Landy Mann

ok followed everyone's advice and cut the clutch slave cylinder out of the gearbox casing with a hacksaw, which actually went quite smoothly


'New' part arrived but the rubber dust cap was cracked, so am waiting on a replacement for that now
Serves me right for buying stuff that's likely as old as the car is, just becasue it's cheap...

 
In the meantime sanded back the OS rear floor and painted just to protect it for now.

There are of course a few small holes which I'll sort out later,

And some pretty big ones as well:

 
More fussy shit to waste my time, unbolted the seatbelt, cleaned up and painted the bracket:


As you can see I've upgraded from wheelie bin workbench to wobbly mouldy old bathroom cabinet.
Seatbelt mech is jammed (of course) - looks like it was soaked in rat piss - but I don't have a 3-point screwdriver bit to get it apart, so will have to find one of those.
 
At least I got some of my money back, 22p

 
Then to investigate the rust in what's referenced to in the workshop manual as the 'buttress'



suitably unpleasant.
But removing all the mangled rubbish out of the way reveals it's not too bad underneath

Top piece has a return just under the lip where the bulkhead is, so doesn't go under the floor.
 
Might be interesting trying to support the car by the front subframe whilst cutting chunks out of a structural member...
Thought about moving the axle stands to behind the rusty bit,  but the workshop manual is pretty explicit about not doing this:

Tried it anyway because I'm stupid but it started making some pretty ugly noises so I stopped.
 
Anyway looks like the engine's gotta come out since I can't squeeze my hands and a welding torch down there
Think there's enough space to position an engine crane down the side of the car, not sure how I'll actually fit past it but we'll cross that bridge whenever.

Unfortunately can't put the crane at the front of the car as there'd be no way of closing the garage doors, and it'd probably just roll down the drive and away down the street....
 
Finally my excuse this time for slow progress is that I was putting up 50-year old wallpaper in a stanky bathroom:
 
Not sure if it actually looks much better, but definitely feels less grim

hi there, thanks for having me.
This is my exploit yellow Punto 75elx that I have owned for 10 years, and have restored.
I love this car, enjoy the photos.
simon

Forgotten thread update time!

The green 800 disappeared to my mechanic back in May, along with a list of jobs that culminated in a fresh MoT. The biggest problem standing in the way of being able to use the car was it pissing power steering fluid everywhere. After a week or so, the garage called to advise the high pressure rail for the power steering was NLA, had been for some time, and stopped the job. The next update I was advised a pipe had been sourced from a Turkish seller with a number of MG and Rover parts - and he'd bought from them previously with success. 
To cut a long story short, it took MONTHS for the pipe to make its way to the UK, and... it was the wrong part! By now the car had migrated to one of the dreaded 'long term' parking spots outside the garage and it took a long time to see it extracted from there and back in the workshop. A local company were able to fabricate a new pipe with the correct fittings. Funnily enough, once work restarted, it was all turned round in surprisingly quick time. 
In total its had the timing belt done, cam cover gaskets, a Volvo header tank fitted with a bracket made to hold it, a new power steering pump, the power steering pipe, CV boots and the alloy wheels replaced with a slightly less scruffy set. 
After washing seven months-worth of muck off it over the weekend, its now on the road for a bit of 'running in' with a view to some longer trips over the Christmas period if there's no drama. So sixteen months after we started, I guess this completely pointless resurrection of a worthless car is pretty much done! 




 
 

in better REV news, I have been informed the kingpin and bushes have been refitted and everything buttoned back up! I am very pleased to hear this, as this has been one of REV's longer-standing issues that was first noticed all the way back in 2021! so I am glad to see the end of it so to speak
 
and with that Duncan discovered the fun that is the Model 70 fasteners! 
have to admit that gave me a good chuckle
however in the course of putting things back together, this was noticed!

 which I find most interesting from a “I am a sad bastard who studies every nut and bolt of these machines” perspective  
because one of the things written in the parts manual is

"STY403 Steering top plate (C/W 2x 5/16" BSF bolt x 3/4" long packed in sets) NOTE: For use with Left hand Steering lock when LP 1161 wheels (Store STY 474) are fitted"

(Dunlop LP 1161 wheels are the standard 10 inch Mini 21A2744 wheels that later Model 70's like REV have)

The thing, I have never been able to figure out what "Left hand steering lock" actually is! It’s not listed anywhere else in the parts manual apart from that note, but I have to wonder if the steering lock, is what Duncan has just made himself?

I think this might be something @Zelandeth you might want to check on TPA, especially as TPA is on 10 inch wheels when she started out life on 12 inch wheels
 
and then some other items where sorted out also  

 

Yes. Yes it is. So it's collecshun day. Still some hours to kill before leaving, so I'm still working. But let's go trough the checklist:
 
Breakfast: coffee and cigarettes
Poo count: let's not go there.
Lunch: in an hour or so.
Weather: nice British weather we're having, a storm was here last night and more rain and heavy winds are expected.
Distance to car: google maps says 127 kilometers by car.
Mode of transport: multiple.
Destination: Buzău.

You're not wrong, but she has enjoyed a trip on the train.
Collection has been achieved - it's a cheap old bus but there is plenty of work to be done so , it needed to be really.

Weekend is over. 
 
Sleep sucks. 
 
Life is good. 
 
I will Copy and paste a single write up. 
 
So apologies for duplicate pics, but you love pics…… Right?? 
 
 
Saturday I washed the van in preparation for Sundays breakfast meeting. 
 
Cleanliness is next to godliness I hear. 
 
 

 

 
 
Making a fire earlier in the day to burn a load of broken furniture wood (non recyclable) it became apparent that the crack in the structure was growing. 
I possibly caused this a few years ago making a massive fire in the middle of winter. 
 
I made the decision to smash this down after 13 years of service. 
 
That will mean another job. 
 
More money. 
 
Buggerr. 
 
 

 
 
Dinner was good.  
 
https://youtu.be/d2glX9aZ3KQ?si=GbrW5mmeUFxd_Bzl
 
 

 
 
Sunday I headed out in the van. 
 
Made a video of the day. 
 
Met some nice people. 
 
Had an offer to buy the van. 
 

 
https://youtu.be/49Tf7UnY8Pk?si=2avF4Vy002_JP3Hh
 

 
All the cars at the meeting. 
 
https://youtu.be/iCkqrX8dV2U?si=gn5LgDBs0sP82Nr8
 
 
Afterwards I headed out to Uncle Bob’s yard to see him and Uncle Peter (86 year old retired builder) about buying some “new” recycled, cleaned bricks.  
 
I did a rough count of the face-bricks used above the preparation area. 
I plan on leaving the concrete foundation and cabinets plus cast, reinforced floor of the chimney as it all seems intact. 
Approximate count is around 500 bricks to replace what is there but I am going to change the design a bit or a lot. 
 
Smashing down the rest of it, the rubble will be processed into another job. 
More about this later. 
 
Uncle Peter was busy pointing the brickwork of one of the barns where he had rebuilt the corner that was smashed by a truck, years ago. 
So I dragged him away from his mortar and we spoke bricks. 
He has about 800 cement style, pressed bricks on some pallets that could be for sale. 
At 50p per brick it’s not as cheap as free, but finding something where the price, look and availability cross on a sweet spot it not that easy. 
 
So I agreed to taking the 800 and fetching and transporting them myself for £400.00 unless he changes his mind. 
 
The excess will be used on another job which is planned for the short term future. 
 

 
 
Lastly…….
 
I looked at this again, not easy to access as it is stored, if you can call it that, in the rear of a massive, disused, damaged greenhouse with loads of junk in front of it. 
 
Uncle Bob the Hoarder owns it. 
 
Wants very strong money for it. 
 
But I do like it. 
 
Think re-body.  
 

 
 
Eventually I left them and headed home. 
 
Moved to green 206 CC down to the workshop as I have done nothing with it and getting the roof to open since weeks ago when I walked away to get on with more important things. 
 
Parked the van and headed to Sallys place to use her broadband to upload my YouTube videos that I can’t do at home due to Sky and Openreach’s terrible service. 
 
Have a great week. 
 
 
 
 

Another Update on the Civic!!
With this little dry warm spell of weather that is happening i decided to get a move on and use it to my advantage. The Drivers side was desperate to be repaired and i finally took the angle grinder to the rust and started cutting. 
Heres a Before photo just to give you an idea on the rust situation:

 
With this being the worst side, the whole sill needs to be replaced. which seems rather daunting as ive never done something like this before. Although using the skills ive picked up from the previous side it should be a challenge which will be worth well doing for the final outcome. Im probably going to have to Brace the car as im unsure if im going to have to cut out the area where the floor is spot welded to the bottom edge of the inner sill. If so ill weld in some pieces from the floor to the upper portion of the inner sill to give the floor some strength and if needed a  bar will be welded across the pillars just in case. 
But for now im currently just focusing on the rear section of the sill. I Ideally want to get the rear of the car welded first, then progress to the front of the car where the rest of the sill and jacking point need doing. The Rover 200 and 400 Owners Club are reproducing the Front Jacking point panels which will come in handy as the Civic and 400 are the same car. Saves me making it all myself. 

Like the otherside the backside of the sill was covered in that black underseal which i rubbed off using thinners and it came up pretty well again which is great!

Unfortunately the rust on this side goes from the rear arch to the front jacking point. So i intend on getting the  Rear Arch done once the rear sill section is complete. thankfully i have a rear inner closing panel and some metal left over from the other sides closing panel which i can modify and fabricate in order to fill in the rest of the inner arch as it will have the same profile.

Thankfully it doesn't look like it has gone too far up into the inner wheel arch. the worst of it is probably where the bumper bolts up into the arch. 
 

So i got an area cut open to inspect the rust, and thankfully the upper part of the inner sill isn't as bad as i thought after a good clean up with some thinners to reveal the original Coating of Primer. 
 

I opened it up a bit more to reveal more rust. and as you can  see the sill gets worse as you work your way to the front, and Rust has crept up between the Rear and Middle section join. Which resulted in me drilling the spotwelds out and peeling back that skin of metal to see how far it had spread in that join. If im going full on with this i may as well get rid of all the rust or it will just come back resulting in more repairs years on down the line. 

So i cut a bit more out to reveal the panel behind and thankfully the rust hadn't spread too far up that seam. As you can see this is where the floor starts to be spot welded to the sill. 
This seam will be all cleaned up and treated or replaced if needs be. it was also nice to see that the Floor Lip isnt rusty. 
 

The idea will be to get all the area prepared and cleaned up ready for welding. I still need to cut out the bit of rot on the inner arch where its welded to the back of the sill, Which can be shown on the photo below.

Once thats all cut out i will then Trim up the repair panel i have made for it. This side i messed up a bit with the measurements and its about 0.5mm too big so im going to have to cut it and trim it down so that the inner sill will sit flush with the inner sill not much of an issue but still kind of annoying. 
 

Here is the Panel i have trimmed up to put in Still needs some fettling and cutting down in some places with the finger sander so that its perfect. But i aim to get this all welded up in one piece rather than tonnes of little bits. I had to cut the lower bit of the inner sill due to my measurement cock up, 0.5mm will then be trimmed off the other piece to get the profile right. 
 

But for now that is where i am up to, hopefully tomorrow i can get some more progress done and perhaps even some welding if all is good!

The Past!
The Dream!

The Reality!
 

For aslong as I can remember I've wanted to be directing my own path in business but never had the actual confidence to overcome huge self doubt and fears of failure, in 2021 when I nearly met with my mortality thanks to covid I remember hating that I'd played things safe as houses like a boring nobody and literally despite continued health maladies I feel that I've got a second run up at life , so I'm starting from nothing at 35 and want to get pushing forward with what is abit of a dream for me .
So basically my sister and I have teamed up to create a new garage/engineering works of which provides the usual bread and butter garage services and also more specialised work less commonly found like large manual machining capability and welding.
We're looking to stock up on a range of common classic parts too so that we can take on most project work without waiting on parts turning up in ebay etc albeit limited space prevents stocking a vast amount.
So far over the last 8 months !

Obligatory huge lathe brought back somewhat inappropriately 


Company car brought down , inappropriately 

Lathe electrical rebuild done because it was dangerous as hell, 415 through the soaked push buttons etc ,,horrible ! Once cleaned and generally setup it's been put to work straight away!

 
this s100 k series swap was quite aquite to drive, getting one to fit the earlier car isn't bolt in like with the estelle and rapid !

Cambelt snappage job on an iveco 2.3, lots of new valves and lapping required!

loads of work done, and loads more hopefully to come ! 

arthur dailey selling old jaguars off the back of a lorry

I know nothing about how AI works, but it must be getting tagged references from images elsewhere on the net to generate these new images.
Which we are posting on the internet.
So next time someone somewhere asks for a Routemaster image, is there a chance it references the group B rally version here and incorporates that into its next image?
Given the intelligence and diligence of some of the worlds journalists, we could easily end up with poorly researched references to things that never were in all sorts of places.

The lovely Stowe.

My dream has come true, I’ve driven the Sierra up the A413, heading north west. The only issue that I’ve noticed is an erratic fuel gauge. I know the tank is almost full but the needle keeps dropping to zero, then rises and drops again.
First destination reached. A Gulf petrol station in Whitchurch, located between Aylesbury and Buckingham. Before I bought my first Sierra from my then girlfriend’s dad, he let me borrow it for a very extended test drive and I remember putting fuel in the tank at this very station, which, remarkably, still exist today.

I’m heading further up the A413 towards Buckingham. 31k miles will tick over shortly.

More very soon.

Sexy steels,
Not sure if ive mentioned it before but the scruffy panda of many miles ended up staying with mother rew after it was decided she found it easier to drive than her felicia.  The felicia will live on just parked in my workshop maybe one day it will get a tickle but its low on the list. 
Anyways, after a puncture and chewed up tyre from the tracking being out i picked up another set of part worns from my usual place on ebay and on they went. While the wheels were off the brakes were check after a noise was mentioned. Sure enough a weeping cylinder has made a mess in the drum. New drums, shoes and cylinders go on tomorrow.  I popped the other two tyres off and gave the wheels a quick knotwheeling and went from scuffy black to my favourite simoniz steel wheel paint. All rebalanced and chucked back on.
New number plate on and we are Looking povo spec snazzy

The other side still has the big dent in the door , the bonnet and bumper are showing the miles (133k!) However it seem this shade of silver is different to all the others being broken on ebay. Balls!
 

Towed a stuck van in the car park of our local country show.
Turns out fwd and transit/ducato type thing full of cheese gets stuck easily.
On the plus side unexpected payment.

Day spent re-welding what I welded before.

Obviously the photo is upside down. It’s a much neater job than before, so it is all good.

This didn’t go as well. Wife was moaning at me, I rushed, and it’s not great in places. Im going to die grind it out and redo it. 2mm steel here, the other part was all 1.2mm.
Think next weekend, after redoing the weld, it’ll be a case of epoxy primer on all the welding I’ve done in order to move the car out of the garage.

Bonus trailer loading videos:
 
-Steve-
P.s. Still kinda amazed they self propelled themselves out of there after all those years!

Sorry been a bit busy to add a proper move update earlier, so…
Moving day went really smoothly! My dad reluctantly agreed to tow with his Freelander so I hired a trailer for the day (£60 Rothwell Trailers). Both 309’s behaved themselves so it was straightforward to load and unload them. We took our time since there was no rush to return the trailer, but we had it back in only 3hrs which I thought was pretty good going.


Feels good to have cleared the drive at my old place so I can progress that towards sale. It does make my current place look a bit scrapyardey but hopefully the neighbours don’t take too much offence. I chose to hide the knackered gold one up the back facing away so as to be the least of an eyesore possible. I’ll get some car covers too.



I’ll be taking a break from these while I prep and arrange the sale of the old house but once done I should be in a better position to tackle some of my car projects in earnest .
-Steve-

Looks exactly like that, never knew what to search to find one. 3 x 3 point seat belts in the back was a big selling point when we upgraded to the scenic.
Not sure the AI description works for the ebay listing though.

I've long admired the original Daewoo range launched here in 1995. I even managed to convince my dad to test drive an Espero from the 'motorshow' in Bristol in 1996.
Today I took delivery of three of the few surviving Esperos left in the UK. 
The silver N reg is a lovely original car with loads of history. Not mint but hopefully easy to bring it up to scratch, the P reg will be a parts donor as it has structural damage that won't repair.
The green N reg is well known on the 'socials, bring a ULEZ survivor rescued by Jude Currie. It's tatty in places but too good to break up. Realistically it'll only be staying with me briefly as I have other projects that need my time and money. 

Morning All
It is that time again where collections need to be made. The Xantia has signed its own death warrant so reliable and practical replacement is required. The journey to collect it involves three trains with little time between them, so the risk is high. If all goes to plan I will be there mid afternoon. If not, as I am a cheapskate and bought cheap fixed train tickets.......
Important stuff to start the day. PC = 1
Breakfast was just a cupof coffee, might pick up something on the way

Full breakdown kit packed

Soon be time to go.....

Towed a stuck van in the car park of our local country show.
Turns out fwd and transit/ducato type thing full of cheese gets stuck easily.
On the plus side unexpected payment.