[Jeroen]

Yesterday (Sunday) my wife and I went to see our good friends Berndt and Loes who live in the next village to us. They were celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Due to Corona restrictions, just their daughter and us. A bigger party is planned for after the summer!

Berndt as some might recall, is a total petrol head, has 12 classic cars and owns and runs the largest car model museum in Europe. Last count over 7000 models.

So as you can imagine, we usually end up discussing cars. He managed to get hold of another Jaguar X308 model. This one not as nice as the ones I got from him earlier. Earlier in this thread you can see mee taking it apart, and painting it in the same colour as my 1:1 Jaguar.

I have been very pleased with it, it looks really good. Except that it did not have the same rims as mine. As luck would have it, Berndt’s newly arrived X308 did have the correct rims!

So I bought it from him. Next job is to see if I can take its wheels off and fix it on my (model) X308. Another little project. These two models are very different in terms of how they are constructed and how the wheels are mounted.



As it is, it took two scale models to get to my current X308 model and I am adding a third. So in terms of cost, this little scale model is not cheap. The spray paint in the correct colour also costs as much as these three models put together and these models aren’t cheap by themselves. But, hey its part of my hobby!

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Earlier this week, we met spanner mater and Classic Car Valuator extrodinair Peter and Miriam’s home. We had driven over in our Spider too.

My wife knew the Spider Miriam has bought very well. She too, has seen it at countless Spider events and we were friends with the then owner who was also the secretary of the Dutch Spider Register, with me being the treasurer for many years.

Mrs. D doing a quick pre-inspection before Peter shows up:



Peter and Miriam checking the manufacturing date of the brand new tyres. Sure enough produced end of last year, so new!



With the paperwork for the Spider all sorted, we went out for a nice drive. It was a gorgeous sunny day!

Next day I went to see Goos. Spider on the ramp to see if we could find the cause of the oil leak:



Sure enough we found it. And luckily, it was not anything serious. All the seals and gaskets on the gear box are still fine. What happened is the gear box is open at the top where the gear shifter comes through. There are a few flexibele rubber coupling attached. One of these appeared to be not properly tightened. Quite a fiddle to get at.



Big relief. Because any leaks on the seals might mean the whole gearbox and or engine might have to come out again. Did that twice already 2 years ago. Don’t want to have to repeat.

Now I know what it is causing it, I don’t ming so much. I do hope the tightening has helped. If not, I need to get better access via the cockpit.

Also picked up my new speedo cable:



I spoke to my friend Berndt this morning. He has a lift and I would prefer to do this on his lift. Problem is we will have to move 3-4 cars before we can get my car on his lift. And it means Berndt cars will be standing outside. Not a problem normally, but it is very rainy and Berndt does not like to get his cars, all waxed and polished, to get wet.

We will see, I might still put the Spider on axle stands.

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

With the weather forecast not particularly good for the next week, I decided not to wait for Berndt’s lift, but just go ahead and put the Spider on axle stands to replace the speedometer cable.

I decided to lift up both front and rear. The speedometer pick up is towards the end of the gearbox so about 40% length wise from the nose. So lifting the rear wheels helps a bit too.





As always I leave the jacks underneath as well, but the weight is taken by the axle stands. I am never entirely happy working underneath a car, but this is as safe as I can make it.

This is what it looks like underneath:



Looks better than it is. That speedo cable needs to come at the pick up at a straight angle and needs to go through two holes in the gearbox support bracket. There is also an exhaust and heat shields to content with.

So a bit of a special tool was required: Piece of string



I undid the nut on the cable on the gearbox, pulled the cable out, tight the piece of string to it, then pulled the cable from underneath so now I have a piece of string that will help me get the new cable back in.

With the old cable removed from the gear box I decided to one final test: I attached it to my drill



With the ignition on, and the drill spinning the Speedo came to life!! Which was odd. Earlier I had tested it whilst still connected to the gear box and it was not turning. (see earlier post where I have it sticking out from underneath the hood.

Anyway, the old cable was in very poor condition. As usual checking old versus the new parts. Making sure the length, sizing, thread, everything is the same.



Getting the new cable back in went surprisingly easy, all thanks to my brilliant little tool no doubt. Took the Spider of the axle stands and took her for a short test run.

We have a working Speedometer once again!!



I am still not a hundred percent sure, why the speedo was not working. Maybe the old cable just did not fit properly anymore. The inner cable has a square end that fits into a square hole on the pickup. I checked but I did not see any major wear. This was the trick that Niek had told me about.

Anyway, its working and this new speedocable will easily last another 35 years, I am sure.

Before I put the Spider on the axle stand I had loosened the bolts on the left front wheel. I thought I might want to take it off, to get some more room/access. In the end I never did. But I did notice that the wheel bolts were pretty loose. A bit surprising as I always torque them very carefully.

So I took out my torque wrench and torqued them once more. The Spider wheel nuts are torqued to 98 Nm. But it just did not feel right. I was hardly pressing/pulling on the torque wrench. Luckily I have another torque wrench and that required a whole lot more strength.

So I decided to head over to my favourite tool shop HBM and buy two brand new ones.

Whilst I was roaming around at HBM I came across this very cool caliper. At long last a proper decent sized one!! 1000mm!!







I had to restrain myself BIG time. Did not buy it, but I did buy a few other goodies:



A new, very bright light, on magnets. You can never have enough lights in your workshop!

Two V-blocks, will be used mostly on the mini-mill to hold odd shape material in place.

A very cool set of radio removal tools! Every brand of radio’s has a set of slightly different tools to extract the radio from the dashboard. this little set cost Euro 2, so it had to come home with me.

Two very thin paint scrapers. I was watching a YouTube video of Ed China (Wheeler Dealers). He used something similar to scrape of old gaskets from an engine. I thought that was a good idea.

A box of grub screws, all different sizes. Will come in handy for my next metal model engine.

A new set of very slim de-burring tools.

A bottle of drilling/milling oil fo when I am uh, drilling or milling!

And two new torque wrenches. Both made by Proton. One is 10-60Nm the other 40-200Nm. That will do just about everything for me.

I like the Proxxon tools. My minimill is a Proton. All designed and made in Germany. Comes in thesen nice, very sturdy storage case that has a special little clip so you could hang it!



Very smart looking:



Very easy to use, with two scales. You pull out the large black knob and rotate it till the two scales give you the exact torque you require. The small scale goes up in increments of 1Nm. The larger scale by 10Nm. So you can set it very accurately.



I checked all my cars and sure enough the wheel bolts on the W123 were a bit loose as well. Not sure what happened with my old one. never dropped it or so. I called my son Luc as well, we recently serviced his VW Golf GTI and we took two wheels off to check the wear of the pads and thickness of the pads/rotors. Told him to re-tighten his wheels !!

I also started on a little project for my workshop last night: I have this window, but not a proper window sill.



So I went to the local DIY centre and got me a simple piece of wood. Lacquered it, three layers.



Just a quick test fit this afternoon



I will fix it permanently tomorrow, after the lacquer is properly hardened. I have bought one of these kits:



Should work fine on stone and wood it says. We will see. It won’t have to support much. I am thinking of putting the model V8 up there and maybe some other cool engine and or car parts.

Jeroen

[Thad E Ginathom]

I like the Proxxon tools. My minimill is a Proton.

Oh! I got that wrong!

I was looking online at Proxxon machine tools the other day, and thought of you. Now I'll have to look at Proton.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

Oh! I got that wrong!

I was looking online at Proxxon machine tools the other day, and thought of you. Now I'll have to look at Proton.

Better stick to Proxxon!! Stupid speller checker, like I can’t make silly mistakes myself.

Jeroen

[Thad E Ginathom]

Better stick to Proxxon!! Stupid speller checker, like I can’t make silly mistakes myself.

Glad to say that I had not got around to looking for it yet.

[Jeroen]

I finished my little window sill project. With three layers of lacquer it was time to install it. So I put a lot of this kit on the brick, put the window sill on it and some heavy items, to keep it all in place.



In the end I was not quite happy with how the kit worked. Underneath the window sill there were just to many large gaps, as the brick work is quite uneven. So I quickly installed these three bookshelf brackets I had lying around.

Not quite sure what I am going to put on it. I have added just a few things, Betty the formidable V8 obviously, my little wobbler steam engine, my fully working, miniature, car jack and the spare Throttle body for the Jaguar.

My beautiful Debbie Two Stroke engine is still sitting on top of our wood stove in the living room. To be admired by all that visit us!







I am sure over the years to come I will be filling this window sill with more and more self build engine models.



Also, put the special fly swatter on the Spider as it is getting near to our trip to France. Without this thing my wife doesn’t like driving top down fast and certainly not on the motorway.



Also, started cleaning the Spider and checking the last final few things. Usually we will do at least 1500 km in about 4-5 days. So I need to make sure everything is in perfect running order. As I am also the designated tour mechanic for the other Spider crews, I also need to sort out which tools and spare parts I am taking. Looking forward to it!!

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

I have thought of two different tools I am going to make for my cars. They both require bits from hoover.

This afternoon I managed to procure three old hoses from as many hoovers. We have a so-called “Kringloopwinkel” here. These shops recycle or rather resell old stuff. So people take their old stuff to the Kringloopwinkel, rather than to the tip. And it gets re-sold. Always dirt cheap. I bought these three hoses for five Euro’s. That is about two coffee’s in a cafe / restaurant.

I could have haggled, but we are very supportive of these sort of initiatives.

Whereas there are some people that need to shop here, because they really can’t afford anything new, there are lots of people who just like to come and look around. It is a bit like a crossover between a bric-a-brac and brocante.

Anyway, here are my new, hardly used, one owner only, each, hoover hoses



Stay tuned for more updates!!

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Still busy prepping the Spider for our tour to France. As last year, my wife and I will return home afterwards via Germany and stay also for another night in Trier. Really looking forward to this trip.

So I gave the Spider a really good wash, cleaned it and waxed it. Looks gorgeous.





I had bought some new wheel/rim cleaner stuff. Never heard of it, but somebody recommended it to me. In all honesty, when I see bottles like this, I usually move on, but this time I tried it. Must admit, amazing stuff!!



Doing a few more odd jobs on the Spider. As you might recall some time ago I checked the oil (vapour) recovery canister. And apart from badly rusted, the drain was completely blocked. Which might have caused some of the oil usage. So I decided to check it once more. To my surprise it took quite a bit of effort, again, to blow through on the drain.



I have filled up the engine oil to max capacity, noted the mileage. I will be doing well over 1500 kilometres in 5 days. So a good check to see how much engine oil disappears.

I also decided to to a bit of touch up. Any car that gets used, gets a few (stone) chips here and there. No different with a classic car. I had this small cup of paint, my friend Johan gave to me, after he sprayed the Parafan earlier. So an exact colour match. Touched up on about a dozen tiny chips.



Then it was time to close up the cup. What I had not realised is this cup was very flimsy. When I applied a little pressure to put the lid on, it basically collapsed. Disaster!!!



Paint everywhere. I managed to scope some of it into an empty glass jar. Mopped up the rest, used a lot of paint thinner.



I did not like this red stain on my work surface, so I spend about an hour with sandpaper and a lot of elbow grease. Looks a bit better.



Very annoyed about this. I have lost most of my, perfect, touch up paint and I am left with a stupid red stain reminding me of my clumsiness.

Decided on a final job, that even I could not screw up. Take all the old oil, filters and other crap to our local tip to be disposed off properly and environmental friendly. I collect all the oil after oil changes, filters, scrap metal (e.g. replaced rotors, brake pads etc) and take a trip to our tip now and then.



Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Today I was supposed to help my friend Berndt to work on the starter motor of one of his (many) cars. I had to cancel. I did my back in earlier this week. I have lumbago. Ridiculous ailment, what good does that do? Luckily, I do feel a lot better already and I am comfortable moving about a bit, but bending over a car engine, crawling underneath it, is definitely not a good idea.

I am in good enough shape to drive my W123 a bit. So I am going out exploring and fine tuning a route for the first ever TeamBHP the Netherlands event later this month! The W123 is a good car to drive when you have back trouble. Because I can sit really upright in it. Not so much in the Spider or the Jaguar, and they are much lower to get into as well.

So if you suffer from the occasional back trouble; get yourself a W123.

Jeroen

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

So if you suffer from the occasional back trouble; get yourself a W123.

My wife has fairly regular back pain. Do you think I should get one?

Actually, I do like a fairly upright driving posture. Some decades ago, I used to enjoy sitting in my friend's car --- a Lada!

[the_real_slager]

Hi Jeroen,

Came upon this thread and i am still reading it since two days, in between home working . Thanks for the ton of information.

Unrelated question, do you have a recommendation for a competent independent garage for Mercedes in the Brabant (not a problem even if it is further north)? I am looking for one for an upcoming transmission check up/ Brake disc replacement for my petrol W205 C300 in the coming month or so.

Regards,
Kiron

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by the_real_slager

Unrelated question, do you have a recommendation for a competent independent garage for Mercedes in the Brabant (not a problem even if it is further north)?n

Not really in Brabant. But Jansen Balkbrug has a very good reputation as an independent Mercedes specialist.

https://www.autobedrijfjansen.nl/

I am familiar with just a few W123 specialist. Jansen organised the Dutch Guinness world record of having the most W123 on the road.

I met some of their folks and customers at this event

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/beyon...ld-record.html (The longest parade of Mercedes W123s! Another Mercedes World Record)


Jeroen

[Jeroen]

A few days ago we came back from our annual Spider trip to our friends Cees and Annelies in France. I wrote on one unique experience during this trip here:

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/trave...ml#post5084473 (Alfa Spiders and Pizza, in France)

Overall a great trip. We left home on Thursday late afternoon. Drove to Maastricht, about 1,5 hours motorway drive, where we met up with Bianca and Alex. Had a nice dinner and stayed in a simple hotel. The next morning we were joined by Bart and Marianne and Niek. First stop the supermarket; we decided to have a picknick on the way, so we needed to get some food.

We sett off at about 09.30 for a 6 hours drive, all on rural roads, from Maastricht, through Belgium and Luxembourg and into France. all the way to the Lorraine, Buxerulles where our friends Cees and Annelies run a bed and Breakfast.

All of us had our covid shots, and negative PCR tests. But we were not stopped anywhere.

We stopped a few times for coffee. We had brought thermosflaks and the hotel was kind enough to let us fill up on coffee!





We arrived around 16.30,, some 500 kilometers of gorgeous rural driving!

As usual, we park our Spiders in the garden of the Bed and Breakfast



Every day after a nice breakfast we set off for a day of driving. Niek and I had prepared a set of GPS based routes. Just popped them into our TomTom and off we go.

We did have some problems though, notably the two Serie 3 Spiders, Niek and mine. Which is very unusual, because we both maintain our Spiders very well and we have never had any real problems before.

Mine was the first to throw a wobble: We had parked along the way, to have a bit of rest, stretch legs and so:





When I got back into my Spider, I started the engine. As always when I start I keep the clutch depressed and gear in neutral. When I let go of the clutch, still in neutral the engine stalled! At first I did not think much of it, but it happened twice more. Some further investigations showed that the car, somehow was stuck in two gears, most likely fifth and reverse!! I could not get it into gear, but as soon as I let out the gear it, obviously, stalled! without moving.

On just about any car my first suspect would be the various gear linkages. However, on a Spider the gear-lever goes straight into the gearbox. There are no linkages, the gear lever moves the actual fork which moves the gears. There is absolutely nothing you can see or do from the outside.

Desperate times call for desperate measures:

I asked my friends to give me a push, whilst I push the clutch in. Once I picked up a bit of speed I let out the clutch in one go. Almighty, very sickening, sound, but the gear box was free again!!!



The Spider drove fine, no noises, gears worked fine. This was on the Sunday. First thing on Monday morning, I put in a call to my friend Goos, the Alfa Spider specialist. He concurred with out findings, that it was most likely one of the balls or interlocking mechanism that somehow got stuck. It is very rare, but is known to happen. Usually it happens more or less straight away after a gear box overhaul. According to Goos it was no use to take the gearbox off, open it up and inspect it. According to his experience, if it works fine, no noises, there is no damage to be seen. Fingers crossed!!

Next Bianca’s Coda Tronca developed a problem with one of her lights. Not to big a problem. One thing though, changing a light bulk is not that straight forward. You have to open up a panel from within the wheel well.

We also checked and cleaned all the fuses and connectors for good measure:



Some of you might recall, since our last visit about a year ago, I have been working on a new con rod for a small vacuum pump Cees was given by a dentist friend of him. It was not working when he got it. We took it apart. The bearing had seized and the con rod had broken. So I made him a new one.

We spend a few happy hours, fiddling away in Cees garage to fit it.



I am happy to report the vacuum pump works perfectly once again!!

The last problem we encountered was Niek’s Serie 3. It was on the day we all left and we all drive home by ourselves. Frances and I had already set off. During our fist coffee stop our group app was awash with messages. Only a few kilometers into his drive home, Niek’s Spider overheated. Long story short, it looks like the head gasket is blown, most likely there is some more damage to the head and or engine block. Cees did a compression test and could not find any compression at all. He also diagnosed the thermostat not opening at all, which is most likely the cause of all of this.

So Cees and Annelies lend Niek their Spider to drive home. Niek and I will return to Buxerulles in a couple of weeks with a trailer, to return one Spider and pick up Niek’s. We decided against repairing it on site. Just a head gasket we can fix easily, but chances are there is more damage, so we are bringing the Spider back to the Netherlands.

On the way home, Frances and I went to Trier, Germany first. We overnighted and drove along the river Moesel the next day until we reach Cochem. After a coffee and some cake we drove home on the motorway, 3,5 hours.

I bought one little scale model in Trier:



This is a tiny Citroen 2CV in Frans Maas livery. Frans Maas used to be one of the largest cargo haulers in the Netherlands. They merged, or were acquired many years ago. But when I was a little boy, there were endless huge Frans Maas trucks rolling through the Netherlands and all over Europe. This must have been their smallest van!!

At home, the usual ritual of cleaning the Spider. We have another tour planned next week.



Yesterday, my friend Berndt came around with his Rover convertible. Quite the unusual little car, an automatic too. The engine starter had been giving him problems. By the sound of it, the bendix was not engaging properly.



Just a cut away drawing of a pretty generic type of starter motor:



So we opened up the bonnet and got to work



Pretty straight forward to get the starter motor assembly out. We had to remove the air filter and that gave us plenty of access. Undo all the electrical cables, remove the battery, undo three main bolts and Bob’s your uncle once again.



With the starter motor removed:





Proof this is still an original Rover part!!



We just cleaned everything.



The inside of the motor was very dusty. I could not get the end cap off, to check the brushes. We decided to just blow out the dust, clean all the terminal and see what happens.

We clamped down the starter motor in my vice. Used a starter pack to power the starter motor and a plier to simulate the ignition switch. Worked fine again!!



In all honesty, when we removed the connector from the starter ignition wire, we noticed it was extremely loose. This might have been the main problem to start with. But it does not hurt to clean everything.

Put everything back again and the Rover starts fine, once again!!

job well done

Jeroen

[carthick1000]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

We overnighted and drove along the river Moesel the next day until we reach Cochem. After a coffee and some cake we drove home on the motorway, 3,5 hours.

That is one of the nicest routes in Germany running along the river Moesel. Cochem seems to be the very apt and pretty location for a stopover. We drove along these routes in several different combinations, but always in summer. Would like to do it in winter sometime.