May 10th- At last an update!

I’ve not been able to update the blog as regularly as normal due to work stuff taking over a bit, plus other issues. With the amount of rain we’ve had lately, the garage has taken to flooding again. The drainage channel built round the outside hasn’t been able to drain away fast enough so once again, the water has been finding its way underneath the concrete panels and over the garage floor. The recent bank holiday weekend has seen me putting guttering up at the rear (the roof slopes downwards at the back) and the rain will now drain into a 200 litre water butt. Hopefully, this will reduce the amount of water running into the drainage channel and will eradicate the flooding.

Anyway, onto the cars. The last time I wrote, Gertie was running, but rather erratically. After spending most of the weekend trying unsuccessfully to resolve this, it was transported over to Carlow engineering for further investigations. A spring inside the distributor, wrong voltage from the coil to the distributor and a knackered crankshaft pulley were diagnosed. They managed to get it running ok, but told me to change the crankshaft pulley as soon as I could as it was affecting the timing.

With this in mind I left for home and managed to get at least half a mile away from their premises before breaking down! The distributor hadn’t seated inside the holding clamp properly and had come out and moved which obviously threw all the timing out. As I had no tools on me I rang Carlow’s straight away and to be fair to them they came out and rectified the problem without complaint. Gordon also noticed the butterfly in the front carburettor was sticking open and making the car rev rather highly on occasions, so he had a quick play with this as well. Once Gertie was running again I managed to get home ok, but not before noticing that the overdrive no longer worked either. What is it with this bloody car? Stuff that was working fine before the engine change now no longer wants to work even though it hasn’t been touched! I think she’s sulking because she doesn’t like her new heart the bloody ungrateful cow!

On this particular night I also had to go out in the estate to collect something and this managed to break down about a mile away from where Gertie had! This wasn’t my night! Luckily, it was only its usual fuel pump problem (I must get round to replacing it) so just needed a pipe undoing, releasing the air lock and fitting back on. The last time it did it was in February and the last time before that was last March, so it’s not exactly a regular occurrence.

To aid cooling on Gertie, I’ve also fitted an oil cooler (I’ve got one coming for the estate as well) and also had the bonnet louvered. We became aware on the 10CR how much heat is generated and also trapped under the bonnet. The louvers will allow this heat to escape and hopefully keep things cooler.

Anyway, Dave managed to get round tonight and resolve the overdrive issue which turned out to be the switch holder on the gearbox needing adjustment so that third and fourth gears were triggering the switch properly. I should have checked this first really, but never mind.

He also managed to get the spotlights working that had packed up but didn’t know how, so that’s still a puzzle as to why they stopped working in the first place? On trying to start the car once we were all done, it decided not to fire! What now for god sake? Further examination revealed that the coil had decided to have no further interest in providing power!  A coil change saw power restored and we now appear to have a fully functioning Gertie.

The worry now is that with the Ecosse only a few weeks away, the car isn’t even run in or tested yet. I need to get some serious miles underway over the next few weeks to reassure me that she’s ready for Scotland. This would be easier if my bonnet wasn’t still at the paint shop being resprayed after having the louvres done.

Will Gertie make the Ecosse? Or will I have to take the estate? Time will tell. (Can you tell that she's been in the garage too long?)