When road tests go wrong
I had to go out to one of the local villages to recover a Series IIA which had broken down just outside the owner’s house. It was an early 88in hard top in faded green and highly original with all its correct period features, a little tired after a long working life but thoroughly charming and right up my street. The carburettor had finally thrown in the towel after 60 years: with only a limited budget I swapped it for a reproduction Zenith 36IV, which are cheap as chips and usually work well provided they have been correctly assembled in the first place.
To fit a Zenith in place of the older Solex PA40 is not entirely straightforward. You need an adapter plate to fit between the carburettor and manifold, and a different throttle bellcrank assembly as the throttle arm on a Solex moves upward to open, whereas that on a Zenith (or Weber 34ICH replacement) moves downward. I had these bits on the shelf so I fairly quickly had the IIA up and running, ready for road test. It was dark and almost time to pack up and go home, but I thought a successful road test would allow me to finish the day on a high.
As I released the clutch to reverse out of the workshop, at first nothing happened. Then the vehicle suddenly lurched back as the clutch engaged with a bang. I tried again and found that the clutch was slow to engage and the pedal action very heavy. My first thought was a badly worn clutch, but by the time I had driven out of the yard and down to the first junction I was starting to suspect that the clutch hydraulics were not quite as good as they might have been. The clutch pedal feel kept varying: one moment it would be fairly light, then the action would suddenly become much heavier. The time taken for the clutch to engage seemed to vary as well.
By now I had a fair idea of what was causing the problem. Series II and IIA vehicles have a flexible rubber hose between the bulkhead and the clutch slave cylinder. This is a fairly narrow bore (it is actually the same as the brake hose on the rear axle) and in old age will start to break up internally which can cause intermittent blockages. I have seen it a few times. Many years ago I bought a Series IIA on which you could select a gear, let the clutch pedal up, get out, walk once round the vehicle and get back in before it started moving. So I made a mental note to look at the clutch hose and carried on with the road test.
My usual circuit for a short test is probably about three miles long and includes several junctions, a long straight and a village. By the time I reached the village the clutch engagement was starting to feel very odd. I slowed for a right turn, selected second gear, let the clutch out and found I no longer had drive. Here I was, half a mile from the workshop, in the dark and just starting to rain, with an immobile Land Rover, mobile phone back at the workshop, and no one I could call to come to the rescue in any case.
I fiddled about with four-wheel drive, high and low ratio and tried various gears including reverse, just in case the problem was unrelated to the previous clutch issues, but to no avail. Then, suddenly and with no warning, the clutch pedal came back to life. The moment I got the vehicle rolling I made a clutchless change into third gear (possible if you carefully match engine and road speed, and a technique which has got me out of trouble a few times over the years) and drove the rest of the way back to the workshop without touching the clutch pedal at all.
A new hose fixed the problem: the old one was covered in blisters where fluid had been forced under pressure between the inner and outer layers of rubber. From the Series III onwards Land Rover used a larger bore flexible hose which does not usually give the same problems as the II/IIA hose. The older hose (RTC3386) is cheap, not hard to change and worth looking at if you have one of these vehicles.