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The blue tarp has been deployed. Fixing commenced with replicating the end of the chassis rail with new metal. This was welded in place starting with the tube for the subframe bolt. She has been properly getting stuck into this. I haven't done a thing. The repaired section. It was tidied up a little and primed after this, but it's not going anywhere. Nice and solid. The other side is a bit more involved in that there's already a repair patch over the top, plus the rot extends a lot further. Chopping. Then being rebuilt in stages. That needs folded over, and a bit on the other side needs replaced too. Then the lower section is just the mirror image of what was completed on the passenger side. In the meantime, a bad weather project was ticked off, namely dismantling and fixing the original radio. Also, a hood ornament was fitted, for maximum rat look.

I've still been pretty busy on this, last weekend dad came over and helped me change the valve stem seals, they were absolutely shot, it took most the day using the compressor route with the head on but it worked and now there's no smoke at all. I also fitted a new electric aerial which was a faff as a fuse had blown behind the ignition column that I didn't know about, eventually sussed it out and now works, the rear orginial speakers were rotted out too so swapped them out for some new ones. Then today it was MOT day! I won't lie, I was proper anxious about this as I hadn't even driven it before! I need not have worried though. It was a new garage about 10 miles away down the A12 but they were a great pair of lads who own old Fords and were very understandable with the old cars which is what I like, it flew threw though, just a verbal to sort the welding probably on the strut top. The only fatality was the rear axle cover sprung a big leak which is apparent common with them, £65 for a new one with a gasket and bolts so not the end of the world. So all in all a pretty good result I'd say!

So many questions. What's an MS sufferer doing with an MX5? Why's he telling everyone about his mental health issues? Why's he sharing his counsellor's opinion? What kind of threats did he make on the answerphone? Have you kept the recording? What happened between office hours and 1am that made him cancel booking 2? This is better than Columbo. You could invite him back then fail the living shit out of his MX5. Or how about replying something like this: "This reviewer was never a customer of ABC Ltd. He twice cancelled on us at the last minute then threatened a negative review when we declined to make a 3rd booking. ABC Ltd does not respond to threats. We do, however, welcome reviews from actual customers."

https://www.carandclassic.com/car/C1516305

Vauxhall cavalier sri mk3 pre face lift 2.0 8v unfinished project 1992 j reg | eBay These were absolutely class cars in the day.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/481831227238749

Pump and belt back in but rain stopped play before I could finish. Tensioning the belt was basically a total guess. Doing it properly requires a tension gauge which I don't have. So I just went for 'about right' on the thumb meter. Did a 720 on the crank bolt and it seems ok. I was pleased to receive the pump so soon, it was posted Saturday. But I couldn't find a gasket so I went about making my own, something I've had to do a lot lately. Not trivial because you can't rest the sealing surface onto the paper because of the impeller jutting out. Eventually I sort of cobbled roughly the right shape, then when I went to put the scissors back I noticed something on the kitchen floor... The original gasket had fallen out of the package onto the floor! Ah well no harm done, I've got a spare now. Because the Maestro dates from ages ago, the handbook isn't too specific about which coolant to use. However I've got some 'red' which ought to do the trick. Book says 33% antifreeze but I think I'll go for 50% for better corrosion resistance. I'm not bothered by ultimate cooling power as I won't be ragging it around a track. Also, I've reverse flushed the rad and block which should help.

Absolutely nothing going on with my cars at the moment, and I haven't bought or sold anything since I got the 206, which is working very well as An Car (circa 5k miles in so far, expenses £100 on a new back box fitted). Have been doing a bit of shuffling at work over the last week which means I've ended up commuting in a variety of unsuitable vehicles. This was quite a nice sight to wake up to this morning - I wonder how often these two have been parked together in suburban streets anywhere else in the world before?

Guys, guys! Check out these poorly-cropped photos taken in terrible light. Too excited to wait until the next time I'm home in daylight to share this. Woop! It's a minty fresh boxed Politoys M 509 Lancia Flavia Sport Zagato and it's my favourite thing in the world This was basically the reason I started buying these things. What a weird thing to model in 1:43. They rarely come up for sale and in searching 'politoys lancia' and then just 'politoys' constantly on ebay I've acquired a few others along the way. Anyway, this is finally here and I can STOP now (yeah right) It's SO NICE! Clearly never been played with, and probably barely ever handled before. It's the most I've ever paid for a model, but still a fraction of what I've paid for jazz LPs or nights in the pub or whatever so I don't feel too bad Did I mention it's MINT? With the Mercury Flavia PF coupé. Perhaps my two favourite Lancias, and two of my favourite 1960s toys. I'm very happy. Thought I'd put all the Politoys together in date order (of release) just to prove that I definitely don't collect toy cars. Actually not as many as I thought there might be...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/rover-827-sterling-2-7-v6-/304684229480

Just ordered just enough to assemble the propshaft. If the transmission does transmission things, I can order the rest.

Once again this year I didn't get any trick or treaters. Being a slightly odd single bloke has its advantages.

You want car shit? How about a near-dead Saab dealership in the woods? LOADS of pics to come

😳

I hope they left a bad review for the counsellor too, as their advice didn't pan out too well 😅

We are staying away in the van on Saturday night as Hunstanton sea front parking is open to overnight stays now it’s out of season, it’s also their firework display. Thought I’d best try and finish the window as best I can for now. I still need to redo the frame but it can wait for now. Picked up a blind for £14 from Argos. Bought some filler for the screw holes that claims to allow wood stain to be applied.. looks terrible so I may have to reassess that or strategically position things on the window ledge.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/134308378869?hash=item1f456738f5 UK car.

Cheers, it's running a brand new Weber 32/36 with a auto choke and we did set up the timing with the gun but who's to say it's right? I'm currently running some cheap 20w50 oil as I want to get about 50 miles on it and then I'm going to drop it out and run some Castrol 15w40, is suspect that's probably part of the issue really, the oil is a bit thick really. Once I've fixed this axle plate and done a few miles in it I'm hoping it will liven up a bit!

As any owner of an indirect-injection diesel engine knows, when glowplugs start to fail, you have an engine that can be a pain to start and then clags like a 1950's tractor for the first minute or so until all the cylinders decide to join the party. Even if you've only one plug failed out of six, it makes a surprising difference, and as many IDI engines have post-heating to ensure complete combustion, that one cylinder that isn't post-heated will knock like knackered balljoints on a cobbled road. A little while back I lost three in quick succession, making the engine near-impossible to start and engulfing about 3/4 of the housing estate I live on into the great London smog of 1952 every morning. To get to the plugs to change them is a bit of an arse on the OM606, as the inlet manifold has to come off. This is a bit of a bore, as the ports are duplex on the head, meaning there are 12 ports. About 3000 bolts to remove from the manifold to the head, and then a few others from the EGR valve and so on. It's made a lot easier on mine, as the "bastard" bolt that goes in from below (meaning you have to jack up the car and remove undertrays) is missing. It's been like that for well over 100k miles, and I've no intention of replacing it. So... 6 plugs ordered. Pick a nice weekend and off with the pipe-organ that is the OM606 manifold, visible here: (pic from earlier in the thread) to reveal all the gubbins underneath: Pulled all the glowplugs out, as they have a habit of seizing in on this engine. Good ones put back, three dead ones replaced. I'm not changing all of them, as three of them are still working. £1 says that another will fail soon now I've said that. The plug access isn't bad, certainly a bit easier than on an XUD. Thankfully all mine came out OK. They are very long and have an astonishingly tight tolerance in the head. Often, these will clag up with soot in the close tolerance and hence get very stuck. I tend to slather them in copper grease, which seems to help. Dead one here: Back to starting on 6 cylinders, with somewhat less smoke. Huzzar!

First full day using the black stealth Astra today, I got a call from the owner @Andyrew and thought he had spotted it speeding on his tracker! Thanks to @Zelandeth for fettling my MGB GT and bringing it to storage. All cars look the same under a cover. I spent the evening cleaning piston and now they are all ready to refit.

Remove a household radiator temporarily, lay it flat on the driveway, lay the soon-to-be-boot-floor metal sheet on top then bray the fuck out of it with a hammer to form ribs and weld it into place. Ideally at 6am on a sunday morning. then refit the radiator in the house before anyone notices*

I wasn't going to bother but as a few of seem interested i thought I'd start a thread on the Capri that i bought last month. It all started when a lady in the village who knows my wife asked her if I'd be interested in her husbands relatives old Capri they have in a garage, both him and his wife have died of old age and they have inherited the property and this old Capri had been in the garage for 20 years since he gave up driving at 83 and it was now being a 'burden', her words, not mind. The car was over a hour away near Harlow so i shot down there to visit the ladies mother in law who was at the bungalow sorting it out, she gave me the key to the garage and told me to take a look whilst she made me a cup of coffee. This is was i viewed when i opened the up n over door. I admit i got a bit excited at this point! the story is what he bought the car new in 1986, used it up until 2003 where he got Parkinson's and was too ill to drive anymore racking up 95000 miles, whilst he maintained the car well he probably would have benefitted from parking sensors these days! The lady said she'd been offered £900 by a neighbour but thought it was a bit low, i offered £2000 and she was more than happy! a few days later by mate helped me collect it. Access wasn't great as it was at the rear garden with a short drive with no room for pulling the car out easily and onto a road that was rat run and blind pulling out on, nothings easy! fortunately my mates truck managed to drag it out with locked brakes and big hammers! we then dragged it backwards down the roads, swapped ends and pulled it into a nearby school entrance and onto the trailer on the way back we got lost and managed to go past the original dealers, Gates in Harlow so we pulled in a got a photo! eventually we managed to drag it into my garage, phew! that was hard work!

It's not bad when you have 2 whole sides off another car 😂 One side is done

Another 6 monthly oil change on the 75. At the next one I'm going to bin the stupid sponge PCV filter and fit a BMW vortex item.

Parking in northern Norway, 1950s.

https://www.subito.it/auto/renault-4-sinpar-4x4-1976-trento-462955430.htm

https://www.subito.it/auto/fiat-850-coupe-prototipo-motore-ferrari-8-32-milano-420564503.htm

This afternoon while trying to ignore the roofers sounding like they're literally tearing the house to shreds I've been messing with the website. The Invacar FAQ is now properly live, linked to from the rest of the site and once Google's indexing system catches up should be searchable. I've also updated the BX's page to show it's moved on and added a placeholder for the Cavalier's spot once it gets started. Going to try to keep reasonably on top of that once the project really starts rather than trying to play catch up like I have with the one for TPA... Also fixed an orphaned page in one of the lighting sections. Not totally sure how I managed it, but I'd apparently managed to delete the entry from the section index at some point.

It still hasn't.

Ha ha, @barrett is an old toy car collector! I'd be pointing and shouting 'Nerrrddd!' at you right now, we're I in that classic art house* film of the 80's, Revenge of the Nerds. But I'm not. I'm in real life and I've come to the same realisation. I'm at the age now where I'm beginning to care less and embrace this needless hobby more openly. Which is why today, I bought the first bits of materials to make up my die cast display zone, which will be fully visible to any normal people that come round our house. And also explains why 'Politoys' is now on my Trademe search list...

When I was setting mine up I timed it to the book. When I took it on a rolling Road the mechanic dialed quite a bit more advance in. He said that book settings have little relevance these days due to modern fuels and so on. It does go very well after that so maybe that's something to try as @N19 says above.

I've measured the wheels, it's a Sunbeam Alpine. Dunno, actually. Looks typically French vernacular to me. Just like the Brits and Ford Pops & Austin Sevens, there were hundreds, maybe thousands of Frenchmen chopping up Simcas, 203s, 403s, 4CVs and the like in France in the late 40s-50s. Not anything I've seen before but most of them were undocumented at the time, and the few that are known about are the ones that either raced, or survived. Good spot.

https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/volkswagen-passat-s-1-6-aut-kombi-1-hand-restauriert/2259020167-216-19829

https://www.leboncoin.fr/voitures/2246206366.htm

Lunchtime Laptop tat today (well, late lunch) - the October release from the Corgi Model Club range: the #480 Chevrolet Impala Taxi Cab (Version 2). It's nice and glossy. And shiny. With a driver! And a whippy aerial. It's maybe a little stumpy around the front end - and there's quite a rake to the windscreen, but it is really nice. As ever, having the replica box with artwork is one of the main draws of the collection for me. Annoyingly, this one arrived slightly torn along one fold. Ah well. Plus it comes with the usual mostly-accurate Collector's Card. So yes - Corgi first modelled the '59 Impala when it was pretty new, releasing it in State Patrol police livery in December 1959, with a civilian version following in January 1960, a taxi version six months later, and a fire chief version in January 1963. The body shell was mask-sprayed to add silver paint to detail the front grille, lights and bumper. Unusually, Corgi modelled the 4-dr Hardtop variant of the Impala, marketed as the Sport Sedan, rather than the standard 4-dr sedan. The main visual difference was that large wraparound rear windscreen - which would have been an unlikely choice for the majority of taxi or police fleet buyers, who would have surely baulked at authorising the extra cost of a Sport Sedan over a standard sedan. 4-dr Sedan: 4-dr Sport Sedan: A steady seller - 760k civvie versions, 523k cabs, 425k fire chief cars and a whopping 1 million police versions were sold over 5 years - for 1965 Corgi decided to remake their '59 Impala with a horizontally split bodyshell, allowing a chromed plastic insert to be added that carried the front grille and lights, a broad chrome side strip and rear bumper and lights. As stated on the card, this made the production process rather easier, as the upper and lower parts could now be painted different colours with less need for masking. It also meant that different upper shells could be fitted to the same base casting - such as the #486 Chevrolet Kennel Service Wagon, in 1967. Even though it was by now a fairly dated-looking model, the taxi remained in the catalogue for a further two years, selling 167k units in its revamped form. Although the police version went on to sell around 600k units until it was withdrawn in 1969, it's maybe incorrect to say the taxi's "something of a rarity" - maybe a bit less common by comparison, but still a fairly big seller - especially in the US export market. I picked up a totally trashed example of the taxi way back in the early 1990s, with a view to restoring it - obviously that never happened... So it's a very attractive-looking toy - but with future club models due to be billed at 20% more due to 'rising costs', I'm not sure how much longer I can reasonably continue with the collection...

I have finally been able to collect the new door skin to my drawing . Note to anyone following that drawing, the angle of the leading and trailing edge was rectified from 13 to 12 degrees (( Can a computer wiz update this on the copy within this thread?)) after a test piece was offered to the body.

It's just a GTO that shrunk in the wash. Buy it. Enjoy the rust. GTO Firenza

Fuck yeah! Won judges choice!!!

More progress on this, lots of jobs have been getting done over the last week, mostly painting the alloys and getting new Nexen tyres fitted And I had a new front plate from Retro Plates arrive to match the rear. Yesterday dad came round for the day and we really cracked on with the brakes, they've all been replaced now, had to replace some of the lines but that's to be expected, the oil pump seal then decided to pour out so we quickly swapped that out with a new one I'd bought Also finished setting the carb back up and it's now running really nicely! unsurprisingly i think the valve stem seals are toast as it's chucking out blue smoke on start up and when you rev it after idling for a few minutes which is a pain, i doubt it will pass the mot like that so that will be the next job to do.

A close relative of my old white Cavalier GSi J422 EGT. The mk3 is still a good looking car for a design which is almost 35 years old. I wonder what the rear legs are like? They were rotten on my first GSi when the car was 13 years old...

10-plate Civic 1.8 Si with high miles (191k). Current owner since 2012. Looks alright for £1,290. https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202211011266716

"Nice Belmont, m9"

It's not a Belmont.