Tickman

It felt wrong liking that post but a very philosophical outlook on the necessity that paying someone to do something is better than a lot of other things.

Mot time today.  Clean sheet, no advisories!!! Happy days. 

Anyway had an hour spare between child activities tonight so had a quick bash at the seats.
They were quite rank.


Didn't really have the best selection of equipment, a hand brush and some sort of car shampoo in cold water, plus a wet vac.
They've come up better but there are definitely some stains that need doing again.

Yeah the van is a 2010 with the OM651 engine so probably the same. It's on 197k, I got it on 190. The chain was noisy on startup so I put the revised tensioner in which quietened it down at startup.
The van man said then he reckoned he could hear the chain but I couldn't so opted to not spend a grand or whatever it would be at random.
I was considering not doing it to try and keep the bill down but it's only going to add maybe £3-400 while the engine is out so it's getting done.
Seems like all the manufacturers went down the "Shimano 9-speed" route for camchains as well as putting them at the back of the engine around the same time, I hope whoever signed off on that shit got fired out of a cannon when they started going ping.

Anyway the shitlist so far for the A3:
Needs a thermostat Service due - £8 Mann filter on the way and plenty oil in stock from the Mannol offer Gear linkage seems a bit dodge, there are various faults stored for neutral sensor, I think there might be some sort of bush needed on the gearbox end Temp sensor needed (£10 Febi) Smells of dog and seats quite rank, in need of a scrub and wetvac Was missing a parcel shelf but already replaced on the way back to work (£20) Cambelt roulette (replaced in 2015 about 80k miles ago) A Febi thermostat is £50 and hopefully less painful to do than the TFSI was, will do the rest and look into this after payday. Cambelt maybe not, will have a look at it at least.
It did 35mpg on the way home according to the OBC, hopefully this would be a bit more with faults fixed and stop/start working.

Once upon a time I would have borrowed an engine crane and spent a week or 2s free time pulling the engine myself but I ain't got time or really motivation for that right now.
The van man is a well known Vito fondler and easily half the cost of a main dealer so it just is what it is.
I really don't mind spannering in general but I prefer to pick my battles.

It felt wrong liking that post but a very philosophical outlook on the necessity that paying someone to do something is better than a lot of other things.

It felt wrong liking that post but a very philosophical outlook on the necessity that paying someone to do something is better than a lot of other things.

Not an entirely happy day. 
Traded the S3 to a local performance car merchant for this A3 sportback + cash. As mentioned elsewhere I am buying a new house for reasons and need to be sensible for a bit. 
I probably could have kept it but £50-60 a week in fuel and £30 a month in tax are all expenses I could do without. 
The trader at least was a very nice man and did me a pretty reasonable deal.
TDI 140, £35 a year tax somehow. Has various issues obvs but nothing that will stop me using it. 
In other great news, the van is with the van man racking up a bill in the region of £1500.
I think I mentioned it had an issue with an inlet throttle valve which did not affect the driving at all but put the EML on. 
I ignored it as you would, until it got to the point it went into limp due to overloaded DPF - the thing will not regen with this fault on the intake throttle active. 
Hilariously this valve can't be changed without taking the engine out, and as it's a modern camchain at the back engine it's a sensible "while you're there" job that I really could have done without. 
Cars eh. Still better than the bus or paying £500 a month to rent a Hyundai.

Squeaking in on the last day of the retest window.

As per I managed to make it more of a carry on than it needed to be, my technique of cable tying a glove onto the disconnected front brake lines then leaving it for several days didn't quite keep all the fluid in. 
This of course led to air getting into more places than it needed to and having to bleed the rear brakes as well.
The o/s/r caliper suitably rewarded me for my ineptitude. 

With the clock running down on the retest I had to take a day off work yesterday to drive to Rochdale to get a new caliper (featuring bonus near death experience when some cunt in a Golf ploughed through a very red light nearly taking me out) and it's just been retested this morning. 
I did think there was something still not right with the brakes as while the pedal is rock hard with the engine off it seems squidgy with it on. Some googling suggests Vitos and Sprinters are just like that, TBH I've not driven it enough recently to remember what it was like before but it's passed so that'll do.

Fairly successful day for faffing.
Inspected the Vespa transmission, the belts often get overlooked and either break leaving you stranded or wear affecting performance.

Based on width measurement it wasn't that worn but it doesn't look great so a new one is on order.
The transmission rollers also looked a bit worn with possible flat spots, so ordered some of those and an oil filter, I have some oil in stock.

Spent the afternoon putting the van back together between showers. Had a bit of a war with one of the disc retaining screws but otherwise pretty straightforward. I bled the calipers with my knock-off Mityvac which worked pretty well, although I did have to rope in a child for a final pedal pump based check.
I also cleared out the scuttle drains, there was some water under the carpet last time I was in there investigating for a diesel heater, the central drain under the cabin filter was blocked with minor gunk and one of the side ones had half a tree of well mulched leaves.
No pics of any of the above as I was well onto the swing of it with filthy hands, I've stopped to make tea and will finish it off this evening.

Had a really good day today.  Got Universal Credit approved so that's my safety net for 12 months (bit of a surprise, since I've never claimed I get the slightly less arduous 'new business' version as a self employed person) as well as info on business and art courses that are available to me as a mature student along with grants I had no idea I could apply for to help with costs.  This was tempered somewhat by coming back to find I had a parking ticket, the job centre hasn't got a car park and I was told I'd be good for an hour on a neighbouring street that's single-yellowed.. I got ticketed at some point during the 45 minutes I was in for my appointment.  It's a reflection on my state of mind that the prospect of a surprise £35 bill didn't make me that angry, just a bit disappointed.
Then went over to the art centre and got some excellent help and advice there on artist networking opportunities, gallery opportunities and an insight into just how active the local art scene is.  Also got to see what sort of thing the art centre promotes and quickly realised it's a very broad church with their featured artist doing abstract sculptures in materials you might consider to be rubbish (I loved them, if I had space there was one I would have taken home), another artist doing miniature portraits, and a shop full of samples of local artists work from wargaming miniatures to ceramics to jewellery to glass items.  My stuff is very different to what was there but then what was there was very different to everything that was there too so that's pretty neat.  There's local studio space I can hire that's not exhorbitantly expensive, a poetry night that is apparently both good and good for networking, and generally just a shitload of stuff that's made me feel rejuvenated about my job.
Having access to an actual meatspace art community really helps and something I've not had for above a decade.  Scunthorpe continues to treat me well in ways I was never expecting and that light at the end of the tunnel is looking a bit more like the exit than an oncoming train today.

Today's job is currently to empty the big unit of my large machines and we have the most temperamental forklift imaginable hence we've had to jump start it and tow it about with the car!

After my Mito was condemned due to rust, I decided to go old skool for its replacement - 50 mile drive home - goes spot on. Forgot the pez shot sorry 😎

Radio in the 205 had been acting up,so decided to replace it with this Top quality* two knob Harrier that I'd bought at a boot sale the last time I was in Norfolk for not very much.
It only works 😁


Looks period correct too.
Chuffed!

Good news and bad news. I don't have to worry about the paint being hard enough tomorrow, that's the good news. Bad news is that Auto Windscreens sent me a message today saying they are struggling to obtain the glass. If they'd said this with more than 24 hours notice I'd have made sure I had a screen there waiting!
Anyway, I did get a coat of green on last week.

Before masking off the inside and aiming a jet of Dynax S50 at the seam.

Watch this space for further developments; the real ballache is I have to clear all 3 vehicles out into the open, as I have concrete arriving on Wednesday to lay the floor.

Excellent progress on an unwanted task.
You really are rattling through this.

Just a little bit of history repeating.

So the paints knackered, and its a bit accessorised. So very 1990. But then again its unwelded and original- not very 1990 at all.
 

But first matter of business…. lets just turn the orgy of stickerage down a bit….

 

 

 

Walking past a near neighbours house yesterday and they were having a clear out with a hippo bag full or random crap on their drive. In front of the bag was this jack and a couple of bits of copper pipe.
Obviously I couldn't let what looked like a perfectly good 2 tonne jack go for scrap so asked if I could take it away. They said yeah no worries but beware as it creeps down after a few minutes.
So I carried it home (a bit of a faff with two fuck wit Beagles in tow) and gave it a once over/top up and last night lifted Boris the Morris up with it no problem.
In my old RAC days when you were taken off road for your vans annual safety inspection the H+S guy would test your service jack by lifting your van with it then having a fag break. If your van was still in the air after his break then it was deamed to be ok. So if you let your jack down while he wasn't looking it failed and you were told to scrap it and get a new one from Brown Brothers/Taskmaster (most patrols always had at least a couple of 'spare' jacks at home).
This morning the Minor is still in the air so it looks like I've acquired a nice dinky little jack that takes up hardly any boot space.

 

I've never had my three parked side by side before. They have to park line astern on the drive and even then one of them has to be in the garage. 
Well I was doing a bit of shunting this morning and there is a space at the top of our Close for two cars that was empty, which is a rarity in itself. Plus the sun was shining and the leaves have just started coming out on the trees so I thought why not.

Like I say, parking for two cars, but when they are all quite small and all yours you can squeeze three in. Obviously you have to start from the left. If I'd put the Triumph in last I couldn't have got out of the car.

Also, how to make a Favorit look like a big car. Park them either side of a Triumph 1300.

Weeeeeeeellllll…
I bled the injectors this morning. I found using a power probe easiest as this meant I could watch the injectors whilst cranking.


I then put it back together, started it, and…
It runs away as soon as you turn it on, sits at 3k rpms, chucks out smoke, bogs down and dies.
Ive spent some time checking the adjustments on the pump, and I’ve come to the conclusion that something inside the ‘new’ pump is seized.
I think the best way forwards now is to just crack on and rebuild the original pump then use that.
A bit of a disappointing end to the time I’ve put into it so far, but you don’t win them all.
On the plus side, I did some other stuff today. I swapped out the carb and some service bits on my mower, and that works beautifully now:



Every time I mow the lawn, I think how lucky we are to have such a nice outdoor space. Even if the dogs and our son do litter it with their toys.
I also finally fixed the three broken taps in the house:



You know you’ve been lax with sorting things when it feels like a luxury to now be able to turn any tap in the house and have it both work and not leak.
Then I went to the shops to grab some gin, and on the way back the dusk sky over the sea caught my eye so I stopped in the Pontiac to enjoy it for a bit.

Things like this remind me why I love living in this part of the country.
So all in all not a bad day, even if the XM work didn’t pan out as expected.

I got the last of the shite hooked up to the pump this evening:

I think the kick down cable is a bit slack so I may tweak that, but otherwise I’m 97% certain everything is as it should be.
I was still a bit unsure about the pump shaft and sprocket so I marked it (badly).

Time to throw all the other junk on:

The good news is that when turning the engine over, the sprocket and shaft stay aligned.
The bad news is I’m a twat and I forgot to bleed the fuel lines. The engine won’t run on air, sadly.
I’ve also managed to get diesel in my mouth again and everything tastes sour.
Inlet manifold back off then. Cracked the injectors open, cranked it, one line primed and then the battery went flat. Probably for the best as it was getting late.
Battery on charge and we will resume play tomorrow! Unfortunately it won’t be until later in the day though as I need to swap the carb on my mower and then go replace some lights for my parents. Bums.

New * Yaris just back from having signs. Had a lot of scratches but they are all hidden now.
It's a spare car just in case.



Nothing much to report, recent weekends racing have been cancelled, next weekend is cancelled all because of rain.
Work on Luton van is progressing slowly. Photos of that after my hols, when I'm hoping for Sun.