Wiring diagram VE Valiant 6 cylinder Auto Wagon (not regal)

Bet you thought I had died. Haven't done a lot with the old girl for ages, and she won't run on petrol, which is a bit of problem since I moved to Queensland two and a half years back. LPG isn't that common north of central NSW, so I dropped the Val off at a local carburettor specialist. He called me about three hours later and said he won't touch my carburettor because the wiring was generally untidy and he was certain that I would blame him if anything ever failed on the wiring (which had nothing to do with the carburettor). Okay took public transport back there again. Three hours spent travelling but I didn't spend the $545 he quoted for the job he was supposed to do.

Determined to tidy the electrics myself and unemployed as a result of the pandemic, I drove home happily in the knowledge that I'd fix her up myself, then rebuild the carburettor myself.

The first issue was that the circuit diagram in the manual was not what you would call easy to follow. Observe below.

So if you have a wire that goes along the full length of the page, or worse, diagonally, following it is a nightmare. I spent about eight hours re-drawing the page using Inkscape.

The result is the same as above except that the wires aren't just labelled, they're coloured too. It makes a remarkable difference in my ability to follow a wire. It's a vector diagram, so you can make it any size you want without any loss of detail. Print on A3 if you want the detail. 

Here is the file. It's in SVG format, and you can view it with just about any vector image software or do that plus edit it with Inkscape.

Leaky sump (oil pan). How to remove it without removing the engine

This is the other job: I stuffed up putting this gasket on properly when rebuilding the engine about four or five years ago (I'm a bad parent).
I hate tying all the crap out of the way, disconnecting the transmission and all the heartache associated with the inevitable screwing something else up in the very long, laborious process.
So, how does one replace the sump gasket without removing the engine?
Not that easy: You will need a black and tackle or engine lifter.

0. Drain the oil and remove the filter.
1. Remove the bonnet.
2. Drain the radiator and remove both top and bottom hoses.
3. Remove anything else that will stretch, break or get in the way if you raise the engine about six inches. I removed the distributor cap and rotor (so they don't get in the way or broken), air cleaner, coil wires, sender wires (oil and temperature).
4. Remove the idler arm from the car body end and a tie rod end (remove the ball joint, don't unscrew the other end so the steering arm can be swung out of the way.
5. Jack up the car so you can get underneath, and put axle stands under, remove jack.
6. Remove the nut at the bottom of the engine mounting on the driver side and the whole engine mounting on the passenger side. Also remove the transmission splash plate.
7. Attach rope to engine, then lift it with your lifter.
8. Remove bolts from the sump, swing the steering arm out of the way and remove it.

Ta-da! That's the hard bit. Clean the sump and put the new gaskets on. Mine were really bad at staying on, even with some gasket stuff (which isn't required for sealing, purely to stop the cork ones from moving). I had to put the cork ones on after the sump was in place under the engine. Just be careful. Try not to knock the rubber ones: The long rubber dimples are very good at holding it in place but I still managed to knock two of these out at the back.

Putting it back in requires a bit of fiddling. If you do well, put the cork bits on, get a couple of bolts in to hold it then the rest of them.

Do everything else in reverse order now, making sure everything is tight, except the sump bolts, which I tightened up with a socket using my hands instead of the ratchet. I'm not that strong so I could make it as tight as my hands would allow and I reckon it's just about right. How do I know? For the first time in five years, the car doesn't leak oil!

Oh, and cork tends to compress, so schedule a re-tighten using the same method in a week or two.
If you use a ratchet to tighten the bolts, you will break the cork and the oil will leak again. I remember this well from the first time I ever did this!

Rust repairs

I'm simply not up to some repairs and cutting out rusty bits and welding mean I had to leave it to the professionals.
Black Edge in Bayswater, like all body shops, aren't cheap, but I've found that they're very thorough. The Val had a lot more rust than initial inspection suggested so it was a lot of money and two weeks without the car, but she's as solid as new now.
Three areas were attended to:
1. Left rear panel (inner and outer)
2. Right rear panel (inner and outer)
3. Plenum/firewall.

#3 is really really common, and I think that living at Torquay for nearly four years made all of these much worse than they should have been.

The rear panels can be bought from a place in Queensland for $125 a piece. The guys told me it was much cheaper buying these than getting them to make them.

This was a few weeks ago. Yes I've been neglecting maintenance issues, mainly due to financial constraints. The weekend just gone I did another job that's been hanging about for a few years.

Engine not running right, overheating

OK, the car was not idling and was overheating at the drop of a hat at the start of Summer. Why is that? The answer wasn't obvious at all!

Compression test.
Most cylinders showed 135PSI, one at 105, lowest at 100.
I suspected a blown head gasket, so off with her head!
The gasket was OK, but the valves looked a bit the worse for wear: Pitted and with black crap coating the back.
More disturbing was that there were two water holes which were blocked by the gasket. No wonder it was overheating. The new gasket had the same blockages on both sides (front and rear) of the engine. I made holes for it, as you can see:

Engine with new gasket

It's the big one with the big red ring around it. No idea why it was not punched out, it might have been a tooling error.
Jobs to do:
1. Make holes in gasket. Your gasket might already have them if you're lucky. My dad was very surprised this one didn't.
2. Clean the head.
3. Remove then grind in valves.
4. Reassemble

The longest task is #3. Grinding or lapping in the valves is very time consuming. The head was unlikely to have cracked or warped so I didn't get it checked. Cast iron is very rugged.

The gasket was very hard to make holes in. A drill with the round hole attachment is a good choice. It's not like a regular gasket, it has metal in the middle.
The head cleaning just required a wire brush attachment. I did this then removed the valves, which requires a special tool that looks like a big G clamp. I cleaned up the valves and inspected them. They were OK, but pitted and they needed to be lapped in again.
This is the time-consuming bit. It requires valve grinding paste, a little light oil or thinners and a sucker.

Place sucker on valve

paste

Place the sucker on the valve and a small amount of the coarser paste around the valve, where it contacts the head with a drip of something lighter (thinner is ideal) which reduces the friction. Grasp the stick between your palms and rub like you're starting a fire with it. Also, lift the valve every so often. Not sure why but my dad swears it's important. When it feels smooth, remove the paste and inspect the surfaces. If they aren't completely smooth (you can still see the pits) repeat. I had to do this between 6 and 10 times before it was smooth. When it is, finish it with the smooth version at the other end of the tube, just the once. It took me two hours to do 12 valves.

OK, reassembled the head, connected everything and dad told me the valve clearances will need to be set. This is another place where you really need to be careful. The slant six requires the engine to be running and hot to adjust this. The setting is 0.010" (ten thousandths of an inch) on inlet valves and 0.020" in the exhaust valves. Now this is important don't fail to set the valve clearances again when the engine has warmed up.
I did, and had it running on five cylinders until I'd worked it out. The adjuster is 7/16" so get a ring spanner and re-adjust. You'll find the idle speed will change radically if yours was anything like mine.
I'd also bought a tune-up kit at the tip shop and it included a vacuum gauge. This is useful for getting the idle mixture right. Maximise it and your car will love you.
Mine seems to love me now. She idles better than ever (as in has literally never been this good) and is smooth and powerful. Also doesn't overheat as easily. Have to get the radiator sorted out next and I just might get through Summer!

Finally fixed the cooling

Well, after two weeks with the new system, I went back to the old one. Here's why:
No matter what I did, there was a massive delay from turning on the fan to dropping temperature. Another problem was that the system wasn't pressurised properly. Firstly not at all, so I blocked the overflow. Still made me very nervous. In the meantime Dad removed the top of the car's original radiator (with heat) and checked the flow through the core. Quite a few of the passages were blocked with "rust and shit" (don't blame me, I'm just quoting). He cleared these and soldered the top on again. I decided to play it safe and:
1. Keep the a/c fan
2. Keep the six bladed fan I was using before the electric experimentation
3. Use the long fan spacer

The radiator leaked, probably through one of the formerly blocked passages. Stop leak fixed this up and even on a hot day the temperature barely gets to half way.
Moral is: Restore the car, don't try and update.

Another Summer and more cooling problems

Well, since the crappo Chinese fan seized and the crook who sold it never sent me a replacement, I decided to do things my way.
Went to pick-a-part and picked up a radiator from an Alfa, transmission cooler from a BMW and a fan from a Mercedes.
The range of bits was for good reasons.
The radiator had to be a certain size. Well, it had to be about the same size as the Valiant one. The Alfa was perfect (really, almost exactly the same size) as well as being quite thin. I got the fan that was on it. All this for $103.50.
Transmission cooler was from a different wrecker: One near my dad's and they charged $36! Hell, that's expensive.
Can't remember what the merc fan cost (got it ages ago) but it wasn't very much (also from P.A.P.) - probably about $25.
OK, so radiator almost went straight in. Both hoses were on the driver's side like the Val, and I set it up so the bottom hose went into the new one. Got a couple of rubber blocks to set it on and found out that it also lined up nicely with two factory drilled holes in the bottom support panel! Just had to secure it at the top, but out it came and the trans cooler had to go in first. I'll get pics tomorrow. It's nearly finished now but I just haven't taken pictures yet.
The cooler had to be modified. I cut it off at the rubber hydraulic hoses and for the Val, I hack sawed the pipes back to the steel. When this had been done I thoroughly cleaned up the cut and the inside of the pipe. The adapters that go into the radiator fit into the end of the steel pipes like a glove, so I screwed them in. They were quite secure, but I unscrewed them, mixed up some industrial strength araldyte and spread liberally onto the threads before screwing back in. Left them for 24 hours to set before tightening.
So, cooler, radiator and original fan... No, the original fan is massively too wide. I tried to modify it to fit (it had a steel shroud damn it!) but no go. Mercedes fans are an amazing combination of heavy duty and efficient design. It was easily half the width of the Alfa fan, so on it went. This required a bit of stuffing around but I got there  in the end. Radiator must not touch the fan housing or the transmission cooler. All of these things would rub holes in each other so make sure they don't touch.
OK, so the Alfa radiator has a thermostat, so I have to learn what sort of output it has and rig up a thermo switch to come on automatically, cool the car down and shut off. The temperature of activation must be higher than the temp of deactivation. If not, it would be coming on for a few seconds at a time every few seconds! Not what we want, so we have it come on around, say, 90 and switch off around 85. It'll have to heat back up to 90 until she kicks back in.
I'm currently researching this feature but there's plenty of information about cheap or free ways to accomplish it.
Also have to get the A/C to activate the fan, or even put in a second one. I did buy two so it's possible, but I'll see how she runs with only one. Thursday will be a good day to test it out, seeing as it's expected to be 40 in Melbourne!

The Electric Fan part 3

The two thermo switches I got from the wrecker were rendered useless: I heated one of them with a blow torch (then discovering they're very sensitive) and dropped the other on the concrete floor, breaking it instantly.
So, what to do when the world seems to be letting you know it doesn't want you to is to stop trying to do it. I fitted a nicer switch on the inside of the car and made it slightly more secure (but still hanging down from the dash). Since it's Winter now, I rarely have to even switch it on, provided I avoid heavy traffic (*very* difficult in Melbourne these days).
Found out the following about how it heats up:
1. Putting the car into neutral when coasting downwards (don't speed, though) is great for reducing the coolant temperature.
2. Putting the car into neutral at red lights no longer has any cooling effect, since the fan is now gone, so doing it is now a no-no.
3. Provided I never forget to look at the gauge every minute or so, the car will always operate at the right temperature.
4. Rain doesn't necessarily cool it better.
5. Cold air does. Driving through the mountains saw the temperature gauge drop quite a bit.
6. Travelling at 60-70KM/H is good for cooling, 80 is OK, but 100 will heat the coolant. The engine has to work proportionally harder at 100 to overcome the additional air resistance and produces much more heat, whereas at lower speeds the wind blowing through the radiator is more cooling than what the engine produces.

The car seems to use less fuel, and (this could be imagination, but) it also seems more responsive.

Thanks for reading.