rob88h

It was bound to happen eventually… Going to car shows I always hope to see one of my old steeds still out and about living it’s best life. FOTU provided TWO! (also @Motown)

The reg on that Mini is apt… EDIT: I’m also very much in love. The world needs more shitty Minis.

x2 14E Leaders!

To be fair you could say this about the back of the Lexus.

Looked worse (better) in the flesh 🤤

To be fair to it, I bet a whole heap of friction is required to stop a vessel of this magnitude. I refer you back to this: 🤣

GLX SE 😝

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. I love these things! I owned this one, twice! It got passed around the forum a bit then left our little circle and is presumed dead now. I’ve a lot of time for them; quite interesting and surprisingly good. Buzzy little blezz-bot. Hope you enjoy 😊

My gut instinct is that it is to do with the stalk - I didn’t mention it, but the washer pump is also in-op when the wipers are not working, so basically nothing from the stalk. Typically Citroen; it all works when I come to diagnose it… Plates are here. It’s looking correct on its six character AP reg. It ended up a little more pricey than planned as for some reason my wife decided she wasn’t getting enough mail and the one letter for her to open that day was my Entitlement Document! I had some interrogating texts about why I’d spent what I spent which was resolved with me paying for a spa day (not Francorchamps).

Glad you’re all ok and it’s pretty easily sorted. It’s not so simple as to do a quick visual check behind those big alloys, so for all the brakes I ran on faith. I didn’t even know where if the car has a Jack or locking wheel nuts in my time 🤦‍♂️. Hope it continues to treat you well and gives you the right amount of fun 👍

Does anyone know the whereabouts of the Beige BX (if it’s on here)? I lost the trail in @Zelandeth’s thread.

I hope whatever the SL EUX fault is isn’t too devastating… Even though you’ve smashed the mileage compared to my tenure I still feel a responsibility for it. I’m a pathological people pleaser when selling cars sometimes. 🤦‍♂️

That looks like progress to me! It always gets worse before it gets better.

I took The Leader to the local Citroen Car Club meet yesterday. By a small world coincidence I met the chap who put @Rust Collector on to saving this car in the first place, I think, so he was really pleased to see it here in his section. I thought I recognised his reg and it turned out he was there in the ex- @dollywobbler C5 so I guess I’ll need to watch all the HubNut and @richykitchy YouTube on that now having met it/him/them. I may* have wasted some money returning The Leader to an Eastbourne reg… The former family owners retained the original vrm G91 RAP for their own reasons, the G_ATL reg is an age related replacement. I thought about getting a cheap AP plate as it had spent its WHOLE life down there, but decided it was frivolous. Then the first thing my brother said to me about The Leader when he saw it was “mmm, Lincolnshire car” bereft of nice things to say about it, haha. That sealed the deal and it’s now G19 FAP being pretty close to the original for little money. Plate nerds will either loathe that it’s on a private plate and I that gave up on the “history” of its age related allocation or be into the fact that it’s back on the right area code and kinda visually close. Personally, I think I went too far and shouldn’t be allowed to do internet shopping unsupervised.

The Leader has been going ok so was treated to some rubber upgrades. The rear near side was a bit dubious on the wall, but hadn’t started cracking or crazing. Regardless it’s in the bin and now the rear set sort of match in newness and brand. It thanked me by coming over all French and giving me inoperative wipers on the way home in the rain. I went to diagnose it yesterday and the are fully functional again. The spirit of BX wiring is strong with this one. I’m just hoping it’s not a “they don’t work in the rain” problem, as that’s kind of their raisin d’être…

Every BX thread contains welding and The Leader is no exception. So far this has been handled by @Rust Collector. I think all he had to do was the rear offside wheel well.

What sort of mad man would put a new clutch in a high mileage mk2 rather than taking it around the back with a shotgun😅 To be fair I’ve managed another 3000 miles in mine now with nowt else breaking so I think it was worth it.

Haha, yeah, sorry. I’ve been reading that and liking things at awkward times of day... I’ve seen some other BX threads to go through when I’ve finished yours. Some good work and some good pointers, thanks. It’s what inspired me to set this one up on it’s own thread rather than losing it in the churn of my mixed vehicle thread. I’ve really enjoyed reading car specific threads lately, yours included.

...Follow my Leader... @Rust Collector unearthed this beautifully low spec "Leader" edition BX 14E around early 2023. It's unmolested, honest and wonderfully care worn by an old-boy previous owner. I don't plan to change much about it, but I'm sure as old Citroens go it's bound to give me a story or two. So far, it's freshly collected from the South Coast, where I have to say it is a credit to @Rust Collector's work as it performed just admirably bimbling around the Seven Sister for a pub lunch before taking on 90 miles of country lane and motorway (including the trial by fire for any old car that is the Dartford Crossing) to get me back home. No squeaky bums or exciting faults to report on the way home, just a broad smile, a setting summer Sun and a ticking accumulator.

To be fair I can’t think of many nicer ways to travel. It’s just one big Radio 4 tuned lounge [edit] Palace on wheels. And yes, my 3 mile commute was not the 3UZ-FE’s forte. Have you seen the sticker on the door that’s says if you tow with it you may need to use a tachograph?

Good luck. In about 1 day you’ll have done more miles in it than I did in total 🤣 I did tell you I was getting 19mpg right?

Harrison’s History #60 - Citroen BX LEADER Replacing the Lexus directly is the BX “Leader”. I don’t think I’ve fallen for a car so quickly for a while! I’ve decided to record this one a bit differently - a return to the older format of a thread following a car rather than a person with a car, so for the Leader I’m going to set up a dedicated thread (and post the link here).

I’ve not really said much about my Lexus yet, but it’s gone now so let’s review 88 Days and 531 miles with a Lexus LS. First impressions were great, it’s big, it’s beige, it’s V8; what’s not to like?! It took me a while to get my head around having it, what with it being about half a day between an out-of-the-blue text message proposition [for the car] and it being sat in a parking bay later that day at work with me scratching my head over getting rid of the diesel Focus and telling my wife I accidently bought another car, again. Indeed, it did spend a bit of time getting in the way… but finally, once it was coned off and probably earmarked as abandoned, I decided it was time to take it home. For me, the main enjoyment with this car has been the refinement and the ridiculous amount of kit it has, particularly if you’re used to driving an early 80’s Mini City. Highlights include the many Auto-you-name-its, remote rear headrests, a blind that drops when you select Reverse and goes back up in Drive, an air purifier as well as multi-zone AC, a refrigerator, cooled seats, double glazing, hidden CD multichanger (I mostly used the tape deck with a 3.5mm jack, haha), soft close doors, dual radio controls, oscillating air vents, not only one glove box, but two and the headline act – massaging rear seats. Features and capability wise, in period, this was probably the smart choice over the main competitors (S-Class, 7-Series, XJ?) particularly because I think they were quite a good price comparatively. But something about it seemed that it never sold that well and maybe for the same reasons, to be really honest, it never gelled well with me either. I had an XJ8 a few years back that (obviously) shared no two components with the Lexus, but to all intents and purposes it was the same car. Big, Beige, V8. For some reason I much preferred the Jag. The Lexus, then, objectively is a good car, perhaps the best I've ever had, despite this particular example’s grotty bits that I won’t go into here (in the For Sale Sold advert if you’re particularly interested). Yet I never really let it get under my skin. But to be fair, 500 miles was not much opportunity for it to make its case. I am glad I had it, it was a lovely place to be, I just couldn’t get any more enthusiastic with it than with the glee of finding yet more features that I hadn’t realised existed. I seem to remember finding the Jag a bit boring at the time actually, so maybe I just needed more time with it and more time to pass before my spectacles get a heavier rose tint and it'll turn out that the Lexus was in fact as ace as it should have been.

Cheers dude, that’s really kind. They are near Munich. I’ve had a couple of internal shipping offers but I’ve not made it over there myself to pick up from any mediatory. There’s no rush because hopefully, hopefully, this NOS exhaust setup will see me through for a few years now.

Yeah, I’ve certainly found that! In fact it put a dampener on things for a good while when I couldn’t get hold of one readily. The exhaust became bit of a lynchpin to working on the Granada as it’s so antisocially loud thanks to massive holes in the mufflers and pip work of the mid sections. (A bit of period repair work for you there) Motomobil in Germany had stock, but various non-Eu delivery constraints meant they wanted to cut the already 3 sections into 6 sections - and it was hundreds of pounds so I wasn’t happy with that. I think that’s back in this thread somewhere. The car is too rough to take it over to a custom exhaust shop without trailering it there and again that all seemed a bit extravagant. Luckily (about a year later) some legend had some NOS bits on eBay from in his shed some 40 years that were still looking serviceable. However, what was thought to be a left and a right muffler turned out to be two lefts… More recently I snapped up the only other mid-muffler I’ve seen come up which fortunately was a right. So, with some careful extractions I’ve enough serviceable pieces to get running and then maybe down the line a custom stainless job when it can get their of its own accord.