Last year went to Scotland and took Jemima for a spin.

Problems with Timing, carburetors and water cooling.

will try fix them this year.

Dual master cylinder leak

The master cylinder has a leak...Quite a bad leak now.

A rebuild kit was purchased.
A long drive to Scotland follows and had a look at the master cylinder.




It was bought "new" when the previous one would "stick".
The bores were a little bit rusty inside which had worn the seals.
The bores were chemically cleaned and smoothed out.


The seal kit was installed. It comes with new brake valve as well.
Not sure why the brakes need this valve and the clutch doesn't.


Bleeding both systems was proving difficult.. I needed to apply air pressure to the filler cap before the systems would begin to pump.




Front tyres also showed some wear... tracking probably out.
A little annoying as the tyres are no longer available and would otherwise have lasted another lifetime.
Castor and camber are also out on one side.. tricky. .

MOT Time again

Jemima failed the MOT.
She now lives in Scotland, a long way to go for the annual servicing.

she failed only on a few things,

1. Main beam wouldn't work - The KwikFit guy probably thought he was smart using the foot switch but as nothing happened he didn't think to use the indicator stalk.

2. a slightly bigger issue - the brakes were uneven at the back. And oil could be seen coming out of the drum. Tricky.
All the parts were ordered (axle seals, bearings and brake shoes) and I travelled north. We had been here before with leaky seals so a further investigation was required during the repair.
I noticed that there was a design in the backplate that should catch any oil seeping from the seals. But it had nowhere to go. I was going to drill a hole but then realised there was one already - full of previous rust and grime, polished by me and then painted in smoothrite... No wonder..
The hole was drilled out on both sides. Now if it leaks again it shouldnt contaminate the brake shoes.

Just in case we fitted new axle bearings, seals and half shaft gasket and O rings.

Even longer time

Missing many stories in the past year or two.. Maybe I can catch up in time.. Trying blogger on the mobile.

Jemima would pull to the left as you accelerate and pull to the right as you decelerate.
Much thinking was done as to why.. But it was thought something was loose on the axle. I found the u bolts were very loose. This fixed the problem.. Hurrah!
Problem returned a few weeks later.. U bolts loose again!!

Maybe the rubber bushes were worn out? Anyway... Replaced the leaf spring bushes with poly ones and new u bolts and nyloc nuts.

Also found that the spax shocks were leaking so the original style uprated dampers were refitted.

Report now is that the suspension and handling is much better.

Long Time

Been a Long Time since last post

Will have to do the story soon.

MOT is done and now running ok except for a rattleing clutch problem.

On the road again...

New banjo bolt fitted, reason it stripped was probably due to an extra washer on the bolt (hidden under some paint).
Brakes need bleeding again now.

While waiting for my bleeding assistant (wife) to become available, I filled the axle with Hypoid 90 (I’d forgotten all about it). Also bolted on the rear exhaust mount (forgotten that too) and started to look at the hand brake issue.

The hand brake was catching on the carpet. Not sure now if the carpet should be fitted first and the handbrake mount bolted through the carpet, or if the carpet is too thick.
I cut away a bit of carpet trim and fitted a washer.
Handbrake is fine now.

My bleeding assistant arrived and was put to work applying pressure to the footbrake while I twiddled the bleed nipples.
“ON…. OFF…” I called.
“ON… OFF…” again and again.

It’s OK now.
It being a nice day there now seemed to be nothing left to do - other than a quick test drive.
Rather than risk my neck, I sent her off down the street.
She came back happy as Larry (whoever he was).


Jemima was back on the road after 21 years.
Now I need to address a few minor bugs and get the MOT.
Tappits, washer bottle, underseal wheel arch, seat belt mount shim, adjust drum brakes again, fill with decent petrol.

It rains and it pours, more brake snags.

I re-fitted the brake calliper only to find that the wheel wouldn’t rotate again due to a pads being a tight fit. This sounded familiar http://campervanman.blogspot.com/2008/06/finally-got-round-tuit.html .

I measured the wire wheel brake disc and found it was 0.3mm fatter than the steel wheel one just removed. So this time I removed the sticky pad behind the pads and gave them a polish on a bed of sandpaper to shave a few microns off the pad surface.

This seemed to do the trick until the caliper bolts were fully tightened. The discs stopped spinning again. This time due to the calliper bolt. Over the years I’ve lost assorted bits but this time I was missing a spring washer – or was I missing something else.

Hanging on the wall were a few bits I’ve painted but forgotten what they were. I had three of these brake things (hose bracket) one was slightly different. One style goes under the bolt the other goes on the bolt extensions. It seems it changed during production. To solve my problem I fitted one odd one under the bolt with a lock tab. Wheel now spins.

Snag was I had to move the banjo brake hose slightly. It didn’t seem to tighten up afterwards. I had stripped the threads of the banjo bolt!
Looking closely I found that the new aeroquip hose banjo was slightly thicker than the original so less thread was available to grip.

So I need a new longer banjo bolt and probably a repair to the brake calliper.

Probably a good job it happened now as it could have come apart on the road.
Maybe I should have converted to dual circuit brakes after all.