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1987 Skoda 120 LX 21st Anniversary Edition


Zelandeth

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Good for you keeping her on the road, the older they get the better they look in my opinion. Good solid, dependable and honest cars. My wife is Czech and I'm often out there. There are so many still being used as every day cars, just shows they were made well.

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Well somewhat to my surprise the only fail items were the expected holes getting poked in the offside outer and inner sills. Everything else went through fine. Still plan on changing the brake hoses though as I just don't trust them.

She ran well to and from the test station, though a fuel vaporisation issue did raise it's head when doing a hot start there - manually priming the carb the next time seemed to resolve it - this car has always been a bit prone to that, have to look into it further once we've a bit more time.

Also identified a fuel leak on my post trip check over - dripping right onto the front branch of the exhaust manifold. Just needed the union on the carb nipped up a bit - but goes to show you *why* it's so critical to go over a car that's been off the road for a while with a fine toothcomb once it's had a proper run.

Will be attacking the underside with rust convertor and Dinitrol on Sunday probably (now I know everywhere other than the offside sill is sound). Would do it tomorrow but off to a get together in London tomorrow so will have to wait till Sunday.

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Well with temperatures well over 30C today I spent the vast majority of the day hiding in a room with air conditioning.  Spent the vast majority of my life up in Northeast Scotland so don't handle heat all that well!

 

Still, gave me a good opportunity to start wire brushing and slapping some rust converter on a lot of the areas underneath the car which have a lot of surface corrosion on them.

 

My going theory is that this car has spent a lot of its life sitting somewhere slightly damp.

 

20160719_174903_zpsgqpozfmu.jpg

 

Everything seems to be perfectly solid under that crud (the offside sill excepted), but it looks like something dredged off the Titanic.

 

20160719_174758_zps4cy9ii8s.jpg

 

Yes, the camber on the offside rear wheel is off, one of the semi-trailing arm bushes is to blame for that I believe - it's about number three on the to do list (weld sill, change brake lines, then sort that).

 

The other thing a 30+C day is good for is a cooling system stress test.  Given I've just had the head off, this seemed a prudent thing to do.

 

Firstly I crawled around under the front of the car to link out the thermoswitch to ascertain that the cooling fan did indeed actually work - I was showered with a mixture of bits of rust and cobwebs as confirmation that it did indeed work.  Nice and quiet as well with no sounds of protesting bearings or anything.  Kept myself a wire link on hand so that if the thermoswitch turned out to be duff I could easily dive under there to get the fan going to cool the car.

 

Then started up, using my highly technologically advanced broom handle set the idle to about 1500rpm, and waited what seemed like an eternity...thermostat works just fine, but it doesn't half take a while for the cooling system on these cars to *all* heat up!

 

Eventually crept up to about a needle's width below 90C on the gauge, then the fan kicked in and it sat pretty much rock steady here.

 

20160719_175253_zpsstup9mb0.jpg

 

Then sat there for a good 20 minutes or so - checked with an IR thermometer and it was showing sensible temperatures relative to the reading there though I forgot to actually write them down.  Also showed me that the whole area of the radiator core is doing its work.

 

She's going into the garage on Thursday to get the sill sorted out - crossing my fingers I'll get the car back before the weekend as there's a show on not far from here - the Festival of The Unexceptional - that I'd love to get her along to!

Edited by Zelandeth
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Well as of yesterday afternoon this Estelle has been officially back on the road after £180 worth of welding, which was a lot less than I was honestly bracing for.

Off to the first show of the year on Saturday.

Today's orders of business will include attempting to get the rear view mirror to remain affixed to the windscreen (again) and rustproofing.

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Here's one of the obligatory photos of her at the Briskoda meetup earlier today.  Seemed to be pretty well received by everyone.

 

20160731_123639_zpszsyabaj9.jpg

 

Shame that there weren't any more Estelles in evidence, the only other rear engined car I saw was a rather heavily modified (and immaculate) Rapid.

 

Think the 40-odd mile run each way has actually done the car the world of good, seemed to be running far more nicely on the way home.

Edited by Zelandeth
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Thanks for the compliment! Still got a fair list of things to do though.

[] Get the semi trailing arm bushes changed as they are beyond shot.

[] Look into getting the rust sorted. Most notably the offside rear wheel arch and the offside front wing.

[] Get the seats re-trimmed (as usual for an Estelle!).

[] Sort the rocker cover oil leak - just needs a new gasket.

[] Get the underbody properly rust proofed.

...that's the list as far as I can remember just now!

Looks like we'll have a Lada Riva 1.5E Estate joining the fleet shortly, should make a good companion for the Estelle I reckon!

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Okay, so today she has decided to play up.

 

Starts fine, runs fine under load but has decided that she won't idle for love nor money.

 

Holding the revs up on the throttle there is a definite, erratic misfire.

 

First thought was crud in the carb, especially as I changed the fuel lines this morning.  Whipped it off and sure enough there was a fair amount of gunk in the bottom of the float bowl.  So cleaned that out and set about blowing through all the jets etc with carb cleaner.  What came out of several of the passages didn't smell, look nor feel like petrol.  

 

Made zero difference.  

 

Fine...checked the points, gap wasn't quite right so was duly set to 0.45mm.  No difference.

 

"Hmm" says me.

 

Dodgy condenser?  Need to get my testers on the HT leads so I can confirm whether the spark is dropping out or if there's still a fuelling issue.  I do have a spare carb I could try if it comes to it.

 

Ideas?

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Update:

Checked that I had a good spark, and indeed did. So definitely a fuelling issue. I just happened to have a spare carb floating around so threw that at it, no difference whatsoever. Now what are the odds of two carbs having the exact same fault? Pretty remote I reckon! ...also spotted when I did this that the heat shield under the carb was on back to front...wonder if that had anything to do with my hot starting issue...

Having pretty much exhausted all other logical causes I've come to the conclusion that I've come across a contaminated batch of fuel. Topping the tank off (from another garage!) has improved matters and it will now idle, albeit not being too happy about it.

So, will stick my main carb back on tomorrow (it's jetted for a 130 which seems to get around the pinking issues with modern fuels and gives a bit more get up and go), and then try to decide what to do next. Not sure whether to just burn through it or actually drain the tank (then what do I do with what comes out?).

Either way, won't be filling up at the Texaco garage just around the corner again. If it's caused an Estelle to play up goodness only knows what it will have done to a modern car...

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Yep, the points are looking fine, no visible damage to the faces.  Manually opening/closing them (carefully, with a suitably insulated tool - learned that lesson before...likewise about starter motor solenoids) didn't show any excessive arcing either.

 

I do have a couple of spare condensers floating around somewhere (the 135RiC I had used to eat them for a passtime for some reason I never got to the bottom of) but can't for the life of me remember *where* they are or I would have tried substitution just to cross that off the list.  Based purely on prior experience though I'd expect a weak spark to be evidencing itself under load as hesitation or a lack of power rather than at idle.  As it stands she will go just fine if you put your foot down.

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Glad you enjoyed seeing it, that's the best part of taking cars to shows for me.

Almost 100% on my contaminated fuel theory now, took it out for a quick test run this evening with the normal carb back on and it's intermittently willing to idle and not, and is pinking under hard acceleration which it never normally does (timing was checked and matches the manual figures).

Going to drop by my usual garage tomorrow and pick their brains see if they follow my line of thinking - and to ask how best to deal with a tank of contaminated fuel. ...and it's a good opener for the discussion I want to have about the ancient Krypton engine analyser that's dumped on its end in the yard...

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Tank is metal as far as I'm aware, but the filter is clear (I've fitted a standard disposable filter in addition to the screen built into the pump), fact that both carbs show the same fault when fuel volume and pressure have been checked in addition to checking we have a good spark says a lot I think in this case.

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Couple of things to check that you may not have thought of:

 

 

Check the valve clearances aren't tight, if [when] they close up the idle speed drops considerably and the engine won't run "right"

 

Check the front to rear brake servo hose isn't split/crushed/leaking, giving a direct air leak into the inlet manifold. If it's the original fabric covered hose then it will almost certainly be in need of replacement. I replace those with 10mm diameter copper pipe and join at either end with good bits of the original hose [or new rubber hose if it's really bad].

 

 

Both those things are often overlooked and make a massive difference.

 

Hope that helps :]

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Will certainly check those, valve clearances are due re-checking anyway. What size is the crank pulley bolt actually? Knowing and picking a socket up to suit that would make it a lot less hassle than last time!

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Check that the anti-run on solenoid on the carb is working OK. It won't idle if this sticks or fails.

Pulling the wire off and touching it on and off the terminal with the ignition on will show it's working as you will hear it clicking.

 

 

On an unrelated note, I've had loads of Estelles and they are prone to the accelerator pump jet blocking up. When you operate the throttle it should squirt petrol into the venturi. Easy thing to check. I always used to fit an in-line filter into the fuel hose from pump to carb. There is also a tiny strainer behind a nut at the fuel inlet to the carb.

Edited by TMB
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Will certainly check those, valve clearances are due re-checking anyway. What size is the crank pulley bolt actually? Knowing and picking a socket up to suit that would make it a lot less hassle than last time!

 

Crank bolt is 30mm

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Cheers for that, the carb side of things seems to be okay (the fact that the fault is present on two separate carbs), accelerator jet is clear, though it did need to be reshaped a bit as it was hitting the centre barrel rather than getting pulled smoothly into the carb.

Have already got a filter in place as I've had issues with the accelerator jet clogging before.

This afternoon though it's gone and started to behave again!

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