Racing Green 89 Mini

Started by MiniDave, August 19, 2016, 01:37:24 PM

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tmsmini

What sensor is that on the shift rod? I have seen the reverse light sensor in the shifter body, but not on the rod, if that is what it is.

MiniDave

#601
I think the big one on the shift rod is the reverse light switch, but there's a small one over on the other side too - I'll have to see what color the wires are and look it up on a wiring diagram I guess.....

Edit: Found this on Somerford - the small switch is the reverse lights switch, the big one operated a solenoid to cut out the vacuum advance in 4th gear. A requirement for German cars only.....

Between 1985 and 1992, Minis bound for Germany were equipped with a vacuum advance cut-out solenoid, operated by a switch on the gearchange.  This naturally necessitated the use of several modified or new gearchange components.

ADU5066   SWITCH, gearbox, 4th gear, solenoid valve operating


Learn something every day!

That solenoid wasn't hooked up to anything so I removed it, years ago......but I still have it somewhere. I figure that had to do with running the car at high RPMs on the Autobahn for long distances....
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

tmsmini

Thanks for the update.
Somerford is great for some of these details

MiniDave

#603
Got the shifter bolted back in and the exhaust installed. With the bottom end all finished I went back to the top - got almost everything buttoned up there. I didn't bother to hook up the extra switch since the solenoid isn't there anyway, plus the wires were broken.

Poured the coolant back in and it fired up on the first turn of the key!

Still have to bleed the brakes and install a few other bits and bobs, then the bonnet and she's ready to drive. Just in time, too. We're supposed to get rain for the next two days and a high tomorrow of 42*!

The other good news.....not a drop of oil on the floor anywhere!   77.gif

Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

MiniDave

All righty then......took it for a spin around the neighborhood today, seems to run nicely although I didn't push it at all.

Driving down a main street, accelerating up in 2nd gear and *bang* it died......I managed to coast over to a side street, popped the hood. It was clearly electrical as it was instantaneous and I could see gas in the filter. It has done this before and the cure as far as I can tell is just to tighten the push on connectors at the coil. so I messed with those and it fired right up and drove back with no further incident. I gave them all a good squeeze with some flat nose pliers and I'll try again in a bit.

The weather is perfect for a nice afternoon drive but I need to get it aligned first.....I guess when I changed the steering rack boot even tho I counted the turns I must not have gotten it back right. I can't do that till Monday so it will be just short drives around the hood for now.

Progress.  77.gif
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

MiniDave

Sheesh, I have never had this much trouble keeping oil in a car before!

I came back from my test drive and parked outside the garage and left it idle while I got the lift ready and saw these three spots.....the big puddle is oil, looks like it's coming out of the speedo end cover on the transmission. The middle splatters seem to be coming from either the oil filter itself or the pressure pipe that fits into the top of the filter housing.

The gold colored puddle is brake fluid, but I think that came because I overfilled the master cylinder while I was bleeding the brakes.....so I'm not concerned with it.....the calipers, hoses and master are all dry after my run.

The second pic is from when it was idling outside the garage door.

So, drain the oil, drain the coolant and remover the radiator. Then to hold the engine up I went and bought an engine support bar from HF......that way I'm not trying to support it with the engine hoist (then the legs get in the way) or a jack (which would keep my from being able to raise or lower the lift.

Once I get it all supported I can remove the motor mount on that end and get that cover off and reseal it. I have spare gaskets and plenty of cheeze whiz, which seemed to do the trick on the diff covers - once I figured out where the oil was really coming from.

Sure don't understand why these gaskets won't seal up on their own....they are the "better" kind - the thicker ones with a sealant in them......they shouldn't need additional sealer too. I'll have to look and make sure there's no crack in the end cover - I sure didn't see one but then I thought I put a new o-ring on the right side diff cover too - and found out differently.

No idea why I was getting the drips off the oil filter, I can't feel any leakage around the pipe but I had one with a tiny pinhole in it once, maybe it's something like that?

Once I get the speedo cover fixed I'll run it some more and see what happens. It really bugs me that these things didn't leak in the engine stand, but wait till it's in the car and all buttoned up to do it!  ::)

It was 75* today and Don and I had planned to go do a 100 mile or so drive in our cars to make sure they are ready for the drive to Va in a few weeks......at least he got to do so in his Pup, which ran flawlessly.

Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

LarryLebel

Its not leaking oil, its just marking its spot.

MiniDave

Yes, well it needs to cut that out!!!

So today I pulled the radiator and set up my new HF engine support bar so I could pull the motor mount off and get the cover out. It's a bit of a challenge as there's not enough room to remove the long bolts that go thru the cover, so putting it back means juggling all those while getting it over the dowel pins and engaging the speedo drive in the end of the input shaft.....

Pic shows the cover after I removed the old gasket - could not see any reason for it to leak, but I had a new thicker version so I put the cheese whiz on both sides and put it all back together again.

I poured the oil back in and I'll let it sit overnight, if I don't see any oil drips I'll put the radiator back in and run it on the rack for a half hour or so.....then let it sit again overnight. If no drips after that I'll drive it some more - tho that may have to wait till Friday as it's supposed to rain for the next three days - might even get some sleet or snow on Wed!

Sure hope this is the end of this problem.
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

cstudep

Leaky engines are so damn frustrating, especially newly rebuilt ones LOL. Hope that is the end of it for you!

94touring

This was like my bus engine that kept leaking from the oil cooler seals. Till I finally blocked it off and went external cooler out of frustration!

MiniDave

Well, if it has stopped leaking I'll start using this "right stuff" for all my engine and transmission builds. It's fairly easy to clean it off of parts with brake kleen.....unlike RTV.
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

cstudep

I have heard it is even worse to clean off than RTV after it's been on for a while but also hear people saying it's not any worse. So who knows.

If it keeps leaks at bay I am not sure I would care, I mean it's not like you are tearing it down every couple weeks or anything. Not sure I would use it on something I needed to remove somewhat often, but I wouldn't use RTV either unless there was no other choice.

MiniDave

#612
OK, no drips this morning, so I finished putting the radiator in and fired it up. I ran it for about 20 minutes till it was fully warmed up and shut it off. That was a few hours ago and again - no leaks. I think it's good now. Finally!

Don't know why the oil filter had oil dripping off of it, I can't find anything loose or leaking and I wiped it off before I ran it today and no leaks now.....I'll drive it again when the roads dry up maybe Friday or Saturday and if I don't find any leaks I think it's good to go at last.

I'll probably retorque the head and reset the valves one more time too, then if I can get a few hundred miles on it before we head off to Va I'll try to tune the carb a little as well.

Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

MiniDave

Everything's buttoned up and ready to go.....I re-torqued the head and reset the valve clearances, now all I need to do is have the alignment checked then Don and I want to do some more highway runs to try and build miles before we head off to CMU 63 in Wytheville in a couple of weeks.

So far, no drips of any kind......we'll see what it looks like after the alignment and our first 100 mile run this weekend.
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

BruceK

May the car gods look favorably upon your test runs! 
1988 Austin Mini
2002 MINI Cooper S
1992 Toyota LiteAce (JDM)
1997 Jeep Wrangler Sahara

MiniDave

Well, thanks for that but so far they're NOT listening!

Today I went to my usual shop to have the alignment checked, only to find that their Hunter machine was down for the count, and the other machine would not work with these tiny 13" tires since it's mostly used for SUVs and pickemup trucks.

However they did turn me on to a high perfomance shop just around the corner and they said they could do it - next Tuesday. So I set an appointment but in the meantime I may try and check the toe myself as I think that's all that it needs.....and we're leaving one week after that, which doesn't leave me much time to find another shop if they can't.

EXCEPT.......

While we had it up in the air I found yet another damn oil leak! This time it looks like it's coming either from the timing chain cover gasket or the front pulley seal. Either way I'll need to pull the radiator again and see if I can fix it. Since I have all weekend now (Don and I were going to do some highway runs this weekend) I'll see about getting that fixed, plus I need to modify the ramps for my lift as now that I have a center muffler it hits every time I try and go on or off the lift.

It's always some damn thing.

On the good news side, the engine seems to already be freeing up some as it's feeling better each time I drive it.

On the not as good side, I think I prefer the 3-1 diff ratio over the 2:76-1, so if someone has a 3-1 they don't need I'm in the market. I won't change it before this trip and I may not change it at all if it turns out I like it better after we've done the approx. 3K miles of this run that we'll do. I had a 2:76 in Buzz and I liked it just fine in him.....FWIW.

More as it happens.
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

MiniDave

Well, it's back together.................again!

I had to remove the radiator again to get to the timing chain cover, in this pic you can see the telltale stain of the oil.....this part is actually the one I took off and resealed last - which makes me think it wasn't leaking but rather the timing cover was dripping down onto the transmission case....oh well.

The good news such as it is is that the crank seal appears not to be leaking, which only leaves the cover gasket. Getting the crank pulley bolt loose (65 ft lbs torque) required removing the starter so I could lock the flywheel. After that it was just a matter of taking out all the bolts and removing the cover. The gasket I used was one of the thick cardboard style but I didn't use any sealer as I thought it would be plenty good without it. Apparently I was wrong......it left a ton of residue to clean off and it was in a very awkward position, but I fired up my air powered drill with a good new wire brush and made short work of it.

Then plenty of cheese whiz on both sides of the new gasket and back together it went.....

I'll finish up installing the radiator this morning then take it for a drive as the leak only developed when driven.....and then when parked. If this doesn't settle it I don't know what to do next. There's no where else on this end of the motor that oil can leak from!

Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

BruceK

You should get some kind of an award for your persistence on battling that Exxon Valdez of an engine!   I've never heard of a rebuilt engine so intent on leaking.
1988 Austin Mini
2002 MINI Cooper S
1992 Toyota LiteAce (JDM)
1997 Jeep Wrangler Sahara

cstudep

With how much residue was left from that gasket it's hard to imagine it would have been leaking although it does look like the only place it wasn't stuck real well was at the bottom there.

Has to be aggravating for sure, the last thing you expect after a fresh rebuild is having to tear it back down multiple times to fix oil leaks.

MiniDave

#619
I'm beginning to think the Mini gods don't want me to go to this event.  50.gif

today I went to start the car and drive over to Don's to help him with the tune on his MG that he had rebuilt (a whole nother story in itself) and ......nothing. The starter wouldn't do anything - so I got out my test light and sure enough, no juice getting thru the wire to the starter.

So tomorrow I get to trouble shoot that issue - either a bad ignition switch or a bad wire from the switch, but I'm betting on the bad switch. Remember when I was driving it the other day and it just shut off for no reason, then started right back up again? I've had that happen before and I know it's an electrical issue, not fuel.

So, if it's the wire that's an easy fix, a new wire. If it's the switch, I hope someone has one and can get it to me in time, we're supposed to leave next Tuesday.

Edit: Mini Mania and 7 Ent both show it in stock, but so much for getting break in miles driven before the trip
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

jedduh01

Dave .  I had a late model car   .  Key to start = Nothing.

Come to find out there is a 'standard' 4 pin relay in the Right rear corner of the bay .. Up beside the pedal box.  Totally factory.

This relay had gone bad = Generic one off the shelf = fixed the problem
    If i remember correctly = Had two large brown wires  into the plug / relay =  then the signal ( From key switch )
and ground.... 

One brown ran to the starter solenoid.

MiniDave

#621
Cool! Thanks for the tip....I'll check it out.... 77.gif

Edit: alas, no joy changing the relay....is there a fuse for that too? I don't have a late model wiring schematic.....I'll have to see if I can find one .

Edit 2: We have contact! Apparently it was just dirty contacts where the relay plugs in, she's working fine now. Good thing as I have the alignment appointment tomorrow.

Thanks again Justin! You saved me some diagnostic time  77.gif
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

Tim

We had a very similar issue with our 91 SPI.  Turned out it was a loose ground on the RHS inner wing.  We played with all the relays and everything else before finding it.  It was a really annoying, temperamental 'shut-down' problem.  Always nice to find an easy fix!

Tim

jedduh01

Quote from: MiniDave on March 28, 2022, 11:27:59 AM
Cool! Thanks for the tip....I'll check it out.... 77.gif

Edit: alas, no joy changing the relay....is there a fuse for that too? I don't have a late model wiring schematic.....I'll have to see if I can find one .

Edit 2: We have contact! Apparently it was just dirty contacts where the relay plugs in, she's working fine now. Good thing as I have the alignment appointment tomorrow.

Thanks again Justin! You saved me some diagnostic time  77.gif


(keep that spare replacement relay on hand ( in the tool box) !!


Great to hear ++  see you in about a week!    Have a safe travel from KS to NC! 
 

MiniDave

The alignment shop did a great job, and got it set perfectly.....it drives much better now. I had never seen one done quite like this - this shop specializes in racecars - Mustangs, Corvettes and the like - so I can see how doing it on stands like this would be better and easier than on a ramp lift.
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad