I was talking with Swiss Tony the other day and he said "Owning a Bentley is like making love to a beautiful woman, you put time and effort into getting her hot and ready for action only to be met with a stern warning from somewhere around the dash area". He was right. My last update was in June, although I do write about the Bentley for Rush magazine, www.rushmagazine.co.uk so there's stuff to read there. I intend that my Rush Magazine will be mainly about my use and experiences with this blog being about things that need doing, have been done or failed to get done.
Since June the Bentley has largely behaved itself with the only significant failure being the rear off-side window mechanism broke. It was at 4pm in mid-December. I was doing a wedding for a friend (editor of the aforementioned Rush Magazine). The window stuck down. It was minus 2deg Celcius, which is about 28deg F for our US cousins. I had to drive them about fifteen miles to their reception. Fortunately they saw the funny side and the heating in a Bentley is top notch and kept warm air pumping all the time. As it happened after dropping them off I just had time to nip to Bowling-Ryan in Bolton who look after the beast for me and they very kindly stuck the window back up with a piece of finest off-cut timber. The mechanism is shot. I have a couple of mechanisms order from a scrapper which I am currently waiting for. Given the rear windows are not used much, there's no rush and I have no weddings planned for a while.
Apart from the usual occasional engine management light coming on (always the knock sensor), and the rev counter sometimes doing very much its own thing, the driving has been great and the car now has just over 113,000 miles on her.
The list of things to do is ever long and last weekend I decided to make use of some of the bits I have collected and fix the bonnet issue that I have had - not big enough issues to warrant being mentioned before but enough that they are a job on the To-Do list.
The issues are, 1. The bonnet, when released no longer sprang up so you could get your fingers underneath - weak bonnet catch springs. Then 2. when the bonnet was up it would, at intervals designed to maim or seriously injure, simply slam shut. So in order, the bonnet catches needed replacing and the hydraulic lifters that hold the bonnet up needed new ones - I think all of these things have been on the vehicle since new.
I'd ordered these some time ago from Flying Spares and they had arrived along with four lifters for the boot. I had done nothing with them due to time and so having spare time last weekend, I got on with the job.
There are two bonnet catches to replace which are simply (for each one), a standard nut and a rubber "bump stop" with locking nuts. Removal of both sides including marking up the positions (they can be adjusted) took about 90 seconds and the use of a single 10mm spanner.
The above picture shows the old, right hand catch, with fixing bolt in the middle (left of the spring) and the other fixing bolt "bump stop" to the right of the spring. Because the catch is adjustable before tightening, probably 4mm lateral adjustment, I marked where the old catch sat before removing and put the new one back in the same place - no adjustment was needed.
Total time for removal and fitting new catches, less than ten minutes, some of which was scrabbling on the floor looking for the bolt I dropped and then wondering where the 10mm spanner had got to.
Second job was to change the hydraulic lifters that hold the bonnet open. Again, easy job with one small complication that meant that this job took twenty minutes when in fact it should have taken no more than ten.
First, make sure you have the bonnet propped up securely. I found an old walking stick ideal for this job. The old guy I swiped it from complained, but I had managed to complete the job before he caught me up and took it back.
The picture below shows a closer view of the lifter and at the top you can just see that the top left of the end is actually a spring clip that is holding the thing on. A flick with a screwdriver (there's a gap for a small tool to be inserted) and the clip springs off to nestle comfortably under my son's car. Fortunately the new lifters come with new springs, so no need to scrabble around for that straightaway.
All ends have the same clip but it is necessary to take the right and left hand engine covers off to access the ones nearer the engine. That done, and the clips removed, they take no effort to pull off. The new ones simply slip on (with the spring clip already in place) and the job is done.
The driver's side is straightforward and takes about a minute to remove and replace, seriously, it's not even beginner level stuff. However, the passenger side benefits from a sensor that, I presume tells you if the bonnet is not closed properly. This is, as you can see in the picture below, a connector with a few wires.
It took me a good few minutes to wiggle the old connector out from under the wing, and this involved snipping some of the cable ties holding wires to the side, in order to get inside. Once free though, it was an easy unclip/clip and then push everything back and run in a few replacement cable ties.
Once done, with the lifter attached, the job was complete. A test of bonnet closure integrity and it was time for brew. These two jobs took about half an hour with getting tools, tidying away and apologising to the old geezer about his walking stick.
Next weekend, subject to time, I will be doing the boot so will drop another update when I get a minute.