Hello From Me and Ted

[IaininTenbury]

Well done with the repairs, a very good grain match!
Btw Hello again, I'm Carcruiser on the Commer van forum. Small world eh!

[panky]

Never heard of you, have you got the Isis out of it's crate yet

[aupickup]

a good repair
but as a joiner the best bet is to splice the jopint at an angle instead of square butting, you can blend the wood in better and its less noticable

[panky]

Yes I can see how that would work. Never mind I'm sure I'll be doing more repairs at some point and I'll make sure I heed your advice.

[IaininTenbury]

Never heard of you, have you got the Isis out of it's crate yet

Think mine needs a new crate...

[jagnut66]

Excellent repair I think, nicely done.
Great pair of Commers too.
Best wishes,
Mike.

[panky]

Thanks Mike, I've got three more and a chameleon

[panky]

Re-filling the dampers on the traveller with heavier oil worked great so today I did the upgrade on the rear dampers on my Commer Auto-Sleeper, this time I use SAE 50, to say it's a big improvement is an understatement .

[bmcecosse]

Excellent! Best value-for-money upgrade you can do...... On a Minor the mod is easily a match for the crude 'bolt-on' tele damper conversions.

[panky]

I know a couple of people who have done the same on a Commer - now I've done this I can tell others it's a waste of money. Need to do the same on my Jennings coach built now

[TFM150K]

Any chance of a couple of piccies of the inside of your Jennings? They tend to be superbly finished. There was an early Landrover conversion that used to attend MMOC National Rallys and I used to lust after it - loverly timberwork and brass fittings!
(best posted in "Off Topic" or Louise will be after me)!

[panky]

I'll see what I can do

[panky]

Got round to filling the rear dampers with SAE50 today. When I took them off one of them actually had a level of oil you could see - and it smelled of oil it was still very thin tough. Big improvement again and feels so much happier on bends and round a bouts Also dropped the front suspension a spline on the drivers side to level it up, sits perfect now. Hadn't done this job before but with the advise on here and a good scan of the PDF manual it was pretty easy, I marked the position of the torsion bar to the arm with a dash of Tip-ex before tapping the rear arm off the splines (I was surprised how easily it moved) I took it very easy on the last half inch and 'felt' it as the torsion bar came free and carefully moved it onto the next spline. After tapping the arm back on the Tip-ex mark showed the desired adjustment had been made Most chuffed with my afternoons work.

[panky]

Got Ted a prezzie I had a bump a while ago and slammed on to avoid the collision, the standard brakes worked great and the front wheels actually locked on a dry road, but it didn't stop the other car from hitting me So I decided to improve the stopping capabilities but what's the point in up-grading the brakes if the tyres wont stick...........so.







5 1/2" J's, not banded must have been made ages ago and a proper job. I put 165/70/14's on but there's enough room for wider ones, maybe next time.
Now I've got more rubber on the road I'm on the trail of a set of Riley 1.5 front drums I know of

[jagnut66]

Very nice and much more in keeping than some Alloys I've seen on Minors.

[panky]

Thanks That's the idea, a program of period mods over a couple of years just to keep things interesting

[panky]

So now he's got his nice wheels it's time to give the little old chap a bit of pep I had a bit of Mini stuff laying around so I though it might be better put to good use.
A 12G940 un-leaded head with nice big vales off my '91 Cooper ( replaced with a stage 3 head) was dragged from under the bench and cleaned up and the valve face to head face distance measured. The inlet valves had plenty of clearance but the exhaust valves were a bit short of the magic number of .320". As the clearance problem was only with the exhaust valves, and there's loads of meat on them, I decided to trim the valve face back to give the desired clearance.

Still plenty of meat left even after skimming



Now clearance ranges between .322" and .325"
I decided to use a HS4 1 1/2" SU and fit it to the manifold I nicked off a Mini 1100 engine I just happened to have kicking about. A couple of advantages in that it holds the carb at the correct angle and the existing exhaust fits straight on. Eventually I'll need a new exhaust and I'll upgrade further fitting a larger bore pipe but need to find a matching manifold (Midget?) to go with the alloy inlet manifold I already have.
While I was at it I fitted a crank shaft damper pulley.


New head ready to fit



Old head



I had to use the 1098 rocker assembly but this needed attering to suit the 1275 valve spacing

You can see in this pic how the rockers don't line up with the valve stems



Some rockers needed packing away from the support pillars with washers while others needed filing down to position them. The end ones just needed the tension springs fitting on the opposite side of the rocker.







I opened up the exhaust manifold to match the ports on the head



As he was




The new installation



Because of the angle of the heater valve connection on the 1275 head I had to file a little edge off the heater valve so that it would clear the engine steady only to find it fouled the battery when I tried to drop it in Nothing for it but to pilfer the heater stub connection off the Cooper, I've nicked a few bits off it over the last few years - I should have made a list
And so after initial set up I took him for a blast up the road - a bit disappointing, but after a few tweaks on the mixture screw I got him running a lot better and much nippier - but I think I need an AAA needle as the one fitted seems a bit lean. The only problem is the noise from the K&N, for my daily driver it just doesn't seem appropriate so I've since fitted the Mini filter box and added that wonderful 70's tuning mod - a series of 1" holes bored into the side of the air box Sounds much better, a nice low growl instead of the K&N's howl.

[panky]

I thought I would need a new exhaust soon, well the coke can repair didn't last as long as I hoped



So now I have an 1 1/2" bore 'performance' system from David Manners. Unfortunately it's meant to mate with a Marina manifold so I had to mod the end of the down pipe a bit.

First I hack-sawed around the large sleeve and dressed the weld down.



Then flared the end out to suit the manifold.
While I was at it I fitted an AAA needle to the carb and took him for a blast - I can report that the new exhaust and needle have made a big improvement and he fair whizzes along now

[jagnut66]

What did you use to flare the end of the pipe out?
Many thanks.
Mike.

[panky]

Started it off with across pein hammer with the edge of the tube over the back of a vice and gradually worked the flare, then finished it off with a ball pein.
Not pretty but it worked.