Lean fuel mixture - possibly partially blocked jets, maybe a vacuum leak.
Ignition timing retarded.

But I don't see any blowby coming out the breather pipe, so I'd take a lot of convincing about piston rings stuck in the grooves.

Rob

Today was an exercise in dodging rain.  I took advantage of two brief clear periods to zip in the drain slot repair, and fix the hole in the top front of the inner LHR quarter panel.



Today's discovery: the "Strip and Clean" style of disc for an angle grinder works fantastically well.

And thus endeth four weeks' leave.

Rob

Craig,

Don't be in too much of a hurry to behead the grey.  If you have a compressor and a 14 mm spark plug adaptor, you can troubleshoot low compression easily -

Take the manifolds off.

Go through the firing order with each cylinder at TDC of the compression stroke.  Squirt a little WD-40 or kerosene on top of the valve heads via the intake and exhaust ports, then pressurise the combustion chamber (you'll need to stop the motor from turning).

Listen.  A deep wheezing sound down in the engine's guts means leaking piston rings.  Bubbling sounds indicate leaking valves.

If the compressions you obtained are evenly low, check the calibration of your compression gauge.

Oh, and if you have a vacuum gauge, you can check for head gasket leaks.  Here, it's best to loosen off the rocker pedestal bolts and nuts completely, so all the valves are closed.
Pressurise (say) no. 2, and connect the vacuum gauge to no. 3's spark plug hole.  Any positive pressure at all in no. 3 means a head gasket leak between the two cylinders.

Repeat the test with cylinders 4 and 5.  These two pairs of cylinders in grey motors tend to have poor head gasket sealing.

Rob

P.S. - there's a bloke in Bungendore who has a freshly built grey motor on a stand, with all accessories, twin Strombergs and tubular headers.  Would you be interested?

And so it came to pass.  We are by no means out of the woods yet.

Cleaning underbody schutz away from the drain slot in the LHR inner quarter panel.  Rust scale fell away.  Screwdriver blade went through the metal on both sides of the slot.  I made a replacement drain slot piece and cut some of the inner quarter panel away.  Removed more underbody sealer, and a nice big bolus of rust fell away, revealing hole in the outer quarter panel, the one which I thought was sound.



OK, so one repair section has become two.  No, three.  Because there's a mirror-image hole to yesterday's, at the top front of the inner quarter panel.

Rob

Retrograde Manoeuvre:



The script is well-known by now.  Cleaning the coal-tar-based underbody sealer off, revealing rust scale, which hid perforations, which became the world's biggest air-welds . . .

Most likely I'll have a few more of these to contend with.

Rob

Craig,

Look for the thread entitled "The Black Art of Cooling Grey Motors":

https://forum.fefcholden.club/index.php?topic=26399.0

I made my stand out of galvanised right-angle sections from Bunnings and axle stands.

Rob

Spare Wheel Well, part II -

"Tread".  It looked easy.  Took a surprising amount of time to hammer the convex curve into a flat piece of sheet.  This, I think, is where an English wheel would come into its own.  I just used hammer, dolly, and sandbag, with much checking of the curves in both directions.



Rob

Conveniently, Rare Spares reproduces the lower spring clips for FE-FC front quarter windows.

My preferred method for removing the glass from the frames is an oven preheated to 100 deg.

Is the pivot for the quarter window lock still firmly in place?  I have had to braze mine back in.

Rob

Spare Wheel Well, part I -

MAP-gas torch and wire brush to see just how far the rot had spread.  It seems easiest to do the repair in two sections: "sidewall" and "tread".  This is the sidewall.  To keep distortion to a minimum, I found I had to lay in a few short welds, dress them down, then go in firmly with hammer and dolly along the seam.



Rob

Craig,

I have many taillight housings.

Front quarter windows are a world unto themselves.  If you want a top-class job, it's best to separate the top hinge brackets from the frames, and also the lock pivot from the frame (many rivets to drill) and get each component rechromed separately.  Be aware also that the replacement Rare Spares rivets are oversize.  I had to turn them down before I could use them.  Also, chroming reduces hole diameters.

Rob

Craig,

It depends what you want to achieve with the hubcaps, but Electroplating Technology in Queanbeyan does a good thing with steel hubcaps.

Rob

And today I re-installed the (repaired) floor of the rear box member -



Couldn't plug-weld to save my life today.  But they look sort-of OK when dressed.  And on the boot pan side there are nice melt marks, so they can't be all that bad . . .

Rob

- and yet again.

I fishoiled the inside of the RH chassis member, and as I was wiping up the leaks I noticed a few on the inside (of the boot).  The fish oil unerringly found some spots to the rear of last week's repair that had rusted through the boot floor.

Grinder, wire brush (and chalk to mark the oozy locations), and the hot metal glue-gun yet again.

By the way, welding a freshly fish-oiled body part is definitely not recommended procedure.  But you gotta do what you gotta do . . .

Rob

Well done!

Rob

Glenn,

The front seat squab cover on Standards has no side opening.  The seams have piping (if that's the right word) starting at the bottom of the sides, going up, continuing across the top of the seat and down the other side.

I can send you a photo or two of my FC's front seat, if that'd help.

Rob

- and it happened again.  As I was sanding the area I wanted to paint, I noticed a couple of rust stains.  Couldn't help myself.  Got a centre punch and hammer and hit in the middle of the stains.  Ping!  A couple more holes.  Out with the Hot Metal Glue-Gun^TM yet again.

Now, it's beginning to sound like Swamp Castle: "But the fourth one, son, stayed oop."

The inside of the rear box section is red-oxide primed.

And I started repairing the "floor" of the rear box section.

Rob

It keeps on giving.  I went to paint the inside of the rear box section today, and as I was cleaning the inside, I pinged off some rust scale, and . . .



As they say, it's only sheet metal.

Rob

Rain Stops Play.  This is, of course, because there's a cricket match at the SCG.  This is as far as I got -



Scope-creep yet again.  A few little rust holes became five repairs, of which three here.  The others tomorrow (fingers crossed).

Rob

Fuel tank flange and part of rear box section repaired.



The spot-welded seam between the boot floor and bottom part of the box member hadn't been sealed, and mud got in underneath through the gap at the tank corner, leading to the inevitable.

Rob

Trevor,

I should have a usable first-reverse sliding gear, and I have reverse idler gears.  Cluster gears (aka counter gears) in good condition are like hens' teeth.

I have to ask - why do you want to replace them?  Chipped teeth?  Chipped teeth hardly ever happens to reverse idler gears, but more commonly to the first/reverse gear and the cluster gear.  Gears that have been in service for a while tend to round off the "pointing" where the teeth engage.  This isn't a problem, and even minor chipping around the points is tolerable.  Chipped teeth become a problem when, say, more than a third of the tooth's missing.

The things to watch out for are -

Pitting of the gear teeth, usually in a line along the base of the base of the cluster gear teeth where first gear engages, but also on the first/reverse sliding gear.  This condition makes for noisy first gear.

Pitting of the needle roller bearing bores at each end of the cluster gear.  It isn't a show-stopper if the rest of the gear's in good condition, it just makes for a slightly noisier gearbox in first and second.

If the gearbox is out of the car, and you've taken the bottom cover off, take photos of the sliding gear, cluster gear and reverse idler gear.  Post them up here and I'll tell you what I think based on their condition.

Rob