Stemming the flow

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The Darracq has always leaked copious amounts of oil from the rear main, particularly after a good run usually depositing a 6 to 8 inch puddle on someone’s pristine driveway.
So today as I’ve already put one car off the road and the weather is a bit shitty I might as well disable another.
Darracq has Paris and London on the badge so the London part would explain the multitude of bolts holding on the sump and still not managing to stop the oil weeping out. Otherwise the sump came off easily and everything looks ok. The “slinger” is in good nick however I don’t know what the clearance is supposed to be between it and the sump/crankcase so will have to do a bit of research. Something that I could not see with the naked eye but shows in the photo is a bit of maybe gasket material in the groove between the slinger and the flywheel flange. Whatever it is didn’t work.
After consulting Andrew I might try a mod where I will drill a hole in the oil pan at the back of where the slinger bears diagonally into the sump to act as a drain.

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Good news and bad news

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Colin called with some good news saying the output shaft wonkyness was nothing more that the woodruff key fouling the flywheel keyway. However (there is always a however) that makes the overall runout worse as the flywheels were not parallel and were compensating for the output shaft so this means a new big end journal which will get the flywheels true. Also today I had the output shaft crack tested as when it had been recreated previously they had put no radius where the diameter changed so a potential fracture point, luckily all’s good.

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Strategise the Crank

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Had a call from Colin this afternoon, he wanted me to come over and lay down some policy guidelines for the Crankshaft. The problem is, how long is a piece of string? Things we make are generally imperfect and what we built 100 years ago are somewhat more so. The question is how good do I want it and the answer has to be good enough to get me through the next 4000Km rally without trouble and then some. The last thing I want is to be sitting on the side of the road with a broken car wishing I had sold my children into slavery in order to have the perfect unbreakable crankshaft.

Colin has found the following problems:

  1. The conrod is not straight although the big end the little end are parallel, the rod is “S” shaped and is scraping the inner flywheel.
  2. The inner flywheel to output shaft taper is wonky (not his words)
  3. The big end journal had been previously machined making one of the tapers  seat about 60% however this is not the drive side so is probably OK
  4. One of the crankcase breather “Flapper” valves is missing and because of previous modifications may be hard to rectify.

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