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RUNNING IN THE 409 7- Fixing minor faults, problems etc or: the plesant task of making a beautiful car perfect after its complete restoration
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22 March 2011: the first drive. Something had to go wrong.... The main brake connection with the brake servo failed after a few hundred meters. Marco Gordini immediately machined a replacement on his lathe. As I was peeking under the 409 looking for details, I took a picture of the 'mini-starter' that I bought from DbElectrical on eBay for the princely sum of $ 69,95+shipping. It's compact, light and spins the engine much better than the old bulky motor. A real improvement |
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On the left, the new exhaust supports, the old ones were gone |
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Looking for the cause of the 409 overheating in slow traffic, I took my stroboscope and found that the Kenlowe fans run slow: 1,874 rpm was the highest reading I could see and sometimes it dropped to 1,670-1,700 during 2 minutes of operation. A technical manual printed by Kenlowe in the early Sixties (a 407 is pictured) says that the 10" fans have to run at 2,300 rpm; therefore mine have to be rebuilt, I gather (17 April) |
An attempt to fit the excellent Danish 'Heat-On' electric motors (right
motor, all black) in place of the ageing Kenlowes was frustrated by the
fact that they can turn only clockwise (as seen from this position) and
their rotation direction can't be reversed. |
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Francesco Pulega restored, upgraded the old Kenlowes reaching around 2.100 rpm (13 May) |
The FlowKooler #1701 water pump, recommended by 318 Poly guru Gary Pavlovich, moves more water for a better cooling and once painted is identical to the stock pump |
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Having been alerted of a possible weak spot, I took some pictures under the rear wheelarches of my 409 (24 April). The LH rear top shock mount brackets was OK.... |
....while the one on the RH side was seriously
corroded. Thanks to Martin Barnes-ACCS for telling me how much important
is this part of the suspension |
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Andrea and Marco Gordini welded a new bracket to install the 'new' Konis. Now the damper is fixed to a reliable metal support |
The Konis have really improved both ride and handling of the 409 (5 May) |
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For added safety, a rear fog light is necessary. This is a nice reproduction of a period lamp in stainless steel with glass lens and halogen bulb for good visibility |
The 'oval' sidelamp has been graciously donated by Greg Lowe and it's a great improvement over the simple Jag-sourced 'square' lamps I had fitted before |
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The strobe reads 757 rpm and this is a good idling speed for the engine, but... |
...the tachometer shows 1.200 rpm, 30% more than the real speed. It will have to be checked (15 May) |
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Detailing: I can't believe that a classy car like the 409 had such a crude speedo trip reset knob without any bakelite knob nor any ring around its hole in the veneer.... |
Despite all the work done on the cooling system, my 409 still overheats: this is 106,3 °C taken with an industrial IR thermometer on the thermostat casing after a long but slow crawl in downtown traffic, Saturday 4 June, outside temperature being 30-32°C. The water temp gauge showed 100°C, the radiator was between 92°C and 100°C in its top sections, 10°-15° lower at the bottom |
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<-- the problems of the front-end 'rattles'. Some of the screws holding the bottom plate were in very poor condition and had to be changed for safety's sake |
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The original radiator cap has a thick reddish seal, quite hard |
This is how it fits inside the cap |
