tommytwo

Current functional car status 0/3.

So the Acclaim ran out of MOT at the start of Feb and rather than fixing the handbrake I decided to sort the Volvo first. This ran out of MOT at the end of March.
It had a binding front left brake. Strip, clean, reassemble, sorted.

Looks quite crusty...




Oof.
Caliper bores were corroded, pistons were corroded and seized, slider pins were completely seized, massive lip on the discs, brake hoses perished. Same on both sides.
Naturally these calipers are now rare and expensive so I borrowed a drill hone from @juular and cleaned up the bores. I think a lot of the crud was actually bits of piston chrome that'd stuck to the sides as the pitting was pretty minimal.
Then I borrowed a vice from @320touring and some strength from @jaypee and with a combination these, a blow torch, a big hammer and a massive locking wrench the slider pins were freed from the carriers. The bores for these were then cleared out with a Dremel.
New seals and pistons were fitted and a blast with high temp silver paint I had lying about, because it'd be rude not to...

This brake union on the driver's side wasn't playing ball:

So I went out and bought the proper spanner for the job and then rounded the fitting anyway. Clamped it with mole grips and set at it with the blow torch having forgotten that I'd only drained the passenger side of the system... The resulting explosion took out the hose and left me slightly deaf in one ear.

Anyway, got it freed off and put a new flare on the end of the old pipe.
This disc retaining pins were also good fun.

Back together.


I probably should have replaced the backing plates, but couldn't be arsed...
Bled the system and ran it up and down the street, stops in a straight line and nothing seems to be sticking. MOT is booked for Tues...
 
In Dolly engine news:
Fitted new thrust washers, measured the end float, buttoned the bottom end back together. Nothing really much to show there.
Most of what I've been doing is cleaning ungodly amounts of sludge off/out of everything...

I also acquired this:

The massive socket only, the impact was borrowed from @dome
With this I could remove the crank pulley...



This meant I could get the cam out...




Ouch.

Gross.
I did the sensible thing for a budget engine build and bought a new cam...


So, back to scraping gaskets and scooping sludge...

Refitted oil pump and front plate and installed new cam. I also waved some black rattle cans around.

Restored*


 

Next stage is to get it flipped over, head back on, get the cam/crank/dizzy timing all locked in, then fit the new water pump, back plate, drop in the car and run in...
Mildly bricking it as this is the first engine I've built solo.
 
 
 
 

Had a weird but funny one today!
Sat indoors and the door bell rings. 
Look out the front window and there’s two young kids at the door, must have been 12 or 13, something like that. 
Answer the door and they’re really nicely spoken polite kids that have been passing by for the last few months on the way to school. 
Turns out they’re both really into cars, and old cars in particular! 
They’d seen the Mercury on the drive and wondered what it was and were wondering if they could have a look at it! 
One of them asked if it was a Lincoln, which he was actually very very close to being right about. Since they seemed so interested and keen I opened it up and let them have a sit in it and take a few pics. 
They were absolutely over the moon!😁
It’s actually so nice to see the younger generation get excited about stuff like this! Reminds me of how I was at that age. Maybe, hopefully letting them have a proper look will spark a lifelong interest in cars. Hopefully it’ll be those kids looking after these old cars in the future.  
Im a bit surprised they had the balls to knock the door tbh, but fair play. Hopefully that’s not something that gets them in trouble some day though.

I had surgery on Monday so the other half used the car as an ambulance to ferry me about. This reminded me of the trip to Wales and how the passenger seat was holding the air operated bolsters etc. better than the drivers side.  Feeling better on Tuesday I had a play with the drivers seat and either a couple of bladders are leaking or the air control switches. Looks likely to be a fun job.

Wednesday the battery was flat from spending time mesding with the seats so I ordered a new 019 AGM to replace the Bosch S3 013 as I have been putting it off long enough. That arrived today, next day delivery from Tanya Batteries  £174.50. Weighs 6kg more than the Bosch removed. Added a CTEK charging lead then went for a 15 mile drive to watch the charge voltage on the hidden display menu. Ran iCarsoft diagnostics and the intermittent code "9059 communication with component B33 (ATA Inclination Sensor) is interrupted" has returned. Decided to investigate and seems to have suffered screen wash ingress from the popped connector to the rear wash wipe and been a previous problem looking at the wiring. Found a replacement with part of the wiring and plug on Ebay for £14 delivered. I could have left it disconnected but it is part of the alarm system and might stop the wheels being nicked.

Clean pass! 👍

Lick it.. that'll tell you.
 
Sorry, unhelpful I know.

I also did the plugs and filters due to how piss takingly accessible they were.

 

Noticed the battery tray was rotten as a pear and the battery terminal was wet too.
I think it’s the rubber seal that was loose and allowing water in. I took it off and went the length of the trim squishing it with pliers to get it tighter and reseated it and it’s a lot more secure now. Hopefully the tray will dry out and I’ll rust treat it and spray it over.




Also took the opportunity to take off the soundproofing and see where the mice had stashed crap to clear it out.

By this time the sky had darkened so I packed up for the day but quite pleased.

Well here we go, MOT season seems to be upon me, with the Rover in tomorrow and the Seicento next week. Might be in urgent need of a car next Tuesday if it all goes pear shaped. Hoping for the best with big 600, done next to nothing to it since I got it nigh on a year ago bar wheels & tyres and a light service. Checked the lights, given it a wash and put a nice fresh rag under the high level brake light to stop it flapping about on the rear shelf. See how we go.

Well this whale of a thing is here….

And indeed yes its on daft tyres (somthing like 195/50 r16 rather than 235/60 r16) i believe part of a half way there plan to slam it which im going to reverse by sticking some of the OE spec fat tyres- part worns on. This should help ease the sumo tottering around in balet shoes vibe. Its a 280 with lpg.
Theres an exhaust heat sheld lose so it makes a hillarious raspy noisy when you   cane it. Its the smallest petrol lump offered with it, but to be honest it doesnt feel that slow. When i had an s500 i just used to potter anyway.  Presumably the comedy wheels help with the gearing for a faster getaway currently.

It drives well, and has a bit of a crumpled Russian wrong un vibe complete with Russian st christopher on the centre console…

A few weeks ago I was dreaming about buying a Mercedes, but was not man enough to bid. So I then went a bit silly and bought this--------------
A 2003 Cadillac CTS 3.2 litre V6 done 190,000 KM's
So far it is a very nice drive, rides well, very little road noise , everything works that I have pushed, pulled and twiddled. time will tell how good or bad it is.
It has been sitting about for a year almost, so took a new battery to liven it up, one brake caliper was binding (ok now after some use) and a rear wheel bearing is a bid noisey. Also will do the cambelt as there are no records of a change.  It'lldo !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s MOT time here too. I’ve taken BX number 4 for a quick shake down run this evening, and chucked a couple of gallons of super unleaded in it:

Tomorrow morning we will find out if she’s going back on the road again after her 3 year slumber.

The C Class went in for a new OSF spring this morning. 11th hour - 14day retest was due tomorrow, as due to the easter break, my local garage couldn't fit it in before today. 
Needed a drop link too, as the fixings were seized solid.  Fair play to them, they said they could have battled with it, but the labour cost to do that outweighed the cost of the new part and 5 mins with an airsaw. 
Repairs, including parts, came in at just over £250.00
As Merc springs are the stuff of nightmares, I was happy to pass the job on to someone else. 
Tame MOT centre were not to busy, so hightailed it down for a retest. Apart from an advisory for a loose heatshield - we're clear for another year.
 
 
 
 

Sold my Cav this morning to @JMotor, then spent the rest of this afternoon swapping all the bits from the passenger door of the blue mx-5 into another one of the same colour that I picked up on f/b marketplace for £40 quid. 
The existing one had a wavy crease in it, and was the worst bit on an otherwise extremely tidy car.
Quite an enjoyable job, except for getting a huge glob of the gunk used to seal the waterproof membrane stuck in my beard. Brake cleaner to the rescue again 🤣
Superleggera:

 

Damage:

Billy, as you've probably already guessed is one of life's eccentrics. A self confessed alcoholic, he often used to spend the night asleep on a makeshift bed in his office. This is despite him owning a house in the poshest part of Wirral worth well into seven figures even though his neighbours complain about his home looking like it's owned by "tinkers and diddycoys".  Billy has managed to amass enough money that he can afford not to give a fuck about anything. As he loves dogs, he spent a fortune building kennels to house stray dogs at his yard. 
Here's where you'll have to follow closely as I'm going to get a bit legal here. Wirral used to limit the number of hack plates issued to 124 which meant that a plate was worth about £11,000 plus the value of whatever cab it was screwed on to. Billy at the time had something like 20 Wirral plates kept "on the shelf". Although a plate owner can't keep a hack plate unused, it has to be assigned to a cab, Billy got around this by once a year sending 20 of his Liverpool plated cabs to be tested and licenced on Wirral to keep those plates alive. There's no way he'd use those Wirral and Liverpool plated cabs to work on Wirral because a Liverpool hackney plate was worth about £35,000 at the time and therefore the cost to rent a hack in Liverpool was something like £250 a week for either a day or night shift.  Liverpool still has a limited number of hackney plates, currently 1,426, which isn't many for such a large city. Billy, along with other Liverpool hackney fleet owners like Atkinsons an George Gawith, made his millions when Liverpool City Council decided to increase it's hackney fleet from something like 600 cabs back in the early 80s. LCC offered every one of its licenced hackney drivers a free hack plate if they were willing to buy a new or newish cab. Fleet owners like Billy offered to supply a cab on the cheap to those drivers who had no interest in buying their own cab as long as he could hold the rights to the plate.
Meanwhile on Wirral back in 1989, Billy decided to challenge WBC demanding "significant unmet demand" meaning that he should be entitled to a free Wirral hackney plate. Back in 2007 he showed me the legal paperwork regarding his ongoing court battle and the paperwork must have weighed at least a hundredweight. By 2003 WBC were fucking sick of spending a fortune in legal fees fighting against Billy so used something that was the new in thing with licencing authorities at the time, The James Button guidelines to taxi licencing law. This basically involved send all of us drivers a questionnaire and then ignoring whatever answers we replied with and delimiting the number of Wirral hack plates. 
An hack owner driver should have seen this coming when WBC refused to plate something called the Eurocab for hackney use after only three were plated. The Eurocab was based on the 2002 Peugeot Expert and was priced at about half the cost of a new TX1. Wirral Council knew that they were going to start issuing new hack plates  to anyone prepared to buy a hack under three years old and fearing a backlash from those current Wirral hack owners decided to remove approval for the Eurocab so the barrier to entry would be significantly higher. The one exception to the rule regarding issuing a new hack plate to anyone willing to buy a hack less than three years old was Billy. As he started his legal battle with WBC back in 1989 he won the rights to plate any approved hackney that would have been less than three years old at the time he started his fight against WBC. This is how he managed to get a brand new issue plate and put it on a C reg Metrocab. He did continue his legal wrangle with WBC to try and get his three early 70s FX4s issue plates as well but he lost that argument because as they were already registered they didn't qualify as new cabs. The council tried to also argue on the wheelchair access requirements that the FX4 lacks but lost that battle because at the time there was still a 1972 L plate FX4 automatic still working on Wirral. 
Billy being Billy, he didn't give a flying fuck about supply and demand and put this C reg Metrocab up for rent at £350 a week including insurance despite that being well overpriced at the time. Before I decided to take the plunge and buy a hack myself back in 2005 I rented the Joni Mitchell Big Yellow Taxi (a manual Bronze spec TX1) for £230 a week including insurance which was dear even then! X918UMB where are you now? Probably recycled into a fridge door. 
Anyway, back to the story. In 2006 my Metrocab was off the road with starting/charging problems for the umpteenth time and I needed to find a rental hack fast to keep earning. Lack of choice meant that I'd have to cross the River Mersey and introduce myself to Billy. As Billy is making enough money with his Liverpool plated cabs he could afford to keep his C reg Wirral plated Metrocab insured and sitting dormant until someone (me) is desperate enough to pay his somewhat elevated asking price. After a friendly handshake I asked Billy how much to rent a Wirral plated cab. He told me that it was £50 a day so I enquired how much to rent it for the week. £350 was his response. I could tell by then that there was fuck all chance of any further negotiation. I handed over £150 to keep me earning over the weekend (this was a Friday) and drive away without Billy even asking to see my hack badge! 
So how did the 1986 Metrocab compare to my 1999 example I hear (about two) of you ask? Well, this was a five seater as opposed to my six seater and from the start I could tell that they were chalk and cheese. A quirk of the early Metrocabs is the interior layout. A Fairway, and indeed my current 2013 E7 hack, have partitions that zig zag inside the cab to both allow more interior room for the driver and a wheelchair user. The early Metrocab takes this to the nth degree, the driver of an early Metrocab is expected to look through no less that three layers of perspex and glass when looking through his left window. As you can imagine this is a nightmare when driving in the dark. Another problem with this cab was the manual gearbox. Now, I've owned a Lancia Beta Coupe and reguarly used to drive a 1982 Alfa Guilietta owned by a friend but this gearbox was something else! Fucked didn't even begin to describe how bad it was! Night shifts were made worse by nearly every instrument and dash light failing to illuminate meaning that driving along a speed camera infested road a very squeaky arse experience. Being a 1986 cab it predated the requirement to be fitted with an intercom. This coupled with being a rattly GRP shed equipped with a very vocal Ford 2.5Di engine meant that there was fuck all chance of any driver to passenger conversation whilst on the move. To it's credit it was a hell of a lot faster and more economical than my 1999 version. 

These are a lovely steer once you have sorted out the problems. Once you have  a good garage it's best to carry on using it. Look on the bright side, you could be stuck with a PCP on a new modern, boring Eurobox or Korean SUV 

This 158%.
I've been there. 
When it's something straightforward but heavy, dirty shit like wheel bearings or springs, I fire it into a garage along the road but if its fiddly, foutery, headscratching stuff I always, always do it myself now. I now enjoy cars about twelve times more than I did before.
As dome says, just fire up YouTube. Unless you have a Jowett Javelin or something, there will almost always be someone that's done a video on how to do the job. It makes it appear so much less intimidating than reading a Haynes. 

You need a new garage!
Or, to start learning how to fix things yourself. First step is a code reader. Second is to use the internet to work out what you need to be doing. Start small and the world's your lobster👍

I suppose I’d best provide the next thrilling instalment…
After another 2 week wait, it returned to the jag specialist on Tue, air leak having previously been located, to get fixed.  As soon as I turn up, I notice something mildly concerning; the actual ‘specialist’: the guy who runs the place is absent. Two lads of about 20 are left running things, whom if I am being kind, are not the sharpest tools in the box. This is confirmed when I hand the keys over to be told ‘Yer, I’ll errr, I’ll try and get it done today but there’s only 2 of us and errr, if it needs parts it might only be ready after easter’
This pissed me off no end after a 2 week wait and no mention that they’d need more than a day, but fuck it, I’d waited this long. Needless to say, no update was forthcoming until I rang late on Wed to be told it would probably be after Easter.
I then received a phone call on Thu afternoon ‘Iyerrr, errr yeh, I’ve had it stripped down and it’s leaking at the EGR valve. But thing is, them bolts are really hard to get to and I can’t get them undone and I don’t wanna snap them because then it’ll be an engine out job. So err, yeh, I’m just gonna have to build it back up and maybe you’ll have to have a word with (owner) when he’s back on Tue and it’ll need booking in again, it’ll be end of April now’
Indeed I will be having a word with (owner) on Tue. I just hope he comes up with a sensible suggestion because I ain’t paying them to strip the fucker down and not fix it for the sake of an EGR bolt which any twat could predict will very likely be difficult to undo. I’ve left it there so I’m hoping a conversation in person will be more productive when I go to collect it.
On a more positive note, it passed its MOT, no advisories.
 

I think usually I’d agree with you. I did consider trying to sort it myself, but I’d need to buy an appropriate code reader, buy a smoke machine, find the time  to actually do it…I could see it taking just as long, costing almost as much and me ending up giving it to a man to fix anyway. Just don’t really have the appetite for spannering at the moment.
I’ve just got a bit of a shitty on with it, as it was supposed to be a treat for myself to help get through a crap time at work but it’s just turned into another thing to stress about. To insure it, when I collected it, I took out another policy and cancelled it within 14 days as the BMW,s policy doesn’t allow you to add a temporary car. That has now long since run out, so each time I take it anywhere I need to day insure it. Also at the moment I’m able to leave it on next door’s drive as the house is empty. It soon won’t be which will leave me with nowhere to put it.
But what can you do, that’s old cars for you. The plan was to sell the BMW, then swap the jag on to the same policy. I just haven’t got that far yet as I need to get it running properly first. 

I've concluded that I like the fixing as much as the driving. Yes it's inconvenient at times, I just had to drive my van to Sheffield 2 days in a row at £10 a time for CAZ charges as the Audi is off the road waiting for me to replace the oil pickup.
But the satisfaction of putting it all right keeps me going. I don't put things into garages though, think I would have been buying a smoke machine and trying to do it myself before waiting 1 month + but your supercharged V8 is a bit more complicated than my golf engine with a turbo.
Keeping the 335 long term or just until this one is sorted*?

After a two week wait, it’s finally been code-read and smoke tested. It has an air leak around the throttle body at the back of the supercharger. Common apparently.
”OK, when can you fix it?”
”That’ll be another 2 weeks”
So that’ll be a month it’s sat there broken. It’s the thirstiest driveway ornament I’ve ever bought. Fuck’s SAKE. Oh, and the MOT runs out this month.
Meanwhile the BMW that I’m supposed to be getting rid of for this continues giving absolute sterling service day in day out, never having caused me an issue in 2.5yrs. Why do we do this?

Top work. 
Totally worth doing the belt again. Specially if it saves aggro later on as you know. Easier than trying to deal with the mess after the belt went. Sadly most won't see the point of doing these jobs and most will be binned due to expensive work needed due to neglect. 
Sad story this. But a friend of mine is using a 1.6 Picasso gearbox for his Peugeot 106 rally car build. It's a BE gearbox but with the same bellhousing pattern of the MA boxes. So fits his 1.6 16v perfect and is waaay stronger.

So it's been a minute and I've left this thread hanging for quite a while. I've tended to keep updates in the news 24 thread but here's a summary of what's been going on since the last update, in no particular order. 
So the headunit debacle is solved. I've used the aforementioned JVC, I've slept since the installation but whatever I've done has enabled it to work properly, remember all settings and most importantly, not cause a battery drain any more. 
Sent it for its MOT a few weeks ago and it went straight through bar an advisory for a defective exhaust mount. Obviously I had to sort that, so 15 quid and a bit of loose change later I've sourced a new band clamp. 
Citroen don't sell them alone any more and only list the silencer. I thought it would be ridiculous to waste the exhaust box just because of the clamp and luckily was able to source a replacement from eBay, otherwise I'd have fabricated something because a replacement exhaust box wouldn't last anywhere near as long as the original one that's still on it. 


I know it's slightly misshapen but that's the best I could get by crawling underneath it. I can readjust when it's next up in the air. 
For some reason the coolant cap won't tighten down and will just pull off, I can't see any damage to the threads on the bottle so I'm hoping a new cap that's just set me back a whopping £5 will cure that
Starting it up this afternoon, I was greeted with a BEEP - oh no I thought, but it was just the service reminder helpfully informing me that I should service it in 150 miles. I've noticed some slight oil sweating underneath from what I assume to be the sump plug so hopefully I should be able to resolve that at the same time. 
I keep meaning to phone up the garage that the previous owner used to look after it to confirm if the cambelt has been done. There's a handwritten note, presumably by the late giffer owner, among the paperwork with a date and mileage denoting cambelt replacement but I'd like the peace of mind of a garage confirming it's been done. I might well just treat it to a new one anyway, because what's £50 to keep such a low mileage healthy engine in good order. 
I think that's it for now. I've still done nothing about the bodywork..
TLDR; it's being totally fantastic with only minor niggles cropping up here and there. 

Forgot to mention this yesterday...
Call me a saddo, but I inadvertently discovered that it is not possible for the wipers to stay parked halfway through their sweep. 
Unlike most other cars where if you take the key out of the ignition before the wipers finish doing their thing, they will stop halfway, no, not on the Picasso. They have engineered it so the wipers still park themselves even after you remove the key from the ignition, presumably due to the BSI staying awake for a short while 🤦
Only Citroen!

Ran the Volvo in to the local tyre place at lunchtime to have the Nankang fitted on the back.

So it now has a full set of usable tyres.  In typical two steps forward one step back fashion though, I've lost the instruments - the speedo still works but the fuel and temp gauges don't, nor do the charge or oil pressure lights, and the alternator isn't charging the battery.  It's not the fuse because the reversing lights are on the same fuse and those are working; it's not the ignition switch as other "ignition live" circuits (wipers etc.) are working as they should.  So it's obviously a wiring fault somewhere in the dash, and those are always my favourite* job.  Doesn't help that the Volvo has a fairly complex electrical system for a 50-year-old car, with two fuseboxes, a PCB for the instrument cluster etc.  I do need to sort it though as I can't go very far with no charging.
I've been trying to buy a cat for the MG  but it's been a right pain in the arse.  Two sellers so far have demanded the reg before they will dispatch the cat, and when I've given them the details they've come back saying I've ordered the wrong one and I need a different one costing £100 more.  I've now tried a third seller but I've lied and said that there is no registration as it's a track day car - will see whether that works.  If this one refuses to send the cat then it's getting a decat pipe.

Definitely a nice spring day today. Glorious sunshine and not too bad temperature either. Must have easily been the best day of the year so far!
To celebrate, I’ve cleaned and polished the Mercury. I’m now absolutely knackered and covered in bites from little bug things that seemed to be attracted to my yellow T shirt! Just got the chrome bumpers to do tomorrow and it’s looking great. Fired it up too, started pretty much immediately after a few pumps of the gas!

I’ll probably give the interior a quick once over too, it’s clean but a bit dusty where it’s been sat over winter. Hopefully I’ll get it out on the road if the weather stays decent over Easter weekend.