The Garden Find

Ground Control

A problem that I've had with the car from the start, and one that pre-dated my ownership was an intermittent fault with the starter motor, or so it would seem. The symptoms of this issue seemed to suggest that the solenoid was not managing to throw out the starter. Turning the key would result in the starter clicking, but no engine turning. The solution was to tap the starter body with a small bar, it worked, every time. Not to say that the fault happened every time, once a day at most, usually on a cold start.

To be fair it was a brilliant security feature. You'd need two people to start the car and at least one would have to have inside knowledge of the tap the starter technique. Kind of like those duel, turn the keys at the same time deals. At the very least it might lead a potential thief to believe the car is broken. Anyway It did have it's downsides. A pain when you need to get going, and it's raining too obviously. Or indeed any solo trips could result in myself becoming stranded until a helpful stranger came by.

I finally decided to do something about it. I'd start by replacing the starter motor with the spare from my red car. I'd heard though that manual and auto starters were different. Fortunatly for me, mine matched perfectly, despite the cars being pre and post facelift respectively.


Taking the spare off the engine took no time at all.


It's in good shape, just needs a wire brushing. Being aluminium, the mounting face will clean up very easily.


By contrast, it;s going to be a bit more difficult to take this one out.


I unbolted it, and got to wondering how I'd ever get it out. As can be seen I've got masses of sealant on the manifold and down pipe.
It's new and working, I'm not going to split it.






What I decided to do was to take out the heat shield on the underside of the manifold. This would be a challenging job itself.
There is virtually no room down there and undoing the two bolts and a nut was just a few spanner notches each time.

When it came to actually getting this piece out, I had to tease it gently with a tyre leaver, as it would get stuck along the coolant lines.
it did come out though. However I could still not get the starter out. In order to do this, I'd have to remove the heat shield on the starter itself.
After much fiddling I eventually achieved this.


Hey presto! And two identical starters. Now all I have to do is put the new (older) one back in.


Here is where it needs to fit back into...

After a little while I got it all back in and wired up, it didn't take too long to install, much easier once you know how to use the space.
So the moment of truth! Will it work?

I went to the key, turned it.... and.. silence. Not a hint of life.

"Oh dear" I thought.

I checked all the obvious things, and yes, I'd plugged in / bolted up all three wires. Hmm.
It was time to check the function of my original starter. Had the spare failed? The original also showed no sign of life though.
I've just gone from a working car to completely non-functional. Time to troubleshoot.

My father, who has dealt with 30 year old starters in Linde forklifts at our previous work came to help. We set the stater up in the engine bay and attempted
to make it go. No luck. Ahh but how is it grounded? we sourced a heavy copper cable. I held this firmly onto the starter body and onto some bare metal on the engine. Then bridged the connection between the starter and the battery directly. It spun into life. Both did infact. It would seem that all along it was a problem of a poor Earth. The starter body bolts directly onto the transmission, albeit with a steel gasket in between. This was not providing a sufficient earth. I cleaned up the meeting faces and set about finding a way to enhance the earth.



I'd use the same copper cable that we found earlier. It is bolted onto the starter via the bolt hole for the heat shield. The other end would be bolted directly onto the transmission.
safe to say that once assembled the car started first time, and so far all subsequent times without any issues. Si I'm glad this has been a free fix and at the end of the day, quite a simple one too.

Next job is to get my tracking done and to fix my fuel filler neck.. again. And then before too long its off to France!

 

Yeah I was aware of the relay mod, but didn't believe it was related to the issue at first due to the car starting after the solenoid housing was tapped. And it was / is a strong starter when it did go. So that was a red herring. Probably, I'm not using the same starter, I guess I wont know until I put it back in for some reason, but I imagine it's fine and this was simply a ground issue.

For the time being I'll be leaving it as is. I've got some more pressing issues to sort out before the Holiday. Afterwards though, when I've got time and the car is not committed to anything I'd like to slow things down again and get to sorting out all the little bits and pieces to continue improving it

 

Mission Is Still All Still Go

Now that the windscreen has been fitted I can finally drive the car. And now the tracking is finally done too, so I can drive the car without ruining the tyres. Quite an important thing when it's got about 1,800 miles to cover in the space of two weeks.

So I've been putting some miles on while I can to do some proper testing. I have to commute nearly 40 miles every day, and the majority of that is on motorway. This is perfect for testing. Although the journey is short in comparison it's show the car to be completely reliable, stable and exhibiting no strange or concerning behavior. Temps and pressures are all good. Fluids are good, both engine and transmission.

My most major and important check has been on the brake lines. The new lines for the rear are not solid, and although when installed looked to be fine, may have moved, or experienced some issues. True enough one side was a disaster in waiting. The line was getting caught on the edge of some metal, and slowly wearing through the rubber, just down to the braid. If this continued, it would saw my line in half. So I changed the angle of the line to try and avoid the metal edge. when checking the gap between any other moving or static items was fine, but after a bit of driving it was apparent that the line had moved again and was rubbing on the wheel rim. Again wearing the rubber coating to the metal braid. The last thing I want is a burst line!

To rectify this I have redirected the line completely, and anchored it not to the near by chassis, but the fuel tank, which happens to have a handy flat area with a bolt hole. The line now moves away from the wheel and down away from the chassis. To aid in the durability of the line I've cut a rubber tube to cover the line and offer some extra protection to the worn areas and to help prevent any more unforeseen wear.


There are a few other things I need to deal with. My indicator cancellation system is way out of line. What's more the dash light for the right indicator has stopped working. So I've got to pull out the cluster again to replace the bulb. Regarding the sound system the stock speakers in the front are just not powerful enough to keep up with the back and beat road noise. I had hoped they would be, but I don't want to destroy them by pushing them too hard either, since they are in pretty mint condition, not bad considering the age. I've gone ahead and bought another pair of Alpine SPG c10 4" speakers to replace them.

To get them to fit I'm installing them into the holes for the bass reflectors. The driver speaker plops straight in, no modification needed. Passenger side needs a small lump of plastic cutting away to allow the magnet to fit in.




I have cut my uglier spare speaker boxes, so I still have a nice clean unaltered pair.


Fits like a dream.


I may have been able to get away with a smaller hole!


I was thinking that I might have to take the centre column out to realign it. But this little purple collar is responsible for the indicator cancellation. It's free spinning on the center column, turned only by the wheel. In the past when I first took it apart I did my best to make sure that I put it all back right. But perhaps I didn't get the purple collar in the right position. I didn't get the steering wheel in the right position at least. When I left for the MOT the steering wheel was way out. I'd taken it off and plonked it on straight to quick fix it. Anyway, now all should be good. A little plastic friendly grease has been added to smooth it a bit more.




I need to clean those doors. But I'm adding the speaker right now.


Stock is nice condition! even has the fabric.


Getting ready to do the passenger side. It took me absolutely ages to get the glove box back in. It will only fit and close when the black metal bar is mounted behind the plastic of the centre console, not in front. Even though the little plastic peg would suggest this is the wrong way round. It took me ages to figure out.


It's now just one day over two weeks before Le Grand Tour... I hope me and the Celica will be ready for it!

 

As you all may or may not be aware I've been planning to take the car on holiday to the French Alps. In fact shortly after the beginning of the restoration I had decided that I wanted to do this. Initially I'd planned to do a small university reunion and tour the Alps with four people including myself. This slowly whittled to just myself and one friend. But actually this would be for the best as the two of use alone had enough stuff to completely fill the car.


Packing was a struggle. We Both had studied photography, so along with all the usual camping equipment needed for two weeks away we both had a crazy amount of camera gear too. It took about a day to get the car packed, along with a huge checklist of mechanical and other bits and pieces that needed to be seen to.


The itinerary was quite large. I expected to cover between 1,750 miles and 1,900 miles. Along these miles I also expected to be tacking some fairly high mountain passes, or cols.


Col Des Saisies - 1657m


Cormet de roselend - 1968m


Col de l'iseran - 2770m (The highest paved pass in the Alps)


Col du Galibier - 2642m


Col de l'Izoard - 2360m


Col de Vars - 2108m


Col de la Bonette - 2715m / 2802m (The higher part is a loop, not a pass, so the title goes to the l'iseran.)


Col de la Madeleine - 2000m


And here is the rough route planned.






It looked as if there would be problems even before the car left the house, not problems with the car at least though. The port of Dover had been experiencing severe delays, up to about 16 hours due to extra security and less staff than usual. Oh and no plan on how to deal with this situation either. It looked grim. I decided that I'd leave the house at 2am to try and beat any traffic, even though my boat sailed at 5:50am, hey at least if I was early I might have some time to relax at the port before a long drive. That would remain to be seen though, I stopped my packing, panicking and other frantic checks and tried to get some sleep.





Home to Dover


The unholy early hours of the morning. About 1am and the last of the packing is taking place. Things like passports and food, pillows and sanitaries, the last to be used before leaving home. It's cold and there is a light drizzle in the air. Empty streets, lit sodium orange. It is still and the air of excitement is only damped by the anxious thoughts concerning the huge task ahead of both me and the car. Taliesin, my friend could relax, being the guest. I sit in the car and fumble the sat-nav to dover. I turn the key, the engine starts and so does Le Grand Voyage.


The car is heavy, heavier than it ever has been before lower than ever too. Road humps take extra care. But we are on the way, everything is working and the trip has begun.


Some ways down the motorway to dover something strange happened. As i accelerated to overtake someone, and move out of lane there was an enormous shuddering. It kind of felt like active ABS, or a wheel skipping for traction. I put it down to the good old dreadful state of english roads.


We arrived at the port in good time, no sign of any delays or traffic. Good. Passport control was smooth. The car was checked over by security, it was fine. Check in time.


my ferry tickets have been canceled. Completely unknown to me, heck I've been charged for them, but apparently they are not worth the paper they are written on. I have to fork out £270 for new tickets, on top of the £110 that I'd already paid some months before. A big shout out here to Direct ferries (http://www.directferries.co.uk/) for being utterly fantastically useless and I highly recomend that no one bothers using them.


Anyway the good folks at DFDS did book me onto the same ferry, so my time table would not be messed up. Waiting for a cheaper ferry would have meant sailing at 9am. Which would have meant arriving in Calais at 11:30am instead of 7:30am. Not possible when you've got at least 5 and a half hour drive, camping and cooking waiting for you. Oh yeah, we're headed to Dole, I'm not going to attempt Calais to the Alps in one go, a bit much.





Calais to Dole


Time to drive on the wrong side of the road! And time to get cracking! Or so I thought. Turns out the shuddering was not caused from english roads, more my car. Any acceleration on the motorway would result in subtle, building to severe lateral shuddering. Something fairly major was going wrong with either the transmission or the engine. It was time to go into limp mode. I could cruise at constant speed and gently accelerate up to high speed. As soon as I felt any shudder coming on I could lift up off the pedal and then gently get back on it. Down but not out. Hills were a challenge. I couldn't just press on the accelerator more to keep up speed. I had to keep sill and slowly climb, dropping down speed and hoping not to get too slow. The shudder would happen in 3rd and OD, So it seemed that it might be a fuel issue. Perhaps one injector was not working fully and starving the engine under heavy load, causing a big miss.

I'm pretty worried at this point about the dynamic of the holiday, perhaps all those high mountain passes are just a pipe dream. I'll have to stick to the valleys, or worse, just one location... or even worse I might not make it.

However the garden fine continued on and we reached dole in planned time, at around 4pm




Probably looking worse for wear after a 1am start and all that driving and stress.


We made it! All three of us.

We had a little walk around Dole during the early evening, quite a nice centre.





Clearly we don't get much sun in England.


















We turned in for a fairly early night. Tomorrow the journey will take us into the heart of the Alps, or at least we plan it to.

 

Autoroute des Titans et Autoroute Blanche

We enjoyed our short stay at dole, but after just one night it was time to hit the road again and press on to Chamonix Mont Blanc, where we would be staying for a few days. The previous night I had done a visual inspection of the engine, nothing had changed from the last 3 weeks. All electrics, hoses and such all checked out. I'd been driving the car to work and back, which was about 40 miles of motorway driving each day and performance had been fine, just two days ago I could push the pedal to the metal, drop a gear and eat up the hills along my commute. The only two things new are the extra weight, and one full tank of fuel from Tesco. without making any changes to the car we took the tent down and managed to squeeze everything back into the car. After a short while we were on the road again.

Today the problem with the shuddering seemed to be even worse, a bad sign for the long climbs ahead too. Still though I could cruise along at decent speed. It was just the long hills where I really suffered and ended up doing only about 40mph. Although I should note that driving through towns and slower environments seemed completely fine.

Undeterred we pressed on, albeit with lorries overtaking us sometimes. Embarrassing. However the Autoroute des Titans and Autoroute Blanche are absolutely amazing highways to drive on. Half the time on stilts skirting the edge of the mountain, or large bridges over the valley then into deep long tunnels. The quality of the infrastructure is quite phenomenal.



Despite the issues we arrived in Chamonix in good time. The landscape was awesome And the weather had held out long enough for us to pitch the tent and settle in. The car could now have a few days rest too. It was time to get the old legs working and do some crazy hikes.


The Celica and Mont Blanc in the distance. I want to find some nicer locations to shoot the car though, not really many around Chamonix. Hoping that I can get some good shots on the top of various cols.



Seen from our campsite this peak is the Aiguille du midi, or Needle in the middle. It's 3,842m high and has a restaurant on the top. we're planning to go up to it at some point. I'm pretty good at climbing, it's another hobby. Climbing into cable cars that take you up to things that is.

On the first day though we were going to visit Lac Blanc. Takes a cable car and a chair lift just to get to the start of the walk.












Mont Blanc



Lac Blanc was very rewarding!

 

Aiguille du Midi et Col de l'iseran

Before leaving chamonix, there is one last thing to do, ascend to the top of the Aiguille du Midi (the peak photographed during sunset in the last post. I believe this to be the highest point in the alps that any normal person can reach, requiring only being able to climb some stairs, not be terrified of heights and able to make do with just 60% oxygen at an altitude of 3842m high. For me this trip up to the peak would provide some of the most exotic views of the Alps, visual and photographic, it's a whole different world up there, here are but a few shots.


The cable car up to the summit.


On the way out to where the climbers exit the mountain.










A small pano, looking down into the Chamonix valley and high Alps on the right. You can see the Celica down there in the valley too..



The Cols

It was now time to move on from Chamonix and travel south. To do this required our driving over quite a few high passes within one day, the least of all, the highest in the whole Alps.

Approaching from the north the Col de l'iseran is an accent of 1,955 m (6,414 ft), at an average grade of 4.1%. The last 15 km (9 mi) starts at Val-d'Isère and climbs 895 m (2,936 ft) at a consistent average of 6%.
The descent is 32.9 km (20.4 mi) in length, falling 1,371 m (4,498 ft) at an average grade of 4.2%. The final 13.4 km (8.3 mi) falls 977 m (3,205 ft) at an average gradient of 7.3%, with several sections in excess of 10%. Hope my brakes are put together well.

Although I'm not too concerned about getting down, I'm wondering if the car will actually make it up. Not only are these hard climbs, it's also fully loaded.

I would first tackle the Col Des Saisies - 1657m. The drive started out well. I was taking it easy, and there was a small hint of shuddering initially, but the problem seemed to vanish over the course of a few hair pins. Gear ratios were not ideal though, 1st was far too low and 2nd too high. The gap between the two quite pronounced, either climb at 4krpm or 2.5k. For the majority of the drive up I'd be sat in 2nd, and occasionally the car would venture into 3rd.



One down, two to go. Next up was the Cormet de roselend - 1968m. A really beautiful part of the Alps.


lac de roselend.







Sitting pretty.





At the top. And my first photo of the car in front of a col marker like this, I have to say, I was pretty excited about it.


The Trip down into borg st maurice, the next largest town along the route was quite hard. Very steep, tight and twisty. And hot. very hot. I should have fixed the AC for sure. Towards the bottom I got one of the biggest scares of the holiday yet. My brake warning light came on. while still on the decent I cautiously plucked the handbrake up and pushed it back down firmly. Perhaps the button was stuck. Hmm nope, brake warning light still on. Low brake fluid. Yup I'm going to die. The brakes did not feel bad though. I cautiously kept going, perhaps only 1km left. I didn't tell Tali about this situation, he needn't know for the moment. I got to the bottom fine and we pulled into a large Super U, a big super market. I checked the fluids and well. everything was fine. The light never came on again.

After buying some ice lollies we set off again.


A long video, so skip about, perhaps watch in 2x speed. Its the whole l'iseran, top to bottom. Suffice to say, we made it!


A little victory photoshoot is in order!












It was nice and cool up there too!

But still yet more driving to be done. I had to make it back down to the campsite. Actually this was quite a pleasant drive down, and showcased some of my favourite style of Alps.







And at last finally at the destination. Lanslebourg. What a day!




It was high time for a cup of tea!

 

Haha yes, many! But they never make it to the public!

 

Le massif de la Vanois

Lansleborg is situated just along the bottom of the southern valley of the Vanoise mountains. These mountains are not as high as the Mont Blanc range, they have their own unique characteristic in the region, as do all the independent massifs. The Vanois is high in places, but it's quite meadowy.

There was no rest for the car either. Most of the walks in the Vanois are fairly deep and high into the massif, too much to walk in a day for sure. So it was up some more little mountain roads. Thankfully performance was all good. The shuddering issue did not seem to come about at all for mountain climbs.




This seemed like the perfect spot for lunch.


The weather started to close in on us. Once again we were up the top of a mountain completely ill prepared. No coats no nothing. Wow the rain was cold!





I really like these types of mountain. The pastures are great.


We basically pegged it back to the car though, the weather seemed to be getting worse and we both didn't want to risk getting too cold.
It was time to go pop the kettle on and have a relaxed evening.

soon after we got back to the tent the weather really did close in. There was an absolutely enormous thunderstorm. It was so loud, like the mountains around use were tumbling down. The rain was intense. For a while I was worries that the tent might leak, soon though my mind turned to the car. Hmm I hope that sunroof can take it!

 

Col du Mont Cenis

Another day another col. This time we are going to visit the lake at the top of the Mont Cenis col. This is also a pass into the Italian alps, so it's a fairly major road. Not so much the tight and edgy col, but still loads of hairpins.

The Celica seems to have settled into the mountain life quite happily. It's now done so much climbing and descending that I have no worries about if it will make it or not, it's just completely out of my mind. Which is really nice because it makes the driving all that more enjoyable.

we weren't actually expecting to find much exciting at the top, rather that we were going to have a quite relaxed day doing not much, but actually it turned out to be a very interesting place.


First off it was a really nice morning as far as interesting weather went. This was the view from the campsite. Nothing like having a cup of tea in front of this!




Lac Cenis and the Italian alps in the distance









We started to walk down to the lake. just on the bottom right of this photo you can see the side of an old bunker. There were no paths down this little valley, so the bunker itself was pretty clean, no litter or anything like that.



Lakeside was really pleasant for a while. It was rather exposed however and the sun was beating down viciously. It had turned out to be a very hot day.





Time to go in!


It was completely pitch black, cold and super creepy.






The church and museum.


All in all it was a good day. The next day was set aside for travelling, again another mighty stint of cols and hot weather to get to our next destination.

 

Likewise, hopefully I'll be able to attend a UK meet before too long. This last year things were a bit tight on achieving the holiday, and although I will hopefully be doing it again next summer, most of the work is done now

 

Col du Galibier, Col d'Izoard et combe du Queyras

Lanslebourg had been great fun and although there was so much of the Vanoise that we haddn't seen it was time to embark on our most southern leg of the adventure. Down to Guillestre. We would be traversing two major cols and crossing from one department to another, the Savoie to the Hautes Alpes: Firstly the Col du Télégraphe (1566m / 5138ft) Then the Col du Galibier (2642m / 8668ft) followed by the Col d'Izoard (2360m / 7742ft) And finally one gorge, the combe du Queyras. All in all this would be a journey of nearly a hundred miles, with a total ascent of roughly 3859m / 12621ft and descent of 4221m / 13848ft These interim traveling days were certainly not a break for the car!


As usual the weather was hot. I was wishing that I'd gotten the AC working before the trip. Nevermind. Open windows and sunroof gave us some relief. And on the climbs the higher you get the cooler the air. We didn't have a huge amount of free time to get from Lanslebourg to Guillestre, in fact it was rather tight. Between taking down the tent and packing the car plus travel time, there isn't a great deal left over to find a campsite, pitch up and cook dinner. So most of this day was spent in the car. Oh and the disclaimer, it's my friends music.


Climbing the Col du Télégraphe the Col du Galibier.




The top of the Galibier is really interesting. Not only are you changing departments, but the geology changes too. The cluster of mountains in the distance are the Ecrins, a large massif in the southern alps sporting many peaks above 3000m and up to 4100m high.


The road up.


The way back down.


Another Milestone for the car!

After a short while we carried on towards Guillestre. Onto one of the most distinctive landscapes of any Col, through the Casse Déserte. But first we had to get down from the Galibier.

The way down


Climbing and descending the Col d'Izoard.



As ritual goes, another image of the car atop the col!





Again we couldn't stay long. But it was refreshingly cool up there. We carried on down the col and towards Guillestre.







Now all we have to do is relax and eat food! An exhausting day under the heat to say the least.