St.Jude

How would a roof rack fix the suspension?

Cheers, had a look but they’ve nothing for the 120 which is a shame.

There is: www.allfourx4.com.au and there is www.newtowntoyota.parts. The former are breakers and the latter I think is an actually Toyota dealership. Problem I’m finding with people with Toyota 4x4s is that their go to response is “get rid of the air suspension just go coils m9”. All of them go for these adjustable ones like on that site that you adjust manually while stationary. Sure it’s a bitch when it don’t work but sometimes I just like to pretend I’m on a boat on the motorway, and when I come off I switch it to hip breaking sport mode 😂

I sank a bottle and a bit of wine last night while perusing YouTube. Usual shit of watching Retropower and wanting to be out working on my Lada, then reminding myself I’ve a Land Cruiser that’s broken and a Rover that’s even more broken. I thought fuck it, let me buy the shocks for the Land Cruiser from Milner Off Road. The 3rd party ones, a pair for £320. Except they don’t have them on their site anymore. That’s promising! I went to Google, and yeah there are plenty of listings for them, all 3rd party ones and I just thought they’re going to be shit. Until I came across two Australian websites selling genuine shock absorbers for $120. Delivery costs $110, so altogether it’d be $350. That’s £189. I’ve asked an Australian Faceache group if the genuine shocks are really that cheap, and apparently they are. I’ve asked that place if they’re brand new and they said they are, but I need to 100% make sure the part numbers are right. Rougtrax who sell the genuine ones have the same part numbers so it looks promising. I think there’s a 2.5% duty to pay on imports from Oz over £135, and VAT. So with all of that it’s still going to cost less than the 3rd party ones Milners were selling. Genuine ones from Roughtrax cost £450 each. I’ve ordered a new credit card as I’ve lost it, but once it’s here I’m going to bite the bullet and get them ordered.

Aaaaaand that was premature. Drove it down the road to pick my lad up, it’s bouncing around like a motherfucker. Shocks need to be done, it can’t be driven like it is. And, there’s a theme, I had just taxed the fucker 😂😂

NO.

Well here we are, 2023 and finally the air suspension is working! Took the mobile mechanic two attempts as the fuckwit at eBay missold the height sensor. Air Bag is fixed, sensor is fixed, turned it on and it seems to be OK. Will take it for a trip out tonight to B&Q. Obviously the replacement I have for this has turned in to be a nightmare, which is another story that I'm fast growing more pissed off with, so this is staying with me for the time being. If it behaves, I might try and look at the air conditioning. But first thing would be to monitor this new height sensor. If it works, the place I got it from are selling the shocks for it for about £160 each (instead of £500 each). If this part is OK, while the box looked a bit generic, I might just do that with it.

Mastercard were total bastards with that, but then Eric Broadley was as much to blame. The sponsorship model they had was silly. Can't remember right, but it was based on how well Lola did in F1 on a race by race basis and it was linked to how many new customers they'd sign up based on the F1 performances as well. Like I do not know how you could sign up to that regardless of how optimistic you are.

One day when I was taking the K Series out of the MG for my Lada, I think the Car SOS of the 6R4 was on the night before, the sudden thought came in to my head that maybe one day I'll buy a Rover 100 and a KV6 engine. I'd make something that could've been a race car if Rover carried on in rallying in to the 1990s from the 6R4. Probably would never happen, but it at least would be a good thing to spend time dreaming up during the dark nights one winter. Think that chassis failed a crash test twice, and the improvements for it to pass were really questionable.

Wot? No Autoaid?

Except for when you're a 10th of a second down on the pole time at Monaco...

Inspired a bit by this video about a fairly wealthy American owning and driving his own F1 car: The thought occurred to me what would the perfect Autoshite race car would be? Personally, for me, it'd be the Tyrrell 019 - which I think is a better looking car than the Jordan 191. I think followed up by the FSO Polonez rally car. Got to be careful with the Polonez Group B stuff though - this specific one that I'm on about is the one where they essentially took the arse end of a Lancia Stratos and threw it under the Polonez shell. Total death trap to drive, it'd be a lot of fun.

The X-Body platform and GM's Malaise era from a historians point of view

I know I commented on that thread but I still don’t know how or why your one was doing that. Like I’ve had that fully loaded and never bottomed out. I won the double DIN radio roffle by @DeanH which is going in to this. I just need to get hold of the harness and DAB splitter. It already has two Pioneer speakers as the left one blew last year, although now I think the replacement is buzzing now so need to look at that. This is a weird one really. I wouldn’t say the massive life events I had at the time that’s caused this car to be so entwined with me, it’s just been brutally reliable. I’ve had enough of cars letting me down, even now, and I think it’s the bad experiences with other vehicles that’s just reinforced how fucking wonderful this car is. The only two real issues I’ve had with the 107, and these are recurring issues, is the catalytic converter cracking and water ingress. The water ingress is a bitch as I thought I fixed it last year but I didn’t, as the rear light seals had gone. But then I’ve got to wait for prolonged rain to see if it’s fixed. It’s never shat it’s PAS. Saying this it’ll do it tomorrow now I bet! The only Peugeot I’ve had with issues with the PAS was my 3008, and that was fucking scary and dangerous, failing at 50mph. Issue there was the tyre pressures at the front. If they’re not identical and are out by a fair bit the ECU of the PAS shits itself and goes “nah mate fuck this you’re on your own” and just stops. Man handling a 1.5t car designed for PAS is not fun. Maybe try that?