FLOOD WARNING!
Jet-washing the SC I noticed that my trunk carpet was very wet - quite puzzling, as this was the first time ever encountering this.
Removing the carpets, it wasn’t really obvious where the water was coming from, so I decided to do a little more investigation and quickly found water had also made its way into the cockpit by the pedal box, and there was indeed quite a lot there!
My first step was to dry everything properly before working out what was happening.
Half a roll of paper towels later I checked if the drainpipe coming from the scuttle exterior fresh air vent/grille wasn’t blocked by pouring a little bit of water into it. No water was dripping under the car, but it was coming straight into the trunk - problem easily located, issue with the drainpipe.
Arrow indicates location of plastic hose to housing
The pipe is connected just under the air blower and runs down via the smuggler’s box to a hole in the floor to allow water to evacuate under the car. After removing the cardboard panel in front of the air box unit I immediately realised that the plastic drainpipe had become disconnected from the unit and water was running straight into the trunk and the cockpit (water always finds a way to get everywhere!).
The pipe was reconnected (and secured) and another water test was done to ensure that water was now flowing from the vent to the floor, as it should.
All this is probably the result of moving things around in the smuggler’s box and disturbing the pipe. I’ve also heard of the plastic becoming very brittle and disintegrating. A word of caution, make sure you check this pipe from time to time, as the consequences could be pretty devastating…
CLUTCH PEDAL RETURN SPRING
Whilst drying the area around the pedal box due to the aforementioned issue, I noticed that my clutch pedal return spring was broken. Interestingly enough, the pedal did feel perfectly fine and was returning fully to the top (a sign of a broken spring usually is a pedal that won’t travel fully back to the top sometimes by up to about one inch).
It is pretty easy to replace the spring with the pedal box out of the car but doing it in situ can be a different story. The spring is so hard that you will not be able to make it long enough to hook both ends up.
Washers will increase length by over 1.5cms making fitment to the pedal in situ possible (don’t forget to put some grease on shafts)
Enter the ‘washers’ trick. Insert washers between each and every coil until the spring is long enough to slip into place. Also make sure you attach the ‘U’ shaped end of the spring first, the ‘D’ shape end requires less extension to slip onto its mount. Job done.
Hope you will find these helpful and please email me any similar tricks you may have so we can pass on to our 911SC community.
Thanks
Franck