[Jeroen]

Spend a bit of time prepping the Spider and the W123 to get back onto the road!

Took their pyamas off, lets out the excess pressure of the tires. All tires had held pressure pretty good. Except the spare tire of the Spider, it was still at 2 bar, but I must have put it at 2,7 - 2,8 bar or there about. I have noticed before that this tire seems to loose its pressure over a period of months.

Checked are where necessary all oil, cooling and brake fluids. Dusted them off, cleaned the windows a bit

Not much else, I can do.

Looks like it is going to be nice weather the next couple of days, so I hope to get some miles in my two classics!

[Jeroen]

Took both the Spider and the W123 out for a nice 2,5 hour drive across many little country roads, couple of little ferries, the usual. First drive after the obligatory winter stop.

I’m happy to report that both cars appear to be working very nicely. Brakes on the Spider are great. Pedal feel is much better too than before (when the pads wear down the pedal travel becomes much longer).

As you might recall I was having some issues with the W123 allignement. After replacing the four tires it was never completely to my liking. Most people might never notice, but I do. So I decided to have a small differential pressure between the two front tires. It was pulling a little to the right. So the left front air is now set at 2.0bar and the right one at 2.2 bar. That seems to have made quite an improvement.

I am not to worried about uneven wear. I don’t do much mileage on this car. The tires are more likely to have to be replaced due to aging, than to wear. Just like last time.

There is still a little resistance in the engine. Again, nobody would notice, but I am just a nerd, so I want to see what else I can do.

Corona is still very much around and is still impacting the various car events here in western Europe. We had enrolled for a five day trip to the Champagne area in France, with the Jaguar Daimler Club Holland. The trip was scheduled for late april. A couple fo days ago I was notified that they had to postpone it to next year. They had about 50 cars /100 people and it is just to early to ensure this trip can be done.

Yesterday I received a mail from the Practical Classic and Restoration show, NEC Birmingham. Readers of this thread will know that this is an annual trip spanner mater Peter and I undertake. It has been rescheduled 3-4 times already. It was set for the 18-21 June, which is still quite a way out. The UK is ahead of all European countries when it comes to vaccination. Still, they felt they had to postpone it to March 2022. Luckily the entrance tickets will stay valid, but I have to change our tickets, once again. I am a Platinum member with KLM. And although I have not flow for almost 15 month, KLM has kept my status on platina. Which means I can, at no cost, reschedule the flights. That is, I will have to wait for a few weeks. Yesterday, when I tried to reschedule I found out that KLM has a forward limit on how far out you can book; 11 months, 2 weeks!

End of this month I have a factory visit to Donkervoort. The date has been changed once or twice too. And I am expecting an email any day as we are still essentially in lock down here in the Netherlands.

Basically all major car events are being rescheduled and I don’t think much will happen till after the summer. I would think smaller events and probably some car club initiatives will start taking off in the spring if we are lucky.

Obviously, there are lots of worse and more worrying aspects when it comes to Covid. This is just an inconvenience really. But I do miss it.

We have also scheduled our regular trip to our friends in their B&B in France, with our Spider friends. That is set for late June. Fingers crossed!

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

It was decent weather this weekend, so I managed to take the W123 for a nice long drive after the long winter stop. Before I took it out I installed the new registration plates. These are dark blue and are specially made for classic cars, instead of the usual yellow ones.

Looks very smart I think!



I usually just set off and make up my mind as I drive off. Or I might make myself a nice route in the TomTom. Occasionally, I will look up a route from the MyDrive TomTom section. There are some very nice routes all over Europe published.

And it is very easy. You sit behind your PC and just click on the route and have it sync with your device in your car!!

I found this one, about an hours motorway drive from home. So that works out well. Very enjoyable drive.



Earlier I had taken the Jaguar out to run it through a car wash. Havent got my outside tap turned on yet, as we are still having frost at night. At this car wash they have these machines that can clean your floor matts. Very effective and easy, but it ripped up the driver’s doormat. In all honesty, this particular corner was in a bad shape to start with.



These matts are only sold as complete sets and are ridiculously expensive. So I thought I had better try and see if I can fix it somehow.

Started by applying Gorilla tape to the back



Next, super glue and some good old fashioned stitching!



Hard going, these door matts are thick!! Needed pliers to push the needle trough.



This was the first set of stitches, I made another row too.



I also put the super glue, with the black filler power onto the tear.

End result doesn’t look to badly. Hardly shows as this piece is more or less covered by the corner of the seat anyway.



Fingers crossed! Lets see how long it lasts. If it doesn’t I will have to take it to someone who can do some provisional stitching, maybe a cobbler or a sailmaker.

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

I have made two appointment:

Next week I am taking the W123 back to Cor to see about the ignition and the allignement. Both are much better than before, but 100% perfection is the norm for me!

Same with the Jaguar. I am still getting an ever so slight vibration exactly around 100km/h. Which is the daytime maximum speed on our motorways. So week after next I will be visiting Raymond of G&G, my friendly Jaguar X308 expert. It’s quite a long drive, so my wife and I booked ourselves into a nice little hotel nearby and we will be doing some exploring for two days. We are still in a lockdown, shops, restaurants and cafe are all closed. But hotels are open and you get your food and drinks delivered to your room. It will be nice to have a few days away from home.

Just to get maximum efficiency from my visit to Cor with the W123 I decided to double a couple of things again. The problem is, most likely the ignition. It still ever so slightly shudders a bit when cruising.

So here we go again:



First thing, remove air filter





next remove the complete air filter intake assembly



Next remove the spark plugs and their leads. Whenever in the slightest doubt always number the leads. In this case, the length is different so they will only go on in the correct order.



Spark plugs looked fine!



All the necessary bits removed to check the inlet and exhaust valve clearance.



The inside of the cam cover looked pretty decent too!



Ready for checking and adjusting!! I always leave out the four spark plugs. You will need to rotate the engine to adjust the valves and it goes a lot easier with all spark plugs removed, no compression.



I have several sets of feeler gauges. I prefer to use loose blades rather than try and use the whole set.

The W123 has value for both warm and cold valve adjustment. With the engine coolant fluid temperature over 50oC it is considered warm. In my case the engine was cold, so the inlet valve requires 0,15mm and the outlet valve requires 0,30mm.



Mercedes does have a pretty nifty tool for the valve adjustment, very useful especially so on the diesels, but on my engine, the so called M102 version, a ring spanner and a good screwdriver does the trick too.



I use a 0,15mm respectively 0,30mm feeler. It is always a bit fiddly, as you tighten the nut the clearance might change a bit. I set them so that if I add a 0,05mm feeler on top, it won’t go through. Which means the valve clearance is likely to be a hair over 0,15/0,30mm respectively which is fine.

Found good use of my fancy Ikea Desk lamp I am using with my lath and mini mill. Can be used on cars too!



Experienced mechanics might jump from whatever valve they believe is fully opened, check adjust and then turn the engine. I like to be a bit more structured. Also, it is not easy to see the lobe on the cams. It is a little easier to see and follow where they are when you turn the engine. To this end I put my socket ratchet on the front nut on the engine pulley.

Like this:



Using my right hand I can turn the engine, with my left hand I am holding a torch and staring at a set of cams and following them visually till I know they are turned downwards. That ensures the cam is in the appropriate position to have the valve clearance checked.



It is very fiddly to get the socket ratchet to fit on the engine. It is pretty tight between the pulley and the radiator, so I just leave it on, whilst fiddling with the valve clearance.

The other day I was reminded of a bad accident I witnessed once, so I made up this simple plague and put it on the dashboard!



I only had to adjust one exhaust valve, which, surprisingly was set way to tight.

With the air intake and cam cover still removed I also checked a few other things. Slightly better access with all this lot out of the way.

First thing, the distributor cap and the rotor







Nothing dramatic, cleaned both of them with a bit of emery paper. Checked for tears int he distributor cap. I did notice some play in the distributor shaft. I don’t know if that is normal or not. i will check with Cor.

Checked the spark lead cable, cleaned all contacts.

Cleaned the spark plugs and put a little bit of copper slip on them too. Cleaned the spark plug holes and blew some compressed air through them too.





As you might recall I changed the membrane on the carburator a few years ago. Over time they perish and once they do the dampner function is not working properly anymore. My membrane was badly torn at the time, shown in some earlier posts.

A few months ago I got into a discussion with a guy on a Dutch W123 forum. He claimed that the vacuumpiston could end in an incorrect position. I was not aware, but decided to investigate, so here goes





Here you see the membrane clearly, still looking as new!



Inside of the carburator.

According to my Stromborg repair manual the membrane has two small protrusions. They are to prevent incorrect mounting of the vacuum piston.



Here you see the vacuum piston. A bit difficult to see but in the bottom are two holes, they need to align correctly to the bottom of the carburator.





I checked and double checked. But there is no way to incorrectly mount this thing. At least not orientation wise. Unless the protrusion on the membrane are incorrectly positioned. Which I think is doubtful. But I will check with Cor as well.

So I cleaned everything and put it back together and filled up the carburator with special carburator dampner oil. This stuff is more expensive than gold. luckily you only use a bit.



Took the car for an hour and half test drive. All seems well and I think the judder has somewhat improved. It certainly idles at a slightly higher RPM. I am not going to adjust that now. Cor will adjust the CO and that also means adjusting the idle RPM.

All set for my Tuesday appointment!!

Jeroen

[KkVaidya]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Ready for checking and adjusting!! I always leave out the four spark plugs. You will need to rotate the engine to adjust the valves and it goes a lot easier with all spark plugs removed, no compression.

Jeroen

Setting the tappets on a low vehicle like this is a back-breaking job especially with that long bonnet. Don't ask how I know
I appreciate your attention to detail for your hobby cars and envy your setup

What is the purpose of that damper oil and is it a preventive maintenance tool for all carburetors?

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by KkVaidya

Setting the tappets on a low vehicle like this is a back-breaking job especially with that long bonnet. Don't ask how I know

Tell me about it, don’t I just know it!

Originally Posted by KkVaidya

I appreciate your attention to detail for your hobby cars and envy your setup:

Thanks

Originally Posted by KkVaidya

What is the purpose of that damper oil and is it a preventive maintenance tool for all carburetors?

It is a standard feature on some carburators. You can see it here:



It provides dampning during quick acceleration so the engine doesn’t run to rich.

It is well described in some more detail here”

https://tecb.eu/onewebmedia/Tuning_S...rburetters.pdf

There is tonnes of information available on Stromberg Carburetters or any other other brand/type in fact. One of the challenges when it comes to part is finding what type was fitted to your particular car. This type is fitted on all kinds of cars from this era. But on the W123 alone a number of different versions was fitted. Parts availability is pretty good, but finding the correct part can be somewhat of a challenge.

Although many people claim that carburettors are so easy to work on, I don’t know of that many competent mechanics that really know what they are doing. Sure, replacing a few bits and pieces is easy, but setting up a carburettors, worse a twin carb system is something akin black magic.

Still, lots of fiddling to enjoy. When I was looking at these photographs last night I just realised I might have made a mistake putting it together. So I will probably open it up again this weekend.



Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Both my wife as my driver license was about to expire. We both got a reminder from the RDW, our local institution that keeps track of those things. So we had made an appointment at our city hall to get them renewed. We live in a tiny village (less than 700 people), our village with 23 other small villages and 2 small provincial towns are grouped together as one administrative council. Which is very effecient and all, but it also means that geographically speaking our council is one of the largest in the country. And it is a 30 minute drive on mostly motorway to get to our town hall. Our appointment was yesterday and it happened to be gorgeous weather. So we took the Spider, took a rural road to our city hall, renewed our drivers licenses and then set off on a lovely 3 hour rural cruise. As always in this part of the country, several little ferries (or pontjes as we call them). We are sill in lock down with no restaurant, cafe or shops open, so we took our own little picnic and stopped half way.

I had quickly put a route together in my tomtom, works really well, very convenient, easy and quick. Syncs over the air with my TomTom: Our city hall is shown here as Gemeentehuis Geldermalsum. It is saved as one of my favourites/destination as I often go there due to some local political activities I’m engaged in.




You will notice, only 83 km. But that is still 2 hours and 15 minutes touring. About half the roads are very small B-roads, very often along the dikes, hardly any wider than the Spider.

Here is us crossing the river Maas, on one of the pontjes.





All in all, lovely relaxing afternoon. We have discovered two very interesting little towns we will need to revisit once this blasted lock down finishes.


Jeroen

[Jeroen]

During our Spider drive I noticed that the electric fan for the cabin air was not working. As you might recall I had this problem once before after the winterstop. It took me quite a bit of time to get it going.

So I decided to see what is wrong this time. Luckily, you can just see the fan from underneath the dashboard, with the various levers/valves in the correct position. Just a little push against the fan and it started spinning again.

As we drive top down always it is really not relevant to have the fan working or not. However, it is a MOT item and it not working will mean the car would fail its MOT. The idea of cours that it is a safety item to de-mist the front window.

So I will just bear in mind to run the fan every now and then. Should be good to go anytime really.

Also checked the carburettor again. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I had installed the plate inside the membrane correctly. But I did, so we are all good to go.



I also sprayed some more rust prevention into the four jackup holes. A known weak point on the W123.



All ready for our little trek to Cor to see what else we can do about the ignition and the allignement.



Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Last Tuesday I went to see Cor, my friendly W123 specialist.

He fiddled with the CO a bit. It was really a bit low and by adjusting it it idled much more smoothly and ran a lot better.





I took the car for a test drive and it does run a lot better, just not perfect yet. I discussed with Cor and he suggested to change out the carburettor needle and seat. So I will be doing that in the next few weeks.

Unfortunately we did not get round to checking the allignement, so that will require another trip as well

Always some interesting cars in various stages of restoration to be seen at Cor’s.







A very good friend of ours has asked my help; She would like to get an Alfa Romeo Spider too. She is a keen and enthusiast driver and she has owned a couple of Alfa’s in the past.

She is very keen on Coda Tronca. So we found one and took it for a test drive. Primarily just to see if she liked driving it, as she had never driven a Spider before. Loved it, but the one we drove needed some more work.

But I found another one:



I happen to know this car quite well. It belonged to the secretary of the Alfa Romeo Spider Register when I was the treasurer. Many years ago, but this car was extremely well looked after. And I also know who bought it then, another Spider Register member and I am tracing him as we speak. Even so, we have made an appointment to go and see and drive it. It is currently with a classic car specialist all the way up north in the Netherlands. Almost 230 kilometer drive from us. So that’s what I will be doing tomorrow!!

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

On Saturday our friend Miriam and I drove all the way North to go and see this Alfa Romeo Coda Tronca Spider.

Miriam is the widow of my best friend Dennis. Dennis and I met in 1985 on an Anchor handling Tug working off the West Coast of Africa, notably Gabon and Congo.

Dennis was first mate and I was second engineer at the time. We got on really well. As it turned out, this was my last trip in the merchant navy. Dennis quit the merchant navy about six months later. He got married to Miriam and we attended their wedding in the Netherlands late 1986. We came across from the UK where we were living at the time to join them for this happy occasion. We have been best friends ever since. Dennis and Miriam are our age, just like us have three (by now grown up kids).

Dennis died way too young, January 2017. At the time they owned a BMW Z4 and we did some touring together with their Z4 and our Spider. Both Miriam and Dennis always liked to drive and were real Alfisti, having owned several.

So I was very happy to help her look for the perfect Spider for her. I know Dennis would have approved. As I mentioned, I knew this particular Coda Tronca well. Through my Spider Register contact I managed to get hold of the previous owner as well. We had a long chat on the phone on Friday evening. Spanner mate Peter has appraised this particular car four times. I would say, as Coda Tronca’s go, this is the one we know most of.

We drove up there on Saturday morning. About 30 minutes to pick up Miriam and then still some 200km motorway to Leek, all the way up in the North of the Netherlands.



I had arranged for the Spider to be ready for us to take it for a test drive. It looked gorgeous and it drove as well as you can hope for. This is a forty year old Italian rag top sports car. It has been maintained very well, it has some major restoration work carried out. That has been well documented. The car comes with a huge file of photographs, bills, invoices, valuation reports etc. I looked through all of it. And I was very happy to see that all work has been carried out by proper Alfa Romeo Spider specialist I know and trust. The last owner had the car maintained by Goos van Pelt, featured in this thread as well. And before that with Rolf of the Mechanic. Again, featured in this thread earlier as well.

But then again, it is a car that has been used, it is not in concour condition, so we made a list of some 8-9 little items we wanted fixed. Including putting new Pirelli tyres all round plus on the spare. We came to an agreement and Miriam signed the purchase agreement.

They will deliver the Spider to her door in a few weeks time. Excellent service. I will be there, just to help her check it over and to take it for another test drive. But I am sure she will really enjoy it and I am equally sure Dennis will be smiling upon her.

This place we went too was unfamiliar to me. I had heard about it, but I had never visited it, nor did I know anybody who had dealt with them.

Have a look, it is actually a pretty impressive place:

https://www.hofman.nl/en/

On average they stock over 600-700 classic cars and they sell about 450 cars a year! Corona meant their business is absolutely booming. I have heard that from other classic car dealers too. People can not go on holiday, but we can travel around the Netherlands, people are not spending much money, you don’t get any interest on your money in the bank. So people start spending on things they really enjoy. Such as house, garden, buying art and buying classic cars!

This also happens to be my sort of first car outing for more than 12 months! Current Corona restrictions means shops can be open, but you can only visit by appointment and only very few customers are allowed in at the same time.

I did manage to take some image showing the size of their car collection:



















More to come on this very lovely Coda Tronca in the next few months



Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Just got a Whatsup message from an old Spider friend, Bart. He had been cleaning up some photographs and came across these two images.

It’s spanner mater Peter and myself driving in Peter’s Coda Tronca somewhere in Norway, early January 2004/2005 both thereabouts. Temperature about minus 27oC!





I might have written about this adventure before. But whenever I am reminded of it, I can't stop thinking and talking about it. It was one of the coolest adventures we have ever been on.

It was an initiative of the then Chief Editor Ton Roks, of the Dutch car magazine Autovisie. In his column he talked about doing a trip with some readers that had never been done before. Like drive a convertible top down to the North Pole during winter.

Peter and I applied immediately. We told him that such a trip should be undertaken in a proper classic rag top, rather than a modern car that had its roof chopped off and warm air ducts fitted to the headrest.

Unknown to us at the time, several other of our Spider friends applied too. In the end three Alfa Spiders, an MGF, A Porsche 911 and a Volvo/Saab cabrio (can’t remember what it was anymore) enrolled. Autovisie drove the Volvo/Saab and we had another support car with us, also a Volvo I think.

We had two Coda Tronca’s and Bart’s Series 4. Those little Alfa Spiders did really well. We never had any problem. And we drove top down all the way up and down the route! We were very lucky with the weather. As you can see it was very sunny, just very cold!. The worst weather was during the first two days. All of us had to make our own way to Oslo, Norway. So the three Spider made a little convoy leaving Amsterdam, in the snow and headed north via Germany, ferry to Trelleborg and along the west coast of Sweden to Oslo. Those two days the weather was atrocious, heavy, heavy snow. And we did not have snow tires, they were to be fitted in Oslo. We made it and the rest is history as they say. An epic journey across a very cold, very barren but gorgeous Norway!

Our Spider broke down only once. We were driving along nicely, on a nice tarmac road. All snow had been removed, we got to a little tunnel and some snow had fallen off right in the middle of the road. We did not think much of it and just drove over it, but immediately the engine died. The snow must have been high enough for it to pull the wire with its electrical connector of the fuel pump when we drove over that snow hump. Not a big thing at all. But I had to crawl underneath it to fix it. Which at -27oC presented a real problem. As soon as I took my gloves off, my fingers would be numb within minutes. Took me 45 minutes to fix a very simple electrical problem!

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

After writing the above, Bart send me 140 more photographs of our amazing North Pole trip. So I decided to do a proper write up.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/trave...orth-pole.html (Three Classic Alfa Spiders make it to the North Pole!)

Enjoy

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Bit of fiddling with my fancy Autel OBD analyser. This is a pretty nifty device. But updating is a bit of PITA. I did it once or twice before and it was not a good experience.

But they have changed the update routines now. I had a pleasant enough chat with one of their support folks Lana. Took a while just to get logged in, but once that was ok, I managed to to update my device. Well, actually you just download new data and software on the SD card.

Although it worked on the Jaguar I got this message on both Fords:



After checking with Lana, she suggested re-formatting the SD card and re-installing everything once more. When you install this you need to select which manufacturers. Because this device can handle just about everything, RollsRoyce, Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini etc. etc. But I just dowloaded the current family brands: Alfa Romeo, Jaguar, Ford, Volkswagen, Audi, BMW and Toyata.

All looks much better, but I need to have a word with my Ford guys.



this means the Ford guys did not do the latest system update correctly!!

I also decided to have another go at fixing the W123 Carburator. It still doesn’t run as smoothly as it should. I bought a new needle and seat some time ago and according to my w123 Specialist friend Cor, that could make a difference.

So took the thing apart again!



The new needle was just a few hundredth of mm to big. So a lot of time spend on some emery paper!



Once it fitted, I put everything together. Started the engine and I sounded fine! So I decided to take it for a quick test drive. When I drove it up to our driveway onto our dyke, it stalled and would not start. I had to get some people to help me push it back and roll it back into the garage.

I took everything apart. Could not figure out what was wrong. I decided to put all the old parts back again. Then it would not start at all. So I took the whole carburator apart again. Cleaned everything, very carefully and re-installed everything. Started and the engine ran really sweet. Took it for a testdrive. Would you believe the slight shudder is just about gone!! Not sure what happened, but I am happy with it.

Also took the Jaguar to Raymond. He re-balanced the wheels. Also, we noticed that the front brakes were not releasing properly. So I had him replace the front calipers and the brake hoses left/right whilst we had the car on the lift. So much easier. Took all but 45 minutes.



Car drives perfect now!

Jeroen

[KkVaidya]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

I took everything apart. Could not figure out what was wrong. I decided to put all the old parts back again. Then it would not start at all. So I took the whole carburator apart again. Cleaned everything, very carefully and re-installed everything. Started and the engine ran really sweet. Took it for a testdrive. Would you believe the slight shudder is just about gone!! Not sure what happened, but I am happy with it.

Did you put the new needle and seat or the old one? By needle you mean the needle valve or what you call the Float Pin?

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by KkVaidya

Did you put the new needle and seat or the old one? By needle you mean the needle valve or what you call the Float Pin?

Put the old needle valve back in. For some reason, with the new needle the engine would not run very well and kept stalling.

Not quite sure why or how, but after replacing the old with the new and back to the old it runs better than ever before!

Jeroen