Sam Glover
How simple jobs can escalate beyond all proportions
Sam is all-too aware how small jobs have a habit of growing.
‘Addressing one problem very often creates several others’
Quick and simple jobs on classic cars have a reliable tendency to escalate into long and complicated ones. Many an engine rebuild has been initiated by an oil-change – and many a restoration has been prompted by prodding a solid-looking sill with a screwdriver.
The causes are manifold. Over its extended existence, a classic car has had the opportunity to amass a rich tapestry of problems. It’s likely to have survived a prolonged period of dormancy or a number of years of being treated as a worthless banger – or both. Poor servicing, lazy or inexpert repairs, hard use, disuse, hapless modifications and simple age-related decay all take their toll.
Addressing one problem very often creates several others. Seized threads, snapped studs and eroded bolt heads can call for advanced surgery. Gaskets tear, plastics shatter, aluminium casting turn to sherbert, dissimilar metals weld themselves together and fiddly fasteners escape your fingers and drop into inaccessible orifices.
Removing one dodgy component potentially opens a Pandora’s box of other dodgy components hiding behind it – or at least a list of jobs that you might as well address while you’re there. If the car is an end-of-life wreck, it’s possible to ignore such things and tackle the job in isolation. If it’s a car you care about, however, it’s hard to avoid taking a more holistic and pedantic approach. That three-fifths worn graphite clutch release bearing will probably be fine for another 20,000 miles – but if you leave it unchanged while you’ve got the gearbox out it’ll forever gnaw at the back of your brain.
An unfortunate series of events
My Volvo 'Amazon' has been a consistently fine example of this escalation problem, having been badly-neglected, badly-restored and badly-modified at points in its chequered past. Recently, though, it really excelled itself. I decided to check its cam timing, which had been nagging at me. Ed Hughes and I have uncovered an epidemic of camshafts that are one tooth out of kilter. I’d attributed the Volvo engine’s docility below 3000rpm to a hot camshaft – but it also seemed plausible that the cam was one tooth retarded.
I whipped off the radiator, fan, fan pulley, crank pulley and timing cover. I uncovered a non-standard steel timing gear set, correctly set. Whoever had fitted the gears, however, had mangled the sump gasket and snotted it back together with a globule of silicone ooze. I reached gaily for my gasket set.
It took three hours to conclude that the sump couldn’t be extricated with the engine in situ. It looked as though it should easily wriggle over the front crossmember – but there was always something that inhibited progress. I unbolted the lowhanging oil pump using keyhole surgery. It came apart and plopped into the sump, ensuring that there was no going back. I uncoupled the engine mounts and jacked it up. I uncoupled the gearbox mounts and jacked that up. I removed the exhaust, carburettors, gearbox crossmember and gearlever and jacked the whole drivetrain further, neatly severing a heater hose. In the end, I uncoupled the remaining tendrils and lifted the engine and gearbox a foot-and-a-half out of the engine bay.
The list of stuff that warranted replacement was weighty: timing cover gasket; heater hoses; manifold gasket; engine, gearbox and exhaust mounts; clutch cylinder seals and flexi-hose; timing cover oil seal and its sealing sleeve on the crank. The metal timing gears had, on close inspection, been gnashing angrily into each other, so I ordered a standard set with a fibre cam gear. ‘That copper pipe looks a bit SNAP,’ I noted as I undid the union on the clutch master cylinder.
Three fairly long days and £250 later, I was back where I’d started. On the plus side, the fibre cam gear and new engine mounts led to a massive reduction in noise, vibration and harshness. On the minus side, the heater bypass pipe – which I’d clearly disturbed during my contortions – sprung a leak on a motorway a week later, and my decision to limp to a welcoming service station ruptured the head gasket. So: the escalation continues. I wonder what the valve seats are like…