Projekt Agnetha

Having achieved some form of brake pedal it was at last time to tackle the Bogeyman of Agnetha’s recommissioning: The suspension.

what is hydragas?

Being an Austin Allegro, Agnetha’s suspension is anything but conventional. The Allegro is one of a handful of vehicles developed to use the Hydragas suspension system developed by Alex Moulton of folding bike fame. I won’t go into detail about how it works because others that know a lot more have already done that. But here’s my over-simplified airline magazine explanation:

For each wheel on the car you’ve got a displacer pushing down on it. A displacer is basically a Star Wars prop that contains a fluid chamber and a sphere. The sphere contains a high pressure inert gas and is seperated from the fluid chamber by a rubber diaphragm. The displacer works like a piston that pumps a water-based fluid in and out of the fluid chamber when the wheel moves up and down. Displacers work in pairs: One pair for the left-hand side of the car, the other pair for the right-hand side. In each pair the fluid chambers of the displacers are connected by a hydraulic line running the length of the car. This means when the front wheel moves up, fluid is moved out of the front displacer and into the rear displacer, pushing the rear wheel down and resulting in a self-levelling effect.

The fluid is pumped up to high pressure through Schrader valves in the filler necks, and that sets the car’s ride height. The spheres and the upper diaphragm are there to absorb shock loads. Unlike Citroën’s Hydropneumatic system, Hydragas is passive in that it has no pump to maintain pressure of the fluid or gas components, and it is completely isolated, having nothing to do with brakes are any other ancillaries. So mechanically it’s about as simple as it can possibly be. And that’s Hydragas in a nutshell. It’s a highly effective, cheap and quite simple solution let down by only two minor problems: 1) It’s technologically extinct, and 2) it has a 100% failure rate. Oopsie. Let’s have a look at these in more detail.

technologically extinct

As mentioned, only a handful of cars used Hydragas and all of them were from the strange world of British Leyland in its various historical guises, specifically: Allegro, Maxi (later models), Princess, Ambassador, Metro and MG F. The most recently manufactured of these cars, the MG F, went out of production in 2002 – over 22 years ago at the time of writing. This means NOS parts, particularly the displacers, are vanishingly rare and, even if you found one, will likely need some work to recommission them as we’ll see later. There are one or two companies that sell reconditioned sets of displacers, and one is particularly reknowned, but globally this is pretty much the only support you’re going to get unless you’re lucky enough to know some wise wizard that still practices the dark arts, hasn’t scrapped their “dalek“, and never really planned on retiring anyway. Outside the UK you’re going to be hard-pressed to find someone that ticks all of those particular boxes!

100% failure rate

This “statistic” is bandied around a lot and although it’s not really a statistic I think there’s a lot of truth in it. Hydragas relies on components being under constant high pressure and any system under pressure will inevitably leak. As long as the pressures of both the inert gas in the spheres and the suspension fluid are optimum, there’s nothing much to worry about. But the gas continually leaks from the spheres, and this is completely unavoidable. So the displacers were designed to leak at a low enough rate that they would be serviceable for at least 15 years (the intended life expectancy of the Allegro – compare that with any modern car!). Once below a critical pressure, however, Hydragas enters the infamous death spiral.

As death spirals go, Hydragas has a particularly interesting one, and once started it cannot be stopped without major intervention. With the shock-absorbing effectiveness of the spheres reduced, the shocks begin to affect the hydraulic unions causing a slight amount of suspension fluid leakage. This reduces the fluid pressure, reducing the ride height, and subsequently increasing the ride hardness, further reducing the shock-absorbing effectiveness of the spheres and exacerbates the fluid leakage. And so it goes on until the suspension has no softness at all and the car is sitting on the bump-stops. As we get closer to the middle of the spiral, the risk of suspension failure increases dramatically. Failure can be in the form of fluid/gas diaphragm rupture in one or more displacers, or even as structural damage to the suspension arms and strut towers.

It might be tempting to refill the fluid lines on seeing the car’s ride height reduce. This will return the car to its intended ride height but will not make the ride softer and only tightens the spiral. The increased pressure in the fluid lines simply worsens the leakage and puts additional strain on the fluid/gas diaphragm.

So what do we need to do? Back in “them days” you would simply order a brand new set of displacers with optimum gas pressure and have them fitted as if you were replacing worn-out coils or broken springs. As we’ve already discussed, this is sadly no longer an option.

sphere re-gassing

The sensible option at this stage is to order a set of reconditioned displacers from The Kennedys. These are used displacers that have had Schrader valves installed in the spheres so that they can be re-gassed whenever needed. I eventually got around to ordering a set, but not before spending a huge amount of time getting my hands dirty trying to re-gas the displacers myself! I don’t think I’d try this on a car that was otherwise in good working order, but with Agnetha there was nothing much to lose.

DISCLAIMER: These are not instructions! It’s an account of what I did, for better or worse. You may cause irreparable damage to the car or its components – ask me how I know.

To re-gas the displacers I followed the method documented here, more-or-less. It basically involves drilling a hole in the top of the sphere (very carefully!) and attaching a heavy-duty Schrader valve (the type used on truck and bus wheels). Using the valve you can re-pressurise the sphere with nitrogen to the prescribed 15 bar. Compressed air is basically nitrogen, right? There is, naturally, a catch. If a displacer has spent any time on the death spiral – or if the suspension fluid was “accidentally” topped up with brake fluid or LHM (the Kiss of Death) – there is a chance it will have a ruptured fluid/gas diaphragm. Common knowledge amongst Hydragasologists says that a ruptured fluid/gas diaphragm is an Impossible Repair and the displacer cannot be re-gassed or re-used in any way; it’s scrap. As you’ll see I’ve found no evidence to contradict this.

On drilling the hole for the Schrader, sure enough one of the front displacer spheres was full of rusty water. Gas/fluid diaphragm failure! The Impossible Repair! Doom! Failure! But what have I got to lose by trying something impossible? I decided to saw the sphere carefully in half manually using a hacksaw so as not to blast whatever was inside to smithereens. After cleaning the inside I noticed the gas/fluid diaphragm indeed had two small holes and was perished around the circumference. It does seem impossible to replace the entire diaphragm but what about patching it?

At this stage anything was worth a try. Using a tractor inner tube repair kit I patched the two holes and sealed the circumference with a generous amount of Soudal Fix All, a very strong elastic glue.

Now to weld the sphere back together. Should be fun welding so close to all that glue and rubber! First I made a collar from a sheet of car body steel to fit inside the sphere that would sit about 1 – 2mm proud of the cut. This was to prevent sparks from the welder entering the sphere and burning the diaphragm. It might have also helped keep the Fix All in place when the water circuit was pressurised – unfortunately I didn’t get that far! To keep the heat under control I then filled it with water.

With the collar in place I began welding the top half of the sphere to the rest of the unit, very slowly and carefully. The welds were ugly and porous due to steam rushing out alarmingly from under the collar, but the water did its job and kept the rubber and glue from burning. After grinding the welds back it was not as bad a job as I thought, the welds showing good penetration all round but the seam had numerous holes where the steam had escaped. I was able to patch the holes by welding over the entire seam using a slightly lower feed-rate, again slowly and carefully. These welds were only ground back a little bit to reduce the height so that the unit could fit inside the suspension tower – given what’s a stake I prefer integrity over aesthetics!

After that we were back on the map: Install the Schrader, make sure it takes a few bar of compressed air, then a good clean up and paint. Unfortunately, after pumping up to 10 bar and leaving overnight to test for leaks, I measured only 3 bar the following morning. A leaking Schrader could be easily fixed, but if the leak is through the diaphragm it would be time to call it quits. To test this I pumped it back up to 10 bar and put the thumb of a rubber glove over the fluid port of the displacer. If the air leaks through the diaphragm then the thumb will inflate. Sure enough, the next day we were back to a couple of bar and the thumb was certainly inflated – time to throw in the towel.

This is when I placed an order with The Kennedys and a few days later a set of reconditioned displacers arrived, fully tested with a 1 year guarantee; the installation of which was only complicated by my poor plumbing skills. I recorded it all in this video:

I’m pleased to report that Agnetha is now as bouncy as she can be. Two years into the restoration, mechanically and structurally she is almost ready for the road again for the first time in 35 years. She still needs a new exhaust and there is a list of minor snags to fix first, but nothing to cause any major worries. In fact, it’s nearly time to get some workshop quotes to get her over the line and tested at last.

Last but not least, I ordered some reproduction engine bay stickers from Miniphernalia and put them on the strut towers. It’s got to look right!

Once again Agnetha is up in the air with wheels off. This time she’s being prepped for receiving a reconditioned set of Hydragas displacers from The Kennedys and having her suspension pumped up for the first time in many years. This will be a huge milestone as it’s almost the last major repair to do before testing! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. While I wait for the displacers to make their way to the Slavic Paradise I wanted to try a small upgrade that could improve Agnetha’s safety in modern traffic.

It’s an in-joke in the classic car world to talk about having headlights like a glow-worm in a jar. Headlights on older cars tend to be dim due to a) the ridiculous physical length of the headlight circuits, and b) surface oxidation of the copper strands in the wiring loom and switch-gear. Even for a small car like the Allegro the headlight circuit is very long, starting at the battery, going through the firewall, into the centre console where the headlight/sidelight switch is located, then up into the steering column and around the main beam / flash stalk, back through the firewall, along the wing into the right-hand headlight and then under the radiator into the left-hand headlight. It’s insane, really. Even from the factory the total resistance would have been considerable, and after several decades it will be quite a lot more.

Indeed I had noticed the wiring and switches would heat up quite quickly with the headlights on. So the net result is dim headlights and the constant threat of an electrical fire or a sudden loss of headlights – not something I want to be thinking about on a dark night at 90 kph in the middle of the Polish countryside. Luckily there is a solution that is cheap and fairly simple to install: A classic car wiring loom. These normally come in the form of a ready-assembled kit that can be installed “over” the original wiring loom without interfering with it. While looking online I saw some classic car specialists had these for sale at very silly prices. But it’s just not worth paying a lot for these things – they’re all made of the same components and it does not need to be anything special. I bought the cheapest piece of crap I could find – for about £11!

The kit works by powering the headlights through a pair of relays (one relay for the headlight, the other for main beam). The current only travels a short distance over brand new wires, reducing the resistance by reducing the length of the circuit and also avoiding the increased resistivity of the original, now rather oxidised wiring. The original wiring is kept in place, however, because it’s used to control the relays by supplying voltage to energise the relay coils. Since this requires very little current, there are no longer any issues with resistance heating. Installation simply involves connecting the “big red wire” of the kit to the positive terminal of the battery, connecting the output plugs of the kit into the headlights, and connecting one of the original headlight plugs (the one nearest the battery) into the input socket of the kit; the remaining plug from the original wiring is then redundant and can be taped-up. It’s then just a case of testing and tidying things up.

And this is when I found the one and only snag. While the headlights and main beam worked as expected, the main beam flash wasn’t working when the headlights were on. I could hear the relay clicking but there was no change in the light pattern. After some poking around I realised this was because the relays were wired in such a way that the main beam could not be switched on if the headlight relay was in the “on” position. This was solved by bridging the wires connected to terminal 30 on both relays. With this in place the main beam flash was working, as was everything else.

I haven’t done any scientific tests to prove how big an improvement this is. I’ve just looked at the headlights and said “wow they’re brighter” and felt the wiring to be sure they no longer heat up. For 11 quid I’d call that a result. Much brighter headlights and no more hot plastic smells!

After playing the Autodoc lottery a few more times I finally found a 1:1 replacement for Agnetha’s brake shoes. As a Swedish export model she has a completely different rear brake setup to the factory standard, having more in common with Ford cars of the era. Having finally got the drum brakes working again, and as a result a working handbrake (yay – stopping power!), I put up a video and immediately got a comment about the Swedish brake setup that led to an explanation that the changes were indeed made in response to local legislation and, more importantly, some scans from the Allegro Parts Catalog listing all the Unipart numbers.

Here then are the scanned pages for anyone who needs to look them up:

Having put this issue to bed at last it’s time to get the brakes fully working with a new master cylinder and rebuilt calipers – more on that soon!

Having put the old girl back together (minus brakes and displacers!) I made a video about starting her up again with the newly repaired fuel system.  Previously she had only been able to run from a plastic fuel cannister, so this was a big step to getting back on the road:

Getting to this stage was a lot of effort, so I’ve promised to only do fun and easy jobs for the next couple of months. The first job was to put the bonnet back on, clean the windows, vacuum the floor and seats, and give the bodywork a good rub down. Suddenly she looks like a real car again.

Note the two holes drilled into the front bumper just above the number plate holder.  At some time in her history Agnetha sported a pair of bumper-mounted fog lights. Although they had been removed long ago, part of the wiring remained including a rather lovely 1970s style flip switch drilled into the side of the speaker housing. I plan to replace the fogs eventually, so I attached some new wiring to the switch and fed it through the bulkhead. At the same time I removed the ugly, horrible 240V plug socket that used to be paired with the blockheater.  Nothing difficult and definitely very satisfying!

The glove box and funny little tray thing that goes under the steering wheel needed some attention. They are both made from that nasty fibre board shit and after 48 years had started to go a bit crumbly. So I gave them a good clean, painted them first with epoxy and then with a rattle can of mat black. This turned out quite nicely – I would certainly have less concern about putting my hand in there!

Before reinstalling these bad boys I’m having a think about where to install USB power and an override switch for the radiator fan. While testing Agnetha yesterday her temperature got into the red without the fan starting. Luckily she didn’t turn into a teapot.  I’ve isolated the problem to the thermostatic switch in the Montego radiator – it just doesn’t want to close. Rather than replace the switch, at this stage I’d prefer to install an override circuit instead, since it’s something I’ve been planning to do all along. It gets hot here in the summer and we have big traffic jams, so I don’t want to be praying for the fan to come on.

I think half the problem with fixing cars is psychological. It’s important to not let it turn into a job, so you have to prioritise the fun, less important stuff occasionally. Particularly true as I’ve just found a load more welding that needs doing!

Agnetha has been stuck in the garage on the blocks since November when her driveshaft oil seals gave up. Fixing the seals snowballed into fixing (almost) everything else, specifically:

• Rear drum brakes (new shoes and cylinders)
• New port & starboard differential covers, bushes and seals
• Replaced twisted starboard driveshaft
• New CV joints all round
• Ball joints and bearings re-greased
• New brake lines
• New fuel line
• New Hydragas lines
• New track-rod ends
• Steering rack oiled
• Sills welded
• Boot welded
• Floorpan welded
• Fuel tank repaired
• New fuel sender
• Cross-tube de-rusted and painted
• Upper front suspension swing arms de-rusted and painted

Getting the engine oil-tight again was more of a struggle than I expected due to the new reality of importing goods from the UK and the diff covers being out-of-stock, but we got there in the end and I made a video about it:

While there are still the not-so-minor issues of the brake master cylinder, front brake callipers and Hydragas displacer units being “INOP”, it’s time to get the wheels back on and run the engine up again. It does a car no good to sit on bricks, and Agnetha’s poor engine spent several months dry while the oil seals were fixed. The engine will eventually need a rebuild but if I can get her through a vehicle inspection without having to do that, it’ll make life a lot easier.

A few issues of note:

Bloody brakes

Ask any Allegro owner and they’ll tell you what a faff the brakes are, mainly due to lack of spares. The Swedish-specification Allegros are even worse because the rear drum brakes are not factory-standard and have more in common with Ford cars of the early 1970s, but don’t seem to belong to any particular model! I’ve tried to find out which parts are correct by asking owners in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries but the precise answer seems to be lost to time. I also tried to find out why they have different brakes but again, no-one seems to know for sure. There’s no regulatory requirement, unlike headlight wipers. The most believable argument I’ve heard is that BL Sweden simply had a job-lot of these brake components and retrofitted the Allegro in Sweden “because they could”. To be fair, the Swedish drum brake setup is a bit more sophisticated being fully enclosed with double-acting wheel cylinders and a self-adjustment mechanism. On the other hand I can’t imagine it delivers significantly better braking performance and, as I found out, it’s doubtful the self-adjusting mechanism is any substitute for just replacing the flipping shoes when they’re worn!

In the end I was able to recondition the brakes by playing the Autodoc lottery and winning 2 sets of Ford Capri/Escort Mk1 1.3 shoes and a pair of Ford Consul/Cortina wheel cylinders. The cylinders fit perfectly, but the shoes needed a little “adjustment” with a hacksaw to fit the self-adjustment mechanism. Fitting the handbrake cable was also fun: Unlike on the standard Allegro, the cable is fed inside and hooks on to a lever within the drum itself. This involves wedging it behind the Red Spring of Death – looking back I think the cable should ideally be fitted before the spring. Oh well.

As for the front callipers, they’re ok but in need of new seals and pistons. Mercifully these are available but not cheap. Same goes for the discs, which should be replaced before we do any serious road trips.

BLOODY HYDRAGAS

The Hydragas displacers are almost certainly toast, which is no surprise. The nitrogen gas in the displacers will slowly leak and they were originally designed to hold enough pressure over the car’s anticipated lifespan (15 years for the Allegro, which is pretty ambitious compared to most modern cars). This particular event horizon was already crossed in 1991 and I doubt the displacers are anything other than the factory-fitted original units. These days Hydragas displacers can be retrofitted with Schrader valves and re-gassed, but I think this isn’t the only issue with Agnetha’s displacers: As the gas pressure drops, the suspension is less able to absorb shock loading. The unions in the Hydragas fluid lines become overpressurized with every bump in the road and eventually begin to leak. As the fluid leaks, the ride height of the car goes down. Naturally the owner will want to pump the system back up, but apparently it was pretty common for garages to take one look at the spheres and default to “Citroën Mode” and pump the system up with LHM instead of the water-based fluid used in Hydragas suspension – they call this The Kiss of Death. The LHM dissolves the inner workings of the displacers, rendering them scrap. When I drained the fluid last year there was indeed some kind of brown water-oil mixture in the system, so I’m fairly sure they’ve been killed. But that’s a job for later in the year. For now we can manage with bump-stops (what’s left of them) instead of actual suspension.

As for the Hydragas lines, of course they were wrecked. Both sides had been crushed, presumably whenever the car was loaded on and off recovery trucks with deflated suspension and very little ground clearance. They were also perforated by corrosion and the starboard side had been bravely re-sectioned using fuel hose and no less than 4 hose clips (because high pressure!); I doubt that repair lasted very long. Mercifully the “goose necks” that are inside the engine bay and attach to the front displacers are in good condition, and the Schrader valves just needed a little cleaning. The damaged underfloor sections have been replaced with copper pipe and these will be attached later to the goose necks with compression fittings.

FUEL TANK SUCCESS

By the time I’d removed Agnetha’s tank and gone over it with the wirebrush it was doing a very good impression of a cheese grater. Allegro fuel tanks are pretty much unobtainium so it’s best to fix them if at all possible. I’m told they can be replaced with MGB fuel tanks which are the same shape and capacity but will ride quite a few centimeters closer to the ground. The tank was badly perforated on both the underside and top-side but was otherwise structurally very solid, especially around the sender fitting and seam, so I decided to try and fix it.

I wasn’t even going to attempt to weld it, so I did some research and decided to try fibreglassing instead. This has the advantage that it’s easy to do and results in a very strong and chemically-resistant repair. First of all I gave the tank a generous coating of red anticorrosion primer, and after putting on the final ply I gave it a quick sanding and painted it matt black.

So what about the fuel sender? Of course they don’t exist either, unless you’ve replaced the tank with an MGB tank and they it’s simply a case of fitting an MGB sender. The recommended solution for a repaired Allegro tank is to get an MGB sender and – guess what – adjust it with a hacksaw! First the filter needs to be removed and 2 or 3 cm cut from the pipe; no problem. The tricky part is bending the wire on the level sensor float so that it a) still gives a reasonably accurate reading, b) still fits through the hole in the tank, c) doesn’t break the sensor while you’re mauling it. I did fall foul at (c) and ended up snapping some of the metal tabs that hold the casing together. This was fixed by carefully bending a strip of steel banding around the case, but not so tight as to crush it! I was relieved to get it inside the tank, see that the fuel level readings still made sense on the dashboard, and that it was water-tight.

Everything was a ball-ache

The repairs I made over the winter were one pain-in-the-ass after another, and I’ll be glad if I never have to do them again. Almost everything that could be awkward was very awkard, and everything that could be straightforward absolutely wasn’t. On the plus side most of the major structural and mechanical issues are now fixed. Besides, if it was easy someone else would have got her running years ago! The next time we run Agnetha (hopefully this month) she’ll be on her own fuel system for the first time in several decades; that’s quite a landmark. Assuming she still wants to run at all, the next jobs will be to get the timing done, set up the carb and try to figure out exactly what state the engine is in. Let’s hope the worst is now behind her!

Since Agnetha’s big “oopsie” on the garage floor last November when her driveshaft seals gave out, I’ve been deconstructing the driveshafts (which unsurprisingly had worn CV joints and damaged gaters) and getting new differential covers installed with new bushings and oil-seals. The aim is to get Agnetha oil-tight again and fill the engine with oil that’s been sitting dry since the oopsie. Quite a lot of progress has been made but at the last step I’ve decided to pause things since it got a bit fraught getting spares imported from the UK. I made a video about it here:

On a more positive note the cross-tube is now fully derusted, primed and repainted. There was plenty of corrosion but the tube itself is made from pretty thick steel so it’s structurally sound.

Next up are some important but low-cost jobs that do not involve customs. Mostly welding, making new brake and fuel lines, and fixing the somewhat porous fuel tank.

After a few short test drives along the front drive last autumn Agnetha suddenly dumped her oil on the garage floor. I eventually found out it had leaked from both driveshafts and not from the gear selector as I first thought (although that probably leaks as well – why wouldn’t it?). Both inner CV joints would quite happily rattle around if pulled by hand, and apparently they really shouldn’t do that. If they rattle it’s a sign that the bronze bushings they sit inside have worn too far so oil is able to rush past and overwhelm the rubber oil seals, which are more than likely worn out as well. 

So the driveshafts had to come out. Unsurprisingly for a car that hasn’t moved in 34 years all 4 of the CV boots were perforated which already implied I’d soon be ordering new joints all round. Getting the shafts out of the differential was fairly straightforward once I’d got a set of driveshaft removal forks. These aren’t the same as the recommended tool, but worked fine with a bit of grease and aiming carefully not to take chunks out of the diff cover (more on that later).

The discs took some encouragement to separate because of a build-up of rust but only required a bit of Flammenwerfer action, a calculated amount of violence and some more action with the shaft removal forks. After removing the boots from the inner CVs it was clear they had worn a fair bit, and given the amount of effort I’ve been putting into this car, it seemed pretty obvious that all 4 CV joints should be replaced – they’re the same as on the classic Mini so there’s no issue getting spares.

Removing the outer joints was straightforward once I’d got a decent puller; these are available everywhere online for very little money. The Haynes Book of Lies says a few taps of a hammer against a drift on back of the CV joint will free it, but I think that no longer applies to cars that have sat for decades! The puller made light work of it. Just a few turns of the hub nut against the puller freed the outer joints. The inner joints, however, were a different story. 

The problem there was that the inner CV rings had become more-or-less fused to the driveshafts and no amount of hammering or pulling was going to free them. I ended up spending many, many hours painstakingly grinding the inner CV rings until they could be chiselled off in segments. Luckily I was able to do that on both inner joints without damaging the shafts. Although it was a very tedious and painful process I did manage to make a video out of it for the channel:

What a pain in the hole that was, but rewarding to have done it without breaking anything!

So at last it was now possible to remove the diff covers and see the state of those bushes and the oil seals. The covers came off quite easily with a few taps from a rubber mallet but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when I finally saw the bushes. In fact I literally laughed out loud. Here’s what I saw:

See the problem? The driveshaft needs to be lubricated against the bushing otherwise it’s just going to make a screeching noise and wear out after a very short time, and you’re back to square one with leaking driveshafts. For the lubrication to work, there’s a hole in the side of the bushing. This has to be aligned with a hole in the diff cover that lets the oil in. And guess what…of course whoever did this, long ago presumably, hadn’t given it any thought at all. The lubrication channels are completely misaligned. So you can imagine old Benny or Bjorn’s face when their Allegro started leaking oil again just days after it being repaired – can’t blame Longbridge for that! Judging by the state of the diff cover they must have also used a chisel or screwdriver to pull the shafts out as they are quite mangled. Sometimes I feels like every time I remove or overhaul something on Agnetha it just uncovers another historical bodge or some kind of balls-up from long ago. Fascinating really, but also incredibly annoying.

But not to worry. New CV joints and – no expense spared – new diff covers with new bushes pressed in and reamed are on order from Mini Spares. Soon I’ll be able to reassemble those shafts as the Gods intended and get that long-suffered A-series filled with oil again.

In other news

I’ve overhauled the steering rack. It’ll surprise no one that I drained about 100ml of used engine oil from it. I wonder if that was the same mechanic that “repaired” the bushings? At least it doesn’t seem too upset by the ordeal. New boots and track-rod ends are ready to go, but the rack itself won’t be reinstalled for a while yet as there is still a lot of work to do while it’s out of the way.

Brake master cylinder. Pain in the hole. Need to get an expert Brakeversteher on it.

Fuel tank. Has lots of holes in it. But I have a cunning plan. The weather needs to warm up a bit first though. Definitely going to do a video about that.

Despite the grumbling, as I start to put things back together getting the old girl tested and registered this year seems more and more do-able! #optimism

As Agnetha sits patiently on the blocks I’ve put together a fairly complete list of jobs to be done to get her through an inspection.

So here goes:

• Replace drive shaft bushings and seals, both sides.
• Replace all drive shaft boots.
• Clean and grease steering rack, replace boots.
• Rebuild brake calipers.
• Rebuild drum brakes.
• Rebuild brake differential switch.
• Rebuild brake master cylinder.
• Clean and patch the fuel tank, replace sender unit.
• Weld sills, corners of the floorpan, passenger door and boot.
• New fuel line.
• New brake lines.
• New Hydragas fluid lines.
• Recondition/replace Hydragas displacers.
• New tyres.
• New exhaust.
• New indicator wing repeaters.
• Rebuild and reinstall crosstube assembly.
• New windscreen and tail screenwash pumps.
• New stereo – a must!
• That should be it, we’ll see.

I would love all this to be done by the end of 2024, and I think there’s a good chance. For a pro it’s probably not even a month’s work but as a hobbyist it never hurts to massively pad the auld estimates.