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Cleaned the Audi. Not sat in it for a while. Christ it's comfortable, swathes of blue velour. Can't wait to eventually get it going again.

Sorry for the lack of updates! Left the hotel at 8am, filled up at Asda Patchway - yes, further from home - and arrived at the chod supplier by the back of 9! We then spent far too long talking shite but eventually got around to loading Yep, that one I eventually left at 11:30 and my satnav told me I had 502 miles to go! Stopped at Carlisle Tesco again to refuel and arrived home at 8:30pm. Averaged 27mpg but the check engine light came up on restart at Carlisle, but apart from making the dash look prettier there was no other effect. The Hyundai tows better than I ever imagined it would. Now safely back home, but not yet unloaded as I am knackered!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284825342856

when you've got 1 sq ft of marine ply left and you don't want to throw it out. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/363847463327?hash=item54b6ffb19f:g:VLgAAOSws7diikr4

Well… 274.7 miles of mixed driving. Around town, country roads, a bit of motorway action. The result? 29MPG!!!!! An increase of 5MPG - the Land Cruiser guys reckon they get 30MPG on motorway runs, so this is bloody good! Now I’m going to mess about with the Aussie box of tricks to see if I can get 30MPG on my normal commute.

Concealing horrendous faults on cars sent to auction used to be considered a bit of a game in the motor trade in the 80s and it was regarded as a bit of fun to be left holding the baby and having to come up with a wheeze to get rid of it. I was friendly at the time with a well-dodgy trader who was regarded as an expert at the game, once memorably selling an engineless Renault 8 by pushing it through the sale whilst laughing with the crowd about how the fucking thing had picked a bad moment to run out of petrol. (This is one reason why private purchasers need to be very careful when bidding at auctions).

It's been a while since I've started a thread about a specific car I own so I thought I'd better compile something about the Ex-Wuvvum Lauguna I recently collected. I'd been after a diesel car for a little while as I sold my petrol V70 to a mates dad then suddenly needed a motorway cruncher to visit my own Dad in Birmingham a couple of times a week when he fell ill. I feel I was pretty lucky to bag this old Reno as everything is getting snapped up so quickly nowadays. The drive home from Castle Wuv in Norwichshire back to Stoke on Trent went swimmingly with no drama apart from a couple of extra error messages appearing on the dash- something to be accepted in a high stakes situation such as this. It's important when purchasing a car which is A) 15 years old, B.) Quite leggy at 160k and C) maybe the most critical, French, to manage expectations. So far I can't complain at all. It really does go very well, is easy to drive and comfortable. The M9R Diesel engine feels powerful, the 6 speed autobox does what it's meant to do and it hustles along at motorway speeds very nicely, in fact it seems to cruise at 90 which I need to avoid if I want to keep points from my licence. The Laguna was pressed into use the next day with a 130 mile round trip to visit my Dad in Birmingham with the present Mrs Lankytim and the Lanklets in tow. They all gave it their seal of approval which is pretty rare with some of the cars I bring home and makes ownership so much more easy, "when are you getting a decent car Daddy, everyone at school thinks you car is shit" e.t.c Safely back home and I had a spare few hours to finally get to work cleaning the interior. A good hoovering pulled out a satisfying amount of dust and debris, dash shine shone all the plastics up a treat and some carpet shampoo was applied to some stubborn stains dotted around the upholstery and floor coverings. It's all come up very well and has made the Laguna a very pleasant place to spend time in. The exterior needed some attention too but I drove to a car wash and let someone else do the work to save flooding the driveway at home (I CBA at that point too). If I get time I'll get a polishing mop on the paintwork and try to get a decent shine, although it's pretty shiny as it is. Not a massive fan of these 18" wheels TBH, although it still rides pretty well over bumps and potholes, If I manage to bag a set of mint 17" alloys I've got a good set of Michelin tyres I can fit to them. There's an area of damage on the N/S/R arch and door which has been badly repaired, I don't think It'll be worth getting this sorted properly so I'll just have to live with it. Wuv explained that this Laguna had an issue with the DPF filter which was throwing up error messages on the dash, the pipework to the sensors rotting off/melting and being replaced with rubber gas pipe. Getting this all into a serviceable condition, where the DPF regens when it's supposed to may or may not be achievable. Add to this the "new" error messages which include the parking brake (works automatically, but i can't apply or release it via the button) and another for something to do with the speed limiter. I have access to a snazzy SNAP ON code reader and was able to borrow it for 10 mins to have a look at the codes, reset them and see what returned. With everything cleared I had this lovely message on the dash. Somewhat predictably it was short lived when I pulled away.. The park brake works fine automatically, i.e applying when you park up and releasing when you try to pull away but if I try to use it manually it'll throw up an error when I try to release it and then won't work manually at all. This message hasn't returned however... yet. It will at some point though. None of these error messages seem to affect the way the car drives or cause it to go into limp mode but will need to be sorted out at some point. If anybody has any idea on how to tackle these issues I'm all ears. So there we have it, another cheap "temporary" car I'm now emotionally invested in that I'll end up spending far more than it's worth on repairs and improvements.

Remember reading BSH about a guy who bought a Suzuki Gt750. These 3 cylinder bikes had a reputation seizing up the middle cylinder. When this one was running rough the owner stripped head off and discovered that the middle piston had been replaced with a tennis ball cut and wedged over the end of the con rod.

I did a Rubik's Cube.

4000 miles in the last year in the little 205, not bad considering I work from home a couple of days a week, and usually have two or three other cars in rotation. Anyway, after a bit of dicking about it's now got a clean-ish ticket and should be all good for another year. Will be treated to a service soon!

That is lovely. I bet Audi don't do blue velour anymore. Not even as a very expensive option. How much nicer does that look than any leather offering? Sticking with late 80s stuff, almost, I have put these in the lazy spotters thread recently but this morning they were parked opposite each other allowing me to get these much better pics of the two together.

I can't be arsed telling the story again of how I got duped with a Civic that had a bootlid held shut with Velcro.....

Todays membership application from me

So after a few beers last week, I was thinking, why isn't there a comparison site for used cars? Something that can aggregate the results from the likes of Autotrader, ebay, gumtree, fb marketplace etc. I think there's probably stuff out there for new cars, but not for the stuff i'm interested in (sub 2k shite). I find myself jumping between browser tabs and saved bookmarks. So after a few evenings of hacking together some extremely shoddy code, i've built a proof-of-concept for the idea here: https://autoscraper.co.uk So far I've got something working that can search autotrader, gumtree, ebay and AA used cars. Motors.co.uk is my next challenge then Facebook marketplace... It's absolutely unfinished, there's no mobile support, the order of the results is confusing, the search is limited and the name makes zero sense 😂 Feedback, ideas, suggestions, criticisms, contributions absolutely welcome! I'm not really sure where i'm going with this, i'm just having some fun learning some new stuff about web scrapers. I'll post updates as I do them.

It's better after a quick rinse and clean inside. It drives nicely enough.

£800 Saab 9-5 Aero over on UK Saabs. https://www.uksaabs.co.uk/UKS/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=209089 Good service History and Stg1 remap No connection with seller, although I think I have met him once

No real idea what's happening here, but for some reason Rafa Benitez is looking the other way as Danny Dyer is getting his ear wax removed by a partially sighted chieftan tank driver MERCEDES ATEGO TILT & SLIDE WITH SPEC RECOVERY SHOW TRUCK BEEN ON TRUCK MAGAZINE | eBay 'it has been run as a recovery only so never needed an MOT' 'its got a folder of service history bits old MOTs' The MOTs it didn't need? MERCEDES ATEGO TILT & SLIDE WITH SPEC RECOVERY SHOW TRUCK BEEN ON TRUCK MAGAZINE | eBay

It doesn't really make me grin but fuck me how thick can someone be Car boot sale , I got there just as a lad was leathering one of the traders , somebody pulled him off . Turned out the lad had a storage unit , numbnuts trader had broken into it, stole a load of gear , caught on cctv , 100% him , then he tried selling it 100m from where he'd nicked it from which had consequences he wasn't expecting.

Papped in a builders yard in Havant.

Ooooh, excited! Always good to get a new toy. I owned one similar to this many years ago and liked it, but as usual got offered a profit so it went (in my defence it was in my dealer days) and always fancied another. Very strange doing a collect 500 miles from home and yet starting off 45 minutes away, although I need more diesel!

A few years ago, one of the Practical Classics team, might well have been Danny Hopkins, bought a Vauxhall Victor FB from a Jaguar specialist. Apparently it had been taken in part exchange against an E Type. It was soon discovered the sills were crafted artisan style from a layer of finest body filler nestling on a bed of crumpled newspaper. The sellers insisted they had bought it in like that in good faith, but the date on the newspapers proved otherwise....

A box of cars was waiting when I got home today.The one I was most waiting for was this Dinky Transit A bit disappointed that the front spoiler was broken,but it's not bad apart from that 😀 The rest of the cars included some Matchbox Some Corgi Some Tonka & a few odd bits & pieces

What about the old 5 speed gearknob on a four speeder trick?

Work on Zetor tractor day 5. Today was the diesel system. Unfortunately someone has cut off the pipe from the diesel tank to the lift pump and replaced it with a rubber hose. They have also removed the water separator that was in the tool box but this should be replaced something to be done later. I started with draining the diesel tank and at the bottom was water mud and rust flakes that I got rid of after a lot of rinsing. And then the tank was filled up with new and clean diesel. Next were the 2 diesel filters and they were as expected. They were replaced with new filters and then the rubber hose and the universal filter on the hose were replaced. This was changed to a new hose and a new universal filter for now, and to see what we do in the future with this. Then the diesel system was filled and air removed and surprisingly the tractor started instantly and ran fine. Let the engine run for half an hour which it did without any problems. So then the diesel system is done for now but are some things that need to be done later before winter as a water separator. I now have over 30 hours of work on this but now almost everything is done the only thing left is to change all of the oil behind the engine and make the tachometer work.

This must surely be a contender for the shoddiest road legal car posted here in a while. https://www.donedeal.ie/vintagecars-for-sale/toyota-starlet-1992/31224315 And its a feckin' diesel!

Was probably fun making this, but HFM? https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/420001836631600/

That's an unfortunate name

Katie alongside a Gloster Javelin F(AW).9R which was built in 1958 and saw service until 1966, the year before Katie (amongst the last of her line) was first registered. 80 mile round trip from home, country village route, and in this weather very a pleasant trundle. Flixton had a good crowd today as the Copdock bike club also visit with around about 120 bikes, and there was also a contingent of amazingly spotless classic Honda (Owners Club), and then again a few of the 'Distinguished Gentlemen' motorcycle club on their way back from a charity run. One of the bike's there was a limited edition (just 500) CCM 600cc single street style bike. There was a flying model club too and also static model attendees too. I enjoyed a good banter with some of the museum's volunteer staff, and some other old gaffers who came to visit this extraordinary museum. Otherwise, classic cars spotted included a couple of early short wheelbase Land Rovers, a Morris Minor 1000, a plastic bumper MGB-GT, a Rover P6 2000, and what looked to be an early 1960's Bentley Continental coupe. Very nice too. I also pulled into the petrol station next to a positively huge black Ford Thunderbird, which sounded fabulous just ticking over. On the way back, just a few miles down the road, I dropped in at Billingford Mill . . . The mill was built in 1859-60 to replace a post mill that had succumbed to excessive winds. The mill closed down in 1959, which is somewhat amazing in light of that being in the Javelin's era ..and its twin turbo-jet with 13, 390lb of thrust (with reheat). The mill is now in the capeable care of 'The Norfolk Windmill Trust' ..and friends of the windmill, who raised funds for restoration between 2017 and 21. It's a tranquil place to visit and perhaps stop for a picnic. Katie, behaved very well, although I was shocked when I stopped for petrol and 30 litres cost close to £60.! Aside from that things are settling (I've done 300 miles these past 7 days) and I'm getting a few squeaks so perhaps tomorrow I'll wander around and check that bolts are pinched up. I'll also drop the tyre pressures again, things jiggle a bit on the old Suffolk back roads that may appreciate a little more compliance. All in all though confidence is building Bidding you a pleasant summer's evening. Pete

Accident on the M^ at Birmingham saw a 45 minute delay on the boards, but the faithfull old TomTom took me around it. I think I may have upset a few people on Walsall High Street but it saved me 20 minutes! Saab dropped off in Monmouth in deepest darkest Wales, no pics as a fairly recognisable location. Now at my digs for the night at Michaelwood Services, with the excitement building for a collection tomorrow! Distance to Saab drop off point 484 miles with the diversions, and from there to my digs 48 miles. Tomorrows collection point is showing as 36 miles so a reasonably early start should see me on my way to get loaded and head home. Did I mention I was doing a collection tomorrow? The view from my bedroom window:

Escoot progress. @BorniteIdentity Bit more to do on this side but for the most part is done. The rear arch is still all the original metal other than the parts that rotted away at the bottom. Edit: alternative image links as autoshit doesnt seem to handle the images too well aparently. https://i.imgur.com/6XSEYi7.png https://i.imgur.com/HCmaEAV.png

https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/opel-omega-b-hu-au-03-24/2113211953-216-3144 1.490 €

https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/opel-ascona-c-ls-1-6/2113290739-216-4180 1.500 €

A friend bought an 8 cylinder yank that was running a bit rough. When he checked under the bonnet he found that the back spark plug was missing and had been replaced with a wooden plug. Hoping to get some improvement in performance he removed the wooden plug and fitted a random spark plug. He tried to start the car which didn't go at all well and when he took the head off he found that there was no piston or con rod in the back bore.

I'm pretty pleased with how the Civic sedan came out after its recent partial respray. Mimms Honda Day Three Sisters is coming up (the UK Honda show - and they bother to hold north and south events unlike most), and it's only in Wigan, so I thought to myself, I'll apply for show and shine, why the fuck not, it's not like I have a club stand to be on, and the general Honda parking will be right at the back if it's anything like Santa Pod was. Checked my junk mail - I've only bloody been accepted. Get the fuck in.

Love those UAZ Bread vans ^^ Saw a Lada 112 on Ukrainian plates in Hereford on Saturday but couldn't get a picture as I was driving. I think the CPT challenge from the other week was a Volvo P1800. Local would be Autoshitter Aldi carpark Best of the rest

Banana skin in the gearbox was a favourite of the BMC boys I used to hang around with. Would quieten the gearbox down a treat. A friend of mine bought a Westminster and the gearbox got progressively noisier after a couple of weeks. The general consensus was it had had a banana skin overhaul. So he drained the gearbox, added a new banana skin and moved it on. I've no idea how the skin was introduced to the gearbox thinking about it now.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175287746433?hash=item28cff6bf81:g:ulQAAOSwmo5ihnZt

Have we had this one yet? Leggy Avensis with what appears to be a pleasingly blue dash. https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202205205930575

One of the other things which had been done to this van before I bought it, was fit a mains inlet socket. Badly. It's not even straight, and the edge of the hole hadn't been painted. Consequently it has rusted over the years. Time to sort it out! All rust now removed, although I'll live with the slight angle - don't really want to weld it up and remake the hole! I wanted to replace the self-tapping screws and use threaded inserts instead. But first I had to make up a crude tool to fit the inserts. M8 screw, drilled out to 4mm. Then screw on a nut, and thread an M4 screw down the middle with a washer under the head. Unscrewing the nut will push on the washer, expanding the insert and lock it in place. All fitted and ready for paintwork. A quick freshen up is getting more involved!

Hi again all, seems to be a good'un... https://youtu.be/SWMpb-VExsk ...all back up together and running very nicely. Still pumping out a bit of residual oil from the exhaust, I either need to run it lots, or take the exhaust off and hang it up in the shed for a week I think. Makes me wonder if the fairly new cat will be ruined... Anyway, very quiet and smooth, and I'd forgotten what a well sorted wee car this is. Will see how the exhaust looks during this coming week and get it in for the test if/when it clears everything out. Think I'm done working on cars for a bit...

This weekend, this little car built on Syros got to star in a car rally of historic cars here on Syros. My co-driver was a lovely old guy who worked in the factory making them 50 years ago. Lots of media attention, even a TV spot for my ugly mug to chatter away in a Norfolk accent

It's been a while, and I've been very busy. I decided to crack on getting the driver's seat installed. This involved fabricating a couple of adapters out of angle iron. Simple in theory, but actually quite time-consuming in practice. I've installed aftermarket seats before, but those were using premade adapters. I've never had to make my own from scratch. It involves bolting the unfinished adapters onto the seat rails, and then taking the seat in and out of the car about 50 times, experimenting with mounting locations, mocking things up, and then eventually crafting the feet for the adapters bit by bit and welding them on. You then eventually end up with this: And then the seat simply bolts on: Looks fairly decent. The brilliant thing of course is being able to position the seat at the exact height and distance from the wheel to suit my 6ft 5 frame. And of course, they have proper seat runners, so varying them is easy. That done, I decided I couldn't be bothered to do the passenger seat, so I turned my attention to the windscreen wipers. The original wiper motor broke last year, and I was unable to fix it. You can buy a reconditioned exchange unit, but they're £100. which isn't really good value for a motor that's fairly crap in the first place, and only has one speed. However, I had all the wiper system components left from a K11 Micra that I parted out a few years ago, just begging to be used. Now, there is an episode of the Project Binky Mini build by Bad Obsession, where they remove the entire stock wiper system. which is the same design as the one fitted to a Minor, and replace it with the system from a more modern Peugeot. However, watching the episode again, it looked like quite a bit of surgery and work to do, so I decided I'd instead retain the Minor's original wiper system, but adapt the K11 wiper motor to operate it. This is how the motor looks when you take it off the Micra. It bolts to a steel plate, which in turn bolts through rubber bushes to the body. The spindle has a small metal arm (not shown here) that bolts onto it and is driven by splines, which drives the rods that make the wipers move. However, the Minor uses a cable that is drawn back and forth inside a wheelbox by a connecting rod, that then sits on a metal peg on a gear, that is then driven round and round by the wiper motor. The con rod turns that rotational motion into a reciprocating motion the move the wiper cable forward and back. I decided the best way to adapt the Micra motor would be to build my own wheelbox from scratch, where the rotating peg is instead attached to the metal arm on the Micra spline-drive. This would then rotate the connecting rod, which would drive the cable as before. To actually mount the motor to the car, I decided to cut the original motor bracket from the Minor in two, and then welded four M8 nuts in each corner. This allows the original Micra mounting plate to bolt straight on: Not only does this allow for easy installation and removal, but it also keeps the rubber mounting bushes to reduce vibrations. That done, I started working on the wheelbox. I decided to mount this directly to the Micra mounting place using the three bolts that thread directly into the wiper motor. This may prove not to be the best way in time, but it should be strong enough. This is the base of the new wheelbox: The two upright pieces of thick steel form a guide for the wiper cable end to move back and forth in. The original wheelbox has a track like that too. This was then mounted to the motor plate, and then the original motor bracket welded back onto the car: I had to ruin my recent repaint of this area to weld the bracket on. The inner wing also needed a few taps with the hammer for a bit of extra clearance. You can also see here the motor arm, which is the original Micra one. I cut it in half to keep the splined end, and welded on a raised portion, through which an 8mm hole was drilled, at exactly the right point. The distance between the centre of the motor spindle, and the peg that drives the con rod is crucial, as that sets the stroke of the con rod, and therefore how far it pushes and pulls the cable, and ultimately, how far the wipers sweep. If the distance is too short, the wipers won't sweep the whole screen. Too long, and the wipers will go off the edge of the glass. Fortunately it seems just right. The drive peg itself I had made by an engineer to my exacting specifications, drawn on some paper in crayon. The Minor's wiring plugs straight in to the Micra motor, although to get both the speeds from the motor, I had to add an extra wire, no biggie. A basic test proved it works, so I dismantled it all, and finished building the wheelbox: It's painted with red oxide and then black satin paint. I also welded nuts around it so that the like can be bolted on and off, similar to the original wheelbox. I also repainted the bracket area on the car. Again: After that dried, I remounted everything for a final fit. I also rewrapped the wiring in new fabric tape: It's definitely overbuilt, but it also works pretty well so far. Both speeds are working (had to buy a 3-position switch), and the motor provides far more oomph than the weedy original. It also should be more dependable, and even if it does break, will be cheaply replaceable. I've also bought a generic off-the-shelf electric washer kit to replace the super-soaker fitted originally. The Minor build in general is now proceeding full speed. I have my con rods back from the engineer, so now the engine is going together. I have also had the new clutch and brake pedals altered, so the next big task will be to finalise the fitment of the pedal box, and fit the new hydraulic clutch system.

Has the Autoshite database been corrupted, and someones ultra-dull thread about mobile phones been merged with this one or something?

Saw something worthy of this thread today. Yes, that's the actual Sweeney Consul just casually sitting among everything else at the Moggerhanger Park show.

Work on the Zetor tractor day 3. Today's focus was the cooling system and the whole day was used on this. The cooling system is often poorly maintained on vehicles and especially old tractors so I was prepared for some nasty surprises and I got it. When I drained the coolant this came out and this is bad, really bad. This is mud rust and large rust flakes. I've never seen anything like this and this is the worst I've seen come out of a cooling system. So the cooling system must be flushed out properly. And the first thing I have to do is take out the thermostat that will be replaced anyway. And of course one of the 4 bolts to the thermostat housing broke. And it was fixed with a welder and a nut. The thermostat did not look good and neither did the inside of the thermostat housing and there was rust and mud here as well. Then after a lot of flushing with a garden hose of the engine and radiator the cooling system was filled with clean water and the tractor was started and backed out of the shed and the engine ran for 20 minutes. And after this I drained the water out of the cooling system and there was still dirt and rust coming out. So I filled the cooling system with water again, left it for 5 minutes, drained it and filled with new water. Repeated this 20 plus times and got a lot out each time. But finally in the end, only clean water came out. So then I could start changing cooling hoses and put in a new thermostat. But since I'm a massive idiot, I had managed to order to small hose clamps so I can not complete this until I get some. Another downturn today was that the new oil pressure sensor with gauge had someone retuned after they had taken the sensor so it needs to be retuned and get a new one. And I did not get to do as much as I wanted today but that's the way it goes, I hope it goes better tomorrow.

Started: Rather failed to get before shots of the headlining, suffice to say the fabric was only minimally attached in the odd spot to the backing material, and in places it was sprouting some pretty unsavoury mould. Car has obviously been standing for a good while and damp has got in the cabin, there are odd places where whoever has cleaned it up for sale has missed and it was clearly pretty rank. Headlining fabric in the bin, ordered new stuff and suitable glue from ebay, watched some You Tubey vids on recovering headliners... How hard can it be?😁