Looks like the leaks are fixed?!

Last Saturday I got up at some ungodly hour and made the 45 minute drive over to my Mum's to try and fix the oil leaks on the Morris. Readers of previous posts will know that the car didn't leak oil before I tried to fix it a few weeks back, at which point I personally contributed to the shortage of crude which is driving up petrol prices!

We identified the problem as the seal on the old style oil filter.I purchased a replacement from Bullnose Motif spares ( opting for a newer type of fitting that takes a standard disposable style filter cartridge).

As ever my brother Steve was helping me out and we got right into it planning to complete a short list of jobs by early afternoon.

The jobs were:

1. Replace oil filter assembly
2. Replace sump gasket (had been weeping a little)
3. Replace another small cork gasket on side of engine

We drained what oil was left and then Steve got on with the oil filter whilst I cleaned the sump and prepared the cork gaskets -which had to be trimmed with a stanley knife.

Steve discovered that the oil filter assemply had an enormous amount of nasty white gasket sealant in it ( as have all the gaskets we have changed so far) but pretty soon we had the new fitting and gaskets in place.

There was one oddity- although the old assembly had an oil pressure sensor and a spade connector to hook it up, the new one had a sensor but no connector.

We resigned ourselves to the fact that I would either have a permanently on or permanently off oil light.

We got the sump back on and tightened up but decided we wouldn't do the final cork gasket as it looked like we would have to remove the exhaust manifold.

The car is already blowing at the front of the exhaust so didn't want to risk any more damage. The plate above the gasket was very loose so I tightend it up and hoped this would resolve the leaks.

We filled her up with the one remaining can of classic car oil available from Halfords in Newbury and started her up.

To my surprise I initially had an oil light on when I turned her over but as she got up to pressure and fired it went out- is there another sensor somewhere? Will need to check in the manual or with the owners club.

We got the car up to temperature and checked the oil again- still good- no signs of leaks.

Time for a test drive. The original fault that I had hoped to rectify before we had the oil heamorage was that the car missed when being driven at speed or under load.

Steve and I jumped in ( thats the load part- he's nearly twice my size!)and zoomed up some of the biggest local hills we could find- it all seemed OK.

Checked the oil and amazingy it was still in the car. Yippee!

I will be driving the car home over the bank holiday weekend so we will see how it manages on a longer journey.

It will also allow me to see if I have successfully fixed the problem with the door popping open on roundabouts! We drive through Basingstoke so plenty of opportunity to test that particular fault!

If it all goes OK next jobs are sort out the dodgy exhaust and then get it through an MOT.

Fingers crossed I won't be calling out the RAC on my homeward journey.