Slowsilver

HP Pavilion P6 desktop computer. Base unit only, no keyboard, mouse or monitor. Don't know how old but has W7 license key. VGA and DVI outputs, no HDMI. SD Card reader. Was working when decommissioned. Hard drive removed for security. Otherwise complete. Any interest before it goes to the tip? Free for collection from Buckingham MK18.

Congratulations Des! Hope REV is ready for you to drive soon. The original suggestion for cuddly mini-REV came from @Mrs6C so I passed it on to Mrs Silver, who is a dab hand at creative sewing and likes a challenge. @quicksilverand I acted as technical consultants when it came to the detailing. I then hassled her to get it finished for last weekend, hoping you would be at the FoD so we could present it to you, but I quite understand you wanting to rest up for your test, which obviously did the trick. Ian being at the field was an unexpected bonus though and he was actually the first person outside the Silver family to see it which, as a fellow Invacar owner, seems appropriate. Hopefully we can get it to you in person shortly and it looks as good in the flesh fabric as it does in the photos.

Vauxhall Viva HA. The first incarnation of the Viva from around 1963 to 1966 in think. Pretty rare these days as, like most things from those days, they rusted for fun.

On further investigation it was decided that it wasn't actually neat petrol but mostly water with an infusion of petrol or, more likely, oil. It definitely felt greasy. No idea where the water came from as it is air-cooled. Best guess is the cover over the cylinder head had filled up with rainwater which washed off the oily deposits inside it then got ejected under pressure when the engine started. Quite a large quantity was expelled but eventually it stopped and once the engine was warmed up we had no more trouble with it.

Indeed it is. The Zafira model was launched in the UK in, I think, March of 1999 and this one was registered in June 1999. It could even be the oldest example left on the road now.

Oddly enough, unlike the infamous bright red which ages to pogweasel pink, the Satin Red does not seem to suffer at all from fading with age. The Zafira paintwork is the 22 year old original and, although recently expertly refreshed by @Andyrew, I believe that most of the paint on the Carlton is also from the factory.

Scoop! Satin Red Vauxhall comes to the rescue of Satin Red Vauxhall. Not all Vauxhalls are sh*te, just 50% of them!

I wish you hadn't mentioned the Maxi. I got it out of the garage yesterday and it has been crying brake fluid all over the floor behind the nearside rear wheel. Looks like new rear brake cylinders are required. Hopefully the brake linings will be salvageable as they are fairly new.

Maybe the hole in the floor is some sort of primitive en-suite facility?

I did, but they just told me to get back to work.

Except that the faithful old retainer usually gets a tied cottage and a wage, but not in this case 😀.

I saw the current title of this thread and thought I would take the opportunity to temporarily augment the Vauxhall collection with my modern*. It's only 22 years old and I have only owned it for 19 of them. The Maxi is alive and well but sulking in the garage as it now has to compete with the Mondeo for attention.

Now Taxed, insured and fully road legal. @quicksilver and I have just shared the driving on its first proper road test. Covered about 40 miles and nothing broke or fell off. It actually drives really well and as a lifetime non-ford man I was well impressed. We took it round to where the daughter of the previous owner lives as it only on the next estate from us. She was at home with the rest of her family, including her two daughters, son-in-law and grandchild. When we pulled up outside the house one of her daughters was sitting looking out of the window. I went to the door and she answered it by saying that she had nearly had a heart attack seeing her grandad's car on the road again. Apparently I look quite a lot like him (bald old git). The whole family came out and were all delighted to see it again. They looked it over, sat in it, took photographs of it to send to other family members with the good news and complimented me on the work that I had done and the condition of the car. One of them even said that the interior still smelt of her grandad, but I suggested that was more likely to be me 😀. This has now encouraged me to do some more odd jobs on it. Nothing else major hopefully but there are still various things that would benefit from some attention. After all the grief that I have had with this, as documented ad nauseum in this thread, it is a great feeling to be able to report that finally, after 18 months, I have succeeded in my quest to restore it, on my own, outside on the drive, with only DIY tools. Many thanks for all the help, advice and encouragement from everyone who has posted on this thread. I genuinely believe that without this I would have given up long ago. Autoshite rocks! EDIT: I forgot to mention that I asked the family about it being a Cat. C write off. Apparently it happened in around 2010, when one of his neighbours backed out of her drive into the nearside rear door and dented it. The damage was confined to this door but since the car was only judged to be worth about £500 the insurance company wrote it off. However, the owner was so attached to it that he added £500 of his own money to the £500 from the insurance and paid his pet local garage £1000 to repair it. It was obviously a proper repair as I can see no trace of it being repaired, not even mismatched paint. He must have really loved this car.

Talboting (verb): To attack a hopeless pile of junk that everyone else has written off as scrap and get it working again.

Don't forget the delightfully rural "Dunny Shack" indoor eco-bog.

The original problem was no braking on the nearside rear wheel, which turned out to be caused by one of the channels on the ABS unit being permanently closed off for reasons unknown. This was remedied by replacement with the finest* of second-hand units (£30 including postage from Latvia of all places). All the connections to it were checked and cleaned and all the wheel sensors were tested with a low-voltage AC voltmeter.

I was warned on here about this spontaneous combustion risk just after I first used it. I had left a rag soaked in it in the garage so immediately ran out to check and was surprised to find that it felt significantly cooler than the ambient. Maybe I was just lucky, but I have had no problems with it at all.

Looks much smarter already. Try some boiled linseed oil on the driver's heel mat. That would finish it off nicely.

I don't think that 8 years sitting in a field has improved it much!

I like the term "Sixfire" by the way. Much nicer than Chris referring to it as "Gitfire", which conjures up images of a miserable old man bursting into flames. And all six cylinders did fire eventually!

Thanks for starting a thread on this as requested. Wasn't quite as easy as it sounds. It had some sort of weird home-made immobiliser on it which I had to rip out and then rewire the standard ignition system. The distributor was full of what looked like grey candy floss so was cleaned out and the points were removed, cleaned and refitted. Then the plugs were taken out and cleaned and the compressions checked while they were out. All the cylinders were about 180psi, equating to about 12:1, which sounds quite high to me. Checked that there was a spark on each cylinder then refitted the plugs. Cleaned the filter in the fuel pump and hand-primed it with some fuel. Set the ignition timing to a nominal 10 degrees BTDC and cranked it over. No start but lots of spitting and coughing. Loosened the distributor and tried twiddling the timing randomly while cranking it over. Eventually it fired up so I adjusted the timing for the smoothest running and tightened it up. Rechecking the timing then showed it to be about 90 degrees before TDC, which seems way out. I rechecked the firing order and I am sure it was correct. However it now ran OK so was exercised up and down the track. Unfortunately it had no brakes and was eventually stopped by rolling it backwards into a conveniently-located Triumph Herald (sorry Chris & Claire). Broken light lens on the Herald and minor dent in rear panel of Sixfire which was soon remedied with a block of wood and a lump hammer (Copyright Slowsilver panel-beating services). Then it stopped running. No fuel in the pump so we assumed it had packed up. Checked the inlet and, despite having sloshed a fair amount of fuel in it initially, no fuel was coming in from the tank. Checked the tank and it was empty again. Sloshed in yet more petrol and off it went again. Judging by the compressions measured, where the timing ended up, the noise it made, the amount of fuel it used in about 5 minutes and the fact that it accelerated like a scalded cat I think the engine (which we think is, or was, a 2.5 litre from a TR6) is far from standard. It will be interesting to see how it goes once it has brakes and can be thrashed tested properly.

Good luck with the restoration. Can we have a progress thread please, however slow.

All the original clips were the horrible sprung things, which I hate with a passion. I replaced them all with the proper jubilee clips shown on the hose in the photo. Because I had so much trouble getting the old clip off I may have damaged the hose internally. It still looked OK but I really should have replaced it then. Serves me right for being a skinflint. Has still cost me £25 but I have now had to do the job twice .

Thanks for all the info. Found the metal pipe you mentioned and it seems to be OK. Looked again this morning and the water level does not appear to have gone down much, if at all, but the paper towel under the water pump hose connection is definitely soaking wet now, so I'm pretty sure the bottom hose is the culprit. Looking at the photo of your hoses @sierraman I can't see a bottom hose. They are weird multi-arm things thus: But thanks for the kind offer. I managed to get a deal on a new one for £25, so have ordered one and it is due on Tuesday.