Floatylight

Lost my job after a month, and only 2 days in the field, as I'm 'not a good fit'. I know there's more to it, I've done fuck all wrong and just been shit on so they could give an excuse to fire me.

Better get the Civic running, then.

The filler saga is pretty much over and its going to be a while before it meets its first real challenge - a petrol pump! 
Petrol cap no longer has the word Subaru on it, very important obviously!

The filler neck now looks the part, mind you I did rush this a bit and didn't let the paint dry for long enough and have a few scratches to touch in......

Got to be better than the original though!

Next task is probably fix the horn as that is definitely an MOT fail.
 

This Place!
I asked for some axle stands off "Trash for nothing" and was told they were gone. I have now had a message that said they were not collected and I can take them. Trouble was I am not planning to go back to Milton Keynes until Thursday so I asked for help.
15mins later they were safely collected.
Thank you @Zelandeth

Sad day, my 480ES has been collected, but the number of £325 tax cars we have is excessive so some have to go.
It is staying on the forum, but I will let the new owner reveal himself.
Update:
@robinmasters has now revealed he was the buyer of the 480.

Don’t know whether I’ve made it look better or worse but here we go. Took the door card out, pushed the top part out by hand and then got a block of wood and a rubber mallet to get as much out from the lower part. 
 
It’s certainly still very uneven but it’s not so caved in now, bit less noticeable. 
 
Also took the blower motor out, it seems to be the actual fan making the noise so will likely just replace it. Have put some oil on the bearing tonight, will let it soak for a day or so then plug it in and see if it’s any quieter first.
 
Before:



After:

Today I set about giving it a quick clean just to see what we’re working with really. 

Issues I’ve found so far:
Front end knock over bumps - advisory for drop link, pair of Febi’s ordered and due here tomorrow. 
 
Blower motor doesn’t sound very happy, sounds like it’s catching on something. Plan to remove it, check it, fix or replace.
Seats are hanging, they’ve had kids in the back and there’s all sorts spilt on them. I’ll either wet vac them or if I can find one being broken, I may even just replace all the seats.
Overall though I’m very happy. I honestly think just by washing and hoovering it and taking half decent pics I could advertise it now and double my money. 
 
The damage is a real shame as it’s a lovely car but it’s just not worth repairing. Touching it I think would make it look worse, probably best to just embrace it!

We were disappointed that we could not get a spark from the Royale's ignition system so yesterday I put the bat Royale symbol in the sky to summon a local retired Auto sparks. 
9am this morning at the FoD he spotted the problem in 5 minutes. The coil feed wires, both run ballast and starter fed 12v had been cut off and we had plugged in an unknown alternative wire.
He added a wire to repair the damage and get the feed to the coil and we have good healthy starks.
Next stage is a bit of testing with easy start to see if it will run.

For aslong as I can remember I've wanted to be directing my own path in business but never had the actual confidence to overcome huge self doubt and fears of failure, in 2021 when I nearly met with my mortality thanks to covid I remember hating that I'd played things safe as houses like a boring nobody and literally despite continued health maladies I feel that I've got a second run up at life , so I'm starting from nothing at 35 and want to get pushing forward with what is abit of a dream for me .
So basically my sister and I have teamed up to create a new garage/engineering works of which provides the usual bread and butter garage services and also more specialised work less commonly found like large manual machining capability and welding.
We're looking to stock up on a range of common classic parts too so that we can take on most project work without waiting on parts turning up in ebay etc albeit limited space prevents stocking a vast amount.
So far over the last 8 months !

Obligatory huge lathe brought back somewhat inappropriately 


Company car brought down , inappropriately 

Lathe electrical rebuild done because it was dangerous as hell, 415 through the soaked push buttons etc ,,horrible ! Once cleaned and generally setup it's been put to work straight away!

 
this s100 k series swap was quite aquite to drive, getting one to fit the earlier car isn't bolt in like with the estelle and rapid !

Cambelt snappage job on an iveco 2.3, lots of new valves and lapping required!

loads of work done, and loads more hopefully to come ! 

Today I swung in by Duncans workshop to have a discussion on the way forward with the kingpin on REV, He has it fully disassembled and we measured everything and came to the conclusion that it is worn!  By kingpin standards not badly worn, enough to probably induce a speed* wobble but nothing dagerous. Fortunately the housing for the bushes is showing no wear at all, so the new kingpin and bushes should be an easy fit and solve the problem. The bushes do in fact appear to be oilite type, and the bottom of the kingpin tube is open into the front drum, which explains why no grease nipples are fitted.  In the bottom of the tube was a ball of rock hard grease that had obviously been put in many many years ago.  Dunc has also spoken to a few of the old boys who tend to congregate at interesting workshops, including the fella who maintained the 1920s bus in Aberdeen which used a similar, if somewhat larger, kingpin assembly.
The unanimous decision is to leave things as original and reassemble with a good coating of heavy weight oil. After all, it was good enough for the government for the lifetimes of these vehicles. He will hopefully start putting it back together later this week.
We started discussing speed wobbles, as you do and we decided to see if we could improve the aerodynamics of REV
The first attempt using Seat parts was not great
So we looked around and found a yellow and white body kit on an old Audi in the corner which we think will work better!


 

Now stored safely until I make some room

That is it parked on the back of my friends 1978 Ford A series recovery unit

Spot on! 1959 93b 

2 fiat fondle.

On the last look over id noted a duff wheel cylinder, the drums are original and pretty well worn now given the cars miles.  new drums, shoes and cylinders ordered in, forgot a fitting kit tho. 
Bosch are actually cheapest for these as they are the OEM manufacturer.

The back plates were very crusty so i unbolted the wheel bearing, and the back plates got taken off and hit with the knot wheel. The axle was given a quick go over with the  needle scaler and then wire brush before a splash of shultz. Im not a fan of this stuff but it has a place.

Having done the KA2 previously in this thread id already experienced the seized union on the brake pipe so just went straight to making two new pipes and cut the old ones off. Id like to have done a neater job but i was getting pushed for time today after doing the doblo and VP this morning.

Back plates bolted on and pipe installed.

Shoes and adjusters fitted. 

New drums on and a tweakof the  handbrake. All seems okay, ill paint the drums next time ive got the car on the lift. Finished around 10pm and dropped the car back. 

 

Yesterday I received 5 brown envelopes in the post.
Yes 5 cars needed to be retaxed, but they were all were FREE!🙂

Oh and as I posted that he’s just replied:
“the engine turns over but doesn’t fire up, we have been told it is an electrical issue, it is not the immobiliser, but the electrics are not connecting with the brain of the car, it is actually with a guy in Norwich at the moment”
Sounds like someone’s already had a go and hasn’t had any joy. Probably not worth me getting involved then!

and gone .......
I think 8 years is the longest I had a car. Not quite the money I'd hoped but it does need some tlc and I think the guy is going to give it
 

Old shite new trick. 
A quick google suggests any A series with this down to manifold flange style struggles to seal. And if it does seal after a while it will blow again as there is no flex to exhaust appart from bending it. 
With new mounts and beefed up stab bar bushes id guess we would probably be okay for longer if i could get it to seal. However the part on the exhaust came in at the wrong angle in my eyes. And was barely sealing one side. Maybe tweaked from the engine moving about alot before.  So bollocks im cutting it. Choppy choppy. 
A snip on the down pipe part and i bolted the flange up as inline as possible. I then cut the first curve off and tweaked that a bit so its pointing in a direction i was happy with. 
As far as im concerned the exhaust would benifit from being isolated from the engine like a more modern motor so having found just one seller on ebay i ordered the smallest flexi ive ever seen at 32mm ID. Also a sleeve so i can make the single piece exhaust into two, so its not a massive arse to move about when fitting. 

It would probably be fine as is but some Additional brackets and mounts will be welded on to the front part of the rear section to  support the exhaust so the flexi isnt under a downward load 
Im told the new exhausts fit well but given this so far has cost only 40 quid in parts and the new systems are very pricey, im Hopeful this will be a reliable cure to a common problem, but we will see.