Yoss

And it drove very well, but I need to tighten the fan belt before the next drive, that's the only thing. And this one had an idle speed adjustment on the dashboard, need to see if this works and if I can connect it again as it is a bit grumpy when cold and likes slightly higher revs then. 
And I have a fascination with taxis and now that I own this one I often look for pictures of these from when they worked as taxis and I have found this great picture where a taxi company gets 50 of these new delivered to its taxi fleet. The flag looks Finnish and Taksi is taxi in Finnish so this is from Finland. Lucky drivers who got these as a workplace.

First drive in 2024 is a success. Good to have it back on the road again.

I've never actually stayed there as it is only an hour and a half away but it is my favourite town along the Jurassic Coast. If ever we are driving to or from somewhere further west we always stop there.
As I said, there are at least three quality bakeries which is how I judge most places (it's why I like Germany so much). It is very scenic but very hilly whichever direction you come from. It has quite a few galleries and antique shops as I guess it attract the arty types.
It's roughly halfway between Weymouth and Exmouth which are both very pleasant too and there are many little bays in between. It is a part of the world I could happily live in.

I've never actually stayed there as it is only an hour and a half away but it is my favourite town along the Jurassic Coast. If ever we are driving to or from somewhere further west we always stop there.
As I said, there are at least three quality bakeries which is how I judge most places (it's why I like Germany so much). It is very scenic but very hilly whichever direction you come from. It has quite a few galleries and antique shops as I guess it attract the arty types.
It's roughly halfway between Weymouth and Exmouth which are both very pleasant too and there are many little bays in between. It is a part of the world I could happily live in.

It is certainly done well even if it's not to everyone's taste.
The same man is also responsible for this double ended 75.

And undoubtedly the best, a two door coupe so he is obviously very talented.

Whilst I've got the Triumph out I thought I'd try and sort the garage out.
This is what I've got. Eight of these blue stacking boxes mainly full of Triumph spares plus a couple of open boxes. What was once a work bench is now stacked with more recently acquired, mostly Škoda bits. There's more in the loft. These boxes stack in certain parts of the garage and still leave room for the Triumph but I don't really have room for any more 

But I've been a bit ruthless and condensed the eight boxes in to five leaving three empty to fill up with the stuff on the workbench. Plus I've moved more, mainly lightweight and clean, stuff in to the loft.
But the strangest thing I've discovered is this. A little blue box.

I don't ever remember seeing this before. So I opened it and it's a fancy old tyre pressure gauge. But not any old tyre pressure gauge, it's only a bloody Borgward one.




And on closer inspection I noticed the slightly tatty box has a Borgward logo on it too.

What's also slightly weird is that we were discussing Borgwards briefly on another thread on here only a couple of days ago.
So I can only see two courses of action from here. Find somebody with a Borgward and sell it to them or buy my own Borgward to put in. 
 

That does look proper Autoshite doesn't it. The advert says it starts and drives but doesn't stop. I don't suppose that matters.

Whilst I've got the Triumph out I thought I'd try and sort the garage out.
This is what I've got. Eight of these blue stacking boxes mainly full of Triumph spares plus a couple of open boxes. What was once a work bench is now stacked with more recently acquired, mostly Škoda bits. There's more in the loft. These boxes stack in certain parts of the garage and still leave room for the Triumph but I don't really have room for any more 

But I've been a bit ruthless and condensed the eight boxes in to five leaving three empty to fill up with the stuff on the workbench. Plus I've moved more, mainly lightweight and clean, stuff in to the loft.
But the strangest thing I've discovered is this. A little blue box.

I don't ever remember seeing this before. So I opened it and it's a fancy old tyre pressure gauge. But not any old tyre pressure gauge, it's only a bloody Borgward one.




And on closer inspection I noticed the slightly tatty box has a Borgward logo on it too.

What's also slightly weird is that we were discussing Borgwards briefly on another thread on here only a couple of days ago.
So I can only see two courses of action from here. Find somebody with a Borgward and sell it to them or buy my own Borgward to put in. 
 

I'd forgotten that, but then every day is drive it day for me with my newest car being 30 years old. Took blue Škoda on a test run then took the Triumph to get some dog food and some bits from M&S then Mrs Yoss took blue Škoda again to the gym so we've done our bit. 

I've never had my three parked side by side before. They have to park line astern on the drive and even then one of them has to be in the garage. 
Well I was doing a bit of shunting this morning and there is a space at the top of our Close for two cars that was empty, which is a rarity in itself. Plus the sun was shining and the leaves have just started coming out on the trees so I thought why not.

Like I say, parking for two cars, but when they are all quite small and all yours you can squeeze three in. Obviously you have to start from the left. If I'd put the Triumph in last I couldn't have got out of the car.

Also, how to make a Favorit look like a big car. Park them either side of a Triumph 1300.

Not a car, but, the 1983 Steinwinter Supercargo:






I came across this via a YouTube suggestion, link:
I never knew this existed 😳 but glad I came across it. Good to see it still exists and to be fair, I think it belongs in a museum.
From what I can gather through a 2-minute "research" was in around the late 1970s, this was the brainchild of one Manfred Steinwinter. The cab was based on a low racer-type vehicle that could accommodate 3 adults and be driven around the city for example without the trailer. But due to some regulations around the early 80s the idea was shelved.
Also, if you are observant enough, you might notice what looks like a Ferrari logo on the front of the truck. Ferrari in fact had nothing to do with the truck, but the obscure car company of Steinwinter did, more about it here:
https://jalopnik.com/a-strange-little-car-company-youve-never-heard-of-has-b-1842759339

Whilst I've got the Triumph out I thought I'd try and sort the garage out.
This is what I've got. Eight of these blue stacking boxes mainly full of Triumph spares plus a couple of open boxes. What was once a work bench is now stacked with more recently acquired, mostly Škoda bits. There's more in the loft. These boxes stack in certain parts of the garage and still leave room for the Triumph but I don't really have room for any more 

But I've been a bit ruthless and condensed the eight boxes in to five leaving three empty to fill up with the stuff on the workbench. Plus I've moved more, mainly lightweight and clean, stuff in to the loft.
But the strangest thing I've discovered is this. A little blue box.

I don't ever remember seeing this before. So I opened it and it's a fancy old tyre pressure gauge. But not any old tyre pressure gauge, it's only a bloody Borgward one.




And on closer inspection I noticed the slightly tatty box has a Borgward logo on it too.

What's also slightly weird is that we were discussing Borgwards briefly on another thread on here only a couple of days ago.
So I can only see two courses of action from here. Find somebody with a Borgward and sell it to them or buy my own Borgward to put in. 
 

Donald Campbell's house I presume. The E-Type was his. 
The vehicle on the right is a prototype land speed car, Bluebird Mach 1.1 (CMN-8) he was developing at the time of his death in the Bluebird watercraft.
Really the bravest of the brave. The new Bluebird had a designed top speed of 800mph+.
I've seen the middle land speed car close-to. Amazing thing.

Whilst I've got the Triumph out I thought I'd try and sort the garage out.
This is what I've got. Eight of these blue stacking boxes mainly full of Triumph spares plus a couple of open boxes. What was once a work bench is now stacked with more recently acquired, mostly Škoda bits. There's more in the loft. These boxes stack in certain parts of the garage and still leave room for the Triumph but I don't really have room for any more 

But I've been a bit ruthless and condensed the eight boxes in to five leaving three empty to fill up with the stuff on the workbench. Plus I've moved more, mainly lightweight and clean, stuff in to the loft.
But the strangest thing I've discovered is this. A little blue box.

I don't ever remember seeing this before. So I opened it and it's a fancy old tyre pressure gauge. But not any old tyre pressure gauge, it's only a bloody Borgward one.




And on closer inspection I noticed the slightly tatty box has a Borgward logo on it too.

What's also slightly weird is that we were discussing Borgwards briefly on another thread on here only a couple of days ago.
So I can only see two courses of action from here. Find somebody with a Borgward and sell it to them or buy my own Borgward to put in. 
 

That does look proper Autoshite doesn't it. The advert says it starts and drives but doesn't stop. I don't suppose that matters.

Spotted today still earning its keep.
 

I never did the starter motor on one but I did have to change the alternator on RM 2213. It is just like a car but bigger, obviously. You do it from underneath but you don't need to jack it up, just take the grille off and lie underneath.
Interesting* fun fact: the interior illuminated advert panel at the front downstairs runs directly off the alternator. If that stops working it's a sure sign the alternator is bolloxed. Most vehicles just have a small ignition light on the dashboard. Routemasters have a big fluorescent advert panel.

Whilst I've got the Triumph out I thought I'd try and sort the garage out.
This is what I've got. Eight of these blue stacking boxes mainly full of Triumph spares plus a couple of open boxes. What was once a work bench is now stacked with more recently acquired, mostly Škoda bits. There's more in the loft. These boxes stack in certain parts of the garage and still leave room for the Triumph but I don't really have room for any more 

But I've been a bit ruthless and condensed the eight boxes in to five leaving three empty to fill up with the stuff on the workbench. Plus I've moved more, mainly lightweight and clean, stuff in to the loft.
But the strangest thing I've discovered is this. A little blue box.

I don't ever remember seeing this before. So I opened it and it's a fancy old tyre pressure gauge. But not any old tyre pressure gauge, it's only a bloody Borgward one.




And on closer inspection I noticed the slightly tatty box has a Borgward logo on it too.

What's also slightly weird is that we were discussing Borgwards briefly on another thread on here only a couple of days ago.
So I can only see two courses of action from here. Find somebody with a Borgward and sell it to them or buy my own Borgward to put in. 
 

Stuck the big chrome trims on the Princess again since I fancied a change.

Whilst I've got the Triumph out I thought I'd try and sort the garage out.
This is what I've got. Eight of these blue stacking boxes mainly full of Triumph spares plus a couple of open boxes. What was once a work bench is now stacked with more recently acquired, mostly Škoda bits. There's more in the loft. These boxes stack in certain parts of the garage and still leave room for the Triumph but I don't really have room for any more 

But I've been a bit ruthless and condensed the eight boxes in to five leaving three empty to fill up with the stuff on the workbench. Plus I've moved more, mainly lightweight and clean, stuff in to the loft.
But the strangest thing I've discovered is this. A little blue box.

I don't ever remember seeing this before. So I opened it and it's a fancy old tyre pressure gauge. But not any old tyre pressure gauge, it's only a bloody Borgward one.




And on closer inspection I noticed the slightly tatty box has a Borgward logo on it too.

What's also slightly weird is that we were discussing Borgwards briefly on another thread on here only a couple of days ago.
So I can only see two courses of action from here. Find somebody with a Borgward and sell it to them or buy my own Borgward to put in. 
 

I have put the original springs back on blue Favorit. Not quite sure how noticeable it is in pictures as they naturally have a large gap between the wheel and front wheel arch anyway.
Lowered.

Standard.

It was okay lowered but it was too stiff. When I did it our other car was a standard Felicia so we had one car that you could drive over speed bumps and potholes without worry. But now I have green Favorit that's even stiffer and that's the one with all the other mods too so I thought I'd put the blue one back to standard. Even the Triumph is a bit boy racered but it has been like it for over 25 years so it's staying like it.
I assumed it was going to be quite a simple job. I'd run it through in my head and decided I could probably do it in one afternoon but of course it took a lot longer. 
On the front I had enough bits to make up a whole strut beforehand so I just had to swap the struts, so two nuts at the top and one nut and bolt at the bottom but I managed to strip the thread on one of the lower bolts and had to go out and buy more.
I'm a bit confused by this.

The red spring is the lowered one and the black the standard. And yet with everything bolted up the red spring is longer, plus it is stiffer so you would think it would compress less with the weight of the car on it but it is definitely lower and stiffer once in place. I'm sure there is some law of physics to explain this but it beats me.
At the back I had the problem of the top mounting nut.

As you can see it's in a deep dished washer. No spanner would go in there and even a socket wouldn't seat properly so I ended up having to 'sharpen' a deep socket with an angle grinder.

I can't remember what I did last time when I put the lowered springs on in the first place but it wasn't this. That was seven years ago and I've completely forgotten.
On the plus side, the thread on the top of the rear shocks is so long that you don't need spring compressors.

By the time you've wound the nut to the end the spring has reached the end of its travel and putting it back together you can just lean on the spring a bit to get the nut on and then just wind it up with the spanner to compress it. Any job that doesn't need spring compressors is a bonus.
The springs make more sense at the back with the black one being longer than the red one.

 
Also the job was made more tricky by doing it in the garage but if I did it outside I'd have to put it at the front of the drive where it is wider but we have residents permit parking and this is the only car with a permit so the other two can't be left out.
It's not a bad sized garage for a single but it still means having to move the car over to do each side and you have to be careful when jacking up that you're not catching the mirrors on anything. 


Also not helped by the fact I've added shelves to every possible surface to try and help store all my spares. I really would like a bigger garage but it's not going to happen so you just have to make do with what you have.
 
But I took it out for a tour of the local speed bumps this morning and it is nice and comfy again. Obviously it rolls on the bends when you push it but not in alarming way.
I do have a rear anti roll bar off a Felicia which I could fit at a later date if I feel like it.

I only have the rear one though, where the Felicia had them at both ends where fitted (all 1.6 and diesels and late 1.3s too). I don't know how much difference the rear one will make on its own but I'm curious to find out. But not yet, I'm just enjoying the floaty ride at the moment.

So Mrs Yoss got in green Favorit one day last week and noticed a note tucked under the windscreen wiper. When she got back out to retrieve it she also noticed a piece of plastic. It was part of the door handle. Somehow she had managed to get in without noticing it was missing.

The note was very apologetic and well written explaining that this womans granddaughter had run ahead and somehow broken it off. I don't know why her granddaughter was going round trying door handles but as I say it was a very nicely written note and she seemed genuinely sorry and left her phone number offering to pay for a new handle. I thought this seemed decent of her so I texted to say not to worry, these things happen with children and I have some spare handles in the garage.
And in the meantime it was still perfectly usable, like I say Mrs Yoss got in without even noticing. So off I go to dig out a spare handle and all I can find are mk1s. I know I have a mk2 one because I found some cheap on eBay a couple of years back and when they turned up one of them was a mk2 despite the picture being a MK1. I emailed the seller and he apologised, gave me a refund and told me to keep it. It's a fair mistake, most people don't even know there are mk1 and mk2 Favorits let alone what the differences actually are. 
But I'll be buggered if I can find it now. So I've bunged a mk1 on for now, they are interchangeable, it's just the outer cover that is different. You can't really see it from this far back anyway.

But you can closer up.


The early ones are actually the same as an Estelle, at least on the outside, and look and feel much nicer. They are just more tactile with the ribbed section. The mk2 are completely smooth and just look cheaper. Now I want to change the other three rather than find another MK2 for the drivers door.
You can see here where the clips have broken and where they slot in over the metal bit.

It might be possible to glue it back on with the right glue, it's not like they ever have to be removed anyway so I shall still keep it.
And just for the hell of it, the two together.

It's not often they get to park side by side. They have to park line astern in the drive but occasionally I have to swap them round and drive them up to top of our Close to do so. Then the sun came out while I was doing it so I couldn't resist a picture.

Seems like it's starter motor season. Green Favorit has been getting slow to start recently especially in the morning which you would think would point to a flat battery. I even went as far as putting a spare battery and jump leads in the boot as a precaution.
Then on Monday night we drove in to town and as I was reversing in to a space I stalled it and when I went to restart it seemed like the battery was flat. This made me wonder if the alternator was charging as we had just driven in to town with the lights on but the warning light wasn't on.
As we were blocking the car park I just decided to push it in to the space and go and have something to eat, which is why were there in the first place, and worry about it afterwards. Like I say there was a spare battery in the boot and if all else failed we could bump start it, it's not a heavy car.
Came back from our meal and it started first time! Drove home with just the sidelights on just in case. 
So I went out next morning when it was cold. The battery on its own was on 12.6v and with it running (it started easily) was on 14.4v which would suggest the battery and alternator are fine. I had been wondering about the motor itself they can draw more power than they are supposed to if they are starting to seize up, I'd imagine.
So I dug out the old Felicia motor that didn't fit blue Fav about two weeks ago (see about three posts back). They are definitely the same type this time. Felicia one on the right, Fav on the left 

 
The one I just removed had a sticker on saying guarantee void if removed which I thought was odd because you'd have to remove it if it was faulty.
Then I realised it probably meant if the sticker was removed. But apart from that it had no other markings at all.

Whereas the Felly one had this on the back.

And if you look very closely it says made in Czech Republic on the body so I'm thinking this is a quality original part and the other one is cheap German copy made for Volkswagens.

 
Anyway, the job itself was exactly the same as on the blue car except there isn't quite as much room what with the bigger engine. It's down there under the fan and the power steering reservoir and all those hoses.

 
The teeth on the old one are bit worn but nothing like the one on the blue car.

so we shall see what happens now, but I'll keep the spare battery in the boot for a while longer just in case.