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Zelandeth

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Zelandeth last won the day on January 16

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    Milton Keynes
  • Interests
    Vintage technology restoration (if it's got valves, I'm interested), retro computing (Amiga and Acorn in particular), photography (film based generally), the Furry Fandom, vintage commercials...and whatever else I've inevitably forgotten.

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  1. Couple of little jobs today in preparation for the MOT on Thursday. One thing which I knew for certain needed sorting was the headlight aim. I borrowed the Partner which I know the headlights are adjusted more or less correctly on and made a couple of reference marks on the garage door from a known distance. Starting point basically had the headlights pointing at the ground about 6' in front of the car. After a bit of tweaking things looked far more sensible. There used to be a huge gap between the lenses and the surrounds, they look more sensible now. Might need a bit of a tweak at the test, but all the adjusters are free now so that's only a couple of minutes work, and isn't the sort of thing my tester would mind happening while we're there if we need to. As mentioned last time, I had to tweak the locking washer for the nut that holds the steering rack to the track rod bracket as I'd put it on backwards. Just wanted to provide visible evidence (to myself as much as anything!) that I had gone back and fixed that. The Easybleed as seems to be standard both leaked fluid everywhere and overfilled the brake fluid reservoir. So I both drained off enough to bring the fluid down to the max mark and tried to clean up the general area so it didn't look like we had a huge fluid leak from the master cylinder. I'd had a new air filter floating around pretty much since I got the car as the one on it was looking pretty manky. If you wondered what filter these used, here's your answer. Yes, that's also me lazily leaving breadcrumbs for myself when I forget. Surprised to see this still being a current item from Mann given the *extensive* list of vehicles using it. Has a late 2023 date code on though so looks to still be being made. Spotted one problem starting to develop in the form of one of the driver's door hinge pins attempting to make a bid for freedom. Having grabbed a suitable drift this was hammered back into place properly. Have to wonder how long that's taken to work itself that far out. Noticeable that the door opens/closes more smoothly now. Will try to find time between now and the test to give the car a general clean, and I'd really like to come up with a more substantial mounting solution for the front bumper as I can see it's sagging again.
  2. This also happens frequently when trying to embed links or tagging users. As SiC says, it's just one of the "quirks" of the complete disaster that is the Invision text editor. If you're on a mobile device, *sometimes* forcing the page to reflow by swapping from landscape to portrait (or vice-versa) and back will kick it into working again. Not always though.
  3. It's on the car now so I can't easily measure it, but "an inch and a bit" I'd say. Maybe inch and a half for the outer diameter.
  4. Okay, let's have another shot at getting this steering rack to track rod bracket apart. Attempt number 1. This failed. The puller would always slip off well before getting any real torque involved. This wasn't actually in use, I just stuck it on there for the photo, so yes I know it's not lined up right. The correct tool for this job is essentially just a big ball joint splitter. However buying one of those would require spending more money than I really wanted to, and waiting for something to arrive. Instead, take one £15 splitter from Halfords and spend ten minutes mutilating it with a grinder until it fits. Remember, it's not stupid if it works! That let go with one HELL of a bang. The old boot was removed and things cleaned up ready for the new one to go on, which I'd already had long enough to have completely forgotten which box it was in and requiring 10 minutes of rummaging until it turned up. Done. Well, almost. I didn't initially spot that there's a flat cast into the bracket where the locking washer is meant to locate. So the nut was loosened off again and the washer rotated through 180 degrees since this photo was taken. Only casualty was me being careless with the grinder and nearly setting myself on fire. I was already kind of paranoid about fire was I was relatively close to the Rover while doing this job and it's proven so far to be by far the most stubbornly not fuel-tight vehicle I've ever owned! MOT has been re-booked for next Thursday. Shame they can't fit me in sooner, but it is what it is, I know they're always busy. Aside from the usual sanity check beforehand and making sure all the lights etc are working, I need to try to tweak the headlight aim a bit as I think it's still way too low. I'll make sure all the adjusters are properly lubricated before taking it in so it can be easily tweaked at the time if need be.
  5. That lot were (at least when I used to be in the area ~10 years ago) an absolute bunch of crooks. Avoid at all costs. Admittedly, they didn't tend to have anything half as interesting looking in the yard back then, so maybe things have changed.
  6. There is a huge satisfaction to be had from realising that the correct tool for a job is expensive. However you can attack a £15 one with the grinder for ten minutes and it should work just fine. Especially grin worthy when it does work exactly as planned.
  7. Yeah, looks like I'll need to get a puller on to it. I mean it's not something you want to come apart easily and from the locking washer it doesn't look like it's ever been apart before, so I can't complain too much.
  8. Rain finally stopped today so I could move forward with this. No. I definitely didn't give it the second coat of paint using the boot as a spray booth. Also made a point of ensuring that the brake bleeder cracked loose while I had the arm still off the car as dealing with that as it stood would be far easier than in the car if needed. The hub cavity, spacer, stub axle and rear cover were all cleaned up. Not really many photos of putting the new bearings etc in as I was absolutely covered in grease for most of it. In fact I feel like I still am despite having washed my hands a dozen times and showered since I worked on the car. Probably the single most awkward part was actually getting the snap ring back into the groove in front of the outer bearing as it really was a bit beefier than my circlip pliers were designed for. However I managed to not ping it into low earth orbit or embed it in one of my eyeballs so I considered that a win. Getting the suspension arm back in place was moderately awkward, but honestly nowhere near as bad as I expected. I was able to lift the arm into position and get the inboard bolt started, then have a jack support the trailing arm while I started the forward one. Then was just a matter of evenly tightening them both up. Which takes takes a while as both of the bolts are really quite long. Definitely a job which made me wish I had an electric ratchet. Then the brake line was hooked back up. Not thrilled by the amount of tension on the flexible brake lines. Looks like when the camber correction hardware is fitted that an inch or two longer brake line should also be added. I'll look into dealing with that in the future. I appreciate that the brake shoes can be fitted back onto the backing plate as a single assembly without the need to wrestle with a bunch of faffing about with the springs. You DO need to mind your fingers though as there will be a heap of tension on there. Then the hub was reattached, the nut torqued up to VFT and the locking tab bent over to ensure it's not going anywhere. All that remained there was to bleed the brakes and put the wheel back on. A helper would have been handy rather than relying on the Eazibleed (which as usual leaked all over the place). I know I do have one of those far simpler one man bleeders somewhere, but we all know what my garage looks like. All back together. Glad to report that a test drive revealed no unpleasant noises or anything. The next task on the pre-MOT was the steering rack gaiter. Seems simple enough. Remove the end nut from the rack, separate it, remove old boot, clean, re-grease, fit new boot and reassemble. Yeah...the two parts aren't too interested in separating after 39 years. Ideas? I've left it soaking in Plusgas overnight. Guessing heat is probably the answer, albeit very carefully both due to not wanting to damage the rack itself and given the proximity of the fuel tank. Once that's done and I've given the headlight beam alignment a tweak we should be ready to head to the MOT again. Hopefully!
  9. Would have been a bit silly not to get the surface rust on the suspension arm treated and a bit of protection applied while it's off the car. Another coat will go on tomorrow before stuff goes back together. Nothing special, realistically probably not going to make a bit of difference, but I feel better for having it done. Well... probably not going to be tomorrow given it's looking like it will still be raining all day tomorrow. *Sigh.*
  10. Our experiences following a mental breakdown of a family member back in 2016 proved the whole innocent until proven guilty thing to be complete and utter cobblers. We instead discovered that "The burden of proof" instead lays with the accused. In this case as we had no actual physical evidence that the offense accused hadn't been committed, and subsequently basically got the book thrown at us. The NHS were waaaaay more willing to provide mental health support *after* the event that we'd been screaming at the top of our lungs was going to happen for the proceeding three years...ya know that might have been real nice to have before a loved one ended up dropping off the face of the earth for a full day, eventually surfacing a day later in a police cell under suicide watch. It just comes with the territory I think. Not going to let it get to me, as we're bit by bit getting things ticked off we need to before we can just get the hell out of here. Biggest headache is just that the employer of the largest earner in the family by a huge chunk has made it abundantly clear that they're neither willing to entertain less than 25% of time in the office nor relocating to another office elsewhere in the country. So that's a pretty major speed bump we need to navigate, and is definitely the biggest constraining factor with regards to timescales. The rest is just crap which might knock value off the house, which while unfortunate isn't the end of the world (within reason).
  11. I'm sure it won't be too hard to sort in the end. It's just a bit of a headache from a stress perspective having them breathing down my neck from two different angles within a couple of weeks.
  12. They've clearly indicated that I have 21 days to provide them with the evidence or it will be escalated (in red print even) to their enforcement team and that I may then be liable for any legal charges from that point, so ignoring it and hoping it will go away isn't going to be viable. I will be responding to the email address listed and copying by post, I'd just like to speak to someone to confirm if there's anything specific that would be useful for me to provide. In the absence of any other feedback they'll get copies of the documentation proving all vehicles to be in my name (except Chris' company car anyway which we see no paperwork for save for the rental agreement) and a covering letter explaining that I'm simply a hobbyist. I worked for a local council for eight years up north, which is one of the reasons that this lot being so damned difficult to communicate with is so frustrating. The only neighbours who can actually see our frontage are the folks across the road, who are the only neighbours we ever really communicate with, and get along quite well with. The others either keep to themselves or are rental tenants who change what feels like about every six months.
  13. Give me strength... Just had another letter from the Council. Apparently they're under the impression that I have started operating a vehicle restoration or repair business out of my property, in contravention with the local planning regulations. They are investigating the matter and invite me to provide evidence to prove that I am not in fact operating said business. Um, how exactly am I supposed to provide evidence of NOT doing something? Guess that's going to be a fun hour sitting on hold tomorrow trying to get through to speak to an actual person. This is in addition to the planning enforcement notice received from them a few weeks ago about us having apparently built a fence on their land - despite every single set of plans I've had sight of (including from the land registry) clearly showing our boundary to butt up right against the footpath. Still waiting for them to confirm the details on that one, though at least they have acknowledged they've received my initial response.
  14. Think this is the original res. I do have a photo of that car on film I believe, which I *may* be able to pull better resolution out of. Can't remember off the top of my head how much closer/further away I was when I took it. I did take a note of the dimensions, but can't for the life of me remember where! The front plate is very clean looking though, I'm not at all convinced it's not a (relatively) modern replacement. Was completely devoid of any makers marks that I could remember seeing. Would have made sense for them to both be of the same type when the car was new I'd think.
  15. Fscking weather. Me: Wants to put the Trabant back together. Weather: Hah! *Rains all day.* Guess that'll be waiting till tomorrow if I can find time then.
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