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Break Down Story Number One, The Blown Head Gasket

Dolly Break Down Story Number 1.

 

The Blown Head Gasket.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I purchased the Dolly in 1987 while still living in Grafton on the north coast of NSW. I had been driving a two door Leyland Marina for about ten years being both my Rally car and my general transport car. The Marina’s competition life came to an end when CAMS dumped the Group G rally car regulations and adopted Group A and PRC rules. But the Marina’s life really ended when a tree limb fell on it. Any way to cut a long story short, I sold the Marina to the wreckers (minus all the rally gear) and sold enough spare parts to build three Cooper S Minis, all together raising around $2,000, which was not going to be enough to buy a good Dolly at the time. But it was enough to purchase an average Dolly, may be out of Rego. After two weeks in Sydney I was starting to consider something else when I found a Dolly for $2,200 with front guard damage and only a few weeks rego, I bought it for $2,000.

 

Christmas 1988, now living in Sydney, (but only temporary I thought at the time) I was heading home to Grafton for the holiday break when about 20 km’s outside Coffs Harbour (on the Grafton side) the Dolly just stopped. Once I had rolled to a stop on the side of the road I turned the key and the engine turned over as if it had no spark plugs, that’s not good I thought. Looking under the bonnet I could see coolant oozing out between the head and the block and so I concluded that the problem was terminal.

 

Walking about a km r so back down the road to the Coffs Harbour Zoo where they let me use their phone (pre mobile phone days) to ring someone I knew from Coffs Harbour Car Club who lived near by. He kindly towed the Dolly back to his place and a neighbour from Grafton came down and picked me up. The next day me and a friend from Grafton Car Club came down with a car trailer and took the Dolly home. I now found myself at home (way out in the bush) with no transport and only a few days before Christmas. Luckily the Grafton Leyland Dealer had a head gasket and a neighbour gave me a lift into town to pick it up. Taking the head of and putting it back on was not that hard and the engine fired up with out problem, except. The fan was broken and I could not get one of them over Christmas so I fitted two electric fans with some very, side of the road engineered brackets. Every time I worked on the Dolly for years I would say to myself, “I should make some better brackets for those fans” but it was not until a few years ago that I finally got around to doing it. So ended my first Dolly break down adventure.

 

Stay tuned, same Dolly time, same Dolly channel for the next exciting episode of Dolly Break Down Stories, titled, “The Broken Suspension”.

 

Yellow Duck Motorsport

Break Down Story Number Two, The Broken Suspension

Break Down Story Number Three, The Broken Rotor Button

Break Down Story Number Four, The Broken Clutch Slave Cylinder

Dolly Break Down Story Number 2. The Broken Suspension

Break Down Story Number 3. The Broken Rotor Button.

October 1990, I had entered the Dolly’s first rally about a month before only to retire with a flat tyre, so the decision to enter another event was taken. It was Saturday of the October long week end as we set out to the start at Raymond Terrace and every thing went well till just out side Kurri Kurri, the Dolly’s engine just stopped.

 

My father was service crew so he was following along behind in his 2500 MK II so we were not without help. In the hope that we would be able to fix the Dolly the old man continued on to Raymond Terrace to talk to the rally organisers to ascertain the latest we could be there to make the start.

 

In the process of checking the usual things I took the dissy cap of only to see the rotor button had come apart. The brass part of the rotor button had separated from the plastic part and done quite a lot of damage to the dissy cap as well. There was no way to fix this, short of getting another rotor button and well, there was not much hope of that on a Saturday afternoon in Kurri Kurri.

 

We towed the Dolly back to Kurri Kurri with my fathers Triumph 2500 to my uncles home were we left it till the next day.

 

Sunday of the long week end used to be the day of the Bathurst 1000 and this would be the first year since 1974 that I had not sat in front of the TV all day watching a great sporting event. This broke the habit and I have never watched the race all day since. Of course the fact that it is no longer a great sporting event has had a part to play in it. These days it reminds me of World Championship Wrestling, nothing more than scripted soap opera entertainment.

 

We drove to Kurri Kurri on the Sunday and fitted another rotor button and the engine fired up, no worries, even with the damage to the dissy cap. The disappointing part to this story is that I had changed the rotor button a few weeks before as part of the rally preparation and I did not keep the old one for a spare. So ended another Dolly Break Down Adventure.

 

Stay tuned, same Dolly time, same Dolly channel for the next exciting episode of Dolly Break Down Stories, titled, “The Broken Clutch Slave Cylinder”.

 

Yellow Duck Motorsport

 

 

 

 

 

 

Break Down Story Number 4. The Broken Clutch Slave Cylinder

During the years 1988 to 1992/3 I used to travel from Sydney to Grafton 4 or 5 times a year, for most of that time I was working for a TAFE College (and I still am) and I would go home every term break. I considered life in the city to be only temporary so things at home were much how I had left them, including a pen full of chooks, so I had to go home every three months to feed the chooks. I had six very large feed hopers which held a 40kg bag of chook feed each and their water supply was from a turkey nest dam up hill of the chooks, running through automatic drinkers. I also paid one of my neighbour’s kids to check on them every few days.

 

On the way back to Sydney from one of these trips, me in the Dolly and my Father in his Rover 2000, I pulled into a garage for petrol in Taree, but when I pushed the clutch in, nothing happened. The Dolly came to a shuddering stop in the garage. Looking underneath I could see a large puddle of fluid around about where the slave cylinder is, well I thought, this is going to be fun.

 

Some years before, in the early 80’s, I had driven my Fathers Triumph 2000 MK I from Grafton to Brisbane and back again without a clutch and it had a box trailer full of racing pigeons on the back, so Taree to Sydney should be a piece of cake.

 

The difference between the MK I and the Dolly being two cylinders and the Dolly has a higher first gear, luckily the garage sloped towards the road so once there was a brake in the traffic I put it in first gear and turned the key. The Dolly lurched forward very reluctantly but eventually fired up and we were off. Changing gears once on the move was not much of a problem, and as luck would have it, I got a great run with traffic lights and did not stop again until the end of the expressway. The toll gates (they’re  not there any more) at the end of the expressway had me worried as they were on an uphill run, so I slowed to first gear and tried to give the toll gate attendant the money, but it ended up all over the road. The Old Man was the next car behind me and he explained the problem.

 

Now it was going to get interesting as I had to drive right the way across Sydney to Fairfield. Again I was very lucky and got a good run with the traffic and the traffic lights, but I did have to stop on many occasions but none of these turned out to be on an uphill run.

 

The following week end I again braved the clutch less Dolly and drove it from Fairfield to Lane Cove to my Fathers place where I could work on it. On MK I’s, TR7’s, Marina’s and even Mini’s the clutch slave cylinder is a pretty easy job, but no not on Dolly’s. This proved to be one of the real hard jobs on a Dolly, of which there are a few. So ended another Dolly Break Down Adventure.

 

Stay tuned, same Dolly time, same Dolly channel for the next exciting episode of Break Down Stories, titled, “The Broken Cross Member”.

 

Yellow Duck Motorsport

Summer 1991, after two years of life in Sydney I found myself unemployed and back in Grafton. If you ever want to get the sack from the public service, well it’s easy, just refuse to do a medical exam, and you will be out of there like a rat out of an aquaduct. How was the Dolly going to handle life in the country, the constant pounding of dirt roads, the dust, the mud and the hard work? The Dolly’s predecessor had handled it surprisingly well, rallies, motorkhanas, even hillclimbs but they were a piece of cake compared to day to day life. During the building of my house the poor Marina hardly ever went anywhere with out a box trailer in tow loaded to the gunnels with bricks, sand, gravel or timber. During a prolonged drought I use to drive to my parents place to fill a 44 gallon drum with water every day.  Also, unlike the Marina I would not be able to just pop down to the local wreckers for spare parts. Would the Dolly stand up to this sort of treatment? Only time would tell.

I  was on my way home from a trip to a small village about 25 km’s west of Inverell having visited a relative. On the outskirts of Inverell as I approached the 60km zone I  put my foot on the brake and the front right hand wheel locked up, so I took my foot of the brake but the wheel stayed locked. The Dolly came to a stop about 100 metres down the road, in the middle of the road, luckily there was no traffic around. I  thought, hey up, I think I have a brake problem here. I tried first gear, but the Dolly was going nowhere, then I tried reverse gear and we had movement. As I backed off the road into a truck stop the steering felt a bit funny. On closer inspection the problem was not brakes but broken front suspension, the front suspension arm that goes from the lower control arm to the sub frame had broken, this had allowed the front wheel to move back and jam against the inner guard. As luck would have it the bush, large washers, nut and broken suspension were all still there. So here I was a  long way from home, on the side of the road with a broken Dolly, a good 38 degrees and not a tree in sight.

I pulled the front suspension apart, locked the car and started walking. About 1 km down the road I found myself in an industrial estate and soon located a welder who welded the suspension back together. I walked back to the car and put it all back together, and my goodness, it was hot.

The rest of the trip home was uneventful. The road from Glen Innes to Grafton must be one of the quietest pieces of road around, from a few km’s outside Glen Innes to Jackadgery there is nothing but national Park, State Forest and sheep paddocks, not a house in site, and no traffic either, I think only one car went the other way in the whole trip.

The local newspaper in Grafton use to print stories about what was on the front page of their paper 50 years earlier and one of those stories was about the discovery of asbestos at Jackadgery and how this was going to bring prosperity and employment to the Grafton district. Ah if they only knew.

The welded up suspension stayed on the Dolly for some time before I got around to replacing it. So ended another Dolly Break Down Adventure.

 

Stay tuned, same Dolly time, same Dolly Channel for the next exciting episode of Dolly Break Down Stories, titled, “The Broken Rotor Button”.

 

Yellow Duck Motorsport