colino

Made it back local ground on the a70 to Ayr . Engage floaty under steer 

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand we're back!
Big lot of updates have been applied, so hopefully everything is still golden.
There is a bunch of post update tasks (database indexing) that the forum is running in the background, so things may run a tad slower for the next couple of hours.
I'll write up a thread in a bit on exactly what was done.
EDIT: The write up and technical discussion is here: https://autoshite.com/topic/55178-autoshite-server-infrastructure
 

You too can be an appalling handsy 70's TV entertainer for just £3500

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/308920741517573

https://www.carandclassic.com/l/C1620412

Still here!
Monday type training, Tuesday & Wednesday route learning, out tonight backshift; 11342 is my first London bus driven in service, a mirrorless Enviro 400MMC.
Lots of fairly major differences to bus life outside London but it's a nice change.
Interesting that I have lived in Glasgow my entire life and had ten full days training up there, five days out driving with a mentor. Down here? Fuck all. Go play 😂

Posted about this in News 24, but given that I can’t contain my excitement around this car, I thought I’d do a bit of a thread as I will be putting some effort into it.
Obviously, what every bald northerner who’s definitely in touch with his masculine side needs in their life is a car their mates are going to take the piss out of.
Secretly, I’ve always loved the R53 Mini. My love grew stronger circa 2014 when I drove my nieces Mini Cooper. I did dabble with one myself a few years ago but it was cheap (£375 on eBay) and categorically fucked, so it got thrown back onto Gumtree and fucked off sharpish.
Armed with a day off work today and some cash on the kitchen table, I tackled Facebook Marketplace and was buying either a T reg Toyota Corolla or an S reg VW Polo Saloon. Then this appeared fairly local. Bagged for £650 with MOT until March 2024
It has been loved at some point in its life, with extensive history up to around 2019, where it tails off and appeared to end up as somebodies don’t give a fuck car. And it’s obvious. But underneath,there’s an inherently good car.
Couple of pics for now - next update is a shopping list and more pictures !
 

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/583028967083848

It's 50/50 a hosting provider problem and a me problem. I haven't had much time to dig into it, and the problem that presented is specific to the hosting providers customisations to the Linux system. So without their assistance it's impossible for me to fix.
The solution is to move it to a new virtual machine, but that's non-trivial it's not something I can do in stages, it's a thing that needs me to block out a couple of hours and take the site down.
I do apologise for the continuing disruption.

As you're all well aware we are experiencing regular outages on the site currently.  
This stems from the initial outage we had last month, where the site became disconnected from the server due to a networking fault.  Since then despite taking a number of steps to rectify this on our side we still get the site disconnected from the network once a day. 
Unfortunately we are not receiving the support we need from the external hosting company to rectify this, as the fault appears to lie on their side.  Essentially whilst we (well by we I mean Slartibartfast) can apply the jump leads each time to get us back up and online, they (the hosting company) are failing to fix the underlying fault or provide us with the tools/support to do so. 
As an admin team we are trying to work out our options for the long term stability of the site. This is not totally straightforward given our varying working hours etc. but Slarti does jump straight to it every time we go down.  This morning we were made aware at 9.59 we were back online by 10.21. 
What can I do?
As people have been - if you spot it's down and you have a means of contacting any of the admin team via external methods let us know.  One of us can contact Slarti and he has been getting it back online in a few minutes. That way we hope disruption will be kept to a minimum. 
I know a few people have offered practical help and experience, this is greatly appreciated.  I'll be asking how we can best use this. 
I'm going to lock this thread simply so it is only used for latest updates, and these aren't lost in a deluge of posts and therefore any member can see it easily.
 
Finally, thank you all for your patience - this is a very frustrating spell for AS and I know it is extremely annoying!

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/185087237787464/
Drive it home, if you can do bodywork.

I appreciate you’re fairly new around here so I’ll be gentle 😬
You don’t have to have a commercially minded forum to have a stable forum. Plenty are constantly up; here’s looking at the PH, RR and Gearslutz boards that I frequent regularly. 
I would argue that a level of professionalism was introduced here with the self nomination and election of a senior leadership team. With that power comes a level of responsibility too, and it’s not unreasonable to expect that the community they’ve appointed themselves leaders of is actually… you know… functioning. 
As someone said upstream - comments like “oh but it’s so Autoshite we’ve got the British Leyland of boards lol” needs a bit of reality. There’s enough funding here for us to both buy and maintain a better and more suitable option. 
So, staying as we are, is basically just self sabotage. 
Appreciate people have jobs. Totally. Once again, I think it’s a lack of transparency that I find most annoying. It’s nothing to do with a lack of gratitude, just that openness that has somehow been missing.
Most forums are now long, long dead. A bit like Rover SD3s. As anyone who runs old cars knows: the trick is to fix problems quickly, keep on top of maintenance, improve what you can and keep things as simple as possible. If you want an automotive analogy, it should be that. Parking them up or ignoring issues isn’t a good strategy. In fact, it’s not a strategy at all. 

i think it's something to do with high & low tide

100% getting bummed for the plate, I reckon

1968 Bentley T1 Classic Car | eBay
There's also a helpful* list of things the number plate can stand for
'LOG can stand for many things
Logistics Logistical Logarithm Log file (file extension) Lamb of God Lamb of God (band) Letter of Guarantee (insurance) League of Gentlemen (gaming) Legend of Grimrock (gaming) League of Ordinary Gentlemen Legacy of Goku (game) Logging File Logical Love Over Gold (Dire Straits album) Lean on God Lyons Outdoor Games (Colorado) Light of Guidance (various organizations) Lernen Ohne Grenzen (German: Learning without Borders) Laplacian of a Gaussian (filter) LiveOnGaming (website) Large-Orbit Gyrotron Legal Organizations Group'   It could also stand for 'blog' so no doubt high on the list for one of those absolute tits who call themselves 'auditors' and just go round annoying building site workers, or filming themselves 'knowing their rights'.     

As above the other day I said that I went looking at a car but I got to Bridport and turned round told the owner and they were ok about it.
A couple of days later from this my father has been on my facebook account sending messages to the owner who I had already told him that I wasnt going to buy his car.
My dad offered to put the money in his account but he refused saying he had someone coming round for it.
I then got a message while I was getting some tyres for my smart car saying the other person cancelled.
Well I actually made it there this time on Friday 16th June. My dad told me to go and knock on the door and he got his mat out of the smart car and looked underneath.
The man came out with a couple of friends and then my dad said it was ok underneath-He didnt want to do any more welding after sorting out my P6.
I then took it for a test drive and the car seemed slow but drove ok . I then went back and told my dad to drive it and he did and he came back smiling saying yep its fine-a little slow but a service etc will sort that.
My dad transferred the money into the owners account and we set off. I got about 5 miles away and it started to smell like brakes.
I got to the roundabout on the a35 and coolant came up and hit the windscreen and steam from under the bonnet.
I went round the roundabout and someone was beeping there horn at me and I pulled into a layby.
I then contacted the breakdown people and they said they would put it through as an emergency as I was on an A road.
After an hour and a half a recovery company rang me. They said we have been tasked to take you back to Plymouth but we dont have a driver to do it tonight so I had 2 choices.
They take the car to Dorchester then wait to see if the breakdown company could sort a relay or they would take the car back to their depot and then deliver it when available.
I said just deliver it when you can.
Well Today Sunday 18th June 2023 my car got delivered to me on a low loader.
I have alrady spent much to much on bits for it but Im really liking the car.
Here it is a 1963 Wolseley 16/60 automatic.
Its not mint but the body is tidy but it was a car that wasnt used much as the previous owner passed away and then the person I bought the car off bought it from the deceased estate.

And…bugger

The smoke plate says 0.5 and they failed it at 0.51. The tyres are annoying as I only put them on last year after the first mot test. I was a bit paranoid it was going to shit itself with a major fault so I put part worns on. They have plenty of tread but the tread is starting to break up. 
They said they could do the joint for £100 and as I don’t have the tool to remove it I let them do this. 
I’ve ordered some Radar Dimax R8+ from round trip tyres. They are supposedly A rated for wet grip so I’m hoping they’re not completely shite. I’ve got a tame fitter who will pop them on for me.

I'm really sorry for the prolonged outage. The server got borked in several interesting ways for unknown reasons.

The site will be doing ol' Whores-Drawers dance for a bit while I fix stuff properly so apologies for that.

It's split working but likely either Barking or West Ham? Won't know until I'm allocated.
It's a £22k a year increase in wages so planning to stick it out for a while 😂

We have had an addition to the circus fleet. Sorry @Cavcraft it's an Iveco but it does have a redeeming feature in that it was a truck for the Ferrari race team, and only has about 150 thou on it. No idea what was paid for it but it's got to be a sizable chunk. No Ferrari's found down the back of the seat unfortunately. 

Next up was something rather more serious.
Over the past thousand miles or so I had to start adjusting the valve clearances frequently.  So much that I could do the entire job in 25 minutes.  The engine would start to rattle a bit, I'd tighten the tappets a bit, the engine would shut up before rattling again after several heat cycles or another hundred miles.
Some of them became quite concerning.  Specifically exhaust on no. 6 which always needed a turn.

I knew what this probably was and being a V engine it's a bugger to check.  So I blew most of the engine apart to remove the followers.

Sure enough they are buggered!  Some much more than others, at best these have done 2.5k miles.  Two words, aftermarket SHITE

Now in fairness I never followed the traditional cam break in procedure for this engine.  To get a fully rebuilt engine to immediately start first time and run at 3k rpm for 20 minutes with a fully blead rock solid cooling system is rather more difficult than you might think.  So long story short this engine did a fair bit of cranking and idling before being driven in anger.  This may have contributed to the short life of these followers.

However (and luckily) the cam itself was just fine.  This is a new old stock Ford cam to the standard profile for a 2.3 cologne.  Despite the followers beginning to fall apart the cam has shrugged it off and it certainly seems to be made from far higher quality materials.  The crazy paving pattern is the last of the black protective coating wearing off (which is supposed to happen).


Cams for these engines are usually aftermarket and of the mild, rally or race variety.  I bought a set of followers and a mild cam from Kent Cams.  While the original cam looks fine and has only done a few thousand miles I didn't want to risk it and was curious about fitting a mild cam instead.  The 2.3 is not known for its speed and a bit of extra power would be nice.  

I put the engine back together.  Followed the cam break in procedure and instantly regretted it.  The mild cam has an awful lot of valve overlap for a "mild" tune.  This caused a huge amount of scavenging at idle and generally made the engine run very very poorly.  No amount of tuning would improve it and I couldn't get the idle to reliably go below 1k rpm.  On the road it felt nasty and would try and cut out at every junction.  I was rather disappointed because that meant...
Take the whole bloody engine apart AGAIN...
 
I put the original profile cam back in.  Reassembled the entire engine and checked everything thoroughly along the way.  

Result!  It runs lovely again and the noisy valve clearances are long gone.  Back to its old self and I'm looking forward to putting in some more miles.  The Kent Cam lifters have been broken in according to the instructions twice now as a precaution.  I hope they stand the test of time as the alternative lifters are either unbranded or from a company I've never heard of (like the first set).  I've also done several oil changes along the way and checked said oil upon draining for anything nasty.  I'm using 10w 40 from Millers with additional ZDDP additives.
While these bits are the main issues I've had over the past year or so I've done lots of other small cosmetic and mechanical jobs such as...
Curing the break squeal with the correct clips on the pads Replacing the boot trim with a mint undented one  Fixing a vacuum leak from the air box General cleaning/degreasing and painting to keep the engine & underside looking good A lot of the issues that have cropped up since putting the car back on the road have now been resolved.  I've learned a lot along the way and with each fix the car gets more trustworthy and nicer to drive.  Although there have certainly been some rather frustrating moments/long days.

The Machine passed it's MOT today, first time of asking since the last ticket to ride experied, Oct 2022. En route hame from MOT station, the instrument cluster went dim and then, stopped working completely. No gauges nothing, blacked out. That was the highs and the lows of today.
Bugger... Car drives fine, heater, windows all work fine. Headlights now come on with and stay on until the ignition is switched off, related, and the left hand indicators have ceased working, related.
Had a quick look at the 5a fuses for the cluster, there's three of them and they all seem, fine. Now parked up with the battery disconnected. Checked for fault codes, none, it's a wiring or relay issue, or the clocks have just packed in? Anyway, 12months ticket to ride was the mission achieved for today.  Focusing on the postivies.  It's still great to look at.

240,000 mile £1500 Cube

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202305187523699

Unlike the Daihatsu Materia, the JDM Toyota bB seems to have an (optional?) front bench seat:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/155554207355?hash=item2437c0d67b:g:zEcAAOSwNNBkYMdj&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAAwCuZWhrk4KUrJBsNzglEq7cY8l1d2dNfVWXh9tEUec4u5ssZ2Ur5E6Au5Qezsb%2FJ%2BD%2F4z%2FhVGDewXcf%2BGBoVnVG4rEB%2BIgrWVZUAyxLqrL5AmaUQWyo%2FFLcDlk9tUVu1uRB3W4iR%2FDeSWo6DzJyc%2BGSRul9KSbC1iQeMfZMRHOOvD%2FbGrunheemnYjk3ihLd9I8e27Jz9pqy2zfY2%2B0lNYUmT77Ck1SrHY3LMNDXsHS14SOzwPH%2BAGunqOxLDIocCQ%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR-iX-LSDYg

Well, that went well*. When I rang for assistance they said, when I was some where safe for somebody to change the wheel to let them know. Blown tyre was the offside outer so they wouldn't do it on the hard shoulder. Going up the hard shoulder was interesting* as there was a couple of places where there wasn't one so I had to stop and wait for a gap in the traffic to be able to use lane 1 which, luckily, at that time there wasn't a lot. Assistance said I would have to wait 60 to 90 minutes, which I have heard before and don't believe, and someone would ring me from a breakdown company. While I was waiting, and having a cuppa, I thought I would help things along by getting the spare out which is difficult as it is in a side locker on a shelf at the back. Managed, with a lot of effort, to get it out and then decided to get the hubcap off, bolted on. Then the phone rang and it was, I don't know, whoever was going to be arriving sometime in the future who kindly informed me that there was no one in the area who could help. Great ! Looked like I was going to be there all night. Decided at that point I would have to struggle and do it myself. Take into account that I am 70 years old and not as supple or as strong as I used to be and  certainly didn't relish the idea. At all. But means must. I have a jack strong enough but the means of getting the wheel nuts off is far from ideal as it is a very big spider with a couple of steel tubes for leverage and it wouldn't take much for things to slip and cause some injury. After a lot of jumping on the tubes I got the wheel off. Got the spare on by using a long crow bar that I had and quite a bit of sweat. Cracked it up and then had to get the fucked wheel back in the locker. Much sweat and struggle. Got to the Cardiff site at about 4.30 and went to bed. Couldn't sleep so got back up and put the kettle on and that is my tale of woe. What a bugger.

The Travellers part 2. Everything was pulled on to the site on Monday night apart from a truck and trailer which was picked up on Tuesday morning arriving at the site about 1.30. The distance from the road to the edge of the field is no more than 50 metres. Ivor, who was driving, asked a traveller to keep the kids out of the way for a few minutes because the machine was coming to pull it on to the site. Unfortunately during those 50m a child decided to hang on to the trailer on the side that Ivor couldn't see as the truck was at a slight angle. Result was that an 8 year old boy sustained some serious injuries. There is a report in the Argus if you look for, Brighton: Boy, 8, hit by lorry in Preston Park. It doesn't tell the whole story. The police arrived in great numbers and even still Ivor had to stay in the truck with a Police Officer in the passenger seat for his safety as the travellers were going a bit ape shit and trying to get at him. Two or three traveller blokes turned up in the tent, which was being built up, with iron bars looking for Ivor but hurriedly left when confronted with a bigger number of workers with bigger pieces of metal. Eventually the police got them all to hitch up and fuck off although a police presence was kept at the park till the following evening. I had to go down the Police station, where Ivor was making a statement, with his passport and some other bits and take him to Gatwick for a flight to Norn Iron to get him away. The circus got two security guys in for Tuesday and Wednesday night but we were all a bit on edge as you can imagine.

As I said, I'm not going to do a write up of every move as they all become a bit similar but the move from Southampton to Brighton is worth a scribble. As normal an advance party went to Brighton on Sunday to mark out for the tent. On arriving at Preston Park we encountered a number of our friends* the travellers, about 10/12 caravans and vehicles. A distinct lack of pickups was noted. More SUV's, small vans and a couple of campers all of which were no more than 3 years old. I don't know how to do links and stuff coz rubbish on computers but if you look at Preston Park you will see at the entrance there is a triangle of tarmac and this is where they were, mostly, parked. This will become relevant shortly. 
When the advance party arrived, consisting of Steve's Peterbilt and his brand new living trailer, me and my heap, and another RV, we were immediately surrounded by about 10/12 traveller kids. I was left by the vehicles to keep an eye on things while Steve, site boss, and Geoff, site mechanic, went to set out. I couldn't understand much of what these kids were saying, sounded foreign to me, and they were all yacking at once. Caught a couple of them trying to steal the chrome wheel nut covers off the Peterbilt. Eventually they fucked off to annoy someone else. Stayed the night and the next day back to Southampton. Bunk wagons arrived about 10am so there was always going to be someone to keep an eye on things.  That next night, as usual, I started setting out the water supply at about 2 in the morning and finishing at about 6. There was, maybe obviously, a lot of interest in what I was doing. Small van driving around on the field  shining headlights in my direction. Everything arrived during the day and into the night as usual. Well, the generator and workshop trailer didn't arrive in one piece. Jonny, Hungarian electrician, lost two wheels off one of the axles on the trailer about 30 miles from Brighton but carried on dragging the axle with sparks flying about that several people flashed him about. How he didn't notice the sparks and the trailer leaning to one side nobody knows. Maybe Hungarians don't look in their mirrors. So now Geoff, mechanic, has to sort this out before the move to Cardiff this weekend and sourcing parts is a major head ache because the original supplier doesn't have parts anymore. The hub is cracked all the way round and the hangers have been dragged on the road and are totally fucked and only one wheel was found. Pics below.
I've got some stuff to do so tune in later for another enthralling*  episode involving the travelling community.