Recent content by Tall Ratbag

Yes, the bulkhead should have a tapped thread - those shouldered bolt in the plastic bag look right. There are different shouldered bolts depending on whether the bulkhead is metric or not, but, the general length of the shouldered bolt is about the same.

Beware the idea of increasing oil viscosity and/or using moly The syncro surface have grooves and features to clear the oil away because the lubrication hinders the friction action of the cone clutch part of the synchro. This is often why you can get the odd crunch from even a modern gearbox...

Were you using the drill in the reverse direction? It needs to be in reverse for the speedo to respond.

The mirror is OK for the MOT - there's no prescribed geometry or area, and no requirement for the mirror to avoid the driver being dazzled from behind.

>>I feel i must be missing something obvious- any ideas? I suspect the missing ingredient in your thinking is a factor of pi linking the diamter and the circumference. The oversize 0.010" piston ring will be 0.0314" longer than the standard one, not 0.010"

The nipple being at the bottom is normal on these brakes on a 109, and is not actually a problem. The real problem with bleeding this type of brake is that an air bubble can get trapped in the wheel cylinders, and you have to do something that's a bit odd to deal with it. If you take the drums...

The pump should only "pump" on the return stroke, and so, the pressure delivered by the pump is controlled by the strength of the return spring. So, when the float chamber is full, the pump lever will not return.

Even a small misalignment will ruin input shaft bearings in little time. I would very carefully check the dowels between the back of the engine and the bell-housing. Any slop here could leave the axis of the crank and the axis of the input shaft offset from each other, thus leading to...

>>poor man’s DTI In a way, yes! It would be quite sensitive because the area of the piston is much much larger than the area of the pipe section, so even a small movement of the piston would push the liquid a long way along the tube.

The crown detaching from the top of series petrol engine pistons is not unknown - I've seen one before where the crown just stuck in its TDC position while the lower part of the piston went up and down as per normal as the engine cranked over - that cylinder just gave absolutely no compression...

Steve - the idea is to use the hollowed out glow plug as a connector to allow air to pass from the cylinder, via the pre-combustion chamber, to a clear plastic U tube. Coloured liquid in the U tube would then move in direct reaction to piston motion, and so indicate TDC. It would look a bit...

Give it a bit more thought; remember that the pre-chamber communicates with the main cylinder; if it didn't the fuel and flame could never reach the cylinder.

If you have an old glow plug, you could butcher it, and remove the internal ceramic parts, and glue it to a length of clear washer tubing, and form a U tube. This could then be used instead of the dial gauge on the piston top as a way of approximating the TDC position without taking the...

When you say plenty of fuel - do you mean at the delivery pipe to the carb? There's a fine mesh filter in the carb inlet - it's underneath the housing where the delivery pipe connects to the carb upper body, it can get clogged.

Looking at the long list of work done, perhaps the fault isn't actually in the bell housing. I was thinking that that there might be a torsional vibration coming from a prop shaft. In a low gear, this vibration would be amplified up by the gearing. You've eliminated the front prop. What...