Zelandeth

Cheers for that, I've dropped a query on that thread, will see if they come back to me. Just would be nice to have given virtually every other option box aside from front fog lights was ticked.

Given it's been sat for a while, my first port of call on the Maserati for the poor running would be checking the dashpot oil in the carbs - assuming I'm remembering correctly that it's running twin SUs...if not ignore me!

You've obviously never visited Luton...

Yes, and it bugs the hell out of me that it's taken so long for it to filter down to lower spec cars. Heck, my 2002 Caddy SDI has a fly by wire throttle and fully electronic speedometer... there's absolutely no reason cruise had to be a massively expensive option that nobody ticked as a result...the only thing you needed to add would be a couple of switches.

Fuel filter is inline just forward of the OSR wheel, and often get overlooked until they rust through. I'd check that for the fuel smell before worrying too much. I really rate that generation of Astra. Not a hugely exciting car dynamically, but thoroughly competent. Also the last of the era where normal cars were apparently allowed to be comfortable and the trend for seats harder than a park bench and solid shock absorbers became the norm.

Oh god, that mess makes my skin crawl...

Oh yes please if you can find it etc! Whereabouts are you based? Imagine it would be pricey to send given the weight.

VW do that with the accent lighting in a load of models too - runs all the way across the dash and along both front doors - nothing in the back though! That just feels so obviously stingy.

Pug 107 and its variants was a fantastic example of penny pinching...though I don't really feel it's fair to call it that as it wasn't a car that was made cheaply, rather it was a car that was designed to be cheap to make. [] Instrument pod attached to the steering column rather than dash, minimising the amount of mouldings differing for LHD/RHD cars. [] Identical ns/os seats. [] Power window switch on the respective doors only. [] Interior light switch on the driver's door only (that DID feel like penny pinching). [] "Frameless" bootlid ala Citroen AX. Albeit less prone to spontaneously shattering I believe. Sure there were a dozen other things they'd done to simplify construction too but I can't remember them all now. Despite that though it never felt cheap or flimsy, and when you realise when it was launched it still was a clever bit of packaging. Only really started to show its age when VW came out with the Up and started to shove big-car luxury toys into shopping trolleys.

Apparently. The old one is in the boot...That wasn't my doing though, it was on there when I collected it!

May or may not be able to drop by this weekend. Have a family work commitment tomorrow which is going to be a huge stressor for me so really can't gauge whether I'll be in the right sort of headspace to deal with socialising come the weekend yet. Not even me that's involved, really does hit home how fragile my mental state is these days sometimes.

That bonnet and the unidentified seat are both from a Riva SLX/2107.

Finally got around to investigation of where the little bit of free play in the steering on the Caddy is. It is only a tiny bit but is really noticeable if I've not driven it for a few days. I had a suspicion that the culprit was this universal joint at the base of the steering column. Having an assistant wobble the steering wheel for me (requiring a helper was one reason I'd not done this yet) revealed that I was correct. There is definitely some free play between the two halves. Wonder how much of a pain that will be to change... Something else which had been on my to do list for a while was installation of a bit of easily removable equipment in the back. Big plastic bin with a non-slip mat in the bottom of it. This is now basically the boot, saves stuff sliding around all over the place. It's tethered in place by the straps there for hooking the dog's travel harnesses to which wrap around the front of it and hook to each other. Bigger than it looks, can get a week's shopping for us in there with a bit of Tetris action. Can just unhook the straps and lift it out to stow in the garage or stuff in the passenger seat when I want to take the dogs out.

Lady, if you're considering "dispersible" to be too big a word for you to understand might I suggest that a pharmacy maybe isn't the best place for you to be working...

After a search covering approximately 80% of the far end of the garage I finally managed to locate this nondescript black plastic case. Here we have the reading with the AC off. This was before I even started the engine. Aaaaaaand with the AC turned on. Yeah...the reading on the blue gauge should have dropped, target being the 30-40psi range, and the reading in the red gauge should have gone up, probably to 130-150psi. They should absolutely *not* stay exactly where they were. What this means is that the compressor isn't pumping. Either one of the valves isn't seating properly or something has failed mechanically in the compressor. It does drop the low side a fraction when the clutch first pulls in, but by like 1 or 2 psi, and creeps back up over the course of the next few seconds. So basically we need a new compressor. Really glad I've found my gauge manifold though. Not knowing where that was was really annoying me. Obviously I don't have access to refrigerant so I can't charge it myself and I don't have access to a recovery machine any more, but being able to properly see what's going on is really useful. These are only cheap gauges and would fall apart in a couple of days in a commercial setting I'm sure, but for occasional use they're just fine. We compared the readings to a set of decent quality (Fieldpiece I think) gauges back when I got them and the accuracy was spot on at least. Will need to get the system evacuated so we can get a new compressor fitted...hopefully that (and getting it recharged for the *third* time) will finally get the air con working again. As the Trevi is still here waiting on the arrival of the correct rotor arm I figured it was a good time to get a couple of other minor niggles sorted. The reason it was here last time was to resolve the almost completely dead dash lighting. Which was successful, though we had issues with quite a few scratchy contacts. Since then while the illumination still seems fine, we were missing several warning lights. There should be lights showing there next to the fuel and temperature gauges. A scan over the rest of the dash showed we were also missing the indicators for the handbrake and rear fog lights. Strip down time. However further investigation shows the issue there to be other than in the dash. The rear fogs work, just no light on the dash. There was an issue with the little lamp failure display too which was convinced there was always a lamp out in the offside rear cluster. Further strip down needed to get to that. There were a couple of spare PCBs in the boot and sure enough swapping it out for one of those (getting the ribbon cable back in was an absolute pig) got rid of the spurious lamp failure warning. I re-replaced any lamps I put in last time given I've had horrendous reliability issues with that batch. These will hopefully prove more reliable. We now have a full compliment of the four main warning lights on the dash during the self test. We still have a red warning light (the big circle below the side/main beam indicator had a red and green LED in, it shows green now with the ignition on as the dash lights are all OK, and lights red to draw attention to a fault) when the headlights are turned on - though there *is* a lamp out in the front fog lights, so that may actually be telling the truth! So I'll get that changed and see where we are then. I may end up with the dash apart again as I'd like to beef up the ground(s) for the panel. Currently turning the headlights on raises the reading on the fuel and temperature gauges by about an eighth...to me that just smells like a grounding issue. Especially with prior experience on Fiats (and relatives) where they have almost invariably had issues with grounding in or around the instrument panel. Easy enough thing to improve though. Have to admit I'm tempted for the sake of less than £10 to add a known good engine to body and body to battery ground strap for future proofing... It looks wacky and you'd think it was a nightmare to work on, but the dash is actually really easy to get apart. Stripping it down as you see above, changing a bunch of lamps, voltage testing to see what was and wasn't working, replacing the lamp failure module and putting it all back together took me less well less than an hour.

Well crap. The AC compressor in the Caddy isn't pumping. That would be why the system doesn't work then!

Looking good, when you starting production of Model 70 ones?

Hillman and Lada for the dash clusters (probably goes with the dash assembly you found earlier), no idea on the last horizontal layout one though. That pump looks interesting... though I seem to be finding all manner of petrol powered stuff interesting these days...

This turned up at a local classic car get together yesterday evening, definitely from the same era as the Chieftain. 1947 in this case I believe. I used to just look straight past cars that were this old, but more and more over the last few years I've been more drawn to them.

Oooh...more pictures and details please... Don't immediately recognise that car, though admittedly I've been out of touch with the Lada/Skoda circles for a few years. There was a while when they popped up for sale that there was about an 80% chance I would know which one they were. I'd definitely love to see what in the metal sometime. There was a local classic car meet on this evening, which I wanted to make an effort to get to. This was a good catalyst for me actually tidying up the front half of the garage. The work that's been going on with the Trevi this last week or two had resulted in TPA getting a bit buried. This is why the garage being so narrow is such a pain... it's so much of a faff to get around the car to get at things that stuff inevitably just ends up getting piled up on top of the car. It's a good thing I'm not bothered about the finish on the paintwork. I had a bit of a dig around too regarding the slight running issue we'd had. Decided to clean and gap the points simply because it's been quite a while since they were last done. No horror stories there, and the distributor cap posts were given a gentle clean too to scrape off the oxide layer that inevitably builds up. A bit of investigation I think has tracked down the issue. I think we've got an intake vacuum leak! It's only a little one, but carb cleaner sprayed around the nearside base of the carb results in a drop in engine speed. It's not worked itself loose of the manifold (again), so I'm not sure whether the base gasket has issues or if it's an issue with the throttle spindle. It has always seeped fuel from somewhere in that vicinity, so might be connected. It's not bad, and I feel I can rest a bit easier knowing the occasional carburetion hiccup is because of a small vacuum leak rather than something which is likely to suddenly degenerate and leave me stranded. I'll have a closer look soon to see if I can confirm exactly where the leak is. Had a bit of a run round the car as well, making sure the wheel nuts/bolts were all still tight, greased up the front end checked tyre pressures etc. All seemed fine, so off we went to the get together. I think the driveshaft coupling bolts being properly tightened has reduced the vibration at speed and seems to have reduced the driveline shunt when taking up drive a bit, though the nature of the system means there's always a bit of slop in there. Some quite nice motors at the meet. Probably the car of the show though was this lovely little Micra. So nice to see one (a really early one at that) in such original condition. Speaking of things which are rarely seen as the factory originally intended... Though rather at the other end of the scale, this was rather splendid. Sounded every bit as good as it looks too. US was quite well represented there. Not the only two cylinder air cooled car there either... Couple of MGBs. Don't remember seeing many in red, really suits it. I know a lot of people hate them because they're so ubiquitous, but I still really like them. Kind of surprised I've not owned one yet. The vast majority of my photos from this meet up are on film though so it will be a couple of weeks before I get that film finished and off for processing. I completely forgot to actually take any photos on my phone of my own car there. Derp. The Trevi is actually going to stick around for a *little* longer yet. Six-Cylinder has successfully tracked down a seller over in France who has the correct rotor arm in stock, so that's on the way. I've also noted a few dash lamps are out again and want to get those all sorted, and am having to wait for replacement stock to be delivered. Apparently 1.2W capless dash lamps are too exotic to just walk into a motor factors and buy in Milton Keynes in 2022...Guess given the ratio of sub 1 year old VW/Audis around here to anything older it shouldn't be a total surprise.

Have been doing a bit more of a detailed look at the rotor arm on the Trevi because it seems like there's some incorrect data out there in the catalogues. Here are the three rotor arms we currently have. The top one is what we believe to be the correct one. The lower two are more recent replacements. Part numbers below. The black one appears to match the current Intermotor listing at least visually. The difference in contact profile is quite visible. That started to break down to the point that we completely lost spark within ten minutes of installation. The Vemo one lasted better, and it's hard to see in the photos but it's burning around the tip too. The one which is resulting in the best running is the ancient and probably badly worn Bosch one. Here appears to be why. That's from the centre of the mark made by the centre contact post to the outer edge of the contact tip. Wouldn't surprise me if that was a round 1" when made. If this is as old as the distributor cap which came off, it's probably very worn. The others however are noticeably shorter. So we need to try to track down one that fits properly! I had pretty much decided to leave that slightly dodgy connector between the distributor and vehicle loom alone as it didn't seem to be causing any issues when poked, shaken, wiggled, flexed etc...however I've changed that decision today on seeing the insulation is worn through on the underside of one of the wires and that bare conductor is visible at the entry point to the connector block. Will get that connector deleted... it's only two wires to remake connections between if the distributor has to come out in future. Hardly the end of the world. Oh...forgot to include the post oil-change photo a couple of days ago. This looks better. A week or two ago I had the AC system on the Caddy evacuated so I could replace the dead expansion valve (pretty painless), and then had the system recharged. Still no AC. Arse. Had a closer look today...here's the static pressure with everything stone cold. Um...I was expecting rather less than that. Why do I get the feeling this may have been overcharged...That reading would make sense if the ambient temperature was somewhere north of 30C, but at 16C it should be sitting somewhere nearer 55psi. I need to turn the garage upside down and find my proper gauge manifold so I can have a look at what's going on with the system actually running (I trust the reading on this one about as far as I can throw it) as equalised standing pressure doesn't tell you anywhere near the full story. My money is on there being way too much gas in there though.

The last batch were supposedly genuine Philips...but this is Amazon so it's anybody's guess if they were actually genuine! Went with Osram this time...but again it's a source from the internet so goodness only knows where they're actually going to come from! Just doing my head in how even trivially simple stuff like this has become a pain to get hold of.

Apparently just buying bog standard 1.2W wedge type dash lamps in a physical shop isn't something I can do now. Unless I want to pay £1.99 each in Halfords - and they have a total of 2 in stock. Had expected to just buy a box from Motorserv, however they "don't do those any more" apparently. They really are as much use as a chocolate teapot lately, no idea what it was that happened a few months ago, but overnight they went from being pretty decent to less useful than Halfords. Great, guess I buy another pack from Amazon and see if more than 30% last longer than 24 hours in actual service this time...

That's why the one vehicle of mine that does have one is the camper. It's the one which seems to be the biggest magnet for idiots...plus is the least likely to be able to evade trouble. Plus it was the easiest to get apart for installation being basically a 70s commercial vehicle design. Windscreen being about three and a half feet tall meant I could tuck the camera away behind the rear view mirror so it's basically invisible. I get the feeling that getting the Caddy apart to install it will be more of a pain, because 90s VW.

I guess part of it is that I have an absolute seething hatred of "stuff" strewn about the interior of my car. Having cables running off from the 12V outlet is an absolute non starter. Hence why basically half the interior would need to come apart for the install.