Starting 1958 land rover series 1, let me know if you hear any unusual sound
Tag Archives: land rover
Land rover series 1 88 inch engine bay…
Land rover series 1 can be categorized as classic car. This Landy in particular is already 50 + years old, most of them will already give up the ghost… few survived and we give credit to old car that retain the original parts…
Here is the picture of landy and inside the engine bay… only few is not original, thanks to the previous owner who tried to use original part whenever possible
Thats all for now, generally I am happy with the originality of the engine… will let you know if it start OK… :) let me know if you have any questions… Cheers
Overheating… oversweating…
Dolly’s or general land rover series temperature gauge is not accurate, but the needle is showing broad indication whether the temperature is OK or not, so I do not really pay attention when the needle is showing slightly high or low than normal (by normal I mean is the needle not above letter “N” ). But few days ago, I find something is not right… the gauge is showing consistently on the high side of letter “N” and few times above “N”.
I remember a friend said to me long time ago… if the gauge showing normal.. it may be to good to be true.. so check it regularly (like once a week)… if the gauge showing not normal condition… Don’t be denial… it is absolutely “a must” to check the whole system…
But this time I do not follow his advise… I think it just normal for land rover gauge to behave abnormal like this… So I continue using it until one day…. the temperature gauge showing fast increase from cold to normal and then higher than “N”.
And worst, I just realize in the mid of heavy traffic, stopping here will certainly cause a massive traffic jam. So I continue driving until found an exit to the slow line and find the first building and parked there… by this time the needle is close to touching red.
There are few tricks to open the radiator cap when its hot, but I do not advise anyone to open it while it hot, unless you know what you doing… it can cause major burn injury if you do that. the safest option is to turn off the engine, leave it there to cool down for may be an hour or more.
I do not have one hour, so I need to make it run the soonest, first I carefully open the water expansion cap (water is boiling in there), and then start open the radiator cap by turning it bit by bit… to reduce the pressure inside radiator.. (I can hear the water is boiling hot inside). I am using a thick news paper for protection and redirecting the hot water in case water bursting from the radiator or expansion tank (after make sure that no one near me of course).
Very thick water steam comes out from radiator cap (not yet fully open), I leave it at that until the steam disappear, mean while I bought two 1.5 liter mineral water from nearby stall. Finally I turn on the engine and open the radiator cap fully (very carefully) and start pouring it.. very slowly… very-very slowly…until the gauge now back to slightly below “N”. (Never pour the cold water at once, do it slowly otherwise there will be a good chance damaging the cylinder head and a lot safer too… )
And then with quick check what went wrong, I found that the radiator is leaking, fortunately not big, so armed with another 2 bottle of 1.5L mineral water I continue driving … if the traffic permit, I stop and topping up the radiator until I safely arrived somewhere I need to be… sweating bullet.. :D
Now I have two options curing this problem… I can change the radiator with brand new as the radiator is having the same age as the car… or I can mend / patch it… brand new radiator is US$ 180, while patching it will cost me US$15 which include cleaning inside the radiator… no brainer I choose the cheaper one… but I promise my self to save for new radiator int he future.. :)
So here is Dolly’s radiator under repair…
How do you spend the Extra Horsepower
Extra Horse power in land rover series…? you think I am crazy right..? I am sane and sober by all means, but yes, I am trying to squeeze few ponies power in dolly’s engine by adding SU carb instead of worn zenith and electronic ignition…
I hope I got few ponies already now, to squeze one more HP, I might as well decommission the current air filter and replace it with high flowing air filter… with something like this…
I hope it will add half or one more ponies.. :), but the next question is, with the extra horses… how do you “spend” it…? there are few options I have in my mind…
- Air condition,
- On board air pump and
- Power steering,
I finally decided to spend the horse power for Air conditioning as Jakarta is very hot and I frequently get stuck in Traffic jam… lot of choice on the air condition system and I just follow what ever the local garage suggestion on what brand to use…
Because I have plan to have double blower air condition and the Station wagon is big… we opt for bigger compressor as in below picture:
And the local garage made all the necessary bracket and fitting and install it in Dolly engine..
And this is when the new air compressor installed…
And this is the Engine bay af ter everything installed…
I still left the old non-functioning Air filter for two purposes:
- Just in case I will cross Sahara desert anytime soon.. I can connect it to the carburettor
- To hide the messy cable behind it (which it failed to hide it anyway :))
So that’s it for now… if you spend few extra horsepower with something interesting, please write it down below… Cheers
A Fish in the fuel tank..?
Remember this set up due to not enough fuel supply..?
It only helps temporary, and the problem is coming back.. loss of power again at all RPM, it clearly the problem is somewhere else… So I want to solve it once for all, first mechanical fuel pump… This where probably the source of the problem is… I rebuilt mechanical pump with this kit part number AEU 2760 …
This will sort this out and no need for additional electronic fuel pump, Done..! me think… but “No Way José..” the problem still exist… it really confusing.. what else should I do..? Now with the fuel pump should be OK after the rebuilt… there are only two possibilities, one is something blocking the fuel line and the other one is something blocking the Carburetor…
I decided to check the fuel line and fuel tank first… I drained the fuel tank and blow the fuel line with compressed air… this will this certainly clear anything that currently blocking the fuel line.
And this is what we found in the tank.. a fish mutant..?.. :), see, no matter how strong your pump is… if this blocking the fuel line… the fuel supply will be much less than the engine needed. I hope it solve the riddle for good..!
Cheers for now
Electronic Ignition – A Little Incident
Electronic Ignition can be considered as upgrade from point contact ignition, but which one…? a lot of option out there, but for me I choose the cheap(ish) option ( but not the crap by all means)… Powerspark from SimonBBC… the consideration is: the technology is already mature, the improvement will not be much different with the point breaker anyway, and I might go for Megajolt route later so I do not want to spend big money here. I ordered this item, a Chinese copy of Lucas distributor 45D4… well Lucas is well known as prince of darkness anyway, what can be worst from that…
Cut the story short, I have received the item in a good condition and installed it about two months a go… I feel bit of improvement compare to the old distributor (not sure if this is only psychological or actual), it works.. so no more maintenance… or so I thought…
One month later, when I happily driving around the town… I heard a noise from the engine bay and the engine stopped… just like that… ooh, Dolly is playing another “guess what when wrong this time” kind of quiz again…!
I opened the bonnet and checked few things, I saw the distributor cup is no longer properly clamped or loose, and the rotor arm is not in the place it should be… ah.. this is the problem… “Common Dolly, you insulting my intelligent… this is too easy….” I said to Dolly (if you see a landy owner talking to his / her car, consider it as normal… we do that all the time :)). Easy fix, just put it back I will be going in no time… me think… but it seems I under estimate dolly in giving a hard quiz… the engine is not starting… it crank OK but not starting…
Another look at the distributor, it is clamped alright now, slightly loose but clamped by both clip, tried again cranking again the engine.. same result…so this is the time more thorough investigation is needed. I checked the inside of the distributor…
The Cup… although cosmetically no problem I found something strange… here is the pict:
So no wonder the electric current can not be transferred from coil to spark plug, because no connection to the rotor arm … it should have something like this…
But what about the rotor arm..? it too seems badly “injured”… here is the pict..
What the hell has happened… I am checking the internet and seems no one is having the same issue, so I accept it that this might be my fault during installation, somehow it is probably not properly clamped, the cup is loose, and *Bang* the rotor may be hitting the one of the aluminum post inside the cup, the rotor stop moving but the mighty force of the engine pushing it further and the plastic broken, and so on and so on…
I finally replaced the rotor arm and the cup from the original dizzy which I always bring for the spare… I fired up the engine no problem, and I can go home safely… seems that the main unit is OK…
I talk to Simonbbc and ask whether this type of “accident” is covered by his warranty… He kindly agree to send the replacement… great service… no wonder he has 100% satisfied customer in ebay. Now the original distributor cup is still being used waiting replacement from Simon…
Cheers for now…
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