I was waiting for someone to mention that!!

lets hope its not a mangled push rod tube... (as if any of us have done that before) if it doesnt leak you cant mark your teritory

Last night was just spent re-fitting the instrument cluster and putting the carpet that was originally with the car back in to provide some sound proofing. I think the oil leak was a combination of a rocker cover gasket not being seated properly and the cover not being tightened up enough. I addressed these issues and there's no patch underneath this morning.

I wondered where you lot had gone to and assumed that there was a problem with the site until I noticed the announcement that you'd moved so here's a recap of what I've done lately, copied over from 2CVGB:

I;d been away for a week on exercise up at Otterburn Range and it was nice to get back into the garage so I eased myself back into tidying up the front panel & grill. I also had to find a way of attaching it to the inside of the front wings. I had thought about making things easier by welding some nuts to the attachment lugs on the front panel but this is proving to be easier said than done because whilst it's easy enough to attach the nuts, getting the bolts in and tightened up from the inside of the wing isn't - so I might have to opt for traditional free nut & bolt attachment.

I also started to tidy up the extra fillet attached to the bonnet and both this and the front panel are work in progress.

I had to do a little bit of fettling last night in order to make the front panel fix properly. Having primed it I hunted around for a tin of paint that came with the car to see if, by miracle, there was any left and to my surprise there was The trouble was, having sprayed the grill and let it dry I soon discovered that the colour is that of the contrasting roof and not the body which I think doesn't matter really - it almost looks intended I still haven't managed to fix it properly using captive nuts but at least it's fixed securely in place for the time being. Having got the grill in place, I did a bit more filling and sanding of the bonnet leading edge and then got a few niff naff jobs out of the way like fitting some rubber along the bottom of the bonnet and around the headlamp apertures.



Which leads me onto those pesky lights. I've got them and they look OK, they work and are nice and bright BUT... they're much too high (and misaligned as can probably be seen from the photo).

Although the headlamp shells have been fitted to "ball joints" donated from a previous headlamp bar on a standard car and then fitted to brackets inside the wing, the fitment bolts are very rusted up and if I have any chance of adjusting the beam then I'm going to have to get those nuts apart...

I'll see how I get on tonight :confused:

I had success with the headlamp shells last night. I removed the lamp units (for what seems the umpteenth time now) to find this:





The lock/tab washers were extremely rusted up and seemed to be causing most of the problems so I set about "removing" them with a large screwdriver and hammer. Once they were removed, the nuts undid with the use of a breaker bar and after a couple of turns with that the nuts came off sweet as a nut.

Having now destroyed the lock washers that were necessary in order to adjust the headlamps from the outside of the shell, I thought about making my own washers but seeing as the shells needed a bit of light refurbishment including some localised welding, I decided to weld in the nuts permanently.



I sure I can hear a couple of you sucking air through your teeth now, but given that the shells aren't in that good a condition and that I'm not likely to need to remove the bolts again for some time it seems a perfectly acceptable mod to me.

After painting the inside of the shells with some underseal, I gave the headlamp brackets a going over with a wirebrush and a coat of hammerite.



The headlamp adjustment bolts were treated to some copper grease and then re-assembled. I also took the opportunity to tidy up the headlamp wiring as well. The lamps aren't fitted back onto the car yet so I'll do that tonight and do a rough beam adjustment when it gets dark.

After re-assembling my headlamps and refitting them to the car, I tackled a little job which although seemingly unimportant would almost definately result in MOT failure.

I recently realised that although the car battery fits snugly into the battery tray, it has no clamp. This was easily remedied by welding a small plate with a welded captive nut to the battery tray and then bending a 2nd suitable piece of metal into shape so that it grips the lip on the bottom of the battery and then bolting it down.

Simples.

Some more fannying around last night. I started by making sure the bottom of the car is adequately sealed along the panels that I've replaced with brushable sealant and then underseal.

Then I fixed the carpet and soundproofing to the bulkhead. As there are certain things such as wing attachment bolts on the bulkhead, I didn't want to permanently cover them so I obtained a couple of metres of heavy duty velcro (used in pilots flying suits etc.) and glued it to strategic points. Then I glued the soundproofing/carpet to this so that I can remove it for access in the future.

There wasn't much more I wanted to get into at that point so I decided that I should grease the kingpins and driveshafts. Whilst I was doing the kingpins, I was reminded that during my previous period of 2CV ownership, a few people I talked to just accepted a bi-annual kingpin change around MOT time, as did I and it was only when I joined the forum that I realised the important of adequate greasing. It's quick and easy (even with my cheapy grease gun) so why not just do it?

PS - just as I started the greasing, Massive Attack's "Teardrop" came on the radio and rounded off a good evening in the garage

More smallish jobs last night.

It would appear that most Bedouins have/had bonnets that hinge on the front panel and open forwards which is backed up by the fact that Belinda has a strange hole just below bonnet level on the bulkhead that looks like it's for a locking mechanism. However Belinda's bonnet is hinged at the bulkhead and I'm not a fan of forward opening bonnets anyway so as time is getting on, I elected to fit rubber bonnet catches of the sort fitted to Land Rovers and Rally Cars(?). They were cheap and easy to fit and fit the style of vehicle as well I think.

Next on the list was a bonnet stay. In the big box of bits that came with the car were a pair of extendable stays which lock when fully extended and I might use them in the future (or I might even consider gas struts to be posh) but to keep things simple for now I decided to just use a simple length of rod. Again, in my now familiar recycling frame of mind, I found a length of 6mm diameter rod that was used as a locking mechanism in the cabinet that used for the floors (remember that?) and the centre lock pivot provided a perfect mounting point. I simply mounted the stay with a bolt through an existing hole in the O/S wing right next to the newly fitted front panel and fitted a small clip (of the type used to hold tools onto a board) to hold the stay when stowed. Then I welded on a metal "P" clip to the underside of the bonnet to locate the stay when in use. I've also recently fitted a length of rubber along the bottom edge of the bonnet as the metal was a bit sharp

I finished off by making sure the headlamps were adjusted having previously marked the beam pattern of my peugeot headlamps on the garage wall. At least I know they're in the right sort of place for the MOT then.

I did take Belinda out for another quick spin last night around the airfield getting her up to 40mph this time. There's a bit of vibration from the front wheels at around 30 mph but this might be due to the dodgy tyres that are fitted and I think the brakes still need a bit of bedding in but apart from that she's quite fun to drive, especially with the high centre of gravity round corners

So now the only jobs I think I've got left to do are get a set of tyres fitted and sort out the passenger door lock which seems to be permanantly locked so that it just spins. I might have a go at adjusting the indicator flash rate as well as I think there's too little "ON" compared to "OFF". I'm still waiting for the V5 to come back to reflect the change of engine as well so as soon as it's here I'll book the MOT and cross my fingers.

Pics to follow......

OK here are some pics of recent work:

The battery clamp:







The rubber bonnet catches:





The bonnet stay attachment point:



and the bonnet stay doing its job:



To round things off I thought I'd include an atmospheric rare arse-end pic of Belinda to show off the peeling paint on her rear door!!



Some of you might have notice the non-symmetrical nature of the bottom of the front panel & grill but as the previous owner had hacked the wings about in order to make the GS engine fit, this is something I'll have to sort out in the future.