JE Robison Service — the blog

Two winners at this year's Newport Car Show!

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:49:00 +0000

I'm pleased to present two winners from the Robison Service contingent at yesterday's Newport Car Show, which has been held at Portsmouth Abbey every Father's Day since I was born. We've attended this show for most of my son's life; in fact there is a story about brining Chairman Mao's Mercedes here in my book Raising Cubby.

The first winner is no surprise - Gene Cassidy's Silver Spur was the runner-up in the Rolls-Royce/Bentley class.

Immediately after that, John Rando's stunning 1963 Continental convertible was named the hands-down winner of the Lincoln class. This car - with its unique leather and wool interior - was one of the hits of its corner of the show.

The coachwork on this car drew a crowd from the moment we parked it till we pulled out to join the winner's procession.

For those of you who weren't there, here's what it looked like:

This car came to us with the typical Lincoln vinyl and synthetic carpet. We replaced that with fine leather for all the seats and doors, and put Wilton wool carpets on the floor, topped by Wilton mats and handmade sheepskin overlays. It's truly unique.

Here are a few images of the other cars in the show:

The show is held on the grounds of the Abbey, overlooking the sailboats in the bay.

There's a mix of domestic and foreign cars at this show

Fins!!

This Ferrari was a late arrival with Montana license plates

The '49 coupe on the left was the well-deserved winner of the Cadillac class. The car to the right was pretty sharp, too

Here we are lined up as they call winners . . .

J E Robison Service is located in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Trade School to open at Robison Service complex in Springfield MA

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Tue, 28 May 2013 10:59:00 +0000

The automobile trade has been good to me. From a humble beginning in the garage beside my house, Robison Service has evolved into one of the leading import car specialists in New England. We’ve grown from a twelve by twenty foot stall to a complex of buildings; all by providing a service few people choose to offer.

Our business has succeeded through the hard work of many people, and the support of a loyal clientele. But before we had those things, there was me – an autistic adult who needed a job.

I started this company because I couldn’t fit in at the Big Corporation. It’s given me stability, and a sense of value in the community. As manufacturing and management jobs have evaporated from the businesses around me, it’s also given me security. No one will be outsourcing repair of Mom’s BMW, or restoration of Dad’s Jaguar anytime soon.

The same can be said for most of the trades. Electricians, plumbers, mechanics, HVAC people . . . we do very different work but we have a few things in common:

We work with our hands
We rely on focus, concentration, and specialized knowledge to succeed
Technical skill means more than people skills in most of our jobs
Our jobs are local, and they won’t be outsourced to India or China any day soon!

Becoming a skilled tradesman is one way a person like me – from an at-risk background, with some “differences” to set me apart – can find success in this society. An established tradesman will always have work, often with a better-than-average income for his area.

Knowing that, I’ve always wished there was a way I could teach the practical trades to young people like me. I get a steady trickle of emails asking that very thing. This summer, I am pleased to say we are taking some action.

We are opening a trade school in the Robison Service complex.

We are going to teach basic mechanics, vehicle inspection, detailing, small engine repair and landscaping. All that will be done right here where I work every day – alongside real professionals practicing the same trades day in and day out.

We are partnering with NortheastCenter for Youth and Families, and Tri County Schools of Easthampton. Students will divide their time between shop classes in our complex and the regular academic program at Tri County’s Easthampton campus. I will be here as an advisor but the teaching will be done by legitimate special ed professionals, not just outlaws like me!

Tri County is a long-established non-profit Massachusetts Chapter 766 approved special education school. Students in our programs will be referred by state agencies, school districts, and private professionals. Some of our kids will be on the autism spectrum, but we will also take kids from at-risk home environments and kids with other developmental challenges.

We are presently recruiting a shop teacher and several other staff. Follow this link if you’re interested in working with us.

Write me if you’re a parent or prospective student interested in our programs. We plan to be open for fall semester 2013, and we plan to begin taking applications for summer school 2014 very soon. I expect mostly day students but NCYF does have residential options.

I’m very excited about this new program. Frankly, it’s something of a dream come true. I can’t wait to see us open the doors, in a few short months. Do you know someone who wants to be in our first class?

Stay tuned for updates, and think hard about those trades. Not everyone is cut out for college. I wasn’t.

John Elder Robison is an adult with autism, and the parent of an adult son with autism. He serves on the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee of the US Department if Health and Human Services. He serves on numerous public and private boards, and he’s the founder of JE Robison Service of Springfield, MA. John is also the NY Times bestselling author of Look Me in the Eye, Be Different, andRaising Cubby. He lives in Western Massachusetts.

The Evolution of Maintenance

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:37:00 +0000

Over the past thirty years, car maintenance has changed dramatically. Since most owners of collector cars are older than 45, this means that they have seen this transformation in their driving lifetime.

Oil changes have gone from every three months or 3,000 miles to 7,500 miles or more, and one to two years. Cars needed new spark plugs every 15,000 miles; today’s cars go 60,000 or even 100,000 miles on a set of plugs.

What do the new maintenance guidelines mean for old cars today? Do they apply to vintage cars, or only to new cars? Let’s look at oil. BMW says its OK to drive a new 5-Series 15,000 miles before changing the oil because they use a special long-life formulation. What does that mean for an owner of a 1983 5-Series? Can he fill his car with today’s super-duper BMW oil and get 15,000 miles on a change?

In most cases, the answer is NO. Maintenance requirements for new cars do not translate retroactively to older cars simply because thinking has changed and fluids and parts have evolved.

Older cars were made in a time of looser tolerances. That’s evident when you look at the number of adjustments on a vintage car. Fenders – to choose one example - have slotted holes so you can move them for alignment. Everything is adjustable. New cars are the opposite – very little is adjustable. Parts are machined precisely and fit exactly as intended. At least they’re supposed to!

The same situation holds true in the engine. Where a 2012 engine might have bearing clearances of 1.5 thousandths of an inch, a 1952 car might have three or five times that much clearance. Some is a result of looser production tolerances when new, and some the result of wear and age. What does that mean? It means the older engine will require a thicker oil to prevent metal-on-metal galling. It means the long-life attributes of the new oil are not the determining factor in its suitability for use in an old car – viscosity is! And the new oil is in fact the wrong viscosity for the old car.

So the use of oil made for a 2012 BMW in a thirty or forty-year-old BMW might actually be destructive. What about going the other way, you ask? The use of the older car’s thicker oil in a new BMW could result in excess pressure, and damage to engine components that were not even invented in the 1970s. Furthermore, the absence of the long-life additives would contribute to premature failure.

When we consider how long an oil will last, we look at two things: How rugged is the oil, and how fast will it get degraded by combustion byproducts as the engine runs? Oil that has the weight rating for old cars does not have the long-life wear additives needed for new engines. That’s one basic fact. Old engines generated more waste product when they ran, right from day one. That’s the second key fact. We all know old engines polluted more. What many people don’t realize is that some of that pollution ends up in the engine’s crankcase, polluting the oil

What that means is this: The life of oil in a vintage car is usually determined by contamination of the oil, either from sludge in the motor or excess combustion byproducts. The use of long life oil will not help that situation; indeed the more aggressive detergents may make things worse!

For that reason I suggest a change interval of once a season or every 3,000 miles on your collector vehicle. And use the right weight for its age.

What about the other fluids?

Brake fluid absorbs moisture from the air. In most climates, it is ready to be changed after three years. Failure to change brake fluid leads to rusting of the internal brake parts and costly repairs. So I encourage you to change it semi-annually.

Some coolants do last longer, and they may be used in older cars. BMW and Mercedes coolants – for example – are backward compatible with most older models. But check the labels to be sure.

Modern transmission and gear oils will last longer, but again contamination is often the enemy in an older car. Since usage varies so widely there is no one recommendation for changing these oils, but in any case I would not run them longer than 6-8 years, even in a low mileage show car.

Spark plug life in a vintage car depends mostly on engine wear. Pull your plugs annually if possible, and check for fouling. Often only one cylinder will foul, and you may choose to replace just the one plug. There are old cars that never fould plugs, and others that do it every second tank of gas. Know your vehicle.

Most old cars are not driven enough to ever clog air filter. Fuel filters are another matter. I suggest fitting a modern filter to your old car because they are so much more effective, and change it every 3-4 years as you can’t see inside, and fuel can carry invisible contaminants that will collect in the filter.

Now it’s time to take this information and run with it, because spring is here, and another driving season is upon us! Good luck!

John Elder Robison is the General Manager of JE Robison Service of Springfield, Massachusetts. Robison Service specializes in repair and restoration of BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes, and Rolls Royce/Bentley motorcars.

Corners and Cadillacs

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:46:00 +0000

I flew close under a stone bridge on the Merritt Parkway, the narrow and twisty tree-lined pathway connecting Connecticut to New York. Looking down at the speedometer I saw I was just beneath the century mark. At the same time, the sign for my exist flashed by, close on the right. I stepped gently on the brakes, moved into the exit lane, and popped on the high beams.

EXIT: 15 MPH.

Hmmmmm.

At one hundred fifty feet a second, the sign was coming up fast. There was only one thing to do. I stood on the brakes. Hard. There was a clatter behind me, as the contents of the backseat relocated to the floor. However, the disruption was brief as the stereo adjusted itself to suppress the additional noise.

As the sign swelled in the headlights, I released the brakes and turned the wheel in one smooth motion. That’s where most drivers go wrong – they stay on the brakes, and go straight off the road. These modern cars have wonderful stability control and drive by wire electronics. It’s all designed to give top priority to straight line braking. So you’ve got a choice: brake hard, or turn hard. But you can’t do both at the limit. Not with electronics. Braking will always win, and you will exit the road, nose first.

With my foot off the brake the stability control took over. The DSC sensed the rotation of the car and the slip of the wheels. It responded by braking individual wheels faster then I could blink, and drifting the car perfectly around the corner. The drift burned off the excess speed, and I exited the turn at a much more moderate rate of progression.

Just let the electronics do its job. That's what they tell us, at service school.

As that happened, the stereo calmly adjusted its volume, and Lou Rawls sang smoothly over the cacophony of tires on pavement. There was no sign that a disaster had just been avoided. Indeed – had you asked – I’d have denied the whole thing, saying that was how I do that turn every time.

The STOP sign flashed by, as I slowed to the speed limit – or something reasonably close – and opened my window. Lou Rawls was just leaving Chicago, and the Girl from Ipanema was headed our way.

Cars sure have come a long way, in the four decades I’ve been driving.

But there’s still a place for a ’59 Cadillac, a ’63 Lincoln, or a 65 GTO Tri Power. Even if the new BMW or Mercedes does have better stereo and cornering. There’s a reason we won World War II, and it’s got nothing to do with electronics.

Gas Springs on Rolls Royce cars - what they are, and how to check them

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:32:00 +0000

Checking Gas Springs – 1981 to 1998 cars

Every 1981-1998 Rolls-Royce or Bentley motorcar uses a combination of coil springs and compressed nitrogen gas to support the rear of the car. That's why your cars squats in back if it sits more than a few days - the pressure leaks out of the system. When you start the car, it takes a few minutes to rise back to its normal height as pressure builds up

The nitrogen is stored in spheres called “gas springs,” located adjacent to the rear shocks. These gas springs usually last 5-7 years. When they fail, your car will ride terribly. If you drive on rough roads with failed gas springs you may blow out the rear shocks, leading to big repair bills. Here’s how you test them:

Start your car and let it idle. Go to the front of the vehicle and press down on a corner with your full body weight. You should feel the car sag an inch or two under the load. Now go to the rear corners and try the same thing. It should be softer. If it’s not – especially if it’s rock-hard – your gas springs have probably lost their nitrogen charge.

If the gas springs in your car are failing I urge you to change them promptly. Driving on bad gas springs will ruin the struts, and leave you with thousands of dollars in unnecessary damage.

Replacement of gas springs is a 4-12 hour job, depending on the year and model of your car.

J E Robison Service is an independent Rolls Royce and Bentley specialist in Springfield, MA. Founder John Elder Robison is a long time technical consultant for the Rolls Royce Owners Club.

When Range Rover air suspensions go flat

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:45:00 +0000

Last week we received a 2005 Range Rover for service. It had two observable symptoms – the suspension would go flat, and the suspension warning light was on. We scanned the car using the Land Rover test system, and read several faults.

We got a long time to charge suspension fault, a rear height sensor fault, and a low voltage fault. That’s when things got complicated. The car obviously had multiple issues. What now?

When you see a long time to charge fault in a six year old Range Rover, it usually means the compressor is worn out. The question is – why? Compressors on these trucks wear out on their own, but they also wear out because of leakage (it overworks them and kills them even quicker.) As a service person we have no way to know what’s happening. We have to change the compressor and see what happens.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a simple one step fix. The compressor contains electronics, and it has different running parameters from the original unit. We didn’t discover that until we opened the replacement part. Carmakers do that – they supersede parts without warning, and we service people just have to roll with it. We installed the compressor, and got a new fault. After a call to LR Tech Support, we learned that new software was needed in the controller, but the controller might not be compatible.

That took us to the second problem – the battery voltage. Software programming is a power-intensive process. That’s why you always have to have your laptop connected to AC power when doing an update. For the car, we need a strong battery. So we proceeded to change it. It's very common for a car with a single issue in the customer's eyes to have multiple underlying causes.

With a good battery in place we did the software download – and presto – Nothing! Another call to techline confirmed the original suggestion – not all control units accept the new update. The solution – a car-wide update, which we are waiting to receive and load.

If that cures the problem, we are done with this step. If it doesn’t, the car will need a new suspension controller as well – one that runs the latest software and controls the new compressor – which is the ONLY compressor they now sell. This is truly a situation where additional layers of troubleshooting and repair reveal themselves as we go.

Once this situation is resolved, we still have to solve the height sensor problem. Once again, it’s a step by step thing. A new sensor may be the answer, but the sensor fault may be an artifact of something larger – leakage from an airbag, or even intermittent connections from a corroded wire harness. When a car is 5-6-7 years old, anything is possible.

What’s the takeaway message from this story? Don’t ever ask “How bad can it be?” because even a simple seeming problem can expand or resist resolution for a long, long time with the complexity of today’s cars. All we can know is what the fault codes tell us. Owners believe they point straight to an answer, but they seldom do. More often than not, the codes reveal multiple problems, and the solutions – as seen on this truck – may themselves be sequential processes. There is no way for us to know what it will take to reach the endpoint – a fixed car – until we are there.

That is the unfortunate reality of computerized automobiles.

We tend to see a lot of situations like that at Robison Service, because our reputation causes motorists to see us as the shop of last resort. We often get the cars no one can fix, and I’ve yet to have one of these vehicle beat us. But they can be challenging, to be sure.

Have you got a problem you can't solve, on a Land Rover, Range Rover, BMW, Mercedes, or Jaguar? GIve us a call at 413-785-1665 or find us online at www.robisonservice.com

John Robison

Carbon clogging and misfires in MINI engines

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:28:00 +0000

Earlier today we took apart an engine from a 2008 MINI Cooper S with 75,000 miles on the odometer. The engine was clean and the services were all up to date. The complaint: A persistent check engine light. The only stored codes were misfires. The car had been to two other shops, and it had received injector cleaning, new plugs, new coils, a test for vacuum leaks (none found), and a test of the direct injection system (which it passed.)

None of those things had any effect on the engine light. It might come back in 100 miles, or it might take 1,000 miles. There was no pattern except this: it always returned.

This is what we found:

What you are looking at is carbon – baked on oil deposits – covering the intake port, intake valve, and valve guide. The deposits are so think the cylinder didn’t work normally anymore.

For purpose of comparison, here is a more typical intake port. This photo is from a different engine – a Land Rover – but it’s got even more miles on it and as you see the valves are spotless

What caused that? This MINI has a turbo motor so we quickly looked there. Turbos are known to leak oil out their shaft seals. But the turbo was clean

There was only one other possibility: the crankcase ventilation system. That system recirculates crankcase vapors, which can be laden with oil. Indeed, when we looked at the hose, we found the same sort of clogging.

How do you prevent that?

Use a top-quality oil. We use Mobil 1 and Amsoil almost exclusively.

Change the oil frequently

Keep the breather system clean

This engine is one of the new Bosch gasoline direct injection engines. While that improves performance it can aggravate situations like this. In a traditional engine the gas flowed into the cylinders through the intake ports, so it acted as a cleaning solvent to keep the ports clear. Now, with GDI, the gas is fired right into the cylinder and nothing but air enters through the port. If the air is laden with oil mist, this is going to be the result.

I expect this is not the last one of these we'll see

The final question in your mind is surely what you do about this? There’s so much carbon that the only real cure is to pull the head and do a valve job/decarbonization. However, this engine had a lot of wear in the lower end (separate issue) that caused the blow-by, so we realized the most cost effective cure would be an exchange motor from MINI

And that’s what we are doing.

MINI – can we repair one for you?

John E Robison

Robison Service

Springfield, MA

Repair or Restoration - which will it be?

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:43:00 +0000

You’ve got a nice vintage sports car, but it hasn’t run in many years. Auction prices for these cars are rising. Should you restore the car to show condition, or just fix it up to drive it?

Here at Robison Service we see situations like that all the time. Sometimes the prudent course of action is clear, but other times it’s hard to decide what to do.

Sitting in the garage, it's a memory or a dream, but making it real may cost more than you think . . .

In today’s market, the cars that bring those jaw-dropping prices on the televised auctions have been meticulously restored and detailed. We do that level of work but owners must understand it comes at a price, as compared to basic mechanical repair.

Let’s look at the restoration or repair of a Jaguar XKE front end as an example. This photo shows a typical old unrestored Jag; this particular car arrived here a month or so ago to join two other similar specimens in line for fixing up.

The problems in this front end are pretty well visible. The brake rotors are rusted. The rubber boots on the ball joints have rotted away, and the joints are loose. The brake calipers are frozen from lack of use. And the wheel bearings are sloppy. The fix: a complete front end and brake overhaul.

If this was a modern Jaguar, we’d be able to do this repair in a day, using complete hubs and exchange brake calipers. The parts would pop off and the new assemblies would slide on. Old cars don’t usually go that smoothly. We can’t simply buy new brake calipers for an old XKE; the calipers the car has must be rebuilt. Same for the hubs. Everything is more time consuming because we repair, rather than replace.

In addition the scope of these jobs tends to expand when compared to service on a new car. For example, we might need to replace the steel brake pipes if they don’t unscrew. We might struggle with rusty parts that won’t come apart, and we will spend time cleaning things up.

The one-day job on a newer Jag may become a two or three day job on an older car. Here's an example of how a simple task like "do the front brakes' expands from fitting front pads and rotors. You pull the rotor and hub off the car, and the bearings are galled and the grease is chunky. Add a few hours to rebuild the hubs. When you remove the brake caliper for access, you see the rubber hose has cracks. Add some time to take it off. When you remove it, the steel line to the master cylinder snaps. Add half a day to run a new line. When you go to bleed the system you feel a "bump" when pushing the brake pedal. On closer examination, you find the master cylinder was corroded inside and the extra push of bleeding has pushed it over the edge. Add a few hours to replace the master. Do this at all four corners of the car, and you've added several thousand dollars of parts and labor to a seemingly simple job. Every job on a vintage car has the potential for this kind of expansion.

So far, all we’re talking is mechanical repair. What if the goal is restoration?

That adds a whole new level of complexity, because everything has to look new as well as function 100%. That affects every single task.

First of all, when the area is stripped down for service, we now have to look at the underlying frame or body area. Is it rusty? Does it need paint? Several days labor may be expended preparing the front frame to be serviced. In many cases we spend more time on the cosmetic restoration of the areas being serviced than the repairs themselves take.

It’s no longer enough to simply replace parts. Parts may not be available new, or else the current replacement part is a low quality reproduction you don't want to use. It may be "new old stock;" a part that sat in a warehouse forgotten for fifty years, and it may not be good anymore. Parts are a major hassle for vintage cars. In the end, we often find ourselves making parts ourselves, or doing our own machining and rebuilding. Once again that eats up time and money.

In this shot you see how a simple brake repair has expanded. The brake caliper pistons are corroded and leaky. The parking brake has worn out. The hubs need overhaul. "Simple" jobs are rarely simple on a forty-year-old Rolls-Royce

When restoring, a simple functional repair is not enough. We must also return the appearance of the parts to a new condition. That may mean corrosion repair, cleaning, painting or plating. We may choose to use techniques that were not available when these cars were made, in the interest of finish, performance, or durability. A good example would be powder painting. We may need to find alternative processes because the old ways are no longer done due to safety or environmental issues. Examples of that are lacquer painting or cadmium plating. All that adds labor time, wait time as paint and plating is processed, and of course there is the cost of it all.

The one day job on a modern Jaguar becomes a week, maybe two, maybe more of restoration work on the vintage car. Always remember this: restoration means bringing back the appearance and the function. A true restored car drives like new - maybe better than new. It doesn't just look good. Painting over worn out parts is not restoration, though it's all too common as a means of cutting costs.

Service and repair is usually limited in scope. Restoration isn’t. You can’t restore the front frame of a vintage car and ignore the back. You need to keep going. The result can be beautiful, and impressive. But it is very time consuming, and time is money.

Repair work is guided by our knowledge of good practice, and we have many opportunities to save money. Restoration is often guided by that car make’s Concours Judging Guide, and we have to follow the code strictly if we are to deliver good value in the end.

It’s very common for a big British sports car restoration (Jaguar, Austin Healey, Jensen, Aston Martin) to eat up 1,000-2,000 hours of labor. No matter how reasonable the labor rate is in your area, that makes for a big bill.

Wood steering wheels are beautiful, but they were seldom original. Opinions about these custom touches vary from owner to owner, and car make to make.

Some cars will justify that work. A rare Jaguar – a 120 roadster, a three-carb XKE – or an exotic Aston Martin may fetch $150-250,000 when restored. For those cars, a very high level of work is justifiable.

What about their little brothers – Triumph, MG, and other cars that are so much more common? They may be a little simpler to restore, and parts will cost less, but a top quality restoration will still eat up 1,000+ hours of labor. If top quality examples of your make only fetch $25k it’s hard to justify restoration unless you do it yourself, as a labor of love. Indeed, that’s what many of these projects are.

The XK120 above has been in the same family for sixty years now. How do you put a price on that? If you're in it forever, nothing but the best will do . . .

The final car I’ll consider is the top end – Rolls-Royce and their ilk. These are much more complex cars, with higher standards of fit and finish, more expensive materials, and “more car” in general to work with. Where a Jaguar can eat up 1,500 hours in a total restoration the Rolls-Royce convertible may consume 3,000, maybe more.

Values of finished cars vary wildly. A 100-point restoration on a Silver Shadow may still fetch only $50,000. A one-off Phantom drophead that was only a little more work to restore may be worth ten times that much in the end. In that world you need to pick your projects carefully if value is your goal.

And then there’s the custom job – the times we are asked to take a car that was built as one thing, and make it into something else. We make 88-inch Land Rover hardtops into 130 inch pickups. We make stock Rovers into fire-breathing rock crawling monsters. We put Rolls Royce leather and wood into American iron that newer saw anything but Detroit vinyl.

For those people – and indeed for most of our clients – cash value isn’t the goal. Rather, the value for them is the joy they get owning a fine one-of-a-kind piece of automotive machinery, and using it for its intended purpose. Most of these projects are Dad’s car; Grandpa’s car; the car we first dated in; or something else that gives that particular vehicle special significance and a value that goes beyond dollars and cents. And those owners tend to be our happiest clients.

So what’s the takeaway from all this? Think carefully about what you want. Don’t confuse mechanical fixing up with concours restoration. Don't confuse nicely painted but worn out junk with restoration. If you want a custom job, think that through before you begin. Remember that different people are happy with different jobs, and there are no right or wrong answers, provided the work you choose is done well. That’s what we take pride in most of all.

If you’ve got a project you’d like to discuss, call me at 413-785-1665 or email Robison@robisonservicecom

John Elder Robison

J E Robison Service

347 Page Boulevard

Springfield, MA 01104

Brake Failure - don't ignore the lines!

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:37:00 +0000

When’s the last time you inspected your brake lines? Never, you say? Maybe it’s time for a quick check . . .

The lines below were photographed on a 2004 Land Rover Discovery that was ten years old in the late winter of 2013. The vehicle is in good shape, not rusted or damaged. But it does live in New England, and that means the bare metal underneath is exposed to snow and salt.

We see a lot of "winter vehicles" this time of year at Robison Service.

Modern cars have pretty good corrosion protection for frames and bodies but we often see “other metal” left totally bare and unprotected. That shows pretty clearly in the steel of the brake line ends.

Do you see the dampness - the darkening on the curved rubber hose - that's brake fluid seeping out. And look at the deterioration of the top right fitting!

As you can see, the steel crimps at the ends of the rubber hose have rusted and swelled, and the connections have started to seep. You wouldn’t feel that as a driver, and the level wouldn’t drop fast enough to put the BRAKE fluid warning light until a few months had passed. This is a dangerous situation.

Why, you ask?

The connection between the rubber hose and the steel crimp has obviously begun to fail. The steel crimp is clearly weakened. What do you think might happen in a panic stop, with 2000 pounds of pressure in the brake line.

Bang! Fluid sprayed everywhere and a line that blew off the clamp. No brakes and a car rolling free, half a second from crashing.

And that’s the end of the brakes, the car, and maybe the driver too. Sure, you could pump the pedal and get some brakes back, but with half a second in an emergency . . . that’s how many accidents happen. At sixty miles an hour you're covering a hundred feet a second. How much "think, react, pump" time does that give you, on a crowded road? Mechanical failure has probably caused far more crashes than you’d think. Many times the area that failed is subsequently crushed in the accident and it’s impossible to figure out what happened afterward. The driver says “the brakes didn't work” but he gets surcharged anyway unless he can prove it.

And with brakes being brakes, he might not even be around to do that, if they failed at high speed!

For that reason, I urge you to check your car for incipient safety failures like this. While you’re under there, take a look at the fuel lines. Modern cars run 40-70 pounds of pressure, and gas spraying at high pressure near a hot exhaust is even more of a hazard than failing brakes. It’s not too comfortable climbing out of a car when the floor is burning beneath you.

The picture below shows the cure for this car – a set of high performance braided stainless brake hoses from our friends at AtlanticBritish. This hose kit is half a day to a day’s work to install depending on rust – there are a total of six flex hoses on a Discovery. If your steel lines are rusty, the job can expand dramatically. The flex lines are out at the wheels - easily accessible - whereas the steel lines are tied to the frame; carrying fluid from the master cylinder to the four corners of the vehicle. The steel lines are much more inaccessible, as they were threaded through the frame early in the car's production process. Replacement of steel lines can easily eat up several days of additional labor. The photos in this story show a Land Rover but most other cars are similar. Rolls Royce – with three times as many hoses – is notably more work but they don’t tend to be as rusty either.

On most cars a set of hoses won't set you back much more that $200. It's pretty cheap considering the risk of letting them fail.

This is what the new lines look line, installed, for comparison:

In this particular vehicle we had to change three steel lines. The remaining lines were okay. Seeing the deterioration makes me wonder how many other ten year old cars are out there, uninspected, on the edge of catastrophic failure.

It’s something to think about, the next time your car is on a lift

John Robison

J E Robison Service

Springfield, MA 01104

413-785-1665

Land Rover Defender restoration at Robison Service

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:51:00 +0000

Here at Robison Service, winter time is restoration time for many of our clients and their cars. We take projects in the fall with the hope that we'l scoot them out the door - finished - by the time spring weather arrives, a few months from now.

Here's a glimpse into some of our activities in the Land Rover world

This is an engine from a 1994 Defender that's undergoing a frame-off restoration. After ensuring the core was good, and no rebuild was needed, we've stripped this motor to the long block and removed all the discolored and salt spotted aluminum.

We bead blasted everything, and finished the aluminum in a clear ceramic that looks like fresh aluminum, but it won't fade or discolor. We finished all the black in semi-gloss powder, and changed the gaskets, hoses, and ancillary parts . . .

We did the same thing on the axles, stripping them to the casings, which were cleaned and powder coated. Land Rover left a lot of this metal bare when the vehicles were new, but we finish it all.

Here's Joe Brick, assembling away . . .

This Defender got a new cross member and we remade the tubular rear bumper. The old parts were totally destroyed by rust

Here's the frame-off restoration that I mentioned above. We've just installed the drivetrain, and built up the axles and hubs. A set of wheels and it's ready to roll!

This Series truck is here for wiring repairs, and eradication of rodents . . . .

Here we are mocking up a new set of jump seats for a Nantucket beach Defender . . ..

Here are the newly built brakes and hubs. The actual hub was bare metal originally, and we finished it in flat black ceramic for looks and corrosion resistance

Here's a rebuilt and refinished swivel . . .

We've had a lot of trouble with steel fuel lines rotting away. These stainless lines are a bear to bend and fit, but they'll never rot!

Here's Joe working on a wiring harness - something that's a lot easier to do when there's no truck in your way

How do we keep track of what's tight and what's loose? We mark all the fasteners with paint once they are torqued. Then an inspector can look under the car and pick out unpainted bolts.

We use high heat ceramic to finish the brake drums, and black paint and u-joints for the driveshafts

Here's a resealed and prepped engine, seen from below

A recent arrival . . . .

Swapping a rear main seal in a V8 is a lot easier when the motor is on a stand . . .

Paul has a pair of rusty battery covers, ready to blast and powder coat. We'll be able to save them.

Meanwhile, we fit the sound deadening panels and rubber for the floor . . . .

And so goes another week at Robison Service

Are you thinking of a Land Rover restoration project? Give John a call, 413-785-1665.

Visit our regular website at www.robisonservice.com

Visit us for real at 347 Page Boulevard, Springfield, Massachusetts

So you want to buy a car . . .

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 18:33:00 +0000

We’ve all heard expressions like, “pretty low miles on that car, if you believe the odometer.” How do you know if an odometer reading is true? My first and best advice is to look at the whole context of car, environment, and deal.

One owner cars offered by franchised dealers of the same make are usually the safest deals, and they often come with certified warranty, but they are also often more expensive. Late model used cars at reputable used car lots are also often safe, because of the source.

You see, many 2-3-4 years old cars find their way into the used car marketplace simply because their original lease ran out, or the original buyer defaulted on his payments. Those cars often have nothing whatsoever wrong with them; they just aged out of their former homes.

One problem to look for in lease cars is neglect, or substandard service. When someone knows they are only renting the use of a car for a set period they don’t tend to care for it as if they’d own it forever. Lessee cheapness and neglect often comes back to bite unsuspecting second owners, and it often happens much later in the car’s life when they have no recourse.

Older used cars are even more of a problem, because they tend to be sold off when they have problems the former owner doesn’t want to fix. In my experience, very few people trade in a 10-year-old car because “they just want a new one.” They may say something like that, but underlying the words is usually a mechanic’s warning that the car needs a few grand in work soon, and they decide to bail. Such cars are often patched up and resold, leaving the new owner with a pile of unexpected repairs. I suggest you examine any used car that’s more than three years old very carefully for that reason.

The best older cars come from sellers whose circumstances may have suddenly changed. A guy who just got a promotion and won a company car may be a great fellow to get a 7-year-old BMW from. Estate sales can be good too. Repos are often cheap, but also often neglected, damaged or both.

The more owners a car has had, the more suspicious you should be. There is little incentive for an owner to alter the odometer while he owns a car. The incentive appears when it comes time to sell, and the more times a car has been sold, the greater the chance someone engaged in deception.

Cars that were leased are more likely to have incorrect odometers. The reason: many leases had stiff penalties for driving cars more than 10 or 12 thousand miles a year. Some motorists – realizing they will owe thousands in mileage penalties at lease turn in – will pay hundreds to roll the odometer back instead.

Odometer fraud used to be a crime of professionals. Crooked car dealers would buy high mileage vehicles at one auction, shave forty or fifty thousand miles off their odometers, and resell them for a substantial gain at another auction a few hundred miles away. Integration of auction databases and better record keeping largely put an end to that practice.

Today those crooked dealers are more likely exporting the cars they “clock” or set back because other countries seldom check odometer records back here in the US. Their activity props up auction prices on high mile luxury cars, but that support comes at the expense of the ultimate retail buyers, distant though they may be.

Today’s lease car odometer fraud is much more likely to be an individual crime, which makes it much harder to detect. When a person leases a brand new car, and turns it in three years later with 32,000 miles there is no way to tell if it once had 60,000 instead. Or is there?

There’s no title history to follow, but many cars have service histories if only you can find them. Services like CARFAX are doing a better and better job of collecting records from state inspection stations, repair shops, and other business that record mileages on cars they see. Discrepancies in their reports can tip you off to an odometer problem, but you have to be careful because a casual reading at state inspection is more likely to be erroneous than a sworn odometer statement when a car is sold. A car that had 30,000 miles in one inspection, 80,000 at the next, and 40,000 today could well be a case of observation error, and not fraud.

The best situation is to buy cars from sellers who are up front, and who have full service records for the life of the vehicle. That way you are assured of both the odometer reading and the quality of care the car received. Unfortunately, that situation is not all that common in the car world.

Given that reality, I strongly encourage anyone buying an expensive used car – classic or otherwise – to have it inspected by a professional. Look for wear in the seats and on the body (or evidence of recent fixing-up) that might suggest high mileage. Look at tires, belts, batteries and other components to see if they are original, matching, and correct. There are a thousand little clues that an expert may spot that suggest one car is good and another should be avoided.

Finding a qualified inspector presents its own challenges, since there is no good system for certifying expertise in any particular make or model. The best cure for that is still to establish a reputation with a shop you can trust, and buy local – restrict your search to cars the shop you trust can check out.

In the end, that is your best assurance. A local shop that does all your work – and does it right - has a strong incentive to be vigilant when inspecting a car on your behalf. After all, if the car has big problems after you buy it – and they did not predict the trouble – you will likely hold them responsible and they may lose your business. A distant inspector knows he’ll never see you again, and has no tie to you beyond the inspection fee you paid. With no disrespect to distant inspectors intended, who do you think will be more careful?

John Elder Robison is the founder of J E Robison Service in Springfield, MA. They are independent specialists in fine European automobiles and they’ve been known to dabble in other makes from time to time. Find them online at www.robisonservice.com

The Making of a Rolls-Royce, circa 1972

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 22:22:00 +0000

While sifting through records on a snowy afternoon I found this paper trail for a 1972 Rolls Royce.

It begins with the order for the car, which was initiated by Rolls-Royce of America. They ordered this two-tone green long wheelbase sedan "for stock," meaning there was no customer for it when the order was placed.

As was the case with most "for stock: cars, no options were specified. Rolls-Royce was unique at that time in that they sold their cars fully equipped, at one price. They did not have a base model car and pile on options like Cadillac or Lincoln. When a customer ordered a Rolls-Royce (as opposed to buying from stock) he might request things like cocktail glasses and decanters built into a door panel, or custom coloring to match a favorite piece of clothing. Other than that, they were built the way Rolls-Royce designed them, which still varied quite a bit from car to car as the manufacturer substituted wood veneers, headliners, switches, etc. There was no such thing as a "production line Rolls." Every motorcar was unique, even if nothing special was specified on the order.

I've looked at cars that went down the production line right after each other and seen subtle differences in what should be two identical cars. One will have a vinyl headliner, while another car has wool - little changes like that set the cars apart from each other. These long wheelbase cars were "more full" of little differences and eccentricities than their standard brothers. The dash of a standard Rolls was framed in steel, but these long cars were custom so the dash frame was cut by hand from wood. That extra hand work alone ensured these cars would be unique.

The door panels, window trim, and rear carpets were also special. Interior sets on these cars tended to be made up in a different area of the factory from the short wheelbase cars. The interior parts would be produced in batches, and the long wheelbase ones were always different.

Rolls-Royce Motors accepted the order for this car May 15, 1972. The car was given the chassis number LRA-14159, and was identified as the 133rd long wheelbase car to be ordered that year. Long wheelbase Shadows are fairly rare, with only 2,780 examples built between 1969 and 1976. For comparison, in that same time period Roll-Royce produced some 17,000 standard wheelbase sedans.

Rolls Royce was always a small volume carmaker. That year they would build 2,473 cars, of which 629 were bound for the United States. Perhaps 75 of them were long wheelbase sedans. That made these cars about as rare as convertibles, and they are actually rarer today as fewer sedans survive whereas almost all convertibles have been preserved.

Most Rolls Royce dealers sold cars from the catalog, as opposed to selling them off a lot like ordinary cars. This particular car was purchased by a Connecticut businessman in early September, shortly before it was completed. This Telex shows the status of several cars, and identifies 14159 as "no longer available for sale."

Back then cars were typically secured with a 5-10% down payment with the balance to be paid when the car arrived. Few Rolls-Royce dealers offered financing, so the deals were almost all cash. Leasing of luxury cars was still quite a long way into the future.

A few days later the car was invoiced out by the factory. You'll note the invoice was in British pounds, which at the time were each worth 2.45 US dollars. At the September 1972 exchange rate, Rolls Royce America paid the parent company $17,762 for the car.

This next paper shows that the car was consigned to Claridge Holt, Ltd for shipping to America. They put it in a container and loaded the car on a Seatrain container ship bound for the Port of Newark. The car left for America in late October.

Those of you who are interested in ships will note this car probably rode to America aboard Seatrain Euroliner, a nearly new (launched 1971) high speed gas turbine container ship. Euroliner was one of the first large purpose-built container ships. She carried almost 900 full sized containers at full capacity, and was just under 800 feet in length. Her two turbines drove her at 26 knots - a brisk pace now or then. In fact, for many years, Euroliner held the cross-Atlantic speed record for a freighter at 31+ knots.

For purposes of comparison, the cruise speed of Euroliner was the same as the cruise speed of Queen Mary 2 today.

At the time, these ships were acclaimed as revolutionary but they always operated at a loss. Modern large container ships have roughly three times the capacity, and somewhat less horsepower and a lower cruise speed from a single diesel engine. Air freight has taken the place of fast ocean freight, and bulk capacity has replaced speed as a top design goal.

When it arrived there was some slight damage . . . oil spots on a fender and damage beside the trunk. That was fixed in New Jersey.

Shipping and preparation took a bit more than a month. On November 27, Rolls-Royce of America shipped the car to their dealer, Hoffman Motors of Hartford, CT; invoicing them for $23,255. Looking close, you'll see that the payment terms are "sight draft." This was a common method of paying for vehicles in the pre-Internet era. A sight draft looked like a check, but it was only cashable once the maker had notified the bank that certain conditions had been met.

In this case, the draft would have been cashable once the car and certificate of origin were delivered intact to Hoffman. The sight draft number is shown on the invoice, and it was probably deposited a few days after the invoice was written. Today, carmakers simply charge the bank accounts of their dealers through the Federal Reserve clearing system but that provision didn't exist in 1972.

The car had a suggested list price of $28,715, but Rolls-Royce did not believe in windows stickers. This was the retail price sheet for the car, which was kept in the vehicle's file at the dealership and possibly given to the buyer:

Hoffman's Rolls-Royce operation is long gone, though they remain in business at the same location in East Hartford with a Porsche-Audi dealership.

In any case, no window sticker was needed as the car was (like most others of its kind) presold. This vehicle was destined for Matthew Saczawa of Wethersfield, CT. He received the vehicle in early 1973, and registered the car at his winter home in Boca Raton, FL.

Looking at the timetable you can see that 8 months passed between acceptance of the order and delivery of the car to its new owner. Where most car companies changed model years in September, Rolls-Royce often continued their model years till the following spring!

That was a result of the long time it took them to build the cars. They accepted orders for the current model year right into summer, which meant the last of the 72's were not delivered till the spring of '73, under the best of circumstances.

Mr. Saczawa - the car's first owner - owned the Atlantic Machine Tool Works in Newington, CT. He was 52 years old when he bought this car. He kept the car for 25 years, only selling it in 1997 because he was too infirm to drive. During that time, the car covered 36,000 miles. That seems like a low number but these cars are often driven sparingly, especially when they are bought by older people who tend to keep them as pets.

The second owner kept the car on Cape Cod for 12 years, at which time it was purchased by the present owner. Here's the car as it appears today, still remarkably clean and original:

Reading through this trail, I am reminded that we are not just owners of these vehicles; we are caretakers - keepers for whomever will follow us. Ordinary cars are driven for 15 years and scrapped. Nicer cars - Mercedes, BMW, or Jaguar - have longer lives but they are still finite. Rolls-Royce cars, in contrast, are seldom ever scrapped. More than 70% of all Rolls-Royce motorcars ever built are still roadworthy today. That's a remarkable thing, but you can see why looking at this example.

The Silver Shadow series was the most maintenance intensive Rolls ever made. At the same time, it is one of the least valuable in the used car market because it is the most common. The result is that many of these fine cars are neglected and abused, and quite a few will be broken up for parts.

I hope the surviving examples get better care as they become rarer, because they are really quite nice to drive. One day, we'll look back and wonder where all the Shadows went. When that happens, I've no doubt this one will be a survivor.

John Elder Robison

John is the owner of J E Robison Service, Rolls-Royce and Bentley service specialists in Springfield, Massachusetts. John is a technical consultant for the Rolls Royce Owner's Club on Silver Shadow and other modern cars. He's been around Rolls-Royce motorcars since the vehicle in this story was new.

Should you warm up your engine before you drive?

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 21:30:00 +0000

Should you warm up your car's engine?

Warmup is part of the ritual of driving any antique, and wise owners follow it faithfully. Few question the wisdom of bringing an old engine up to temperature before putting it under load. Yet many of those same people hope into modern cars and zoom out of the driveway without a moment’s preparation. Is that wise?

Most carmakers say warmup is unnecessary, but they are under pressure from government agencies to keep fuel economy up, and warmup burns gas. And they are in the business of selling parts . . . cars that don’t break don’t make them any money. So I don’t know if I’d follow their advice blindly, in this area and some others . . .

When I think about the problems people have with high-end cars, oil leaks and head gasket failures are high on the list for any brand. When we disassembly engines for oil leakage we often find gaskets cracked, which means they were not strong enough to hold against the applied fluid pressure.

It’s easy to assume they didn’t hold because they just weren’t good enough, but that’s not always the only explanation. In fact, when an engine is cold the metal parts have contracted so the fit between two pieces of engine is fractionally looser than five minutes after start, when everything is warm

As the engine parts heat and expand, the bolts tend to expand less, so they become more tightly clamped. Why? Because the engines in modern cars are aluminum or some other lightweight alloy, and the bolts are almost always steel. Steels expands less.

At the same time, when an engine is cold, the oil is thick. Thicker oil = higher oil pressure as the pump works harder to force it through the passages of the motor. An engine that has 15 pounds pressure at 800 rpm hot might have 50 pounds when cold, and pressure could soar to 100psi or more if the motor is raced.

Looser clearances between big engine parts + higher oil pressures in warm-up = much greater chance of blowout failures in the engine’s oil system

At the same time, stepping on the gas with a cold motor means high combustion chamber pressures. Mix that with those loose clamping forces on the cold head gasket and you have a formula for head gasket blowout.

Manufacturers can say what they will . . . the logic and engineering sense of the points above will stand. They may have engineered in enough strength to protect against the failures I describe, but then again, maybe they didn’t. After all, if they did, we’d never see those failures in the shop!

The simple takeaway – five minutes of warm-up will keep your motor alive longer, with fewer leaks and less risk of failure. And when you do drive . . . go light on the throttle until everything is up to temperature!

Happy New Year

John Elder Robison

Some Words for the Ones We Leave Behind

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 14:54:00 +0000

With all the talk of Christmas, and the holiday weekend, precious little is said about the machines we leave behind. What about the cars that languish in our service department, partially eviscerated, sick, or wounded? What about the ones that are cured, waiting for their owners to return? What about the others, the ones who slumber in storage, waiting for spring?

I thought we might take a moment to reflect on those machines in this time of commercial frenzy

Some say every car contains within it the seeds of its own destruction. That was certainly true in the case of this 2002 BMW, which went home yesterday, leaving these gnawed and eaten bits behind.

Then there's the Lexus, yearning for service, sitting hood agape.

In the next bay a Porsche hangs on the lift, bereft of engine and interior, as we search out and fix the devastation wrought by rampaging rodent invaders.

A Jaguar XKE hangs next to it, with the body stripped for paint repair and the engine removed for overhaul. It will be transformed for spring, but that's still some months away . . . .

In the Land Rover shop an engine sits dismantled as Paul assembles a chassis for one of out winter Defender restorations. This one will head for Nantucket, and a life on the beach.

A Rolls Royce convertible sits quietly, waiting for its seats to return from the upholstery shop. As the TV ads used to say, "A car without seats is like a day without sunshine," and I believe that is still true.

Over in the engine shop a Jaguar motor awaits repair. Meanwhile, it sits safe, among more of its kind, Jags and Rovers and a couple Rolls Royces.

A few cars sit outside excited, waiting for owners to drive them home:

This Rover's owner is headed here on the train, at this very moment. By the time you read this, they'll be headed for home.

This one's going west, to the Hudson River country of New York. The journey will be easier, with the new stereo we fitted.

There are many more the pictures don't show . . . The Willys waiting on its door latches, and the Three Black Bentleys. They come from different cities but they've become fast friends and can often be seen pushing lesser cars out of the way when the gas guy comes round.

There's the Lincoln, and the Cadillac, and the Triumph out front. There's the Harley, and the Jeep, and the ancient Ferrari. The six Rolls-Royce sedans and the Mercedes 600. The old 6.3 and the nice 3.5. All waiting.

While you are out celebrating, raise a glass to the cars left behind. Be considerate when you return, and remember machines may have feelings too.

Woof

To Maintain or Not to Maintain, that is the question . . .

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 20:24:00 +0000

“All I’ve done is change the oil, and do whatever service my local garage told me about." That’s what the owner of a ten-year-old 150,000 mile Lexus told me yesterday. So what should I do now?

We looked at the receipts and she was right. A bunch of oil changes, a few sets of tires, a few sets of brakes, and a battery had taken her all that distance. It hadn’t been very expensive, especially compared to what the dealer wanted when they quoted the recommended services.

Now the car had an engine misfire. That had caused catalytic converter failure, and a check engine light. The owner knew the car wouldn’t pass inspection that way, and the corner garage didn’t do work like that. So . . . the car ended up at our shop.

What does a responsible shop owner do, when someone like that comes in? It’s like when the CPA has a new client walk in the door and say “I haven’t filed any tax returns since 2003, and now I’ve got this letter. What do you suggest?” What indeed.

I have seen some very high mileage Lexus cars in my day. We had one fellow put 420,000 miles on a 1999 LS400 without a single major failure. But he did his maintenance. This car was a bit different. It was fifty thousand miles past the timing belt change interval, and a hundred thousand past the transmission service date . . . . this car was living on borrowed time.

As I explained to the owner, it costs less than $1,600 to change a timing belt, water pump, and all the stuff in front of the engine. If the belt breaks the bill is going to be at least $5,000, maybe considerably more. It’s an all or nothing thing. Every day you drive without belt breakage, you win. The day it breaks, you lose big. No belt lasts forever.

She decided to change the belt.

We moved on to the other items on the service schedule. Spark plugs were next. Why? Because the car had an intermittent skip. Ignition failure is the most common cause of misfire faults. What happens is that the plugs get old. As they age, it takes more and more voltage to fire them. That extra voltage puts stress on the wires, connectors and coils, and eventually something fails. For that reason, whenever you have an ignition miss, step one is spark plug replacement.

You may still need other parts but you certainly need new plugs if the old ones have been in the car 150,000 miles.

She decided to change the plugs

Now we get to the “other” fluids – brake fluid, transmission fluid, rear axle lube, coolant and power steering fluid. Some people say, “I went this long without changing them, best leave it alone so I don’t stir things up and cause a problem.” While many people use that line as a rationalization for doing nothing, it ensures the eventual failure of the system. Lubricants, like belts and plugs, have a finite lifespan.

Brake fluid absorbs water, and it will rust your brake system from the inside. Coolant becomes acidic, and dissolves your radiator and engine from within. Transmission, steering, and axle lubes all pick up tiny metal particles. Left in the old oil, they will grind away at the bearings till something fails. At the same time, oil gradually loses its film strength, which is what keeps the gears from galling against each other under load.

She decided to change the fluids.

In the end, after going through the list line by line, we agreed to do all the deferred service on the car. It cost a hefty sum, to be sure, but it’s still less than she would have spent had she done it all on time, because some of the things we are doing would have been done several times already.

Which begs the question . . . .

Was the original maintenance schedule too conservative? If so, she saved quite a bit of money with little or no consequence. Or will she pay a higher price down the road, as the un-maintained parts and systems fail before their time?

I wish I knew. I’m sure some carmakers are conservative and others are not. I’m also sure some drivers are hard on their cars, while others are gentle.

In the past five years I have lost count of the engines I have changed in Mercedes, BMW and other cars because the owners failed to change the oil. I used to ask how they could be so dumb, but after the tenth or twentieth car came in the door I knew the answer. Cars don’t talk back. So when money is tight, the car gets neglected. Most live, but some die.

When I point that fact out, the owners get mad at me. Fine, I tell them. I’m not the one making loan payments on two tons of scrap iron because I failed to protect my investment. That’s the thing about being autistic. When people act dumb, and machinery suffers, I may take the side of the car and not the human. Vets feel the same about people who abuse cats and dogs.

The lesson to take away from all this: You can probably push the maintenance schedules a bit if you drive gently. But when you do, you take a big risk. Deferring a $1,000 service won’t be so smart, if it costs you a $7,500 engine. Carmakers make maintenance schedules for a reason.

Most of the time, when we suggest altering a factory schedule, it is to do something more often, not less. The carmaker, after all, wants a schedule that keeps the car alive long enough to give them happy owners and a good reputation, but not so long that the car never wears out. We, as repair people, expect to care for things and have them last almost forever.

So I guess you pick your philosophy, and with it, your repair shop.

The Philosophy of Car Restoration

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 18:21:00 +0000

Yesterday I posted some pictures of newly painted parts that are part of a Land Rover restoration we’re doing. I captioned them “better than new,” and one of my readers asked if that was really the right goal of restoration. Shouldn’t we follow the vision of the designers, he asked?

When we tackle a rusty old Land Rover Defender or Series truck, we are working with something that was originally a roughly finished utility vehicle made to a low standard of finish for use by military forces, farmers, and rural residents.

Today those vehicles are valuable, and often owned by very affluent people who are demographically very far removed from Land Rover’s original target market. Land Rovers were built to be working off-road vehicles that would wear out in time, and be scrapped. Today’s collectors have a very different expectation. They don’t usually “work” their Rovers though they may attend club events. Rather than expecting them to wear out and be scrapped, many collectors expect a level of quality they can cherish for a lifetime.

Where the original buyers bought for function and value, collectors buy for sentiment and sometimes-potential financial gain. Most of the people who are drawn to Land Rovers discovered them years ago, perhaps on a farm, or at a camp in the wilderness. Others – like me - saw Land Rovers in Wild Kingdom or National Geographic and dreamed.

When I grew up one of the things I became was an automobile service manager. I watched people use Land Rovers to work power line projects and go where no other car could, and we fixed them when they sustained damage. I saw the compromises Land Rover chose to make the vehicles affordable, and I saw how they subsequently fell apart in the field. I learned how engineering oversights and errors could leave a person stranded, alone in the middle of nowhere. I saw how New England winters turned bare metal undercarriages to cheesecake, and I wondered what might be done about that.

When I began overseeing restoration work I saw how cars are put together, and I began to understand the tradeoffs designers and engineers had to make to deliver a combination of cost, performance and durability. One of the first things I learned was that cost is one of the most important design goals of every car engineer. If a dollar could be saved by leaving a hidden metal part unpainted, Land Rover was very likely to do it.

Other carmakers – like Rolls-Royce – had bigger budgets and made fewer of those compromises. They had their own issues, to be sure, but initial finish was not usually among them.

People would say thing like, “I want my Rover to look just as it did when new,” and at first I took them literally. However, when we saw the results it became clear my clients did not really want the rough fit and finish of the original, even though it was true to their words and the way Rover had done it. When they said, “like when it was new,” they were actually envisioning an idealized “new” where it was hand built, hand fitted, and near perfect. That is quite far from what the factory did.

The more of these jobs I did the more I realized that our clients put a lot more emphasis on finish quality than any factory ever had. That meant all parts needed to be painted or finished even if they never had been before.

As we acquired more experience our philosophy of restoration diverged farther and farther from the manufacturer’s philosophy of car building. Every step down that road made our clients happier. We acquired the ability to restore cars so that they looked great and drove better than they did when new.

We built a reputation as a shop that built vehicles to perform, as well as look great. Too many restorers see their job as cosmetics-only, and we could never agree with that point of view. If I had a choice I’d take a fine running car that had some cosmetic imperfections over a beautiful trailer queen any day.

When we do cosmetic work, we always consider how it will perform in addition to how it will look. If we weld up a custom bumper, we ask if it will hold the weight of the car on a floor jack. When we paint something we ask if the finish will hold up when our clients use the vehicle. Often that leads us to use more rugged techniques like powder coating.

When someone comes to us and says, "I want to drive my Land Rover on the beach," we think long and hard about how we can minimize corrosion in that hostile environment. Every part we successfully protect today is a part that won’t have to be chiseled off, ten years down the road.

Here's one of our projects, from beneath. It's not the perspective most people see, but it looks good and more important it will be durable.

Then there’s the matter of customization. As much as some people like originality, I like tasteful custom work because it’s an opportunity to express our creative skills. We love building custom bumpers, hidden winch mounts, or special racks and carriers. Those things are like custom cabinets in a fine home – you can look at them forever and know they were made just for you, and not bought from a parts catalog.

Obviously the word customization can mean many things, all the way to the Batmobile or the George Barris custom rods of the sixties. If you have something far out in mind, make sure the restorers share your vision. Otherwise you run the risk of being like that sailor who passed out in the tattoo parlor . . .

We’ve also learned how much time quality work takes. We know a full restoration can easily consume a thousand of hours of labor. Some complex cars can take far more. Jobs like these can take a year, maybe more to complete. But the results will be worth the wait.

If you’re thinking of restoring a car – Land Rover or otherwise, I urge you to talk to the shop. Learn their philosophy and make sure it’s in line with what you want. Remember attitudes can vary with car lines. I’d approach a 1954 Rolls Royce with a very different mindset than the one I’d apply to a 1978 Land Rover pickup. Some people want to work on one line only but I’m happy to take a variety. There’s room in the restoration world for all of us.

One final piece of advice – pay attention to how the shop manager communicates with you. Ask whomever you will be dealing with to explain some aspect of their trade and listen close. Do you get the sense they really understand the theory behind what’s proposed to do? If you have doubts – watch out! Some of the biggest mistakes I see come from well intentioned ignorance. Another thing to watch for is specialized knowledge. If you care about originality the shop should know what is and isn’t correct for your year and model.

Ask how they will update you on progress. We send updates with images and text every week. People may roll their eyes at endless images of wheel bearings and pistons but they sure know what we are doing, every step of the way. We may send a client a thousand images in the course of a job. We want our clients to be fully informed so there are no surprises when they see their finished car.

Best wishes for the holidays
John Elder Robison

JE Robison Service
Springfield, MA, USA

Intermittent Problems That Can't Be Fixed

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 14:32:00 +0000

I receive a surprising number of messages from motorists who are unhappy with dealer service departments. Who can repair my BMW right? Where do I find a competent shop to work on Mercedes? Who repairs Land Rovers? One of the biggest sources of distress comes from intermittent problems with certified used cars that are out of new car warranty, but still covered by certified warranty. This recent missive typifies what I hear:

For the past few months I've had both the check engine light and tire pressure monitoring system warning lights come on and off. I check the gas cap and the engine runs fine. My tires pressures seem ok, too. I've taken my Mercedes to a dealer three times for these warning lights, and every time they've returned the vehicle saying it's fixed. After driving the car again for a few hours, or a day, the lights come back on. The dealer said that as long as the check engine light is not flashing, it's not a critical problem. I'm just tired of dealing with this dealer's service department.

Why does this happen? Is the dealer incompetent, or the problem so intractable? In most cases, the answer is neither. Much of the time, the answer can be boiled down to four words:

No pay = no work.

To explain what this means in the context of car repair I need to start by explaining some things about warranty and service. When a car is new, it is backed by a warranty from the manufacturer. With rare exceptions, there is no limit to that warranty, and the dealer is not responsible except as the service agent. The manufacturer cannot say, “we’ve done all the warranty repair we are going to do,” and abandon you.

If a new car has a really intractable problem the manufacturer will usually offer a replacement vehicle or in some cases a refund or lease cancellation. Carmakers go to great lengths to satisfy customers.

They also expect a lot of their dealers. One thing they expect is that the dealer will do something in response to customer complaints. If a car comes in with an intermittent fault the dealer will often change the most likely parts even if the fault is not present at that moment, because that gives the best chance of cure, and the manufacturer stands behind them and pays the bill. If a subsequent repair is needed, they generally stand behind that too.

If a lot of time is needed to diagnose a difficult problem the manufacturers have a policy of paying the technician as needed. Knowing that, they usually get the job done. Problems can still happen but the vast majority of new cars get fixed successfully.

Cars covered by certified programs are a whole different story. Once the new car warranty expires the manufacturers unlimited obligation comes to an end. The certified program is often administered by a third party company who didn’t make the car and has strict limits on their responsibility for it.

In most cases, there is no longer provision for paying to diagnose difficult problems. Indeed, many used car warranties – technically called service contracts because they are not actual manufacturer warranties – don’t pay for diagnosis at all. Those that do often pay a fraction of the real time taken.

Yet customers don’t know the difference. They just expect their problems to be solved. But that can’t happen when no one is willing to spend money to find a problem. It’s not the dealer’s car – so he’s not writing a blank check if the trouble can’t be found in 15 minutes. The car’s owner thinks warranty covers everything and the dealer must be trying to cheat him if they ask for any money. The result – the dealer says “no problem was found” and boots the car out the door. One day, they figure, it will come back with a visible failure and they can fix it then.

The focus of carmakers is to make money by keeping customers happy so they buy more cars. Good service on new cars is part of that. The dynamic for a third party administrator is totally different. They make money from finance, by collecting fees for service contracts and paying out as little as possible.

Once those folks manage the car’s service, everything changes.

Yet the motoring public knows nothing of this. Everyone tries to hide this ugly truth. Many dealers are told they cannot charge customers extra for so-called certified repairs. That is presumably meant to prevent gouging, but in practice it ensures no dealer technician will waste a single unpaid minute chasing a difficult intermittent problem.

The system works for most people, most of the time, because most problems are not intermittent and motorists learn to ignore the rest.

For the rest of you . . . .

We’re here in Springfield, Massachusetts, and we’ll diagnose and fix anything at our regular shop rate. If an extended warranty pays us, great. If not, the owner can pay. From the shop perspective that’s the only fair way to do this. We get our clients everything we can from their service contracts and they pay the balance. We charge for actual time worked, and WE WILL solve the problem.

J E Robison Service Co, Inc

Springfield, MA, USA

Bosch Authorized Car Service

Specialists in Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes, Porsche, Land Rover, and Rolls Royce-Bentley

When cars break, and break again

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:00:00 +0000

My friend Bob called me to ask about his most recent car repair experience. He said, Last week I noticed my brake fluid was low, and the pedal went to the floor. I took it to the shop, and they replaced a leaking caliper. Two weeks later, the same thing happened. This time they say I need a master cylinder? How come?

The experience of sequential repairs is all too common in the automobile business. Sometimes it’s due to technician error. But more often, it’s the inevitable result of service policies or the step by step nature of some repair operations. Let’s look at some examples to see how it happens.

When Bob brought his car in for service the first time, he had a visible problem. Brake fluid was leaking at one of the wheels and it’s didn’t take much to see the source was a failed caliper. Replacement was a straightforward job and the garage sent the car on its way assuming it was fixed for good.

Yet it failed again, just a few weeks later. This time the failure was not so obvious. There were no leaks at any of the wheels but the fluid was low. When that happens there is only one place to look in most cars – the power brake booster. Indeed, when the master cylinder was pulled back from the booster the technician could see where fluid was leaking and he ordered a new cylinder.

The question is, why did this happen two weeks after the first repair?

The answer was clear with a little bit of thought. When everything is normal the guts of the master cylinder don’t move more than a few thousandths of an inch to actuate the brakes. When the system gets bled following repair it moves through a much bigger range, half an inch or more. If the seldom-used reaches of the master cylinder have become roughened by corrosion the act of bleeding the brakes may lead to the internal seals failing.

That’s what happened in Bob’s case. I asked myself how the repeat failure might have been avoided. The first answer that came to mind is more frequent brake fluid flushes. When the fluid is flushed the cylinders are run through their full travel. Doing that periodically would prevent buildup of corrosion and presumably prevent failures like this. But at what cost? The more flushes would have cost more than the cylinder, and required three service visits instead of the one repair.

Some would say the brakes could be bled through air pressure, without moving the pedal. That’s possible on some vehicles but the problem with that is that you never see the system work through its whole range and that may blind you to another more serious problem. So that may work, or it may replace a harmless problem like this with a worse one.

In the end I concluded there is no way to assure a “one step fix” in a situation like this. Most of the time, when the first job was done, the master cylinder would not fail. But every now and then, it will. When that happens you have a two step repair.

Then there are the so-called emission problems – those “check engine” lights that just won’t go away. Many motorists believe that scan tools point us directly to failed parts, but all too often that is not the case. Fault codes are symptoms, many of which have numerous possible causes. Sometimes we can test and verify a failed part and we have a simple one-visit repair. Other times the tests all come back good – the problem is intermittent or not picked up by our testers. Other times we reach a point in the diagnostic tree that says “Replace A and re-evaluate.” So we replace A and see what happens next.

The problem is, low level emission faults cannot usually be detected on a short drive. Many require that the car be run through a tank of gas, sometimes more. As a practical matter that makes the owner the test driver – and if more work is needed, the car comes back. Sometimes twice, sometimes three times.

I wish there was a way to streamline this, but with the ever-increasing complexity of cars, we face a choice between exchange of major systems where we swap out all the possibilities (prohibitively expensive) or multiple repair efforts (a hassle for motorists).

Winter and Waxoyl

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:33:00 +0000

Winter is coming and it's time to think about protection for anything you plan to drive in the snow and salt. Robison Service is the most experienced installer of Waxoyl corrosion protection products in the East.

Waxoyl treatments start at $1,000 and we're still booking appointments for fall. Read more on the Robison Service website, email mwhite@robisonservice.com or call Maribeth White at 413-785-1665 for an appointment

Hurricanes, Seawater and Cars - a bad combination

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 13:50:00 +0000

If you’ve been watching the news these past few days you’ve probably seen plenty of images of waterlogged cars. New York City alone has thousands of flooded vehicles. Some were immersed to the tops of the tires, while others were totally underwater. What will happen to them? All are junk; useful for scrap metal and body panels only. But that’s not where many will end up . . .

Most of the cars will be covered by insurance, and they will be written off and sold as salvage. For months to come, salvage auctions all over the East Coast will be processing these cars. Some will look perfect, but they aren’t. There’s a reason they were declared scrap. If only they ended up that way. The fact that they don’t is one of the dirty little secrets of the insurance business.

When an insurance company declares a vehicle a total loss, they are in essence buying the car from the owner at its pre-loss value. But insurance companies are not in the business of fixing cars; they are in the business of money. Therefore their goal is to turn that piece of totaled iron into cash in the most efficient way possible.

That’s where salvage auctions come in. Insurance companies hire these auctions to gather the wrecked, burnt, and flooded cars from individuals wherever they may be. They then clean them up – if such a thing is possible – and auction them to the highest bidder.

Bidders at these salvage sales are supposed to be recyclers – junkyards, to use the more traditional term. However, many buyers of flood cars are shady used car operations. These people don’t buy the salvage for parts. They buy them to fix it up and sell – often to some unsuspecting used car buyer.

Insurance companies could stop this practice in a moment, if they wanted. They could require flood cars to be cut up for scrap, and they could ban sales to so-called “rebuilders.” Why don’t they do that? Money. A buyer of scrap might pay $10,000 for a flooded Porsche, because that’s the value of the salable parts. But another bidder might pay $15,000 knowing he can sell the car to some unsuspecting motorist while it still drives.

From my perspective, it looks like that want the top bid – which probably comes from a “rebuilder” – more than they want these ruined cars off the road.

Why are they ruined, you ask? How can a car be ruined while it still looks brand new, especially if it drives like new, too? Here’s how it happens . . .

The first thing to fail is the electrical system. Most modern cars have wire harnesses running under the carpet – on the floor – and many have control modules down there too. If seawater rises above the door sills these areas will be submerged. When that happens, salt water invades the wiring, control units and electrical connectors and begins the invisible process of corrosion that ends up like the rusty junk you see, washed up on beaches.

Once it starts, there’s no turning back this process. The only cure would be to strip out all the wiring and controllers and install new parts – a task that might cost $10,000 on an ordinary Toyota or Chevrolet, and that’s just the beginning . . .

When seats and upholstery are submerged their cushions and innards become waterlogged. They can’t dry because the water is sealed inside by impermeable vinyl and leather coverings. So the water stays in their, growing mold and rotting the interior from within. It’s not a very pretty picture, when you cut it apart six months later. Once again, it could be fixed, but the cost to take apart every bit of interior and wring it dry would be prohibitive and destructive, because most of thise pieces were never meant to be disassembled.

Then we come to the running gear. Modern cars were not designed to operate in water. Seals and gaskets keep oil and grease from escaping outward often can’t prevent seawater from making its way inward. When salt water gets inside it ruins the oil, and begins the familiar process of corrosion whenever it comes in contact with bare steel.

Seawater damage to wheel bearings and axles may be insidious – the bearings may fail one by one, over a period of years. But fail they will. The ocean will always win. The Army learned this when they started driving truck up beaches – today, they strip and overhaul any axle assembly that’s been in salt water for this very reason. You can do that in an ordinary car, too, but the cost will be high and it’s one more reason cars get scrapped.

The same thing happens in a engine. If the engine is running when submerged it usually dies a violent death as incompressible water is sucked into the cylinders, shattering or bending the pistons and rods. If the engine is off, the damage may not be as apparent, but the corrosion will begin inside, and the engine will fail long before its time. This will happen even if the oil is changed.

Insurance companies know these things. That’s why they declare flood cars to be total losses. But to some dealers, they look too good to scrap, and there’s money to be made.

These people will buy flood cars, change fluids, change failed control units, and get the vehicles running as best they can. Then they offer them for sale, usually far below book value. The cars often have salvage titles, which tell buyers the cars are reconstructed, but buyers look at the cars and tell themselves all is well, because they look so good. Wrong! A saltwater flood car will never stop presenting problems; it was written off originally for a very good reason.

A true repair of a saltwater flood car would consist of new wiring and control units, dried out or new upholstery, and completely overhauled or new drivetrain and running gear. The cost of that work will far exceed the value of any ordinary car.

The take-away from all this: Be very careful if you’re in the market for a used car in the next six months. Steer clear of anything with a salvage title, no matter how god it looks. If a car has a clear title, look at where it’s from. If it lived in an area impacted by Sandy – be very careful.

Storing newer collector cars for winter

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 01:47:00 +0000

If you live in snow country you know convertible and sports car season is coming to an end. Soon it will be time to put our pets away till next year. In this article I’d like to offer some pointers for storing late model collector cars.

Start by filling your car with fuel and pouring in the correct amount of fuel stabilizer. I suggest Sta-Bil brand but alternatives are available. A full gas tank minimizes the chance of condensation which happens when water vapor from the air condenses on the inside of the gas tank as temps drop in the evening. If this happens every day in a car that’s in storage you can accumulate a great deal of water in the fuel. Filling the tank to the top will prevent it.

I also suggest pouring in a bottle of octane booster as the fuel will lose octane rating the longer it is stored.

Note: cars built after the 1990s have sealed fuel tanks which should not allow free circulation of vapors. For these cars filling the tank is less important and indeed you may want to keep their fuel level low so you can fill with fresh gas in the spring.

Run the car at least 30 minutes to get it thoroughly warmed up; an hour’s hard run is better. You want to make sure you have boiled any stray moisture out of the engine and exhaust system before shutting the car off for the season.

You want to store the car with reasonably clean oil; some suggest changing oil right before winter storage while others argue for changing the oil first thing in the spring. In my opinion, the oil in your collector car should always be fairly clean so that no special attention is required for storage. As a practical matter, I can say with confidence that cars often go into the shop to be "checked over for spring" where shop visits to "prep for winter" are fairly uncommon.

If you don't know the age of your coolant I suggest you either change it (most cars should get fresh coolant at 2-5 years intervals) or at least tests its ph to make sure it has not become corrosive.

The next step is washing your car, and vacuuming and cleaning the interior and trunk. Spots that wash off easily now may not be so removable if left till next spring! If your car is going to be stored in an area where mice may invade I suggest putting mothballs or some other repellant in the car to improve the chances that they won’t move in.

Check all your fluids and top them off right to the full lines before parking the car. Make sure the antifreeze protection is good and the windshield washer system has solvent, not water, so that it does not freeze.

Spray all the door seals and the trunk seal with silicone spray before putting the car away. Oil the hood, door, and trunk hinges, too. If there are throttle linkage pieces on the engine I’d hit them with oil, and I’d also oil any moving pivots (like the parking brake linkage) under the car.

Before parking your car I suggest inflating your tires to the maximum pressures as shown on the tire sidewall. This will minimize the tendency of your tires to develop flat spots as they sit.

Switch off the radio, heat, air conditioner and all other accessories before you shut the car off. The will minimize the electrical load and transients when you reconnect power next spring. It’s your best way to prevent electrical failures.

Drive your car into the spot where it will be stored. Close the windows, and shut off the engine and remove the key. If your car was made before the airbag and electronic engine management era you can go ahead and disconnect the battery. If you have a newer car – wait a minute! Newer cars often need as much as twenty minutes for their computers to store data and shift to low power mode. If you disconnect the battery before that process is complete you can set fault codes that will require a trip to the shop to correct next year.

In the worst case, disconnecting the battery can even cause major electronic systems to fail. Land Rover – for example – has a problem with this on their 2000-2005 Range Rovers. Disconnecting the battery too quickly can send the navigation computer to never-never land where the only cure is a new $1,000+ unit. Be patient and avoid problems.

If you are disconnecting the battery I certainly suggest you take the keys out of the vehicle. The reason – when you connect the battery in the spring there is always a chance the central locking system will power up and lock the vehicle. If that happens and the keys are inside, you’re stuck!

Modern batteries lose about 10% of their charge every month while sitting. If you park the car at the beginning of November a good battery will still have enough juice to start the car in March. Connecting a trickle charger will keep it at 100% buy you’ll need access to an electrical outlet.

The best way to protect your tires is to put wood blocks under the suspension at all four corners, lifting the car’s wheels slightly off the ground. That will ensure the tires are round next season.

Do not set the parking brake. Leaving the parking brake under tension all winter may well result in a brake that won’t release next spring.

If you have a convertible you should usually store the car with the top up to prevent shrinkage. Once it's closed don't open it until you have a warm day to heat the canvas unless you are in a heated space in which case that does not matter. Every year we see plastic rear windows that split when opened on a cold day.

Some people prefer car covers; others leave their pets uncovered. There’s one school of thought that says pulling the cover off and on will scratch the car and another that says the protection is invaluable. If you want to get a cover and the car is indoors I recommend the heavy flannel. If it’s outdoors Technalon is the ticket.

These tips will maximize your chances of an uneventful winter of storage. I wish you the best of luck with executing the plan. And remember to keep your insurance in force. If there’s a water leak in the garage, or mice eat holes in the seats . . . those things are covered by comprehensive insurance in most states. The times you are not driving the car may well be the times you need insurance most.

John E Robison

J E Robison Service

Springfield, MA, USA

www.robisonservice.com

When speakers stop speaking

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 14:51:00 +0000

Is the radio in your vintage car sounding tinny, scratchy, or generally awful? If the vehicle is all original, and it’s more than 10 years old, there’s a good chance your speakers are shot.

Even if the car is hardly driven at all speaker cones are prone to dry out and fail. The part that fails is generally the surround, which is the bit that connects the main body of the cone to the frame.

Take a look at these two photos and see the difference – one shows a good surround, while the other shows a surround that has fallen to pieces. In this speaker the surround was made of foam, and the foam turned to dust and vanished. When the speaker is played it will sound terribly scratchy because the voice coil (hidden under the cone) is scraping the frame. If left unrepaired the coil may short out, and damage the radio electronics.

Interestingly, the speakers most prone to failure are those made with foam surrounds in the 1980s and 1990s. Older speakers had rubberized cardboard surrounds, or simple paper, and they fare batter with time.

And time isn’t the only thing that kills speakers – volume will do them in, too. When you play the radio loud the speaker cones are pushed in and out greater distances, which stresses the cones and surrounds and will eventually lead to failure.

Speaker technology has improved quite a bit in the past decade, which means the speakers you can buy today are far better than what was in the older cars. For that reason we tend to turn to suppliers like Crutchfield rather than buy oem from the carmaker.

If you are changing speakers in a 1970s car (or something older) you may find there’s only one wire to the speaker. In those installations the other terminal on the speaker is connected to ground. When wiring the speakers you’ll see the terminals marked in red, or with a + sign. Ground the black or – terminal.

The polarity of speakers is important whenever there is more than one installed in a system. When they are the same, they are said to be in phase, and they reinforce each other When they are backwards they tend to cancel each other out. Out of phase systems tend to sound tinny and faint.

Look at the speakers you are replacing and make sure the polarity is the same when you connect the wires to the new ones.

The British Invasion car show, 2012

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 00:34:00 +0000

Thanks to Mike Gaetano and all the volunteers for another successful show. 614 cars and counting . . .

Inspecting Rolls-Royce and Bentley hydraulic systems

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 14:42:00 +0000

One of the more unique features of 1965-1998 Rolls-Royce motorcars is the hydraulic system. The hydraulic system powers the brakes and the rear suspension’s height control. These systems are legendary for their complexity and potential for bank-breaking repair costs. In this essay I'll show you how to check yours out so you can get a sense of what's happening before disaster strikes.

The early version of this system (1965-80) is filled with a derivative of conventional brake fluid (RR363). Newer cars (until the advent of the Silver Seraph series) used Castrol hydraulic system mineral oil, or HSMO. The two fluids are not compatible. Use of the wrong fluid in a car will cause severe system damage. All reservoirs are clearly labeled RR363 or HSMO.

The fluid in these systems should be changed annually. Some owners question the need for this, when their cars are rarely driven. Here's why it needs to be done: The hydraulic pumps store fluid in accumulators where they compress nitrogen gas under very high pressure. The fluid is separated from the nitrogen by a rubber barrier, but it is inevitable that some nitrogen will make its way into the fluid. This forms bubbles, and bubbles in the fluid cause the brakes to pull and act erratically.

Any car that has been sitting a long time is sure to have "funny feeling" brakes for this reason The cure: Change the fluid annually.

The system contains two hydraulic circuits that operate in parallel for the brakes. One of the systems also powers the rear height control. Hydraulic fluid is stored in reservoirs on the left fender well. Lines carry the fluid to the hydraulic pumps, which are located in the center top of the engine; under the carburetors or the fuel injection. High-pressure pipes carry the hydraulic fluid to the accumulators under the motor. From there excess fluid is returned to the reservoirs. Braided lines carry the high-pressure fluid to the distribution valve assembly located under the driver seat.

A network of steel pipes carries hydraulic fluid to the calipers at each wheel and to the rear suspension and height control. The rear suspension contains height control valves, shocks, and gas springs that sit above the shocks in the trunk area.

All the pumps, valves, and moving parts are subject to failure. Calipers rust or leak. Gas springs and accumulators lose their gas charge. Metal lines rust and rubber hoses deteriorate invisibly. A system this complex can only be fully tested by trained people using special tools in a workshop. However, it’s possible to do a pretty good “quick check” without tools, using the following procedure:

Begin with the vehicle sitting, engine cold. Get in the car and pump the brake pedal 10-15 times. Open the hood and check the level in the hydraulic reservoirs. If the level is low, look for leaks (as evidenced wet spots) Turn the key on but do not start the engine yet. You should see two lights, Brake 1 and Brake 2. Depending on the year of the car these may be in an electronic unit, in a group of lamps, or by themselves in the middle of the dash.

If you do not see the lamps, or if only one is lit, give the brakes 10-20 more pumps. If the light does not come on you can assume that warning circuit is broken. Start the car. Watch how long it takes for the lights to go out. If it takes more than 20 seconds the hydraulic pumps are probably weak.

Run the car 2 more minutes, shut it off, and turn the key back on. Begin pumping the brake and note how many pumps before the Brake 1 and 2 lamps illuminate. Less than 20 pumps indicates the car has weak accumulators.

Start the car again and wait for the lights to go out. Go to the back of the vehicle and bounce each corner. If the car is soft and pushes down a few inches with your weight that’s normal. If it’s rock-hard that is a sign of failed gas springs in the rear suspension.

Sit down on the rear bumper (even better, have two people sit on the bumper) and wait 30 seconds. You should feel the car lift to the original (and visibly correct) ride height. If it does not lift that’s a sign of problems in the height control.

Take the car onto the road. Try braking slowly and quickly. Pay attention to any pulling or diving that may indicate caliper problems or air in the lines. Look for any pulsation or shudder that may indicate warped or damaged rotors. Let the car come to a stop on a gentle slope and release the brake. Make sure the vehicle begins rolling smoothly and the brakes do not drag.

Shut the car off and put it in neutral. Press and release the brakes a few times.

Finally, put the vehicle on a lift and make sure all four wheels spin freely. If any wheels drag that may be a sign of caliper trouble. Next check all the components for leakage. Look at the reservoirs (top left fender well), the pumps (top of the engine), the main valves and accumulators (under side of the engine), the distribution valves (under driver seat), the brake lines and calipers, and the rear suspension components.

Look at the fluid and make sure it looks smooth and uncontaminated. RR363 (used 1965-1980) should be almost clear; HSMO (used 1980-1998) is dark green. There should not be any foam, sediment, or sludge visible. Color should be consistent.

Look at the rubber hoses to see if they are original. If your car is more than 10-15 years old I suggest you replace all rubber hoses as they can swell inside, creating invisible failures. A swollen hose may cause brakes to drag and overheat. Old hoses are also prone to bursting.

If your car passes all these tests you can give yourself and the vehicle a pat on the back. If you see potential failures, I suggest you find a specialist and get a more thorough evaluation.

John E Robison

JE Robison Service

RROC Tech Consultant

Flanged or Top Hat Liners in Land Rover Engines

noreply@blogger.com (John Elder Robison) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 14:07:00 +0000

The more I see of the 2003-4 Land Rover Discoveries, the more it seems their engines were fatally flawed. Ten years ago, 90% of the engine problems from overheating were due to heads warping or head gaskets failing. 10% were due to what people called "slipped liners."

The same was true for noise complaints. When someone came in with a rap or tick issue the problem was almost always a noisy catalyst or worn rocker shafts - comparatively simple fixes. Only a tiny fraction of noises were from internal motor problems.

Today, with the late Disco motors, those odds have flipped. When a 2003-4 Rover comes in with overheating trouble, the most likely cause is liner or block failure. A noise complaint is more likely to be from excess clearance in the piston-liners (in other words, prematurely worn out.) I've written several essays about how this happens so I won't repeat all that here. The question is . . . what do we do about it?

The solution that has emerged - both here at Robison Service and in the UK - is to rebuild the blocks using flanged liners so the cylinder head seals against the liner, not the block. Then we fit new pistons with proper clearances.

The photo above shows a typical failure. The block cracks at the base of a head bolt bore, between the back of the liner and the water jacket. With the stock liners there is no barrier to prevent combustion gases going round the liner and into the coolant.

The fitment of flanged liners solves that problem by making the liner top the sealing surface. There is no high pressure gas behind the liner, and the cracks are rendered irrelevant.

The photo above shows a flanged liner and a new piston. The o-ring seals the bottom of the liner to prevent coolant dripping into the oil sump in the event of a crack.

This is what a flanged liner looks like installed. As you can see the wide flange covers the entire sealing area of the head gasket.

We can do flanged liners in 4.0, 4.6, and overbore configurations. At this moment (Sept 2012), costs to do a block with flanged liners, new pistons, and all basic machine work in in the $4800 price range. Our American costs are similar to costs from RPI or Turner over in the UK.

We believe this is the only long-term solution to the problems in these late motors, and it provides a substantial upgrade for any older Land Rover V8. However, the liner repair is just the beginning when it comes to engine overhaul . . .

What else do we do when building a motor?

I recommend balancing any engine. Motors like these rely on sophisticated engine electronics to achieve smoothness. That will be considerably improved if the engine is mechanically balanced before assembly.

Front covers and oil pumps have been problematic on these trucks. The pump gears fracture, and eventually the oil pump fails. The result - engine failure from oil starvation. I recommend fitting a new front cover as long as these parts remain available.

Heads are another problem area. We recommend rebuilding the heads. This involved walnut shell blasting to get everything spotless, followed by crack test and a check for warping. Then we fit new guides, redo valves and seats and cut the sealing surfaces perfectly flat. If you're a perfectionist we can also cc the combustion chambers to ensure each cylinder is exactly equal.

This is a rebuilt head. As you can see the sealing surface is cut to a mirror finish. We true these heads to half a thousandth of an inch to minimize the change of gasket failure.

We also rebuild rocker shafts, and swap cams and lifters. Needles to say, every other part is cleaned and inspected before being overhauled, repaired, or replaced. That thinking should also extend to the external accessories like the water pump, injectors, and alternator.

We believe the engines we are building now are substantially smoother and better than what land Rover delivered new.

Till next time
John Robison
J E Robison Service
Springfield, MA USA

(413) 785-1665