A HOT TEST DRIVE, or HOW TO LOOSE THE HEAT
The “one” thing left to do on the heating system was to get the broken heater union out of the coolant pump. The fan and pulley came of the pump relatively easy. The screws and nut holding the pump to the engine block as well. Then it took some persuasion with a piece of timber and a hammer to get the pump out of the block.
I think the theme of a previous owner was “the more liquid sealant the better” (as seen before, even on the exhaust...). Sure enough, although the coolant pump actually had a gasket, there had been a overly liberal amount of the liquid stuff applied (even blocking a small coolant passage into the block). The pump was cleaned and I set about to get the piece of union stuck in the housing out.
With a jig saw blade I saw the union left-overs in four pieces. Actually I resorted to use the complete jig saw at the end, and finally I could pry the pieces out. However the threads in the housing was now a bit affected by the sawing and I was afraid that thread sealant wouldn't be enough to take up the “imperfections” and seal. So it was a pleasant surprise when the tightness test revealed no leaks. Then it was time to make a new gasket, and I traced the holes over from the old one and made a gasket with simpler outer shape. A more appropriate amount of silicon sealant was then applied on both side of the new gasket for some extra sealing performance.
At last I could connect the new heater hoses to the new aluminium fittings (bought at Burton Power). The cooling system was filled up (thanks for the super tip from the Skid Factory), followed by five test laps around the garage building – all good and heat coming from the vents in the heater box!
So the next day was all free for driving. I drove about 160 km in total and refused to take the highway, where possible. I tried to drive as much as possible of the old main road (“R1” or “Riksettan”) from Södertälje all the way to and through Stockholm. When I've had passed the Liljeholmen bridge I got the feeling I was back in the 1950-1960's driving through Stockholm, for a brief moment.
The heater works fine, it was hot in the cabin, so hot that I had to stop and turn down the ball valve two thirds. I also discovered that by altering the fan speed, the position of the scuttle valve and/or the position of the heater box fresh air valve I could significantly regulated the heat. How the distribution through the cabin is I don't know, but as the driver I'm satisfied.
Some service, check-ups and to reassemble the glove box remains before the car (she?) is ready for the spring adventure.
The coolant pump is out.
A lot of silicon sealant used by a previous owner. Can you see the blocked coolant passage?
Gaff tape works great to plug the pump for a tightness test.
From left to right; new aluminium heater fitting, left-overs from broken-off fitting and the less broken original fitting.
Coolant pump, new home-made gasket, previous home-made (?) gasket.
One of the mounting ears in the coolant pump housing was cracked and eventually broke off. A home-made sleeve ensures that the nut will hold the ear evenly to the engine block.
Re-assemblin'.
Heater hoses completely connected.
Vauxhall Victor Estate (FB) "Julia" (1962)
Saab 99 "GLT16" (1984)
PREPARING FOR THE EASTER RUN, OR HOW TO KILL THE SIDE LIGHT BY MENDING THE HEAD LIGHT
During the past autumn I thought of doing a one year anniversary trip with the Vauxhall. As December got closer I realized that the trip had to be postponed; the heater was not fixed yet and the doors were still leaking air worse than a sieve.
The target was set on fixing those things and making the trip whenever they were done. When March came I was making good progress and the goal was set on taking Julia down to Jönköping and visiting the Easter traditional Bilsport Performance and Custom Motor Show. A total of three days where allocated for the adventure.
I planned to do nothing on the Easter Friday than packing the car with tools, spare parts and supplies. The heater was working great and the front doors had new seals, but still leaking like a sieve (see previous post). I’ve noticed same days before that the right head light wasn’t working so I had ordered spare head light bulbs. However, neither of the new bulbs would light up; nor main, nor dipped.
The voltage at the bulb terminals were correct and the earth terminal had contact all the way to the battery. “Strange”, I thought, but decided that it was probably best to re-wire the head light. And there the calm and lazy Friday went up in smoke…
Armed with cable terminals, butt connectors, heat shrink tubes and tools the Friday afternoon came and went quickly. When it all was done, and the head light was working properly the right-side light and flasher had stopped working, and one of the screws holding the lens was rusted solid to the base… “Arghhh!” … Eventually I gave up with the penetrating fluid and just drilled the screw out. The bulb socket was very rusty, and I had to work feverishly with sand paper and a drill mounted wire brush to get at least some contact between the socket and bulb.
I was also set to mount seat belts in the front seat before the trip. This also happened during that calm and lazy Friday, in parallel to the side light mending. The two, from factory, prepared seat belt mounting points in respective b-pillar worked great. But, the ditto in the floor for the buckles were way to far back for the buckles supplied in the kit I bought, that supposedly would fit a 1962-64 Vauxhall Victor (FB).
Fortunately, I had foreseen that something like this could occur and had preventively bought some generic threaded seat belt anchorage plates. Two holes were drilled in the transmission tunnel just behind the front seat, these anchorage plates were placed beneath the floor and I made up a mounting bracket for the buckles out of 30 mm flat mild steel bar. By this stage it was well past midnight and I packed up and went home for some sleep.
Look for an upcoming post for the road trip story.
Auxillary gasket to the oil filling lid.
Totally worn out throttle linkage.
Some welding, drilling and grinding later the throttle linkage was in better shape.
Mended, assembled and oiled throttle linkage.
New bulbs. Standard 414 on the left, halogen with 414 fitting on the right. I havn't tried the later yet.
Mended head lamp bulb socket.
New right head lamp wireing with heat shrink tubing, neatly bundeled with the existing cable harness.
The last few cm of wires to the bulb socket are original, just cleaned up. The rest of the wireing in to the engine bay is new.
Behind the b-pillar upholstery ready-made seat belt anchorages were found.
New seat belt anchorage points were added to the transmission tunnel.
Home-made bracket for the seat belt buckles.
Carpet back on the floor and seat belt buckles mounted.
Seat belt buckles.
Seat belt reel.
Upper seat belt anchorage point.
Saab 99 "GLT16" (1984)
Vauxhall Victor Estate (FB) "Julia" (1962)
chris_gson skrev:
Great work & Result ! good luck driving !
Tackar! 
Vauxhall Victor Estate (FB) "Julia" (1962)
Saab 99 "GLT16" (1984)
Xebers76 skrev:
Du är riktigt klurig du! Blir fint!
Alltid kul att "klureriet" man visar uppskattas. 
Vauxhall Victor Estate (FB) "Julia" (1962)
Saab 99 "GLT16" (1984)
THE EASTER RUN
or
ONE YEAR PLUS, ANNIVERSARY TRIP
Early afternoon on the Easter Saturday me and the car rolled out from the parking lot at home. I drove towards Jönköping on the old route 1, in Swedish called “Riksettan” or simply R1. With the help from a 1947 map, in combination with modern and online maps, I had traced the remainders of the old road on to-days road and put it into the navigation app on my phone.
The R1 was the predecessor to to-days E4, and for the most parts the routing is still intact, “slaloming” around the modern highway. When it comes to the towns and cities, thou, that is when it gets very tricky to find the old routing. The old road usually did go through right in the middle of the town centre. Today, the road planners do everything they can to minimise traffic through the towns, and also a lot have usually happened with the town “landscape” during the last 60-70 years. Nevertheless, I tried to stay as close to my interpretation of the original routing as possible, even if I couldn't drive on the exact same streets as the original.
Between Södertälje and Vagnhärad the road surface is good, but the stretch south of Vagnhärad and the whole way to Nyköping is full of cracks, bulges and ruts, due to lack of maintenance, I think. Sometimes I was all-over the road trying to avoid the worst damages…
In Jönåker the old road passes a place called “Kalle i Backen” and according to the legend you should honk your horn when passing, so I did. Although, there is some discontinuity in the steering wheel horn switch, so the signal came a bit late.
Next stop was Hotel Stenkullen, or actually I stopped to look at the road leading up there, since the first part of it probably was a part of the R1 before the highway was built. I remember reading about it in the Swedish magazine Nostalgia many years back. They were also tracing the old road, but in its entirety and from south (Helsingborg) to north (Stockholm); and they found this remainder more or less by chance. It is easily identified as have been part of a major road by because the road surface consists of concrete blocks and the joints between the blocks are very visible.
As the road turns towards the hotel the surface change from concrete to asphalt and the guard rail change from the old wooden type with stone pillars, to a modern steel one. If you look closely straight ahead into the woods instead, you can see the trees and plants growing in a distinct pattern resembling that of the concrete block joints.
The journey then continued to, and through, Norrköping, Linköping, Mantorp and Mjölby. Before I left Norrköping I took a wrong turn and ended up in a housing neighbourhood, but to my surprise I also found what I believe was a stretch of the old road, the concrete block joints were felt in the car and clearly visible through the top asphalt layer.
In Mjölby I realised that I was a bit pressed for time if I was going to make it to my hotel before they closed. So, I got the opportunity to test the Vauxhall in highway speed. Let’s just say that that was not fun after a while so I decreased the speed to a more comfortable level and continued along the highway, being passed even by some lorries (which were not keeping their speed limit).
I arrived at the hotel, just north of Gränna, with some minutes to spare. After checking in I decided I needed some snacks and drove to the nearest petrol station. When turning back to the hotel I adjusted my position in the seat and something went “CRACK”. Then the seat was very loose and it felt like the back rest had snapped.
The next day I drove, with a loose seat, back to the same petrol station to examine the damage and figure out how I could fix it. What I discovered was that the mounting support for the seat, that should be welded to the floor, wasn’t on the driver’s side, and hadn’t been for some time. Someone before me had fixed it with one, or two, self-drilling sheet metal screw! These screws had torn from the flanges of the mounting support and was also loose in the floor.
Fortunately I had a cord-less drill with me and some screws, nuts and washers. However, I had no drill bits, and the petrol station was not well equipped either. But, the re-carpeting job was partly done with self-drilling screws, so I robbed four of them and found four larger washers. Then I removed the bench and used the cordless drill to drill and screw the mounting support back to the floor. Four screws with large washers and adequate spread is better than two randomly placed ones without washers, right?
An hour and and half late I could then head towards Jönköping and the annual Easter car show “Bilsport Performance and Custom Motor Show”. With the camera ready I entered the first of four halls. Many hours later my feats were sore and the show was closing for the day. Over-all the show was not that interesting compared to previous years I've been there .
(If you're interested you can see my photos from the show here: https://photos.hoftware.com/#collection/241194 )
The next morning I was on a mission to find a fellow Super Seven-builder in Vara to get help with machining some parts. So, once again I headed to Jönköping to get around the south end of lake Vättern.
On the way I found a very cool old bridge, and it was in very good shape too. You could see that, including the old bridge and the current bridge, it had been a third one there too, probably even older. I was very glad to see that someone is maintaining the old bridge; the stone-work was in excellent condition and as far as I could tell the railing was newly made in old style.
From Vara I set out to drive the old road north, this time the R6 (“Rikssexan”) that today is E20. I soon found out that this is harder than tracking the R1, because most of the routing of today's E20 is on top of the old R6. There is just small pieces through villages that remain, and you have to drive a lot back and forth between the old and new road. The later the night got the more I got tired of that so eventually I gave up and drove the E20 all the way to Mariefred. From there the R6 is intact to Södertälje.
It was a good trip and nothing major happened with the car. I need, however, to go hunting old roads without any other goal, to be able to stop more and discover. At last I wonder what next year's anniversary trip will go to?
Vauxhall Victor Estate (FB) "Julia" (1962)
Saab 99 "GLT16" (1984)
Saab 99 "GLT16" (1984)
Vauxhall Victor Estate (FB) "Julia" (1962)
Ska det se ut så här? 
https://www.facebook.com/17405400337034 … 685370992/
Vauxhall Victor Estate (FB) "Julia" (1962)
Saab 99 "GLT16" (1984)
Xebers76 skrev:
Sådanna resor är underbara
Japp!
Saab 99 "GLT16" (1984)
Vauxhall Victor Estate (FB) "Julia" (1962)
The front seat mounting base is now secured to the floor. For the long term plan I'll be stripping the entire floor of surface rust and the paint covering the rust, and then weld the seat mounting base to the floor, as it should be.
Saab 99 "GLT16" (1984)