A quick couple of jobs before heading out on a club meeting.
November 17th 2019
With plans afoot for a meeting of the Wirral Classic Car Club, there were a couple of small jobs I wanted to do before heading out on the road. Firstly I've been noticing the occasional groan coming from the steering rack or column when manoeuvring. The chances are that some lubrication is badly needed, so let's get to it!
I know there's a grease/oil nipple below a small rubber plug in the passenger footwell so the first task is to locate that. Peeling back the carpet I find it straight away, prise out the plug and give the area a good wipe around with a rag.
Now the next question is whether to use oil or grease. There has been a lot of debate on that subject on the owner's club forum, some people insisting on oil and others arguing the case for grease. Well as a novice I think the best thing to do is to consult the original workshop manual (Morris, not Haynes) and the outcome of my research was... Oil! Hypoid gear oil to be exact and fortunately I still have some left over from when I refilled my differential.
Fortunately I found a small 'push type' grease gun on Amazon which was advertised as also being suitable for oil. When the tool arrived in the post, I opened it up and filled it. So far so good!
I then jacked up the front of the car to raise both front wheels off the ground. This will make it easy to turn the wheel from lock-to lock in order to distribute the oil. I started by turning the wheel fully to the right in order to slide the steering rack as far left as it would go. Then I gave a good few pumps of oil into the rack before straightening the wheel and pumping in some more. Finally I turned the wheel fully left, gave a few more squirts of oil before turning the wheel fully one way and then the other a few times to spread out the fresh oil.
To alleviate another little squeak, I dripped some 3-in-1 oil into the bearing on the steering column bracket.
The final job of the day was to grease the handbrake cables underneath the rear of the car. There are two cables that go from under the transmission tunnel and off to each rear wheel. The outer sleeving of each cable has a grease nipple in order to keep the inner cable well greased and moving freely. I suspect this has never been done, or at least not for many years! I first jacked up the rear of the car and placed axle stands under each side of the axle. Well the clue is in the name I suppose!
Then I slid myself under the car, attached my grease gun and pumped each cable full of grease until I saw it begin to ooze out of the ends.
The next picture is a little hard to make out due to the atrocious amount of filth around my rear hubs, but it shows the end of the handbrake cable at the point where it attaches to the brake backplate. You can just see the fresh grease coming out from the end of the cable sleeve in the centre of the picture.
And with that last job completed, it was time to head off to New Brighton to meet up with the other members of the Wirral Classic Car Club!
The weather wasn't wonderful but the car performed flawlessly. We drove around 41 miles in total and had a fantastic day out.