wuvvum

You've done bloody well there.

As alluded to a couple of pages back I have finally got the new offside front strut fitted to the Z4, and I'm pleased to report that it's transformed the way the car drives - even the knocking that I had thought was a knackered balljoint has gone. I've got it booked in tomorrow to have the tracking done and it should then hopefully drive as well as a 20-year-old 192k-mile car can be expected to. Then I just need to sort out its other issues - the sticky steering, the battery drain and the engine misfire when cold / throwing a wobbly if I try to take it over 4,000rpm. I was intending to attempt to diagnose the latter two issues this weekend, but predictably when I tried to do so the car behaved perfectly. I thought I was onto something with the battery drain as the multimeter was initially showing just over 1.2 amps with everything switched off, but after 10 minutes or so that had gone down to about 80mA, and that was the same each time I tried it. It's now gone three days without flattening its battery, and that's with the smaller battery off the Zafira on there. I also plugged in the laptop and took the car for a thrash up the coast road to see if I could get a fault code when the engine threw its usual wobbly, but instead it revved happily to 5,000rpm and beyond and didn't even put the engine light on. I'm pretty sure it has a vacuum leak though as there is an audible hiss at idle, which gets much louder if I give the throttle a sudden blip, after which the engine will misfire for a few seconds. It's going to be a two-man job to track the leak down though, so I'll run the car up to my mate's at the weekend and get him to listen while I blip or vice versa. The Lexmoto also threw a bit of a wobbly on Sunday - I fired it up and it ran fine for a bit then cut out, and I noticed petrol pissing out of the carb overflow. So it looks like that has a stuck float - I've taken the carb off and I'm going to take it to bits one of these evenings and see what's what. The rest of the fleet has been behaving remarkably well. I took the Mobylette for its first ride of the year on Sunday, and other than taking a bit longer than usual to start from cold and being a bit spluttery for the first mile or so, it ran surprisingly well - in fact I ended up taking it for the longest ride I've been on since I got it back on the road, and it didn't conk out once, although it still has a major flat spot on part throttle when it's warm so that will still need investigating at some point - not hugely urgent though given that most of the roads round here are NSL so the bike spends most of its time flat out. The Renault 6 ran fine as it always does (although it's definitely getting more tappety, I really need to do the valve clearances this year), but what I am pleased about is that my brake repair from last year is holding up fine - I did a couple of fairly heavy stops and the brakes didn't stick on at all. The bungee cord holding the bonnet closed also seems to be doing the trick, for now. The Volvo also ran great, managing an uphill overtake of a dawdling giffer in an X-Trail (it's not a sporting engine by any means but it still sounds nice when given some beans), the temperature gauge held steady at just below half and it didn't seem to lose any coolant. I do need to sort the brakes out this year though, they're OK but the offside rear still isn't doing much so it does still pull to the left noticeably under heavy braking. The Visa's brake pedal has gone a bit softer again but it's still much better than it was previously. On Saturday I swapped the wheels front to rear (when I got the car the rears were the correct 155/65x13, the fronts were oversized and rather worn 165/70x13). It's made a noticeable improvement to the steering - it's lighter at parking speeds and weighs up less in faster corners. It does look a bit odd with the fatter tyres on the back, but the spare wheel has a nearly new correctly-sized tyre, so I only need to find one more to have a complete set. To do that I need to find a tyre place that can balance centreless wheels...

Inner tubes?

Given that some people still seem to think that historic vehicle exemption is at 25 years, I'm going to say it'll be a while yet.

I forgot myself, but then I was out early this morning and saw a TR6, MGB GT and Acadiane in quick succession so realised something must be afoot.

Today was Drive It Day. So I drove it.

I'm not sure that I'd trust anything from a place that has nine consonants and no vowels in its name.

Indeed.

Well that was a more than averagely productive lunch break.

I wonder if he'd deliver? I've always wanted to see a Transit do a wheelie.

Bloody hell, and there's me thinking I'd never be able to afford another DS!

@LightBulbFun How difficult do you reckon this would be to get off the Q plate? Not that a Q particularly bothers me in itself at this price, but it's one of the exclusions on my insurance policy.

You are the eBay AI engine AICMFP.

It doesn't matter how shit it looks, you are still legally required to tag @eddyramrod.

Now that it's properly spring I thought it was time to dig the Renault 6 out of the garage. It always needs a jump start after it's been sat for a while, and I cleverly* hadn't left any room to get to the bonnet when I put it away - I remember thinking at the time "that's going to be a problem - oh well, fuck it, I'll worry about it in the spring". Well the good news is that my brake repair last year seems to have held as the brakes were still free, and thanks to the new tyre on the nearside front all the tyres were fully inflated. So all I needed to do was climb in through the tailgate, knock it out of gear, climb back out again, grab hold of the back bumper and pull, and out it came. The Rover 75 and a pair of jump leads soon got it running, and I took it for a quick run round the block and was reminded of the issues that had cropped up shortly before it went into hibernation and that I hadn't had a chance to look at properly. So that was the first task for today once I finally got my arse in gear. The first issue is that the bonnet latch isn't locking the bonnet. I couldn't immediately find what was causing this, but removing the latch soon revealed the problem - the mechanism is made of plastic (yes, really) and after 51 years one of the bits had decided it had had enough and snapped off. So that's irreparable then. Of course bonnet latches for Renault 6s are completely unobtainium, but a Google session suggested that the Renault 12 latch is similar - or at least the plastic bits are - and those are available (albeit at some expense), so I'm going to order one - worst case I can butcher it for its plastic bits and make one good one out of the two. For now I've put a Bungee strap on to stop the bonnet flipping up - it's a forward opening bonnet so in theory shouldn't be an issue but aerodynamics can do strange things. The other two were easier fixes. The nearside rear indicator was behaving funny when the lights were turned on - this turned out to be a cock up on my part, when I refitted the light unit after the car was hit last year I put the earth wire behind the clamp instead of between the clamp and the nut, so it was flapping around and barely making contact. The other problem was that the choke wasn't returning properly when the knob was pushed in - this was a slightly stranger one as it transpired that the clamp that holds the end of the cable had come off the carb - I certainly don't remember doing this (and I would have remembered as it was a fiddly bastard) so can only assume that the bolt had vibrated loose and fallen out. One of the three screws holding the end plate on the carb had also vanished, but I found suitable replacements for both in my stash so that's all sorted. I then chucked a bucket of water over it to get the garage grime off - next job is to make a template up for the repair section I'm going to need to make for the nearside front floor, but I didn't get time for that this weekend. Most of the rest of the weekend was spent playing with pushbikes. I did get the Mobylette fired up - it took a few more kicks than last year but still not bad for an elderly two-stroke engine that's been sat for six months - but I didn't get a chance to take it for a spin as I'd been hoping to do, and the forecast looks shite for this coming week so that might have to wait a little while.

My wipers don't quite park at the bottom either. When you switch them off they go to the bottom of their travel and then come fractionally back up before stopping - don't know if yours is doing the same?

Yep, mine does the sticky steering thing as well, seems to be a common thing as they age. I've been reading up on it and it sounds like it's one of those things that should be a 5-minute fix but actually takes half a day because BMW made everything completely inaccessible. Only the Z4Ms have hydraulic steering and thus escape the issue, but they're slightly* more expensive.

1.3 GL is a nice spec - a mate had one about 20 years ago, in navy blue with a red interior. My last Mk2 was a red R-reg 1.6 Ghia - lovely car until I melted a piston cruising at 100mph on a private section of the A47. I swapped it for a Vanden Plas Allegro - with hindsight not one of my smartest financial moves.

Welding schmelding. MOT exempt innit - get it running and drive it as it is. You won't even need to worry about the brakes - just stick a foot through the floor and stop it that way. That must be one of the last of those with 10" wheels - my B-plater was on 12", which made tyres easier to find. Mind you I'm sure you could borrow* a couple off the Invacar if need be.

Coming home from the office this evening, get to the first roundabout and have to stop as there is a Citybug being driven rather enthusiastically round it. Had a better look as it zoomed past and it was my old 107! Always nice to see my exes out and about.

Ah yes, Byker. There is a grove there, if memory serves.

@purplebargeken Didn't know you had a T4! Must have missed that one.

Ty DeLorean is back at it...

"There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."