Rave

Sorry if this is a dim question, but why's it LHD if Sweden drove on the left until 1967?

1.4CL https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/134956057346?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D777008%26algo%3DPERSONAL.TOPIC%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20221115143451%26meid%3D82dd4c8f7da94ea883e83ebe766fc98d%26pid%3D101615%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D1%26itm%3D134956057346%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D4375194%26algv%3DWatchlistVariantWithMLR&_trksid=p4375194.c101615.m47999&_trkparms=parentrq%3A04b2d96818e0a7286821b701fffd9154|pageci%3A9ddddc1c-d969-11ee-b3a9-5a09ac647ec7|iid%3A1|vlpname%3Avlp_homepage

On the plus side I daresay the boot floor won't be too onerous a job:

On mine you can always open the driver's door with the key, it's only the rest of the doors that require power and a functioning BCM, so not sure why they had to go in through the boot? When working they are perfectly pleasant to drive and be in, the engine's great and they're big and practical. But to me, a car that: 1) requires electronic gubbins to do something as simple as opening a door 2) is designed to leak in multiple places as and when inaccessible drain holes get bunged up And 3) positions said electronic gubbins at the very lowest point in the car where all the leaking water collects ...doesn't suffer from "design flaws". It suffers from "unbelievable design incompetence". I genuinely hope the engineers responsible were drummed out of the profession. Oh, the Omega looks fit BTW, that looks a megabarg!

As someone with far too many cars, wiper blades are a constant niggle for me, as I go back to a car I've abandoned for a year or so to find that the wiper blades I put on for the last MOT have perished through lack of use and need replacing despite never having been used in anger. Anyway I was having a desultory look online yesterday to see if I could find a cheaper option than just spluffing a fiver a blade on whatever crap B&M had in stock and found that GSF's current "65% off" sale applied to wiper blades! Their own brand Drivetec ones are mostly less than 2 quid each with the discount applied At that price I thought it would be foolish not to treat each of the cars I was buying for to a whole new set. Check them out if you need some, not sure how long the offer will last, seems they do free delivery on orders over 20 quid- though my 6 blades only came to 11! In the longer term does anyone know of a reliably cheap source of wiper blades as although I'm planning on thinning my fleet this is likely to be an ongoing prob for me?

While I'm on the subject of Mk4/5 Fiestas, this one caught my eye: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284904052897?hash=item42559ad8a1:g:Ef0AAOSwAdJi2HTj Pretty unremarkable you'd think, except that a bit of detective work says it's (almost certainly) a 1.8TD. In the Fiesta it makes a pretty unremarkable 73bhp but in the Mondeo (and Focus Mk1?) it's fitted with an intercooler and slightly larger turbo and makes 90bhp, remappable to 115-120. Those parts can be fitted to the Fiesta easily enough. A boring looking Fiesta with 120 brake and shitloads of torque strikes me as a recipe for smiles, but unfortunately I'm not in a position to make it happen 🙄.

Oof, I like that very much. If I ever manage to buy my dream car storage barn then some unsuspecting supermini is getting set about with an angle grinder, welder and pipe bender . http://www.opel-corsa-a.com/index_e.php?seite=Modelle/Umbauten/Gilbert_David/Tropica_e.htm

Anyone got any sympathy for this presumably soon-to-be-ULEZ-victim fishface? Rather sun faded for sale sign in the rear window suggests that the seller has not been inundated with people keen to hand over their asking price, and the tax is up at the end of the month, so they might take a bid? MOT history suggests that it'll still be on less than 60,000 miles. Only one advisory last time, O/S sill, which looks to me like it'd still only be an advisory: It's a 1.25 16V rather than a cruddy Endura. Does need a new tailgate though really: Anyway it's a 7 minute bike ride from my house and if anyone fancies it I'd be delighted to act as middleman / delivery driver for my usual consideration of a bit of beer money.

I'm particularly impressed by the telephone in the khazi. But as a hygiene OCD sufferer I would never in a million years touch the fucking thing, even if I had completely run out of bog roll; I would genuinely rather alert the entire campsite to my predicament by yelling for a resupply 🤮

It looks happy to be off my in-laws drive and out and about! If it runs fine but refuses to restart that would potentially suggest that the cam position sensor was crapping out when it gets hot enough. However that wouldn't explain why it cut out on Rob on his way down. Yet more googling suggests that the pipe to the MAP sensor can degrade and collapse once it gets hot so that might be worth a check too.

I bought a Mk3 Mondeo from this lot in 2012. It was fine. Their business model seems to be buying cars from BCA and then immediately punting them on on ebay. The Mondeo turned out to be from Thames Valley Police.

Erm yeah, so this turned out to be quite prescient. To cut a long story short, this 106 was the first of many collections of vehicles from AS, and my fleet has now expanded to 10 cars. The 106 has been sat on my driveway for over a year waiting patiently for me to get round to welding up the boot floor. My landlady informed me that she wants to put some scaffolding up to fix the gutters so that's given me a kick up the arse. Much as I love this little car it's looking like I'm going to be stuck living in suburban London just outside where the ULEZ is being expanded to next year, and most of my driving involves giving lifts to one or both of my elderly in-laws, and so this 3 door low slung car is considerably less popular with them than the Daihatsu Charade I bought last year, and will be less useful once it starts costing me £15 a time to drive inside the South Circular. So the plan is to fix it and sell it, not because there's any money in it for me, but because I adore 106s and it would break my heart to scrap one. So without even taking any pictures I dived straight into the driver's side, which seemed to be the larger of the two holes. A decent session with the flap wheel on my 115mm grinder and the slit disc on my new Lidl 12V cordless 76mm grinder had me ready to start putting metal in, and a bit of a session with the lump hammer and pipe pliers had a bit of metal bent (very) roughly to shape. Here's the finished result all covered in silver galv spray: It looks shit because it is shit; I'm an impatient and incompetent welder, But it is solid. So feeling full of myself, today I turned my attention to the other side where it appeared that the hole was quite a bit smaller. Oh. TBH, that's not really going to present a problem, I just need to let a lot more metal in. The rust appears to stop just short of the rear seat back bracket, so I'm planning to lap weld a 90 degree piece between that section and the floor. Then I figure that rather than muck about doing loads of little patches I'll just cut the entire crusty section out of the floor and weld in a circa 12"x 8" piece of flat steel to replace it; I won't be able to form the factory ribs but my 1mm steel sheet appears to be about twice as thick as the original biscuit tin Peugeot used, so I'm confident it'll be just as strong. There's a bracket underneath the part of it that seems to have some extra seam sealer on it to hold the exhaust hanger, but hopefully I can clean that up and chuck a load of rust converter and galv spray at it before welding it back on from underneath. But of course the other side looks worse: As far as it's possible to tell from doing a forensic dismantling of a lot of crispy weetabix, I think the inner wheelarch panel was spot welded to that inner panel that holds the seat back bracket, and also a lower panel that for some reason forms a double skin just above the axle. Then it was all left to trap water, I guess. That delta shaped hole above the rubber bump stop reveals the interior of the beam that supports the boot floor. No part of the axle mounts to anything south of the rear main chassis rail, fortunately. So I don't think any of the totally fucked metal is particularly structural. Basically, I need some advice as to whether to crack on here, or cut my losses. I'm happy enough to put the time in, but obviously I don't want to be selling anyone a dangerous car. I guess my plan would be to stop dicking about with the flap wheel, accept that all of that metal above the axle has got to go, and start cutting it back till I find something good to weld to. Then weld in a triangle to close off the bottom section, before sticking a plate on to join the inner wing to it. Then squirt a load of wax into the box section before closing the hole up. Finish up by spraving galv and painting underseal and stonechip all over. I figure that if Peugeot's crappy biscuit tin has lasted a quarter of a century before getting to this state, then my bodge up ought to prolong its life a few more years, but if it's not going to be safe then I guess I'll give it up. I generated quite a lot of dust today! Oh and final edit: Once that's done I'll need to do at least one of the front inner wings as well, don't know how much of a PITA that's likely to be...

A 1.9 diesel in a car that's well under a tonne actually results in very reasonable progress, it's not exactly refined but they have absolutely no trouble keeping up with traffic. They have the usual lovely French car ride and decent grip once it's rolled on its side a bit. My old one used to do well over 50mpg on my suburban London commute and I once drove (very slowly) to Ashford in Kent and back on not much more than a gallon, for 70+ MPG. Someone GIB.

@tobyd was the chap who heroically rebuilt the world's most knackered Div I think? If that's the actual bike then sorry to be a pedant, but the XJ900 and the Diversion 900 are separate models, albeit that the latter is based on the former. The Div was actually less powerful, apparently.

I climbed in the back seat once I'd taken possession of it, as I have an odd fetish for travelling in the back of 3 door cars, and especially 2+2s. I could actually sit back there fine (I'm 5'11) however it failed the 'sitting behind yourself' test as to fit my legs in I had to have the driver's seat further forward than I would want it while driving. I reckon a child in a child seat would fit fine however they might well then have a great opportunity to irritate the driver by repeatedly booting the back of the seat. Edit: it seems to me that you have little to lose by aralditing the impeller. I just fixed my pond pump with araldite, though it had a slightly different problem with the impeller- the fins were fine, but the drive tang in the middle where it was turned by the motor was worn down. I araldited a bit of wooden toothpick in to replace it and it's running fine 24 hours later.

This gives me a good target to aim for to get one of my Pugs MOTd...

Albeit that it's not been a cold winter, mine does actually sit at halfway now (or perhaps just the tiniest smidge under, it's an 87 degree stat). Takes about 2 miles of driving from cold to get there.

More bodgery has just been inflicted on this poor old heap of shite. It's actually managed about 4000 reasonably trouble free miles since the alternator fix, though it required a replacement thermostat, which sorted the cold running but didn't sort the heater. Anyway it did that 600 mile round trip to Newcastle OK, except that having forgotten to turn the lights off immediately upon parking up, it wouldn't start when I decided to straighten up about 5 minutes later. The battery was obviously kippered. I've been lugging around my jump leads and a spare (wrong sized) battery since the alternator debacle, so it was no problem to start it up to get home, and it did manage to start itself in the car park at Man City where we'd been spawny enough to blag a free parking ticket right outside the ground, but anyway I was eventually forced to concede that the game was up and ordered a new one from Tayna for 75 quid (which strikes me as reasonable, it's a big battery). While fitting it I noticed that there was water pooled in the bulkhead compartment, a common fault. It turns out there are two drain holes- I already knew that the bung had been removed from the central one, but it turns out that the one under the brake servo was both present and bunged up. So I poked it out and the water drained off, hopefully without having done any mischief to the servo as is wont to happen. I also found a big pool of water in the passenger footwell; I suspect that this has leaked in round the pollen filter housing and gone via the passenger footwell air vents, as the front footwell was dry and there was nothing to suggest the door seal was at fault. It had absolutely pissed down for days that week, so I've just parked it facing the other way on the road camber since, and at some point might try putting some silicone sealant round the bottom of the pollen filter box. Anyway, the new battery went in OK and obviously started the car no bother, but the idle seemed a bit lumpy. I thought no more of it though, and used the car to run us all out for a Chinese meal. When I got home again the aux belt was slipping like a bastard when trying to park up. A quick google revealed, surprisingly to me as it would never have occurred to me as the problem, that this is usually caused by the clutch bearing on the alternator pulley failing and seizing. There followed lots of dire warnings about how it would kill the tensioner in very short order if not sorted. So I poked a screwdriver into the internal fan blades in the alt and established that there didn't seem to be any slip in either direction, measured the pulley to make sure I got the right one, then ordered a replacement for 23 quid from ebay, along with the £7 splined tool required to get them on and off. So today was the day to try and fit it. I didn't even get started until 3pm, having stayed up to watch the Superbowl after an evening of delivering Uber Eats, and was fully expecting to have to give up when it got dark with the job not even half done, but surprisingly it went a bit differently. Now of course Mr Haynes starts his instructions on how to do anything in the engine bay, including this, with "first remove the entire front of the car", but I've not had to do that so far and was determined to maintain that record. The only impediment to removing the alternator with the radiator in situ is apparently the viscous fan getting in the way of the lower bolt; but you can apparently undo the pulley and drop the whole fan and viscous section down into its housing to get it out of the way. You're meant to lock the pulley by putting a 5mm bolt through it, but I didn't have one of those, so used a 4mm allen key. That on its own looked likely to bend when I started heaving on the pulley bolt, but putting the belt back on to provide a bit of additional hold while I cracked it off worked like a charm. I removed the belt, undid the bolt, and then whacked the pulley off with a lump hammer. So then it was just a case of getting the alternator off, after removing the positive battery terminal of course. The bolts came out easily but the alternator was stuck fast. Still, the lump hammer did the business again, and after a bit of cursing I'd wrestled the alternator out past the radiator top hose. At that point I fetched the removal tool and my rattle gun. A load of whacking from the gun seemed to be doing little, but when I gave up as holding the pulley was hurting my other hand and went for the torx bit down the middle to hold it, it came off easily. And sure enough, it was seized. The new part appeared to be correct, so I screwed it in by hand. I was able to nip it up pretty tight with the spanners, but then thought I'd probably better read the instructions, which claimed that it should be torqued up to 85nm, which seemed a lot. So I fetched my torque wrench, and put it on the end of the torx bit while I held the spline tool with a spanner. That of course resulted in me undoing it again, as I'd forgotten that the torx bit needs to go anticlockwise. I reversed the drive direction on the torque wrench, assuming that it works in both directions, and then honked on it as hard as I could. The torque wrench never clicked off, but I did succeed in rounding off the splines off the torx cutout inside the alternator shaft. Oh well, that would have to do. It'll have to be a new alternator next time. Of course having struggled to get the alternator off, I struggled to get it back on. I should really have run a dremel brush over the mating surfaces to clean off all the corrosion, but what I actually did was start twatting it with the lump hammer, and a drift as necessary. That was working alright until I smashed one of the vent fins off the alt, and could only find half of it afterwards; I assume that the other bit fell inside. Still, the alt turned fine with no rattling. After a lot of bashing and swearing I had the alternator bolts in and done up, so then it was just a case of putting the viscous fan back on, nipping it hand tight, replacing the belt, and doing it up with the wrench. Reattached the alt cables and the battery terminal, ran inside with my tools as it had started to rain, and then started the car. And...it seems to have worked, no warning lights came up and I was able to turn the steering lock to lock with no judder. I will have to find an excuse to take it for a spin just to see that it doesn't fall to bits before I take it on a 450 mile round trip to Everton on Saturday, with four passengers who won't be happy if they miss the game... When I started the car, the viscous fan was merrily spinning away, even though I gather that the idea is that it's not supposed to turn until the car warms up? That might explain the extended warm up times. To replace it really will involve pulling the whole front of the car off I think, so that's probably never going to happen.

I can only remember Autocar giving one car a 1 star review in my 30-odd years of reading it: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/proton/gen-2/first-drives/proton-gen-2-1.6 So I demand that a Roffle Of Doom is set up forthwith.

Yeah as I say it most likely isn't the cause here, indeed it can apparently be a bugger to diagnose because the problem isn't anything to do with the ECU and so often no fault codes are stored. My brother's car was claiming gearbox faults (it's an auto). Indeed we changed his battery before I had the glimmer of a memory that dodgy clocks can cause problems and went and googled it, and found a youtube video of how to perform the repair. Still it's something any Mk2 Focus owner should be aware of I reckon! And if it can cause spurious gearbox faults to show and put the car into limp mode, it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that it could do the same for the PAS.

It's unlikely to be causing this issue I reckon but the canbus fault your reader found can be caused by dry solder joints on the main connector for the clocks. It's a common fault on Mk2 Focuses and related cars like the Tourneo Connect and CMax, it's quite easy to remove the clocks, take them apart and re-do all the joints with a soldering iron. My brother's CMax was giving all sorts of random faults, only took me an hour or so to perform the fix. Might be worth doing before the pump if the replacement sensor doesn't fix the problem.

I don't mean to rub it in, just defending ECP here- I picked mine up this morning no bother. I'll try and get them on the next time we have a dry day...so at this rate sometime in February.

Bugger. I did a click and collect order and have not yet had a cancellation email, so fingers crossed?

DYOR, but I think these fit most XJs from the XJ40 through to the X308. https://www.eurocarparts.com/search/104630048 Enter the code FROSTY80 and bosh, £22.15 for a pair of discs.

It's annoying to see a potentially viable* car go for scrap but as everyone else has said there really is no way of making it yours that doesn't leave you open to at best losing money if the previous owner comes forward to claim it, and at worst result in a load of hassle from the police. If you want one for scrap money keep an eye on facebook and gumtree, I assume that the "£50 and a broken xbox tonite m8" crowd must occasionally get a bite otherwise they wouldn't keep doing it?