Supernaut

Just been taken out for a spin in this. 

Fucking gorgeous interior. 

Mate has paid £2.5k for it which seems fair.
The electrics survived the drive to the pub. 

Battery charger and battery arrived.

Battery duly inserted in the hole, lubricated the mounting bolts and put the thing on charge because it's spent a lot of time in the box. 

Connected up, the dash provides a litany of faults. It all seems to work though. Climate control screen is half working, but the segments that are broken only show up at a temperature not normally set so that's good. 

Sunroof and windows all work, which is surprising.  Someone's been in there before, it's all nicely greased up.

Most of the other electrical things also work. Oddly this car has side repeater indicator lights, rear fog lights and the dash says BOOT OPEN when you pop the trunk. 
Driver's side seat has two movements that don't work, the front of the seat just whirs and doesn't move up or down, and the headrest just goes click. 
Radio also needs investigation.
 
Overall quite surprising how much of it still works. 
 
Phil

Oh, come on!
You know it makes sense.
It also needs an absolutely filthy lumpy cam, with a hidden but very free flowing exhaust system.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/356221943551811/
£1,295

https://www.facebook.com/groups/UKBarnFinds/permalink/2153964704960979/
 
Bring a wheel., and a shovel 

"I'm ready for my oil change now..."

I thought about cropping out the wheelie bin, but this is Autoshite!

That's what we want to see!
It was only showing the first block on the temperature gauge before.
The car came with fuck all service history, so it's a bit of timing belt roulette. The mileage suggests it's about 40% through its second belt. I had a look under the timing belt cover. It's rubbery and belty, with no cracks or signs of perishing. It can stay.
I just put some fresh 5w30 fully synth in it too, plus an air filter. The new oil filter I got was 10mm too narrow! The filter on there seemed fairly recent and in good condition. Good enough for the girls we date, as Derek says.
The air filter I took out wasn't even too bad, but I had a new one anyway.

It then got the obligatory Opie Oils strong as fuck air freshener hung from the mirror.
 
I should really get hold of a drill brush and give the seats a good going over.
Perhaps I should investigate the light rattle from the front suspension too. Sounds like a drop link. One of those rattles you only hear but can't feel.

That was about a medium amount of fuckery to do. Did some small plastic clips that hold hoses get launched into orbit? Maybe.
Did I pummel the plastic slam panel with my magnetic torch because seemingly the entire engine bay is plastic so I couldn't get the torch to stay anywhere? Once or twice.
I still need to pour some coolant in there, but it's lunchtime.
The thermostat housing even has a wee cap like a tyre valve on the side. I assume for bleeding the coolant through. Very thoughtful of them.

"I'm ready for my oil change now..."

I thought about cropping out the wheelie bin, but this is Autoshite!

Sorted. A folded up bit of paper on top of the battery to press it down more has worked 😂

"I'm ready for my oil change now..."

I thought about cropping out the wheelie bin, but this is Autoshite!

That's what we want to see!
It was only showing the first block on the temperature gauge before.
The car came with fuck all service history, so it's a bit of timing belt roulette. The mileage suggests it's about 40% through its second belt. I had a look under the timing belt cover. It's rubbery and belty, with no cracks or signs of perishing. It can stay.
I just put some fresh 5w30 fully synth in it too, plus an air filter. The new oil filter I got was 10mm too narrow! The filter on there seemed fairly recent and in good condition. Good enough for the girls we date, as Derek says.
The air filter I took out wasn't even too bad, but I had a new one anyway.

It then got the obligatory Opie Oils strong as fuck air freshener hung from the mirror.
 
I should really get hold of a drill brush and give the seats a good going over.
Perhaps I should investigate the light rattle from the front suspension too. Sounds like a drop link. One of those rattles you only hear but can't feel.

Snortmaster

Sneezemaster

Fartmaster

Routehalitosis

Morning After Master

Raymond Revuemaster

Dancing on Ice Master

Strictly Bus Dancing

Ringmasters

I think I'll go now...  sorry

Spacemaster



Seamaster

Skymaster

Sailmaster

Fieldmaster

Monoroute

Shortmaster

Flatmaster

Railmaster

Driftmaster

Lowmaster

Discomaster

Schoolmaster

Restmaster

Routemaffia

Routemallard

Routemaster of Death, the Destroyer of Worlds


Arrival of the Divine Routemaster

 

It's not much of an achievement for it to be better looking than the 407 coupe and its basking shark mouth.
The 406 coupe, though? Still perfect.

"I'm ready for my oil change now..."

I thought about cropping out the wheelie bin, but this is Autoshite!

Cannae call it a wheelie bin as it's had welding so not mainly plastic on the sills noo😂
 
Looking well!

No.
 
I'm calling it.
Jake is actually a joke account trying to wind us up.

"I'm ready for my oil change now..."

I thought about cropping out the wheelie bin, but this is Autoshite!

Lost my job after a month, and only 2 days in the field, as I'm 'not a good fit'. I know there's more to it, I've done fuck all wrong and just been shit on so they could give an excuse to fire me.

Better get the Civic running, then.

"I'm ready for my oil change now..."

I thought about cropping out the wheelie bin, but this is Autoshite!

Marketing always wins. You only have to look at any VW Golf to realise that.
 
Have we had the Ford Ka, yet?
Horrific things. Badly made, rattly shit heaps with a terrible interior and an engine that seemed to be from the 1930s.  It's as if someone had a bet at Ford that they could create a smaller version of the truly awful Escort of that era, yet somehow do the seemingly impossible and actually make it worse. If ever a car was built down to a price, rather than up to any standard at all , it was the Ka.
Pile (of shit) it high, sell them cheap.

Humber but with 2.3 Ford diesel and Rolls radiator.  There’s a lot of conflict here, but I think the car lost 🙁

 
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/176336575992?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=NYO75BuwR0i&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=y9xs1hiVQ9O&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

A pogweasel yellow polo with the asthmatic 1.4 that VW seemed to make forever?
That looks utterly grim. Top work.

Been a lot of hits and misses this weekend.
First up, trying to torque the camshaft cap studs was a pain, 15nm was simply not happening, even with the two nuts tight against each other, it was still turning down the shaft when close to 15nm. Tried adding a third nut to see if that would help matters, but ended up stripping the threads on the nut.
In the end, I went for 10nm. It'll be fine, I hope. Fitted the cam, and new front cam seal before I torqued down the caps (minus one nut).

Then it came to the camshaft pulley. Following the torque figure, I didn't even get close to the Haynes figure before disaster struck.


That was....not ideal. I messaged Phill on a blind panic asking for advice, and he suggested drilling a 3mm hole in the bolt shank and hammering a torx socket into the hole to extract it. There were almost tears of joy when this came out.

Then joy turned into anger when I decided to check the figures in my Autodata technical data book.
Haynes (stated 80nm) for the sprocket bolt.

Autodata?

So the bolt failure was caused by a massive overtorque. Arse biscuits.
To try and take my mind off it, I tackled some of the minor jobs, first job was removing and re-sealing the body seams around the bootlid hinge. Forgot to get any photos, but I scraped the old, dry seam sealer with a plastic scraper, masked the area off with tape and applied a healthy layer or Pureaflex40 to the joins.
Whilst I was in the area, I managed to push the split section of the wiring rubber grommet into the hole, so it'll be a much better seal than the empty space that was there before!
I continued the minor jobs, treating screen rust spots before they become sinister,

Swapping out the rocker cover gasket:

And getting this dirty bottle cleaned up as much as possible.

Which cleaned up alright, but had highlighted how big the crack in the side of the tank was:

As it was the rarely-used rear washer tank, I elected to try and repair it rather than replace. I used an old soldering iron to re-melt the plastic along the crack. It's not pretty, but it's sealed up and shouldn't leak so that's a win.

The bottoms of these bottles have a sharp lip around their manufacturing joins which has been suggested aids corrosion by chafing through the paint - these were sanded down prior to install. The scuttle area had already been heavily lanoguarded about six weeks ago so all should be well there.
Unrelated to the BX, but a mate  followed me on the commute to work and told me one of the Rovers brake lights wasn't coming on every time. Luckily, I have spare bulbs, but it was quite interesting to see the where the filament had broken loose, flapped around a bit until it made the circuit and 'tacked' itself back on. Herman has had a front fog light doing that for years, so the build-up there must be spectacular.

Eventually, I decided to carry on with assembling the 3 pistons and liners, I'm still awaiting parts to assemble the final cylinder but this is a good start.
Turns out I needed to order another set of piston rings too, thanks to my ill-fated attempt to fit them last time:

Annoyingly, this was a pain in the arse. Autodoc did them at a reasonable price, but the delivery time takes the piss at around a fortnight. I found some on eBay with a two day delivery, so I placed the order on Sunday. I then sent the seller my details, and they cancelled the order! Apparently they weren't compatible. I've told them I want the rings and will assume the risk - the manufacturers of the piston rings list the set as compatible for every 1.6 XU engine except the XU52C. I can't see what difference there would be though, so I guess we'll find out in a couple of days.
Anyway, the ring gaps were checked prior to fitment, they were all bang on at around 0.50mm.


With the new set of plier-style piston ring compressors, I was STILL having issues with the rings. 
I asked Phill for advice, and he very gently pointed out I was being a bit of a fuckwit and assembling the oil control ring at the bottom incorrectly, which in turn meant the ring wasn't compressing properly. 
With the correct advice dispensed, and a slight tweak to the piston ring compressor, we were finally making progress! A fresh seal was fitted to the base of the cylinder liner before slotting it into place.

Eventually, I got all three complete assemblies in.

And clamped the liners down.

Then I nipped back to the house for a pee, and noticed that Mini had snuck into MrsH's car whilst she was unloading, and got himself locked in. Tit.

I decided to crack on with bolting in some external components, so the oil pressure switch, water pump and timing belt tensioner pulley went on (the old one was really rather grumbly and rattly)
The pump came from Autodoc and was their own brand (RIDEX) and it seemed pretty well made.

Next up, the crank bearing seats were cleaned, new shells were fitted, and the crank lowered into place. This was a pain in the arse with the liners and pistons fitted as the conrods were in the way, this was aided with some steel wire to hold them in the middle position.

The crank bearing caps had fresh shells and an oiling before being loosely assembled.

I'm still awaiting the seals for No.1 bearing cap so I've not fitted that yet.
After that, it was applying the last coat of lacquer to the windscreen frame rust spots. The paint colour match is pretty poor, but it won't rust and that's what matters.
I spent the remainder of the evening googling part numbers, dimensions and specs of the cam cap nut. The Citroen parts catalogue specified a nut and washer assembly, the Peugeot catalogue specified a flange nut. Seeing as this was what was fitted, I went with that, got the size and thread pitch and started searching. I eventually got three part numbers, and the phone numbers for potential dealerships that could have the nut I need in stock.
A bit of phoning around yesterday morning ensued. The Peugeot dealership said they could source the nuts, but they wouldn't be here till Wednesday and were £1.25 each.
My second dealership took the part number, said 'Yep, we've got 14 in stock here, and they're 63p each+VAT'. Didn't bother ringing the third.
The dealership?

Yep, I went in my Rover that's really a Honda, to a BMW dealership to pick up some nuts for my Citroen, which was sourced using specs from a Peugeot parts catalogue.

The parts fella that came out was very friendly, and couldn't believe what vehicle the nuts were for I ended up having a chat with him about the Rover parked outside and he was really enthusiastic. Ended up buying 10 nuts as it makes sense to replace the entire set.
Got home and checked the nut - it's a good fit, a bit taller and with a wider flange than the originals, it feels much more substantial. The nut is originally used to hold inlet manifolds onto various BMWs.
I started checking valve clearances but this ended up being a pain to rotate the camshaft without the sprocket bolted in. I checked the first 4 and found them to be juuuuust within limits, I'll check the other 4 later when I've got the camshaft bolt and torqued it in.
Boring stuff, but prepping for when it gets reassembled, the fuel pump gaskets were changed, thedistributor oil seal was replaced:

And the inlet manifold gasket was tackled. 

This took an absolute eternity - it was properly on there! The mating faces were eventually cleaned with a scotchbrite pad and WD40 to get a smoother mating face.

Today, I'm into my two days off that was pencilled in for engine building - not much bloody use of I've not got all the parts together! I'll be working on various other little jobs instead.
Cheers.