New member

[Graham66]

Hello from Australia. I have an R4 sedan in need of total restoration

Engine 445678
Type 800-01
Oval R1123, 439910
Diamond 4235134

I bought this car about 3 years ago but haven't had the time to get it road worthy. It was bought from a bloke in Melbourne sight unseen whereupon I thought I might try and drive it home to Brisbane - 1669 km away. (:twisted: hehe)

It got as far as Albury (314km) before the 3 speed non synchro gearbox started leaking and making an almighty racket (very loud crunchy scraping noise). Topping up with oil temporarily stopped the noise but not satisfactorily enough to continue the journey for my liking.

I've just recently put in a 3 speed synchro box and was ready to get it registered and start using it as a daily driver but now it has sprung leaks also. The horrible crunching noise is back and it's LOUD :eek:

Also it's become very hard to tune as of late - basically it's running like a pig. Tried all the usual stuff - points, plugs, dizzy etc - could be just old fuel. Being an unregistered vehicle it's hard to diagnose properly until I get it on the road.

I love this car and really want to get it going. It's a French sunroof model with a rusty driver's floor but that's about it.

Hoping to get to know you all, source information and hopefully some parts

cheers :smile:
Graham

 

[malcolm]

Welcome to the forum. Can you get bits or spare boxes over there? the 3 speed box must be getting very rare.

Fuel could easily be the running problem. I've had a few cars with old fuel trouble recently. One had summer fuel in and it wouldn't work in the winter. Another has 6 year old fuel and won't even start. The fuel smells off, so I'll drain out the ststem next week.

 

[Simon.AU]

I've just recently put in a 3 speed synchro box and was ready to get it registered and start using it as a daily driver but now it has sprung leaks also. The horrible crunching noise is back and it's LOUD :eek:

Welcome aboard Graham, yep, I've also imposed myself on this forum too :-)

Just wondering with your gearbox, I reckon it may be the crown wheel coming loose. What happens is that the retaining bolts come loose and the heads of the bolts start grinding away at the alloy casing, so the source of noise it twofold, incorrect meshing of the CW & P, and the bolt heads grinding away the casing. This would result in a noise that varies to the speed of the car, and not the speed in each gear. Look for alloy shards in the oil too.

The diff seals are fairly generic, take them into somewhere like CBC's and the side, front, input and driveshaft seals are available off the shelf, take note of the shims when replacing the driveshaft seals.

 

[Graham66]

Clementine, the 3 speeds seem to be around still - I managed to pick up two not long after I purchased the car - although they all leak of course :smile:

Simon we have the gearbox pulled down and apart from a missing synchro spring it seems pretty good. I suspect the noise is actually the left wheel bearing - it fell apart and crumbled when taking the hub off. The noise always seemed to be coming from the front left but it was confusing because it was intermittant and would seem to disappear when coasting in neutral

Hard to describe the noise it was making - kinda like chung... chung... chung.. chung chung. chung chung

Thanks guys for the welcome - I thought you might bob up here Simon :wink: