Laying up the Minor for the winter

Well, do you put your car away after the last rally? Or do you use it on Sunny afternoons all through the winter? Are you one of the innovatives who puts a calor gas stove in the passenger footwell to use the car the whole year round?
The service list is similar for all these eventualities. Skip them and end up by the side of the road, five o’clock on a busy roundabout in fog and rain with the temperature hovering around freezing, the mobile phone battery dead or worse, no credit, a hungry child in the back and a whinging SWMBO who will be late for a hair appointment. It’s not that I’m sexist, these things just happen this way.
Rule Number one: a battery will not last a fourth winter. Yes, there are weird and wonderful chemicals you can add to the electrolyte from recipes in magazines aimed at mini enthusiasts and these will foam and bubble quite excitingly. But the battery will not last a fourth winter. Replace it in September/October just as the first frosts are waiting around the corner and you’ll not fall into the frosty morning trap. [Swing the handle if you must, but there’s an art to not breaking your arm in the process…..!]
Rule number two: fill with antifreeze. Ok, so you didn’t drain last year’s. So get a hydrometer and syphon off some of the coolant and check. Bet you used cheap glycerine antifreeze anyway and it only lasts a year because it evaporates faster than water. While you’re heading for the sun in August or ticking over merrily at a concourse for the judge, the antifreeze is busily evaporating. Sort your hoses first and then refill with two litres of antifreeze and the rest water. If you do it in September then any leaks will show themselves before the worst of the winter and it’ll be an easy Sunday Morning job to sort. While you’re at it, invest in a bottle of screenwash additive and pour the lot in.
Rule number three: buy some points. I presume your distributor cap and leads are in good working order? Aren’t they? Grab hold of them while the engine is running and you’ll soon know! Fit new points in September whether your car needs them or not. New ones will last right through until spring with only one adjustment after a hundred miles while the old ones might not. The silver tarnishes with age as well as use. How much are they? £2.35 at my local shop. Is it worth it?
Rule number four: see to your brakes. Braking on snow and ice is no joke. Personally I back off my front shoes by one notch in the winter so that gentle braking brings the back brakes on first. This is pure preference. Make sure you have plenty of lining left to last until spring. Pack some grease onto the pipe unions behind the drum and the bleed nipples too. This prevents corrosion from salt and makes it dead easy to strip and replace if you need to later.
Rule number five: see to your lights. The hanging connections at the front inner wings are a constant source of trouble in the winter, bad earths, bad connections, dim lights. Take them out and scratch the connections with a strip of sandpaper. Check the earth connection at the nearside. Fit new black connectors. Buy a spare headlight bulb or sealed beam and put it in the boot.
Rule number six: Buy those spares you’ve been meaning to for years. A fan belt for instance. It lies on top of the petrol tank, takes up no useful room. A petrol pump. A hammer keeps an errant pump going for a few miles but if you’re on unleaded then the diaphragm might be the problem and the hammer won’t sort that. Let’s face it, everyone gets a petrol pump problem sooner or later, a spare in the boot is insurance against one failing in the snow on Christmas Eve.
Rule number seven: change your torch batteries. Enough said. Carry the torch with you, see if it’ll fit into the well in the boot and leave it there.
Rule number eight: While you’re in the boot, blow up the spare too. Consider an aerosol of instant punture repair, wrap it in a towel with a bag of silica gel and leave it in the boot. Do I have to tell you punctures only happen when you’ve got a white T-shirt on!
Rule number nine: stock up on CD’s. What better way to relax while you’re waiting for the breakdown service because you skimped on the previous! [Requests to the site please, I’ve been buying Deep Purple and Grateful Dead!]
Rule number ten: Print this and fasten to garage wall!!

Winter Minor foibles

t’s not over yet! I was called out the other night to a Moggie that wouldn’t start. Winter Blues. It was very frosty, I suspected a flat battery and very little else. I packed the jump leads because my back won’t swing a handle these days and took the every day car so the 56 amp alternator would charge it in no time.

Sure enough, the beast wouldn’t start. The battery had had it, the owner told me. He’d been using the handle for weeks but this time she just wouldn’t go. No kick, no nothing. I looked at the ignition light and it looked healthy enough but while I was there I noticed there was no ticking of the fuel pump. I opened the bonnet.

There was a veritable cauliflower of growth – something like the crystal gardens we used to grow in glass bottles as kids, blue and green and white, all over the battery terminals, the steady bar, the J-bolts, the battery compartment, the earth stud – and most important of all, the mounting bracket for the petrol pump and the pump itself. Under torchlight it looked scary. Like Topsy.

Oh! Said the owner.

We carefully prised off the metalwork without allowing crystals to fall all over the engine compartment and into a plastic bag. The battery went onto the garage floor and had several kettles of boiling water poured all over it. Likewise the petrol pump. Then all went back to my place for a revamp.

The metalwork was scraped with a wallpaper scraper and then into the washing up bowl full of very hot water. This takes off the worst of the crystals. A little Fairy liquid helps it to get under any paint that might be left behind. All the nuts and bolts and battery connections. Thoroughly scrub with the washing up brush and leave to dry on the draining board.

{My proof reader is quite horrified by this! He says it’s because he’s a married man which I don’t understand but he’s absolutely made me take out the bit about the tea towel!]

Anyway, once all this is dry it can be red-leaded thickly with a brush. I have hot air central heating and it’s quite quick. Hammerite and the like doesn’t repel any further attacks but there’s a product called Aciderm made by Crosby Coatings whose telephone number is well out of date. If anyone knows of them please e-mail the site.

Paint the lot and re-assemble. In my case, the acid had eaten too far into the petrol pump and we had to fit a new one. The problem at the end of the day was that the battery had been well over filled, the car used on short journeys and left to stand long periods between, The control box was set too high. One thing leads to another and my new acquaintance had a hell of a problem.

Nuts and bolts and unpaintable bits should be smeared with Vaseline or anti corrosive gel, available from www.vehicleproducts.co.uk It’s a small tube but goes a long way. It’s an endless task especially in damp winter weather.

Odds and Ends

Ok, so what do you pay? Mine is due now and the reminder is for £85.00 which is a fair jump on last year. I’m on 6000 miles and limited use. I don’t insure with the MMOC and on the form where the company asks for the classic car club I usually fail to mention the MMOC and list the two other clubs I’m involved with.  So I wondered what other people pay and had a quick ring around half a dozen people in the local club with similar cars. Seems to me like the club is not negotiating a good deal. Perhaps we need more information and it’s difficult to compare like with like when some people are on 3000 miles but I still get the impression…….. Cade’s Corner. OK, so it’s that sort of article this month. It was to be something along the lines of storing your car on bricks for the winter, [perhaps tongue in cheek] but boredom struck.

My post bag has been busy again lately and some of the items are relevant to all Classic Car enthusiasts, not just the moggy fraternity. My everyday car is a Polo, nothing strange about that. It’s 17 years old, has a Pico expansion box instead of the regular two baffle and deflect silencers, a Webber twin choke in place of the Pierberg that drove me crazy and ended up in the crusher with a Sierra one Saturday Morning. Trouble was, you could still see the little piece of bright aluminium when the Sierra came out as a box! It also has a 56 amp alternator, Radyot driving lamps and Cibie fog lamps. No, there isn’t an external parcel shelf or a go-faster stripe down the side. But it does go like a bat-out-of-Hell. 15” alloys on 45 profile tyres and tuned adjustable rears with gas filled front on stiffened coils. It also has a stereo system. CD player and radio, amp, pre-amp and Pioneer speakers front and rear. The load is 600watts. It’s my last fling before I go grey or even bald and have to Settle Down! [God Forbid!!]

So a guy I know has a Moggy Pickup. He’s done a brilliant job customising it along the same sort of lines as my Polo with hand finished wood flares on the load area. Forty years ago I would have done much the same. Supercharger, perhaps. But his Sound System, two speakers, pre-amp and tuner is 500 watts. I did warn him. [Watts divided by volts equals amps.] One rendition of “Smoke on the water” at full blast and the battery is flat! Dynamo output is 22 amps at 3000 revs. It’s surprising how few Classic Car enthusiasts understand car electrics. If you slot two size AA batteries into your alarm clock and take a reading you’ll find it’s twice that of one battery. Similarly with a car battery. Put two batteries together with links, as in jump starting, and you end up with 24 volts. Starter motor will probably love it just this once but the coil might take a wobbler. No matter what the polarity of a car’s system, jump starting is ALWAYS pos. to pos. and neg. to neg. Another guy who emailed me wanted to know why he always got a belt from his plug leads. I emailed him him back with the explanation this his leads were breaking down and the belt was the result of the HT finding the easiest route to earth – through him and back to the metal of the car. He emailed back to ask why he should get a shock from a twelve volt car. Twelve volts it might be, but the spark that jumps across the contacts of the plugs to create the explosion in the cylinder has to come from a much better source than twelve volts and the coil supplies this. In our cars, with the older coil the voltage is somewhere between 9000 and 11000 volts. This is why it’s called High Tension.

On a slightly more modern car, my Polo, it might 35000 volts. Graphite leads were invented for the Mini Cooper which had a high coil voltage for the plugs that were available then. Copper leads, if you still use them, do leak a little and grabbing them should prove to be just a “tingling” sensation. Any more and your cap and/or leads have had it. And a word on overheating which remains a perennial problem to some people. On the Burnhope Rally recently [Did you visit the Calendar?] one Moggy was ticking over at about 2000 revs in case it stalled and wouldn’t start again. Mr Grumpy’s overheating kit installed too! Some cars seem really prone while others never suffer. Age-old mysteries! I’ve suggested a plate to go between the manifolds, where the inlet sits on the exhaust, to divert the exhaust gasses rather than let them heat the inlet manifold but wonder if I’m simply blowing in the wind. Some feedback from those of you with the problem would be helpful. Mike’s references to Carrie and restoration in last month’s newsletter left me with goose pimples, the shakes and an empty bottle of Jack Daniels. God Forbid there be an angle grinder handy! However, a car I bumped into in a car park recently, a trav, had weeds growing out of the woodwork. The driver was young and there was a child seat attached to the passenger seat. The conversation got around to restoration and he was horrified. “Weeds!” he waved his arms. “ My girlfriend planted them one by one from the packet1” Next month, starter motor or dynamo overhaul, watch this space.

Battery Charging

Apologies to readers who can strip a gearbox, replace the layshaft bearings and uprate the Sun gears and synchromesh cones in forty five minutes, and without pin punches, but it seems there are Morris Minor Owners who are very new to their cars, having swapped from Volvo Amazons and the like and have had a really rough ride with their local Kwik Fit Fitter. Really, it¡¦s silly. There are so many Morris Minors you would wonder why Kwik Fit Fitters hadn¡¦t written a computer program for the car!!!!!!

Gone are the days when the bloke next door and him over the road fixed their cars on a Sunday morning. Today, everyone has a company Mondeo and finding someone who knows how jump leads work is another thing. The car goes into the local dealer and a hire car hired at the first sign of the top speed dropping below ninety. My gripes over. Batteries go flat. It¡¦s a fact of life. The colder the weather, the less the voltage and so the higher the current to make things work. If you only do short trips then the battery will not charge with a dynamo. This is a fact of life that would have been well known thirty years ago. So before you blame your battery for being flat, have a little think about your driving habits.

Having said all that, a battery will only last three winters. When did you last buy one? To charge the battery in the kitchen or in the garage, you¡¦ll have to disconnect it. The battery is the square lump at waist level at the back of the engine compartment. It¡¦s held in with a bar of bent steel and two J bolts. Two thick wires come away from the terminals, one each side. The one on the right as you¡¦re looking at it is connected to the car body and is usually a short wire lead. This is the first one to attack. Where it attaches to the battery, there will either be a bolt fixing or a big lead cap with a screw in the top. Undo the screw or undo the nut with a thirteen or fourteen mm spanner and prize the terminal from the battery gently. If it struggles to come off use a blunt screwdriver as a lever underneath and twist the lead or brass terminal. Note whether the terminals are at the front or the back of the battery. Do the same with the other side now. If you only have metric spanners then the J bolts will come undone with a 10mm like-as-not. Undo the nuts only enough for the bar to fall down. Lift the battery out. It might be wise now to remove any old leaves or debris from the battery tray once the battery is out. In the Spring you can repeat this whole operation and paint the battery to try to prevent corrosion.

Your battery charger may have a switch for 6V/12V, make sure it¡¦s set to 12V. Connect the read lead and crocodile clip to the lead battery terminal marked + and the black to – [neg], any lights on the charger should now be lit, plug in the charger and switch on. If you have an ammeter display on the charger, the needle should have moved as you switch on. Charging should be an overnight thing. If it¡¦s early evening, give the charger a few hours, switch off for an hour and then switch on again. If there is a trickle/boost setting, set it to trickle. Make sure the battery is sitting on a few old newspapers in case of acid spillage. Don¡¦t stand over it with a cigarette, the battery emits hydrogen while it¡¦s charging and while there isn¡¦t a lot of it, it can go pop spectacularly. One small note, if you are doing this regularly you¡¦ll need to check the cells for electrolyte [Acid}. Some cells have individual caps you can screw off with a tuppence and others have a long cap that needs to be prized off with an old table knife or similar. The two end cells dry first and if you can see the lead plates above the water then add tap water if it¡¦s an old battery or ionised water from the steam iron or melted from the freezer if it¡¦s a new battery. Just fill until the level covers the plates, no more.

Refitting is a reversal. Make sure it¡¦s a nice snug fit before tightening the bar and fit the other lead, not the earth to the body first. Fire up and away. Coat everything in vaseline if you can, to stop corrosion. Remember, anything you would like to know is only an email away To Freeze or not to freeze¡K¡K.. I don¡¦t know about anyone else but I¡¦ve had a lot of fun this year with the weather, freezing one minute and quite mild the next. It¡¦s been a funny year for frosts, fogs and winds from the south east that bit in to every spanner you picked up. I thought everyone put antifreeze in the radiator in October or November, but I was very mistaken. Modern cars need antifreeze the whole year round because it¡¦s anti-boil as well and the system runs at high pressures that were unheard of in old cars. The antifreeze stops you boiling in traffic jams on the way to Cornwall in July, believe it or not. It also inhibits corrosion which you need with modern aluminium heads and water pumps. It¡¦s not a lubricant though, as the manuals tell you. I wrote an article much like this last year, the subject is so easy. But then not everyone reads this newsletter, more¡¦s the pity.

The girl with the metro should have read it. The temperatures dipped dramatically one night and only the lack of water saved her engine block. The lower hose split so beautifully along its length you¡¦d think there was a Stanley knife involved. But then she didn¡¦t hear the hissing, never noticed the temperature gauge and couldn¡¦t smell anything either because of the Chanel Number 5 or whatever it was. She ground to a halt. In the moggy, well looked after and water topped up regularly [isn¡¦t it?] the damage would be a lot worse and I¡¦m not talking just core plugs. My uncle who should have known better once left his Thames Van parked outside when it should have been in the garage and where he would have remembered to drain the water. [You could do that with the Thames and it was common practise with the old side-valve Fords!] Instead he went to the pub and stayed longer and drank more than he intended. In the morning there was an icicle clinging to the inside of the radiator. The ice had split the core nicely and the leaking water formed the icicle. It¡¦s so easy to drain some water off. There¡¦s a tap on the block under the manifold and usually another under the radiator. Drain off what looks like three pints and fill up with neat antifreeze. Two pints would do in these UK winters, three would take you to the edges of the arctic circle. With the Moggy you can¡¦t drain the whole system like the old Fords. The heater rad stays full. There used to be an optional extra of a leatherette muff for the radiator but few people bought them. The wind chill factor being what it is in modern driving at speed down the salted trunk roads, it¡¦s an idea to use a fertiliser bag and slide it in between the radiator and the grill. That helps the engine warm up quicker and keep your toes warm. If you get stuck in a snow drift with idiots in front who don¡¦t know how to drive then you simple jump out and whip out the bag to stop you over heating. The old AA advice from the fifties still holds good with one or two reservations and additions. Keep a blanket in the car, a rug or an extra anorak, just in case you get stuck. Keep a shovel in the boot. Keep a flask of brandy, sorry coffee, in the glove box. A large bar of chocolate comes in handy as does a supply of Rock and Roll CD¡¦s to help you move to stop frostbite!! If you do get stuck, a mobile phone is the best accessory. At least you can order a pizza!

Get You Home tips

Through your emails and feedback it’s become very obvious that your local KwikFit Fitter is about as much use as a set of metric Torx Bits when it comes to even basic servicing of a 1950’s car. Trouble is, unlike 1965 when I had my first car, all the neighbours have a company Cavalier and not a clue about points and plugs either. There’s no-one to turn to. I hear the same story a couple of times a week. “I’ve had the car in Halford’s and they replaced this and that and it’s no better. What do you think is wrong?”

A Regional Directory of word-of-mouth approved back-street garages would be the answer and perhaps we should, at some stage, work towards that. Not a lot of help when the starter motor won’t turn or the car coughs to a standstill after a few miles every day. Perhaps, since we are into Winter, a few get-you-home tips and perhaps we might get some feedback on simple problems that the franchised dealers can’t fix and I’ll print the solutions here with instructions to print out and take in with the car!! Starter won’t turn. Chances are your battery is flat, there is corrosion on the terminals or on the cables between battery and starter. To get you home, dig out the handle, open the bonnet and insert the handle in the hole in the bumper until it engages in the dog at the front of the engine. Turn the ignition on, set the choke if you have a cold engine and make sure it’s out of gear. Turn the handle clockwise gently until it’s at the bottom and then pull quickly upwards. You may need to do this several times. Starter turns but engine doesn’t fire. If everything is cold and damp it’s probably ignition. Wiping the inside of the distributor cap with a dry towel has been known to work. Wipe the outsides of the HT leads too, the large black wires in the left of the engine. Have someone else spin the engine on the starter, you can often see an HT leak as a spark along the leads. If everything is hot it’ll be petrol.

Leave the ignition switched on and listen for the petrol pump ticking. No tick? Thump it with the wooden handle of a hammer or big screwdriver until it ticks several times in succession. Engine runs but cuts out or misfires after a few miles. Could be lots of things but most likely a worn float chamber valve. Not an easy thing to replace by the roadside even if you carry a spare. Revving the engine helps clear away the excess fuel and might get you a few miles before it happens again. [February newsletter will carry step by step instructions to replace the valve.] Puncture. One wheel nut is too tight and you can’t shift it. If all you have is a silly L-shaped wrench, “borrow” a piece of wood from the nearest fence and use it as a lever across the wrench. Grease the nuts tomorrow. Carry an “instant” puncture repair aerosol and drive home slowly. Fan belt snapped. So be a hero and repair it with your wife’s tights! Be prepared for them melting after a mile or so. A short piece of tow rope is better, especially the sort that splices into itself. Wrap it around the water pump and crankshaft pulleys only and make it home on sidelights without the dynamo. Make a note to carry a spare. No lights. Probably a blown fuse. The headlight fuse is separate from the fuse box in the loom just below and this is usually the cause though god knows why. There should be a spare in the fuse box itself, end on and facing you. Use that and replace it tomorrow. Split water hose. Empty the system completely to get rid of any anti freeze. Repair the split with PVC tape, bandages, torn rags, anything. Refill with plain water from the nearest farmhouse and leave off the radiator cap. This should see you for quite a few miles, but I hope you thought to fill an old pop bottle and carry that along too! As usual, your requests for advice and information are always welcomed.