If you've been around for the last couple of years or so, you will know all about Richard's Kadett, warts and all.
Having finally got it sorted and reliable, Richard is happy to put it on the market. The new toy, a 1275 cc Mini has superseded it.
I have put together a spec and some pictures and a bit of previous history for anyone interested.
Although the rad had appeared dry when I had run the car up, the following morning, there was a trace of 4Life cowl at the bottom of the rad. Naughty, naughty words.
Out with the rad again and this time I opted to try to get a new core fitted. A very helpful chap at Berkshire Radiators offered to do the job, that is until he tried to get a new core. Unsurprisingly no longer available but for £250.00 we could have a custom built one. I thought I would revisit my repair.Failing that, I would fit the spare.
To help me locate the leaks, I dug out my pressure tester but I needed to block the hose fittings. I used some of the poly bushing material and a short length of silicone hose. Sadly, the original fittings for the tester had become brittle with age and I couldn't get them to seal enough to get the rad up to the 20 psi, that the cap maintains. Time for a bit of improvisation. Instead of pressurising though the rad cap, I decided to fit the rad cap and modify one of my
bungs. I simply cut a piece of 8mm Kunifer and silicone bronze brazed it to a large steel washer. Then I drilled an 8mm hole through the bung and sealed it with some silicone.
When the silicone had gone off I refitted it and then coupled it up to the
pressure pump.
Two leaks, which I re-soldered and the radiator now holds pressure.
Lets see what happens this time.
So, with Andrews help I finally managed to get both probes working on the tripmeter in the Kadett. It turned out to be a broken sender AND a dodgy switch. Nothing we could do with the
sensor other than order a new one, but some contact cleaner sorted the switch out. With the new probe fitted we were back in business.
Time to move on. We had a water leak it seemed,as when I took the sump guard off, there were traces of 4Life on it and checking the rad level confirmed it.
Having run the car for a while to pressurise the system, the leak appeared. Top tank seam. Time for a bit of soldering.
With the rad out and having given the offending area a clean up, it revealed a split rather than a hole. Time to bring in the big guns. The Mappi torch, a load of flux and a touch of luck or should that be skill. Whatever, it seemed to work. The solder wetted in nicely and when I filled the rad with water it seemed to be staying dry. Of course I wouldn't know for sure until it was back in the car.
With everything back in place and pressure restored, we had dryness.
Going through the spares package for the car, I came across a new pair of front suspension top links. Unmodified !!!!!
Not any more, the shocker mount is double skinned and the bush ends
have been wrapped around.
Still on the spares package, the ball joints on the bottom arms have been replaced.
Of course, there has also been a bit of cleaning going on and our new manifold bolts also
turned up, allowing me to finish off the exhaust.
As both seats and belts run out of Homologation at the end of the year, we are changing them. It incidentally makes it a lot easier to clean.
There were also a couple of small jobs, little things that I just haven't got around to doing or that have popped their heads over the parapet since the car got built.
One such was locking the handbrake on. The notches had worn away, meaning that it keeps coming off. To get over it, I took the Tig to it and built
up the teeth. Then I just filed them back to what they were l
like when new.
One more tick on the list and time to move on to the next job .
This time it's the switch panel that came in for a bit of TLC. This has always been a little bit flimsy, I should have made it out of something a little thicker. Rather than
make a new one, I have beefed up the end plate and added a brace to the cross bar on the roll cage. Those
Cleco's do come in handy.
While the paint dried, I popped the rear quarter lights out, the car is being sold with the glass ones, complete with Goodwood Festival of Speed stickers. Again with no glass in the hole, it makes cleaning that much easier.
As you may have noticed, I still haven't got on top of the trip issue.
Following it's last two successful outings, Richard has decided that the Opel must go. In reality, he has bought himself a Mini and needs the space. With that in mind, we are spending a little time doing a few tidy up jobs on the Kadett.
One of those being to pop a new exhaust manifold gasket on. Not the nicest of jobs as some of the retaining bolts are pigs to get at. No trouble spotting the blow. I had thought to replace the bolts with some a little more user friendly but M9 x 1.25's aren't that common, so we may
stick with standard bolts albeit new ones [if I can get a set].
Another little job will be tidying up the gravel rash on the paintwork, something I am still waiting for a quote for.
There was another little problem to solve as well. It related to the trip meter. We have a Brantz International 3 Pro fitted, with 2 probes, one on each front wheel [undriven wheels]. Switching between the two is done via a separate switch, which you can just see hanging on the right, after I removed it from it's normal home. While the co-driver side probe worked fine, switching to the second probe was totally unproductive. No readings at all. My first port of call was to check that the wheel probe hadn't been dislodged or damage, but that all seemed fine, as did all the
connections between it and the control box. By this time I had taken the lid off the switching unit and had a look at the other bit of Brantz magic. All
appeared to be OK, which took me back to the probe. I then substituted a Terratrip probe, no difference, but thinking it may not be compatible, I decided to connect the known working probe instead. ANDDD, that's where it became more bizarre. It still didn't work. Time to give up, go home and have a bit of a re think.
Just going back to the exhaust for a moment, I have managed to find a company that sell a kit, which comprises the gaskets and necessary bolts. I await Deutsche Post.
Having had a trouble free run on it's last outing, the Red Kite Rally, there isn't a lot to do to get the Kadett ready for the Woodpecker Rally.
The torque tube is one area that will get some TLC but before I get on with that, I wanted to address a small issue that has been present,ever since we got the car.
The camber on the nearside front wheel has always been a little challenged, compared to it's off side counterpart. As there is no facility for adjustment, I needed to be a little creative. The
obvious place to start was on the upper suspension arm. The upper ball joint is bolted to the arm with 2 x 10 mm nuts & bolts. To start with, I was going to
elongate the holes.
Then it all got bolted back together
While I was doing this, I noticed that the trackrod end boot was split. An easy enough job to fit a new boot, having first checked that the joint was serviceable. Some fresh grease went in as
well.
Time to have a look at that torque tube and it's accompanying oil leak.
The only place that the oil can be coming from, is the diff pinion oil seal. With the tube off the car, it was nice to see that the oil seal can be replaced without undoing the pinion nut.
The mounting and the rubbers looked a touch Heath Robinson to me. Before I could get to them, I had to remove the UJ yoke and tap the shaft through the bearing housing. The
centre rubber had what looked like an old fan belt put in to stiffen it up.
The two side mounting rubbers looked standard, the top and bottom ones however, looked anything but.
One thing I noticed was the crack in the mounting, so a little welding was needed.
A bit of research and a look at a standard mounting revealed that someone had made their own mods.
If you look carefully, the standard mounting [top one] has two slots, which accommodate push in rubbers. Ours has those welded over and two non OE blocks bolted in top and bottom. The 'fan belt' fed into the bearing carrying rubber is obviously there to beef that one up as well and probably accounts for some of the harshness in our drive train.
This is what a standard set up looks like, so you can see that the two small bushes at the bottom of the picture, have been replaced by massive great bolt in ones.
Having ruled out the rear disc, I moved on to the half shaft. Back to Martin's. Looking at the diameter of the outer end of the shaft, you would think, there was no way that you would bend that. However, I was determined to find out
why the disc was running out of true.
Centering the shaft, required the attention of Martin's 'Birmingham Screwdriver' but he was eventually happy. With a DTI mounted, time to check it out.
In excess of 30 thou. Must have been a bit of knock to bend it.
Looks like we might run a different shaft for the weekend.
While I waited for Martin to check the disc run out, I made a start on modifying the seat rails. Richard had requested a lowering of the seating position. Because of the seat design, the existing brackets didn't allow enough downward movement and even if there were enough holes, they would cut into the material.
Time for modifications. At some point in the past, the top had already been cut off the mount but we needed something a little more drastic. The one in the front is the original. A little
marking out, drilling and cutting produce the rear one. A potential drop of about an inch and a half should be enough.
My other 'little' job was refitting a rear silencer box. Having lost the original, we ran the last event with a straight through rear pipe and were 'advised' that we should do something about our decibel count, before the next event.
Their wish is my command.
As the box had no mountings, I had to add some. This was one of the original ones but reshaped. A corresponding bar has been welded onto the
box. I have used a section of the straight through pipe for the end and it already had a mounting on it, now I need to make a new one for the body.
No sooner said than done.
The next outing for the Kadett is The Red Kite Stages on June the 24th. Having thrown it's toys out of it's pram, last time out on the Plains Rally, I've been trying to get to the bottom of the gearbox problem.
When I looked, after taking it off the trailer, I found that the 4 bolts holding the gearbox to the bellhousing, had come loose. These are the only things that retain the input shaft in place. With them coming loose, not only was the oil coming out but also caused the jumping out of gear that Richard had experienced. Having tightened them up and topped up the oil, I took it for a road test. All good but I need to find out why the bolts came loose in the first place.
Time to get it into the workshop and do a bit of detective work.
I had noticed a very slight vibration before the Plains, although no one else seemed aware, so this was where I started. The plan, get it up in the air and run it, in gear.
In the course of this, I came across this little issue. Warped disc, bent half shaft or maybe a bent caliper mounting, but whatever it is, the caliper is moving. As my lathe isn't big enough, it's off to Martin Taylor's to check the disc.
Sadly, the run out on the disc was within tolerance, so I need to look elsewhere.
This week is all about the finishing touches to Richard's Opel Kadett. This will be the first outing for the car since the Nicky Grist Rally, last year.
As detailed earlier, the engine has been rebuilt, following oil pressure issues, we are back to the close ratio, 4 speed gear box. Most importantly, the rear springs have been changed back to the original progressive ones. The ones fitted for the last endurance event, being so hard, that they wiped a brand new set of DMack's in 40 miles.
Alongside this, I have been making a new lamp bracket for the car. The original ones took about half an hour to take off, so we needed to come up with a better arrangement. I've been making up an aluminium lamp
bar. It's also been necessary to modify the wiring in one pair of the Cibie Oscars to suit the Bremax loom.[only 2 lamps had gone up with the car] At some point in their history, the fixing bolts had been changed, so I found a
couple of original ones and fitted them. Then it remained to weld on the fixing lugs.
With that done, the lights went on and we had illumination.
