better not read the thread on the rivets on the D*lly then russ

Filming for Holy Flying Circus

Took Hetty to be an 'action vehicle' on the set of the biopic of the Monty Python Crew.



We arrived at the production base in London. RVs, portable catering, lorries full of Macs, the works, it was awesome!

We then proceded to 'Michael Palin's' House where Hetty was parked on the drive, and later, opposite the front door at the point where Palin is kissing his wife goodbye.







The last scene was a dog walker fidning part of the script of 'Life of Brian' in a rubbish heap. This was pretty funny, all you'll see in the film is a out of focus shot of the windscreen surround, we were literally just set dressing, they could have used any car!











Had a fantastic time, really enjoyed it. the production team were lovely and plied us with food and drink all day. Was an experience to remember.

you do realise as soon as that programme goes to air there will be a deluge of letters to Terry Wogan on "Points of View" saying.....
"As a log term licence payer I was disappointed to note the use of LED trailer light on the Belgian built AK350 in the shot ,scene 5, Victorian Suburban exterior. Is this the sort of attention to detail that our licence fee now provides.......Disgusted, Surbiton."

I wonder why they used "that old van"of you.
I mean: What is the connection between this car and the film?

Nice experience though.

One of Martijn's vans ( CitroenAZU.nl) was used for films aswell.

Great story Sam

It's not Hetty's first taste of stardom, either. When we had it, it was used for a series of adverts for Kronenbourg 1664 - "What Britain would be like if France had won Waterloo" - there's a couple of brief glimpses of the front wing outside a shop doorway and a reflection in a shop window. But they paid well... It was also in the background of a kid's TV series about time-travellers or some such guff - they "went to Paris" (actually filmed in the BBC TV centre car park)...

So, Hetty runs beautifully. Smooth, quite. Lovely.

Apart from the smoke...

It's embarrassing. So thought I should do something about it.

I did a compression test first. The left side gave 170psi, the right, 160psi. This I was quite pleased with. In hindsight I wish I'd done a 'wet' test to test the rings. But hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I whipped the heads off and had a look in the barrels:



hmmm oily.

The rings:




So none are broken, crudded up etc...

It's VERY hard to get hold of M4 piston rings so as there was nothing I could easily do I thought I'd focus on the valve stem seals.

On examination:

The left hand head had shot valve stem seals and sadly the valve guides had worn too.

Interestingly the right hand head didn't have valve stem seals - so this must be an older head. And there was lots of wiggling in the valve stems too

Luckily I have a spare M4 which I took to pieces last weekend.

The pistons and barrels had pretty much had it



On taking the heads apart it transpired that these too were old Ami 6 heads, without valve stem seals. However the valve stems are really tight in the valve guides so running it won't be smoke free, but it's got to be better than how it was before!

The heads themselves needed a thorough clean. They'd been pretty gunked up. One of them had some slight pitting where the barrel sits but I hope I've ground that to the extent that it won't be a problem.

Before:





After:



I'm at the stage now where the replacement heads have been cleaned. I've ground the barrel surfaces and ground in the valve seats (that was fun!).

Tomorrow I'm going to put the heads back together.

Also FINALLY I have a proper air filter - a genuine AK350 at that. Of course Hetty has the massive solex 40 carb off an ami 6 which was only fitted to AK350s for the last 6 months of 1966 - so as you can image the correct air filter is really common Although there was one in the museum at Salbris.

I used the rubber tubing off an Ami 6 air box to adapt the 350 air filter (intended for the smaller carb) onto the 40.









The final tweak I want to do is put a late 60s style breather on (which is correct for the 350) its like a fat looking later filter. I''ll attach an ecas CPD valve to regulate the crank case pressure which might help prevent oil leaks.

That spare engine is one I had from Jon Spanners many moons ago - dunno if he can provide any history on it...?

The engine in Hett apparently had a "new" crank before we bought it - there should be paperwork in the history file. I was always sceptical, since when I replaced the pistons and barrels, there was play in one conrod. The pistons & barrels came from Lucy Cutler - good used - when one piston turned out to only have three half rings in it.



I know who (apparently) rebuilt the engine...

So, put the engine back together today. after cleaning up the flanges on the manifold, discovered it was pretty warped.

Before



After



We got around this by fitting standard 'thick sandwhich' type gaskets coupled with thin later material gaskets on top/ We also made sure that the cowling wasn't intruding on the seal between head and flange.

As Sean recomended I went at the rocker covers with wet and dry and washing up liquid. I was amazed at how beautifully they came up. I started with 800 then polished them up with 1200 and they were smoooooth.

These were attached to the heads with actual M4 rocker cover gaskets smeared with a little clean engine oil - no gluey gubbins or anything. I then tightened the covers with actual M4 rocker cover nuts salvaged from my spare engine.

Finally, the push rod tube seals - these are held in place by a spring that applies pressure keeping them snuggled up to the crank case. The spring is braced against a washer that fits on a hump on the push rod tubes. We doubled up the washers to apply extra pressure so there's a really good seal.

And it ran, it ran smoooooooth like a baby's bum and dry like... a baby's bum with pampers on, no oil spraying. Hurray!

Smoke - well, I need to run it a bit more first really. Given that the heads are off a '63 ami I'm expecting it to smoke a bit as there's no valve stem seals, but its certainly better than before.

Compression test showed 160psi dead on each side which I think is pretty damn good really.

Out of interest - the 63 ami engine that I've cannibalized had REALLY short push rods and odd cam followers. Pics below.

'66 M4 left, '63 M4 right


'66 M4 Right, '63 M4 Left



I've just finished spraying up the new airbox so I'll fit that tomorrow. I'm also going to fill my cans with veggie oil as Jameswallace has kindly leant me a pump to get the lube in.

Sam,
excellent stuff, very useful as I've got to build one good M4 out of 2 unknown quantities and many boxes of bits this Winter and have already learned some things I didn't know about these engines...

ken
( p.s. Don't bin those pistons, as I think I've found an alternative source of rings, just need some 'old school' filing to set the ring gaps)