January - December 2026
Now into Feb 26 and the accidental omission of the bump stop
rubber under the top strut cup has been rectified by dismantling
it and popping said item over the shock absorber rod. The rubber
gaiter has also been attached to the top strut cup, albeit only
with a cable tie because I could not find a big enough jubilee
clip, unfortunately. I *think* it will be alright!
Anyway the strut has been refitted to Blue Bess and various nuts and bolts recycled and tightened-up to the correct torque with thread-lock used for good measure, too.
However, I am struggling with obtaining the correct sway bar
link due to a confusion over which is the left- and right-hand
side of the car. Needless to say, I am sure it will be sorted
out in the end.
After sorting out the correct sway bar or drop link, we are
going back together again.
For reference, the two part numbers for the sway bar from Born
Built Beauts are shown below, hopefully to avoid similar
confusion in future.
So we attempt to replace the brake caliper but could not compress the piston back in again to fit newer pads so that one has gone off to the spares shop to be refurbished again, or even replaced - who knows what the future holds for us?
On the other side, the caliper is removed and tested to see if that one is OK and indeed it is, so it is refitted with newer pads as the old ones were down to the last mm of material. The back plate is a bit rusty but I think it will hold for another year or two, partly because I do not fancy replacing it with another 11" pizza pan at the moment, as that would mean splitting the hub. Anyway better pads are fitted and various things coated with waxoyl and copper grease is applied in the usual places so now we are just waiting for the replacement unit on the other side.
The bleed nipples on both calipers have not seized-up or snapped-off and the brake disks on both sides clean up reasonably well with a wire brush and some emery paper, so what could be better?
Now into April 2026 and a caliper has been procured locally and the brake pads replaced with those that came with the car way back in 2004! Everything has been put back together except that the steering tie rod has not been tightened because the tracking has not been set, yet.
On attempting to refill the brakes with fluid, I find that the rear driver's side brake cylinder is seized but the other side is OK, so only one side needs replacing. Its going a bit slow joe crow this year as we're already into early May 2026 by now, but the cylinder has been replaced anew.
The brakes were then successfully bled with the easy-bleed kit but try as I might, I cannot get the new rear brake cylinder to fill up and adjust itself, bah humbug. This is going to need starting the engine to get the servo going but, there's a big hitch because I spotted that the fuel hose had been re-routed at some point in the last 15 years so that it was no longer in the chassis leg. Instead it had been cable-tied to the copper brake pipe running from front to back and was therefore about 1 cm from the front exhaust silencer. This would therefore account for all of my fuel evaporation issues which led me to install multiple electric and mechanical pumps and other paraphernalia over the last decade. Never mind, we will sort it out but it is embarrassing that it took me that long to notice, not arf.
Anyway, now at the end of May 2026 and its time to renew the insurance on my only running 340, Deep Blue, and this requires that some new photos are taken. Here they are.
In late May the removal of the old fuel hoses begins with their detachment from the fuel tank and a couple of new nylon hoses are procured from the internet. They have 8 mm and 6 mm external diameters and 6 mm and 4 mm internal diameters, respectively. A psychedelic blue braided nylon sleeve is acquired, too, to help prevent them from rattling against surfaces that might wear them away. I have also identified the hole in the chassis leg that the new hoses have to be pushed through from the engine bay (bottom right photo).
The new hoses are taped together at one end, are pushed through the box section from the front and they duly reappear at the other end. A bit more fiddling about allows them to thread over the torque tube and over the tank so that they reach the fuel sender under the back seat.
After some trimming to get them to line up with the fuel sender connections, some home-brewed olives are inserted into them to prevent them from collapsing when the jubilee clips are done up. These olives are made from a telescopic radio aerial and from sawn-off and milled-down rivet sleeves. I did order some proper ones but they were a bit shorter than I hoped and I made a bloomer with one of them by ordering the wrong size. Home brew saves the day.
Everything gets reconnected but I realise that the pipes are pressing against quite sharp bits of metal around the fuel tank so wherever it looks like they could wear, I fit a bit of rubber hose to try to protect them.
This allows the fairly decrepid old hoses to be removed and the new ones connected at the engine end by around the middle of June 2026. The car then actually starts and runs well, which can't be a bad thing. The rear brakes self-adjust fine and are given another quick bleed to be sure the air has all been expelled.
We're now into early July 2026 and its time to replace the dodgy old hose connecting the two halves of the tank, so the tank is drained of petrol and the hose is replaced, with a bit of psychedelic blue braiding to protect it (not). Some waxoyling in that area is done, too.
So now it is time to think about what more needs to be done in this area. The heat shield has been spruced up a bit and repainted but before refitting it, etc, I am hoping to see if I can get the gear lever to tighten up a bit which maybe due to something missing at its base. Time will tell.