Floatylight

He liked you too...
 

As you may have seen in my collection thread this afternoon, the good old PW has thrown in the towel.

I was trundling along nicely about 50mph, and it just cut out. Dash lit up, and it just sounds like no compression on turning the key. Of course it was pishing down and I was right on the edge of a busy, narrow A-road, so no chance to investigate.
I'm guessing something's gone wrong with the cam belt. It's buried right under the middle of the car so haven't actually seen it.
Yup. Think so.
Yes indeed. Exactly this.
I'm just thankful I was on the way to its (temporary) replacement, and I hadn't just spunked a four-figure sum on getting the underside restored. So thank you Lawrence at Coach Craft for turning down the job.
Also I'm grateful that is has done this to me, rather than any of you poor souls, if anyone had actually taken it on.

Today I relived an experience I used to often have, I visited a scrap yard.
Tipped off by the Volvo 700/900 Facebook group that there was a Volvo 940 in Smith’s of Bloxhams yard I visited with @Slowsilver to get a headlight wiper and some odd bits of trim for the Volvo 940. Unfortunately we missed the boot trim by a day but manged to gets some other bits.
Of all the scrap yards I used to visit in the 1980’s and 1990’s this one was always the friendliest and fair with their prices. The good news is the same applied today and I enjoyed the experience of visiting the yard.

Arrived home. What a supremely cosseted waft. Yes the seats are as comfortable as they look! Not packed with horsepower but for a relaxing way to get about it's going to take something  special to beat it for a car in every day use.

Collection complete. Arrived at Exeter 12 mins late, not bad for the UK🙄
Compulsory wollard below.
Looking forward to the drive home.
An absolute pleasure to meet petrolblog, a thoroughly nice man .

GLWS, good to see the Mazda serving you well!

Irritatingly the forum software (Invision Power Board) has just pinged up an update! Its a security update too but thats only in the Commerce part of the forum software package - we don't pay for that or even have it installed. 
I don't really want to apply that update along with this migration at the same time. Doing too much on an update is a receipe for things to fuck up and go wrong in my experience. So I will likely apply that in the next day or so before the migration. Just to ensure that is all stable before doing a big switch. However I don't imagine the downtime from that will be more than half hour or so.

TL;DR the site will go for some major maintenance this coming Friday afternoon/evening. I’ll figure exact times closer to the point. Expect a few hours downtime when this is all going on.
The current server setup has been online for nearly half a decade and in computing world, that’s an actual lifetime. It has had a good innings but it’s coming to end of life.
Not only is the server operating system getting close to not being no longer receiving security updates (end of June 2024 is the cut off) but the underlying server hardware is pretty old technology now. I suspect the hosting provider has chocked that server full of other clients and hammering it hard too. Both reasons are very likely why things seem to go really slow at times and you may on occasions get that very frustrating 502 Bad Gateway errors when trying to access parts of the site. This occurs when the site takes too long to generate a page and times out (around 30 seconds). 
Ultimately, we need to migrate to a new server and do it soon. Hopefully it will eliminate those errors. Of course I can’t guarantee for certain those errors will completely go away but I fully expect them to. Likewise, its important we move to continue getting the latest security updates to keep the site stable and secure.
To use an analogy, previous recent updates have been the oil and tyre changes on the bus. This is basically a whole new bus where the branding/customisations need to be reapplied.
A few months ago in the background, I have built up and started testing a new server enviroment. Some may have seen the previous announcement a few months ago about the testing site at https://autoshitetesting.co.uk - thanks everyone who checked out and gave it a poke. The server that this site is on will become the new server the forum will live on (will still stay as autoshite.com when fully live). This is the latest version of our Server Operating System (Debian) and should give us security support till the end of June 2028. The hardware is the latest technology in CPU, memory and disks. These all should offer multiple times the performance of the existing server setup. I’ve jigged things around so hopefully it will keep it to around the same monthly hosting cost despite the increase in performance.
It’ll take a good few hours to copy all the data from the old to the new and then make the switch. I don’t expect any major hiccups but there maybe a few kinks that may need ironing out once live too. I’m hoping that most machines should pickup the new server IP address automagically and we won’t lose anyone along the way. I’ll try putting up a site somewhere else that we can still provide support if things go wrong (probably https://autoshitetest.co.uk). So note that down now.
I’ve been wanting to do this for a while and have had everything roughly in-place, but I’ve needed to find time to finish this off and go live. Life has been busy for me recently and I’ve needed to find a good slot. Not just a few hours but possibly a day or two if things go really awry. I certainly don't expect any issues (otherwise I wouldn't be kicking this off!) but I need to budget contingency as its a major switch with a few unknowns.
The aim is for possibly Friday afternoon/evening to kick this off. I can’t say exact times yet but hopefully can say closer to the time.
I like being on here as much as many of you do and this work is needed to keep this forum all hunky-dory.
I'll leave this thread unlocked for now if anyone has any questions or concerns on this.

Yeah there's a lot of it about.  Scum gon' scum I suppose

As has been offered above by several folk - you only need to drop them a brief line and introduce yourself and the fact that you own REV and it's under restoration, also if you like, to add that you'd love to know more about its history with their parents. Get the introduction made and a dialogue established and the rest can follow on from there. Don't overthink it (I know that is easier than it sounds!) but literally, launch in with a short but friendly introduction. A pound to a penny they will be really pleased to know that REV is still about and that they will get back in touch with you.

Piss poor excuse to not contact them,the fact you own it is reason enough.hi,I own your dads invacar,which is undergoing reatoration so i can use it on the road,have you any photographs or history you might be able to share,would love to reunite you with it once it is back on the road..etc etc
 

and in REV news,
the Kingpin set was posted off to  @Saabnut yesterday and should hopefully be with him before not too long, I sent it using the quickest option available  
Saabnut also very kindly gave me a phone call yesterday to discuss the initial report/impressions so to speak
and it sounds like Duncan his Mechanic has gotten over the initial fright of "WTF are these controls" and like most people who have the opportunity to actually spend some time with a Model 70, is now finding it quite enjoyable bombing around the yard in REV now  
current plan going forward is get the kingpin changed, fettle the doors so they open and close smoothly, clean up some fuzzy connections under the dashboard and then bomb around the local lanes see how she performs and tweak/fix accordingly   
 
 

Maybe @LightBulbFun should write the book! 

Maybe @LightBulbFun should write the book! 

Decent polish, too

Pictured here beside my neighbour's MK2 Polo* 
The size difference is interesting


*The Polo is owned by a young lad across from us, who inherited it from his grandfather, and he's been running it as a daily for a couple of years now. In honour of his grandad he will not restore it or 'improve' it at all, choosing to keep the mismatched wheel trims and missing trim bits as they were when his grandad had it. He's only done essential mechanical jobs, such as welding, carburettor overhaul and head gasket. I have mentioned autoshite to him before, I think he'd fit it well here! 

Bye Nova 👋
 
See you soon. 

Hi,
I’ve been aware of the brown forum for many years, but generally hung around on another well known blue hued forum, sort of on and off anyway. Most of my ‘fleet’ (if you can call a collection of long term broken cars that) is probably more at home on here but my most recent car tinkering finally pushed me over the line to sign up on here.
Ya see I’ve been spending a bit of time recently poking and tinkering with the longest standing, many years abandoned, heaps in my collection and I suspect this is the only place I might scrape some interest in what is basically a hopeless cause. Said heaps have been abandoned rotting on my drive for 17 and 19yrs respectively, but the house where they languish is going on the market soon so their existence hangs precariously in the ballence. Friends and family have been telling me to scrap them for about a decade now so their calls are almost deafeningly loud now. It would certainly be the sensible thing to do.
For reasons beyond common sense I want to move them to my current house which means making them mobile again. I mean ‘mobile’ as in I can load them onto a trailer and preferably drive them up my short but annoyingly steep driveway, not as in make them ready for the road. 
Anyway, so what do you make of these two beauties?



Artefact 1 - The gold one - 1989 1.3 XL special equipment
This was my first car, bought by a much younger self circa 1999. I saved up the £600 by working weekends in Burger King while doing my A levels. It was well used and abused until 2005, but it’s been parked up ever since. It was retired as a fully functional car on 109k miles, I just replaced it (with a 34k miles 1.3 mk6 Escort I bought as Cat D salvage and returned to the roads). It donated its windscreen to the blue one around 2009 after vandalism so it’s been open to the elements for a while too, it’s become home to some ferns growing in the carpet.
Artefact 2 - The blue one - 1987 1.3 GR Profile
This was my mates car for a year but he donated it to me when the MOT ran out, in 2007 according to the MOT history. The original idea was to fix this one up using the gold one for spares. After a couple of years ignoring it I did drag it to an MOT test in 2010 which it failed due to much more rampant rust than I had given it credit for, it’s sat ever since.
So what ya thinking of doing with them I hear you say! Well, the gold one has probably (though not certainly) had it’s day as a regular 309, but I’m sentimental about it and have a very harebrained idea for it in the back of my mind. It might never happen but I want to hold on to the possibility, so the goal is to just move it and sling a car cover over it. The blue one however is calling out to live once more, I want to get it back on the road. I’m better skilled to weld it back up now than I was back then, and once the old house is gone I should be blessed with more time and lower outgoings which should help. I just kinda fancy fixing it up a bit, I want to feel the mighty power of the Simca rattle box engine and savour the rolly polly handling on skinny tyres once more. But firstly I just need to move it so I can achieve priority no1 which is to get the old house up for sale.
There you go lots of waffle, I’ll post about where I’m up to and what I’ve got stuck on soon, if anyone cares.
-Steve-

Cannock Auctions is Dead, the Truckers is very much alive as are most of us, shall we get a gathering of the Midlands Massiv organised?

Cannock Auctions is Dead, the Truckers is very much alive as are most of us, shall we get a gathering of the Midlands Massiv organised?

there is arrow auctions in redditch as an alternative but only mondays & wednesdays

Cannock Auctions is Dead, the Truckers is very much alive as are most of us, shall we get a gathering of the Midlands Massiv organised?

Had a little more time on this today… although it pissed it down the entire time!
Fitted the fuel pump and a new coil (Lucas… eeek!) to the Nova and…. Nothing. Still no fuel reaching the carb. I tried of an external tank and still no dice.
Walked away for a few minutes to gather my thoughts and wondered if the new pump may need priming. Google said generally no, but I did it anyway and it worked! Ran it off the external first, and then connected it all up and it ran! Not only did it run, but it ran on less choke then ever before which was a big bit of progress. I was soaked through by now, and the radiator started emitting a fair bit of steam, so decided that water clearly wasn’t getting round well enough, so time to switch it off!
My aim by this point had been to have got this far plus renewed all the fuel lines, refurbished the steel wheels, put new tyres on to aid moving and ready for MoT, and to solve some of the non working interior elements.
Alas my deadline has now been reached, and tomorrow it goes off for a holiday, to get a few bits done. In a way a shame a I was building slow, but purposeful momentum! 

Turns out there was not much love for the Sigma at Rustival in spite of it rarity.

So sorry to hear this news. Thoughts and prayers are with you.