Shirley Knott

Its been slightly gifferised with some later mb bits- which make my eyes itch- but its spent almost its entire life life in central london and looks pleasingly rot free. Ive probably had about 25 w124s so immediately went to the front spring perches and rear subframe mounts. VERDICT- they exist. 

 


 

Why am i freezing my ass off in a dorset village waiting for a post office to open?
 
Well it all began at 5.15 when i fired up the w220 and drove into deepest dorset, to do a swap.
For this 230te 7 seater 

After we did the swap it became clear its on the disabled tax thing- hence freezing my ass off waiting for the post office to open- where im hoping that my v5c/2 will allow be to change the tax category, and tax it.

I had a day off yesterday, so a couple of minor jobs were completed on the remaining fleet.
V70 
This one passed its MOT with a clean sheet last week, but meanwhile has been cruising around struggling to raise the temperature guage above 30% - Not good for a PCV system already infamous for gunking up.  A stuck thermostat was my diagnosis.  A very simple job on pre 2003 P2 cars thankfully. 


Old vs new (NOS calorstat branded item sourced via Ebay for £12)


The original was Volvo branded, so in all likelihood had been in situ for 23 years. New stat installed, now the temperature gauge is pinned in the middle so job jobbed.
Clio
Next up, squealing brakes on the Clio, in spite of the recent clean up and new pads. Remedied this time by a further strip and clean, chamfering the new pads slightly and installing a new fitting kit (£7) to hopefully allow the pads to move more freely.

I followed this up by replacing the miss matched wheel trims (Different on opposing sides) with a set of spokey looking jobbies from ECP (£13.50)
Old.


New.

As you can see, these give the car much more of an aggressive edge and highlight the 1.2 8v Clios racing heritage,  hopefully firmly establishing my status of the 'cock sportif' of our street.
Total spend for the day, £32.50. Satisfaction gained - Moderate.

so i swept up the remains of my sill

removed the outer wing for better access

and had another poke around

not great  


potentially fixable but not straight forward by any means.
i’ll have a go at the other side, if that is ok, i’ll make an effort at this one, if not, well, best not to think about that just yet. 
the mot expires at the end of feb, the black one is due at the end of march - and that needs welding too. 
bloody mazdas  

 

the front wing, whilst being in good condition, didn’t seem to be very secure.
perhaps that is because there’s not much there to secure it to  


oh you dirty bastard 





this is not what i signed up for. 
(remember this is the car with a £2grand bill for sill restoration in november 2021) 
i went inside and opened a beer  

chop, bend, etc

spot welds to hold in place


and slightly less shit pidgin shit round the edges

i’ll grind that back in a bit, but first there’s something else i need to look at…

you know how get to carnegie hall, don't ya ? 
practice ! 

maybe if i use finer wire ? 

yes, that’s more like it

in the meantime, the green monster has been getting a bit of attention 

first off ditch that rattly old heat shield

then there’s this to attend to

new work light proving very effective 

chop chop 

weetabix template made

find a suitable sheet of tin and get cutting

time to test out my christmas present body hammers

ha ! not a chance ! break out the big guns 

bish bash bosh

now the easy* bit
oh fuck, that’s terrible !

turns out i can’t weld for shit  
…to be continued…

the Exo has been hibernating since the end of november so i thought it might be a good idea to check on the state of the battery

still showing 11.8v after 8 weeks tucked away in the garage round at me mams house - i’d better hook it up to the trickle charger  
but, just in case, maybe i should see if it will start ? 
damn thing fired up first turn of the key ! bloody impressive that  

shame it’s not going anywhere for a while yet  
i stuck it on charge anyway, won’t do any harm 

looks like a trip to peterlee may be on the cards 

i wonder if it will all fit in the bini ? 

with the interior of greeny tidied up,  it needed a pair of genuine eunos v-spec floor mats

which were donated several years ago by @loserone from his old v-spec 
they really do look smart


 

the mighty mx5 is Sorned and hadn’t been used for a while so i thought i’d better check on the state of the battery - turns out it was not a kick in the arse off flat  
now, should i 
fetch the battery charger ? 
or 
tax the bugger and go for a hoon ? 
no contest, really  
a quick stop for supplies 

and a proper thrash round the back roads 
battery is now fully charged, tank is now fully emptied and the back end is minging filthy - great fun  

as the rain had stopped and my head was no longer thumping from too many festive pints last night with @DVee8 i had a go at doing a radiator flush on the green one
these bottles of snake oil have been on the garage shelf for quite some time, i hope they still work

step one - empty the system and flush with water

step two - bung in bottle one and run at fast idle for 30 mins

step three - empty it out and try not to scald yourself

minging ! 
step four - refill with fresh water and run for a further 5 mins
drain it all out again

step five - bung in bottle two and run for 15 mins then drain 

step six - refill with fresh water and run for another five mins, drain then flush with the hose 


step seven - drain it all again and finally fit a new thermostat and bung some coolant in. 
a quick test drive up and down the street and all is well, no leaks and lovely fresh coolant in a nice clean radiator  
 

i’m fancied a bit of a christmas eve hoon but the exo is sorned, the black mx5 is sorned and the green mx5 is still in bits (and sorned)  
it’s just not the same in the bini 

but the roads were nice and quiet roads so it got a good blast anyway  
happy christmas folks 

 

despite the thermostat arriving in world record time, i couldn’t be arsed fitting it tonight. instead, something much* more important:
oh dear, that looks just a little bit crap

yep, needs to go

the connector had slightly melted too so a spare was spliced in

that’s better


nice and bright, even with whatever cheapo bulbs were fitted

and some silliness  
 
 

an odd quirk of imported mx5s is that when you pull the stalk to flash your headlights, they don’t automatically pop up, you need to raise them manually by pushing a button on the middle of the dash - hardly convenient.
a common solution is to fit this little guy

to the back of this connector

the red/white wire is the main beam feed, the white/black goes to the motor so when the main beam is activated, the lights will now pop up and make you smile  
 
 

i’d drained the radiator while fixing the power steering so thought i’d give the engine a flush. this involved moving the car outside for the first time in a while

thermostat has seen better days - i’ll order a new one

flushed with the hose for a good while and refilled, i needed a quick test drive up and down the street 
only problem, the seats are still in the house - this handy toolbox will have to do

i’d given it an oil change while it was jacked up and it’s running very nicely now, even just up and down the street, the car is lovely to drive - i’ll look forward to getting this one out on the road soon  

a trip down to see the mazdadudes in darlington and £50 later, a replacement steering rack has been sourced and installed 

at which point i discovered another leak in the fluid cooling pipe work  
fortunately i had a spare from the exo donor but fitting it was a massive pain.
all done now and the power steering works perfectly 

time for a quick tinker under the bonnet - new plugs and an air filter both very overdue

i fitted a replacement power steering pump

and jacked up the front end to turn lock to lock to bleed new fluid 
bit something wasn’t quite as it should be - a sort of sloshing noise was coming from the rack  
i pulled back the steering gaiter and got soaked in oily coffee

that’ll be where the steering fluid has all been hiding - add a replacement rack to the shopping list. at least i hadn’t just dumped a brand new bottle of fluid into it. 
not ideal, but it was great being able to crack on with the spannering in a warm dry garage.

first job on green was to swap the manky  dashboard binnacle (seems to have been painted and gone sticky in the sun)

for one i picked up at the scrappies last week

time to sort out the doorcards - there really is too much beige, i used the top sections and handles to tone it down a bit

much better

with the end of the month approaching and a rare dry day, i moved the Exo to the garage at my mams house to hibernate for the winter 

she insisted on coming along for the drive  

and the green machine took up residence in my own garage 

takes up a lot more space than the exo  

been to the local breakers and picked up some parts to tone down that tan interior 

plan is to use the top section of the door cards and the handles - should look much smarter 

then took mighty for a drive

the pop up headlights sometimes didn’t pop up  
i traced the fault to a duff switch (this lifts the lights for cleaning / bulb changing) and fitted a spare

the top of the dash has been painted and was looking shabby

so i rubbed it down and gave it a quick coat of satin black.
the oddly coloured crash pad that doesn’t match the rest of the interior was annoying me

so i swapped it for a black one i had in the loft

looks much smarter now
 

while the tools were out, i ditched the ugly aftermarket fog light 


looks much neater

the wiring was rerouted to the offside reverse light 

just needs a red bulb like mighty has