Oh I am definitely on the usage side, however I feel a decent coat of paint may mean it lasts a few more years before needing a rebuild on this scale again!

MOT today, a fail, but not too bad on the whole. The track rod end / steering joint (or whatever it's called) cover had a tear in it, I knew it was a little iffy but didn't realise that it was an instant fail - so lazyness on my part for not reading the entire MOT regulations.
Also play in the kingpins. Neither of us quite knew how much was acceptable, and they were right on the limit of the one mention the MOT guidelines gave for kingpins. However, I have the kit and one kingpin set all ready, so I said I might as well change them.

Comparable to 'normal' cars on the brake test though, which I was quite pleased with. And CO readings of 0.36% without me even fiddling with the idle CO for the test!

So everything else spot on, a few bits should be arriving from ecas tomorrow, booked in for a retest on Friday, but as those were the only issues I can't imagine there'll be any trouble there. Then for its first drive I'll be doing 200 miles to Canterbury the day after!

i¨d say thats good news!, well done

Almost there...
ken
p.s. If that's the CO reading, it's actually a bit low and you'll find that a steadier, slower tickover can be achieved by richening the idle mixture a shade.
Just use the normal procedure of winding in the idle screw with the engine fully warmed up, until the tickover starts to falter, then back it off by one turn.

Thanks Ken, yes, monoxide not dioxide (hasty edit, hope no one else saw that! )

Hmm, that is the method I followed to set it, but perhaps I got impaitent on the 'fully warmed up' step. Anyway, it seems very happy for now, I'll have another fiddle when I can actually drive it on the road again.

HC was quite high actually, still below the limit on average, but a few of the individual measurements were over, is that anything I should worry about?

The rather basic emissions test used for older cars works by assessing the relative percentages of CO and HC in the exhaust gas, so my understanding is that a very low CO reading will tend to push the figure for HC higher.

Figures from the last couple of MOT tests on my wife's Dyane seem to bear that out...
in 2012, CO 2.15%, HC 153 ppm
for 2013, CO 0.92%, HC 553 ppm ( The tester wound the idle mixture screw in during this test to reduce the CO reading and overdid things a bit, but it still passed OK. )

ken

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I shall adjust it again when I have the chance to properly warm it up, that should bring down the HC. It seemed to be running perfectly happily during the couple of miles to the MOT centre which is reassuring.

Another quick question, whilst I am frantically getting everything ready for Friday - I have the castle nuts fitted with grease nipples that SPOG came up with a while ago, and I made sure to get the 9mm high ones, for 'AK or Ami'. However, I just tried fitting them, and the ones in there are standard 2CV ones, about 12mm high. These replacements are too thin, they screw in past the split pin hole. In which part of the steering system does the difference lie? I can only see one type of arm, housing or seat listed on ECAS. For now I am just going to pack them with grease and refit the original, as play there was only an advisory, but I would like to get that sorted.

The correct track rod end housings for your van should have a crank/offset in them, so that the 'body' of the housing sits lower than the track rod.
They're also longer, so you'd need to replace the track rods with the shorter type if you swapped the track rod end housings which are on the van at present.

In the meantime, got any washers 3mm thickness lying around to pack out those gaps between the castle nuts and the outer cups?

Ken.

i reckon they would cost ooh £1 each
2x50p too large a diameter

How did the retest go? Did you make it to Canterbury?

Washers sourced and fitted, thank you both

The O/S kingpin didn't put up much of a fight, after I realised I needed a much bigger 1/2" drive to undo the axle nut on the hub.



However with an enormous breaker bar, they gave in without a fight and the rest held no surprises.



The N/S did hold a surprise though, the welch plug;



As I understand it, the welch plug needs to make a tight seal around the top of the hub, to force the grease between the swingarm and the hub, and prevent the ingress of dirt. Whereas washers are generally fairly well known for having holes in the middle?
It was also stuck in place with a load of horrible blobby weld that took an age to get rid off. Anyway, eventually it was off, and the condition of the rest wasn't too bad, and the kingpin kit makes it so easy to replace them (Huge thanks to 2CViking for his invaluable tutorial!). There was actually quite a noticable difference in play between the old and new kingpins, so quite good to have got them done I suppose.
With that I took it back to the MOT centre, a pass with a clean sheet now

Having driven, ohh, very nearly a whole mile without issues I decided Canterbury shouldn't pose any problems. For want of something to do, I filled up the washer fluid, then the pump leaked all over my lap so I emptied it again. With those preparations done, I set off for Canterbury the next morning.

For the first hour or so, everything went perfectly. I had been getting quite worried about the leg room, but once you've managed to shoehorn yourself into the cab, it really isn't that bad, and I didn't find myself getting uncomfortable. Speed also was surprising, I thought it would be hugely slower than dad's car, but it kept up with the traffic. Indeed, I spent most of the time on dual carriageways doing about 60 on the first choke. I haven't filled it up yet, but the working out the fuel consumption will be interesting.

Anyway, it was all going too well to last, entering Basingstoke it started hiccuping and missing, then gave out completely in the middle of a roundabout. There being a police car behind me, I discreetly opened the door, stuck my leg out and scooted it off the roundabout, and the policeman pretended not to see me. Fortunately there was a set of traffic lights immediately off the roundabout, so for no reason other than I had a spare coil sitting on the passenger seat I swapped them over in the time the light was red. Hey presto! Driving again.

This kept up for another 30 minutes, when it started happening again. Swapped the coils back over again, problem fixed.

I ended up driving back like this, swapping the coils ever 20 minutes or so. It seemed odd to have two dud ones, but they were both of unknown condition, and simply waiting for the length of time it took me to swap them made no difference, whereas actually swapping them completely cured it for a few minutes...

This continued all the way to the outskirts of Canterbury, when I had to do an emergency stop as some woman blithely pushed her pram across the road right in front of me without looking. From then on my brakes started emitting this truly horrendous screaming ever time I touched them, but I wasn't about to admit defeat so close to home. With a lot of planning ahead and slow approaches to roundabouts I made it the last few miles to our house and had a well earned cup of tea.

Rather than eat this week, I decided to give my student loan to Roy, and a nice shiny box of bits arrived for me the next day.

I decided to treat myself to a nice shiny yellow coil - they're not hugely more expensive than the normal ones when you've factored in the leads and so on. I also put new points / condenser on there, as the ones on there were arcing like anything (I think the cheap ones are a false economy, Valeo ones on there now. However, I am rather hoping to splash out on a 1-2 spark unit for Christmas )

The screeching turned out to be the brake pad having come adrift of its metal backing somehow, fortunately it hasn't damaged the disc, and I've renewed them all in case it was a dodgy batch of pads.

All seems to be running happily for now, but I appear to have left my stroboscope at home (honestly, what self respecting student leaves home without their stroboscope??). Is there anybody anywhere near Canterbury that owns a strobe that I could use for 5 minutes? It seems to be running fine, but I would be much happier knowing it is running fine.



Anyway, it is more or less done for now, and huge fun to drive. Thank you everybody for all your help, I'm not sure I would have got here without all the help I've had from here, 2cvgb, mig welding and the mobylette forum. I hope in return you've found it an interesting read, and perhaps in future I can start answering some questions instead of solely asking them .

And don't worry, of course it's not finished, there's plenty more to come!

Thanks everyone

-George