Schaefft

It's particularly amazing when you are thousands of miles away from home somewhere in Italy/Greece and you know the Northern border of that former empire is a few steps from your front door. Puts the size and achievements of the Roman empire into perspective really. It also means that hundreds of tourists have utterly obscure shite in the background of their holiday photos. Can't wait to park my Caprice New York taxi there😂

Some very satisfying fixes on the Pontiac, hopefully motivating enough to keep the momentum and tackle that welding eventually! Just the ultimate in practicality there. Also good to see some progress on the XM, I keep thinking about mine. Apparently it only recently found a new owner. Maybe I'm seeing XM ownership through rose tinted glasses but having had no actual problems with mine it was a great car to own.

No, but as many non-native English speakers I guess my vocabulary was pretty much shaped by US pop culture from early on. I do try to adjust once in a while but I just don't agree with the UK spelling most of the time 😂 Some more bonus content. The Corona is still a lovely car to drive. It rides so well considering it's roots.

Should anybody be bored from looking at the Celsior by now, great news! The Alfa is back! It actually didn't go anywhere for months. 166 are anything but resistent to rot so it hasn't seen the road since October unfortunately. Which sucks as its so fun to drive! First up was a wash, it turned a little greener than usual in the time it didn't move much: Took a little while but much better. I just can't get enough of looking at this paint. The color absolutely makes it, I don't think I feel that way about any of my other cars, so well done Alfa. I've also finally put the wheel arch liner back on the car, it's been off since probably a year ago when I replaced the alternator. I'm not sure if I showed this before but the wooden steering wheel, shifter and center console trim from @sdkrc's old 166 are now installed and really improve things inside. People keep complaining about American manufacturers and fake wood but that center console trim is by far the least convincing faux wood I have ever seen in any car. Still better than boring matte silver with broken clips though. I still need to find a replacement switchpack for the fuel door release that also has the sports throttle response button. Harder to find than I imagined. At least the cigarette lighter surround lights up now, its the little things etc. etc. Hopefully some more progress in the next few days. And since I can't leave a recent post without a Celsior photo, have a size comparison between Toyota's second biggest and its smallest domestic luxury car offering back in 1992. There's a bit of of fish eye lens distortion going on here but the difference isn't as big as you'd imagine. The Celsior would be 7 series-sized while the Corona Exiv is more of a 3 series, although officially based on something one size smaller (Celica).

500 quid 2.0 Turbo XM Estate. Doesn't run because the seller not knowing the keypad code. https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1471647893559387/

Ordered a replacement gas pedal for the BMW for 18 quid. It's probably the throttle body that's the actual issue but its worth a shot. In Celsior news, the car finally received fresh brake fluid, pads, hoses and wear sensors this weekend. I've also done a few other minor jobs while in there and unfortunately revealed a little more carelessness by the bodyshop. Let the wrenching commence! Front brakes first. I actually didnt end up using the caliper piston rebuild kits on the left, the pistons were still sliding back in nice and smoothly. Well, I think we can say I got my money's worth out of those pads. I don't know when these got changed the last time but it certainly been a while considering the car didn't do that many miles in the last 15 years. The loose wire in the left photo is the wear indicator sensor btw, for some reason whoever replaced the pads didn't know how to or didn't bother installing it again. This is also what I originally expected to be a cut ABS sensor wire a few years back btw, the sensor plugs into the wiring loom of the ABS sensor, bit of an odd design on early Celsiors. Can't say these are the worst pads I've seen but we haven't had a look at the rear ones yet. Quick look underneath to see where the minor exhaust leak is coming from. Like the exhaust shop said, one of the exhaust temp sensors is blowing, they tried to goop it up but no luck. Unfortunately impossible to buy now, not sure if it could get welded? I've also had a look at the O2 sensors and tried to measure their resistance. Well, it seems like there is infinite resistance which of course isn't right, it should be somewhere between 5.1-6.3 ohms at around room temperature. I unplugged them to see if it would make any difference to the way the car runs. It doesn't so new sensors it is! The 135 quid Maxpeedingrods which I only bought to get the car through the MOT are holding up surprisingly well. I've greased them up before installing them so everything is still moving nicely. Unfortunately I just remembered while writing this that I should have put some fresh grease on them... I also found the source for my very noticeable front suspension clunking. I originally blamed the coilovers but its actually the front swaybar bushes that are so worn out that the swaybar can freely move from left to right. So new swaybar bushes are added to the shopping list. I've also fixed the messed up passenger side bumper corner I accidently caught on a wall. No photos yet but some hot air, a tactical ziptie and reinstalling a bumper bracket did wonders. The rear is next. Working on an incline lifting a rear weel driven car is always fun. If you are wondering why Im using different brands for pads and hoses compared to the front, so do I. I think they just ended up reducing the combined shipping costs when I ordered them from Rockauto like 2 years ago. Motul RBF600 is probably some of the best brake fluid you can get if pedal feel matters to you. Yeah, I think its about time to replace those pads... The disc is getting very thin as well so rear discs are added to the shopping list... Certainly cutting it thin with these. The rears actually had the wear sensors properly in place, replacing this one finally got rid of the last (permanent) dash warning light. Unfortunately the passenger side rear caliper piston was really struggling getting pushed back in so I might need a new caliper there. I'm not sure how much extra I paid for the Bosch pads compared to the Beck/Arnley ones but they were certainly much more neatly packed and actually came with a sachet of brake grease. I used copper grease on the sliders for the front calipers instead. About the bodyshop's carelessness mentioned further above: The rear trailing arm bolt is completely loose, the nut was never tightened after the sill got welded there. Mistakes can happen but I'm really starting to get the feeling that things were just slapped together in the end to rush the car out the door. Something like this is pretty dangerous. I had to replace the nut (with a Mercedes one no less) as it wouldn't properly tighten anymore, I'll have to have another look the next time its on a lift though. While having the wheels off I finally had a chance to raise the rear coilovers by 20mm to level out the car a bit better. I don't think its perfect yet but lowering the front should result in a nicely balanced stance. Let me know what you think! The rear discs, swaybar bushes and O2 sensors will hopefully be the last few bits to make it mechanically solid. Being 32 years old now it'll probably always need something but any MOT relevant work should near with these 3 things soon. Some bonus content, the Cadillac is finally moving again and received a wash. That immediately revealed the various paint defects it has, the photos are hiding them remarkably well fortunately! Another big blue landyacht that will receive some more attention this summer.

Ista+ will tell you, unfortunately I don't have it myself, I got the wiring diagram from a BMW specialist who I hoped would diagnose my airbag problem (didn't but gave me enough info to continue and figure it out myself).

How do you know it the satellite module speaks over CAN? My rear seat satellite wasn't showing up at all when scanning for all modules despite receiving power etc. The fibre optics cable must have had a crack somewhere, causing the "blinking" messages to never arrive/be sent out, basically making the module invisible to the larger system. You can easily check the fibre optics cable by shining a light into one end (probably where it connects to the parent airbag module under the dash) and see if it shines through the other end. Mine wouldn't at all.

Actually a '67 or '68 so another owner who got no real clue about what they sell.

It really depends on the car I think. I don't think anyone really cares about Opel Vectra As/Cavaliers outside of the UK so values are appropriately low. Same with Fiat Barchettas which were borderline worthless everywhere while they somehow held their value fairly well in the UK. As usual, supply and demand. I haven't looked up prices for either in a while though. Another great purchase. Only on Autoshite you will find someone go from a Rolls Royce to an Escort in a matter of weeks.

The PDF only describes how to set up SP Daten as far as I can tell. I got the full set of steps, updated by myself to clarify a bit where needed, to setup a used airbag module which absolutely possible as I've done it on my E65. As you mentioned, you flash the module (overwrite to latest factory programming for your car), write the VIN to it and then set the system time. Unfortunately it's all incredibly unintuitive with the default tools and often poorly explained by those handful of people who can be bothered in the first place.

INPA and a few extra tools. I can send you the instructions.

E65 finally got a new windscreen today. Unfortunately Im fairly sure I heard some whistling sound coming from the windshield on my way back on the motorway, which would mean that it's not sealed properly and will need doing again. I wanted to confirm during my lunch break, the problem is that either the gas pedal position sensor or throttle body decided to die, sending it into limp home mode and it's now not recognizing any gas at all. E65 ownership in a nutshell. At least I was able to glue a new BMW badge onto my remote so there's that.

This Lincoln Continental is for sale again, this time with distributor issues. Very interesting color combo. https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/450776033955290/

Thanks for the advice, I'm still hoping to get a call back from the agent eventually because the sale did end up falling through (way too early for that at the moment though). The property was rare enough with the combination of price, seller's motivation, location and curb appeal that I can't imagine anything similar coming up anytime soon. We've been looking for over a year by now after all and our set of requirements are quite specific. But we'll see. Quick update on the Celsior today. The new driver seat triggered a seatbelt warning after putting it in the car. Turns out even the seatbelt buckle is slightly different on the Celsior, it has 4 wires coming from it while the UK LS400 one only has two (which are used for the nighttime illumation of the buckle on both cars). The wiring loom of the seat is identical, it's really only the loom of the buckle thats different, very odd but an easy fix. I finished (for now) polishing the bonnet as well. I could keep going forever to get it all perfect but a) I got enough after like 5 hours and b) my Halfords polisher died once and for all. That means it might be time soon to finally get a better polisher with more power that should hopefully speed things up significantly. 600 grid wetsanding to get the worst scratches out first: 1500 and 3000 grid discs next (thats where you really need to be careful to not burn through the clearcoat. In hindsight I didn't have to be nearly as careful as I was, the super close-up results probably would have been better. Done. These photos were actually before I spent another 2 hours today polishing the paint further, daylight wont show all the fine scratches that would become very visible under streetlights. It's probably still not perfect but the difference is like night and day. The before photo below was after me cleaning the hell out of the bonnet, including using the claybar that normally removes everything. I ended up having to sand the dirt off of it. So yeah, there's the proof that you can polish a turd as long as there's some clearcoat left on it. The problem really is that damage over such a large area takes absolute ages to remove. A better polisher might make a difference but as of right now it would take days to really cover the entire car. It might save you a respray though. Depending on when I get a replacement polisher I might have a go at saving the paint on the front bumper. Its mainly scuffs that should mostly come out. The rear bumper received such a piss poor respray at some point that there's little hope in rectifying that though. Next update is hopefully me figuring out what O2 sensors I need to order and finally doing a brake flush. I might even change the ancient pads and/or hoses.

Lexus GS300 definitely, will feel like a modern nice car and 4k gets you one with such low miles that you wont have to worry about anything for many years. Not sure what you could get instead if insurance for that is an issue though, I dont think it would cost more than anything else.

Quick use of the few rays of sunshine tonight. I've already installed the replacement passenger seat shortly after I picked them up a week ago. The driver seat was next today. LS400 seats seem to have a common failure point where the axle that connects both backrest hinges slides out of the spline shaft on the center console facing side, mine had the same problem. It was also pretty worn from what is definitely not 128k km or miles so out it went: As usually now was the time to clean up all the filth you wouldn't be able to reach otherwise: Much better. Here's the before and after for the seat: Also much better! Both replacement seats come with the added bonus of being heated, something that was a common option in the UK (front and back!) but one my Celsior never had. I already replaced the backseat with a heated one previously and happen to have a spare center console ashtray that also has the heated seat buttons integrated. The whole wiring loom for them isn't pre-installed from the factory though and I doubt that I'll ever get the chance to retrofit it, remembering the ordeal on the E39 years back its not gonna happen anytime soon. Nice to know I got the option now though. If anyone needs the old driver seat or actually rather decent old passenger seat, let me know. Might be a nice office chair for someone!

If this stays even close to the estimate it would be an incredible bargain for someone.

Ok, mine are 21, 28 (upstream o2 sensors left/right) and 55 knock sensor 2. I'll have a look, thanks!

The last one actually didn't seem to need any work at all (didn't get to the point where we'd schedule a proper survey) but pretty much everything else we viewed in the 12 months before did, if not signifcantly more. It's as if people only see the general location and plot size and go wild, ignoring everything else (or maybe they try to haggle the price down long after the seller agreed to an offer). Do you get a code for a knock sensor? My exhaust just got welded but still seems to have a tiny leak through one of the post-cat temperature sensors. The first gen JDM Celsiors never had O2 sensors after the cat so I don't think it would affect the upstream ones, no cat temp warning either. Always a possibility of an exhaust manifold gasket giving up but I'd be somewhat surprised by that. Quick bit of after-work progress then. The driver lower sill covers were scratched up beyond saving so I used the chance a week ago to pick up up a pair for 30 quid. The new ones aren't perfect either but can at least be polished to look decent again: This also gave me a chance to inspect the welding work done on the sill in the back, it all looks nice and solid now: Unfortunately they didn't actually drill the holes needed to reattach the sills again properly... In general the way they reattached it all was a bit of a mess. Naturally most of the clips were broken/missing, often unavoidable but something I would have gladly dealt with myself if needed without having them flap around underneath the car. I found a bunch of Toyota clips that were perfect for what was needed. I'm actually not too keen on drilling holes into my freshly welded sills so I might go the double sided tape route on the back. Few more scuffs to polish out on that side but another job crossed off the list.

Borders is just a little too remote although prices are a little more sensible there for sure! Don't really wanna live across the border either since income tax would go up significantly with the slightly different tax bands. Took the Celsior to Alnwick today. Leaving the car park an elderly man approached me, he seemed quite happy to see the car. Waiting at the exit he came over to my window, quite enthusiastically claiming that I drive one of the best built cars to have ever existed. Hearing this of course made my day, it's not a given that the Celsior/LS400 is being recognized by anybody really, especially someone who would have any kind of real enthusiasm for it. I've let him know that the car only recently returned to the road after over 10 years which seemed to make his day in return. He quickly mentioned that his dad once bought a Bentley when he was 35 and continued to own it for 30 years. I sure hope he didn't confuse mine with one!😂 I had the chance to blink out the CEL codes as well. Results are both upstream o2 sensors and knock sensor #2... O2 sensors wouldn't surprise meas they are probably ancient, however the knock sensors were replaced when I changed the starter and I really don't want to take that intake manifold off again only to find it's perfectly fine. The real trouble is that some people got O2 sensor codes due to faulty ECU capacitors as well. I had mine already replaced but there's no guarantee that it all just worked. With the CEL light coming on relatively randomly, although usually under hard acceleration (it's usually gone when the ignition is turned off but can come back relatively quickly sometimes), it's not all that easy to find out what exactly could trigger it either. I've replaced the MAF just to see if it makes any difference at all and will try to read the resistance of the o2 sensors when I get a chance. That still leaves the knock sensor code though. The engine runs perfectly and I'm using E5 so I don't think there's actually a problem, it's more likely the non-OEM sensor is junk. Good thing I kept the originals, bad thing I'd only know if things are good or bad with everything reassembled... I also started working on the bonnet paint after getting back home. With so many scratches on it it needs some serious wet sanding. Fortunately the ingrained dirt comes off very easily as a side effect. Here's what it looked like before: I took some 600 grid and worked the worst scratches by hand. I need some new 1500/3000 grid sanding pads for my DA polisher though so this is what the bonnet will look like for a few days 😂

That's actually not too far from a house in Longhirst we were looking at in July last year. That was the only other place where I felt like you were getting a decent house, outside space and location for a fair asking price. Naturally people went mental and outbid each other so far beyond the original asking price that we gave up eventually. On a house that probably needed 50k of renovations soon. There's still too many people with too much money to burn and overpay. If I compare prices of what is supposed to be one of the cheapest areas of the country with those of other comparable houses anywhere around the world I'm just shaking my head. We are quickly approaching 700-800k USD and this is not London, Tokyo or Toronto. The value just isn't there.

Thanks guys, I'm hoping for the next one to come around eventually. The letter hasn't arrived to this day, very unusual for Royal Mail but maybe a sign why it wasn't meant to be. It's a huge bummer right now but might be for the better long term as long as we aren't overpaying for whatever comes next. Thats not easy in this market despite everything currently going on.

Some disappointing news on the house side. It was all pretty much set in stone, we were only waiting for a bank statement that would proof we had the deposit in place for the estate agent to agree on the sale. Well, for whatever inexplicable reason my better half and her dad thought it would be a wise idea to have this sent via Post when they sorted it (I thought its easier to just have it all in a single account, hers), before a bank holiday weekend. Naturally the expected happened, Royal mail fucked up and didn't deliver, viewings happened on the long weekend, the previously motivated seller got a significantly better offer and we are out. I intervened and told gf/father in law to call the bank asap when the letter still wasn't here on Tuesday, we promptly got an email copy instead but even that would have cost us tens of thousands (!) of pounds in the end. Just another lesson to be learned, if something is important sort it yourself and never ever rely on anybody else. In 99 out of 100 cases people simply don't think or will fuck it up. Unfortunately a lesson I learn over and over and over again. I don't think we'll get the opportunity we had there again but maybe the next one will at least offer a little more garage space. I also have more time to revive the other cars that will need to move eventually, so there's that... Anyway, after picking up the parts for the Celsior last week I managed to make a little progress. I tried to clean the new bonnet but the dirt is so deeply ingrained that I'll have to get the polisher out next. I've also transferred the dual washer pipes exclusive to the Celsior over to the new bonnet, I still don't know why Toyota decided to go with two different setups for something as simple as washer pipes. Many different clips that were previously missing are back on the car and I finally managed to have a look at the lazy blower motor (yes it's somewhere behind all that wiring): Fortunately there's just enough space to undo 3 bolts and drop it out from the bottom. At first I thought the transistor controlling the motor (there's also a separate more common resistor) at high speeds would be at fault so I rigged up its replacement. It became increasingly clear that it cannot be the source of the somewhat erratic motor speed though, especially when the motor works differently well depending on its position. In the end I think the carbon brushes are just worn out, another indicator that the car will have significantly more miles than indicated. I tried to clean it all with brake cleaner and made an attempt at greasing the bearings. It's not seized up (like the W140 blower motor was) or fouling against anything so it can only really be the contact points of the carbon brushes being close to gone. I can press up on the motor shaft when it's installed and it suddenly goes twice as fast. It just doesn't get the voltage it needs anymore. Anyhow, another drive into the countryside yesterday. Despite the remaining jobs it really is a great driver now. Here it is assuming it's Street Fighter position: Almost. Hopefully a replacement blower motor will sort the airflow, I'll have to reach out to the local old school auto electrician to diagnose the radio and I might have a go at raising the coilovers in the back. Maybe even the A/C system could hold some pressure? In the right lighting you could almost forget about it's cosmetic flaws, with some paint this could be a great looking car from any distance!

After my visit of Athens I'm convinced it might be the best spot to see old shite like this in Europe. Around every single corner there would be the next two or three interesting cars.