Loud "clonk" from front

[DavAmb]

Dunno if I mentioned it in the intro but BessieForrester (all my vehicles are called Bessie) had a mysterious loud "clonk" from somewhere up the front end that's been worrying me. Seemed to be coming from the passenger footwell, started off only when braking on reversing and got worse to the point of hearing it over most bumps that the LHS front traversed (quite a few on my trips).

So decided to run her up on the ramps last night and have a squizz (as you do on a cold and wet mid-winter night). Found the nut that secures the rear LH wishbone pivot to the chassis was loose. By "loose" I only mean perhaps a quarter turn until totally tight, but this was enough to allow movement - probably less than a quarter of a mm, but amplified by the firewall made is quite loud.

While I was looking around under the car, I did notice one thing, there's some plastic add-on bits behind the wheel-well, just ahead of the front doors. These have trapped a fair bit of muddy sludge against the body - will have to get in there with the pressure washer and try and blast it all out. Seems to be a bit of a design over-sight or perhaps a bit of planned obsolescence?

So, that's one crossed off the list, just waiting for that plug seal and rocker gasket set! Having cleaned out the plug wells again on Sunday I'm back to occasional misfires come mid-week.

 

[Ratbag]

^ Gidday DA

I name mine "Roo1", "Roo2", "Number 1 Colt", "Number 2 Colt", "Number 3 Colt".

Nearly as imaginative ... :lol:.

Glad that you found that! A small amount of looseness where it isn't meant to be can have catastrophic consequences .

As for noises, in my Wolseley 24/80, I was convinced I had a problem with my front suspension/shocks. I swear that's where the squeaking noises were coming from.

During some other work (topping up the fluid in the rear shocks, IIRC), I replaced the plastic leaf spring separators in the rear springs. The noise coming from the front end disappeared ... :iconwink: :rotfl:.

 

[Kevin]

Useful tip - thanks DA

 

[Rally]

Only one problem? You must have been Wolseley's luckiest customer! Is it true that 24 stood for horespower and 80 stood for the number of days it took to service the car?:biggrin:

As for noises, in my Wolseley 24/80, I was convinced I had a problem with my front suspension/shocks. .

 

[Ratbag]

^ Cheeky bugger ... :lol: :rotfl:.

When I got it, it had the 32 mm (?) Stromberg downdraught carby that was factory equipment. The engine was an agricultural design, but bullet proof. Nice long stroke straight six.

The local BMC workshop manager rang me one day and asked if I would like to swap my standard carby and manifold for a factory set of 3x 1.25" SU carbies, because they couldn't get them in tune, or to stay in tune. Seeing as how I had experience doing this with the 3x 2.75" SU carbies on the E-Type (IIRC), I jumped at the chance. They would do all the work for nothing to both cars, and I got the SU carbies for nix.

Once I tuned them properly, I reckon it must have added around 20-30 BHP to the engine (that's what the factory bumf claimed too); but it made a huge difference to the maximum torque and torque curve.

Flaming thing had three on the tree. Knowing what I know now, I would have swapped this out for the 15/60 four on the floor. But hey, I was nearly 22 y.o. at the time ...

Lovely car with Avon radials on it. Only reason I sold it was because it was black - impossible to keep clean, and I got run into about 6 times in 18 months!! All but once I was stationary, in broad daylight. The other driver's response was always the same "I just didn't see you" ...

 

[DavAmb]

The Wolseley sounds like a nice machine, bit of a classic car nut myself, the MX5 mightn't be a classic yet, but one day... Looking forward to "For the Love of Cars" tonight.

Also learned recently from a friend who has an Oka about greasing cart springs - on the Oka you don't. Reason being that friction between the leaves as the spring compresses and rebounds provides some of the system damping. I was impressed, simple but obvious once it's pointed out.

Now I've sorted the paragraph formatting, better go back and fix my original post.