Fatbloke and Poppy - Part 15

by Mike Peake

No further spannering had been done for a while that summer of 2014, but there was lots of driving and lots of fun.

I went to the Tetbury car show with my local "Royal Wootton Bassett Classic Car Club" and had a great day out. 12 of us set out in Convoy from RWB and all made it to the event. The event was great with over 500 vehicles present plus a Dalek...which one of our members bought!
 
On another trip, 20 classic cars left RWB for the Defence academy in Shrivenham where we spent the evening clambering over and in all sorts of military vehicles (Well the ones I could fit in anyway  - the Russian T34 was definitely not built with humans in mind let alone FB's) this was followed by fish and chips in a car park. Another great evening!
 
It was capped off by my clutch pedal going all floppy and refusing to disengage the clutch on the way home. It was very dark so I pressed on and Poppy didn't let me down and got me home yet again but it was an interesting and challenging drive!
 
So I had an excuse to do some investigative spannering and discovered that all my clutch fluid had disappeared! I traced the system from the master cylinder all the way through to the slave and found no obvious signs of leakage so topped it back up and gave a quick bleed and all was working tickety boo, but decided to do something about it to prevent re occurrence. 
 
After seeking advice, general consensus was that the culprit would be the slave cylinder so I decided to replace all the seals in both the master and slave cylinders and bought the seal kits accordingly. Removing the Master from the car was a simple job, helped by the fact that I've already removed the brake MC twice this year. The 2nd as a result of my ham fisted, heavy handed incompetence leading to a cross threading of the pipe union in the MC resulting in the need for the new MC and brake pipe detailed earlier in my tale. (I promised to try to be more careful this time!)

​I also had previous experience of the working on the slave so, from the dubious comfort of my unpadded driver seat, I set about removing the gear knob, radio speaker, carpet, gear lever grommet, gearbox tunnel and insulating pad which was all much easier than trying to reach the slave from underneath. Once all that was done, the slave come out quite easily and both were taken home for re sealing.

Ye Gods - an engine!

The parts arrived and because I've learned my lesson, I wall papered the utility room in newspaper so Mrs FB wouldn't have an excuse to hospitalise me for inappropriate car maintenance within the household boundaries.
 
Once all surfaces had been hermetically sealed in this fashion, I set about the master cylinder and very quickly had a nice clean and resealed part ready for service. As this had all gone according to plan I set about the slave.
 
The "no longer available" metal cap was gently prised off with a big screwdriver and a pipe wrench with very little damage and set aside for reuse later. All the grease was removed followed by the circlip and the piston was coaxed from the chamber and rubber seal removed.
 
The work area was somewhat cluttered now so I decided to clear away all the greasy paper towels and no longer required parts and chucked it all in the wheelie bin. This was shortly before I discovered that the slave cylinder seal kit did not include a new circlip like the MC kit did! As none of my usual stockists sell this particular part, I had to decide whether to just buy a new slave or to wade through the wheelie bin to find the old circlip.
 
Well a new slave cylinder is 30 quid and as regular readers will know I am terminally skint so I waded through the 10 days of rubbish in the wheelie bin.(2 weeks between collections!!) After an hour of this unpleasantness, I finally located the circlip which had, of course, worked itself to the very bottom of the bin!
 
I was lovingly cleaning the circlip as I walked back into the utility room where I promptly stood on and crushed the "no longer available" metal cap which had rolled un-noticed onto the floor. I may have said some bad words as I was cleaning up before going to order a new slave cylinder.
 
The new slave cylinder arrived and was quickly fitted along with the resealed clutch Master Cylinder. All was bled through and Gearbox tunnel carpet and radio all refitted. As I could now change gear, I went for a nice sunny ride in the surrounding country side.
 
Does anyone know how to get newsprint off of utility walls?

to be continued

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