83C

Yup. A6 GLL, a 90 with the 2.3 10v lump. Sounded great, drank fuel.

Success. Pry bar, hammer and ping, off went the circlip never to be seen again. No major issue, can always get a new one. A Garrett GT2025LS in all its glory* It is also buggered. The shaft play needs measuring with a tape measure rather than a dial gauge. It’s not clear on these pictures but look at them and see where the compressor wheel is/isn’t touching: Next job is strip it down. This leaves me with a potential rabbit hole to fall down, in that there is the opportunity to do improvements. Improvements like a better wastegate actuator and blow off valve (recirc, of course), replace all the wanky jubilee clips with Mikalor clamps, send all the alloy bits off for media blasting and powder coating… And now I’m looking at ultrasonic cleaners. This could get expensive.

Got a bit further pulling bits off the ZT: Plenty of access around the turbo now. I can actually get virtually everything off to get the core out, except the sodding wastegate actuator arm which is under and behind the turbo. One simple circlip is all that stands between me and victory. Bugger.

Been a busy couple of weeks for the 83C fleet. Out: the Boxster. Left a few days ago for a new life with a lad doing a motorsports degree. In: this, today: Its the MG ZT that RichardK was selling, needs a bit of work. Started by laying some slabs. At the end of the driveway there is a gap between the concrete and the shed base, and it was just mud. Laid 4 reclaimed slabs after I’d knocked a load of concrete off the bottom of them (they were the floor in a friend’s garage until he had it converted into an extra room). Makes working around a vehicle at that end much nicer, boots don’t get covered in mud. Next step was to get the ZT in place for surgery: Next door neighbour was celebrating the arrival of a British motoring classic, obvs. Went and bought a new set of ramps from Halfords, no need to take the wheels off for the work that is needed and it raises the front of the car to an acceptable working height. Based on discussions leading up to buying the ZT, it could have been a couple of things causing the smoking issue. One was a leaky inlet manifold gasket, the other was a leaky turbo oil seal. Aye, that answers that question then, wet around the exhaust joint and other bits of the turbo. Oil down the exhaust aiding the Land Rover style application of anti-rust treatment there. Time to get stuck in. It’s immediately obvious that there has been someone in here before, going by the exhaust manifold studs/bolts/fresh air: Still, they’re holding for now so no point in disturbing them. Bit of spannering later and this is where we’re at with access. Next stop is draining the coolant. It’s clear the car has been looked after even if there are hints that it’s fallen on hard times recently such as the budget tyres that are fitted. It’s filled with the correct OAT coolant, oil looks okish (but will be changed), and everything is coming apart without too much hassle. Took the inlet pipe for the turbo off and this came oozing out: Oil and water mixing inside the turbo is a Bad Thing. Stuck my fingers down the turbo inlet and there’s a good couple of mm of movement on the turbo shaft - the trade term for this is ‘its fucked’. You’ll not see it here and it looks clean because I’ve already wiped all the excess oil off, but here’s the cold side impeller: That’s as far as I got with this today, I’m watching a new turbo core on eBay for £58 and this is held on to the exhaust housing with something similar to a V-band clamp, so there really shouldn’t be any need to remove the exhaust manifold or unbolt the housing. The core and inlet housing should come off as one unit once water and oil connections are removed, there’s certainly space for them to do so. Also in is this: Triumph Tiger 955i. Wanted a bike that I could go out in all weathers on and be a bit more upright and comfortable riding. This was a bit of an opportunist purchase because it was local and the right price, but will come into use soon, with collection tomorrow. I’d already decided the ZZR was going - it did less than 50 miles last year. I don’t ride it if it’s wet, I don’t take it to work because there is nowhere dry to park it, and I’m so busy that it’s just not getting used. It was MoT’d and serviced in preparation for selling, probably won’t put an advert up here as it’s not the sort of thing for this forum. It’s been a blast owning it but it’s time to move on, got more plans to pay for. Finally this evening the Arnage got a run out to a local car show at High Ercall village hall - in a spectacular fail for a budding motoring YouTubist I only took one photo the whole show and no video at all: Well recommended to anyone in or near Shropshire, there really was something for everyone there including bikes, cars from 1920-2023, tractors, a couple of commercials, a traction engine and more. The temperature gauge on the Arnage seems to be having a bit of a fit - normally it holds at half way constantly. Today I noticed it quickly dropping about 10 degrees and then rapidly rising back to half way, every 5 seconds or so and taking about a second to complete the movement down and up. On the way back it couldn’t decide and held for a while at the lower position and then rose, then fell etc. I can’t find anything odd under the bonnet, rad top hose is hot, header tank is hot, heaters work well (no discernible change in temp whilst the gauge was flicking up and down), no leaks, nothing. I’m wondering if the sender unit itself is iffy, or has a bad earth. I might just try running a jump lead from the engine to a suitable bolt or body-mounted bracket and see if that has any effect. It’s all Jolly Good Fun.

Thats a very good point, because I no longer plan to drive it in Australia that may well be the way around the registration problems. Definitely going for something that has at least a couple of month's valid rego, and will probably buy from a dealer as they would be more experienced with handling paperwork or as @cort1977suggested, delivering it directly to the docks. Personally I wouldn't mind buying private and I've seen some cracking deals with private sellers, but it's a big ask to involve them as the seller with moving the car around and doing export paperwork. I have heard elsewhere that NSW is a bit more awkward for buying cars as a tourist, the only issue with buying in QL despite being there for around a week is that I could really do with accessing the car at the end of the trip to load it up, hit a Supercheap Auto for consumables etc whilst we have a week in Sydney and a bit of time to do the legwork. My wife would be rather less than impressed if we had to drive both a car and the motorhome all the way from Brisbane back to Sydney! I am hoping that my wife's relative out there might be able to help out, either by using their details to register it or to just aid with where to go, what to do, but I want a plan B for if they can't help. They live just down the road from Bathurst too which is a bonus. @warch - if only. 70's Aus muscle cars are bloody cool, but so much money now. @DodgeRover I remember you mentioning something like that when I first posted about going to Aus. At the time the plan had been to visit Melbourne and possibly a little into SA, but that plan got shelved when my wife started seeing things around Brisbane that she wanted to do. Thanks for the advice so far.

"Hello Signaller at Pantyffynnon, Driver of 2V10 here. Yes, I'm stuck because someone has borrowed a couple of sleepers and is using them to prop up their Land Rover while they work on it..." Wheels always go under the sill, without fail. Well, so long as I get chance to actually slide them under the sill in the first place.

A couple of years ago I had a cheap 2t trolley jack fold in on itself just after I'd taken the wheel nuts off the o/s/f wheel on a 5 series, and was pulling the wheel off to put an axle stand under the hub. The wheel came down trapping the tip of my boot and the hub sat on the inside of the wheel trapping it in place. Very fortunately they were my steelies and I was able to undo the boot and slip my foot out without any damage, if my foot had been a few inches further under the wheel it would have probably crushed the boot. I don't take any chances now, bought a much better 3t jack, more axle stands and never put bits of myself under unsupported bits of car. Don't dick about with crap jacks and inadequate kit.

Later this year I'm off to Australia for a month, and I'd like to bring back a slightly bigger and better souvenir than a crap fridge magnet or a postcard. One of these: Or one of these: Both are mid-2000s mid range sport-ish saloons, both are around $5-7000, or £2500-4000. Top one is a Ford Falcon BF XR6, bottom one is a Holden Commodore VE SV6. Why these? I've always liked the Australian Supercars Championship which has always been Ford vs Holden (these days Chevrolet) but I can't run to a V8 engined Falcon or Commodore. I much prefer the looks of the Holden which probably stems from always preferring the big Vauxhall saloons and owning several Omegas, Carltons and a Senator, but the XR6 has the legendary Barra 4.0 24v six and bearing in mind parts availability over here won't be great something that is well known for mechanical longevity sounds like a good idea to me. The SV6 engine is probably the weak link, the cam chains stretch and eventually break on the earlier ones. Later facelift SV6s sorted this issue with a heavily updated engine (badged SiDi) that gave around 280bhp from an N/A 3.6 V6 and sounded pretty good, but they're getting above budget (circa $10k for a half decent one). Last year when the planning for the whole Australian caper started in earnest, I did originally have the plan to buy something cheap (non-sports versions of both of the above can be had sub-$2500) to bomb around NSW and QL in because it was cheaper than renting a big car. This evolved into looking at what a little more would buy in terms of niceties and looks, and then the idea came along to bring it home as well. This plan got left by the wayside when it became obvious that for what we wanted as a family, a big motorhome for the first few weeks and a hotel for the last week would be more practical. Recently however I've come back to the idea of buying a big Aussie saloon (not least because of Hubnut's series on Betty) but just to bring back to the UK. I've always wanted a VXR8 but they're £15-20k for a half decent one and they rust because they're built for nice, dry, non-salted Australian roads rather than UK roads, and there isn't an equivalent Ford Falcon here aside from a few Coleman Milne limo/hearse conversions. There is also some practicality to all this madness, shipping back would be by shared container which means I can load personal effects in the boot. Given that Singapore Airlines want £200 per person per flight for 5kg extra luggage capacity over the 25kg allowed, the shipping at £2k (best quote so far) makes much more sense than trying to bring back whatever clothes, paraphernalia and tat we buy by air and being charged up to £800 for the privilege. I can also chuck in a selection of spares (usual consumables like belts, filters etc) for the trip home. At one point in the plans we were even considering taking clothes out there that could be donated/binned before coming back in order to create more space for souvenirs, so avoiding that sort of nonsense seems like a major win. I know @dollywobbler brought Betty over from NZ and I've been bending his ear about more details on how he went about it, who he used for shipping etc, but has anyone here bought a car in Australia or even better shipped a car from there to here? Mainly my concerns are around sorting out registering it in my name when I buy it out there, to transfer the rego (Aus equivalent of the V5) I need an Australian address. The shipping company confirmed this morning that for their purposes they can put 'c/o SeaGo Shipping etc' so they don't need me to have anything other than a proper UK address, but obviously I can't put my UK address down for rego. Anyone done it, or even just bought in Australia for use in Aus?