15th April, 2015. Window winders and more tidying

I have had dealings with doors on several cars over the years and always disliked working on them and I can show you the scars to prove why.  There is never quite enough space to get your hands in and those edges always seem to be razor sharp.

The side windows on the TR7 have always rattled and the passenger window winder has got progressively worse so it was time to fix them.  A while ago I bought a complete Rimmers window overhaul kit for less than half price from a guy who was moving to New Zealand, so I had all the bits ready.  I also had the winder mechanisms from the old red car which seem to be as new so proposed to use them rather than the new Rimmers ones which I can sell later.

The rattle was easily fixed because it was just the usual problem with the felt having slipped down the guide.  I used a new felt but also added a bit of glue behind it to be sure it didn't slip again. I also followed the tips in the guide written by Mike Rotherham on the TR7/8 Forum.   

 http://www.forum.triumphtr7.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=20318

The guide was a great help in advising the sequence of how to get the winder mechanism back in and the rollers into their guides.  Even following it the expletives were frequent but it all went into place eventually and operated nicely until I found that one of the rollers (the white one) had come out of its track.  I put it back but it came out again when the window was fully down.  Bugger !!

Then I remembered some polystyrene blocks I found in the bottom of the doors in the old red car. Could there be any connection?
Bingo!
That block was there to limit how far the window can drop and prevents the roller coming out.

Old red car polystyrene block

My new version showing how it limits drop

Thinking about it since I remember that the winder mechanisms usually have a tab bent over to stop them going off the end of the teeth so I wondered if the winder mechanism I used did not have that done?  Its hard to see down inside the door and I don't want to take them apart to find out but next time I go in there we may find out.

The other problem was with the outer weather strip. The old ones have some kind of stiffener built in but new ones do not and are much more floppy.  I found it impossible to get the spring clips to work on the new one and ended up putting the old strip back on for now.

16th April - Brake Fluid Leak
I noticed was a small puddle of fluid under the car below the oil filter area. At first I thought the T piece or oil pressure gauge pipe was leaking but a quick check showed it was brake fluid. I thought that maybe I had done something wrong when I fitted new seals in the master cylinder which would be really bad news but then I noticed some fluid ON TOP of the master cylinder so it must be a reservoir seal leaking. It was a quick job to take the reservoir off, clean up the seals and refit with some red brake grease to aid the fitting. Problem solved, but it has also left the paintwork below the area damaged so it will need tidying up again.

New servo and master cylinder with leak fixed!

Spark Plug Tubes
The day before the Corinium Run I was putting together a toolkit and thought it would be a good idea to check I had the correct spark plug socket but when I tried it in the engine I found the plug tube was half full of oil and a quick check showed that three of the tubes had oil in them. 

That's oil down in there!

Evidence of previous owners attempt at sealing with silicone

You can see in the pictures that someone had previously attempted to seal the tubes using silicone and it must have worked for a while because I had not had the leak before. The rubber seals on the old tubes were rock hard and useless but I had a set of replacement tubes ready for building my new engine so these had to be called into service now. Not a difficult job but a couple of hours doing something I hadn't expected to do.

Old and new tubes for comparison