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I love the book, it has perfect reproductions of old pictures and nice new ones, it is huge (you can not read it in your bed), it is an artwork in itself, if you understand German it is a must
Normally in the nearside spare wheel cover was the hydraulic jacking pump (lever and controlls) for operation of the built-in jacks. (see also post “jackall system”). In the offside spare wheel cover was the spare wheel. And the radio was near the batteries in the double bulkhead. I found an image in the huge Holthusen book and some images for the operating front end. It looked a bit different compared to yours but I assume different systems were used.
Peter,
your car has very interesting features: the cotal box and a period radio.
concerning overheating and electric waterpump see also the post “V12 boiling”. In short: I can recommend the electric waterpump which I installed in series to the original one. The correct long term cure would be to clean out the block and especiallly the waterways in the heads and to check the impeller of the original water pump.
Dear petemick
Nice car, I have the same, do you have an image to post?
Get the repair instructions written by David Hine, join the club if you have not yet.
Very important with an engine with unknown history is not to use modern oil with many additives which can detach deposits having been sitting in corners of the oilways for decades. As the original engine has no modern oil filter all this stuff would circulate permanently around and create wear or plug the system somewhere. The system is designed for oil without these additives and the sump is the “filter” it should form sludge here
I think there are two possible ways to go:
1. You leave the engine as is, stay with classic oil and change the oil often. I do it this way. What you should do at least is to remove the old oil, remove the lower end of the sump (the large flat ribbed plate held with huge number of screws and clean out the sludge there. Open the double “oil filter” housing and have a look at the filters and clean them with fuel and see if they have no damage. It might be good to check the pressure relief valve in the oils system that it is not stuck open (see also what Mark and Jim wrote about that). I am driving less than 2000miles per year with the car, so changing the oil once per year is a bit a waste of oil but cheap (the manual for the car says change every 5000 miles) and you can not do anything wrong with a mistake in a conversion (it is a complicated system and every change here changes something there). I am running with cheap SAE40 oil from a local supply.2. You do a conversion to modern oil filters (see also the above post from Mark and Jim, there are also other ways to do it, e.g. a conversion of the original oil filter housing with fitting modern filters there). This conversion especially makes sense if you have to overhaul the whole engine. After that you can run modern oil.
What you also should do is to open the water plates (at least one to have a look). Again many little screws and it may be very hard to loosen the water plate without damaging it. Remove the sludge on the water side.
Let us know if you have more questions, I am pure amateur but try to learn and do much myself.
Dear Laurence,
I have only the 2 carb settup and the flat air filter housing is missing. Instead I found these nice brass suction trumpets in the car when I bought it and I am using them, so there is no air filter at all in my car. Suction noise is not a problem and the carburettors are well accessible this way. I know that others have cut a modern air filter and put it in the flat housing. Which certainly restricts air flow a bit. For me the decision was easy, and as long as you are not driving on dusty roads (Peking-Paris or similar) or 30000 miles per year I assume this should be ok. Earlier Lagondas did not have air filters either. I assume the 4-carb cars as the sports version (Le Mans cars, Rapides and a few others) did never have even the flat air filter/silencer housing.
PeterThank you Mike and Barbara. I hope it is as good in the long run as it looks.
Work goes on, I am making new copper tubes for the water supply to the heater (my engine had only rubber hoses going across the engine head which is not how it was when new). And I changed the little outlet from the oil filler (which is for breathing of the engine and I assume also for evaporating water that somehow comes into the oil?) I did not like that it would drip exactly on the ignition coil so I made a different one (the bent tube is from parts for heating system piping from my local DIY shop). The black is the old one.I took the engine out myself but this was really difficult and my engine hoist not really high lifting enough. So for putting it back I went with engine and car to a local workshop with proffessional means..
After that you see the family happy to have the car back.
I am now connecting everything. The four screws of the transmission shaft universal joint are a nightmare to reach, but I finished that yesterday.
Two last images show the numbers on the rear side of the block (not the engine number). Does anybody know what they mean?
Block reassambled and test run (no power curve testing I admit but checking temperatures and oil pressure at least) resulted in optimizing the water thermostat. Enginge must be running smoothly when I see how it is fixed here..
Camshaft and valve seats: most of the valve seats were broken, a wonder that it did not cause a broken valve
Selection of parts prepared for assembly
Auxiliary components: alternator and radiator
Some minor parts to repair: broken suction manifold and water hose connector. Cut, fitted a metal piece in, welded and reshaped.
Here another special repair: the water pump channel is integrated in the fron end engine cover. This channel had deep holes from corrosion. This was metal powder blasted and reground several times to build material up again.
Dear Owen,
two remarks about your point 1: heat leaking into the cabin:
– Arnold Daveys book on page 136 tells you that you are in good company: ” comparing the merits of the two models (LG6 and V12), for his extra GBP 300 or so the V12 customer got a reduction in 0-60mph time of about 3 seconds and silky smoothness at all speeds. He also got hot feet and the indefinable cachet of owning the “in” car of the period..”
– I can confirm the engine is producing much heat. I have remade such a cowling over the exhaust manifolds of my midsize V12 de Ville like they had it often originally (A.Daveys book page 134). I think it improved when I bent it down so that some of the upper part of the grille in the bonnet side is not covered by it and allows some of the other hot air under the bonned to get out. This works good enough for me. I think even better might be not to use this but to wrap the exhaust manifold with some of the modern heat shield, but I have not tested it and can not compare. It will keep the under bonnet temperatures low but the exhaust pipes will heat up more under the car..
Remark:
The upload of images is not very fast. First you see it connecting second uploading. Do not be to unpatient otherwise your images will not appear and you have to do it again.
If your image is to big (above 200kB) most imaging software can save it smaller. You first can reduce the amount of pixels (we do not need the 10Megapixel your camera provides). After that you can use a good jpg compression.
My son created a little programm that can reduce the size of a whole selection of images at once to the desired pixel size and degree of compression. Here you can download his little program to resize your images (needs .NET framework 3.5): http://pictureresize.origo.ethz.ch/download. The program is german and english he only has forgotten to translate the start button which reads “Los!”= “go!”