Matty

You clever bugger! Anyhow it's never a bodge if it works! Top job Pete 👍

Yesterday afternoon I tackled the Daimler's scuttle vent which is all but seized solid.  However then a friend called me as i had everything in bits, and asked I was going to drop in and see him before we went on to the Triumph Sports Six Club meeting at the Sorrel Horse.  Bottom line I didn't get that job done (i'll report on that anon). So today I was going to tackle that again.  The issue I'm facing is how to get to the hinges of that inner flap, And to get to those I fear I'll need to pull some of the dashboard out. 
.. And to pull part of the dashboard out means I've got to jump around inside the car on the driver's seat. 
.... But the driver's seat is sagging, and I fear my gymnastics would do more damage. 
....... So instead of getting on with the scuttle flap (which is the air intake for fresh air and for the heater) I decided instead to tackle the driver's seat. . .

^ the squabs just lift out. Dead easy.  Even just with a hand pressure you can see how giving the seat was. 
I guessed what was happening.. The leather seats are wire-coli sprung, and inbetween those springs and the leather is a diaphragm and then latex foam rubber.  When the diaphragm fails - the wire springs cut into the foam rubber and that's a costly and troublesome business to repair.   In short, the diaphragm needed replacing before I used the car any more, or even just jumped around inside it when pulling the dashboard out.
It's always better to avoid damage than having to fix it . . .
   
   
^ Inverted and looking from the back, the seat looked pretty good for 56 years old, but yes the diaphragm (which despite it being a Daimler is only sackcloth) had failed in many places. Just right of centre in the first photo you can just make out where the foam rubber was being cut into by the wire springs.  A couple of those springs were also broken.      ^^ I decided to tackle the diaphragm from the back and from the propshaft tunnel side (to the right in these photos), because I did not want to disturb the leather around the more visible front and outside faces of the seat.
There were three types of clip holding the springs, the fabric, and the torn sackcloth diaphragm to the wire frame. I guess I must have removed forty or fifty of them in total, as carefully as I could, so as to minimise damage to the fabric. 
   
^ Aside from wire staples, the diaphragm was also stitched to the wire springs.   It took an hour and half before I could get my hand inbetween them.    Again in the second photo you can see the torn sackcloth. In places, the wire springs had cut right through the foam to the cloth facing on its other side. Had that been cut through the underside of the leather would have been damaged.

^ the steel batten which follows around the back of the seat was snapped. It is there to stop the back edge of the squab from pushing down, away from the backrest, which it does ..resulting in a cold draught to the small of my back. 

^ this is a mat on the floor of the garage next to my car.    It's there to wipe my wet feet on.  However what is not so very clear to see is a replacement diaphragm about to happen !

^ that floor mat measured and cut in half has a hessian underside face to it (visually quite similar to sackcloth).  Rather* awkward to get it into place mind you, between the wire springs and the damaged sackcloth.

^ Even when there's little in the way of skill, I can always count on my stubbornness     1hr-7 minutes between these last two photographs !
That's the diaphragm replaced.
Next up is a little more padding, to compensate for the wire springs having cut through the original latex foam, and 56 years / 89,000 miles of 'settling'.
   
^ Always one to blow the budget to impress.  An old pillow with polyester filling, is no longer a pillow (..for under my head  )

^  polyester filling, slipped inbetween the old and the 'additional' diaphragm.
    
^ Far left of the photo, you can see I've wired the broken rear batten in place. That's because my welder is a 20-mile round trip away.  Wire springs being reconnected to it. And I've used a foam sponge as spring to help hold that batten up ..in place.  Crude, but it actually works. . .

^ job done.  I'm not claiming to have restored it ..it's just a fix to keep it going ..and as importantly to prevent further damage from those wire springs to the leather seat covers.  I must say though - the hessian backed rug does look the part.  I wonder if it will last another 56 years ? 
 

^ Feels much better, and doesn't look over stuffed. 
Of course the proof of the pudding lies in how one's bottom feels about it a day later ! 
Bidding you, one and all, a good evening,
Pete
 

Just in case anyone was worrying that kids today were loosing their natural wit

Have you met my cars?? 🤣
 

Have you met my cars?? 🤣
 

Just in case anyone was worrying that kids today were loosing their natural wit

Not another wannabe singer!

Just in case anyone was worrying that kids today were loosing their natural wit

Would you like the newly created position of my motivation coach? Could do with one like 😆

Just in case anyone was worrying that kids today were loosing their natural wit

I have also been accused of being just a little blunt.

There’s a fine line between my style of motivation and BDSM. So, it’s entirely up to you.

New design time!
https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/159906258

Would you like the newly created position of my motivation coach? Could do with one like 😆

Luckily I'm on direct debit for both of ours (07 z4 3.0si coupe and 07 st150). So I'm not going to look at what it gone upto cos I don't need to. I'll only get upset anyway....

No idea what each car is but I know I'm paying around £150 per month across the fleet for the next six months. Only the Range Rover and the Skoda (or whatever daily I have by the time October rolls around) will stay taxed through winter. 
It's like all the other tax we all pay - I wouldn't have so much of a problem with it if we were actually getting something worthwhile for the money rather than a country rapidly falling apart at the seams.

That camshaft pitting doesn't look fatal but could indicate oil starvation, which these engines are well known for. 
Particularly due to the design of them where the injectors are exposed to oil, so if they leak combustion gasses then it finds it way into the oil which absorbs carbon. It all goes a bit south from there as it starts to block everything up. 
If you feel like doing a bit more preventative maintenance, dropping the sump and checking the oil pickup may not be a bad idea, and possibly checking the oil feed to the turbo and replacing the feed pipe if necessary. Again, this oil pickup blockage is well documented as being the cause for turbo failure on the DV4/6 engines. 

Don't do it human. You know what happened last time... 
Against the better advice of my feline assistant, I decided to crack on with more tinkering on the ever-ungreatful Peugeot. Namely refreshing the washer and seals on number 3/number 2 (depending on however Peugeot decided to number them this week) injector. 

Getting to the injectors was straightforward enough, unbolt the plastic loom holder, disconnect connectors and carefully* wedge it out of the way. Likewise, removing the leak-off pipe watsits only required removing the clip holding each in place and levering off its injector, again stuffing it aside. High pressure lines came off easy too. Am I getting my hopes up? Yes. 
Slight battle getting the rocker cover out, as one of the 8mm bolts was helpfully hidden behind the pipe going from the intercooler to the turbo. Though loosening it's retaining clip gave me enough space to get at the aforementioned bolt. Twist, wriggle, curse the bastard who designed this engine and the rocker cover came out.
Oh. Swear words. 

Moving swiftly on (to preserve my sanity if anything...)
Removing the injector involved liberal application of carb cleaner and scraping around the clamp, the escaping combustion gases had solidified back into a hellish combination of tar and very solid carbon. Unsurprisingly effective at holding the injector in place but it yielded. 

Lovely.
That took a significant amount of time to clean all whilst paranoidly avoiding the tip of the damn thing. 
Cleaned up the bore with an amazon spesh cleaning kit and replaced the seal that sits at the top, with only a slight faff getting the blighted little rubber bastard to seat properly.

Not perfect by any stretch but it do. 
Put new spacer thing and copper washer on the comprehensively refurbished* injector before chucking it back in its home, reattaching everything and putting off turning the damn thing back on. 
A smidgen of hesitation and puckering of the sphincter, then I turned the key.
Chuff successfully banished and I don't have to keep the air con in recirc anymore! 

Double whammy for this episode of mechanical incompetence. New alternator belt, tensioner and an oil change. 
Saturday began with me getting up at fuckthis o'clock to take the merdemobile for a new pair of front tyres. Only I didn't need to get up early as my appointment wasn't until 11 o'clock! Decided to kill time by picking up the new alternator tensioner and belt. 
Anyway, a pair of shiny new Continental EcoContact 6ses and a wheel alignment later, the Pug feels a lot better to drive. Quieter and less twitchy, old tyres must have been on the edge of perishing despite appearances. 
Get home, get tools out and set about jacking up the front end to get the wheel and arch liner oot for access to the belt itself. 
Getting sufficient access to the tensioner saw me playing brittle plastic connector roulette and winning, thank fuck. Levered back the old tensioner back and using an 'approved tool' (a small screwdriver that only got bent slightly*) locked it. 

Looks deceptively roomy, it really wasn't! 2/3 bolts came out no problem, the one furthest away just wasn't reachable from above so had to go at it from the wheel arch. Managed to get it off eventually and only dropped the spanner 553 times...
Lobbed the new belt and tensioner in and made the absolute stupid mistake of placing my pry tool on the engine cover... 
Of course it fucked off down the back of the engine!

Like, right down.
Bawlicks to this I thought, after removing several layers of skin from my hands trying to wedge them through the letterbox sized gap, so I sacked it off for the evening and went indoors to get mocked by the cat. 
Sunday rears it's head and I head back out to try and figure out how to pry the trapped tool from the HDi's grasp. Didn't take long, though I lost more skin as the car fought to claim it's sacrifice. 

SUCCESS. 

Reunited with it, I was able to finally remove the locking pin from the new tensioner and feel the warmth of a job actually done. 
Oil and filter got changed too, which went flawlessly and there were no issues whatsoever... 

Ffs. 
Luckily that was the old oil and I remembered to replace the sump plug before putting in the new stuff.

GT cars at Oulton park this weekend 
Just seen this posted, looks like it was slightly muddy 

I’ve done 20 miles with a B&B clutch cable fitted and have no problems to report.

Just in case anyone was worrying that kids today were loosing their natural wit

Nah you're wrong. I put a borg and beck clutch kit in mine recently. it's managed a full 100 mile and hasn't failed yet! 🤣

Would you like the newly created position of my motivation coach? Could do with one like 😆

Yeah, just not helpful that it seems the car is inbetween years. Like I said above the car falls under a specific year, but the manual doesn’t include it. 
I knew the moment my mom started rambling I thought I’m not going to get anything done on this. And while I did nothing, and actually it was fairly futile, if I didn’t do it it’d have been another day where I’ve just walked past it and not tickled it.