My DS Returns!

Quick update.

My DS is once more back in my garage. With assistance from the ever-helpful Richard Burch (again) and the generous loan of a trailer from Doug (again), it was back in the garage after 11 months away….. Almost three years to the day since it first made the same journey from barn to house.

Languishing back at the barn. Can you spot it?

Richard Works. I document it...... 

Ready for the journey home: loaded on Doug's trailer. Again......

Before the car came back I bit the bullet and painted the garage floor. I used epoxy. it’s expensive so I opted for a ’surplus to requirements’ blue colour that was half price. It’s made a world of difference to what was otherwise a dusty and gritty floor. I also painted the walls white to make it lighter and brighter. Again, also less dusty.

A Sea of blue

Since the return I’ve refitted racking and cupboards and re-stacked all my parts and spares. Though it feels cramped already: as a result of the house building work I've lost wall space so have fewer cupboards and racks.

Racking, cupboards and car parts all back in place

Even so, I've managed to do a few things: the bonnet is now off and the screen is out. All the seats came out. I had two interiors crammed inside for storage and that’s all now gone to the attic! Removing the seats revealed the “-15” heating system - long buried.

-15 rear heater

The roof is off again. It had been off in the mid 90s. I’d then removed it again back in 2001. The car has been off the road since then and partly because of that. Back then I had cleaned up all the crimped edging and the roof had only been loosely bolted back on ever since. There are a couple of tiny places on the inner gutter I may weld - but less is more.

Bonnet and roof off - more storage problems.

I’m struggling for storage room for the bonnet and roof. They are both standing in my workshop at the moment. Reluctantly, I may need to wrap them both in several layers of plastic sheeting and store them outside for the foreseeable. The storage problem will only get worse as I plan to remove the doors very soon. Partly because I need to tackle a front jacking point repair, but more because I need to replace the bottoms of the rear doors.

CRC Rebuild - A Correction.......

Well. We're all learning, aren't we? Timo (T-Mo) contacted me with a query about my CRC rebuild from September 2018. This one HERE. Now there is very little information on how to rebuild and service a CRC unit. It's not really meant to be pulled apart. Okay, excuses over....

Timo's rebuilding his CRC and, as well as looking at my post, had been doing other research. How wise that turned out to be! He queried the order of the slide valve parts in my post as they seemed different to this diagram from Manual 843 - "Hydraulic Course Notes".

Inside the CRC Unit.....

The diagram shows part 8 sitting on the end of a spring and with it's thin end pushing on part 7 - the slide valve. In my blog I'd assembled the spring so that part 8 was inside the spring and went through it. Like this.....

This is how I thought it went....

And this.....

Push rod passed through the spring.....

I didn't want to pull the CRC off my car unnecessarily, but luckily I had a spare CRC that I was planning to rebuild. So I pulled it apart this afternoon to check, and this is what I found.......

NOTE: Thin end of the pin faces towards the slide valve deep inside

I nearly fell off my chair! I'd clearly assembled my CRC wrongly. Although the diagram that T-Mo was referring-to is only a schematic, not a technical drawing, the orientation of parts in this second CRC looked far more like it.

Now I should have known better for several reasons. Firstly, I should have taken more reference photos for my strip and rebuild. Secondly one of the reference photos that I found and salted away after my rebuild clearly showed the parts in a different order.......

An efi CRC - photo clearly shows which way round the push rod goes....

So that seems to confirm it. Anyway, my thanks to T-Mo for bothering to query my post and not assuming everything he was reading was correct.

My penance? Well apart from going back to correct my original blog, I've now got to pull the CRC from the car and rebuild it again.....