Lots of work

and no photographs.

Yesterday was a recreational day after the little get-together on Friday, but today work continued on the green Crayford.

During the little outing on Friday the propeller shaft became very noisy, so today Daniel and I dismantled more or less the complete underside of the car to remove the propshaft. We finally extracted it from the car and disassembled it on my workbench. The bearing was fine, the rubber boot was completely shot. Unfortunately, you have to destroy the bearing (or at least damage it severely) to remove the rubber boot. We succeeded in doing that. New parts to be bought tomorrow.

Then we removed the rear silencer that had parted from its tube. The middle silencer is fine, though.

When we collected the car from Britain, Rory told me not to fill the fuel tank completely because he never did and he did not know whether it was rusted through on the top. So we drained (mega-yuk, I hate working on gasoline engined cars) and removed the fuel tank to find it in serviceable condition. A good clean confirmed that it is rusty on the outside but fine on the inside. I will change the seals for the fuel sender unit and the fuel drain plug, renew the hoses and simply put it back onto the car.

As I found the radiator to be leaky a few days ago, I ordered a new one but it has not been delivered yet. So I prepared the old radiator for removal, giving the connections for the automatic transmission oil cooler a good spray of WD40. The engine oil cooler can be parted from the radiator and will remain in the car. Daniel suggested not to remove the old radiator until the new one sits in my workshop, and I followed this wise suggestion. The car would be rendered completely stationary if something broke during removal of the old radiator.

Then I decided to continue with low-profile cosmetic improvements: replace the faulty switch for the rear interior light operated by the left rear door (the new switch looks very differently and will be exchanged for an originally-looking old part as soon as possible), removing the rubber from the rear bumper (finding the chromed bumper severely rusted on the left part and fine on the right part), clean away the rust and reassemble the rubber for a much-improved look, and firmly attach the "250" badge on the completely rusted-through bootlid (an operation during which the bootlid disintegrated in this area).

We began to clean the engine, which is very oily on the left side, but did not detect the origin of the oil dripping to the ground from the engine. The same goes for the fuel smell, it may simply originate from the shot rear silencer (engine running rich) or from the fuel lines at the fuel tank, which I will renew. The fuel hoses in the engine compartment are more or less new already.

So much for today. Collecting parts tomorrow.