MAINTENANCE THINGS you never think about....

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Editor
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MAINTENANCE THINGS you never think about....

Post by Editor » 19th February 2018 - 1:02pm

Here are some timely things to check to keep your Type 3 and Type 4s working well, from our very knowledgeable Forum member from across the pond, Jim Adney.

Just some thoughts about parts of our cars that get ignored:

Plastic sheeting inside the door panels

I've had body shop people tell me that they are there only to keep down wind noise. They may be a small help in that, but that's not their main function.
The main thing they do is keep rain water from soaking the pressboard backing of the vinyl door panels.

You'll never know this until you leave one of those plastic sheets out, or tear it up, and then notice your door panels warp after the next rain. If your doors are missing their door drains, you can cut replacements from heavy plastic sheeting. Dry cleaner bags are too light, but construction vapor barrier is good and I have some good sheeting here if you can't find any locally.

Door drains

That's right, rain water gets inside the doors. That's why the doors have drains.

Each door has drains at the bottom corners to let water out. If you don't clean them out occasionally, you may hear water sloshing in there after a rain. You don't have to remove anything to clean out the drains; you can poke them from below, but if you're inside the doors for any other reason, it's always a good idea to brush and vacuum out the loose stuff. It accumulates.

Wiper shafts

Most of the time we tend to ignore the shafts that turn the wiper arms, but those shafts actually come thru rather long bronze bushings, and those bushings can sometimes use some lubrication. You don't want to wait until the shafts have seized. I've seen cars where the bushings were turning WITH the shafts, slowly augering out the hole in the body.

At the very least, it's worth removing the arms occasionally, cleaning under there, and adding a couple drops of oil while the shaft is turning. If you happen to be taking the wiper assembly out of the car, take this as an opportunity to take the shafts out of the bushings, clean it out, and fill the space in there with a good grease.

Door hinges

Most of you probably already know that there's a little plastic cap on top of each door hinge. You should pop that cap off once a year and fill the hole under it with oil. That will help keep things working smoothly, and with minimal wear, for a very long time.

Distributor lubrication

Every time you do a tuneup, you should clean off the distributor cam and rubbing block and then apply a small bit of fresh clean grease to the cam.
This will keep the rubbing block from grinding a path into the steel cam. Yes, over time, this happens.

In addition, if your distributor has centrifugal advance in addition to vacuum advance, you should remove the rotor and add 1 drop of light oil to the hole in the top of the shaft. This will keep the centrifugal advance from sticking.

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Jim Adney,
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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Dave.

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Re: MAINTENANCE THINGS you never think about....

Post by broady_6 » 19th February 2018 - 4:27pm

All very nice points, though the door card one is a little late for me. I've had to retrim one of mine for that very reason a previous owner had removed the plastic and the first I knew was a soggy door card
The sultan of swing

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