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Yeeeeeeeehaaaaaa🙃😋 Normal service is resumed. Found a module on German Ebay, in Freiburg, haggled a bit and nipped over the border to pick it up Everything back to normal 😀😀 Thing is, now it's too hot to go roofless! Now in our wee hut, beers in the fridge and I can relax.. 1300 miles in so far..

After sitting outside under a tree for three years my other halfs CRX del sol is back on the road for the remainder of the Summer. A fresh oil and filter,new battery and a couple of Bigg Red caliper rebuild kits were all that it needed. Just a few mot advisories for bushes and Ball joint boots. Because the wife and I is old the insurance was a wallet busting £91 and I got a £20 Halfords voucher back too so it was actually only £71 using man maths. 30 years old next year too.

Been planning this trip for some time as I've missed driving on the wrong side. The SLK was prepped as if it was going to the moon.. full service for both engine and transmission, all fluids done including weird SLK fluids, 4 new tyres, brakes and suspension all settled and everything tip top and Bristol fashion. . Set off and headed towards that England. About an hour in I needed a pee... annoyed me this as I usually have at least a 300 mile bladder.. stopped at the side of the road, walked behind some bushes and simultaneously fell in a river,through barbed wire in some nettles... Wet foot, ripped jeans and nipping arms we continued happily South to overnight in Towcester in a Travelodge. Up next morning and kept south towards Newhaven. Got into the Brighton and decided to put the roof down. Nowt. Window.. nope. Stopped at Sainsbury's for some stuff and no central locking either. FFS. Off the ferry after having to hand documents through the door, down to Rouen in the dark and into an F1 for the night. They're great if you breathe in and walk sideways.. Up today and nipped into a Carrefour and bought a torx driver, opened the roof control module and found this... FFS.. Onward and into Paris. A mile away from the Eiffel Tower as I stopped at a crossing, there was a thud. In my mirror was a chap on the ground beside a hired electric scooter.. he got up, gave the thumbs up and disappeared into the crowd. I now have a helmet sized and shaped dent on the boot lid.. FFS.. Onward to Ligny en Barrrios, to a cracking AirBnB, we stopped at the services for some coffee. I opened the door and the alarm went off... the central locking and remote have packed in so it wont switch off.. I found and pulled the fuse to shut it up, but now I have to wait 5 mins every time I open the door for the hazards to go off. FFS. 2 black boxes in both my cars to go down in the space of 2 weeks. Is it the Chinese? Solar flares. The law of sod? FFS... Anyone overnight courier a 1708200926 to Alsace in the next 5 days? P.s.. the Eiffel Tower needs agood prodding with the Corrosion Assessment Tool...

Huge thanks to Dan for being an absolute gent. Time to head back northwards...

The Carina went straight through its MOT this time. Which is nice.

Early one! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/225099773817?hash=item3468fdf779:g:5r4AAOSwiLRi6CRT

I suppose it could be a drug-addicted MoT tester living a double life and selling bent tests to fund his crippling habit, or it could be that the apparently very minor list of fails which seems to be about an afternoon's work to fix were taken care of and then the car was re-tested and gained a legit MoT? We'll never know!!

That's what gets me... not everyone gets on, it's a fact of life. Sometimes you do take an immediate and irrational dislike to a person. That's human, done it myself before. No need to be a dickhead about it though. They're getting a fucking fondue set now.

Happy lad.

Seam sealed. Chassis paint. stone chipped waxoiled then trims back on

Someone on here wants to do a collection using the most possible types of transport, with this sort of itinerary: Cycle to station, train to next station, tram to airport, flight to next destination, bus to port, hovercraft to IOW or similar location, collect car, ferry back to mainland. (Optional - break down and get recovered home by recovery service.)

Tea count:1. Airport bringing no joy but most flights seem to be on time.

Mrs6C sizing up to be a ton up girl!

Mmmm less holy luckily 90% of this will be covered up by the side skirt trims.,

Anyone in 72 (Sarthe) who needs assistance I have tools and a workshop available half way between Lemans and Tours. For those that don't need assistance, I also have cold beers and tea! Here for a couple of weeks.

Good to see another exo builder (and another G- EXO plate!) - I am new to these parts and did wonder how mine would go down here! (I am another serial MX5-er but NA and NC - my build is on the MEV forum if anyone’s interested - Exocet build thread) All I can say is yours looks great, and if you ever consider it, then a turbo turns it into an animal - I boosted mine during lockdown (and am still nailing details!), but 220BHP makes it a completely mental little thing!

My Rover 825Si still exists. First bit of news is that we've finally moved home, and there's now space for THE ENTIRE FLEET to coexist in one place. Garage needs all its innard spitting out, but then the Rover will go in there, the Audi in front of it and my varying work daily in front of that — and the 306 in front of that. And space for a 'guest' in the bay at the start of the drive. Rover somehow suits a block-paved drive outside a 1979 house rather well. Having taken the 306 to the Festival of the Unexceptional last year, it was the Rover's turn in 2022, and with every possibility of vast crowds forming around what would understandably be the very star of the show, and no doubt the absolute highlight of every onlooker's lives so far, I thought it should have a wash. Excitingly, I've recently acquired a snow foam nozzle for my olde Karcher, and I've been snowfoaming everything in sight with gay abandon. So I pointed it at the Rover. After much delicate scrubbing it looked... well... ...... more or less exactly the same. So, I thought, time to break out the big guns. I used a clay bar. And then I polished it. And then I waxed it. So carried away was I that I even had a go at cleaning the engine a bit. Then I realised how much fun that wasn't, and stopped. Next job on the agenda was to make the stereo a bit more listenable. Upthread are my exploits vis-a-vis replacing the rear speakers, and now it was time for the fronts. And this time, rather than using drivers purloined from a pair of old Mission floor-standing hifi speakers, I actually got some that were designed for use in a car. 13.5cm FLI items, as endorsed by one @ThePollittoccasionally of this parish. Out with the old: In with the new: Nobody need ever know. End result? Pretty bloody good, to be honest. Fitting was ever so slightly a pain in the arse, thanks to the new drivers having to be nibbled a bit to fit into the plastic frame thing that holds them at an angle, but they went in in the end. I elected not to bother with the supplied crossovers and tweeters, prefering to trust that the originals would do the job alreet, and they seem to thus far. So that's good. Next I went to some tyre people for another nice pair of Falkens and some alignment to see if I can get them to not wear out rather too quickly on the inner edges. I also requested an A/C regas, and they tried, but alas the Rover failed a Leak Test. Apparently pumping poisonous gas into something that it'll immediately leak out of is disapproved of these days. So I suspect I'll need to pay somebody some money to make it not fucked any more. Dash lighting still works, though: Anyway. FoTU was attended; I parked between a very nice (albeit gently shonky) Mk3 Granada and a near-mint Mk2 Astra GTE, where it was largely ignored. Instead, everybody who recognised me excitedly asked whether I was up in the 306. Was a pleasure to show @Skizzeraround, though, and anybody else who chanced upon it, a big shaaaat ahhhht to you, too. After that, it wafted me the 120 miles back to Mistley comfortably and relatively economically, like a car. Which it is.

This afternoon with help from @Slowsilver and @Zelandeth we visited the Saab 95. The aim was to get it ready to be transported to the FoD next week. The good news is Adrian the seller had deliberately left the handbrake off and while it was a bit stiff and the brakes grind a bit it does roll. We also took the opportunity to take the spark plugs out and squirt a drop of WD40 into each of the bores ready for the FoD start up.

Here's my latest shed; It sat with many others in one of Rover's secure storage compounds (a field somewhere out of sight) from around Summer 1998 until March 2000 when it was dusted off and registered. There were plenty of these about that got S, T and V registrations, but there were only a handful left long enough to get a W plate.

Probably without Westwood.

It's payday so an additional little Lanchester update here. Because the Lanchester uses 7" headlights it does mean I can upgrade what's there. The original lights are 40/50W BPF bulbs and they're... rubbish. It also doesn't help that the silvering on the bowls is bubbling in places and while we're not likely to drive at night a lot, having your headlights on does make you more visible to other road users who might not otherwise see you so an upgrade makes sense. Originally I was considering re-silvering the headlight bowls and getting new original style light bulbs. The cost of this for what you end up with seemed prohibitive in all honesty. Given how easy it is to acquire a good H4 upgrade kit, and how affordable, it made more sense to modernise. I've gone with the same sort of kit I used on the Princess which I've had no issues with, and while I did have to buy some extra pigtails since the Lanchester wiring hasn't got the modern three slot plug for halogen bulbs, it still came out at a meagre £35. I also opted to go for headlight bowls that have sidelight bulbs in them. Nothing fancy, no LED rings or anything like that, just a single bulb pushed through into the bowl. There's no real need for the sidelights to be separate from the headlights on the Lanchester so it doesn't really matter where they're located and if I move them into the headlights that frees up the original sidelights completely. This then makes wiring up the front indicators a lot easier since I can reuse the original bulb holders and fit some nice bright amber single function LEDs in there. It's a really good location for the indicators since they're high up on the body and very visible and because we'd not be adding any other lights anywhere, it keeps the front of the car looking completely standard. Funnily enough, the sidelights are mistaken for indicators by younger (folks under 40) people anyway, so it makes sense to put them in there for that reason too. What I'm not sure of is whether or not I'll need to fit a relay for the headlights. The H4s will be brighter than the original BPFs but I'm not sure if the draw on the system is going to be such that it will be an issue. I'd welcome opinions and recommendations on this one since I want it to be safe but I also don't want to be adding complexity if it's going to be perfectly fine without them.

All our neighbours have fancy stickers on their bins with numbers....I used an old can of spray paint. When I moved in (new estate) the council kept on delivering sets of wheelie bins to my house . I'd come home after work to find another 4 bins outside my front door. I had 16 bins at one point 🤣. I gave most of them away but I kept an extra set. They are very handy in the shed for storing crap!

Is there such a thing as too many bikes?

I drive a brown 70s car, listen to 70s and 80s music, harp on about "the good old days" and enjoy ancient trains. I am an anachronism with legs.

I wasn't sure if this was collecting a SLK or a collection of SLKs which judging by the for sale section on here is quite feasible. Eithers good of course.

Goodbye non working and corroded parking sensors. (They're actually still there but I couldn't get new loom connectors to repair the system and if something looks ugly it has to at least be functional)

So with one Rover 820 'done', I guess it is time for the next one, and what a shed it is too! This one had been languishing on the owners club Facebook page for a couple of months, with the hard-to-interact-with seller complaining that no one wants to buy it (try answering your messages then?). To cut a long story short, the seller's self-imposed 'the scrap man is coming for it Saturday afternoon' dead line had been and gone, over a week later the thread was bumped back to the top of the page and I'm on my way to Blackpool with £500. There's no tyre kicking or haggling at those prices, so it quickly finds its way back to Huddersfield. It drives really very well and has MOT until March 2023, but looks completely awful and the interior is a health hazard. The plan is to clean it up a bit this week for an hour or so each day after work and get it in the garage over the pit by the weekend for a proper going over. Hopefully there's no nasties hiding underneath and we can crack on with tidying it up... Here's the current state of play;

Pulled hard enough, the indicator assembly came off. The gearshift selector is all loose. End of the arm has a pin on it that fits in the detents, prevents shifting from Park etc without first pulling the lever towards you. Lever arm polished up okay though. That's the rest of it that needs to come apart now to see why it's so wibbly wobbly (technical term). Phil

Doing some crabbing in Torquay. Threw the net in - not quick enough to grab the cord. Lost the lot. I bent down too quickly and split my shorts from arsehole to breakfast time. I then had to walk back to the car.

Finally home. SLK ran beautifully all the way. Only a couple of quirks to investigate - no working cruise though no warnings on dash & fuse is fine, and big fist thump sometimes needed under passenger footwell to coax heater blower into action. AC pleasantly ice cold which was nice. I think the blue looks brill too and the near total lack of rust scabbing is very un-90's-Merc. Goes like a rocket too with the supercharger seemingly in perfect shape.

Almost a FTP today. It wasnt overly happy starting this morning and ran a little rough but seemed to smooth out when warmed up so I wilfully ignored it. Coming back I'd was getting on the dual carriageway when it started misfiring and the rough running came back. Luckily it was only a short stretch of DC before I got off but the rough running became utter shit and it I struggled to coax it along up hill - luckily or unluckily there were roadworks so it was a 40 mph limit so my 30-35 was just scary instead of dangerous. Tho this wasnt helped by an artic ridingabout 10 foot off my bumper the last 500 yards in my own unwanted recreation of the last scene in Duel. (But with a boring ultra modern cabover instead of a dirty old Peterbuilt) I limped it back luckily 95% downhill and 20-30 mph limits, where it was ish behaved , anymore tha a quarter throttle was pointless. Tho getting it back in the garage was a pain as the Turing circle on it is woefully and it kept stalling out after 12 inches of progress. The only dash instrument giving any indication was the temperature gauge reading slightly cooler than normal. 🤷‍♂️ I checked the hoses and there were no leaks and no sign of OMGHGF. I suspected maybe a vaccum leak or the carb had decided to give up given the misfires and incredibly rough running. I took the air cleaner off and had a look and a poke but noting seemed amiss - well more amiss than the ish-working cludge together than the current carb set up is. This mystified me as I'd not touched the engine or carb a good few weeks, so I did the sensible thing and had some lunch instead if burning myself on a hot engine trying to find the issue right now. Post lunch and driving chores finished -Rover saves the day again, I came back and prodded some more convinced it was a duff carb or air leak. Leaning in and noticing some fuel wetness in the top of the carb from soem forward firing when had me convinced... till I realised I was leaning on the distributor cap and HT leads and something felt spongy..... one HT lead had not been totally snug and worked loose it would seem and had been just sitting ish in place. To the casual glance it did not look to be loose/off. Surely the bag of spanner crap running couldn't be that simple. Naturally it was, firmly seated in place and air filter back on and a slight adjustment to the idle screws and throttle linkage (idles high but weak ish still, wrong carb excuse yadda) and it fired up and ran smooth - for a straight pipped , mildly hot cammed lump with the wrong carb - I.e. really loud. A test drive confirmed it within a few feet that normal* running had been restored, tho I took it for a bit of a spin just to be sure! 😁

Did you get a weird fuzzy feeling fixing your German car with parts from Germany in France? I went to a Dutch car show in my Opel manta, it rained hard on the Saturday night into Sunday morning that my tailgate leaked water in due to rust around the glass seal. My Dutch friend at the show said “hey, I have a mint tail gate you can have for a schmoke and a pancake” (€15) so I followed him 50km back to his apartment and changed it in the communal car park and left my red tailgate in Holland. Still have the Dutch licence plate number etched in the glass to this day! Felt proud as punch swapping that bad boy out in the car park lol.

shocker as man with german car goes to germany to fix german car id have left it broken and spent the money on pastis and gauloises

The good news is that the MOT pass will take my car to its 30th birthday next March, god willing etc. So that's like driving a 1963 Cortina 1200 in 1993....

It is indeed based on a Suzuki thing - the mark 3 Alto (model code CL/CM11), I don't think these were sold here but both the Suzuki and Daewoo versions were very popular in Eastern Europe, possibly because, phun phact alert, the Tico was made in the old Olcit factory in Romania. going down the Alto rabbit hole, here's some more new to me... Mighty Boy and Slide Slim indeed. Incidentally, have you seen the new Alto (the 9th generation)? I think it could do well here, assuming it's not some sort of NCAP deathtrap -

This arrived in the post. It came in handy

Excellent write up. Shall be a trip to remember for sure. Got back from France Sunday night. Left my bike south of Paris after ftp here. 7 bikes, one big crash, 3 punctures and a burnt out clutch ( all fixed) broken gearbox on bm, not so much. Turns out I don’t have euro cover so back with the van a week Sunday to pick it up. Must check the cover situation on the van… Do love France.

I know how he feels..

Three amigos parked up together opposite a bus garage in Glasgow.

"If I take either of these 1990s security devices off, even for just ten seconds to take a competent interior photo, the car would be stolen" https://www.carandclassic.com/car/C1482098

Our old neighbours did that to us, I was away for a bit and came back 2 days after bin day and our bin was gone. Looked over the fence and saw it on their yard, next to their own bin. Clearly had our house number on it etc. I went round and found it full of rubbish. Red mist came over me and I went round, tipped the bags of rubbish out of it and kicked them open all over their lawn then hammered on their door as I walked off with my bin. Not proud, it was a stupid thing to do as there's nothing to be gained by arguing with idiots. I got lucky and it put them in their place rather than escalating anything

Dying to find out who my work's closet shiter is. This is someone's daily driver... Look at it! 😍

Dangly mirror Sierra? In brown? With a beige/brown interior? Welp, might as well close the thread, I don't think we're going to top this.

for a car i said i probably wouldn't keep a car i wasn't too keen on when i bought it i've certainly put a lot of work into it to the point i'm going to buy replacement outer sills for it yeah i have a feeling i might keep it

Done a collection. Perfect fit in the back. Not managed to get it out yet though. Thats for tomorrow. Thanks to @Ohdearmefor this little project to bring that little extra sprinkle of Dingle to my already tainted house.

Dunno if this is of interest, but it's been on my bucket list for a very, very long time. 24 hours of Lemons is an endurance race series in the US for sub $500 cars, a parody of the 24 hours of Le Mans in France. I read how someone once entered a car with a paintjob dedicated to Albanian dictator, Enver Hoxha, and that for overtaking under yellow flags they sometimes weld a large steel pig to your roof. This is exactly the kind of nonsense I love. I wrote a few features on the racing and it's been pretty well covered in the media online and in print over the years. I meant to go just before Covid but, well, y'know. I really can't afford it, I can't drive for toffee, and am sending $$$ over the internet to complete strangers. And I've just realised that my helmet is non-compliant, I need new overalls and boots and that the term 'budget motorsport' is an oxymoron. In October I'm flying to Boston (Mass, not Lincs), a place I've always wanted to see, and I am going to get very drunk. Then I'm driving to New Hampshire motorspeedway to participate in two 12 hour stints with a small team of fellow idiots who have suggested a 'Young Ones' theme for the car. I think I am also going to be asked to judge the event, and will ensure that there are some British-Leyland type shenanigans to keep things lively. Details of the car and stuff to follow once I know what I'm doing. Some random pics; Wish me luck...

If it were my car I would fit relays. So that the original (elderly) switch gear is only switching the low current to trigger the relays and also I could fit some fuses. I would wire the relays so the high current side is fed by a fused connection direct to the battery. There is a company making just such ready made Headlamp relay wiring harness called Boomslang (Why they are called after a poisonous snake I have no idea) They have become fairly popular on old Land Rovers. Linky to a retailer selling the kit Wiring diagram Easily removed should you want to return to "as it left the factory".

Why would he need to do his research on remembering a part of his life for a book, just read it as a funny story written by a musician that he bothered to write about as many wouldn't have. I take it no one knew what the car/trike thing was a good few pages back then, I've hunted through old albums at work and can't find anything that relates to it just old cars.