busticated bracket fixed

I'm happy to report that the broken alternator bracket has been repaired and everything refitted.

My neighbour Jason is making a 500bhp drag-racing monster out of some old grandad's mid-60s Ford Falcon. The Falcoon of Doom is fitted with all sorts of shiny hot-rod bits, many of which have been fabricated in aluminium by one of Jason's mates. So I handed over my broken bracket and two days later Jason knocked on my door with it all fixed.

Next up I couldn't find studs to replace the two broken ones on the rack at my local Burson's parts place, so I bought some long 5/16" UNF bolts and gave them to my Daimler club friend Michael, who was kind enough to cut the bolts down to the correct length and cut UNC threads on the other end.


The studs screwed in easily, with some Loctite on the threads, on Friday night and I left them overnight to cure.


It is a freezing cold, wintry Saturday, but after a bracing walk back to Burson's to buy some spring washers (why is it you *never* have all the little bits you need?) I was ready to get going.
Firstly I had to drain the radiator -- which of course meant I got as much coolant all over the garage floor as in the bucket.

Then it was surprisingly easy to undo about 8 bolts to get the top branch of the water pump off.


The four bolts to hold the alternator bracket were easy to get to with a socket once the water pump branch was off, and from there I put everything back together, refilled the radiator and started her up.

There was one small coolant leak at the small-diameter pipe that takes coolant from the water pump into the manifold, but loosening and re-tightening the clamp seemed to cure that.

So that's another problem solved: next up it'll be time to take off the rocker covers and do the tappets (there's a nasty tappety clatter on start-up on the left bank), and I need to check the right-hand exhaust, as I think it's blowing where the manifold joins the downpipe (which is of course directly under the steering box and hence almost impossible to get at!)

Broken alternator bracket

I haven't updated in ages and I have a huge backlog (I assume I can fiddle with the dates and post in reverse order? I'll find out ...)

But to the present: Dame Zara made it back from a 450-mile round trip to The Grampians in western Victoria last weekend without incident, but by the time we got into the outskirts of Melbourne and it was dark and rainy, one couldn't help but notice that her fanbelt was squealing like a stuck pig every time we had to stop and pull away from traffic lights. In the past this has just been due to a loose alternator belt, so this afternoon I set to to tighten up the belt.

However, the alternator was at the top of its travel and the belt was still rather loose, and I'd noticed before last week that the whole alternator seemed to be moving back and forth more than it should, so I slackened off the alternator altogether and found that indeed there was lots of movement of the alternator on its bracket. 'No worries,' I thought, 'I'll just have to tighten up the bolts that hold the alternator bracket onto the front of the engine.' No such luck .... I soon found that the bracket itself is comprehensively broken (as you can see by the pix below).

It could *possibly* be welded up, but I'm not confident it would stay together for very long.

So I'm hoping that someone out there might have a spare alternator bracket hanging around in their shed (I'm not even sure if the V8-250 one is the same as the earlier 2.5-litre, as the earlier cars had a generator), or have an inkling where I might find one. Even if I do find a spare, the fun isn't yet over: as I have a Bosch alternator not the original Lucas, the bracket needs to be modified to suit (as you can see by the welds on the old one), so I'll need to find someone prepared to do the required welding.

Even more fun: two of the four studs that hold it on to the front of the engine are broken -- and I suspect previous owner/s haven't been bothered to fix them as it seems I'll have to take off the whole fan/water pump assembly to get to them and to re-fit the bracket. Oh the joys!


But on the upside, I did get the chance to clean up the front of the engine that's usually obscured by the alternator ...