:: Diary - October 2014 ::

:: Wednesday, October 1, 2014 ::

After my gear selection problems on Sunday, I decided to have a look at the clutch operation in the first instance.

First, check the fluid level. It’s a little bit low, probably because (I am ashamed to admit) I haven’t checked it for years, probably. It’s only about 1/4 of an inch down from the “max” though, so unlikely to be affecting the clutch operation, but I top it up anyway.

Next step - you can see the clutch arm down behind the left hand exhaust manifold. I enlist the help of a willing passer-by to press the clutch, while I watch the arm - it seems to move through full range of travel, and there’s no sign of the operating rod punching through the arm. There’s also no sign of fluid leakage at the stave or master cylinders.

So next step - start it up (handbrake firmly on!) and try gear selection. All go in fine, except reverse only just engages right at the very end of the lever travel. Leave the clutch in for a bit so that the gearbox internals get a chance to stop. Reverse is exactly the same.

Now, reverse gear selection has never been great since I got the car, it engages just before the lever hits the edge of the hole in the console, it has just been getting gradually worse. The console is in the same place (as far as I can tell) so I suspect wear in the gear linkage.

There are two places where the gear linkage can wear in a Type 9 box - one is a ball pivot on the end of the gear lever. You can only get that off by pushing it up the lever, and TVR have denied that option, by cutting the lever and welding on an extension that moves the lever forward 4 inches so that you can drive the car without trying to change gear with your armpit. So that repair fits the manual’s 5 spanner “pain in the arse” standard.

The other option is a wee “saddle” that sits on the selector road, that the end of the gear lever fits into. Because I paid attention in Higher Physics, I deduce that any wear at all in that, will be exaggerated by the length of the lever (and especially TVR’s 4 inch forward extension) to a far more significant “play” at the lever end.

A wee look on “the Bay of Dreams” shows that you can buy the saddle for £8 or so. This meets the tvrgit criteria for any repair - it’s cheap. So I order one, on the basis that it can’t do any harm, as long as I don’t accidentally drop a bag of sand on the transmission tunnel, through the gear lever opening, while I have the lever out.

If it works, it cost £8. If it doesn’t, then I’m no further behind than I am at the moment, and I need to start faffing about with gear levers as well. What’s to lose (apart from my sanity, and that packed its bags and left a long time ago)?

:: Friday, October 3, 2014 ::

The wee gear selector saddle arrived today. It’s a tiny bit of plastic - hope it solves the problem!

No time to fit it today though, busy weekend ahead!

:: Sunday, October 5, 2014 ::

It’s TVR Car Club day. So I go in the Porsche. At least it can reverse!

We meet up at Dave’s - well 2 of us do, Jim has made a detour via the far side of Edinburgh. That’s a fair diversion even by Jim’s standards.

However, we’re soon on our way. Jim’s penance is to lead the way, so god knows where we’ll end up. The boy does good, though, and gets us there on time.

The lunch time chat is about the usual wide range of subjects, but returning to the waitress’s cleavage from time to time. There is also a warning about the consequences of cleaning your specs under the smock you wear while getting your hair cut by a voluptuous female. The consequence in my pal’s case many years ago, was a rattle across the ear with a wooden hairbrush when she saw the cloth moving up and down in his lap.

All too soon, it’s home time. Jim is leading again. As we leave the junction, a man in a Porsche Cayenne seems to get all upset that a right-turner allows us out in front of him, and blasts past Dave in the 40 mph limit and attaches himself to my back bumper while we follow a convoy of Sundayists. I’m not sure what he was trying to prove, but whatever it was, I’ve learned my lesson.

Maybe he just wanted to be close to a real Porsche before he went home to clean his glasses?

Another fun day!

:: Saturday, October 11, 2014 ::

Right, let’s get a look at this gearbox then.

Here’s a gear lever. Obvious, eh? This one is in the “reverse” position - it’s right up against the edge of the console there. Close examination of the gaiter shows that it’s worn badly just where it gets caught between the lever and the console.

So the first step is to take the gaiter off, and see what it’s like then. First, the knob. No, not the one in the craver’s seat, the other one. Mine is held on with 3 wee allen grub screws under the collar, so just lifts off. I start the engine and try gear selection - it’s much better. The movement of the lever is only being impaired by a few millimetres by the edge of the console.

With the gear lever off, there’s a standard Ford gaiter underneath. They say that these are Mark 1 Transit, but I saw a Sierra at a car show recently, and it had exactly this gaiter. Maybe he nicked it off a Transit right enough - I didn’t ask. Anyway, the rubber gaiter also shows slight wear, where it’s getting wedged against the console.

That gaiter is held in with wee screws (it was originally riveted), so I need to take the centre console out to get to it.

First remove the two wee screws on either side of the console, behind the seats. Then I can lift the back of the console, until I can get my hand under, to disconnect the two hoses to the “eyeball” fresh air vents. I also disconnect the radio. That gives me enough space to pull the console back, and pull part of the loom down from behind the dash into the passenger footwell, and turn the console out of the way.

Like this. Then I remove the screws and remove the rubber gaiter..

That lets you get to the gear lever. It’s held in with 3 Torx screws, 2 at the front and one at the back. Access past the gear lever is awkward, but I manage to loosen the front 2 with Torx bit on a wee extension bar. The back one is behind the hole in the transmission tunnel though, so pretty inaccessible. I do eventually manage to get a but into it, but it’s too tight. Then, as those fucking stupid Torx screws are prone to do, it strips the splines in the screw head so I can’t turn it.

After a few minutes of jumping about the garage booting random stuff and calling inanimate objects bad names, I decide that a different plan is required. I’m going to just trim a bit off the console.

Here’s the underside of the console, showing TVR’s careful upholstery techniques, on the basis of ("if you can’t see it, it doesn’t matter”. How much worse can mine be? I peel back the stuck-down flaps along the front and sides, then I use a plastic spatula to carefully lift the edge of the trim around the edge of the hole. The next step is to slip a strip of very thin plywood between the top of the console and the upholstery.

Then I use a tiny cutting disk in a wee dremel thingy to trim about 4mm off the front edge of the gear lever hole, with the plywood behind the fibreglass to protect the trim. Then I change to a little sanding wheel and reshape the corners.

Then it’s out with the spray-on contact adhesive, and stretch the trim material back into place, and leave it to dry for a bit.

Then it’s just a matter of putting it all back together again, being careful to make sure that there are no folds in the gaiters that would double its thickness when you’re looking for reverse.

Once the console is back in, I have a wee drive then reverse into my garage no problem. Result!

Here’s the gear lever with the enlarged console hole. I know, you can’t see the join, eh?

I’m feeling quite chuffed with myself until I decide to check that all the electrics still work, and nothing has become disconnected. Everything is fine except the drivers side window - it won’t go up or down, it’s dead. I’ve probably knocked a wire off the back of the switch. But no, when I pull the switch out, it looks fine.

Now normally, you would disregard the possibility of a second thing coincidentally going wrong while you’re fixing the first thing - you would be pretty certain that it was become of something you’ve done. Not in a TVR though, they are bastards and will go wrong in 3 different ways at the same time, just to throw you off the diagnostic scent.

I can’t be arsed volt metering my way through the whole system, and anyway, my hands have contact glue on them so I’m sticking to everything except the willpower to continue.

One step forward, one step back (albeit in a more easily-selected reverse gear!)

:: Tuesday, October 14, 2014 ::

Here is a car.
Here is a door.
Windows one, two, three, four.
Open the window,
What do you get?
fuck all.

Yes, the drivers side window hasn’t miraculously fixed itself since Saturday, so I’ll have to do it myself.

First step - I pull the switch out of the console. There are 5 wires, the middle wire is the feed, and a poke with a voltmeter shows 12-point-something volts. OK, one end wire is positive when the switch is “up" and the other end one is positive when… oh you’ve guessed already, smartarse? Well they show up 12 volts ok. A continuity test to wires 2 and 4 (the black ones) show that they are connected to “earth”. So it’s not the console wiring then…

So it’s off with the door trim (I’ve explained that 25 million times before so I’m not doing it again here) and I pull the wire out of the bottom of the door. I disconnect the connector and connect the voltmeter to the loom - when I work the switch, there’s nothing - so it’s a break somewhere between the switch and the motor.

Just to confirm, I connect a positive feed and earth to the motor terminals, and it whirrs up and down no problem. So it’s definitely the wiring then.

Now I’m pretty convinced that it has to be something that’s been dislodged when I’ve pulled the console out - so I’ll have to pull it out again to check.

The window works perfectly when the console is in this position. While that’s an improvement, it’s not very practical for driving.

Another check of the wiring on the back of the console shows that there are no loose connectors there, so the next point to check is the plug where the console joins the rest of the car’s loom.

I know, from when I had the dash out and did the carpets, that there are two multi plugs just up behind the dash, under the glove box, just where all those coloured wires disappear in the photo. I pull down the “fuse cover" (aka bit of carpeted hardboard in the passenger footwell) and feel the connector - it pushes together ever so slightly at one end.

Check that window still works - it’s fine.

Very mysterious. I decide to put the console back in place first, and then check again that the window still works.

Then I put all the wiring back up behind the dash and shove the cover back in place. Check that windows still work.

Finally, replace the radio. Check that window still works. Then I decide to fit the new Unipart original Land Rover window switches I bought, so I swap the wires over and push them in place. Window still works.

Finally finally, I re-fit the door trim and speaker. Check that window still works - it’s fine.

So the car is back together, and everything seems to work again. For now.

:: Thursday, October 30, 2014 ::

There’s a certain type of man, who shuns all concepts of modern civilisation, but lives on a primeval instinct. Not for him, the need for academic prowess, or the gregariousness of social engagement. No, this type of man lives on his wits. For him, everyone is “the enemy” who dare not stand in his way.

In times of war this man is the first to step up to the plate. He knows no fear. He holds no political conviction. For him, the terms of engagement are simple. Find the enemy. Kill him. Yes, in times of war, this man can be a country’s greatest asset. This is your ace spitfire pilot, or your most successful jungle guerilla.

But what does such a man do in times of peace? How does such a man earn a living in “civvies”?

I have pondered this for a long time, and I think I finally have the answer.

He drives a minicab.

And the word of the minicab driver is law.

Minicabs are exempt from the need to decide what slip road you want to take, and get in the right lane before you reach it. No, the law of the minicab is “I’ll pass as many of these as I can, before chopping sharply into a gap that’s 2mm longer than the length of my Nissan Primera, straight through on to the slip road, just before the white line changes to a big solid concrete barrier”. If there’s somebody else on the slip road already, well, don’t worry about it, because by the time they have swerved to avoid a minicab at 80 mph, they won’t be on the slip road any more.

Minicabs are exempt from “no U-turn” signs, even if they create a queue behind them that’s like a Russian bread shop.

Minicabs are exempt from the normal convention that you drive on the left in this country. Well, it’s not easy keeping to the left when you’re trying to smoke a cheroot, eat a sandwich, drink a coffee, count your change, do Terminator impressions in the mirror, and read an A to Z all at the same time, especially if you still haven’t bought new tyres since they were advisories on the last MOT 4 years ago.

Minicabs are exempt from any requirement to give way at junctions or roundabouts, because they have a CD hanging from the mirror to ward off evil spirits, and speed camera laser beams.

Minicabs are exempt from the requirement to keep a safe braking distance behind you. This is because they have no brakes at all, so have to rely on the brakes of the car in from in the unlikely event that they want to slow down for anything.

Minicabs, especially diesel ones, are the fastest cars on the road, apart, obviously, from white Transit vans. But that’s another story.

So, let’s join together to salute the new hero of our age, the dispenser of instant justice (but unfortunately not the recipient of instant karma) - the minicab driver!