The rest of the injector seals arrived on Tuesday, so I popped them in that evening - a much firmer fit in the head.
Thursday evening I JB-welded the pitting on the thermostat housing and the head. First up, mangle another tool to make myself a miniature filling knife:
Then clean up the corrosion as far as possible and thoroughly degrease.
I also found this area of damage on the housing:
It wasn't covered by the hose, and the tubing appears to be double-skinned at this point so it wasn't going to leak. I can only assume someone jammed a screwdriver in there to remove the hose and damaged it. I cleaned it up and jb-welded that too.
Once it had gone off, I sanded it smooth this morning. one of the bits I had filled had slightly sunk, but I had to remind myself it only had to be shallow enough that the -fairly thick -rubber gasket would seal, it didn't need to be billiard table smooth:
With that done I set about putting everything back together.
The rear timing cover, a professional parts sweden item, was
Okay - there is a warp in it at the top, which I am hoping will straighten with some heat cycles now it is fixed to the outer covers.It's not rubbing on anything.
The new tensioner spring was considerably stronger than the one that came off, so that is reassuring.
For those of you with a similar level of OCD - aligned V-belts:
I also had the rad hoses off and cleaned them out and inspected - cleaned up the water pump inlet, which wasn't too bad, then reassembled with some new stainless steel clamps.
I had actually ended up using the Hexeal antifreeze to fill up the C70, so I needed some more. I ended up getting it from Smith and Allan for £16 delivered, but it is twice the strength - the hexheal stuff says to use it neat for protection to -37, but the Smith and Allan stuff you dilute 50% for that, so works out better value. Not that I am ever going to see -37 mind you, but having sufficient corrrosion protection is important.
With the new plugs fitted, away we went - it took a bit of cranking to fire up (I assume because I had the injectors off etc). I need to borrow a decent tacho to set the idle speed, initially it was somewhere about 550-600 at a guess, when spec is 900. was a bit lumpy!
All ran up to temperature fine, and there were no leaks from any of the hoses or the 'stat. The viscous coupling seems to be in good condition, there was a definite difference in the amount of air being moved between cold and when the lower rad hose got warm.
Stopped and restarted instantly a few times.
It has also moved under it's own power for the first time in a month - only the 2ft forward and back available in the parking space though.
***
I did take a flyer on that NOS Bosal rear silencer, I thought I may as well when I put the part number that is stamped on the one currently fitted to the car into Skandix and it told me in big red letters that it wouldn't fit!
Evri took 10 days to deliver it, and must have dropped it on the way as one of the pipes was slightly tweaked, but I soo straightened that out.
The old one looked surprised:
Getting it detatched from the over-axle pipe was predictably awkward. After removing (snapping) the clamp and belting the silencer rearward with the lump hammer a few times I decided that was 1) an exercise in futility, and 2) more likely to detach something further upstream, so I decided to cut the silencer off as close to it as possible, then cut longitudinally on what was left to free it. I should have gone and borrowed the mini grinder at this point, but sometime later with the hacksaw and it was off. I lost about 5mm of the over axle pipe - nothing to worry about.
This looked serviceable from underneath, I'll have to fabricate a new top strap:
This looks promising:
Ah.
I had already predicted this! the diameters are different. (Or, depending on how you look at it, the same size) Time for a sleeve.
The extra hanger bracket stops just short of the towbar bracket.
I'll probably cut it off, and there will be no problem with clearance then:
Talking of the towbar, I'm in two minds about whether to remove it. From the history it was fitted from new, but I don't think it was ever used - note in the history about the caravan wiring being disconnected and coiled up.
ITs a weird swing out affair that required the rear valance to be mangled. It would be quite nice to replace that with a whole one.
The tailpipe is serviceable but tatty. To be honest, I have never been a fan of the 700's bendy tailpipe, so I may just get something that comes out straight.
Overall I'm quite pleased with that as a purchase, a lttle bit of fettling and it'll be on, and will last much longer than anything one can buy new these days. (I put a Klarius box on a V40 we had and while it did kind of fit, the quality wasn't the best.)
So depending on when I can get a sleeve to fit the box, we should be good to tax + insure from 1st June. We're away Thursday and Friday, so hopefully maiden voyage next weekend
