GrumpiusMaximus

If you meet a twat in the morning, they're probably a twat.  If you meet twats all day, then you're the twat.
I'm definitely a twat.

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/sevenoaks/news/mclaren-supercar-trashed-in-sainsburys-car-park-235828/
Could be worse.

If you meet a twat in the morning, they're probably a twat.  If you meet twats all day, then you're the twat.
I'm definitely a twat.

That's going in my book of insults to describe the mithering knob at work

Where was I...?
Oh yes, so I replaced the rad with the new ally one, fresh coolant and a new bottom hose and water pump gasket (the pump was new but the gasket damaged) cured the leaks. I made a new gasket out of rubberised cork which is really good stuff.
It now runs well and the gauge sits slap bang in the middle.
The mot ran out on the 2nd August so dad and I went round it to fix all the faults. One foglight and one headlight weren’t working. Dodgy wiring and corroded connections. Cut off a scotchlock and soldered it properly. The exhaust was also blowing where the mid section meets the backbox- it’s an aftermarket big bore exhaust and someone had made a mess of fitting it - not only had they not pushed the two parts of the exhaust together fully, but they’d used a hanger that was too short and cut a hole in the rear valance for the tailpipe to go. I had to use lots of heat to get the two parts separated, then cleaned it all up, welded a short extension onto the backbox so the strap would reach and out it all back together. It’s still loud, but at least it’s not blowing.
There are only three Class 3 testing stations in Southend. One of which I recognised as being lenient as I’ve bought a couple of ropey cars that were tested by them. Phoned them and they said “oh our class 3 tester is working at another garage this week, try them instead”. So I did. He didn’t seem especially pleased when we dropped it off but was all smiles when we collected it, saying how good it was, and he could see we’d done a lot of work on it to a high standard. Just one verbal advisory for the front tyre getting low.
Flushed with an official clean bill of health, I decided to tidy it up by repainting the scruffy alloys. I’m very lazy with painting and don’t really like doing it, especially as these are quite fiddly things. Still, it was a lovely summer day and there were only two of them, so I sat in the garden and rubbed them down, masked them up and painted them using BMC Island Blue (same colour as my A35 and the only blue aerosol I could find) and lacquer. Came out pretty well really! I polished up the bare aluminium bits. It’s not perfect because they are quite badly kerbed but do look much better.




The next thing was the tyres. The rears were very old and the front was almost on the limit. Had three new Falkens fitted at the local place, about £50 each or something fitted. They had to order them in specially and it took a couple of days for them to arrive.
It was funny seeing the man going behind their stack of new tyres which had just been delivered, all of which were for modern cars with ridiculously big tyres (it didn’t look like there was much there less than 18”) and fishing out these three little 10” tiddlers!
With the new tyres on I was confident enough to push it straight into daily use.
Robin mirrors are super rare and £50 a pop secondhand from Reliant specialists. When they get broken typical tight arse Reliant owners won’t pay for proper replacements so they fit any old shit. I don’t know what the ones on it were from (Peugeot 205 maybe?) but they were so floppy I couldn’t see a thing in them.
Managed to get a drivers one for a whopping £35 a while ago. Been biding my time since. A Robin got posted breaking for spares on the Reliant fb page. I asked for a price for the passenger mirror and heater and he said £10 and £20 respectively. I dibbed them straight away and thought I’d have the other mirror too for that money. I asked him for a price for the window winders too as I’ve got one broken one. One of his ones was broken and one had been repaired but he kindly chucked them in. I sent him a parcel label and this turned up at work today.

I popped the passenger mirror on after freeing it off. Much better!




The heater came from a G reg Robin LX and I’m pretty sure it’s the correct one based on what plasticvandan was saying. I think I’ve got all the trunking now, and I’ve got plenty of heater hose so all I need to be able to reinstate it is a cable, a valve and the four rubber grommets where the trunking goes through the bulkhead.
Does anyone know if the valve is screwed to the inner wing (if so where?) or if it just floats in the pipe?
The heater isn’t in amazing condition (it came from a scrap car) the motor assembly has taken a wallop and the fan blades are catching on the box. Looks easy enough to pull it back to where it should be. The matrix looks pretty good though and I’ll flush it through before fitting it. No idea if the motor works but fingers crossed!
My dad tuned it up and got it running much better. It starts brilliantly now and has great compression. Lovely little engine so what Torsten was told about it having been rebuilt I’m sure was true. It seems to be doing it good to be having regular use too.

It’s times like this I really curse Reliant’s designers for making things so inaccessible in the engine bay!



This Robin has obviously had a history of overheating as someone had removed the thermostat. Let’s look at the problems:
Missing heater and bypassed coolant pipes
Missing thermostat (fixed)
Leaking bottom hose (fixed)
Corroded and clogged radiator (soon to be fixed)
Leak from water pump gasket (soon to be fixed)
I took a deep breath and splashed out on a new aluminium radiator for it, which should be here tomorrow, along with a new gasket for the water pump. The old gasket was damaged which I think was the source of the leak that was coming from there. The water pump is actually not very old! 
I replaced the bottom hose a few weeks ago, the old one was mega porous. The cheapest I could find was a new remanufactured one from CHG Reliant at £17 or thereabouts. It was a nice fit to be fair, so I’ve ordered the rad from him as well.
Joe Mason Reliant Spares (the other main supplier) has complete heater “kits” on the shelf, we just need to establish which of the three potential types my car had originally. Hopefully a picture of the empty space where it once sat will be enough!
As for the Royale, that’s been a bit of a nightmare.
First issue was this plug in the side of the engine block that needed to come out to complete the injection type cooling system. It was a steel threaded plug with a typically German Allen head. Obviously I rounded it off straight away. Made the decision to strip down the engine to get access to weld a bolt on.
So after a couple of hours work:



You can see the little bastard down there above the oil pressure sender!
I finally had some access so welded a bolt into the Allen key slot. Also warmed it up with a blow lamp. 
No joy. The bolt simply twisted with the big breaker bar on it.
I then had another look round the garage and found a new steel wheel nut that looked like it might do the job. Lopped the head off the bolt, put this over the top, cranked the wire speed up on the welder (already on max power) and went for it.
A 19mm impact socket on the big breaker bar and it finally shifted! 


We eventually managed to get it running (albeit not very well) and I drove it out of the space on the driveway where it’s been sat for two years! 









Unfortunately, soon after that it refused to start with no spark. The wiring is a mess where we fitted the new wiring loom. Dad and I have come to the end of our tether with it, it requires the services of an auto electrician to set it up properly. One is coming to look at it next week, a chap sent by a car dealer to have a look at a fault with my sisters car last year. He expressed interest in the Royale then and sounded quite enthusiastic when I spoke to him on the phone earlier, so I’ll give him a chance first.
I suppose I shouldn’t feel that bad about seeking professional advice just to finish it off. Dad and I got a long way just on our own. It was an ambitious project.
Bread and cheese for me for the next few months then!
I will continue with the front end metalwork tomorrow in the meantime. Got this corner ground down and a couple of skims of filler on it. 

I also painted inside the headlight area with some random metallic maroon left over from my 2CV, and got the headlight all connected up and working again. Cleaned up all the corroded wiring while I was at it.
Fortunately, the other side doesn’t look as bad. Shame it’s marooned with that corner next to the fence with the adjoining property.
In Rover news, it’s been collected by Les at BL Transverse who is going to attempt to fix it. I lost some money on that one but I decided to cut my losses with it. Its just one of those things, you can’t win them all. I’m happier now I haven’t got the stress of it hanging over me.
In fact, I’ve bought a few expensive lemons in recent years! I always buy cars with the heart, that’s the problem ?
 

So anyway, this was the interior when I got it from Torsten. It just felt tired and desperately needed a good clean.

The drivers carpet was obviously damp and soggy, fair enough it’s a silly old fibreglass car, it obviously leaks a bit. Especially as neither door fits very well. It was also loose and sliding around where it had broken free of its poppers.
Removed the scraggy old carpet and chucked it on the radiator to dry out. Only it didn’t dry out. But the paint on the radiator started bubbling up. Can you guess what happened?
Yep, it wasn’t water but bloody brake fluid!
Normally this would be a serious expense as new master cylinders are about £170, this being the later Lockheed tandem one. However, I work for a classic car brake hydraulic specialist so I simply removed it and took it into work to look at. I had intended to just put a kit in it, but the bore was badly pitted due to shitty old fluid, so my colleague sleeved it for me. Didn’t take any pictures of this so you’ll have to use your imagination.
Built it back up with a new seal kit, put back on the car and bled it up, and it’s been perfect ever since.
I couldn’t think of a way to clean the brake fluid out of the drivers carpet and it was really worn out anyway, so I decided to brighten it up a bit with some lovely 1970s carpet I saved from the skip. Gave the dashboard a  bloody good scrub up too, it obviously hadn't been cleaned in years! Came up reasonably well.





You can see by this point I had also swapped the seats over as that old Rialto seat had almost completely collapsed and I wanted something reasonably comfortable to sit on to drive.
Ended up paying silly money for a pair of the correct seats on eBay. But to be fair they were in bloody nice nick when they showed up, so in they went. The original Reliant design for fitting the seats to their frames is an awful press clip thing that’s almost impossible to do in the car. I drilled the pins and turned them into clevis pins with R clips so they can easily be removed in seconds.



The back seat was not bad but absolutely filthy. Used the VAX to clean it and it came up well. There was a massive fag burn in the base which my mum repaired using a small square of material cut from under the base. Looks much better now.

Everyone in the family loves this car, it’s definitely a keeper as it’s so much fun!

I just asked my Dad about Ely's as he worked in Dover a lot in the 80s/90's  - he says
I probably met Reg as I used to occasionally help out my dad on Saturday mornings fetching parts off the shelves at Cat Automotive's branch in Elm's Vale Road.
Sorry for a bit of thread drift Dicky, but it is distantly related to the car!

I didn't realise this was the same lad who took a load of money off people on here for that Renault 30! Ha!
I always find the sort of people who repeatedly complain about other folk being 'unreasonable' to deal with are themselves irascible bastards who don't believe they've ever been wrong about anything. It's fine though, these are the same people I meet drinking themselves to death aged 50 in shitty pubs so it usually doesn't end well for them. Tossers.

Oh, please ban me, make me a martyr. Just take yourself off and stop being such an attention seeker.

Well thank fuck for that 

Has he gone? Phew!!! What a total attention-seeking cock whisk

Ok fine, I will leave you all to it. 
 
Mods, ban hammer please?

No, there's an undercurrent of significant annoyance about the fact you took monies given to you in good faith to attempt the restoration of a certain Renault 30, then ignored all sensible advice and spent some of that on new tyres (IE the most pointless thing possible), then disappeared, only to reappear shortly thereafter having sacked off the R30 and having bought another Renault (the model of which escapes me right now)
Whilst I somewhat defended you to begin with, actually you were being a weapons-grade dick about the whole affair, which left rather a bad taste.
So for you to arrive back, generally being just as much of a dick again, brag about cars you've sent to the baler and threaten to do so again to yet another Renault, quite frankly you can get bent.
Which nobhead has nicked the "ignore" function??

I think you need to tell us that again, as we haven't fully understood it off the 6 or 7 times you've told us so far

I am off 
 
 

If you have such a strong dislike of folk on here, a possible option that you might want to consider is to take your Clio and shove it right up your arse? I've sold loads of old heaps through this forum and never had a single problem. If you think you can find a bunch of people with 'more realistic expectations' about cheap old bangers, fuck off and join them, thats my advice.
Is it just me or did you start off showing us your new car then skilfully turn it into a way to pointlessly slag everyone off on here?

père as-tu une pomme de terre car mes essuie-glaces ont cessé de fonctionner?

Last few times I twatted my mirrors, I did each one reversing into my garage in poor light.
That ruined the wiring for the heaters and mountings for the glass but I could at least glue the mirror back in.
Then I gently tapped the wing mirror against a parked car's mirror, where upon the glass fell out and cracked all over. I stopped to pick it up and check the parked car; but even a scratch to them fortunately. But mine is pretty much toast!
Oops!

Fucking wing mirror.  Fucking narrow road.  Fucking bloke in a fucking Focus chatting to his (presumably) fucking girlfriend rather than fucking pulling over to his side of the fucking road.  And then not fucking stopping and fucking driving off.
I've got a second-hand one on order already from eBay.  Due Monday.  Fortunately the electric heater wires disconnected at the spade and nothing has snapped or sheared in the mechanism - so I can just take the bits off the replacement rather than fucking about with trim to get it in.  Fucks me right off though.  And I've had a properly shit week and might have to drive to Devon at short notice...

Steroid diary day 5.  High dosage continues.  Sleep total over last 120 hours - five fucking hours.   It’s like being pissed without the urge to shout “wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy!” at wheelie bins.  Current mood
 

 
If you see a man in a silver Leon being brought sandwiches by Paul Gascogne later, this may provide context

Yesterday had a car come in for test that had the extension added last month.
Luckily he brought the car in when he did

Yes that is the cords showing and the other side wasn't much better.
Imagine two tonnes of Mercedes hurtling towards you when it's pissing down with rain and that is the tyre.

As Parky awoke one one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in a bed into a man with tubes...

You are going to have to get two separate wardrobes now. One for the Lanchester and a Lady Penelope one for the Princess.

Another little paint update.  With what was left in my first 1 litre tin I had a bit of an experiment off car with some thinners and found that if I thinned the paint to more the consistency of single cream it actually didn't dry as quickly and could be dressed out.  However, once thinned and done on a larger area than my test sample, I found the paint wasn't actually flowing as well as I'd like and drying with brush streaks in.  This isn't the end of the world, however, because I now know roughly how much to dilute the paint so that I'll have enough time to dress it with a brush after applying with a gloss roller, per @puddlethumper's recommendation.  I feel like I'm in a more comfortable place with it.  The bonnet was easily one of the worst panels for the streaky look, as you can see in this close up.

The other issue is that the first coat of paint hasn't hardened as much as I need it to in order to take out the worst of the problems on the surface so I'm going to leave this for about a week before having another stab at it.  Experience has taught me it takes 4-6 days with synthetic enamels, when used outdoors in cooler weather, before it gets hard enough to really cut it back heavily.  At the moment the paint still feels a bit plastic-y, for want of a better description, it's hard enough you can't dig a fingernail into it, but if you go at it too much with sandpaper it just clogs the paper after a while.  After a few days, this plastic feeling goes away and the paint usually sands very nicely.  If you do this job indoors in a heated environment, it hardens much quicker.
It looks okay for now, though I do wish I'd gone with a different, and probably more expensive, brand.  Ah well.  Worst case is I waste my time with this pink and have to redo it with better paint, that's hardly the end of the world.  Also of note is that with the second coat, in person at least, the pink isn't so vibrant and is more towards the colour I expected, more of an orange hue to it in all lights now.

I ran out of thinners today too so I'll get a fresh tin ordered and some decent gloss rollers before we try for coat three.  The first two coats were done with just one litre so I should have more than enough to do the whole thing since I've still got two litres of paint that aren't thinned down just for the pink, and another three litres for the black which is less surface area.