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Good luck. Hope it all works for you and this time the bloody thing seals!

So good you cleaned it twice

That's great value! Well bought!

Water leaks are a pain! I remember one lad telling me that they had a customer complain he had his boot filling with water. The foreman simply remover a bung in the boot floor. 'There you go sir, the water now has a way out!

Water leaks are a pain! I remember one lad telling me that they had a customer complain he had his boot filling with water. The foreman simply remover a bung in the boot floor. 'There you go sir, the water now has a way out!

Back in the day, a small mini clubman auto estate [I think they made them] would have suited her down to the ground! God knows what something like that would cost now!
 

It's been a minute. There hasn't been a lot to report over the last month. I've been travelling with work so the fleet has sat mostly idle. I did enjoy a rather large F150 in Texas for ten days. It impressed me with it's sheer pace considering it's size. Apparently it was the 400hp twin turbo V6 version. Quick in a straight line but terrible ride quality. I did take it off-roading over the weekend and unfortunately it wasn't very good as it was only the RWD version with road tyres. But I still gave it a go.

 
Roll forward a week to today and the sun has been shining today so I took out my MGF for a spin. Despite it being a rather rough example it doesn't look too bad in the rolling countryside. It isn't the quickest car with the CVT gearbox but it makes for a nice bumble round the country lanes.

 
After I went out for a spin I set about some more welding. It feels like a long time since I last did any welding. Partly because it has been! But today I did manage to finish off the rear panel. When I took off the boot hinge panel the boot floor was also rusty. So I started by cutting all that out.

Then replaced the central section.

Then set about cutting out the other corner

Unfortunately I made the mistake of not measuring twice and ended up cutting the panel too small as can be seen here... A bit of cardboard aided design helped fix that. Although I also had to cut out a bit extra due to thin steel.

New panel under the rear light too

Then onto the hinge panel

Finished off with a lovely coat of brown direct to metal Hammerite

And that's it for today! There's still a hole in the wheel well to fill which can be spotted earlier on in the pics but I ran out of time today. That'll be next weekends job as well as hopefully starting on the rear floors in the passenger compartment

A bit more of the bitsa interior. Upside- it’s semi trashed so very usable. (OSR door card- partially eaten by a dog?)


Dog guard secured by a ww2 soviet machine gun sling
The headlining is just the backing only, as it the internal a b c d pillar trim-

The NSR 1/4 window still has the breakers yard markings on it for extra couldnt give a fuck points. Actually this glass is more tinted, and is optikool rather than the other side windows being triplex- so off a later model i think.
 
Farthest off road so far

Verdict- must try harder
 

I nearly sent one of those little trailers into space a few years back, it was unladen on the back of my 4x4 so couldn’t be seen or felt.
I momentarily forgot myself and went over one of those narrow speed bumps without slowing down as the 4x4 wheels could pass either side of it.
The trailer then immediately made itself seen and felt, as its wheels could not pass either side 😬 I thought it was coming through the back window and absolutely shit myself, I’ve not made that mistake again.

Lovely looking car, but, with no MoT and a suspect clutch, worth maybe £400 tops? More probably than the scrap man would give you, but I feel that is all. 

Unfortunately, they are, or have, reached that age where they ae worth very little. For us it is great as we can pick up a very nice working vehicle for not too much cash. I do see some cars up on ebay/facebook for serious money, and yes perhaps for the very best it is warranted, but for the rest, £1250-£2000 seems about it for a cherished, low mileage example with a full MoT. These are lovely cars. They ride beautifully. The diesels are reasonably good on fuel, but the V6, on full chat, well, let me tell you, it will make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck and give you goose bumps! Lovely. My V6, unfortunately succumbed to the dreaded tin worm. Hopefully my tourer will fare better. 

I don't name vehicles but I was tempted to call it Norman as the reg is TEB, just a bit missing.

Lovely looking car, but, with no MoT and a suspect clutch, worth maybe £400 tops? More probably than the scrap man would give you, but I feel that is all. 

Lovely looking car, but, with no MoT and a suspect clutch, worth maybe £400 tops? More probably than the scrap man would give you, but I feel that is all. 

The one that amuses me the most, Micra Wave

Definitely not for heating up a tikka masala 

Always back to dogging on here...

That looks great! Normally they fade to a 'lovely' shade of pink, reminds you of Penelope Pitstop! Didn't they also form the basis of the Daewoo Nexia? Probably won't help at all as they all seem to have reverted to washing machines now. 

Mk1 Micra with 247,000 miles on the clock and the footwells 2 foot deep in delivery tickets.

This is looking great. I admire your welding skills. How much are they asking for the small bottles of gas these days?
 

That is looking good. Your Grandad would be proud.

That looks great. I expect your grandfather would be really proud of you! Well done, you are doing a fantastic job.

When these were new, they were considered a large car. Now they seem so small when compared to moderns. 

I put a facet pump on mine. Seems reliable but then that's only over 4 thou miles so who knows.
By the way, a series powered cars don't fail to proceed. They only pause at the road side to allow lesser cars to catch up 😆

Back in 2000, I bought @Puglet a Pioneer radio as a birthday present, which she fitted to her 205 XS, This was bought partly for the sound quality, but also because the display showed swimming dolphins  It was transferred to the next car, a Renault Megane Coupe, and the MINI after that.

Unfortunately, an iPod adapter interface was bought which came with a reversed polarity lead, and this fed +12 V through the ground connection on the expansion socket, taking out the button illumination
This has sat for the last 10 years, so with the need for a radio again I downloaded the wiring diagram and did some probing. There was no illumination supply to the front panel so not just a case of a new front. The transistor which switched the supply was open circuit, so that was the first replacement but no joy.
Time to delve further in the circuit, and I found a couple of zener diodes which didn’t measure right.

(Circled, with the new transistor already in place)
These were a low noise type of quite a tight tolerance, which I couldn’t find exact replacements for. Eventually I managed to find some low noise types with a slightly different voltage, but with wider tolerance bands (5.2 to 6 V and 9.4 to 10.6 V). I needed 5.5 to 5.8 V and 9.5 to 9.9 V, so I just bought 10 of each and measured them until I found ones which were close to the middle of the original spec.
I soldered them in, and then re-applied lacquer to the PCB as was originally done.


Then a bit of fiddly reassembly.


And the end result?

Yay, the dolphins are back! (I confess I had tested it before reassembly and fitting though!)

all fun and games until suddenly the Dolphins vanish again but this time the radio displays in a scrolling message
"So long and thanks for all the fish"