Twiggy

Well that answers that, it's not permanent. It's not even temporary. 
I'm cursed

Well I dug out the spare radiator from Stores but it's totally different. Well nearly totally different. 
Same width across the car. Maybe 2-3mm less depth. 
More importantly the mounting bosses for the cooling fan are on the wrong side, and the mounting bosses are in the wrong place. 
I decided that bodging it on was the way forwards. This involves:
1) Drilling some new mounting holes in the slam panel assembly and lower front panel. I don't really want to go butchering these but they're quite rusty anyway and you can't see the holes once it's in position. 
2) Mounting the fan on the back of the rad instead of the front. I've also turned it around 120° so the connector sits more favourably. 
3) Reversing polarity of the radiator electrical feed. Obviously with it on the other side I don't want it pushing against the incoming air, so my GCSE physics says swap the connections to swap the direction. 
4) Clean up the mounting threads for the slam panel and the mounting screws. 
5) A general spritz of Lanoguard in the areas exposed by the removed radiator. The area by the rad bottom hose is pretty crusty, I'm not poking around there yet as I'll only find holes. One for another day I feel. 
A break for rain (and lunch) before I button it all back together again. 

Today's job was to fit a roof rack to a camper which had hit a bridge and crushed the rack and bent all the brackets, after welding new rails onto it and straightening out the brackets we got the rough smoker forklift out and immediately had to mess about with 'fork extensions' 

Tightened on and missing fasteners repatriated, and also we fitted our own design of fabricated pannier box carrier frames to the door along with relocating a ladder to the side and number plate and lights to the top of the door !

Mrs ODM phoned today with a screw in her tyre on the way home.
Compressor managed to get it home and is booked for a new one and mot tomorrow.
Espace needs a service and wheel bearing and it also gave me this today after too many short tip runs.

if anybody needs me I’ll be out having a regenerative fap.
 

Sun's out, pagani out.

Good luck ! I hope it all goes well.

Good news!
A new home for AROnline
Great British Car Journey are taking it on.

Good luck ! I hope it all goes well.

Good luck ! I hope it all goes well.

1st car meet of the year, right old mixed bag of motors..
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1980s office car park vibes. 
Head of accounts parked next to the company director. 

A bit more of the bitsa interior. Upside- it’s semi trashed so very usable. (OSR door card- partially eaten by a dog?)


Dog guard secured by a ww2 soviet machine gun sling
The headlining is just the backing only, as it the internal a b c d pillar trim-

The NSR 1/4 window still has the breakers yard markings on it for extra couldnt give a fuck points. Actually this glass is more tinted, and is optikool rather than the other side windows being triplex- so off a later model i think.
 
Farthest off road so far

Verdict- must try harder
 

Spot on. You can claim your free prize.

Jesus, brief panic ensued in the work car park - popped out to get something from the Rover, and the fob wasn't working. Totally dead. Unlocked the door with the key and the alarm went off, and wouldn't stop.
 
Had to run back into the building, prise the fob open, reseat the batteries and try again. Working now, but poo shot out.

Was I going to let being a parent stop me from getting in the garage until half eight tonight? Apparently so.
Does that mean I wasn't going to achieve something today? Does it bollocks.
First things first, stock up on brain juice:

Buy a toy for the boy who did great swimming today:

And when the kids finally get to bed, start getting to work on stripping the engine.
Oil pump out first, this was a piece of cake, although I'd already made my first error of the day and left that end plate on - it was meant to come off at this point, but didn't affect anything until later.
I used my paint pen and placed dots and numbers everywhere to allow correct orientation of all items upon refitting.

The Conrod caps were removed and the shells inspected - they will benefit from a replacement, but the crank itself looked good so far.


With all the Conrod bearing caps removed, it was time to utilise one of the more precise instruments in the garage:

And eventually, 4 hefty pistons were removed.

The rings were inspected and there wasn't any obvious signs of wear. I'll be looking a lot closer at everything over the coming days.
Big end caps were labelled prior to removal:

And the shells on these were spot on, with only minor wear evident. They'll be going back in on the rebuild.
With the flywheel end main oil seal removed, and all the caps off, the crankshaft was lifted out, signalling the end of the internal stripping.


The only dilemma I have at the moment is the crank pulley end - there's slots for two woodruff keys, but I've only retrieved one during the disassembly. Hopefully it turns up.

Either way, there's only a few external bits and pieces to come off, including the water pump and mount bracket, then it'll be ready to go to the machine shop later this week.
So, a short period in the garage today, but a productive one.
Cheers.
 

So, onto today's activities then.
First off, I lopped off the rotten upper section of the reinforcing bracket between the inner wing and chassis leg. New on was measured up and filed down a bit to make it match.

Got the welder set up and cracked on -

Ground the welds back and it looked pretty okay after that.

With that done, the repair sections were given a coating of weld through primer:

And the first panel clamped in place.

This one turned out to be a bit of a faff as there were loads of curves that I wasn't immediately aware of, but the hammer got everything in the right place for the welding to happen. Ground down, it even looked all right.

With that done, it was onto the next section.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a proper pain in the arse as my CO2 bottle ran out at 9pm. Not a problem as I had an Argon/CO2 bottle that I used for a couple of minutes in the cupboard.
What an arseache that ended up being. Not sure if it was the gas making a difference, but the welds weren't going down right and I was blowing holes every other time.

Aaaaand annoyingly, the replacement bottle ran out, less than five minutes into the job so I called it a night after grinding down what I could. Looking forward to moving on from the welding!
Cheers.

Well bugger me sideways, I've only gone and done it.
It's remarkable just how easy it is when you have the correct information to hand - this came in the form of OEM wiring diagrams for the fuse board itself.

With that, I tracked the lines and worked out which continuity checks needed doing. Was surprised to note that the fuse board connectors went in reverse order (6,5,4,3,2,1) as you view it.
It became evident that the very first continuity check was open circuit which was promising.

This meant it had to come out (again) 

With the board on the bench, it was a lot easier to repeat all the required continuity checks, and we finally had the fault pinpointed.

There was an open circuit from the 'cold' side of the fuse socket, to the first junction of the horn/heated screen circuit, namely the high power input for the heated screen relay (this then carries on to the horn side of the circuit)
Unfortunately, it's a double-layered board and I was unable to access the actual board. Luckily, I had a surplus piggyback fuse with a flylead, so I elected to add a flylead to the relay terminal. Ended up using solid core wire on the board half as it's quite a high amperage circuit.


With that all assembled, the board was re-tested and continuity was restored. The board was reconnected to the car and the horn now works!
Also, billy bonus, the HRW works and the switch illuminates, so I must have been talking bollocks about it working beforehand.

With that all confirmed to work, the interior was rebuilt (glovebox light fixed)


As an aside, I noticed the oil level gauge wasn't working any more - this was traced to the sensor plug coming off for some reason so that's an easy win.
So, I'm back to bodywork repairs for the rest of the week, hopefully without any more nasty surprises!
Cheers.

Minimal photos today, because I was incredibly pissed off with the entire day.
Firstly though, some good news arrived today:

A good used catalytic converter for the Beat - this may still need to go to the exhaust place for a replacement flanges to match the stainless link pipe.
So, on with the fault diagnosis. Reinstalled the cabin fan and headlights to aid the digging. Decided the fuse box needed to come out for a clean up, so all the connectors were marked up and disconnected

And eventually the fuse box was on the bench, given a stiff bristle brush and some contact cleaner before being blow-dried from the compressor and left on the dehumidifier to dry fully.

Yesterday, I came to the conclusion that the fuse feed box and battery positive lead were in need of changing, so more faffing occured and eventually the leads were on the floor.

Annoyingly, I had a niggly little voice in the back of my head to check this lead further, as it dawned on me that I hadn't fully tested it in isolation as the alternator and starter had still been connected to the supply. Figured it would be best due diligence to check It with all items out of the circuit, 
Connected it to the battery, and in all the imaginable combinations of test, they all came back with battery voltage, inexplicably.
This meant that everything had to get refitted, which I did not enjoy. The highlight was getting the cables back through the grommet into the cabin, made easier with a bit of steel wire and some tape;

Eventually it was all rebullt and the test carried out again...
5V.
I had a bit of a tantrum about this, but eventually found out the entire thing was my fault, mainly because I had gone for the 'Use a clean shiny big patch of metal as an earth' and it turned out to be pretty crap as an earth - testing the circuit and using a proper earthing point made all the difference and proves that we were getting battery voltage, but using the crap earth, we were getting just 5v which was a lie.
Next fuck up wasn't really my fault - the heated rear window WAS working the entire time - it transpired that a bulb had blown in the switch so I was never going to tell if it was on (EDIT: this turned out to be bollocks, see my next post). Seeing that the horn was still working, I rigged it to the battery which worked.
Checked the stalk connector again for power and it was negligible, so it's getting closer. I've now got a BX factory electrical manual and read up on the fuse box, which I reckon is the culprit (again,)
Sorry if the spelling is terrible, I'm absolutely exhausted and been doing the ol' nodding dog here which isn't helping so I'm off to bed.
Cheers

Not many photos today, because a) I only got a few hours in the garage today, and b) I was both in a hurry and in a bad mood, so I just cracked on.
Chopped the rest of the grot out, what remains is crusty but saveable. When taking the remains of the initial rusty bit out, it was evident that the vertical inner wing skin that it welds onto was heavily deteriorated under the seam sealer. Seeing as there was another adjacent grotty bit within that section, I drilled out a few spot welds and removed it as one large section.

This left me with three sections removed in total, although a fourth one will have to be made to cover the original hole - there was simply nothing left to make a template with. Three of them will be made with 1mm steel, the remaining one is part of the suspension turret plate and will be made in 1.8mm steel. The removed section (the bit at the top of the photo) is only a mounting surface for the 1mm bridging plate on the arch and has no structural implications at this point.

Metalwork cleaned up for welding. The patch near the suspension turret cleaned up with a light sanding and proved to be solid, thankfully. It'll be given a further wirebrushing, before Kurust and primer.

First panel knocked up. Still needs a little bit of a fettle to make it perfect, but it's a start.



Called it a night after that. The next two patches to make are simple strips, the final one can't be measured/cut out until the others are welded in.

It's been a very quiet week this week - turns out I have tonsillitis, so I'm trying to take it easy whilst the antibiotics do their thing.
I came home from work to find a big ol' box of bits:

I'll open it up and divulge the contents later.
As I'm meant to be taking it easy, I decided to start prepping for my next big job, the NSF arch area. First up, give the wheel arch a scrub up to make sure we can see what's happening under there.

With that done, it was time to focus my attention on this - this patch had been hurriedly applied the last time the car failed the MOT back in 2020.

Halfway through and it was putting up a fight!

Eventually though, I removed the patch to expose the horrific situation underneath, which also highlighted the lack of paint to the other side of the repair patch.


The screen wash bottle was removed to look at the both sides of the repair, which surprisingly didn't look any better from that angle either.

Clearly though, some more room was required to work in the area. The resting wiper position was marked on the screen:

And the scuttle, wiper arm, heater blower motor and bonnet were removed to aid access.

Final job for the night was removing all traces of the previous patch attempt.


With that all done, I knocked it on the head as I'm still exhausted and ill (god knows how many times I've re-written this due to tiredness causing bad spelling)
 
 
 

18th - 22nd
*SIGH*
Shall we get into it?
One

Two

Three

Annoyingly, there is a bracket at the front that I use to lift the car a bit before I can get a jack up in the proper place. This bit me on the arse rather spectacularly, as the spot welds in an adjacent area let go, and the bracket folded in half. That'll need some remedial work.
First thig I did was check the rear of the engine. Didn't like what I saw, those are coolant crystals, so the head gasket has probably deteriorated to the point where it requires replacement.

Found no shortage of rotty, grotty bits that require attention.
Some that can get away with a stiff wire brush and reprotection - 

And some that can't.

All in all, there are several repairs needed, but a lot of areas will recover nicely with a good wirebrush and reprotect. Also found a perished LHM strut return line, so one is on order.
Whilst not bothered with cameras etc, the fuel lines were rigged to a jerry can for a test run of the engine, which highlighted several issues, namely thin, fuel-smelling oil (probably a byproduct of short running times with choke, changing the oil may actually help with the engine smoking issue too) and the temperature gauge not reading a temperature, despite the heaters being toasty.
The top rad hose was stone cold which is pointing at the thermostat being stuck, which would explain the brief forays into overheating when it was on the road.
The following morning, I whipped off a very old thermostat. In fact, this may even be the original one.

Popped it in a pan and set it to boil:

I ended up taking it to 99c and it didn't open so that's an easy win, it was very stiff and notchy to operate so a Gates thermostat has been ordered to replace it.
The OSF area seemed like a good place to start, so the LHM sphere was removed, the VIN plate rivets drilled out, and the LHM tank removed. This was due a fresh change of LHM so it make sense to clean the tank out properly.

First repair up - an almost insignificant panel covering a cavity. 
Chopped.

Measured:

Welded:

Primed:

Annoyed with myself afterwards because I chose to do a straight edge instead of curving it - doesn't make a real difference in the grand scheme of things though.
Next bit was chopping out a rotten section of arch and adjoining vertical section - you can see the tiny holes peppering through the metalwork!


To do a curved panel with a lip was a bit of a challenge, but I think I've cracked it:

This was then bent into shape and the lines re-welded.
The vertical section had a curved lip and I wanted to see if it could be recreated with my limited tooling.

Turns out it could!
Quick test fit to make sure it all goes together okay:

And I'll look to weld that in tomorrow.
And that me all caught up! Cheers if you made it this far
I've got loads of parts coming via the post so hopefully, I'll be making more significant steps forward in short order.

17th (On its own because it was a busy day)
Remember all that lovely work I did the day before? Fitted the tank, and height corrector rod?


Well, it was all for nowt, because the tank had to come out AGAIN, as I forgot to connect the tank vent line. Superstar.

Luckily, it is now a one-man job!
With that back in, it was time to crack on with the rebuild of the rear end. Starting with the fuel filler pipe:

And the exhaust, rear lights and rear bumper. The rear lights were tested for correct operation and found to be fine, although the brake light switch wasn't working very occasionally - this has been cleaned up and I'll keep an eye on it, testing it again closer to the time.

With the exterior done, it was time to tidy up the interior with a few jobs during the rebuild.
Starting with these rear vents. The sponge-like material was over 30 years old and was suffering terribly.

Luckily, fish tank bio-foam is an inexpensive alternative. Typically forgot to get a photo, but you get the idea.

The boot floor carpet was fitted, and side carpet panels re-secured, followed by the side plastic trims. The previously split c-pillar plastic trims were repaired with some repair tape from the rear, and the repair is pretty hard to spot. Handily, the snap occurred between two fasteners, which helped matters.
 

The parcel shelf was next, but had some faults, mainly the rod that runs along the forward edge wasn't securing the parcel shelf properly, and allowing it to flex. It was obvious to see what happened, the plastic had snapped around the rivet. 
Easy enough to sort with some stainless steel wire!

Forgot how much I liked the in-built sunshades on these.

Bit of trim has clearly been snapped for years - small hole and wire pulled that tight!

Rear carpet, rear trims and rear seat bases went back in.

When this car was in proper use, we fitted a new throttle cable to ensure it had a smooth cable run etc. This worked for all of three days, before the plastic tab snapped and it had to be cable tied in afterwards.
Luckily, eBay came up trumps for this:

Feels a little bit more substantial than the old one. Fitted.

Whilst in the engine bay, I whipped off the distributor pickup sensor, to replace the thermal grease that had gone very dry and crumbly. This sensor was the cause of our random unexplained cutting out problems years ago, and I'm keen not to re-live that experience.

With that done, the wheels were refitted, and the car lowered back onto the ground:

And the front seats/steering wheel were refitted, completing the rebuild of the car.

It was actually quite refreshing to see the car complete once again, but it was to be very short-lived, as I knew I was going to start working on the front end next. It just made more sense to fully rebuild the car and start from square one once again instead of having shelves full of parts that could easily go back on.
Cheers.

We need more traffic police.

Iveco makes better vans than Ford and VW.

You won’t be alone in any of these things at Shitefest!