Slon lives again

A couple of weeks ago Slon passed his first EU-kontroll in Norway. Which is great news. He is now road legal for another two yeas.

At the end of September I had to hand in his number plates as I had not been able to get everything sorted before the Eu-kontroll deadline.

The only problem on test day was that the engine was running rich, around 9% CO. The tester tweaked the carb to get it through the test but the engine is now feeling a bit tight. I will have to check/re-adjust the carb before I start using Slon in earnest.

Nice to know I now have something else to keep me busy. Well apart from the fact that we need to put the Syncro through its EU-kontroll before the end of June.

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A new home for Sliced Slon

Here it is, the new home for the Sliced Slon blog.

I hope to be able to put up some more pictures in the near future, including the “missing days” of the original restoration of Slon and of the Sycnro’s turbo swap from last autumn.

“Hope” is the operative word here.

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Progress 1: gearbox input shaft oil seal

This evening I cleaned up the bellhousing which was covered in a layer of gearbox oil and grit. Once I had cleaned off the cack, I removed the clutch release bearing support (three nuts) and dug out the old seal. This took a bit of brute force my special rear brake drum removal tool. Once out it took a few minutes to put the new seal in place. I put a thin layer of high temperature gasket seal round the outside of the seal where it makes contact with the bellhousing. I smeared some oil on the input shaft, pushed the seal into place, tapping it with a drift to get it seated properly.

I checked the tightness of the bellhousing nuts while I was there, and was able to get a half turn on all of them without using excessive force. I will check the manual for a torque wrench setting tomorrow and tighten them to the correct torque.

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Progress

Well it has been a while since I last posted. Slon has been languishing in our garage tent for a year now. The (new) brakes will probably need replacing as the van has stood still for so long. Sigh!

On the good new side of things, I got the Remtec engine fixed by VW Heritage a couple of weeks ago. Apparently user error, the engine was running lean and the fan belt was loose. I'm not entirely sure that this was my fault as the engine has never felt like a new one even when I had just installed it. I didn't fiddle with anything after installing it and driving it up to Norway which suggests that the engine had been set up wrongly at the factory. I did fiddle with things when I got it here, but by then the damage had been done.

However the engine is apparently running well now according to Nigel the head engine honcho at VW Heritage and it cost very little to get it fixed. I'm not going to argue this, just make sure I never buy a complete engine again. The old Volkspares engine was running fine when I pulled it out of Slon, albeit leaking oil at a visible rate. That was a short engine and has the original carb and distributor on it.

Hopefully I will feel like getting on with the remaining restoration jobs after putting the engine back in. I want to do a few things in the engine bay before I put the engine back, some wiring needs replacing and some rust needs removing from inaccessible places. I am in two minds about taking out the fuel tank whilst I have the engine out. On the one hand giving it the once over might not be a bad idea, on the other hand, if it aint broken don't fix it.

I will start posting when I have done something as a way of motivating me through the cold autumn and winter nights.

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