1973 AC Model 70 Invacar, Visitors & Occasional Distractions

Have you thought about electronic ignition? Theres a thread about it on the Daf Forum for the 2 cylinder engine
dafcars.proboards.com/thread/3815/coldstart-problem?page=1&scrollTo=36573
Theres a points system which might work, or I have a system in my Reliant Kitten that is an inductive pick up from the cam, no points. (I am going to try to identify it)

Re: The Box- why not put a kill switch on it for the ignition too? Then at least you can put the key on, start and stop it from the engine bay.
Would add a small increase in security too. Very small.

Phil

And yet another timely reminder for me to put the battery on charge when I finish play today!
I locked my keys in the boot once, luckily I was doing an interior clean so the doors were open, but I still had to dismantle the rear seat via rounded bolts and squeeze between the seat frame!

And then a week later I found a spare key wired to the oil cooler!

Wouldn't work for me sadly, the side locker is shallower than my shoulders and ribcage... there's also a brace right in the middle of the area I'd need to squeeze through.

I've been doing a bit of a poor job of updating things on the cars lately, though mainly because not a huge amount has been going on. It's a good time I've found to start ticking off a few of the jobs which had been waiting for the right time to happen and/or further information. One of these jobs was replacing the rear brake hoses on the Invacar. While the rubber on the ones on there seems fine, the ferrules are quite crusty and I've just never fully trusted them given their age. Despite them passing the "literally having me hanging off the brakes with my entire body weight" test without any signs of distress. However the tricky part there was figuring out what I needed to buy. My original plan had been to take one off the car (or one from a spares stash a friend has) to a local hydraulic specialist and have them make me up a set using the original as a template. This turned out not to be necessary however as someone else had found a Girling cross reference catalogue which showed the part number fitted. The rear brake hoses on an AC or Invacar Model 70 is 64047355. A bit of digging around has confirmed that this is the same as the front brake hoses used on the single master cylinder equipped versions of the Mk I Triumph GT6 (among others...but this seems to be by far the easiest one to find parts for). After initially getting one wrong part delivered (which turned out be a foul up on my part) I got the correct parts ordered.

That was at 16:34 on Friday afternoon, through the eBay shop of MEV Spares...The package dropped through my letter box a couple of minutes past noon the following day. That's some speedy service!



Their part number for those playing along at home.



Perfect weather to be working on cars.



Despite being in the garage, with the door deliberately left out a bit to provide an overhang, and inside a car, the snow STILL managed to find ways to get down the back of my collar and into my right ear while I was working.

What then followed was the best part of two hours swearing at this thing.



The nuts securing the hose to the chassis and suspension arm fought me the entire way off. Not helped by the fact I was working in a space precisely 2/3rds as wide as I needed it to be to realistically get both hands in - and access from underneath is even worse because all of the brake lines are on top of the chassis or suspension. Realistically I should have just removed the driver's seat first...but that sounds like extra work!

With the hose *finally* liberated I was able to confirm that it does look like we have a perfect match this time.



Thankfully the retaining nuts survived the brute force required to remove them as I didn't have anything else in stock the correct size or thread. Fitting the new hose was a far quicker process! Doesn't this look better?



The new hose looks a lot more twisted than the original in the photo mainly because the curve in the pipe is off to one side rather than upwards - that's the orientation it was naturally sitting in before any securing fixings were tightened up, so it's not under any undue strain.

Hopefully get the other side done tomorrow, get the system bled and adjust up the handbrake which is blatantly obviously doing next to nothing on the nearside at the moment - which ties in with me having noticed a bit of extra free play in the brakes recently - the handbrake adjustment plays a big part in that as it basically sets the rest position of the shoes. Car is just coming up on 1000 miles travelled now, so makes sense to my mind to have expected to need to do this as the shoes will have bedded in properly and cleaned any crud off the surface in the drums by now.

Will just be nice for long term peace of mind to know that these hoses have been changed. For all they looked crusty, I don't think the original ones were in imminent danger of failure (or I wouldn't have driven the car!), but it's nice to know I'm not relying on potentially 48 year old rubber hoses when I hit the brakes! *Especially* as this car has single circuit brakes - something I'd really like to look at upgrading in the future for obvious reasons. the flexible hose on the front brake was physically damaged when I got this car so was replaced with a NOS replacement. This part while also an off-the-shelf Girling item doesn't look to be shared with anything common enough to be readily available these days. For peace of mind I may well look to get one of these made up by Pirtek or similar outfits. Though the front hose at least is easy to inspect - unlike the rear ones which are essentially inaccessible unless you're going in through the service hatch in the rear of the cabin.

Also on the long-term peace of mind list regarding the brakes: A few folks have raised concerns about the suitability of copper for rigid brake lines - in spite of it being sold for this purpose with all the prerequisite safety standard markings stamped on it in most motor factors. That message has been received and understood, and I do fully intend to replace all the copper rigid lines with cupronickel ones in due course. I want to fully investigate the possibility of the dual circuit setup first though as I'd rather not do the job twice. I've been as careful as possible to avoid bending the pipe at all beyond what's necessary to form it into the necessary shapes so as to avoid work hardening it, and have made sure it's secured in place as thoroughly as possible (and have actually just bought some more clips to improve on that a bit along the chassis rail for the front to rear main line). Thanks for the advice on that folks, it's not something I would have ever known about without the feedback.

Of course once this work is finished it'll probably be a while before I can take a test drive to see if it's made any noticeable difference to the behaviour of the brakes (not expecting it) given the current situation.

That's pretty much the message I took from the advice I was given. However with single circuit brakes I'm leaning towards doing anything I can to reduce the number of opportunities for Murphy's Law to get involved! Which has also reminded me I need to get a proper Girling master cylinder ordered in so I can implement a brake fluid level warning light. That's very much on my list of "essential instrumentation."

If something happens and I'm losing fluid I want to know about it!

How long is the front hose? Land-Rovers are a cheap source of flexihoses, front brake ones are particularly useful.

Re: level warning, would it be possible to retrofit a cap that has an integrated level sensor?

Range Rover P38 front hoses are pretty long as well. Banjo on the caliper end.



Here's one I measured earlier!