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1951 LD10 KKV 222

Descriptive and in-depth articles on how to do repairs or restoration. (Wilf's articles visible by forum members only).
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grahamemmett
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Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by grahamemmett »

As Brian says, you just need to give it a little more gas. And don’t forget to take the handbrake off.
Once a gear is engaged the box is relatively quiet, when in neutral it’s noisy as everything is then turning over. That’s one reason why you sit at lights with it in gear (second gear, first is for hill starts) with your foot on the brake and it’s all quiet.
If you’ve not driven a preselect before you need to remember it’s not a clutch and pushing the pedal to the floor doesn’t disengage the drive. You have to use the brake and I’ve seen many a garage mechanic panic when doing the MOT.
The other thing I’d say about using the gear change pedal is don’t tickle it - you shove it to the floor and let it straight back up all in one action. If you half press it, it will push right back at you and come up twice the normal level. Then you need to force it back down - and it takes some force - and let it back up normally. All will be restored.
Graham Emmett ¦ DLOC Chairman ¦ chair@dloc.co.uk ¦ 07967 109160
Northwich, Cheshire
DB18 1949 LCV522 (Yes that one with the P100s)

Brian-H
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Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Brian-H »

As Graham says, use the brake pedal (assuming the brakes work), in particular use your left foot to inch forward with engine revs raised. However, on page 4 of this thread there's a pic of a compression tester, did you check the compression(s) ? - because I'm just wondering if you'll get much more revs/power out of it - it sounds like it could be blowing across the middle cylinders ?


The horn (revisited)
Forget what I said before, there's a better sequence to cheking/setting it up.

Firstly, this pic below is worrying as that pin should not be sticking up like that i.e. the contacts should be closed.
h_electromagnet_pin1.jpg
You'll have to take the electromagnet back to its base state
h_electromagnet_s1.jpg
h_electromagnet_s2.jpg
Remove that piston/cylinder from the bottom, remove the pin, and the contact should be closed. If it's not, find and adjust anything that prevents it closing. When the contact is closed, connect a multimeter set to resistance and measure between the grey chassis and the flying lead. I reckon it should be between 1 and 3 Ohms (which would give between 12 and 4 Amps @ 12 volts). Then open the contact with a finger and the resistance should go to infinity. Until you get these sorts of readings it won't ever work. If you get 0 Ohms then there's something wrong on the wiring on the chassis of the unit, and/or the insulators aren't correct (I can't tell you what or where as there's not enough detail in any of the pics).

When you've got the resistance working properly with contact open and closed, next make sure that that piston moves up and down freely. It looks to me as if the piston is the wrong way round because the pin should go in that dimple. So make sure that the piston moves freely, then put the pin in - one end in the dimple, the other end should go through a support at the top that keeps the pin upright. By pushing the piston up and down, the contact should open and close.

When you've got it all operating properly, piston and pin moving freely and opening/closing the contact, with resistance either, 1 to 3 Ohms (ish), or infinity, you can now test using a car battery.

If the car is -ve earth, connect a jump lead from battery -ve to the grey chassis (if car is +ve earth, use battery +ve). Then, holding the piston upwards so that the pin is just touching the insulator under the contact arm, connect the flying lead to the other battery terminal.

One of three things should happen, either
1. the unit buzzes like crazy (while keeping your finger pushing the piston up), or
2. the piston flies out past your finger (unlikely, but if it does, quickly disconnect the flyng lead, reverse the piston, then try again), or
3. the piston moves up forcing the contact open, but won't drop back down. If this happens, find out why it won't drop.

When you've got the unit buzzing, disconnect everything, fit the diaphragm section, make sure that the contact is still closed with pin just touching (you might have to adjust the screw), then try the car battery etc again, and it should all buzz away nicely. If so, fit it together with the bottom section and screws, test again, and you might get some squeak out of the base. When you fit the cover over the "snail" section it should get louder (even louder when airtight). Then fit the end throat section and test again.

Note that these horns are quite loud when fully assembled and working properly.

Norfolk Lad
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Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Norfolk Lad »

Brian-H when he said use Left foot this is on Brake Pedal to ease forward not change pedal , which until you get the car to run as it should i think forget about driving it forward.
The car needs to tick over at low revs lower then a normal car it will show the ignition light is on , this stops fluid flywheel creating drive to gearbox take revs up when you want to move forward using throttle pedal.

Brian-H
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Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Brian-H »

Norfolk Lad, as Graham said "As Brian says, you just need to give it a little more gas" because the OP said ""When you select the gear you can hear it select, the revs drop and the car bob forwards as though its trying" - so if you're in a picky mood take it up with Graham as well please. All I was doing was re-iterating to the OP that brake pedal (using left foot) is a good idea when raising engine revs in gear as the car (which hasn't moved under its own power for decades) may suddenly rush forward further than expected (noting that the OP has expressed the desire to get the car out of the garage under its own power).

JDB
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Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by JDB »

Re the horn, the pic that Brian-H highlights as worrying suggests you've assembled the armature stack incorrectly. There should be a bent piece of spring steel above the arm, pushing down on it that holds the assembly closed whilst the electromagnet is de-energised.
I like what you're doing with the car, best of luck, John.

triddell
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Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by triddell »

Per Brian H's comment, it does sound like the head gasket might be blowing between cylinders 2 and 3. I had that problem and confirm the motor did run sounding much like yours. I didn't have a compression guage but found that while it was running if I pulled the leads off 2 and 3 it made no difference. A gentler way to test is with the motor off, turn it over by hand with the crank and if you get noticeably less resistance and a hissing sound when 2 or 3 are coming up to TDC then it's a fair bet the head gasket is blown between them.
Tom

JDB
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Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by JDB »

Actually, I'm not sure my previous post is right, the arm itself may act as the spring, anyway the stack looks pretty suspect, here is a photo of one on my Daimler Majestic Major - also a Lucas windtone horn - showing a working arrangement.
IMG_2999.JPG

Vulgalour
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Location: Kent

Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Vulgalour »

We shall start again (again) with the horn assembly at the next opportunity. Our lack of experience with these horns and the fact that someone has been inside it before means we're very likely to copy the mistakes of previous tinkerers, with the information above and a Lucas service document kindly supplied on another forum we can now double check the order of components and hopefully correct it. I doubt another round of cleaning is going to help at this point, we've cleaned contacts and moving parts each time everything has been apart and back together, I doubt it can get any cleaner.

Hopefully I'll have a little time later to check the compression, I'm planning to do that with the hand crank and to clean and gap the plugs (just in case) as I go. This will tell us if it is a head gasket failure, fouled plugs, or something else. Although we have no video evidence, the car was running more evenly before and didn't have this lumpy limp it does in the recent video, so our suspicion is more that it's timing and fouled plugs than it is a failed head gasket. Testing will prove either way.

We just have to be patient and keep going over things until we find and fix the root causes. Honestly, I'm surprised we're even at the point of it running at all given that we've only had the car a little under a month and it's been essentially immobile for 36 years. We'll get there either way. Our thanks for all your help and advice along the way so far, we do have a fair bit of repeat information due to using various fora but that's a good thing as it tends to help guide us on where to look and what to sort out.

When we do get to the point of taking the first tentative drive it's going to be quite exciting I imagine.

Sydsmith
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Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Sydsmith »

I have been watching this thread with great interest since day one. I especially admire your commitment to the car. I am amazed that you have resisted the urge to get the car going properly so you can drive it, even if it is only up and down your driveway.

I have bought and sold dozens of cars over the years the latest one two years ago, a 37 Muliner 15 sports that had been in dry storage for seven years and not on the road since 1988 getting a car going has always been my priority.

The very first thing I did with the 15 was to change all the oils, change the engine filter, crank the engine over with the rotor arm out then run the engine, within a few days I had the car able to drive up and down our driveway, exhaust was not even there, tyres were shot but just about held air, brakes were dodgy, steering unbelievably stiff, but it felt good to have the old thing running again.

Those few short tests drives proved the engine and Wilson box were OK, so apart from it having the wrong carburettor, I was confident the rest of the car was worth the effort needed to sort it out.

Good luck to you I admire your patience but if \I was you I would not wait a momnet longer to check out that engine and have a drive :D. Syd

Vulgalour
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Location: Kent

Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Vulgalour »

It's all to do with time management really. I work nights and my partner works mornings, and our days on and off don't always match up, it does make it a little tricky and makes progress look a little odd because quite often we're spending the evenings doing as much research as we can, and snatching the odd hour here and there for the bigger jobs. Nibbling away at getting the engine running is what we can do, so that's what we've been doing. This weekend, however, feels like we might have all our ducks in a row providing the weather isn't too appalling. We rarely have more than a solid 4 hours together when it's possible to work outside and it's slowing us down somewhat. We'll get there, we've plenty of time to actually drive the car and as frustrating as it is not to have done so just yet, we know we're not far off now.

----

Snatched a few minutes earlier today to have a quick inspection of the plugs. As expected, they were all sooty, we haven't yet been able to run the car off the choke so it's not surprising that it's quite rich.
Image

One of our neighbours was having a clearout recently and had a spark plug cleaner going spare. It's like a miniature mediablaster. This seemed an ideal opportunity to try it out. Just clamp it onto the relevant battery terminals and press the little red button to set it going with the spark plug in the hole, it works best if you rotate the spark plug while it's on.
Image

Then pull it out and clean the plug down with some suitable cleaner to make sure there's no grit or similar in the threads and it's back to clean again. A very handy little tool, it would likely benefit from some fresh media inside.
Image

All of the plug gaps were .034"-0.040" instead of the book recommended .020" (fortunately my feeler guages are metric and imperial marked) so I reset them all accordingly and that's one less job for the weekend. Just as I was packing up, the grease gun I'd bought online arrived, a second hand Wanner, a brand recommended by another reader and initial testing at least confirms it pumps out what grease is still in it so hopefully that will be a sensible purchase. The new ones in the same price range as what we paid for this one all looked rubbish and like they'd barely last one use.
Image

We'll have more time tomorrow so we'll do the compression test, check the timing etc. and hopefully get things running a little better or at least diagnose what the issue with the lumpy running actually is.

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