Vintage Minor Register

While we eagerly await the November Newsletter with more details, our monthly meets at the Fountain, Tenbury Wells will switch to the third Sunday lunchtimes for the winter months. So the November meet will be on Sunday 17th, starting at noon.

I'll also be at the Boot, Orleton next Tuesday 5th for the first Tuesday meet.

Got home without any issues yesterday. Just need to find some time to investigate the oil leak coming from the front of the engine. Fingers crossed it something easy to fix.

Well, I found a spare half hour and had a good look under the front of the car. I ran the engine for 5 minutes to see if I could get it to show me the leak, but to no avail. I have absolutely no idea where it's coming from. Everything under the front of the car is now covered in oil, including the exhaust downpipe, hence the smell of hot oil I got. One thing I have noticed is a missing bolt. It looks like it could be the engine mount. There are two bolts either side of the engine, facing to wards the front of the car, one above the other. The missing bolt is the top one on the passenger-side. It clearly hasn't been missing very long as the thread is clean.

I don't have a SV block handy right now, but I'm pretty sure these four bolts have holes that run right into the block. If so, then that is where the oil is escaping.

I noticed recently that my fabric saloon was dripping oil from the back of the engine. It turned out to be a missing bolt at the rear of the sump - so a very similar issue.

I'd recommend you check the tightness of the other three bolts.

Thanks for that piece of info. Ian. Do you have the bolt size so I can replace it?

Um, it's got to be something like 3/8" BSF.

Thanks Ian. I spent almost 2hrs this afternoon trying to get the corresponding bolt out of the driver's side of the engine, before giving up and tackling the lower bolt. That came out in less than 10 minutes!!! I popped over to my old-school mechanic in Tibberton and he miraculously found a replacement bolt within half and hour! I stopped at Halfrauds on the way home and bought two cans of brake cleaner. I've just doused the entire front of the engine, the oil pump, exhaust downpipe, steering mechanism, and axle, all of which were covered in oil and are now clean and oil-free. I'll tackle to bolts tomorrow afternoon. Shame the weekend is wet and windy. I might not want to take the car out for a test-drive if the weather is too wild

Sounds good, and I hope the bolt proves to be the source of incontinence.

I spent time yesterday working on the tourer because the ignition timing was way out.

The distributor is horribly difficult to work on in situ because the clamp nut/bolt is almost impossible yo get spanners on and also the stepped bolt that holds the clamp plate to the engine nosepiece is similarly difficult to get at - particularly when trying to refit. I must have dropped it under the car at least 20 times before the thread would pick up, made worse by freezing fingers. But I managed it and got the timing in the range of the advance/retard.

However, power is still way down so I will go ahead and rebuild the '29 engine I bought at VSCC Prescott long course and plan to swap them over when it is done. The deciding factor was that the engine, in addition to very low oil pressure, has very little compression - the starting handle can be twirled with a couple of fingers.

But I did also manage to fit the correct MORRIS script on the radiator, which transformed the look of the car from the front.

SV_Minor wrote: ↑Fri Nov 22, 2024 5:59 pm Thanks Ian. I spent almost 2hrs this afternoon trying to get the corresponding bolt out of the driver's side of the engine, before giving up and tackling the lower bolt. That came out in less than 10 minutes!!! I popped over to my old-school mechanic in Tibberton and he miraculously found a replacement bolt within half and hour! I stopped at Halfrauds on the way home and bought two cans of brake cleaner. I've just doused the entire front of the engine, the oil pump, exhaust downpipe, steering mechanism, and axle, all of which were covered in oil and are now clean and oil-free. I'll tackle to bolts tomorrow afternoon. Shame the weekend is wet and windy. I might not want to take the car out for a test-drive if the weather is too wild

All done and appears to have stopped the oil leak Was a 'mare to get the two bolt back in though. The engine mount brackets had dropped ever so slightly, but enough to stop the bolts engaging with the threads in the block.

Great news! I can imaging how difficult it must have been to fit these bolts in situ.

But could not have been a better outcome.