes. I cleaned out the cylinders with compressed air I could see that the actual fluid ingress points appear to be halfway up the cylinder bore, this theoretically means that both cylinders will be half full of air.

I suspect the best way to bleed them would be to start by having the shoes comperess the pistons to reduce the volume to start with. Bleed them through to hopefully reduce the air first. Then fit the drims and get someone to press the brake pedal hard to before releasing the fluid to see if it will expel the trapped extra air. Its a LONG time since I last buggered around with LWB drum brakes !



As you can see the drums are still good with virtually no wear despite all the mud it trials in.


I then opened up the rear drums, this is where the first problems were encountered.

The N/S bleed nipple sheared off so I will have to replace the slave but no other issues here.

The O/S was the only drum I had to fight to remove including thwacking my thumb with the Thor hammer. However, the bleed nipple offered no resistance so I just need to reseal the pistons.

As time was getting short (swmbo wanted to head home for dinner) I decided to remove the old S3 reservoir and it did indeed confirm my sus****ion that the feed nozzle had cracked off whilst trying to tighten the jubillee. Well I have a nice new metal S1 from Dingo, I just need the union so I can make up a feed pipe.

More bits orderred from Dingocroft!



The next question is again the Master cylinder. I have tried to get a better picture, but I will need to get the floor out to get at the pipes. Looking at it it appear similar to the laer series 2 one on the Dingo website BUT the largest diameter chamber at the rear is not as deep as the S2 one. e.g. the Dingo image shows the fluid chamber starting nearer the input pipe than mine if this makes sense.



This is also for curiosity, a four way junction with an unused brake light switch, is this an S2 part


Looking at the pipe from the reservoir, this is in 1/4" does it matter if I replace it with 3/16" from the reservoir?

A bit more today, 10 steps forward, only 1 step back!

as with the bleed nipple, the brake union refused to budge too, so I had to nip out to grap a pipe slice and cut the old pipe off to release the old cylinder



I found that the forward piston was seased farly solid

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Anyway thanks to Stutabs bits I made up a new pipe and installed the new cylinder



All nice and tidy. On the O/S I found that one of the pistons was very stiff, starting to seize but I cleaned up the bore and replaced the rusting piston with the good one from the old cylinder along with new seals.




After putting the wheels back on I decided to tackle the alpine window with my new tool. Lordy Lordy it took less than 5 minutes to put the window back in! Its amazing what the proper tool can acheive



The only step backward is that the Brake master appears to have Witworth threaded unions, so i need to sort a couple out in order to replace the reservoir and possibly to install the servo!!

One way to bleed twin leading shoe brakes is to take the back plates off and turn them upside down so the bleed nipple is at the top, I have spent many a hour trying to get series brakes bled, it can take a while especially the ones on 1/4" pipe.

Well, last weekend I finally got the 80 out and about and took it to out the club family day where we played on Matts two trial sections.

The brakes are just the same LOL. So next step will be the remote servo but I suspect it will be a next summer job. SFF is about to relocate to Sutabs garage whilst the bungalow gets rebuilt (more importantly my bigger garage )

The gearbox feels much better, actually its bizarre now I have rebuilt the ball on the bottom of the lever not to have a vague gearlever now.

The only niggle is that it can pop out of third gear on overrun.

Must get under the wifes D1 now, need to replace the rear shock bushes, get some welding done and replace the bonnet release cable as it has siezed I cannot get it the bonnet open and the headlights are doing strange dodgy earthy things.