well, this morning herman went on his first great adventure; me and mazza’s long trek [well, about 140 miles] down to visit my mate baz in angelsey for the easter weekend.

hulme to angelsey - herman adventure no.1


hulme to angelsey [close-up] - herman adventure no.1


no problems whatsoever on the way down; herman cruised along quite happily at around 55mph, topped 65mph a few times on the downhill bits and even scaled the dizzying heights of 67mph during one particularly ferocious overtaking manoeuvre on a trundling-along caravan. he even got us there on less diesel than GULG used to use, which was a nice bonus!

approaching the menai bridge


punky the dashboard penguin’s eye view of our crossing the britannia bridge into angelsey


our hero and role-model at the wheel, crossing the britannia bridge into angelsey


herman, relaxing in his rustic surroundings


on the journey home, i had the old familiar problem of herman running like a bag of shite when i first started him up. a quick whip off of the engine cover revealed that, as expected, i had my beloved bubbles back in the fuel system again. the last remaining section of diesel run-off tubing from the injector pump had decided to spring a leak. luckily i had some lengths of rubber tube in my toolbox, so i was able to effect some quick running repairs at baz’s before we set off.

bloody fuel pipes! - the diesel was oozing out of the bastard


time for some more rubber tubing repairs and fuel line priming


bubbleicious repair job done, herman cruised home as happily as he had cruised down there and even, at one point, overtook a VW T3 camper wagon on the A55 near conwy. all in all a successful trip and i found herman a helluva lot less sluggish and clunky than stuff i’d read about the LT35s on the intarwebs had led me to expect. probably my expectations were too low since i’ve always driven clunky, slow 4x4s and the like before. so i was expecting him to barely be able to reach 50mph. the fact that he’s more fuel economical than GULG is nice too - although that’s a situation that’s likely to change, once he starts getting a load of ballast - in the form of campervan innards - stuck in the back.

next major mission will prob be whitby in a couple of weeks time - another 130 mile trek!

not the most productive of days today.

on the positive side, my new ‘next day delivery’ battery that i ordered four working days ago, finally turned up. so herman has at last got some decent amperage behind his ignition system. mind you, even with the new battery installed, the glowplugs were still only getting about 9volts through them when i turned on the ignition. so, sommit’s not quite right there.

out with the old. in with the new [batteries, that is]


what was a real pisser tho’ was that - far from leaping into life when cranked over on the new battery - herman refused to start. so it was the by now tediously familiar ‘up with the seats, off with the engine cover’ routine again to find out that, once more, the fuel line into the injector pump was full of air and the pump itself as dry as the proverbial nun’s chuff again. so i had to go through the tedious priming process again to get the fecker working.

it’s really weird - once he’s fired up he runs fine and the engine revs great [my trooper, when it’s had an air-leak in the fuel lines will start OK but refuses to rev at all] and the bubbles in the fuel line clear after about five mins. but if i leave him standing for a couple of days, it’ll be back to air bubble hell again and the system will need re-bleeding. it looks like a really slow leak, which is going to be an absolute bugger to track down. at least with a big leak, you can spot it fairly easily. i’ll have to leave the detective work to the weekend tho’, as i havenae time during the working week to be crawling round underneath in the muck, checking out fuel lines.

downhearted by these symptoms of fuel troubles, i turned my attention to one of the other niggling problems; that of the windscreen wipers not working.

an adaptor set had also come in the post today, which would allow the 24mm socket i’d mistakenly bought in 1/2” fitting, to fit onto my 3/8” socket set. said 24mm socket being needed to remove the steering wheel to get at the windscreen wiper switch. under the steering wheel, the switch housings were extremely filthy and a bit dodgy looking, so i separated them out into the main parts and had a hoke round with my circuit tester on the windscreen wiper section - to no avail. there was one lead feeding 12v into the switch assembly, but it didnae seem to be coming through anywhere inside and, with darkness about to fall, i dejectedly decided to call it a day and reassemble the steering column again.

steering column after removing wheel - skanky, or what?


sigh! - another one for the ‘when i’ve got more time’ department!