Man of Honour
- Joined
- 27 Sep 2004
- Posts
- 25,821
- Location
- Glasgow
Congratulations on getting it all working, it must be tremendously satisfying and it's been a very interesting read from an outside point of view.
Project Bentley
- Thread starter JRS
- Start date
One more ticked off the 'would be nice' column - just replaced the dip beam bulbs with better quality ones. The ones that were in there were alright, but a bit yellow. Not any more! Also attached the boot interior trim that goes over the locking mechanism, now with stainless self-tappers and cup washers to replace the painted mild steel screws that were there before.
Got some LEDs coming to replace the festoon bulbs for the boot interior, number plate light and under-bonnet light. And then going to look seriously at replacing all the instrument illumination bulbs with LEDs as well.
Got some LEDs coming to replace the festoon bulbs for the boot interior, number plate light and under-bonnet light. And then going to look seriously at replacing all the instrument illumination bulbs with LEDs as well.
****.
**** ****y ****ing **** ****.
****.
****.
So, we had a bit of a situation the other day. Nothing major. Just lost the rear brakes and rear suspension hydraulics....
Looks like the o-rings on the pump for the rear of the car have failed. Hopefully we only have to renew them rather than replace the pump. Still amounts to a disabled car though - the front brakes work, and still work well, but trying to stop this much car with brakes only at one end isn't too clever. And that's leaving aside the rear end being sat on the bump-stops.
I wouldn't mind, but the pump in question is in the centre of the engine bay and buried underneath the guts of the fuel injection. Not brilliantly accessible!
**** ****y ****ing **** ****.
****.
****.
So, we had a bit of a situation the other day. Nothing major. Just lost the rear brakes and rear suspension hydraulics....
Looks like the o-rings on the pump for the rear of the car have failed. Hopefully we only have to renew them rather than replace the pump. Still amounts to a disabled car though - the front brakes work, and still work well, but trying to stop this much car with brakes only at one end isn't too clever. And that's leaving aside the rear end being sat on the bump-stops.I wouldn't mind, but the pump in question is in the centre of the engine bay and buried underneath the guts of the fuel injection. Not brilliantly accessible!
So, after a bit of a faff involving the adverse weather, a mechanic who could only pop round to work on it part-time, me not being able to get to it on the few days when the weather was nice and Gary's inability to reach the broken part due to being short and having a bad back, the car is back on the road.
Ended up working in the rain again, but that's par for the course with this project. The mechanic who'd helped Gary out had gotten it to the stage where the o-rings had been replaced, and the pump housing and low-pressure inlet were both back on. Still to refit was the high-pressure outlet. And some of the fuel injection pipework. And a bracket that holds part of the fuel injection pipework on the car. And the system needed to be bled.
Only minor issues cropped up. I missed a loose injection pipe, and that sprayed a bit of fuel out when we first tried to fire it. Shut it straight down and got it tight! Once fired up and having prodded the throttle a bit, she settled down into a nice idle and the rear of the car rose. And rose. And rose. Now standing at proper height rather than dragging the spare wheel well on the ground. Took her out to one of the local petrol stations because the tank was quite a way down. As it turns out, there was an Arnage at one of the other pumps while we were there - reckon we probably emptied the place....
The brakes still need to be bled properly (there's about six million bleed points, most of which we'll get away with not using by the look of things), and the ABS goes spastic when you really try and stand the car on her nose. But she goes well, stops mostly well, rides nicely (smoother than before all this actually....) and sounds fantastic. And everything works! It has to be the only 1989 Bentley in existence where everything - right down to all three cigar lighter sockets - works just fine.
And she's being sold later this year. It's been an experience for Gary, owning this car. Often bruising, endlessly frustrating (thanks to garages mostly), and while it's a lovely car it's not one that Gary's wife will entertain the idea of driving (too big, too heavy, too....Bentleyish). So it's got to go. Next up - a facelift XJ (the X358 model). Still some wrangling to do between Gary and his good lady over the colour scheme, but that's the car that they can both agree is nice and will both drive.
Ended up working in the rain again, but that's par for the course with this project. The mechanic who'd helped Gary out had gotten it to the stage where the o-rings had been replaced, and the pump housing and low-pressure inlet were both back on. Still to refit was the high-pressure outlet. And some of the fuel injection pipework. And a bracket that holds part of the fuel injection pipework on the car. And the system needed to be bled.
Only minor issues cropped up. I missed a loose injection pipe, and that sprayed a bit of fuel out when we first tried to fire it. Shut it straight down and got it tight! Once fired up and having prodded the throttle a bit, she settled down into a nice idle and the rear of the car rose. And rose. And rose. Now standing at proper height rather than dragging the spare wheel well on the ground. Took her out to one of the local petrol stations because the tank was quite a way down. As it turns out, there was an Arnage at one of the other pumps while we were there - reckon we probably emptied the place....
The brakes still need to be bled properly (there's about six million bleed points, most of which we'll get away with not using by the look of things), and the ABS goes spastic when you really try and stand the car on her nose. But she goes well, stops mostly well, rides nicely (smoother than before all this actually....) and sounds fantastic. And everything works! It has to be the only 1989 Bentley in existence where everything - right down to all three cigar lighter sockets - works just fine.
And she's being sold later this year. It's been an experience for Gary, owning this car. Often bruising, endlessly frustrating (thanks to garages mostly), and while it's a lovely car it's not one that Gary's wife will entertain the idea of driving (too big, too heavy, too....Bentleyish). So it's got to go. Next up - a facelift XJ (the X358 model). Still some wrangling to do between Gary and his good lady over the colour scheme, but that's the car that they can both agree is nice and will both drive.
Soldato
- Joined
- 10 Mar 2006
- Posts
- 3,975
Is ther the going to be any profit at the end of this venture? Or was it all for love?
No. Getting out without losing huge amounts of money is the best you can ever hope for with a project like this.
Lot of money has been spent to do less than 2k in over four years!
I think while Gary and I both like the car a lot it's not something that he's loved the way he loved his old XJ8. He keeps looking at Arnages, though. And there are some very nice ones out there. I just see him more as a Jaguar man (in the Top Gear sense!), and at least with an X358 Jag he'll have a car that his wife will actually drive
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 27 Sep 2004
- Posts
- 25,821
- Location
- Glasgow
It's been a pretty fantastic achievement to get it running and thoroughly interesting to read, I hope it goes to an owner who takes as much care as you and Gary clearly have.
It was a car in that problematic stage of being too good to scrap, but cheap enough that the faults were mounting up. Add to that the sheer stupidity of some of the bodges we found (boot lid trigger being a shining example ) that caused more work for us since we had to go back over places and parts that ought to have been done right the first time around.
Pretty much all of what we did, I'm more than satisfied with. There's a few things that in a perfect world with less limitation in the funding department I'd like to go back and have another crack at. And there's a few things that we never did that in a perfect world with less limitation in the funding department I'd like to go back and have a first crack at!
But, c'est la vie
) that caused more work for us since we had to go back over places and parts that ought to have been done right the first time around.Pretty much all of what we did, I'm more than satisfied with. There's a few things that in a perfect world with less limitation in the funding department I'd like to go back and have another crack at. And there's a few things that we never did that in a perfect world with less limitation in the funding department I'd like to go back and have a first crack at!
But, c'est la vie
Ever get the impression that your car is sentient?
Took the Bentley into town earlier to a garage that Gary has used for his other cars to see if he could get the last bits of air out of the hydraulic system. I'd driven the car the other week to Swadlincote and back, and the run down the hill to the Burton bridge traffic lights was a bit hairy when the front left and rear right brakes just didn't engageeek. Certainly gets you to focus when you've got +2 tonnes of car trying to rotate left every time you try and slow it up!
So, fired up and headed for town. And wouldn't you know it? No histrionics. No warning lamps. No trying to pitch dead left when slowing for traffic lights. No wildly malfunctioning ABS. Just smooth, serene progress.
I give up.
Took the Bentley into town earlier to a garage that Gary has used for his other cars to see if he could get the last bits of air out of the hydraulic system. I'd driven the car the other week to Swadlincote and back, and the run down the hill to the Burton bridge traffic lights was a bit hairy when the front left and rear right brakes just didn't engage
eek. Certainly gets you to focus when you've got +2 tonnes of car trying to rotate left every time you try and slow it up!So, fired up and headed for town. And wouldn't you know it? No histrionics. No warning lamps. No trying to pitch dead left when slowing for traffic lights. No wildly malfunctioning ABS. Just smooth, serene progress.
I give up.
This sounds more like an electrical fault.
I had an issue with the CSK where, after 30 mins of driving, the ABS would randomly trigger all four wheels to "anti-lock" below 30 MPH. Short term fix to get me home was pull the connection from the valve block, final fix was the replacement ECU.
Keep at it, over the last weekend I felt like pushing one of mine into a field and leaving it there, it will be worth it in the end.
Oh, and I still want to see this lovely car in the flesh!
I had an issue with the CSK where, after 30 mins of driving, the ABS would randomly trigger all four wheels to "anti-lock" below 30 MPH. Short term fix to get me home was pull the connection from the valve block, final fix was the replacement ECU.
Keep at it, over the last weekend I felt like pushing one of mine into a field and leaving it there, it will be worth it in the end.
Oh, and I still want to see this lovely car in the flesh!
That's now my thinking. Once again, I face my old nemesis Happy Fun With R-R/Bentley's Cheap Electrical Components™.
Woo.
I remember the eBay spoof auction for one of those jars. My favourite bit of the Q&A on the auction page went something like this:
I am still a bit narked about this latest breakage, or whatever has happened. And I'm really bored of R-R/Bentley's idea of what consititutes decent design and manufacturing. When you're designing a luxury car, something that you'll claim to be 'the best car in the world', your default position should not be "oh, that'll do"....
I am still a bit narked about this latest breakage, or whatever has happened. And I'm really bored of R-R/Bentley's idea of what consititutes decent design and manufacturing. When you're designing a luxury car, something that you'll claim to be 'the best car in the world', your default position should not be "oh, that'll do"....
Gary packed the car off to yet another mechanic, a classic car specialist who came recommended. The pump that we replaced the seals on busted itself internally - looks like fixing the seals revealed other weaknesses! All sorted now, the system was being bled when Gary last texted me earlier today so it should be back on his driveway by now.
Once again though, there's an oddity. There are two hydraulic pumps on these cars. The front one (mounted towards the front of the engine near the alternator and A/C compressor) supplies pressurised oil to the rear struts and rear brakes. The rear one (mounted between the inlet manifold, warm-up regulator and distributor to make it a complete pain in the rectum to do anything to) sends oil to the front brakes. We did the seals on the rear pump, and that's the one that broke. So why did we lose the rear suspension and brakes, which the front pump supplies?
The systems obviously share some common pipework, but I can't figure out why we saw the opposite of what we should expect. Unless Bentley managed to assemble this one the wrong way around....
Anyway, with both pumps working and pressures being equal across the hydraulic system the ABS should start to behave now. And the ride at the rear should be more consistent.
Once again though, there's an oddity. There are two hydraulic pumps on these cars. The front one (mounted towards the front of the engine near the alternator and A/C compressor) supplies pressurised oil to the rear struts and rear brakes. The rear one (mounted between the inlet manifold, warm-up regulator and distributor to make it a complete pain in the rectum to do anything to) sends oil to the front brakes. We did the seals on the rear pump, and that's the one that broke. So why did we lose the rear suspension and brakes, which the front pump supplies?
The systems obviously share some common pipework, but I can't figure out why we saw the opposite of what we should expect. Unless Bentley managed to assemble this one the wrong way around....
Anyway, with both pumps working and pressures being equal across the hydraulic system the ABS should start to behave now. And the ride at the rear should be more consistent.