It's comforting just to know that you care, .

With all the excitement I've overlooked to mention the now monotonous occurrence of another driveshaft gaiter splitting, that's the forth one since this summer, though they've all been old ones. I'll swap it for the spare shaft with new gaiter I've been carrying in the back of the car, and get some more on order. On the positive side I did spot it before it covered the engine bay in grease again.

Another question, my alternator only charges at 14v on a good day, I'd like to see if I could persuade it to go a little higher, nearer 14.4v if possible. If it was a conventional alternator with a feed from the ignition, then I think I would be able to lie to it about the battery voltage by putting a resistor in the supply to the regulator. However it is a single wire type, sometimes referred to as self exciting. Does anyone know how these work, or have an internal wiring diagram for one?

The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the devils own satanic herd!

Well what do you know, the useless feckers have sent the wrong one! I was just maneuvering it into place when I felt inclined to count the pinion teeth. 9. That'll be one for a 602 then.

Before that I'd already spotted that it wasn't as per the picture. What they've sent seems to be a Cevam branded generic 2cv starter, the same as 80% of the ones listed on ebay, but also oddly, visually the same as the Valeo. I'm going to assume that most of them are far eastern copies of the Valeo including the one 'Dyane6' didn't recomend.

After he warned about plastic cogs, I opened it up for a quick look inside. There are no gears, it's direct drive, and there are quite a lot of plastic parts, but it doesn't seem overly shoddy. I would have liked to have been able to try it, even on a standard car, but there's not one easily to hand without putting bits back together. I said that the best solution would be the 602 Valeo and ring gear swap, and I've now got a 602 starter that looks like the Valeo which is a start, but I'd really like to know if it is significantly inferior before I ask them to take it back..

Seeing as I had the old one out, it put it on the bench and poked it with a battery, the bendix gear looks very worn, but I oiled the moving parts and it seemed quite reliable. Then when I put it back on the car, nothing. I've checked that the feed is live, but there's definitely something more to look into here.

A fan of blackadder, nice one joolz.....

Well I've "fixed' it . I couldn't understand why it would work on the bench, but not on the car. I finally realised that every time I put it on the bench it was upside-down, it just didn't work the right way up. I pulled it apart again and found a worn brush, not sure why I didn't spot it before. It's now got a tiny wooden spacer behind it and is working again for the time being.

I'm still going to swap to the 602 parts sometime soon, so I can't decide whether to keep that other starter, or send it back and get a genuine Valeo when the time comes.

Has anyone else got any experience of these Valeo copies, are they any good?

Joolz, do yourself a favour and sent it back. I had one of those reasonably priced ones on a std. 602 and started not "particularly good".
Better spend double the money for a real Valeo or make the effort to check (and prob. recondition) a used Ducelier/Femsa/Valeo etc.

just read this thread in its entirety, very inspirational! good work, that man

Thanks, but as you can tell, it's a bit of a never ending saga.

I had started preparing a flywheel to fit onto a second engine, and had had 3mm machined from the front face which dropped the weight from 6.5 to just over 5.5kg (iirc), I've moved the ring-gear to the back edge but after the recent trouble I've kept the original 602 one.




I've static balanced it as well as I can with a bearing in the central hole, I removed the seals from the bearing, washed the grease out, and then lubed it with WD40, in the hope of making it as free as possible. Initially it would always turn to the same place when released, but after drilling some holes in it I can spin it and the position it stops seems to be random.



The pen marks are where it stopped. Pics are a bit rubbish, it was quite dark and flash doesn't work.



I was going to swap the ring-gear for one in better condition, but bizarrely, despite being from exactly the same type of flywheel, it was too loose!?

I mentioned elsewhere that I had changed another driveshaft by the side of the road, I was on my way to Spa but had only got 20 miles before being brought to a halt, or nearly not, what with the discs being at the opposite end of the driveshaft to the wheel. It had been fine the previous week, but as soon as I left home I thought I could hear a noise.
The amount of movement in the inner joint made it quite obvious something was wrong, and when it looked like this I knew the insides were going to be messy.



I took it apart for a photo, not sure why, maybe I have too much time. I think as Harley would say, It's shat itself again!



Annoyingly, as if this wasn't annoying in itself, this driveshaft had only been on for about 50 miles. I've been swapping driveshafts whenever a gaiter splits, as it's quicker, and then I fit a new gaiter to the old shaft and that becomes the spare. I'm thinking this one must have initially got damaged last time it was on the car and it threw it's grease everywhere. So far in the last 5 months I've been through 5 gaiters and 2 joints. Up until now all the split gaiters had been original, 20+ years old, but this last one was new and got punctured by a piece of broken bearing cage.

On a positive note I think I know why I've been having so much trouble. It only started when I raised the gearbox so must be something to do with the angle. Because of the unique disc/spacer/shaft combination I've had to use some overly long bolts with spacers underneath the heads, now these have always touched the gaiters, but I'm sure they're not pinching them. However I caught the last gaiter just as it was beginning to split and it was starting from level with the bolt head.This is the one in there at the moment that's just done about 500 miles, and you can see where the bolt head is beginning to wear the rubber.



What I need are some M9 x 45 socket head bolts and if anyone can find me some they deserve a prize. I believe I may find some in a conrod big end somewhere, but it seems M9 x 1mm pitch is more common than the 1.25mm pitch that I need. For now I'm going to try grinding down the bolt heads a little in the hope it helps, but I need to track down some replacements before I run out of driveshafts.