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The ratchet that is rounded off is about clicks 5 to 8. Online says a properly adjusted mechanism should be locking the wheels at 2 clicks. So hopefully (!) once fully adjusted it should be fine. Apart from the rounded off notches, the other notches hold firm. Even as it wears, the springiness in the mechanism should hopefully allow it to be pulled past that. Failing that, my wife who likes to put handbrakes on mega hard will likely stretch the cables anyway. 🫠 It was unlikely to pass an MOT as it stood previously though. Even if it did, it would have been marginal. I did find that parking on a hill it did like to roll. It's always been habit for me to leave cars in gear anyway. While it's another expense I didn't want, like you said, at least I'm saving on garage bills. I think I'm already at the point now (£200ish and then the MOT to get through) in parts that I won't be getting my money back. At absolute best this is probably a £1400 to £1500 car. Any more and you're into a Z4 with less miles and better bodywork.

That's about £5 more than the people I've called, but I guess I'd get it near enough instantly. I don't have the handbook for it I don't think. I'll go through what I've got again tonight and see. At least last time I went through it I didn't see anything to do with an EKA.

of course, it's not my pic!

Probably saved a few hundred quid in labour just by investigating it! Hopefully it all goes back together happily, assume the handbrake ratchet will last for the mot?

In other news. I spent two days detailing the paint on the Astro van Crazy?? Absolutely But you can see and feel the difference. I used Zymöl polish after a decent wax wash, and then wiping down panel by panel, a section at a time. Small circular waxing and doing 3-4 passes back and forth plus more concentrated waxing on any scuffs or areas that looked less than good. Very few people waste time like this these days. Beading is good. Finally Yes it was even better than before. I will get to the wheels again as it’s 6 months since the last time I polished and sealed them. Back to swinging my 20 pound hammer today. Stuff happening.

Drain towards the lawn. Hopefully it’s not a problem waiting to happen.

Growing up we had an Austin 1100. No seatbelts in the back and very slow, but a nice little car. That was kind of her grandad

If you own an Audi A8, the front bumper needs to be removed every weekend. If you own a BMW Z4, the car needs to be raised every 200 miles... ( @wuvvum probably feels this pain too 😅) I was going to chuck this into a garage to sort the handbrake, but I thought I'd at least investigate at first. Put the parking brake in its service position. Basically latch off the handbrake lever spring. Took quite a bit of force to do that. Out of the many old wrecks I've bought over the years, including a lot of British Leylands finest, I have never seen a handbrake ratchet worn out. I know there are a lot of BMW lovers and VAG haters on here but my 200k Golf is holding up on the miles much better than this 177k BMW. Nowhere near the same amount of trim, interior and part wear like this car. I'm getting good at pulling BMW rear brakes apart now. Pads, caliper, caliper holder and disc all removed. Pretty obvious now what the issue with the handbrake and the rubbing noise I was getting was from. That's the drivers side. The passenger side (where I actually thought the noise was from) was how it should be. So what happened? Well the shoes are held in by spring retaining (beehive?) clips. These are mounted into the back-plate. Which was rusted out completely. Thankfully the bolts for the shield came out without snapping. So new backplate time. These are supposed to be mounted by removing the hub and driveshaft. However I'm not doing that just for a backplate and handbrake mechanism. Far too much risk of ruining bearings and making this a much larger job. Instead what I'm going to do, and most other people do, is snip off the caliper side and slot it in through the hub. Basically an extra cut in the one I put in here. Just the one slot meant the backplate was pretty bent and warped it. It needs to be fairly flat for the handbrake setup to work properly. I could get new backplates off eBay for £22 delivered. But won't arrive till Thurs or Fri. Instead Febi on Amazon to the rescue again and should be arriving today. I'm doing both sides as the other is pretty bad too and I don't want to be doing this again. While I had the backend up, I removed the wheel arch liner to give the drains a good probe. Thankfully mostly clean and dry.

Which reminds me! What's the plan for drainage off the new concrete 'runway'? Is there to be a camber & lose it to the sides? Or a defined exit "drain" (that might already exist)? Just pondering 🙂👍🏻

It's still not perfect but it's a great GROCERY GREATER and STATION SHUTTLE. Park anywhere, don't worry about it, worth nowt, let every seagull shit on it, no worries* motoring. Its nippy enough, comfortable enough at 74mph, small enough to fit anywhere, and isn't really even that cramped inside for a 6ft4 22stone travesty of a pilot. It's returning low to mid 40s mpg on mixed driving and costs nowt£ in tax and insurance. Lowest group on insurance and tax is about 2$ per month. ECCONOMYICAL Still stuff to iron out, foibles-wise. Idles a bit high randomly, still misses a bit sometimes and has cut out randomly twice. I'll keep piling the miles on and keep picking away at it where funds allow.

After all of the tomfuckery on collection day, I discovered that I actually DO have a 12v outlet. Some ABSOLUTE LEG has wired one into the glove box. It was tucked safely into a hole in the top of the box. Cheeky fkr

Most importantly update. Textured. Rubber. Action.

Saw a very nice vintage pedal car for sale this week. This is unusual in that it is a pedal car. Imported I believe from America. I could be mistaken. Tell me more. Chassis Previous rider is now 21 years old. So I got onto it with G3 followed by Zymöl polish. Loads of scuffs and marks that came off. Leaving it looking better. Unfortunately the stickers that were stuck on it years ago, and possibly a smoking house means that there is discolouration around the stickers. So removing them would leave marks showing the original silver paint. After an hour or more the result was pretty decent. Next job will be getting a kid to pedal it, rather than looking for a button to posh. Why do I do this stuff? No idea.

I love these Pandas. There's one round the corner from me in that bright blue that I ogle enviously. I've noticed Sainsbury's sell the perfect colour matched paint for yours, handy for touch ups:

I certainly don’t want growth on the concrete. That’s why I spend days cleaning it all every year. I may have bought a Mercedes Benz SLK 230 this week. Foolish? Maybe. Collected it on Monday morning. Giving it to Sally.

I used a blade to carefully cut the glue, it can be re-suck easy enough. I did intend to open and showcase the Moving Parts cars I've bought recently but just not had time - saved me a job on the BMW!

I also fixed this smoll hole. Perfect* fit*.

Have some pics from various famous* local* landmarks and from general pottering.

While the bonnet was up I dug out the duck bill scuttle drains. They tend to back up with mulch in pandas, which dries, compacts, blocks, then fills the scuttle with water, which then leaks into the footwells. Pics are terrible but you get the idea. Dug out with a finger so there's plenty of room for spread to drain the fluids. Gape action!

True

Next was onto small service items. The car did seem a bit flat and felt a bit missy occasionally at times so start with plugs I guess. using the power of my sheepskin house slippers I was able to read the plugs in mystical ways and came to the conclusion that yes, I'm pretty sure it's about time that these be changed. Air filtre. Out with the old, in with the new. Also did the oil and filter and added a go slower sticker. Rear wiper improvements.

In all my excitement on collection day, I forgot to thank all that made it possible. The car was in a different country to me and @Lacquer Peel and @juular very kindly gave it a good inspection, picked it up locally* and stored it till I could collect. Thank you gentlemen for all your help and thanks to @MrsJuular for sensibly pointing out the lack of air in the tyres and for excellent hospitality on collection day. Now, what's been going on with it? Well, first up and probably not the most pressing issue but what came first in alphabetical order, was the alternator bearing. Pandas do seem to get through these and for peace of mind* I demanded a new one rather than swapping on a used one. Thankfully @Jimbob McGregor is fantastic at managing demands and he was kind enough to cast his thorough eye over the cars few failings. Alternator was changed out, front brakes stripped, cleaned, greased and popped back together. The handbrake was as close to vertical as physics would allow and barely held the car on steep gradients so that was adjusted down to the trademark Jimbobmcgreggor two click specification. Great improvement all round. Happy new alternator.

1961 Volvo Duett 1105 pounds https://www.finn.no/car/used/ad.html?finnkode=349630582