Canadian 404C restoration

[Mike Tippett]

I dropped these bits and a little more off at Anderson's Precision Engines on Monday. Also, they will set the ring gaps for quick street use (not racing!) and I may also get them to build up at least the bottom end. Sent them the workshop manuals in PDF.


They also have the cast iron exhaust manifold and will rectify the plane where it contacts the head and fine tune the stainless steel header pipe which is pretty good but requires a small adjustment to one of the three bolt holes.


October 29th I got the last batch of plating work back from Victoria. The job was well done.



Anyway, I have two complete sets of steel fuel lines and both were plated in copper. The fittings are copper so I thought it would be the best way to protect the steel and would help the fittings too. One set was used on a running engine as little as 14 years ago (the car's) and the other from one that was last run in 1990 (our former 404 sedan's). As it turned out, I should have pigged them out before plating because when I got them back I realized 6 of the 8 were blocked - I could not blow air through them. So one by one I rammed a very stiff wire up each tube and some rusty gasoline sludge and varnish came out when I squirted some Varsol through them. I'll do it one more time just to get the last bits out and then choose the best 4 for the car.


I also have one NOS tube, which is like a very dark patina copper colour. I would not want to have the beautifully cleaned injectors fouled up by whatever might have been in these tubes! Even though I have 18 injectors.....

I got the sump washers and bolts plated, valve cover bolts, timing cover bolts, some other bolts for the throttle body etc. Also the trunk latch loop. And the welded heater tube was redone in zinc too.

Not a lot new to report in early November other than the wait continues for the new intake valves (slow mail!) but Monday the 16th I took the C3 gearbox into Victoria Transmission for the long-overdue bearing replacement and internal inspection. The older fellow who will be rebuilding it did the same job for my friend Tim Bowles' 404 Coupé Injection about 20 or 25 years ago. I have one special tool for it (depth gauge) and dropped off the reprint of the gearbox chapter of the workshop manual.


I finally put the front brake hose fittings that Jean-Marc Faivre sent me from Cheminot France a while back on the car after a good cleaning.





Then I assembled the water pump with a pulley from a 504 and a later type nylon 6 bladed can in place of the 3 bladed original.  Set the air gap provisionally too.


Then I checked the oil pump/distributor drive shaft and damn it, it's worn near the bottom.  So I'm going to buy a new old stock one from Dean Hunter in England.  I'm also getting a couple of springs for the carbon brush of the electromagnetic fan.

I also found the new intake valves I meant to bring to the engine shop originally.  Only three are original and one is probably aftermarket so that is why I ordered another set....

[Mike Tippett]

Eldest daughter Jennifer brought the rebuilt gearbox home.  Personalized note on the top cover!

If you're wondering, the Nardi shifter can only be bolted on from inside the cabin, once the gearbox is in position below the car.  There is no other way to install it.  So I leave the corrugated plastic in place until I'm ready to install the shifter.

The bearing near the centre of the closeup photo is the main input shaft bearing, SKF 6207N.  This is the one that generally gets noisy in the 404 C3 gearbox as it ages, with the engine idling and clutch pedal released (input shaft spinning).  Even loose in my hand it made a significant noise, which none of the others did.

I'll see about installing it tomorrow after I fashion some sort of front support out of a steel strap I bought, to simulate the factory tool, and then put the shifter on....

[Mike Tippett]

What was supposed to be a quick removal and cleaning of the clutch release bearing shaft and the installation of new bushings and carbon bearing ended up being a 5 hour nightmare.

The clutch release shaft is usually easy to remove with the steps being to remove the bolt from the fork (the head is behind, facing the gearbox), push the release bearing fork along the shaft against the spring, release the circlip that holds the fork in a precise location on the shaft, take the circlip off the small end of the shaft and gently tap until it slides off the (splined) fork and then you're done.

Well, the forged aluminum fork was seized to the shaft at a certain point - just would not budge. I decided to drill it full of holes along the shaft to hopefully make it release (destroying it in the process of course) and even full of continuous holes it still was a bear to drive out. In the process, the boss on the bell housing that supports one of the bushings broke a chunk off.

So I went out to the shed to retrieve a spare gearbox, brought it up to the garage, took its bell housing off, removed the cutch shaft without the slightest problem (GRRRR at the first one!), whipped the bell housing off the rebuilt gearbox and cleaned the other one up. That took a while. Then I selected the best clutch release bearing shaft I have and prepared it.

The rest of the job was easy but painstaking, removing the Permatex Grey from the rebuilt gearbox sealing faces and the other bell housing, cleaning them with acetone and then resealing. A brief moment of almost panic ensued when the input shaft would not turn but I figured the shifter forks had just gone into an implausible position (remember, the shifter is not on the gearbox yet) and yes, that was it.

So I was unable to make the tool to support the front of the gearbox, much less, install it!

The little tube on the upper part of the release fork is for oiling the carbon bearing from above. Regular maintenance....

[Frank.04]

What would life be a struggle without a shed filled with crap?

[Mike Tippett]

Haha so true! The crap saves the day once again!

[Tobias106205]

I just stumbled onto this thread. Outstanding work! I love the attention to detail.

[Mike Tippett]

Thanks Tobias, I will post a couple updates because I've been a bit negligent in that recently.

[Mike Tippett]

Some updates over the past month:

I installed the Nardi shifter. It's tight getting in there to tighten the bolts. Shifts nicely. A Michelin inner tube was cut up to make a weatherproof seal between the bodyshell and Nardi, as per the original (but mine is better!).


Next I have to cut up some insulation to fit both under and over the fibreglass Nardi covers, which will take some trial and error, and finally fit the tunnel carpet over all that.

I mounted the carpet on the transmission tunnel after the removable insulation and fibreglass shells were installed.


I think this will be a provisional job because I realize now that the original carpet piece that the new one was modelled on was not the optimal shape for the area behind the shifter. You see the drop-off after the shifter boot, well that is about 7 cm shy of the end of the rear tunnel carpeted section. I guess the original carpet had a separate strip for that area.

So I made one up from the dark blue original tunnel carpet and it looks presentable, but the rigorous solution would be to have it all in one piece, with the lower section being part of the main tunnel carpet but shortened so it fits the radius of the lower tunnel ideally.

So when the car is on the road again and Covid-19 is under control I will visit the guy who made it and have him custom make another one in one piece.

A year later and before installing the engine, something had been bugging me. The fuel return line I had installed a year ago was too short and ended under the clamp you see on the left side of the photo. So I had installed a rubber injection-rated fuel line with clamp and clamped the whole mess under the holder. But it seems not rigorous and liable to cause leaks or some other problem over time. So yesterday I bought another 16 feet of 5/16 inch Cunifer line and made that line over again. Now it reaches to right under the fuel decanter filter, which is what it's supposed to do, with no hose clamp under a clamp that would be nearly impossible to access with the engine installed. Much better! I still don't know which is the fuel supply line and the return line, but if it's not the one I've connected to I can easily switch them. The rubber fuel line you see on one Cunifer line is going to be cut again for an inline fuel filter.


I also started tidying up the blower units and hope to be able to get the best one working and cleaned up.


3 January I did some work on the SOFICA blower unit. I have two. One had a noisy motor with lots of end play on the shaft, but much better brushes than the other one, which was quiet and had very little shaft play. So I swapped brush holders, which meant a little bit of soldering. Came out very well.


Then I extended the wires so the two speed switch that I have relocated from the blower unit to the dashboard can be fed, and found a good blocking plate for the switch hole.




The thing I should have got before now is a set of new rubber mounting washers for the motor, which is bolted through the front of the SOFICA housing. So, before putting the motor into the housing and putting it into the car I will make some of those.

[Mockenrue]

Talking about fuel lines, is gasoline available in Canada with 0% ethanol addition ?

[Mike Tippett]

Yes, in British Columbia, Chevron sells a 94 octane ethanol-free premium plus. It is the same as 99-100 octane RON (Canada and USA use the RON+MON/2 formula). I will only be using that in this Province.

When I drive elsewhere with the car, I will always use at least 91 octane (96 RON) and sometimes on such a road trip I may need to use E10.

[Maarten Deen]

How are fuel pumps organized in Canada? I have the idea that in the USA the pumps with the big buttons to choose the RON mix the fuel on request. I don't know if it is possible to just add ethanol in that process or not.
Here in the Netherlands is 95 RON (which is E10), 98 RON (up to 5% ethanol, usually none) and maybe another premium petrol.
I mean, realistically the carburetted 404's only need 91 RON. Maybe the injections need a bit more?

[Mike Tippett]

At the Chevron stations, there is one pump nozzle for the 87-89-91 octane and a separate one for 94 octane. I expect that means that the ethanol is added at the pump in amounts that vary with the button pushed.

The Injection engine has normally 8.8:1 compression but mine should be about 9.2:1 due to using a Reinz head gasket instead of the metaloplastic one.

[Mike Tippett]

Got the SOFICA unit installed with the remote switch wired up nicely.


It's worth mentioning that despite being a metric car, the brake pipe unions I used are 3/8 inch on the nuts and not 10 mm as were the originals, even though the threads themselves are imperial. A 10 mm wrench will not get them tight enough.


Couple of shots from the side, now that the car's off jack stands and on its own wheels again.

[Mike Tippett]

The Jaeger aluminium plate for the sports instrument panel - made by Le Club 404 - arrived today and I installed the instruments provisionally at the lunch break. The instruments other than the oil pressure gauge are used and need to be cleaned and tested. I may also look for a better voltmeter and possibly an 8 Gordini tachometer after all, as the Renault 8S tachometer has a different style of chrome trim. Still it's a good start.....