Eddie Honda

He's even got the awning up! 

Did ye, aye?

Wait for it...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
HONDA JAZZ obviously. (Just give those i-Shit ones a swerve)

@Eddie Honda

Haven't seen that in a while! Here's E Honda having a go:
 
Hope the Carina is what you need - what was up with the other one? 

I'm blaming @wuvvum for this one.
Before I went on holiday last month I found myself obtaining insurance quotes and purchasing advance, one-way rail tickets, which can mean only one thing - a collection mission was being planned. Last night the time finally came around to undertake the deed.
Entertainment was assembled:

A taxi was hailed:

Thanks to Miss SL for the lift to the station.
Old-ish cars were seen:

Titty duck leads the way. Her name would be clear when seen from the front.

A train was caught:

Read about the quality motors available in August 1996:

 


Descended into the underworld for the next leg, Liverpool Street to Bank:

Then the comedically simple Waterloo and City Line:

Spent some time messily eating a burrito, wondering why this AA ad portrays the trashing of what appears to be an LS400:

 

 

 

Then the final leg of our southbound journey, Waterloo platform 12 and a late commuter train:

More to follow.....

Just thought I'd pop in and add a little update to this. I have loose involvement in this with it being a friend's car belonging to Tommy.
After a seized front alternator bearing, subsequent bursting of a heater pipe put it out of action for a while and 3 MOT passes later, rust has finally caught up with it.
Nearside front floor / jacking point / inner sill:

Offside front floor / jacking point / inner sill:

 
Going to have a think about it, but will probably fire the welder up.

Just thought I'd pop in and add a little update to this. I have loose involvement in this with it being a friend's car belonging to Tommy.
After a seized front alternator bearing, subsequent bursting of a heater pipe put it out of action for a while and 3 MOT passes later, rust has finally caught up with it.
Nearside front floor / jacking point / inner sill:

Offside front floor / jacking point / inner sill:

 
Going to have a think about it, but will probably fire the welder up.

Just thought I'd pop in and add a little update to this. I have loose involvement in this with it being a friend's car belonging to Tommy.
After a seized front alternator bearing, subsequent bursting of a heater pipe put it out of action for a while and 3 MOT passes later, rust has finally caught up with it.
Nearside front floor / jacking point / inner sill:

Offside front floor / jacking point / inner sill:

 
Going to have a think about it, but will probably fire the welder up.

Just thought I'd pop in and add a little update to this. I have loose involvement in this with it being a friend's car belonging to Tommy.
After a seized front alternator bearing, subsequent bursting of a heater pipe put it out of action for a while and 3 MOT passes later, rust has finally caught up with it.
Nearside front floor / jacking point / inner sill:

Offside front floor / jacking point / inner sill:

 
Going to have a think about it, but will probably fire the welder up.

Just thought I'd pop in and add a little update to this. I have loose involvement in this with it being a friend's car belonging to Tommy.
After a seized front alternator bearing, subsequent bursting of a heater pipe put it out of action for a while and 3 MOT passes later, rust has finally caught up with it.
Nearside front floor / jacking point / inner sill:

Offside front floor / jacking point / inner sill:

 
Going to have a think about it, but will probably fire the welder up.

Just thought I'd pop in and add a little update to this. I have loose involvement in this with it being a friend's car belonging to Tommy.
After a seized front alternator bearing, subsequent bursting of a heater pipe put it out of action for a while and 3 MOT passes later, rust has finally caught up with it.
Nearside front floor / jacking point / inner sill:

Offside front floor / jacking point / inner sill:

 
Going to have a think about it, but will probably fire the welder up.

Call me picky, but the bottom inside corner of the letter V isn't curved the same and the Griffin roundel looks smaller.

I've taken a closer look at those plugs...
 

pluggap by E Honda, on Flickr
 
Yep, the gaps are huuuuge.

New van is fucking huge. I don't even entertain the idea of parking it on my street, it lives round the corner...

New job seems less inclined toward keeping me out for 12hrs a day, so may actually be able to fix cars during the week again!

I'd been pondering the concept of taking the Dolly to @320touring's unit and getting the doors hung and other multi-person jobs out the way after work today. Arrived home and gave the car a once over and decided against it.
Too much stuff that might catch an observant copper's eye and bring problems...
Firstly the lights. The headlights weren't working at all, indicators wouldn't flash, braking turned one of the rear lights off rather than illuminate the second fillament.
Cleaning connectors, clamping loose spade connectors tight with a spanner and assaulting various earthing points with sandpaper yielded the following:
Sidelights aren't working, but they're on the same connector as the sidelights so either there are no bulbs in them, they're both blown or they're supposed to earth locally and aren't. All are equally as possible. Headlights come on in the sidelight position, the car has always done this, no idea why.
O/S headlight seems to be missing high beam, or is always on high beam, not sure which. Only the N/S works operating the "flash" function on the stalk, but I'm not sure if the flash illuminates the dipped or high beam! I'm guessing high beam, which would suggest the O/S bulb has blown it's high beam filament.
At the rear everything is now working except the reverse lights. The bulbs look ok so may be the switch itself. The rear light turning off under braking was because it was wired backwards.
I looked at rigging up a sole numberplate light temporarily until the bumper gets refitted but the socket was in such poor condition the bulb snapped in half before it came out. I managed to tug it loose with pliers in the end. I couldn't be arsed taking the other light out the bumper to salvage another bulb.
The bonnet jamming shut seems to be that the release cable sheathing has popped out of it's retainer. Having looked at a few pictures of how it's supposed to look I should be able to sort that out.
I also took the redundant exhaust hanger (or it's remains) off the end of the tailpipe.

Both my Dolomites featured these odd superfluous mounts hung off the bumper bolts. For the 1300 it kind of makes sense, as the rear of the exhaust is just some welded on pipe and is probably heavier than stock, but it's been perished to the point of uselessness for years, so away it went.

Then I threw some water at it, as it was dusty as fuck, and called it a day as it was getting dark.


I don't think it's too obvious these cars all belong to one household...

I've been using the 205 for my commute and have covered 600 miles so far and apart from being a little noisy it is a very nice place to be. Last visit this was replaced

But this turned out to be VERY soft so I ordered the correct bush and got to work fitting it. Bushes can be pushed it using a vice but this bracket has a driveshaft running through it. No problem...


The free range vice came in very handy.
I still have one lower bush to change but ran out of time today.
 

When I got the C1 off @davehedgehog31 he said that a wheel bearing was starting to make noise. It has taken about 6 months of use to get to the point of being bad enough to need changing. That was yesterday's job.
Car in and on the ramp and jacked up.

Disconnect enough stuff to get the hub off.

Spend far too long pressing the old bearing out, realising that you need to cut some metal to prop the hub up high enough, realise that the little 6 ton press is not strong enough to get the bearing moving, regret not spending more and buying a better one, get some hammers, put the hub in a vice and batter fuck out of it, put it back in the press and eventually get it to move.

Old one out, new one in, race cut off the hub flange and that all back together. Think of a way of lowering the lower are to get the ball joint back together.

A scissor jack works perfectly. 
Get it all bolted back together.

Disc and caliper back on, wheel on and done.
In short, either buy the best tools you can when you can or pay a man. 
I may* have exceeded the book time slightly!

Must have been first in line. Not too shabby.
Less advisories than last year, despite my attending to none of them. 👌

There is actually somebody on the Acclaim page on Facebook doing his own mad weldathon, although he managed to get hold of a couple of hen's teeth NOS panels...



Certainly a new phenomenon, nobody was welding up Acclaims 5 years ago. Then again, they're worth twice as much now, so it makes sense...
I'm continuing to hoover up bits that crop up. On Saturday this arrived:

NOS wing for the NS. Bit of surface rust where the coating has scuffed off in storage but the one on the car is a patchwork quilt that's rotten on the inside... I still need a bumper as my rear one is hopes and dreams (and fibreglass), but they're scarce.

"I just need to fuck about with the handbrake before the MOT, I'll find time".
I didn't find time.
Hence being out at 8pm after work in the rain the day before the cunt has to be dropped off.

To adjust the shoes you need to pull the hub off, a design I hate. On the Dolly you can adjust the handbrake and wheel cylinder without taking the drum off, and the drum comes off separately to the hub. A billion times easier...

This toothed adjuster is what I was hunting for. In theory it should auto-adjust. It doesn't.

In fact when the handbrake lever was pulled the whole mechanism would move in/out with a loud clang. Getting the handbrake between "barely engaged at max pull" and "wheel locked sold when handbrake is off" was impossible. Something generally seemed fucky, to use the technical term, and without pulling the functional example on the other side apart I couldn't work out exactly what was wrong. So I chucked it all back together and wound up the cables a bit.
The shoes were also scored and oddly crumbly.

However brake shoes is not a job for the dark and wet, when springs vanishing into the void is highly likely. So I packed up and went inside. Winter MOTs are the fucking pits.
Acclaim promptly dumped at the MOT station, it shall be tested tomorrow. I suspect a fail on handbrake, although it does mostly hold on the driver's side wheel alone. Suspected other issues are the front tyres and indicator flash speed. Place yer bets.
 
In Volvo news fuck all has happened except a tree threw itself at it and a bird took a massive shite on it.

Ah, but you forget this is AutoShite and "sections" don't happen because a vocal minority have a massive bellyache if anything is changed/moved/created. You'll still get the question asked so many times anyway as it's the law and usually starting with the statements "I've looked but..." or "I know it's been asked before, but..."
 
I agree it's good idea, but really? Have you thought it through? Think of the consequences man!

Needs an alarm. Like Landies, they seem to get twoc'd
 

T'was dry on Sunday.

Had a new thermostat to go in. Obviously it didn't match the original, but it was the same diameter so in it went.

Obviously the nuts came off pre-torqued for convenience...

Obviously my fucking socket looked like this:

Fitted.

Minted.

Went to the powerwash and some fuck nugget spent 15mins blasting the ever loving fuck out of his push bike. Then the machine wouldn't take a £2 coin so I had to do the whole car in 6mins...

then got stuck behind another cyclist doing 6mph along Great Western Road. 
then it got cold

Jesus man, you're nearly tight enough to be Scottish!🤣