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Alright lads? Here's a new batch of rubbish old cars, starting with this Stagea thingy. Not sure if this was in use or not, looked a bit down at heel but that might just be the gravel drive and odd parking angle A very clean R4 in Worthing, with my camera on a 'square' setting for some reason Local Asda car park regularly delivers the goods, including these three recently. That looks like waxoil or something leaking out of the Xantia Found a house which some may recognise from internet urbex fame. A Herald being caned up the A23 And a couple of cla**ics out the other day. I assumed they were in convoy but the Alpine turned off at some point and I followed the Fiat for ages. I could sense the drivers' frustration as they were being held up by this Ignis doing 42mph on an NSL road. Three from the same small town the other day. Particularly pleased with the Maestro van An XK in Firle. I think I might have snapped this years ago in Brighton actually And three from France this weekend That's it, cheers!

And finally, the money shots. How bloody good do they look?!? Exactly the picture I had in my head before I even bought the car. Slightly wider at 13x5.5 but I've stuck with the same sized tyre (165/70) so I've just got a bit more graduation from contact patch to sidewall I guess.

Been driving about a whole bunch. Went continue tidy up at mother in law's lot. Takes forever, glad I had spare belts for the mower. That's genuine mower-shite too, it's British Leyland levels of rusty. Headed home. Warm air, window down radio on, engine humming away up the highway. Got bugs all spattered up the glass. Can't say it's a trailer queen.

And we're home. I'm quite excited as this is my first encounter with a vehicle built and developed under communism and the first impression is good. This is a 1976 Zetor 2511 which I think was Zetor's smallest model in the 1970s it has a 1.6 liter 2 cylinder diesel engine with 25 horse power and was built in Czechoslovakia. And it's going to be used in my dad's company.

On a walking holiday with a mate on Mull. When I awaken after an unplanned snooze in our hotel I find she's had about 6 lagers in the bar and now very worse for wear. She proceeds to very loudly ask me and rest of the bar about the possibility of a shag later. Interrogates me as to why I don't fancy her. When the fish and chips arrive I'm alarmed to see she can't use a fork. She stabs at the mess with such violence that tartare lands on her nose and forehead. When we getup to leave there's fish everywhere and her seat is effectively destroyed. FFS

Erm, seem to have bought an old Vauxhall... ...a 2.0 Super Touring. It's pretty bad body work wise (the kit didn't do them any favours) but they're a rare old thing now.

i have made the executive decision to just do a "fuck it" i'm going to fix it, i'll call into the garage tomorrow and tell them to fix it

Yesterday with the help of @Slowsilver we cut the grass in the camping paddock and main orchard ready for the weekend.

put half a tank of diesel in it, topped up the tyres and drove it 3-4 miles to the test centre brakes felt utterly awful at first now they feel an awful lot better made it with no issues gearbox is lovely and smooth seems to be running much better on fresh diesel too i quite like the way it drives, in fact, i really like the way it drives

MPs here in the UK have literally LOST THEIR JOBS looking for stuff like this on the internet. Nice work, is it a trick of the camera or does it have a green 'modesty' curtain for safety on the rear of the roof/cab?

We are on a tractor buying trip today

I had an errand to run this morning, 40 miles away and I took the XM because I wanted to drive a car that looked like a spaceship and rode like a magic carpet... They are well worth the time and effort to look after them. The items on the MOT list don't look bad and once they are done, you won't have to worry about them again...

Getting some headlights on Saturday Guess I am fixing it then Well unless they quote me a grand then I'll have to have a think

Hey @sutty2006 New head new headset new sump new nozzles new MAP new belts new gaskets. 20220510_151959.mp4 Purring. Boost is back baby. Figured having carefully stored a spare engine for years I should use some of it. Shiny new ticket on it and all. Even taxed it. 8k till the big 250. Should do that this year.

drove past about 20 mins ago, still where i parked it so it'll likely be done this afternoon been doing some more stalking, it really has been a local car to me for quite some time

started to go through some old stuff in my dad's loft which has been in there 25 years or so. started to uncover a few of my old model cars , not found my box of pre enjoyed matchbox cars but found some sadly badly stored Bburago and the like, and also found my Micro Machines! I wonder if that unbuilt Orange Blossom model kit is worth anything?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185417878998?hash=item2b2bc44dd6:g:NCEAAOSw2pJidpqP

Autoshiters please come and see us this weekend, the weather is lovely, dry, warm and sunny. Just jump in! If you have never been to the FoD before just PM me for joining instructions. Pets welcome, children welcome, parents welcome. Free camping, for motorhomes, caravans, tents and car sleepers. The final thing I have to temp you with is Mrs6C has bought a large new kettle for the gas stove!

I had to read that twice

Not shite and not cheap but if the look you're going for is "Eastern European Arms Dealer" you're sorted https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165462625863?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3D26242ab851af4df89402544b9c466bf3%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D15%26sd%3D165462625863%26itm%3D165462625863%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3A22b4e17f-d03b-11ec-8ab9-fa585ea0c03c|parentrq%3Aad1547051800a9f0b78106b1fffe711c|iid%3A14 Recently had £930(!!!!) worth of brakes

Had five minutes spare last night so had a quick poke around again. Crusty white thing is crusty. Emergency supplies squirreled away in the air box. Nothing chewed through though. Random wires removed with the swift tug technique. Some more blebbage to be noted. Missing door stay Paint generally a bit flat and a big bonnet scratch. Gave the bumpers and rubber a once over to make it look slightly more presentable pending more work.

After a search covering approximately 80% of the far end of the garage I finally managed to locate this nondescript black plastic case. Here we have the reading with the AC off. This was before I even started the engine. Aaaaaaand with the AC turned on. Yeah...the reading on the blue gauge should have dropped, target being the 30-40psi range, and the reading in the red gauge should have gone up, probably to 130-150psi. They should absolutely *not* stay exactly where they were. What this means is that the compressor isn't pumping. Either one of the valves isn't seating properly or something has failed mechanically in the compressor. It does drop the low side a fraction when the clutch first pulls in, but by like 1 or 2 psi, and creeps back up over the course of the next few seconds. So basically we need a new compressor. Really glad I've found my gauge manifold though. Not knowing where that was was really annoying me. Obviously I don't have access to refrigerant so I can't charge it myself and I don't have access to a recovery machine any more, but being able to properly see what's going on is really useful. These are only cheap gauges and would fall apart in a couple of days in a commercial setting I'm sure, but for occasional use they're just fine. We compared the readings to a set of decent quality (Fieldpiece I think) gauges back when I got them and the accuracy was spot on at least. Will need to get the system evacuated so we can get a new compressor fitted...hopefully that (and getting it recharged for the *third* time) will finally get the air con working again. As the Trevi is still here waiting on the arrival of the correct rotor arm I figured it was a good time to get a couple of other minor niggles sorted. The reason it was here last time was to resolve the almost completely dead dash lighting. Which was successful, though we had issues with quite a few scratchy contacts. Since then while the illumination still seems fine, we were missing several warning lights. There should be lights showing there next to the fuel and temperature gauges. A scan over the rest of the dash showed we were also missing the indicators for the handbrake and rear fog lights. Strip down time. However further investigation shows the issue there to be other than in the dash. The rear fogs work, just no light on the dash. There was an issue with the little lamp failure display too which was convinced there was always a lamp out in the offside rear cluster. Further strip down needed to get to that. There were a couple of spare PCBs in the boot and sure enough swapping it out for one of those (getting the ribbon cable back in was an absolute pig) got rid of the spurious lamp failure warning. I re-replaced any lamps I put in last time given I've had horrendous reliability issues with that batch. These will hopefully prove more reliable. We now have a full compliment of the four main warning lights on the dash during the self test. We still have a red warning light (the big circle below the side/main beam indicator had a red and green LED in, it shows green now with the ignition on as the dash lights are all OK, and lights red to draw attention to a fault) when the headlights are turned on - though there *is* a lamp out in the front fog lights, so that may actually be telling the truth! So I'll get that changed and see where we are then. I may end up with the dash apart again as I'd like to beef up the ground(s) for the panel. Currently turning the headlights on raises the reading on the fuel and temperature gauges by about an eighth...to me that just smells like a grounding issue. Especially with prior experience on Fiats (and relatives) where they have almost invariably had issues with grounding in or around the instrument panel. Easy enough thing to improve though. Have to admit I'm tempted for the sake of less than £10 to add a known good engine to body and body to battery ground strap for future proofing... It looks wacky and you'd think it was a nightmare to work on, but the dash is actually really easy to get apart. Stripping it down as you see above, changing a bunch of lamps, voltage testing to see what was and wasn't working, replacing the lamp failure module and putting it all back together took me less well less than an hour.

i also fitted some wanky headlights to the mx5 they’re bloody bright even if they do look a bit wanky i bought them off a really nice chap who had bought them for his Scimitar. then decided they looked too wanky ! he was probably right but the rest of the car was an absolute beauty. but that wasn’t the most impressive thing in his garage - he also has a Scammel Scarab ! not this one but it was in lovely condition, sounded awesome when he fired it up i love it when you go to buy parts and meet like minded folk, i was probably there for an hour talking shite about cars

https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/fiat-ritmo-125-tc-abarth-hoermann/2101469977-216-2064

WELL THEN Lack of live collection shots sadly, but I did a buy

Best bodykit for a Midget, imho, the Arkley SS @barrett This one is cheap but needy… https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165466294249

It has been a long time coming but the shipping container is finally at the FoD. Even today was filled with obstacles. Quicksilver will give a full report as I was only there at the end for the success.

Sorry to hear about your breakdown @trigger Ive just gone into town to collect a pizza and managed to (badly in the excitement) park next to the wobbed up wolseley I sometimes see for a BL CARS group shot

Both Chieveley and the green Favorit are on their first holiday with us. Of sorts. We thought we'd start small so it's just a couple of nights in a cabin on a farm in Dorset, less than two hours drive away. You have to think about what you're packing more when the dog is taking up the back seats. It looks very farmy in this direction. There's also an interesting looking Merc 190 round the corner which I shall have to investigate later. The view the other way is much greener. The paddock up to the fence is ours. It is supposed to be dog proof but we don't entirely trust Chieveley, he can be very inquisitive so we've got him on a 60ft lead. Mrs Yoss has gone for a walk down to the local Spar so he is ignoring me completely at the moment. Edit: The Merc.

i rather liked the look of the bare aluminium floor but it got trashed by snow/slush/grit/whatever on the way to the test centre and was slippy as a bastard when wet i gave it a good clean up but it still looked shit time for some “wallpaper aided design” which took way longer than i expected i ordered a big sheet of checker plate rubber didn’t leave much room for error - measure twice etc what an improvement! looks so much better but as that took about four hours, they can get stuck down tomorrow

Got my Montego model today. As pointed out it's a bit of a rogue as it's definitely a post 1989 Rover spec car but has 1987-89 Austin Rover badges. Very nice all the same.and I'm delighted to finally have one. I resorted to making ine out of plasticard in the 1990s because nothing else was available!

On their way to Finland. I bet they rusted well.

quite likely i'll be fixing it.....

What time is the MOT so I know when to start breaking the F5 button

I'd fancied one for a very long time I put a post up on the XM Facebook group, asking if anyone was selling one.....this one came up I didn't even mean to buy it It just happened

Get yourself a criminal record sharpish. You won't have to do it then.

Look hard to see if you can find the errors _ _ _ supposed to be in English Wichita, Kansas

@Fumbler Don't think you'll get any more robust than that! 1.3 petrol, so insurance should be alright, even if it's a little high that's got to be offset by the purchase price? Just a thought!

It has been quite quiet on my page for a while, this might offer some explanation... Chapter 1: The Run du Soleil Due to a family event in the South of France where my guardians live, I felt it would be a good idea to make a trip out of it and get some experience driving on the continent. Given the Volvo's predicament, my only choice of transport was my still relatively new (to me) 1986 Audi 80 Sport, with 150k miles under it's belt and possibly some faults hiding, probably not. My parents had to get there and back, as they couldn't stay, so they took the Nissan 370Z Nismo bought as a bit of fun (without* the asterisk) last year. Before departure I was fastidious in my checks, far more than normal. The fluids had been recently changed, but they were topped up and the tyres inflated to slightly over their recommended pressures to give better fuel economy on the motorways. Finally, the cars were cleaned, and I spent the best part of a day polishing the Audi with zeal. Yeah... The morning came and to say it was pissing it down was an understatement. In the dark on the M25, there was a lot o f spray, putting paid to all my armwork the day before. To make matters worse, due to a huge geopolitical shift that shall go unnamed, the M20 was closed to park lorries all down it, so it was almost impossible to actually access the Channel Tunnel. Eventually following his nose, my father carved out a route taking us through the Kentish country lanes and we were able to sneak on to the motorway for the last stretch to get us where we needed to be. Once we had been through customs we were ready for the adventure to really begin. Our route was pretty simple: Head around 800 miles south, at 80 mph, going through the automotive intestine that is Lyon. With my father leading in the Nismo, I duly followed, and quickly found the Audi to be far more capable than I had bargained for. My father was dawdling around at 70, which actually began to really hinder my concentration. So much so, that I had to goad him to speed up to the legal limit of 130kph. There was some good reasoning behind his actions though, as for about 600 miles, the motorway was covered in standing water and with crosswinds for large parts. This was going to be a fight. Passing lorries with zero visibility. Crosswinds really knocking you for 6. The famously smooth French roads, so often the envy of British drivers, became akin to an ice rink, but with lorries whose spray always blew exactly where you had to go to pass. Keeping the car in a straight line was a battle, mile after mile. I found myself wishing I had got a quattro instead, before reminding myself that 4WD cannot cheat the wind. But the only thing that was faltering in the equation was me. The car was astoundingly good at long distance, high speed blasts. The engine was willing and had plenty of go in it whenever I was at the limit, and it cruised at 80 all day with little fuss. Halfway in however, I had to take a break. My father was, quite annoyingly, totally relaxed in the Nismo, the tuning shop Sportscar GT proving more comfortable than the family saloon, even if you couldn't get as much in it. I had to give a series of flashes denoting whether I needed a break, or the car needed fuel (spoiler alert, the latter was only needed twice), as he would just plod on through. We certainly made an interesting combo though, and the continental drivers were quite perturbed to see a 36 year old saloon overtaking them in the outside lane. Just doing what it was designed to do. But 3/4 of the way to Lyon, the weather dried up a bit, and the roads opened out, and we could have some fine cruising. Many cassettes were played, from the likes of Duran Duran to a-ha, even a bit of Roxy Music, and of course I had the cassette adapter for my phone. Then we hit Lyon. For those who do not know, Lyon is like the small intestine, but of roads. Lots of congestion, lots of illogical layouts. A world of shit if you are a driver. A Huge tunnel with about 5 different entrances and exits, and we had to get the one that would take us to Provence. And we hit it as rush hour. N'ertheless, we waded through, and feeling extremely thankful I drove to Somerset a couple of days before to fit a new cooling fan. Then, after getting past an accident, we were able to get close to our goal. But in spite of how close they may appear on the map, Lyon is still 4 hours from Toulon, our target. France is Very Big. As night fell we went on, my concentration buckling under the strain. The French lack of cat's eyes really playing with my mind. But we went on. If I hadn't been exerting myself so hard earlier in the trip, I might have been better off. But then given my age, and this being my first automarathon, I shouldn't have really been surprised. Still, I flipped cassettes, kept the fan at full, and tried to focus on my IAM skills* Not long before our destination, in the dark at around 21:30, I put the special magic cassette in. This allows me to play music from my phone through the cassette player. And next on my playlist was that anthem by The Sisters of Mercy, The Temple of Love (1994). This song seems to be the music equivalent of caffeine, and keep me awake far longer than other songs do. When I heard the opening I turned the volume up and prepared for the power. Shame the cassette wasn't prepared for it though, as it promptly gave up the ghost a minute in and left me in silence. It simply couldn't handle it. But by this time, I was close. So I decided to forgo anything else and try to concentrate. Though not before some questionable in car attempts to salvage the music. The last few miles went by, and by the time I arrived in the picturesque walled village of Le Castellet, I had been going for 18 hours, and the odometer had climbed by almost 900 miles. And in the back of my mind I could hear echoes of Craig Armstrong's Ruthless Gravity, as featured in the 2003 Top Gear race to the South of France... Tune in next time to find out how through my trying to explain why a Renault 20 was a good idea, my godfather bought an Innocenti 1100S. And my first EV experience *gasp* But there can be no more tonight, I have just had to navigate the M25... ...And drive 3/4 of France

Preparations underway in Sweden for driving on the right.

So, you were obvs afeared that your reputation for having cojones like spacehoppers was on the slide, hence you took your XM's electrics apart... ...THE DAY BEFORE AN MOT???

Sunderland.

Decided to take a punt on an early MOT for the 205. The corrosion fails were somewhat expected. The CV boot just needs cleaned up apparently. The oil leak isn't an oil leak, it's leftover from when I changed the fuel pump and the car had been previously fuelled with [undefined], and it ran all down the back of the engine. The brakes are an odd one as it has a new master cylinder and the system has been pressure bled. I've had one of the wheel cylinders off and it seemed to work OK, so that's going to need investigation. As for the rust, guess where my weekend went. This. Turned into This. Likewise for the other side. A lot of this has come about from shitty previous repairs as seen here. This is why you don't bang a patch over rust. It just makes it worse. The nearside took a fair chunk of metal. The wind really picked up and I could no longer weld using gas, so I went out and bought a roll of flux core. That was a bit of an experiment as I'd never tried it before, but it actually turned out pretty well. It's messy in some places, but it's strong. I had to turn the voltage right down as it penetrates far further than the shielded welds, but that's no bad thing. Driver's side. The rust on the driver's side extended down to the front panel, which has a coolant hose running up against it. So I had to dump the coolant before I cut it off. I guess I should've found a bigger bucket.. Front panel cut out. New panel tacked in. I ran out of time to finish this off, so I'll have to find some gaps in the weather this week to get it sorted so that I can get the free retest. On the plus side the car won't have a single bit of corrosion left once this is done.

https://www.mathewsons.co.uk/auction/lot/lot-190---1987-vauxhall-cavalier-18-cabrio/?lot=5040&so=0&st=&sto=0&au=15&ef=&et=&ic=False&sd=0&mc=2&pp=96&pn=2&g=1

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/294976575665?hash=item44adf958b1:g:NtQAAOSwxRNiek4a

Just in case a Metro wasn't quite grim enough, here's a diesel one. https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/515738453586052 If I had the room, absolutely would.

The door hardware is now assembled and fitted to the door, and I've insulated it also. One of the welds around the handle mechanism has a crack, so welding that up is all that's stopping me fitting it. I started to weld and promptly ran out of gas, so will have to go and get some tomorrow. It's struck me that a possible reason for the long brake pad life could be the fact the caliper pistons are rusty! This is pretty disappointing, as I fitted new calipers in 2013, and I rarely take it out in the salty winter. The pistons don't even seem to have any plating, so have rusted at the first sign of water. The dust seals had popped off on this side, being (not) held on by a wire spring clip. The new seals have a rigid portion, which is a slight interference fit on the caliper body. If the effort to fit them is an indication of how well they'll stay on, they should be ok! Both pistons are now moving freely, so onto the original job of pad replacement. One side down!