Still fighting me
Remember the power steering pipes that I carefully de-rusted and painted because the union in the wheel arch was remarkably still intact?
They're leaking from the hose joints. Obviously
This does explain the weird tar-like substance I found on either side of the gearbox which I thought had come from the scuttle drains, but was obviously these two joints dripping hydraulic oil
It had sat for so long that any light hydrocarbons had long since evaporated leaving just tar. Of course this only became obvious after the engine was back in and putting pressure on the hose.
I tried taking it out in two pieces, but the union was seized as I didn't disturb it when I had the pipes off
So I went full-postal and pulled the suspension off to ease access
I split the hose in the vice and took it to my local hydraulic specialist to see what he thought. After some thought and fiddling with fittings he came up with this:
This is a new pressure hose crimped on to the original rack end
and a 90° fitting on the other end where it attaches to the complicated front half
As there is now a rubber hose over the downpipe (instead of the original hard line) I sourced some fibreglass heat-reflective sleeve
So we end up with this
I had to tweak the original bracket slightly - this used to go over the hard line but needed expanding to hold the hose & sleeving
This is the union from the front half of the hose. This piece is the part with the liner and complicated nozzle gubbins, but actually this one doesn't fail. Only the exposed end goes rusty but can be recovered. The back half is just a plain hose. The sleeving is heat-shrink which I fitted over the pressure hose before reassembling. After testing I will slide this over the union and shrink it to keep the weather out
and it seems to work
I reassembled it tonight and fired it up and there are no leaks, no odd noises, and it all fits together nicely. I forgot to take a pic of it assembled so I'll do that tomorrow when I put the suspension back on.
This is the 3d printed wiper scuttle bolt cover cap in place. Not quite the same texture but its not obvious unless you're looking for it so quite pleased with that.
