Alco- I wonder what's the story here

Will not work when that washer is useless..

EGGS-Zact-lee!!

Might make it easier to grab with a wrench without putting the wrench on the body.

Full threads at the top might be for a rubber boot.

It's possible the D-shaped punchout in the washer can thread over the top part of the switch post until it hits the milled out groove.

Like universal windshield wiper blade kits, there's nothing intuitive looking about this switch, but I'm sure it works just fine.

Page 13 shows boots for these switches.

I'd bet the full threads at the top, helps seal the boots, to prevent leaks.

With a piece of pipe and a sizeable hammer? :-)

For almost every mechanical connection there is a solution :-)

;)

About thirty years back, I had a Triumph that had head bolts like the one at the lower right.

They took an inline 4, and tipped it over by about 40 degrees so they could get a lower hood line. That made the head bolts inaccessible, so they put them in at an angle of about 15 degrees off perpendicular to enable you to get at them with a wrench. So far so good.

Then some bright spark decided to make them _studs_ instead of bolts, so that in order to get the head off, you had to extract the studs. Of course I got all but one of them to come out, and of course that one was right next to the timing chain guides, so I couldn't just wiggle the head out.

I eventually used a two-by-four and a sledgehammer to get the head off. It bent the chain guides all to hell, but they bent back again okay after I put the head back on. Never did get that stud out.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Probably that bright spark fresh out of school assumed that the engine be taken out of the car for that job, blissfully unaware of the extra effort and cost.

Had a similar event on our evap cooler. Of course wrecking something in there doesn't come at the price tag of a new Triumph engine.

The worst is when you think "Oh, it's coming, it's coming, just a smidgen more torque" and then ... *POCK* ... snapped off clean at the surface.

Also, a better fit for cosmetic cone nuts: Note that there is only one or two threads in the cone nut, which would probably cross thread into the D shaped flat.

Another theory is that it's AlcoSwitch's solution to a cosmetic problem. A large flat area on the threads would look ugly on a front panel. It's an improvement from previous locking washer designs, that used a milled keyway:

It wouldn't have helped--the studs were at a pretty big angle to the head, and the holes were pretty tight.

There was a recall on this car due to another bright spark's cheaping out on the hardness grade of the studs. Of course I wasn't the original owner, so in this case I was out of luck. But then, if it didn't leak oil it wouldn't be a British car, now, would it? (Problem was, it was leaking coolant into the oil. Somehow brown mayonnaise doesn't work as well, either on sandwiches or in engines.)

At the time I knew a guy with a wire-EDM rig for fixing that sort of brilliance--he specialized in removing bolts covered with broken EZ Outs. He'd shower you with abuse for being a moron and screwing up a simple extraction, but then he'd fix it like new. (I never had to use his services myself.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Could you at least install bolts after the job? That would make it easier next time.

It always surprised me how many mainstream cars needed head gasket jobs over the years. Can't remember a single Japanese one that did.

Many of the really good technicians I met were like that. Chewing you out for not being careful enough but then they'd do an excellent job fixing what got bent.

Triumph had some stupid ideas. They made a V8 (the Stag, I think), that took the water pump drive from the timing chain. When the seal failed (as it inevitably did, it was made in the UK), you got water in the oil. Major job to fix it.

Compared to. say, the good ol' small block Chevy, British attempts at V8s were laughable.

I doubt they "touch down".

Anything made in such quantities will be milled automatically, either on an old-fashioned production milling machine, or CNC.

Maybe milled in batches with a side cutter, on a horizontal machining center.

Don't Brits smother their food in brown stuff out of a bottle? Maybe their engines, too ;-)

The Rover/Triumph V8 _was_ originally a GM design, based on the Buick

I had to give it up when I got married and went to grad school, but I was pretty fond of it once it was fixed up.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

But, what about the switch Sphero was asking about?

What about it? The whole thread was a lark from the beginning.

And expecting a SED thread to stay on-topic for more than half a dozen posts is doomed anyway.

Besides, English cars that leak oil rock. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Whoosh! Right over my larkened head. Sorry!