Minor Mishaps- a less then positive weekend

This was the big weekend when I planned to service the Morris and solve all her ills. It started well enough on Friday; I took her out from under the covers and started her up to make certain that the battery was OK. She started fine so I used her that evening to collect the girls from Guides.

Saturday morning and I was up and about early to do a few chores before popping down to Halfords to get some oil ready for the service.

Unfortunately the Morris had other ideas- she flatly refused to start which meant I had to push her around the close to get at my other car. Using the modern car I drove to Halfords and bought my oil (cost nearly as much as the service pack!) and some jump leads.

By the time I had got home, started the Morris with it’s freshly re-charged battery, and got on the road half the day had gone already.

The plan was to drive the car to my Mums house (about 45 minutes away) and crack on with the service and gasket replacements. The 45 minute journey took slightly longer than planned as the car really started acting up- losing power and really wheezing as it went up hills- and finally about 5 miles from my Mum’s it gave up entirely.

Five minutes later- some choice language and a bit of under bonnet tinkering and we were off again- finally arriving at our destination with only one break down and 6 door openings. (Did I mention that the driver’s door pops open from time to time- it makes journeys so much more exciting!).



My brother and I set to work with the service and this is when the real problems started. Firstly we drained the oil and then refilled her to flush it out. As I was refilling her I could hear the oil slapping on the workshop floor. I immediately blamed Steve (my brother) for not replacing the sump drain plug- if only it were that simple.

Instead the oil was poring out from under the rocker cover. We removed the cover and discovered that the gasket had actually folded under the cover leaving a big hole for the oil to leak from. No problem we had a spare gasket and replaced it easily.



Plugs, leads, distributor all easily replaced and things were looking good.
However once we had completed the service and refilled the oil we again discovered a massive puddle under the car. We had failed to get the gaskets to seal properly on the old style oil filter and so another 5 litres of Halfords finest was dribbling across the workshop floor.

It was now getting quite late and little people kept popping into the garage to enquire how I was getting on and making big hints that it really was time to go home- but the car was not driveable.

We decided to divide and conquer. Steve cracked on with the oil filter and I went to the back end to replace the rear suspension tie rods which had been an advisory on the MOT. This was a relatively simple task requiring only four bolts to be undone and the new bars put in.

WRONG. Despite pounding the blighters with a hammer and using the foulest anglo saxon I knew I could not get the darn things off. We concluded a ball joint breaker was required so I decided to call it a night and go home in Lynn’s car.

The good news was the oil was in and we had run the car up to hot with no puddles.

Sunday morning I was back down to Halfords- third time in two days- to buy a ball joint breaker and yet more oil.

We all jumped in the car and were on our way down to my mum’s when I got a call from my Dad. The alarm on the Alfa was going off. This was a bit of a surprise, as to my knowledge the Alfa doesn’t have an alarm, but I could certainly here the horn blaring away so we diverted to Dads to sort it out.

I wasn’t really feeling like diagnosing the problem so I just disconnected the battery and got back in the car to go and sort out the Morris. The joys of classic car ownership!

With the new tool I had the bars switched over easily- I ran the car for a while and there was no evidence of oil seepage so I took her for a test drive.

I drove the car as hard as I could up the steepest hills and as far as I could work out the stuttering had been cured. YIPPEEE!

Back at Mums I checked the oil again- curiously there was nothing on the dip stick. I thought I’d better swing it back into the workshop to refill the oil at which point I discovered a she was leaving a green snails trail of oil wherever she went! It was that bloody oil filter again!

I gave up.

In summary I arrived on Saturday with a working car and left on Sunday with an immobilised heap still languishing in the workshop having been “fixed”.

Maybe this is going to be tougher than I thought.