26th December (Boxing Day) 2011

Run today down to the annual Steve Biddlecombe classic car show at Romsey. Trig performed without fault including rescuing a stranded Porsche Speedster that had a flat battery while on the homeward bound leg. Ran veg all the way ;)

Big turnout for the show this year. A LOT of people turned out. Not been for 10 years and back then it was only around 10 cars that showed. I would estimate this year it was around 200 pre '76 cars and the same number bike wise. A good number being US muscle which makes a nice change from MG's/TR4/TR6's etc. Nothing better than a bit of large capacity V8 rumble?

On arrival home I noticed the clutch pedal had traces of leaking hydra fluid. Looks like the master cylinder has gone south. This is one I salvaged from my previous S3 with a new seal kit. Quality of the 'kit' unknown. So it looks like a new TRW Lucas/Girling is needed. Will check tomorrow.

Also the Smiths cab heater seems to have sealed after the flush and rad seal added a month ago. No signs of any leakage after the run today. Outside temp around 9 Deg.C and with the tarp buttoned up and the fan off it was still cosy in the cab. With fan on it was too warm IMHO ;)

I need to get the tyres sorted though. Braked hard when I saw the stranded Porsche and the rear locked immediately. It has done this before. It takes just a dab to lock the rears with no weight in the back tub. These Lassas need to go and be replaced either with new or the part worn Wranglers I have in the yard.

27th Nov 2011 - SVO system failure - again!

After replacing the veg tank filter with the large Perkins 296 CAV cartridge type after the in-line original became bunged with gel I thought I had got to the bottom of the recent SVO fuel starvation. I had not.

CAV296 filter assy

 Last weekend I headed out to meet up with some of the guys from the S2 forum local 'chapter' and after a couple of mins switched over to SVO the engine started to baulk due to a lack of fuel. Tried it once more after driving a few miles on dieso and then had the same problem. As I didn't flush the system last time after fitting the new filter I 'assumed' more crud had worked its way through and bunged the new filter?

Roll on today and as soon as I opened the underseat filler to the SVO tank and then heard the woosh as the tank pressure came back to atmospheric. I then realised the cause of the problem!

When I rebuilt both tanks I fitted new rubber gas cap seals - so they actually do seal (rare for LR?). In this case I sealed it up a bit too well and the sprung vac vent in the cap had become gummed up with polymerised veg oil - so it would not vent at all. Duuuugh?

I cleaned the vent port and also swapped for the dieso side fuel cap as this had a bigger vent port so this should be less likely to gel up. Also drained the full veg tank of +40 litres of oil to check how much crud was floating in there and could cause future problems. The result was I found the tank was spotless clean inside. Zero crud. The few bits I found the other week in the inline filter must have been from earlier trials a year or so ago?

Tank now refilled and left running for 40 mins on SVO without any issues. I couldn't get Trigger out of the drive for a run due to my other vehicles, and time limitations, but fingers crossed I have hit the nail on the head this time?