Most of us here in the Great White North have just come off of the Victoria
Day long weekend. It was a long weekend all right, but this one had little to
do with a less than amused Queen. We bought the 80 TR7 convertible over
a month ago, and it has spent most of its time at the garage of a Britcar
mechanic of good repute. The engine had just been replaced by the previous
owner and his buddies, and there were lots of wires and hoses unplugged, and
such. The exhaust leak turned out to be a stripped thread in the head where
the manifold is supposed to attach, surprise number one. The steering problem
was not to be remedied by the new ball joint which the previous owner had
left in the trunk, but by two outer and one inner tie-rod ends. Thankfully,
the safety inspection was a little loose. The back window was severely
yellowed (we fixed this somewhat with Aurora boat-window cleaner, thanks for
all the suggestions), the turn signals flash r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y and the
four-way flashers don't work at all. One of the brake light sockets has a
problem and the windshield wipers don't park themselves. The headlamps only
retract if you leave the light switch in the parking lamp position for a
second or two, and will stay up if you abruptly turn the switch all the way
off.
Some questions. How are the rubber thingies at the top of the door window
channels supposed to be held on? The left one gets caught every time I raise
the window and almost fell off. Is there anything I should be aware of when
changing waist seals?
When we picked up the car on Friday night, it was raining, of course. The
mechanic warned us that he couldn't get it to idle, and that it was probably
becuase there was some spooge in the carbs as they had been sitting for a
number of years. Sure enough, it stalled at every traffic light on the way
home (any help on this problem would be appreciated). On Saturday we washed
and vacuumed it and took it on some errands around the area. It started
idling properly. Hooray! It was running great. It was sunny, we had the
top down and life was good. We had some things to do in Whitby, about 45
minutes of superslab from here, so on Sunday we put the top down and off
we went. We got a lot of interesting looks on the highway. I was enjoying
every minute. My SO, Louis-Charles, was driving and I had our 65 lb.
labrador at my feet.
At the off-ramp, L-C tried to gear down to stop for a traffic light. No
clutch! He played with it for a few seconds in hope that the gods of LBCs
would make the clutch pedal do something, but the gods were asleep. Or maybe
they were looking on in amusement, I'm not sure. Anyway, just to make things
worse, we were stopped going up hill. The hazard flashers don't work so there
were a bunch of cars behind us. With the car in first, the starter motor
just didn't have enough poop to get us going. The next time the light turned
green, I got out of the car and pushed. That did the trick. So there I was
running down a major street after a broken TR7. The dog had decided that
it was much more interesting to watch the goings on from the passenger seat,
so I had to run along side for a while until L-C got the dog into his lap
so that I could jump in. What a sight. We managed to trundle along in first
to our destination.
The last time this happened we had toasted the clutch master cylinder on
L-C's brother in law's Peugeot, so we popped the bonnet and expected to see
brake fluid dribbling down the firewall. Nope, it looked fine. What's going
on? A look under the car revealed the slave cylinder dangling from its
hose, with one bolt, the metal gasket and the rubber boot still there. The
other bolt, piston, spring and other internals were gone. The piston is not
part of the slave cylinder rebuild kit, and is sold only with a complete
master cylinder. Great. We'll have to spend all week looking for a used
piston somewhere.
We got a ride home that evening. On Monday morning (a holiday) I phoned the
previous owner to see if he had found the waist seals that he had promised
to us. He told us to come and pick them up. It just so happened that the
mechanic that did the other work on the car was there getting a few things
as well! He said that he probably had a slave cylinder kicking around, and
to go by his shop later. He rebuilt the cylinder for us, for free, and gave
us a couple of new bolts and some brake fluid. The remaining bolt had
remnants of the transmission's thread left in it, so we didn't hold much
hope about getting the new ones to hold. Hadn't the guys who put in the
engine ever heard of a torque wrench? When we got back to the car, we
examined the old and new bolts and realized that the threads were
different, and that the new ones seemed to work better. Hmm. We bled the
system, and this was probably just as well as the master cylinder was full
of black spooge. I drove the car home. When I pulled into the driveway, it
stalled. It hasn't idled since. Any ideas about this?
I now really feel like a British car owner as every time I stop I look under
the car to make sure that all of the parts are still there! If the slave
cylinder holds on for the rest of the season, I have my first winter project
planned, to get some heli-coils in there.
The adventure has begun,
Jody
Jody.P.Levine@hydro.on.ca - Toronto, Canada - "Fuddle Duddle"
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