Why I never made the car show

I was driving in a hurry as I had not left time to get to the Classic on the Common car show in Harpenden. Typically if you’re in a hurry you usually meet somebody who clearly is not; anybody who knows the road between Hemel Hempstead and St Albans will tell you it is single lane apart from a 50 metre stretch which goes under the motorway, I was following a Ford Fiesta who refused to go above 30mph. As soon as I could, I accelerated pass them (this does not happen very often in a Morris minor) and I think I even touched 50 mph for a split second, this I later came to regret. As I drove along I felt the car was running well but the sky was becoming very dark and rain was starting. The club had arranged for all of us to meet up in the car park at the Ancient Briton Pub.

By the time I arrived it was raining hard and both the chairman and Charlie were already sitting waiting in the car park, in fact it was raining so hard nobody was getting out of the cars and all communication appeared to be done by winding down the window and shouting. Soon we were joined by Mike and Don and with the rain still coming down (well it doesn’t go up) we all set off in convoy. I started off almost at the tail end with only Charlie behind me, as I was pulling out of the car park I noticed that the engine appeared to have a permanent misfire and a knocking noise coming from the engine under load. I decided not to leave the car park but looked at the engine hoping it was only something easy to fix, no such luck. Everything appeared to be in order under the bonnet and it was then that Charlie pulled up behind me and asked if I had left the choke on as my engine was blowing a lot of smoke. I told Charlie to let the others know I was abandoning my trip to the show and would try and limp it home, fingers crossed and all that. I gave Charlie my ticket as I wouldn’t need it and he kindly offered to follow me for a while to see how I got on, which I appreciated.

The journey home was approximately 5 miles but felt more like 500 , with a top speed of about 25 mph and the engine rattling badly whenever I put any load on. I soon collected a large queue behind me of frustrated drivers, some indicating they thought I was running on two cylinders by their hand gestures; Isn’t it funny how you never notice the slight inclines in the road until times like this ? Every hill, regardless how slight, sent the engine rattling and I expected to see a piston fly out through the bonnet. Well I did eventually make it home with Charlie still following me to make sure. As you can appreciate, after getting home relieved, all I wanted to do was put the cover on her (funny when cars play up they suddenly become female) and try and forget about it for a while.

Forward wind a couple of weeks I have now had my holiday and the sun was shining (yes that day we experienced summer) I had been let off work early and decided to have a look at her (still female as I am still angry with her). I thought about what had happened and concluded maybe the fact that the misfire happened immediately as well as the knocking noise that it could have been a broken valve spring. So with this is mind, I removed the rocker cover and with the ignition off I pressed the solenoid to turn the engine over, well that blew my first theory as all the valves were moving as they should. My next thought was to do a compression test so having removed the sparkplugs, I fitted my cheap and cheerful compression gauge (which is similar to a tyre pressure gauge) but who said you need expensive tools to diagnose faults on cars? Compression number one was 75 PSI number two was around 75 PSI as well, then things got interesting with number 3 and number 4 having no compression, this cheered me up as I was certain now I knew what had happened and why I should not have overtaken the Fiesta.

Removing the cylinder head was fairly routine, apart from the fact I forgot the bypass hose which happened to be worn out anyway and fell off. It only took me half an hour to take the head off but my aching back reminded me why I stopped working on cars and now teach motor vehicle technologies . With the head removed, the problem was easy to diagnose with a big chunk missing out of the cylinder head gasket between cylinders 3 & 4 (see photo above). Looking at the state of the gasket it appears that I drove home on two cylinders and not three as I thought at the time. The fact that I got home is a tribute to the strength of the engine design itself. I also think the straw that broke the camels back so to speak was putting my foot down to overtake the blooming Fiesta. Having cleaned up the mating surfaces everything else appeared to be ok so I decided to give the cylinder head a fresh coat of green paint.

A week later I was sitting at home alone (no tears it was great) on bank holiday Monday with the sun shining, I decided the time had come to put the car back together. There is no greater feeling than having time to work at your own leisure on your classic car (well there is but I need to keep this clean). I put the head on, tightened it down to the correct torque and then came across my only problem. When I fitted the pushrods back one of them refused to sit back properly and sat proud by about an inch. This wasn’t a major problem as all I had to do was remove the side plate to find the cam follower sitting out of its housing, a simple job to refit and I also had a spare gasket for it too.

The rest of the job went fine and I was soon at the point of firing her up (still female, still angry). I decided to play safe and crank the engine over on the solenoid with the ignition switch off so the oil could pump around the engine before it fires up and any load is put on the engine. Having done that I sat in the cab and started the car it all ran well, with a road test confirming that he (now male everything ok) was now back in business with a little more power than before. So watch out if you are a slow Fiesta driver.

I hope you find this article of some interest

Regards

Paul Cantellow