Had a bit of a frustrating weekend on the fettling front, in that I spent a lot of time doing work on the cars but don't seem to have actually achieved much.
The first job of the weekend was to see if I could get the Rover's electric windows working properly. I'd ascertained that the switch pack in the driver's door and its multiplug were fine, so the next stop was the multiplug in the driver's door shut. The helpful chaps on the Rover 75 forum had given me details of which wires do what, so I set out full of optimism that I might finally get the problem sorted. Except that you can't actually access the multiplug because the door is in the way. I'd assumed you could get to it from inside the inner wing, but once I'd finally got the various rusty Philips screws holding the arch liner in place to come undone and pulled out the soundproofing, it became apparent that you can't access it from inside the inner wing at all.
You also can't really access it from behind the dash - there's a hole that I can put half my hand through and I can touch the plug with the tips of my fingers, but there's no way I can get it unclipped even if I could see how the clips work (which I can't), and even if I did somehow manage to unclip it there's no way I'd get it back together again. The only way to get at the plug properly, as far as I can see, is to take the door off, and that ain't happening. So I still have non-working windows.
I finished cleaning out the carbs off the 164, put them all back together with new diaphragms and gaskets, and this afternoon I refitted them to the car. Put everything back together, ran the jump leads across from the Mazda, turned the key and... it's still running like a bag of shit. (It wouldn't fire at all to begin with, but that was because the dipstick had spun round and was shorting out against the LT wire to the distributor.) So I think it must be ignition related - there's plenty of fuel getting through and the carbs all looked OK (they're Stromberg 175s so a fairly simple unit). Problem is I'm not very good at diagnosing ignition-related faults, and I can't afford to start playing parts darts, especially with the price of old Volvo bits. So I'm not sure where to go next.
I jacked the front of the Renault 6 up and took off the driver's side front wheel to see if I could get any grease into the brake caliper sliders in an attempt to stop the brake sticking on. That turned out to be a non-starter as there was no gap anywhere to get the grease in between the moving parts. They're a very odd design of caliper - the sliders aren't the usual pins, they're a sort of rail which is sandwiched between the two halves of the caliper and the whole thing is held together with clips and split pins. Anyway, while I was in there I noticed that the pads are getting pretty low (the brake must have been sticking more than I thought as last time I checked there was loads of meat on the pads and the car hasn't done that many miles since then) so I'm going to have to change those, which is going to be fun - the HBOL says that the pins holding the caliper together need to be renewed every time it's taken apart, but I haven't found a source for new ones so they're going to end up getting reused I think.
I started to take the EGR pipework off the Doblo to see if I could clean the valve out (I've been driving around with it unplugged for the last few days which has cured the stuttering but has brought the EML on) - the pipe from valve to inlet manifold came off easily enough but the Allen bolts that hold the pipe from the exhaust on to the valve assembly are a right twat to get at and I couldn't undo them with the tools I had available. So I've ordered a blanking plate off eBay and I'm just going to blank it off. Stupid bloody things anyway.
I made some progress with the 107, but not as much as I'd hoped. I ran it up to my mate's yesterday evening and we got the bit of welding done that it failed on, and we also made a brake pipe up for it. I'd been hoping to get the pipe fitted today, but the bleed nipple on the rear drum sheared off so I now need to buy a new wheel cylinder before I can go any further (I could have fitted the pipe I suppose but without the ability to bleed it I ran the risk of leaving the car with no brakes). This is annoying as it'll be the first actual expenditure on the car - everything else I've done to it so far has been done with bits I already had lying around. I also discovered that the union where the original brake pipe joins to the flexi is essentially a blob of rust and has no chance of coming undone via conventional means, so I'm going to have to cut through the pipe and hammer a socket onto it, which is an added complication. The front union cracked off easily enough though, which is a relief. I've made a temporary plug for the front pipe to try and stop all the fluid draining out of the master cylinder while I piss about trying to get the rear union off - I took a spare male union and trowelled it full of JB Weld. Hopefully that'll do the trick.
Anyway after the bleed nipple broke off I pretty much gave up on fixing anything else, so I cleared out the Laguna ready for its lucky* new owner to collect it next weekend. The other job that had been on the list was to do an oil change on the XF, but the filter I ordered hadn't turned up so that's going to have to wait as well.
