Lagonda Rapiers

4 minute(s) of a 484 minute read

Coming home from the VSCC, Mid-week, end of year run on Wednesday we managed to get caught up in some traffic, at one stage the radiator reached boiling point on the temperature gauge. This is something quite unusual for the Rapier as the electric fan should cut in at about 85/90 degrees. This did not happen which in some ways was a good thing. As it is the fan may only switch on once every three or four years. Normally I would check its operation every year or so.
Thinking about all this, in fact it must be quite some time since I last tested it. Over-riding the thermo switch produced a NO-GO result. Taking the fan off to test it on the bench showed it was seized solid. Now all these clever modern things are made in such a way as to be impossible to dismantle. All this goes against all my principles but with next years trip in mind I lashed out and bought a new fan. Of course none of the mountings are the same as the old one, so now I will have to make a visit to the steel merchant to buy a length of steel strip in order to fabricate some mountings for the new fan. Hopefully I can still use the original thermo switch.

12-10-2018

To the best of my knowledge the relined bands have been consigned to me. Hopefully by now they will have left England. I have decided not to take the transmission out of the car until I have the parts. I have yet to work out how to convey any sense of urgency to our British cousins. If the bands do not arrive in time for me to rebuild the gearbox, it will mean simply that we do not take the Lagonda but will have to hire a modern car for the three months that we are away. Today I have been busy making new mounting brackets for the new electric cooling fan. I finished making the brackets and did a trial fitting this afternoon, so now I can dismantle them for painting. It will then be another box that I can tick.

The good old Brits, no wonder their country is such a mess. The Parcel Tracking Service has given up already and as far as I can see the parcel containing my "parts" has not yet left the UK.
I can only think that I will be lucky to see the gearbox parts some time next year! No doubt Friction Services (Bristol) Ltd have chosen the cheapest delivery alternative which means it is waiting somewhere to be put on a slow boat that will take anything up to three months to get the parts here (Australia.)
About the only thing that they were interested in was how quickly I could arrange for payment to reach them.
Silly me, I thought that it may help to speed things up and sent the payment to them by "Telegraphic Transfer". That way they got paid within an hour of my sending them the money.

12-11-2018

If I hadn't told you youwould never know.
I have just spent the last two days or at least sometime on each of the last two days making the two mounting brackets and sorting out the installation of the new electric thermo controlled radiator fan.
I was lucky in that I could adapt the existing thermo switch. The old fan had actually died due to a lack of use. Being a sealed unit there was no way that I could get into it to lubricate the bearings that had actually seized due to under use. It probably had not run for at least three or four years and of course when It was needed it failed to perform. Normally the Rapier tends to run too cool struggling to reach 80c. Lagonda never thought that it was necessary to install a fan on the Rapier engine and it is only in exceptionally heavy traffic that the fan is needed. Even in the UK and France we tend to avoid traffic bottle-necks but sometimes you do get caught. Now with a new fan installed we should not have too many problems.
I am quite pleased that the new fan is no more conspicuous that the old one.
If I hadn't told you you would never know........
Looking at todays photograph, perhaps I should paint the thermo switch and the rear of the fan body matt black.