BeEP

People keep saying the markets flat at the moment and struggling but I haven't seen It myself, my Golf sold quickly and I had someone interested in my Mondeo until I changed my mind, I still think if the cars a good one and well presented then there's plenty of people out there with money happy to spend it still.

Well, the regular updates failed miserably! The local phone mast went down after a storm so no net for a week!
The auction was a waste of time with everything fetching a massive premium because of the chateau factor, most 10x or 20x the estimate. Madness. Some scruffy IKEA chairs, still available new at 59euro each fetched 70 euro each. I bought nowt! The week was not a total loss though as I got the grass cut, drank too much wine and beer and had some excellent meals out.
I had a funeral to attend on Monday so had to cut the trip short, and as the funeral  was in Cambourne, Cornwall (23 miles from Lands End) I decided to take a different route and took the Roscoff to Plymouth ferry. Good if expensive. Sadly on the way the back box got steadily noisier until it fell off and went all Bonnie Tyler
In Plymouth I stayed with some very good friends who I had not seen in too long. The week before I arrived my friend Jim won a raffle and this was delivered to him


Whilst admiring this, his neighbour was out polishing the tidiest K11 I have seen in a long time, 48k miles, 998cc

On the Monday I attended the funeral and left afterwards for home. Left Cambourne at 1330 and arrived home at 2345 655 miles later at an average of 36mpg. Who needs a back box?  
Tuesday was a day catching up on work, Wednesday was a day at the hospital for yet more tests and today I visited the excellent @GingerNuttz of this parish to drop off something to keep him out of mischief. I was worried it was going to be beyond hope and really only took it as I had laid out for new inner and outer sills, but he reassures me and is going to get on with it.

Alerted to wet carpets @Mrs6C went to investigate and found the openable air vent on top of the scuttle was designed to accept some water but had a rubber collection trough with a metal drain tube. It turns out this was totally blocked with long term debris so water spills out into the cabin. The carpets have been removed and are drying out, but smell. Mrs6C poured water into the vent and now you can hear it landing under the car.

Who was after a MK1 Tigra? This looks well smart.
https://www.carandclassic.com/l/C1639024
 

Been having a bit of a tinker with the Getz today, as one does when one acquires a new conveyance.  I plugged the Delphi in to see if it could find anything that might be related to the hiccupping on a very light throttle, and it came up with an EGR valve low voltage code, which might have something to do with it.  Unfortunately the EGR isn't very easy to get at without removing the scuttle panel and I didn't have time for that, but I've cleared the fault code and I'm going to see if it comes back after a bit of mileage.
Next job was to swap the wheels front to rear - I noticed on the run home yesterday that when I tried to exit a roundabout with any degree of enthusiasm it struggled to put the power down, wheelspinning on the throttle in second gear.  On inspection today the rear wheels were adorned with nearly new Matadors and the fronts had a pair of mismatched budget tyres, both in decent condition but older and with a bit less tread.  So the Matadors are now on the front - appreciate they aren't exactly Pirelli P-Zeros but they probably have a better chance of coping with the engine's torque than the Sailwin and Polaris tyres which are now on the back.  I can see a remap in this car's near future so it's going to need all the help it can get traction wise, especially with 175-section tyres.
I also fitted a pair of LED sidelight bulbs - the sidelights were very dim and on inspection the bulbs had gone rather black.  The LEDs have improved things considerably, although when wrangling the nearside bulb holder out of the back of the reflector I somehow managed to pull the bulb out so there's now a W5W bulb rattling around inside the headlight.  At some point I suppose I'll have to take the light unit off and fish it out, but that can wait.
Only other fault I've found so far is that the reversing lights are very intermittent, which could be a pain around here in the winter, although the rear fog would probably help in a pinch.  As with the 107 I also need to upgrade the horn, as it's pretty pathetic.
It's a great fun thing to drive, although in a very different way to the 107.  The Peugeot handles better and feels much more agile, but the Hyundai is generally more grown up - it's quieter inside and the stereo is better (not that that's saying much) - and the brakes are fantastic being discs all round.  And the performance, even in standard form, is quite impressive.  The Pug goes fairly well for what it is but you often have to rag the tits off it to keep up with outside-lane traffic.  The Hyundai is a lot more relaxing - you can plod your foot down in a high gear and it will just pick up and go.  It's odd, the first time I drove a Getz (a brand new petrol-engined hire car in Australia in 2008), I absolutely hated it and couldn't wait to get back behind the wheel of my then-18-year-old Saab 900, but the two I've owned since then (both diesel, the first with the objectively dreadful VM 3-pot) I've really liked.

that’ll do nicely

only ten months or so after the test drive!

We own our (tiny) house.  We don't drink or smoke.  No children at home.  We, as Bruce Dern said to Ryan O'Neal in The Driver, "live real cheap."  We don't redecorate or refurnish every month.  We don't even buy a daily paper.  We go to a theatre or cinema maybe once or twice a year on average.  The Motability car sips, and in two years has done 7,000 miles.  In 18 months the Jag has done about half of that.
If you arrange your lifestyle accordingly, you can afford to knock around town in a V8.

Update!
I went to WBAC this morning and they started chipping.  The best offer they could give me was £400.  So obviously I drove home again.
Since then I've been at an event at the Lakeland Motor Museum, where I was in conversation with a party from the garage I called at on-spec the other week.  I showed them the fail sheet.  When I said I already had the strut, smiles broke out.  Consensus seems to be that a set of tyres can be brought in just under £400 and the rest is relatively easy.  So I'm taking it in on Monday afternoon for them to look over.
It looks like Handsome has a future!

So yesterday was a busy day, I drove the Getz from Chichester to chesterfield where it now awaits collection from its new owner and picked up our new family wagon from @RichardK my partner has been hinting at getting a bigger car for a holiday abroad next year and with 2 teenagers and 7 small dogs a Hyundai Getz or Rover 75 Saloon wouldn’t cut it, so here we are! 
 
What a beast! 
plenty of room for everything we need, and LHD for continental holiday! We still have the Rover 75 for daily duties thankfully 
I’ve got to tickle the arches with my welder before the next mot so keep an eye out for updates on that but for the money I absolutely love it! 

only ten months or so after the test drive!

I received pictures from Chuck regarding the exhaust on the Rexton deciding to loose integrity so today was the day to see what was involved. It was pulled in so I could get the Insight out.

I wasn't going to rely on the lift to get it in the air so once the insight was moved we positioned it here and up it went.

We then jacked the back up and put axel stands in place. This is what greeted us.


That's not getting patched with the dog food can I brought...
A quick look around the workshop and a check of the pipe size produced the old downpipe from the 940 proving me right that you should never throw anything away.
The flange was removed from the silencer and some pieces of pipe were stuck together.

Quite happy with how they were going together we carried on.
The two pipes were offset and the spare pipe I had was very offset so it became a cut and weld fest but eventually we got this.

Which is solid, has a hanger and doesn't bang off the floor or the prop.
Cost of temporary* repair was £0

BL Day was a big success, I have never seen so many rubbish cars in one place!



 

I refitted the number plate back onto the front of Boris the Morris today...

Obviously being a bit of a rogue i mounted it on two hinges so at speed it tucks under his front to make him go faster. 😁

Apparently it was national get outside day, so naturally I stayed indoors. I do wish these national days were publicised before the actual day. I went for a 10km walk yesterday morning though.
I can’t find the photo thread, so here are a couple taken this morning and evening.

I did a buy.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/696662402338698/

Yes! It’s an Audi 100 from 1983 with a 69hp non-turbo  2 litre 5 cylinder Diesel. It’s rare as hell, at least here in Sweden.  I’ve seen an estimate of 5-7 cars.
Not too fond of the Fondmetal wheels and I will change back to yellow indicators. Almost completely rust free. 

Nice.

The hesitation problem actually turned out to be a clogged pre-filter in the Facet fuel pump I've fitted. What was happening was that crud was accumulating on the screen and restrict the flow at full power, some of which would drop off when you turned the engine off. So after flooring it you would tend to get hesitation at even medium throttle openings, but after a restart the hesitation would only occur after the next time you floored it. Probably another 600 miles done over the last few weeks, which reminds me, I must check the gearbox oil level...
A few photos:

That's right, and TBH a box stripdown was more hassle than I wanted to take on at this particular time. I just wanted a simple, bolt-in solution, and ideally one which put me in a better position than I was in previously. So I bit the bullet and found a rebuilt gearbox that I could purchase outright. The label on the side of it almost felt like it was rubbing salt into my wounds!

So this should be a simple case of bolting it all togther and happy days, right? Er no, as it happened. It seems like my original gearbox was a bit of a hybrid between the diesel and V8 versions. When I first fitted it the clutch pushrod was far too long, and I now realise that the boss the clutch fork pivot screws into sticks out further than the V8 version. 
Old...

...and new.

So, I now needed a different pushrod, but at least not a difficult or expensive part to source.

Finally I could start to fit it, with at least some confidence that it should all work!

It's still a bugger to manoeuvre into position, as Hyundai clearly didn't have the foresight to give ample clearance in the transmission tunnel. But with a lot of up, down and angling things, it slid together. (I'm sure that reminds me of something, but I'm struggling to remember what).
I thought it best to test the clutch operation as soon as it was on, so any excuse to fire it up with no exhaust...
Happy days indeed! Then just a case of refitting mounts, propshaft, exhausts and centre console, and time for a test drive.

Great to be back behind the wheel again for the first time since May, although there is still work to do. I think sitting unused through hot weather has gummed up the carb, as it seems to be running very hesitantly under acceleration. But the gearbox is good, both quieter and a sweeter gear change than the previous one. That was always a little whiney, so I'm questioning how well that was actually rebuilt...

Ta da

Done a multi car policy on the 2CVs… all four insured for just over £300.  Weirdly it cost more if I had zero miles on any of them… so I can do 1500 miles in the one with holes in the floor if I can get it to run seeing as it’s Mot exempt!
Also should serve as motivation to get the others back on the road! 

Found my watch.  I didn't put it in the van, I put it in the Renault 4 for some reason.  I R twat.

Cool new band t-shirt arrival