Trunnions

Let’s not argue about the spelling…….. They are the swivelly [sic] bits at the top and bottom of the front legs of your moggie. There’s a top trunnion and a bottom trunnion and they are very different but do the same job. One thing they need is grease. The owner’s manual probably says something like 10,000 mile intervals but believe me, I do this three or four times a year on my 5000 allotted miles. It’s not a hard job to replace them but it’s a real pain of odd sized sockets, ring keys and open ended, 15mm and 16mm split pins to drill out and replace and a steering arm to heat up, cool down, heat up, cool down, bash out and hope you haven’t wrecked the threads, grease nipples to clean out, packing pieces to make if they’re lost, rubbers to grease and split pins to find. It’s much simpler and easier to look after your Trunnions!!

Jack up the car a side at a time and remove the front road wheels. Support the car with stands under the chassis and let the bare hubs just hang. There is a grease nipple at the very top of the leg, probably covered in grunge and another at the bottom, just behind. Various sizes have been fitted and retro fitted clean the surrounding area and use a pair of pliers to unscrew them. Clean the nipple. You don’t want any road grit to find its way in with the grease. Test the little ball in the end of the nipple isn’t rusted solid by holding the nipple against the delivery nozzle of the grease gun and squeezing the gun just a little until you get a half inch of nice clean grease through it. Screw them back in and now they are nice and clean, nip them up with whichever spanner. [Wipe any grease on to a convenient brake pipe, not your overalls!] Any that won’t let the grease come easily through should go in the bin.

Order new nipples and they should be with you the next day in the post. www.tomroy.com or similar. It’s not a second mortgage. Hold the delivery pipe against the top one and squeeze the handle until clean new grease appears in a wave at the rubber three or four inches down the leg. Do the same at the bottom and the wave of grease should appear at the rubber sleeve at the top of the trunnion of the swivel pin, much the same as the top one. Sometimes the grease will also appear at one side of the trunnion cross piece where it meets the bars from the torsion bar. This is normal and at least you now know the pin isn’t seized solid. If it’s been some years since the last greasing you might have some difficulty. At the top, recon Trunnions tend to allow grease out in a circle around the nipple. This is bad machining of the trunnion and there isn’t a lot you can do except strip off the trunnion and apply grease manually on to the swivel pin threads.

If the grease simply won’t go in but squirts out of the side of the nipple then try warming the trunnion with a blow lamp, gently at first and then more positively but not so low down that
you singe the rubber bush where it meets the leg. Let this cool a little and then try again. Several attempts should get it. Same at the bottom. If your wave of grease comes out only at the bottom warm it a little above and try again. But while you’re there………. The track rod end has a grease nipple on the top………….

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!!

Brake failure

Tech tip for this month – The Mystical Case of Brake Failure.

Most of us run a VW, an Audi, a Vauxhall or BMW as well as a moggie. Some of the more unfortunate among us run Fords! Service interval 60,000 miles, courtesy car and check the tyre pressures one Sunday morning just before you belt down the motorway on holiday. The dealer gets the car once a year, plugs it into the computer, changes the plugs and the air filter and charges you £300.00. Know the story? Way back in the 1950`s and 60`s when our moggies were built, life was a little different. Everyone washed his car on a Sunday morning and while it was drying, he opened the bonnet and went through the weekly checks. Oil, Water, Tyre Pressures, Brake Fluid, Lamps. Along with re-gapping the points and greasing the nipples once a month, the owner driver more-or-less did his own servicing and it had to be regular and often. The first service interval would be 100 miles, oil change and filter. The next service was 1000 miles, the next 3000 miles. In between you did your weekly checks.

How we forget! In those days it was common and a must. Now, it’s unknown. But the car hasn’t changed. It still needs its weekly checks to make sure everything is A-OK. And the case of the girl with the 1963 convertible……lost her brakes going down a long slow hill…..Managed to stop on the handbrake and called the AA who towed her home. Hubby hadn’t checked a thing in five years. FIVE YEARS!! Passed its MOT every year, where was the problem? The problem was that the master cylinder was dry. Bone dry. Nearside rear brake cylinder was leaking very gently. Had someone checked the fluid regularly it would have been spotted before it became something of an emergency. Okay, so now he checks everything weekly. It cost him a set of brake shoes on top of the new cylinder and a new pipe because the old one wouldn’t come out. The pipe should have failed an MOT anyway but it was well gunged up so the tester probably didn’t spot the rust. When we got to the other end of the pipe we found a split in the flexi too. But that’s another story………

1. For a car in regular use at least a couple of journeys a week, regular Sunday morning checks should include: – Tyres. It’s easier to spot wear on a particular place early if you do this
every week. A bent steering component would alter the tracking and wear would be on the outside edge or inside edge of one or both tyres. Evidence is “feathering”. The edge of the patterns rises to a “feather”. 2. Brake Fluid. The master is under the driver’s toes. Unscrew the cap and just have a look. It should be just half an inch or so below the filler neck if the
brakes are adjusted properly. If it goes down, adjust the brakes up and check again. Still down? Suspect a leak at a wheel cylinder.

3. Water. Or should that be water and antifreeze? Check the level. Water normally finds its own happy level and this varies from car to car. If it’s above the internal fins in the radiator
leave it alone. If you really need to top it up, use a mixture of antifreeze and water made up in an old pop bottle.

4. Oil. The A-series engine unlike modern lumps was designed to use oil. The amount varies from engine to engine but half a pint over 500 miles is not undue cause for concern. Top it up. When the colour becomes anything darker than caramel, consider changing it and the filter.

5. Dashpot oil. The black plastic or brass knurled nut on the top of the carburettor unscrews to reveal a plunger. If you remove it and then pop it back there should be some resistance
and you need to force it back. If not, top up with 3in1 oil or similar, about a teaspoonful or two.

6. Battery. Check the electrolyte levels. The liquid should be above the plates. Remove the battery and wipe with an old cloth, smear the terminals with Vaseline, very lightly, The negative end of the battery will most likely need topping up regularly. Here you can use water defrosted from the freezer or a bottle of de-ionised from the corner carparts shop or, if it isn’t a new battery, from the tap. Wipe the tray and remove leaves and debris.

7. Washer bottle. Enough said. It’s not in the Haynes manual but then washer bottles hadn’t been invented in the fifties. Unblock that nozzle on the bonnet that you’ve been meaning to see to for three weeks too!!

8. Lights. Just make sure they all work and replace the bulb, scrape the rust, as necessary. Reminds me, my interior light………

Next checks at 1000 miles…………

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.

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!