fatharris

Huh.
Commute to work this morning in the Rover, sat queuing at a roundabout.
Suddenly, enormously loud explosion heard - thought it was a gunshot.
Suddenly, Rover has plenty of power and it is running lovely - I'd been suspecting a boost leak somewhere for a while.
Guessing the exhaust had a restriction somewhere, but I've not seen anything come out the tailpipe.

Another productive few hours.
Ran the BX for 15 minutes to get the oil/Berryman mix up to temperature before draining. The exhaust fumes fill the garage quite quickly, so I tried helping it along with the spare Laguna pipe 😅

(It did not help.)
After fifteen minutes of idling, I cracked open the drain plug and noticed just how thin the oil coming out was. I know I'd added about 800ml of Berryman, but even with that factored in, it was too thin.
I slapped another coat of primer onto the areas I'd applied Puraflex to.


And left the oil to drain as much as possible.
Had another check of the LHM system and started preparing it for a first run. Pleased with how the repairs look now everything is back in place. OSF sphere screwed back on and looking fine!


Once the oil fully drained, the sump plug was refitted, a new oil filter attached (old one was stamped 2016, which would tally up with the lack of use it has had since then) 

And the oil topped up to roughly the correct level. The car wasn't level so I didn't want to overfill it.

Next job was to reattach the front wheels, I also slid a set of ramps underneath the wheels to give a bit of clearance.

As I was planning on priming the LHM system, I needed the cooling system to work, so I ended up changing the thermostat. Was going to do it at the same time as the timing belt, but there you go.

The LHM belt was reattached to the pulleys and the HP pump supply line was disconnected and primed.

MrsH was roped in at this point to start the engine whilst I connected the supply line. For some reason, the LHM pump belt lost its tension so this was resecured.
And after a few minutes, success! The car was suspended on LHM for the first time in nearly a year.

Early indications are promising for the engine smoke too, there seemed to be a lot less clouds on acceleration. Once the engine got warm and the levels were re-established, I started exercising the suspension by alternating between max and minimum extension. The struts are a little bit sticky and creaky but nothing too unexpected for a car that's been sat a while.
I bled the cooling system of all air and was dismayed to notice the temperature gauge still wasn't giving a reading, despite the new thermostat proving serviceable and the top hose getting hot. I shut the engine down and suddenly:

Ah, everything IS working fine, it's just me being the idiot. I've had a prod with the multimeter and found the 'earth' terminal I was connecting to is a perfect earth in Key position 1, but 12v comes through when set to ignition.
Luckily, I added plenty of spare wire to the earth wire so I can simply connect it to a proper earth point instead of being lazy.
Anyway, seeing as it's mother's day, I'm knocking it on the head tonight to enjoy some time with MrsH. I'll pop in tonight to put a final coat of paint on the welding repairs before moving onto the next section.
Last thing I did was place four clean rags at each corner to check for static LHM leaks. Hopefully they'll still be clean tomorrow!

I'm currently debating whether it is even worth doing the head gasket any more. Any advice? 
Cheers.

Productive few hours in the garage today, although pictures are sporadic.
Prepped the panel for welding in:

Squeeeeeze the pigeon real hard, and eventually stopped blowing holes in the metal.

And ground down.

This has now been primed and Puraflex has been added to the seams.
Decided to puty hand in the way of the hammer, because I'm an idiot.

Whilst this was ongoing, I decided to try and resolve the burning oil issue with some snake oil.
The car had been running fine when in use, but started blowing blue smoke when accelerating the engine. I'm rolling a lot of dice on gummed up piston rings.
Luckily, the internet has given a pretty glowing recommendation to this product:

I spent a few hours searching around the internet, and it seems to be good for solving oil consumption issues. Decided to try a piston soak, using the procedure recommended by Berryman.
Used two bottles, poured them into each spark plug hole, put the plugs back in hand tight and agitated the engine by rotating the crankshaft pulley back and forth every half an hour. Every hour, I took the plugs out and checked the fluid by sucking some out with a syringe.
The fluid was clear when poured in.
This was the best one a couple of hours in - you can see the carbon deposits in the bottom of the syringe.

This was one of the worst ones:

Pure black in there, there was another cylinder like this too.
I used two bottles in total (it eventually drains into the crankcase) and five hours later, all bar one of the piston crowns was dry - a quick blast of compressed air into the spark plug hole freed it up.
The remaining cylinder fluid was pulled out via the syringe, and fired into an old rag, to see how many deposits were in it. This was a 10ml sample.

Whilst this was going on, I moved onto reattaching the VIN plate. Using the original remaining drill hole for one side, I drilled out the other hole and applied zinc primer to the exposed metal.

Once dried, I applied Puraflex to the hole, as well as the rivet itself, and got that properly attached.

With that done, I started looking at the LHM system, which was still untested because of this doozy:

Luckily, these are really simple to change, just prize the clip off, and pop the pipes off.

The pipeline's were heavily perished and cracked everywhere, so this was definitely worth changing.
Onwards then, to the next part - building up the LHM tank. First off, I needed to take the filters out and give them a good clean.

Here's where I made major fuck up of the day.
Notice how similar these two cans are?

...yeah. It took me a couple of seconds to realise the cleaner wasn't just clearing loads of sludge out. Thankfully, using the right can cleaned all the traces of primer out!
The other filter was also removed:

And cleaned.

The tank is now fitted in place but I forgot to get a photo.
Tomorrow, I'll be running the engine for about 15 minutes on idle to cycle the Berryman fluid through the system before carrying out an oil change - hopefully this will be enough to stop the smokescreens when I accelerate.
I'll also look to apply primer to the Puraflex and possibly a coat of paint in the evening, then I'll look to move onto the final section requiring rust repairs.
Cheers!

Fuck it, can't sit around waiting for it to be done.
Welded in another portion of the arch repair.

Ground the welds and applied weld through primer.

Went inside for a bit to celebrate the dog's birthday for a bit - 9 years old today, and still mad as a pair of bollocks.

He enjoyed a large dried sausage and some new toys.
Then went back in the garage to weld another repair panel in:

This was ground back and a coat of zinc primer applied.

And made another panel to be welded in tomorrow at some point, gave it a coat of weld through primer and called it a night.

No point taking any chances, ordered the big one - dry powder is corrosive to metals, and the water/AFFF extinguishers are obviously not much use in the vicinity of electrical bits.
 

FUCK ME.
Barely any photos today, but the first day in nearly a week that I've had a chance to work the BX. 
I made the last of the repair sections for this first stage, and coated them with zinc primer.

Gave the other side a coat too (excuse potato camera)

Then I thought I'd do the small, three holed panel first. This was an absolute pain to do, first the leading edge kept blowing holes in it, then when it came to do the plug welds on the holes, the metal melted through and caused a small fire to the soundproofing behind the dashboard!
Naturally, I panicked and grabbed whatever was closest to me and squeezed hard, 'aiming' it towards the hole with a flame in it.

Which thankfully extinguished the fire. I've pulled out the carpet and had a look as far as I can, and I think I've gotten away with it. 
Made a right mess though.

After that, I decided I was done with the welder for the day so I ground down the welds on that panel and called it a night. Now in bed, googling CO2 extinguishers.

Important things first, the glass was replaced.

Then I spent the night at work on duty.
MrsH messaged me in the morning about the Laguna:

...aaaaand not ninety minutes later, I get a phonecall from MrsH. She's in her work car park, and the Laguna has suddenly transformed into a rally car.

I popped over to swap it for the Rover and took the LOUDEST, most careful 12 mile drive home, getting it straight on the ramps when I got back, and let everything cool down.

A closer look at the cause.

Unfortunately, I didn't get many photos of this, as I was in a hurry to get this done - the Laguna was needed to do the school run in a couple of hours.
Luckily, I already had the replacement pipe in the garage, I just never found the time to replace it as I was focused on the BX. As the Citroen was in the garage on stands, it meant I had to work on the Laguna outside in the pissing rain.
After much swearing and skinned knuckles, the old pipe was out and I could see the cause of the failure was not the item snapping due to corrosion, but the flange welds cracking and eventually failing, allowing the downpipe to slide out of its own flange (oo-er).


As I was in a massive rush, I didn't change the studs over on the exhaust manifold, just wire brushed the threads and copper greased it. The new pipe had been a pain to source but was reasonably priced, although the fitting kit was extra, and also a waste of bloody time.

With more haste than before, I got the new pipe bolted in, the car came off the ramps and I made it just in time for the school run.

I'm going to have to re-visit this one at some point, the manifold to downpipe joint isn't 100% gastight, and the crushable wire style gasket isn't sitting flush. That being said, it's a lot better than it was, and it highlighted issues with the exhaust system closer to the tail pipe.
On the way home, I noticed that the heater temperature control knob wasn't free to rotate like usual, it was sticking in and sprinting back to one position.
Good job I know how to gain access.

Eventually, we found an issue with the heater control cable itself - for some reason, it had developed a kink and was jamming inside the run. Annoyingly I've been unable to resolve this, at this time, so I've disconnected the cable, and left the heater flap in the fully hot position.

Trying to source a new set of heater control cables was a nightmare in itself, but I managed to find a NOS set of cables for a RHD Behr-equipped car in Holland, of all places. Luckily, my brother lives in Holland too, so it's getting delivered to his house for when we get there at the end of the month.
Cheers.

Ah, another day, another set of jobs that have nothing to do with the Citroen.
It started off well, with me finding more holes that need attention:

They're added to the list - joys!
To take my mind off it, I popped down to my local hardware store and bought some fire rope to replace on the woodburner doors. They had compressed horribly over the past year, and rendered the door catch useless. This meant it was burning through the wood even quicker than usual.
This was quite a filthy job in the end, as the original rope was held in place with fire cement, which had to be wirebrushed out using the drill brass brush.  This kicked the dust absolutely everywhere in seconds.

To make matters worse, 2 out of the 8 window retaining fasteners had seized in place, shearing as soon as I applied any torque. This was remedied by drilling out the remaining stub, and welding a new bolt into the door, which worked a treat.
Sadly, the glass has been showing signs of degradation for the past year or so, with plenty of crazing evident, and I must have tightened the lock nut a bit too tight...

Bollocks! MrsH has got the measurements and she'll pop to one of the local woodburner suppliers this week to get a new pane.
Fitting the new rope was easy - it just lay in the groove for the window one, and I laid a bead of fireproof silicone in the groove of the door to help hold it in place - the ends of the rope were also coated in the silicone, to prevent it from fraying further. A little sliver of fireproof silicone was applied to the window crack, not with the intent to use it, but just to keep the kids' prying fingers from picking up a nasty cut whilst a replacement is sourced.
Either way, the hinge pins got a little dab of copper grease and the doors were rehung on the burner - finally, the door catch works properly again! The window rope cost 99p/mtr, the door rope cost £1.40/mtr, much cheaper than online and highlights the merits of the local traders once again.
Anyway, after I butchered that job, it was onto the next one. Daughter's electric trike wasn't charging.

This had a replacement battery last week so we knew that was grand. Eventually tracked the fault to be with the charger itself. Would show 6v output on the multimeter for a few seconds, then would start dwindling down slowly. 
Not fancying buying another charger, I started looking for alternative power sources in the garage. Tried my first stupid idea:

Which reminded me why the battery was removed from the MX5 in the first place - it was almost unable to turn the tiny motor. The 18V Ryobi knockoff was hung in place and immediately discounted as it would be much too quick for my little one without setting up a potentiometer.
Ah well, back to the drawing board with that one.

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.

Minimal pictures today because it was boring work.

I'd pressure washed the underside last night in preparation for rusting and dusting. I'd noticed a few areas requiring treatment.

Took the front wings off as well, so I can inspect and protect the out of sight stuff. Used about a litre and a half of lanoguard on as many surfaces and box sections as I could get access to. There's a crusty bit behind one of the arch liners that is going to require some attention soon.
After that, I noticed the front brakes were quite stiff so I stripped, cleaned and greased them. I think a front brake system replacement is on the cars for it soon.
Refitted the wheels and left it on stands, this should aid the drying process.

In other news, it turns out I may have been seen off at the MOT in November. As it is an import first used between 1/8/92 and 1/8/95, and the emission standards details aren't listed in the handbook, it should have had a non-cat (two gas test), as specified below:

And the Beats failure certificate?

Failed at fast idle, and it failed the retest on lambda too. It shouldn't have had either of those tests carried out.
I'll be mentioning it when it goes back there for the MOT, although it should be okay now it's got the replacement cat fitted.
Cheers.

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)
 
 
 

Early start before work this morning, as I popped into the garage before I set off and laid a coat of primer onto the Puraflex layer - think this was a contributory issue with the Schultz and lanoguard not properly setting last time.
Drove to work with a wonderful sunrise backdrop:

Yes, I still need to wash it, but it has been an absolutely fantastic car over the winter.
When I finished from work, I felt rough as arseholes, so I only popped into the garage to lay down some protective finishes in the OSF arch, courtesy of these two products:

Fertan as a brand is highly rated as a rust converter so I'm hoping the stone chip follows in the same vein.
Masked the important bits:

And cracked on -Fertan on the underside, paint on the inner wing and the arch.


Ended up doing two coats of each. Popped the IR light on to help speed up the curing time between coats, but it'll dry naturally now till tomorrow.

Quiet evening today, I laid down a coat of red primer to all worked-on areas.
Finally had a chance to use the IR heater! Helped dry the primer super quick.

Added a layer of Puraflex on the seams and joins of wherever I was working, and left it to dry overnight.
Working a small job on the sofa tonight - the VIN plate is pretty pitted and grotty, so a bit of time with a spare electric toothbrush and some metal polish might yield some results.

It's not the fastest process, but there is a slight improvement. I'll keep working on it when I'm not in the garage. Still waiting on loads of bits to arrive in the post.

Saturday ended up being a write-off, work was busy and I was up till gone 2am, and back up at 6am, so I was shattered.
Today, I popped out to buy some LHM and some engine oil, and got these hot wheels for the kids:


With that done, it was time to weld the two new patches in.


First one went well, so it was time to line up the big one. Decided to use a self-tapper through the plug weld hole for a bit of assistance.

I got about a third of the way through and naturally, I ran out of gas 🤦‍♂️ luckily, the local hardware shop is open on a Sunday and I bought two bottles for peace of mind. Definitely at the point where buying a big bottle would have made more sense, but oh well.
With the new gas plumbed in, the rest of the patch was done. Forgot to get a photo of before the grinding though.



 
I'm a little unsure about where I would stand MOT wise with this repair - it's been plug welded in the original spot weld positions, but the MOT manual says it needs to be a continuous weld if it's a patch. Can anyone give some advice for that?
After that, I replaced a crumbling tiny bracket on the inner wing edge.



And I repaired the damaged bracket that I jacked on and bent - it transpired it had pulled a couple of spot welds, so I ratchet strapped it to the opposite bracket, straightened it back out with a lump hammer, cleaned up the metal and re-welded the spot welds. It's a lot better than it was.
Thankfully, this brings an end to the welding repairs required in the OSF arch - not much left to go now!
Cheers.

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.

13th - 16th
This period had a bit of a lull for a while for several reasons:
Firstly, the Lanoguard had reacted with the schultz coating and took several days to dry. On the Pureflex, it hadn't dried at all. Lessons have been learned. This pushed back the refitting of the fuel tank by several days.
Secondly, my boy needed a small operation to remove an extra tooth, which required general anaesthetic. Fine in itself, but both parents were required to be in attendance.
Still, I noticed during some lighting tests etc, that the parking brake warning light failed to operate. Switch was checked for correct operation (working) and the plug was checked for voltage - no voltage, which led to the bulb itself being a prime target.

Luckily, I already wanted to take off the steering wheel and surrounding trim to re-fit it more securely to stop the creaking and rattling.

A couple of days later, with the majority of the schultz/Lanoguard blend finally dry, I turned my attention to the fuel tank, which was given a quick brushing to remove all the compacted dirt.

When the tank was removed, the steel fuel supply and return lines that ran under the floorpan had long since been crispy, with one pipe shearing when disturbed! There was no point in replacing it with another steel pipe to corrode in the future, so following on from Phill (twosmoke)'s lead, I ordered some nylon hose with the intention of replacing the entire run with it.
The most awkward part of this job was fitting the 90 degree bends - they required the pipe to be submerged in hot water to soften it, then the strength of a thousand men to get them on!

Once the first 90 degree bends were fitted, the fuel tank was then hung in place, the 10mm floorpan hole drilled out to 12mm, and the vertical pipe heights measured. The tank was then removed and the second set of 90 degree bends was fitted, and the tank reattached to the car.

With that part done, the height corrector rod was lubricated thoroughly and mounted to the floorpan, and eventually to the rear corrector. This was a proper faff as I couldn't remember which orientation that the cockpit height control handle was in - the arrow on the handle pointed in the opposite direction to where I thought it would logically go!

Then it was time to take the lad to hospital, and spotted this impressive bodywork specimen on the way in:

Cheers.

10th - 12th
So, after a little bit more fettling, filing and sanding, the first tacks went down for the first bit of the floorpan.

Can't remember why I took this photo, but the car was a bit of a mess everywhere, with parts surrounding me and getting in the way. Luckily, I had just the thing to keep me motivated!

Eventually, both repair sections of the floorpan went in without any real fuss. A 10mm hole was drilled into the vertical section - this was a mounting bolt hole for the fuel tank. It was 12mm on the original, and would get drilled out to the correct size when the fuel tank is hung in, to ensure it's drilled in the correct place.

With that done, the welds were ground down a tad, the bare metalwork was etch-primed up top, red primed underneath, and a coat of Polyflex was applied on the seams.

Whilst that dried, I jumped onto the patch in the middle of the floorpan.

This then got the same treatment as the other patch repairs - coat of primer, and some Polyflex.
Next up, the welds on the OSR outer sill patch were ground down, a (poor) skim of filler was added, before getting a coat of red primer.

Decided to take a break from metalwork, welding and painting etc, in order to plod on with a new job. One of the biggest bugbears I have with this cart is the total absence of a temperature gauge - Citroen instead opting for a pair of 'too late lights' which typically tell you when the damage has already been done. This wasn't good enough for me, and I wanted a gauge. Various items were sourced from the internet to allow this to happen, coming to a total cost of about £45.
Next dilemma was the mounting location. I looked on the internet for various sources of inspiration, including this solution by one BX owner:

Having the gauge down there was a no-go idea, as I am sure that would clatter my knee every five minutes. I didn't want a gauge sticking out anywhere like an additional appendage, I wanted it to look a bit more discreet. Eventually, I stumbled across this location.

Typically, I guess a tweeter from a higher-spec BX would live in this aperture. I wasn't bothered about that though, so I started measuring the hole I would need to accommodate this, and got chopping:

The angle isn't perfect, but it's subtle, and I can clearly see the centre section of the gauge from my seat  - the needle not being visible will be alarm bells to me when out on a drive! I decided to call it a day on that project to have a think about how and where to power it etc. I gave the welded repair areas a coat of schultz to make it all one colour and not make it stand out like a sore thumb.
After that, I went head-first down this rabbit hole...

Yep, I decided to give the engine a compression test - perfect time to do so as the tank was out, the carb was empty, and there was no way to start it.
Because the internet loves arguing about everything, I ran two sets of tests - first with one spark plug removed at a time, second with all plugs removed.
First plug out, very sooted up. Probably because it was only running in and out of the garage very occasionally. They were all like this.

The results were....erm, okay? The final test revealed one cylinder was a tad low which bumped up with a spoon of oil down the bores. Bit strange that the second test wouldn't get as high as the first, but I've want to try a bit of snake oil first. More on that later.

Then it was time for a monentous occasion - time to apply the lanoguard to the rear end and floorpan! The brake discs were protected, and a tarp laid down, and off I went!

Also sprayed the rear subframe mounting areas, inside the boot rails, and inside the sills.

Whilst that dried, it was time to crack on with the gauge install.

There were two power feeds required - one for the LED backlighting bulb, and one for the gauge itself. I decided to utilise a switched supply from the fusebox - the rear window motors circuit was a perfect fit for this, as I have keep-fit windows in the rear. A piggy-back fuse (popular with dash-cam installs) was used to get a powered fly lead from a switched supply.
Whilst it was routed behind the dashboard, I added an extra line and fed it into the stereo, as it has only ever had a permanent live and so never turned off with the key. Does now though, so that's a nice easy win
Finally, I got the last of the power supply rigged up, demonstrated by the backlight here:

The LED is quite intensely bright - I've already added a couple of layers of masking tape to the LED to dim and yellow it a bit, but I'll need to revisit that at some point, as I imagine it'll be quite distracting at night.
So, onto the engine bay then. I decided to order an in-line sensor mount that fits in the middle of the top radiator hose.

It was properly nerve-wracking to chop the hose in half, particularly because I got the measurement wrong at the first instance! Thankfully, a quick re-think and a second chop saved the day.
I forgot to get more photos of this, but I then fed in the wires from the gauge to the temperature sensor in the engine bay, trying to keep it running with existing looms, utilising an earth lead that was found under the battery tray. With it all wired up, the kettle was boiled and the sensor was plopped into a mug of hot water (it was cold in the garage and the mug had cooled considerably in my transit from the kitchen to garage!):

Now deemed to be working, the sensor was fitted into the pipe adapter, and I called it a night.

That was a busy three days, thankfully the pace of work slowed down a tad after that!

More to follow...

Honestly? No clue - in the three years this has been sat on the driveway, I never actually got on with checking the car over - there's at least one more repair to do, possibly two. Still got about six million mechanical jobs to look at too, which I'm sure will go without a hitch

Typically, I use medium point, non-permanent OHP pens - they're relatively fast-drying, and clean off with water. If I make a mistake, I usually use a cotton bud dipped in water to prevent smudging the rest.

I prefer the medium points (like a felt tip) - any finer and it struggles to lay the ink down properly, plus the thickness of the medium point line gives you a bit of leeway for the thickness of the angle grinder disc
 
  
Honestly, that Tetrosyl is worth firing straight into the bin if you've not kept the receipt. Absolute garbage stuff. Got a brand new tube with the receipt here that I'll be taking back and swapping for more stone chip

So, the following afternoon, I cracked on with making the fuel capsule bracket.



It didn't come out too badly, and it turned out to be all for nothing. One of the tangs on the fuel capsule had snapped, and a replacement item was £24.
Weighing up the options of whether I even wanted/needed to re-introduce a moisture and dirt trap against the inner arch, I elected to remove the capsule entirely and connect the line into the fuel filler neck directly. There's no one way valve fitted now, but the pros outweigh the cons in this regard.
Instead, I opened the LHM depressurisation screw, jacked up the OSR arm and worked on the OSR unit replacement.

Aaand immediately shitcanned it as the supply pipeline union was heavily rounded off. Without a replacement supply pipe, there is no way in hell that I'm chopping into pipework. 
Oddly, I'm not sure where the leak is - it's not flowing out of the boot and there's a pool of LHM at the bottom of the 'cup' the unit sits in. Could possibly be an LHM sphere seal that's gone bad. 
With that work on hiatus, I went with an LHM pump change - the old one was functional, but the pulley had some distortion and the wobble was hilarious.
Alternator was removed for access.


With no further welding repairs required at the rear end, it was time to start seam sealing.
Initially, I went with Tetrosyl rubberised seam sealer in a mastic gun, then Tetrosyl brushable seam sealer.
This was a total disaster as despite giving them at least 24 hours between applications, it cracked in several places when I checked on it a couple of days later. Reading a few forums etc kept pointing to using a PU adhesive as a seam sealer and recommended Pureaflex40, which was less than £8 a tube from Toolstation.
Fuck it, let's find out.

Buuuuut on the way out, I remembered it IS an adhesive, and one of the rubber trim bits has been flapping for many years.
In for a penny.


Now that's clamped and secured (it did stay out when I removed the clamp!), it was time to give the affected areas a couple of coats of red oxide primer.


Stone chip hopefully going on tonight.

Had a couple of hours in the garage, so I cracked on and welded in the sill end repair panel - I'll be bloody glad to get to weld somewhere else with access, that hub and swing arm proved my downfall on the tighter sections again.

I've got an entire afternoon/evening in the garage tomorrow, so I made a head start with the next part - this bracket holds the fuel capsule to the inner arch. 
Annoyingly, the actual bracket had gone missing from the workbench which was not ideal, but luckily I had penned the outline of what remained on a scrap bit of metal when I took it off:

Using that as a template, I took a fresh set of measurements off and sketched a fresh template:

Which I then carefully drew back onto a clean bit of metal.

That'll do for today - I'll cut it out, mark the position on the inner arch and weld it in tomorrow, and that'll bring the welding repairs to the OSR arch to a close.
Still need to find the metal bung on the sill end panel, but having it open will allow me to protect the inner skin of the sill in the meantime.
Cheers 😁

As we had a day of good weather, the cover came off the Beat, the MX5 was opened up and both cars run up to temperature and dried out. Despite a few teething problems fitting the cover initially, the Beat has stayed clean and dry which is a relief, given the torrential rain that has tormented us at times!

The sill end repair panel had been expertly lipped by my friend, who had shown me the various metalwork tools used to achieve a correct result. With that done, I measured the opening, completed the vertical lip fold and started shaping and trimming the panel for fitment. The sequence of photos shows the process of fitting it in, working out the shit bits to re-bend, and what needed chopping out.
 
 
The intention is for the panel to sit behind the existing panel. Whilst cleaning up the existing metalwork for welding, a cheeky glint of light caught my eye.

Bugger. Using lessons learned from watching my mate work the other patch, I measured and made a panel that would replace the grotty bits within the area in one hit.
 
Measured twice and cut once, before clamping it into place:
 
(The grot to the front of the patch is just staining - the inside and outside of the area is fine.) The welder was then fired up and for the first time in ages, I actually had room to wave the torch AND see at the same time - pure luxury!

Finally, the panel was clamped in place, just to check the final fitment.

Hoping to get into the garage tomorrow and clean the surrounding metalwork and get it welded in - doing so would give me just one more bracket to make and weld in within the area, which means I could finally look to flatting all the welds down and seam seal/prime/paint/rustproof the rear end and finally move forward of the axle!
In terms of the cars actually on the road - the Rover has been an excellent winter daily driver, apart from needing a throat clearing in minus temperatures, and the washer jets being awful again. Herman was called into use after a medical episode meant MrsH's Laguna is at work for a couple of days. Typically, the first time I used the washers on Herman, the pipe popped off and the bonnet gets a little river instead - another job to be sorted out dreckly!
Oh, and the Rover is in desperate need of a wash.

Cheers for reading!

Well, there's been a lot of moving parts to the last fortnight, so I'll try and do it in order.
First things first, we got invited to a neighbours house for a Twelfth Night celebration. Whilst in the stone circle for the beginning ceremony, I spotted something next to the river bed:

This will get cleaned up and hung in my boy's bedroom - he's called Austin. I also got made King for the evening, which was hilarious, particularly when I didn't make MrsH Queen

Anyway, fun stuff aside, the patch got welded in. Lack of access was once again proving to be a hindrance, thanks to the wheel hub receding into the wheelwell, and the rear arch 'spat' reducing access even further. However, it survived being smacked about with a hammer, and seam sealer will have it looking pretty.
 
Feeling a bit deflated with how bloody awful the last few repairs had gone, it was time to move lower down, onto the sill end. The 50mm metal bung was split with corrosion so that will need replacement. The metalwork was then cut back to solid metal.
 
The area was cleaned up with an air file, and I quickly remembered the old adage 'buy cheap, pay twice'. This time with the sanding belts. The 'cheap' eBay ones were quickly refunded and another set of Cubitron belts were ordered - these are excellent belts and highly recommended.
 
In the meantime, I made a rough template of the repair patch, added 20mm around the edge for the lip and dropped it with a mate who offered to show me the correct way to bend a 90 degree lip into a curve.

This process involved getting some wooden 'formers' made up, which would take a bit of time in between jobs, so it was onto the next job.
Remember this bracket?

Good news! It was listed very cheaply on Chevronics!

Bad news - they were out of stock. Guess I'd better have a go at making my own then.

Using the image from the website, the other bracket and a bit of guesswork, and I had a rough outline. With the donor structure flattened, you can see there wasn't much left to go on!
 
Eventually, once I'd worked out the correct sequence of folds to ensure they could all be achieved, and using an impact socket as a former to give some strength to the corners, a bracket was made!
 
With the pigeon fed extra helpings and squeezed hard enough, the bracket was eventually welded into the correct position.
 
Part 2 to follow.

Bit more work done today. Welded the smal patch panel on the inside of the inner arch. Chopped out another grotty bit of the inner arch, and re-thought the repair.  Also chopped off the bent portion of the previous repair section as it was now surplus to requirements.

Once on the bench, it was clearly thin in several parts, so the right call to cut the whole section out.


So, onto making a new panel.

Never tried before, but a bit of twatting about with hammers allowed me to match the profile of the 'hump' at the bottom.

Eventually, the edges were joggled and everything looks to match up nicely.

Sadly, a persistent headache curtailed any further work today, so tomorrow will hopefully be spent prepping the arch for welding it in properly.