DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Interesting approach to this.
Looks good and you could not have added more to ensure it is all sound.
Just my opinion, don't bother grinding down the welds just for cosmetic reasons, the joint will be stronger as a full weld rather than a dressed '1/2 weld'

I have a bitter experience on my race car where someone else had welded part of the suspension and the weld from a repair had failed while i was in full flight. The repair weld was dressed to hide the repair, the weld was about 1mm at best thick.

You can get back to normal now!

Very smart approach. Great result!

impressive

Thanks for all the kind words guys. Im really happy with how this has worked out, plus the relatively small damage to my wallet, all things considered. Obviously I would have been happier if this had never happened! Im sure I would be knocking on for a 5 figure sum to pay someone to repair this, which would not have been happening, I probably would have had to sell it. There cant be many more worse things that can go wrong on me now I hope. I did think at first when it failed as I was driving and lost power plus horrible sounds and smells that I had thrown a rod or siezed the engine, now that would have been bad on the wallet!

So I have braced up the tube to the rear seat bases painted it all under sealed it all etc. I got a can of cavity wax with a long probe attachment and gave the tube 3 heavy coats of wax internally






With the engine out and having done a few hundred miles on it, it was due a valve lash adjustment and a retorque of the head studs. This is much easier with the engine out. I wouldnt fancy doing a head stud re-torque with the engine still in the car, that must be a proper old git access wise. I was surprised how much retorquing was required, I got half turn on some of the studs. It may be different for 2.0 engines like mine as they run paper gaskets to the heads unlike later engines which I guess compress somewhat over time.

I also had the opportunity to fit isolating switches for each CDI box so I can test the twin plug banks. Plus I have made progress with getting my RPM transducer/fuel cutoff to hopefully work. I didnt know until recently that the factory transducer only works with points distributors. i.e. if you run 123 distributors (like i previously did) or any other aftermarket electronic/hall effect distributors like my current twin plug one, then the transducer doesnt work. Fortunately there is a work around If you have a Classic retrofit CDI+, which both of mine are so hopefully I will be able to sort this.




This weekend I have been slowly reassembling things. Theres a chance I could give it a test drive next weekend if all goes well and weather is kind. I didnt think this would be possible this side of christmas a few months ago

Very good to see, a result to say the least.

I have just removed the 3.2 out of my hillclimb Lola to clean and check the studs etc after 2 years of abuse on the engine, and all was well though the valves had opened to 6 thou on every valve so pinched back to 4 thou.

Hope your next update will be it flies down the road!

great to see how you've turned this disaster round

Well done, the earlier threads when this happened showed how disillusioned you were with it all. But you have persevered and done an excellent job of fixing it all. That repair should out last the car now. Congratulations!

It's really disheartening when these things come along but the test of a man is his ability to bounce back in the face of adversity.

Well it has been a while, how time flies.

Got the engine back in in December but had no chance to really hook it all up properly until January. Cue months of rain and cold. In march I was able to go for my first run with the new rear end. I threw it over some speed bumps and it was all good, the car also drove straight, so i was classing it as a successful repair! I was really happy to be back on the road.

Now where was I up to before all of this Torsion bar tube mess. I was running in my newly built engine. Now I wasnt fully happy with how it had been running before the tube failed the engine seemed to stumble a lot and stall and now it seemed worse than ever juddering as I was driving along. But working lots of overtime to pay for tube repairs and garage floor tiles, I didnt have much time to look at it. I still had doubts about the mixture settings and the twin plug ignition system. In the end I wanted a second opinion so I took it to Johnny at UnitEleven in Warrington. Fortunately it was a nice sunny day and he worked on it outside. He got it running much better with some mixture adjustments and throttle body adjustments but it was still stumbling. I still wasnt happy with it. A timing light showed that it was misfiring on both banks, randomly missing sparks. Another issue he spotted was that the charging system wasnt putting out enough volts, we were only seeing ~12.8V at the one battery I was running, so no wonder I have had issues with flat batteries and slow cranking over the years.

So first thing I looked into was the charging issue as I thought that would be easiest to fix. I know I have a SEV Marchal alternator, and a lot of googling later I found out that your regulator and other gubbins in the engine bay must also be SEV Marchal for the output to be correct. My regulator and gubbins are Bosch. Somehow over the years this car has ended up with a mis-matched arrangement and I'm told this results in the system outputting around 0.7-0.8V lower than it should. Marchal regulators are now hard to get hold and the wiring/plugs etc are different and I dont want to start messing around cutting up my loom. I looked at fitting a modern unit but most of them appear to be made for later engines and wont fit my fan housing and/or are very expensive. So Im on the look out for an original BOSCH unit.

In the meantime I have bough a second battery and installed it. I know that many think this is unnecessary extra weight but ive had enough issues over the years with slow cranking on the one battery and it dying or nearly dying when I have had to stop and start the engine a few times in one day that I think its for the best. It may be more to do with the charging system than the fact I had one battery but Im thinking its better insurance. It cranks and starts so quick now! Johnny also said it would be better to have it so that sealed it.

After this came the Ignition problems. I spent 2 weekends trying EVERYTHING I could think of to cure the ignition issues without success. I swapped in/out/over the CDI boxes, coils, leads, plugs, checked all the earths and battery cables, re-routed everything for interference issues tried to fit shielding, took the distributor to bits and cleaned up every contact, I tried everything. It kept misfiring on BOTH banks. Eventually I contacted Johnny at Classic Retrofit and he had the answer. He told me that if running an MSD magnetic pickup to trigger CDI boxes you have to reverse the polarity of the pickup. I.e. to wire the pick up opposite to the MSD diagram and run the +ve wire to earth and the -ve wire to the CDI box. I flipped the wires in 2 minutes and there it was running perfect. On the one hand I was absolutely delighted but on the other very frustrated at this whole episode.

Now that im getting proper ignition the revs are much higher at idle so the throttle bodies the timing will need re-setting again! Oh the joys. So thats my next job. I do feel im very close to a properly running engine now! I might even try and get the speed switch fuel cutoff to work if im feeling brave!

Another thing I have invested in is a genuine Marelli Jaguar 12 plug distributor cap as the repro caps that come with all the aftermarket distributors like mine really do look crap quality

Great news! One of those things that you would never find until you meet someone that has been there and got the T shirt!


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Received my genuine Marelli 12 plug cap, such better quality, all brass fittings and its got that weighty solidity to it. I was lucky to find one, they are not easy to get hold of. Much happier with this swapped in now




vs cheapo

More problems to solve. Speedo cable broke. Fortunately removing the broken cable was pretty easy, probably a nightmare on a LHD '69 cars where the speedo is central in the dash and is right behind the heater blower but access to the back of the speedo on RHD cars is much more simple as its to the very right of the dash and there is a gap to get your arm in and unscrew the cable and the gauge clamps.






Whilst im in there I thought I might take out my clock and see if I can get it working, which it never has. I took the back cover off it, there was nothing obviously wrong with it, it looked pretty clean. I looked for the solder fuse that I have read is often the cause of these stopping from working but it appeared ok. So I simply blasted the mechinism with solvent degreaser, hey presto, it starts to tick! It has obviously stuck with gunk over the years mid-cycle. It kept ticking until the spring loaded mechinism bottomed out, a quick flick of the mechinism and it started again. I had some watch oil to apply to the mechnism, I had read that watch oil is a really low viscocity oil for these light mechnisms, it appeared thicker than I expected, as soon as I started to apply it, it stopped ticking. Another blast of degreaser to remove the oil and then a blast with WD40 and its working fine again. Fitted it back in the car with 12V on it its working fine. Really happy with this little improvement, hopefully it will keep decent time!

Some good news on the clock

The clock is still going strong! Albeit a bit slow, seems to lose about 15 mins per day, I need to adjust it, easier said than done now its back in the car...

I managed to get hold of an original 55Amp "725" Bosch Alternator to hopefully cure my charging issue discussed above. I double checked the voltage im getting with the engine running at 2000rpm, it was 12.8V, this is obviously too low. I swapped out my incorrect SEV/Motarola Alternator for this replacement Bosch unit. Fired it up and straight away, im getting 13.6V as I should be. Hopefully now my battery will actually charge whilst I'm driving around! Im not sure quite why all off these oddball problems happen to me, I can find next to no other examples of anyone having this issue!

I decided to stick with an original unit instead of buying a new internally regulated unit for a few reasons, 1) they were a lot more expensive, 2) you need to machine your fan housing for them to fit I believe, 3) you can have problems with the dash light not going out, 4) some people with a lot of experience say that they see more issues with the modern alternators than with the original ones, obviously I have no experience of this. As a precaution, I'm going to buy a spare regulator to carry in the car anyway.

I concur, my 914 needed a good blip on start up to extinguish the light…


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