rob88h

After all this work, I finally turned my attention to the garage (again).  Last year, I did a major re-jig to the layout, as detailed in Page 1 of this thread. Whilst having the workbench at the back was definitely the right way ahead, the working area floorspace was too narrow for working comfortably on cars, even small motors like the Beat. Swinging the trolley jack about and crawling underneath proved to be a pain in the arse. 
So, the aim of the game was to get as much floorspace back as possible. First step was to mount the bicycles to the roof rafters:


Relegating the boys' bikes and garden toys back to the garden shed did help things as well.
The biggest cause of floorspace intrusion was the floor-mounted racking.

Having had these since we moved in, these were essential in storing the absolute hoard of shite Mini parts. Nowadays, they were a lot more bare. They stood at 1.8m tall and could split in half, height-wise too.  A rough plan was hatched. The racking was broken down, and the separate 90cm vertical sections were reduced in height by 15cm. This height was chosen to allow it to stay roughly in line with the adjacent cabinet already fitted, and allow room to move underneath it.
The test fit of the first unit looked promising:

So the work continued.

Eventually, after a couple of evenings, they came together nicely.


And with the fourth and final unit fitted, I could properly secure the units for good. The rear vertical sections screw into both the wall and the roof trust mounting beam, the units were secured to each other and the front vertical sections were mounted to a section of timber secured to the roof beams.

This resulted in a very secure storage space that also allowed for full use of the floorspace underneath.

The following evening, all the shite that resided in the way was stowed.

Look, I can open the door fully! The ladder and workbench were also wall-mounted at this stage, accounting for the log storage near the front of the garage. The boy's toys came back in for a few days as I had other plans elsewhere.

I think it worked out pretty well.

And then, the Beat was parked on the other side of the garage, just in case! It's been nearly a month and it hasn't fallen down so I think that's a win. Work beckoned for a while after that, so this took a back seat.
Finally, I got back to it though. In our old house, I'd had to buy a tin of garage floor paint to repaint our porch floor as it was ruined. The tin had been sat in the garage, gathering dust for seven years since. 
Seemed daft to let this opportunity go to waste, eh?

I ended up applying this paint with a tiny roller - I needed to apply two coats, and I didn't want to end up having to buy a new tin, so minimising paint wastage in big rollers was the aim of the game.
Whilst in between applying the coats, the in-laws came down, so I got the FiL busy applying a coat of white paint to the walls.

At this point, we wall mounted 1 racking unit onto the wall, and relegated the other one to the shed, which was another ballache in itself!

Next, a toolboard in the corner of the garage was made up to accommodate the air tools above the compressor. Some corner shelves were also made and fitted.

One of the garage bugbears I had was a dark spot in the garage - a Facebook freebie of another florescent light was gained and wired in.
It got quite messy with all these simultaneous jobs going on!

But the work has its dividends, and a few hours later, the garage was ready.

You can see the corner shelves and extra florescent light in this one.

The Beat looked positively dwarfed in the new-found space.

So naturally, I had to test out a theory:

Yep, this will now become a 2 car garage for the winter months.
There was a surplus TV stand in the rear corner of the garage, which I had to avoid when parking the Mazda:


So with that moved out of the way, how far could we go?
Well, as it turns out, quite far.


It's a bit of a squeeze, but both cars drove in with minimal fuss, as long as the Beat is as far back as possible. Theoretically, Herman  /should/ fit in there alongside the Beat, but I really don't want to find out the hard way that I'm wrong.
So I finally have a clean, wide space to work without a dusty floor to ruin my day. Best thing was, most of the items used in this project were surplus items from other projects, so I spent just over £25 on the whole project.

As sunshine was just around the corner, it seemed right to start preparing the MX5 for the road once again. Once the car cover was removed, it became quite clear that I had become a millionaire without even knowing it.

With a reminder in the rear view mirror about keeping cars off the road too long:

The MX5 saw daylight for the first time since October.

A quick run over with a sponge and reconnecting the battery appeared to show everything still worked, but the OSF wing has deteriorated to the point where it was no longer secured to the front bumper. As the MOT was a day away, a bodge was the order of the day, namely drilling two holes into both the bumper and the wing and locking them together with garden wire. After that, a splash of aluminium tape, followed by colour coding it with some duct tape saw the wing looking slightly less terrible.



The Rust-eze sticker has finally gone too, it had faded away to nothing.

So away it went for an MOT and it failed for a binding front caliper.

 

New caliper, pads and a re-grease of the sliders saw the old girl roadworthy for another year, straight into daily driver duties.

Herman's new intake tube arrived, which was a relatively painless swap.

Turned out to be worse than the initial inspection:


At the moment, Herman just isn't being used again - blame the increase in fuel prices for that. A new battery is on the horizon though, as the Lion one isn't in the rudest of health.

They're only wee stubby ones, but really perfectly sized for light hooning the bike got fully serviced and recommissioned back in September whilst I was away with work.



I just chipped away at it a bit at a time and now it rides beautifully - I ended up giving my road bike away because I prefer this in every single way.

Took Herman to the beach today with the family. MrsH has been using it to ferry the boy to and from Nursery, so it's averaging a pathetic 13mpg at the moment.

As we pulled out of the beach car park, the traction control light came on and the gearbox started behaving very oddly - felt like limp mode, stumbling and throttling back when applying light throttle. It also refused to kick down or rev higher than 3500.

Weirdly, it only did this in normal and sport modes - in manual it was working absolutely fine, pulling cleanly etc.

Luckily, my mate Dan was a stone's throw away and he was very kind to let me plug the car into the garages reader.

Got a shitload of fault codes throughout the car (hopefully induced by the low battery problems I had before) but most pertinent were these ones:





This was highlighted by one of the throttle quadrants randomly motoring through its full extent whilst we waited.

Still, the faults were cleared and a quick test drive revealed all was behaving again, but I'll be keeping a close eye on this.

Did spot this though, which would partially explain the poor MPG:



So I'm now on the hunt for one of those.

Bonus doggo - he never, ever gets to ride in Herman but we had the kids seats in there already so it seemed daft to move them around.



Nothing exciting anywhere else, although the MX-5 is going in for an MOT on 5th April so hopefully we'll get a nice easy to-do list!

As with most people, I've finally had enough of these sodding fuel prices and started using the bike a lot more now.

Sunday morning rolled around, and my 4 year old reminded my that, contrary to popular belief, I am not entitled to lie-ins, hungover or otherwise.
Painkillers necked, pancakes scoffed, and straight into it then.
The engine was fully reassembled up top, exhaust refitted (the studs/nuts need replacing very soon, as does the manifold to cat gasket), the brakes vacuum bled at all four corners and the gearbox oil replenished:

I also took the chance to remove the distributor cap and rotor arm for a quick check - it wasn't bad so it only got a light sand back to shiny metal.
A while back, I noticed the coolant pipes were weeping slightly at the join from metal to rubber - I couldn't remember which one it was so it made sense to do the lot. Did forget there would be the remainder of the coolant in the system, but thankfully there was a drip tray underneath to catch the fluid! 🤦‍♂️


Once the rubber pipes were off, the metal pipe ends were cleaned up and a very thin coat of grease applied. The rubber hoses were cleaned/scraped of all the rust deposits and some rubber seal 'plumping/conditioning' solution applied to make them more pliable/sealing (The stuff is for door/roof rubber seals, so they got done on the Beat too whilst the stuff was out).
Once the rear was done, it was on to the front - was then that I discovered that the front right axle stand was bearing no weight at all

Then (no pictures) there was evidence of more rustproofing required behind the nearside intake grille cavity on the rear quarter - unfortunately, I was getting quite frustrated at not being able to get a paintbrush down the crevices and resorted to masking off the surrounding area and pouring stone chip paint down into the cavity and using an air line to 'push' it around - certainly not a pretty or correct method, but I've not got many ideas left. The next option will be drilling a hole in the sill for drainage and adding a rubber threaded screw that can be removed for drainage.
With that done, it was time to fill up the cooling system - the system takes 4.7L so a fresh 50/50 mix of OAT coolant was poured into the header tank at the rear, with occasional assistance of purging the system by me blowing into the expansion tank to push it through 😆 I've noticed the expansion cap seal is perished, so I've coated the top of the expansion tank in silicone grease in an attempt to aid sealing.
So, how does it run?
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Fucking lovely, is how it runs! Initially it had a check engine light illuminated, but this was suspected to be oil contamination of the camshaft position sensor connector. Once cleaned, the code cleared, and the car got up to temperature nicely and the last of the air burped out of the cooling system.
A ten mile test drive revealed that everything was running nicely - it wasn't grindy or grumbly behind my head any more! The handling feels a bit off but the car will be going in for an alignment with Phill soon. The brakes take a bit of getting used to again as with the old calipers, I was not getting any brake pedal travel, which made it very hard to slow down gently. Not so the case now, it's lovely.
Parked it up for the night and had an early night for work the following day.

This car is so close to being done, the roof is the next big step, but I need to import some of the fixtures and fittings for it. I've got two roof frames to choose from too, so I'll be using the best one.
Dead chuffed, like.

So, having filled myself with breakfast, I climbed into the same filthy overalls and drained the transmission oil into a clean drip tray - but not before ensuring I could undo the fill plug first!


1.2l is bang on for the amount expected in there - looks all right too, so it's going back in until I can afford to replace the MTF.
The nearside hub and arms came off relatively easily with only four bolts and a big flatpoint screwdriver to pop the driveshaft out. Brakes were another matter. Sadly, the handbrake cable was rusted into its mounting arm on the hub, but thankfully, Honda thought ahead on this, allowing them to be removed with 2 x 12mm bolts. It needed further unseizing on the connection point on the caliper arm too - this took quite a bit of oiling and beating with a hammer to eventually come out. 
Eventually though, I was greeted with a cavernous space where a hub should be:

The offside was a much bigger pain in the ass. The handbrake cable had also seized in that arm, but one of the bolts was particularly crusty. Not wanting to risk rounding it off, I used the only 12mm, six sided socket I had, a 1/4" drive one, along with a step down socket to allow me to feed the torque in a bit better with a 3/8" ratchet handle.
Which went well.

Eventually, after digging through my spare tools, I found a near-death 1/4" ratchet handle, and used that with large ring spanner on the handle to give the leverage required to crack the nut without rounding it off. Clearly, I need to expand my socket selection to include six sided sockets at 3/8" input.
Aside from that, almost all the bolts came out with no fuss.
I say almost...

When I received the Beat back, I was informed there was a small amount of play around the hub to shock clamp, despite tightening it as much as it would go - this is what necessitated the hub change. Sadly, as soon as I put any real torque into the clamp bolt to undo it, it sheared. 
No matter, it sheared at the right point so I was happy I could still remove the hub:

At this point, there were car parts littering the floor:

But you can clearly see the rear calipers were not up to the job these days, with barely any contact being made on the inner disc surface.

The new hubs, arms and calipers are in much, much better condition - I'm going to suggest they came from a relatively fresh imported Beat as there is no rust at all anywhere! (Spot the freebie Bluepoint socket set that gave up its step down socket earlier - sheared in a nanosecond :mrgreen:)

Disassembly work continued, with the engine re-supported on a jack and the rear mount disconnected, ready to undo the four large bolts holding the rear subframe on. Sadly, the electric impact wrench could only undo  the smaller 2 of them, leaving it up to sheer bodgery - step forth me, a tyre iron and a 17mm impact socket - you could see the car squirming around on the axle stands as I undid them! Eventually, they gave in and I received my prize - the difference in condition is plain to see!


 
A bit redundant, given the scale of work being done here, but I marked the camber adjustment nuts and their relative subframe position on the rear arms and transferred the marking s over, in a naive attempt to get it 'kinda' in the same zone.

'lOaDs Of RoOm FoR a K2o SwAp LoLz' 🙄

Anyway, time to rebuild.
Subframe back in, bolts threadlocked and biiiiig torque applied. Creep marks applied and I'll check on them in a few hundred miles.


Nearside hub next - a bit fiddly when you're the only one in the garage! Thankfully, the rear engine mount being connected freed up a trolley jack:

Notice these have brake dust shields fitted, unlike the old ones!
These hubs came with calipers, discs and pads already fitted, and all of them looked to be in better condition than the old set. Seemed silly not to take the caliper off and clean/grease everything up to ensure it hasn't gotten stiff during its period of inactivity.

Once done, the caliper and, cable and banjo union was refitted.
The hub was then jacked up to what is approximately the level it would be when sat on the ground on wheels, and the suspension arm bolts torqued and creep marks applied.
Then, feeling confident, I cracked on with the offside, until I finished for the night at this stage:

I then went to the pub for the night. Many beers were imbibed, ready for a late start on Sunday 😆

Whilst at work, MrsH received a parcel:

Gavin sorted me right out, with everything I needed to repair the Beat, at a great price and delivered quickly. Top bloke!

It also came packed in some authentic Japanese newspaper, but I forgot to get some photos of that.
Satisfied I had the required parts, I wasted no time in whipping the belt and pump off.
The damage marks were evident, as was the evidence that the previous owner had just run it on pure water for a while!


The play in the pump was immediately apparent, but the pump was also sticking at points:
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And the bearings sounded like a children's maraca:
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The old pump had a hole drilled out to allow removal of the locating dowel:


A tiny smear of hylomar to hold the seal in place,

and a smear of grease on the mating face of the seal

And that bolted back in nicely.
Photos dried up a bit here, but the idler pulley and tensioner pulley were replaced.
The old timing belt had clearly been scrubbing on the lower cover, presumably when the pump pulley allowed some lateral movement!

A new belt was fitted:

....and removed, and refitted several times as I'd never done a timing belt before and I was absolutely cacking it about messing it up and lunching the engine!
Once fitted for the final time, the crankshaft pulley was refitted and the engine rotated on the pulley what felt like a million times - everything felt all right, so I think any potential damage has been avoided.

Whilst everything was disassembled, it seemed daft not to work my way through the pile of parts sat on the shelf as part of the service.
Starting with spark plugs (gaps checked before fitting!)

And the fuel filter. Fiddly little bugger. (Photo is of old one coming out)

This item is, again, usually a Japan import jobby, but after a bit of digging, I managed to found out the part number was shared with one from an early 90's Civic Shuttle 1.6, which was showing as in stock at ECP.  There were slight variations in the angling of the banjo union support brackets, so one doesn't sit in a bracket, but otherwise it's a perfect match and proved itself to be leak free. Result!
This means the only thing left to do in the service at some point is the air filter - again, a Japan-only part, but I'm investigating other options for this.
Progress shot:

This marked the end of Friday's efforts, as I had to pick the boy up from pre-school and be a dad for a while. Normally, the next step of the job would be to re-fit the exhaust etc. However, I had a lend of an electric impact wrench from a neighbour to remove the crank pulley (My air one wasn't strong enough) so whilst I had use of the wrench, it made good sense to dig this lot out of the garage rafters for Saturday's job:

Right, first things first - Herman is back with a fresh ticket and MrsH is using him as a daily to ferry the boy to nursery and back - I'll continue to use the Laguna until the fuel prices sort themselves out.
The Beat? Glad you asked...

(BIIIIIIIG posts inbound!)

Right, there was no point in delaying it, so the following day, the Beat went up on stands in preparation for the parts.

Luckily, having observed @twosmoke300do it a few months prior (Whilst I was v.hungover - I was, quite literally zero use that day!) I was roughly aware of the correct order to do things. 
Things were going well, with only a few stumbling blocks on the way:


Keen to avoid the heart-stopping moment of it running wrong like last time, the HT lead paint dots were re-applied 😂

The exhaust put up a fight (as it did last time!) but eventually came off.

Alternator and A/C belts - these were clearly past their best when we did the timing belt change back in November but we didn't have spares. Got a new Alt belt but the A/C one is still eluding me - not overly important as the A/C  doesn't work in this car.


Eventually, after more faffing about, I got the timing belt covers off and was greeted with  a shard of metal resting at the bottom. Uh-oh.

Turns out the idler pulley hadn't let go, but the water pump had, there was excessive amounts of play in the pulley suggesting a failed bearing. This was on the 'to-change' list as we discovered a coolant weep back in November, but as the water pump is unique to this engine, it was an import from Japan job - which I did not have the spare funds to do at the time. Thankfully, the engine turns fine so there should be no permanent damage once a new timing belt kit and water pump is fitted. Now the car appears to be in yet another maintenance package, I'll be looking to do some of those other big deferred jobs I was leaving until after the show season, including a near-full rear end change, de-corroding the rigid cooling pipelines causing small weeping leaks, more rustproofing and a service.


Yay.
Herman has also gone in for the MOT today, so fingers crossed that's not too painful!

The wheels that are on the car came with the car, I would rather have the factory ones myself but they're rocking horse poo and these have got new tyres on.

The black vinyl was applied post respray by Tony, I spotted it on a different Beat online and liked the look of it on that one. Still unsure if I like it on the bright yellow, but maybe it needs to be Matt/satin effect instead of gloss?

Big white van arrived, so we pushed it into position. Mercifully, the recovery fella took my word for it that it wasn't going to be fixed by the roadside and didn't crank the engine.



As we moved it, we noticed it's shat out some coolant.



Either way, we got the Beat on. The recovery fella had loads of questions about it and seemed chuffed to be dealing with an oddity.



Finally home and parked up.



Thankfully, whilst awaiting recovery, I got in contact with a friend of@ruffgeezer who just happened to have a timing belt kit for a Beat, including the water pump for his own car.

However, he wasn't planning on doing his for a few months, so he's very kindly offered the kit to me for the cost of him getting another kit shipped in from Japan. Absolute win there, as I get the parts by the end of the week and his stuff will arrive before he wants to do his belt change anyway. Top bloke!

Right, where's the gin then?

Gut feeling is the idler pulley that was grumbling has degraded beyond safe driving now. These engines are too expensive to source for me to risk driving home on it, as a full failure on these engines is catastrophic.

Going to plead with the breakdown fellas not to start the engine at any point now.

Luckily, MrsH is inbound to take the boy home so he's not stuck here with me forever.

Bugger!

Spirits were high in the car



MrsH has just come to collect the boy, naturally she's overjoyed with the entire event



Been sat here for a couple of hours now. Still no big truck, or indeed little truck, but she brought my cable, and I'm glad I installed the USB socket earlier this month



I am however regretting shaving my head this morning as the roof skin has shrunk which means a lovely cold breeze keeps running past my bald dome

Oooh, it was a close one, but the old girl made it

It's not going anywhere now till payday.



I thought it was pretty impressive, but a rough calculation works it out to be around 36-38mpg. Not bad, but expected better.

After a couple of low weeks, I thought I'd try cheering myself up with a short drive out in the Beat whilst we had a bit of sunshine.

Suddenly, AN NOISE.



Awaiting recovery truck. Back to feeling low

Yesterday morning, I received a parcel:

Inside were the Beat parts I ordered from a fella in Poland, namely bumper trims.

I also gave him an extra pound and asked him to throw in some of his favourite sweet treats in as well, which were a bit of plum wrapped in caramel and chocolate. Unusual, but nice
It's only small, but it makes a difference:


Finally, I had a quick job today that required removal of the side grille:

Namely, making foam 'blanks' for the grilles. These go straight into the rear quarter panel inside so the aim is to reduce as much water in that area as possible.

10 minutes of hacking about with a Stanley knife produced this:

Which, whilst not pretty, will keep the majority of the water out of the internal cavity when washing/rinsing. Made one for the other side too.
Tested them with a wash (they worked), gave the car a coat of wax and threw some bedsheets over it, to keep the dust off. The dehumidifier runs in the garage 24/7 nowadays anyway to try and keep the rust at bay  
 

 
And that's it for a while - The Laguna is still on an economy run, and doing quite well.

I reckon 500 miles to this tank is perfectly viable, it's had a bit of handicap from doing a lot of idling to bleed the cooling system etc, but it's still pretty decent. Usually get around 320 miles to a tank, filled up on the 2nd and it should see us for the rest of the month. 

So, diagnosis was complete and it was off to Euro Car Parts to pick up some parts. Always enjoy the mystery and intrigue of ECP - I know what I ordered, but what was I going to receive? Would it even be for a Renault?
 
Whilst online, I noticed that oil filters, etc for the Laguna were hovering around the £1.50 mark with the discount code, so I bought a kit, and a service kit for Herman and a few bits for the Beat whilst I was there. They didn't list a fuel filter for the beat, but a bit of digging revealed the Civic Shuttle 1.6 fuel filter /should/ be the same. At £15 it's an expensive punt, but cheaper than the alternative.
Never had a trolley full before.

Whilst loading the kit, this unusual import turned up in the car park:


Spoke to the owner - he was Japanese and it was his parents car, so when he moved to the UK he figured it was better to move here with a car he knew and could trust!
Other tat spotted whilst in Truro that day:


That evening, I went to work on the night shift.
Finished early, so at 0315 that morning, I parked the Laguna into the garage:

Unpacked the boot with all the bits and got started.

My allen key set arrived from Amazon - annoyingly, the short section of the 7mm one was still too long to fit into the bolt head as it was fouling the chassis leg. Bit of angle grinding reduced it to the required length!

Annoyingly, this entire evolution highlighted some problems with the layout of the garage, notable the positioning of the racking and the presence of mine and the boy's bicycles - not an issue with the Beat, but an absolute ballache to jack a normal sized car like the Laguna up. Once up on stands, the bottom hose was removed (Thankfully there was still some coolant in the system which shows it never 'ran dry' before I found the fault), system drained, plastic access fairings removed, aux belt removed and water pump pulley removed (a breeze thanks to me finally unseizing my free rattle gun last year) left me with this view:

As you can see, the belt was already past its prime:

But 9 E8 bolts and a slight mallet tap later, and the old unit was removed and in my hands - remarkably, it's the original unit, from 24 years and 129,000 miles ago! The unit itself was sticking when rotated, with a bit of play in the bearings. Fired into the bin.

Then came the dull task of scraping off all the old gasket that had stuck itself onto the block. Came off all right eventually!
New pump was a budget ECP brand - seems okay though.

Didn't have a torque wrench that went that low for the securing bolts, so went for two white knuckles.
Then pulley back on and new belt fitted.

Once all connected back up, the coolant was filled and car started to begin the bleeding - success! The noise has gone away. Started bleeding the system at the one bleed point it has, when disaster struck:

One half of the bleed screw thread sheared off inside the pipeline, which hadn't sealed, resulting in a permanent slow leak of hot coolant. After much panicking and faffing, I managed to get the thread out, and found a spare bolt that matched the tread pitch and depth. More importantly, it provided a tight seal against the pipeline so order was restored!
Whilst in the area, I replaced the cabin filter - those who read the old thread will remember Phill finding the old one totally clogged. 
Turns out these clogs really quickly/easily. These have a 12,000 mile interval, thank christ they're cheap!

And touch wood, the Laguna has been fine ever since. I topped up the coolant a tiny bit the other day but I'm going to assume that was the last bit of air making its way out of the system. I also cleared the driver's side sunroof drain whilst the fairings were all removed, and that seems to have stopped the roof lining being soaked in a downpour. There's definitely some rustproofing to do soon if we're to keep it for the long term though.
I finished work early Friday morning and set about trying to weatherproof the covered cars by tactically parking the Laguna and Herman, and shoving some spare wheels against the BX's sills to act as windbreaks. Must have worked as the BX's cover was fine, and the MX-5's cover only lifted a bit up the rear bumper. Result.

Oh, I agree wholeheartedly, but since I started using these for running, my shin splints have all but gone, along with my knee pain.

The calves are still tight as fuck and sore but they're getting much better as my body gets used to them. It's still sheer, unbridled agony every time I stand on a stone or on those lumpy paving stones near junctions.

Overall though, I like them. Will probably buy again, but maybe a slightly thicker soled version (these ones are 5mm thick inclusive of the insole!)

Doggo is cute though, and a hell of a companion. Absolutely my best friend

I've recently been using the Laguna to get to and from work, with this full tank dedicated to me doing an economy run. So far, it's going well, with over 200 miles covered and it sitting at approx 2/3 on the gauge.

However, I had noticed a noise emanating from the engine bay, sounding like a squeal, changing with revs. As everything was still working fine, I saw no need to investigate further until the weather improved.

Then, I was about to pull out of the car park at work to head home when the power steering felt 'pulse-y'. No dramas, this cars got a persistent PAS leak so I grabbed the bottle from the boot to fill up.



Disturbingly, the level was fine, but a tiny splash more in the reservoir (and removing the reservoir filter) was just to make sure.

I suspected that the aux belt was a bit far gone - I'd never changed it in my ownership so why not now?

So, a couple of days later, I got my nonce slippers on:



And ran my usual route, but with a stop off at the local factors:



For a new aux belt.



Did a swap with the Beat to get the Laguna in the garage:




And immediately had to abandon the job as it required a 7mm Allen key to loosen the tensioner (pictured), which I did not. The belt definitely needs replacing soon though, it's all cracked.





So, instead I decided to take off and clean the bonnet latches as they are quite stiff.



Where I suddenly noticed the expansion tank was empty.



A bit more diagnosis found that the water pump was leaning which was causing my squealing noise. Picking one up on Monday.

Bugger! Reckon the Laguna heard us discussing whether we need to get a bigger car and decided to shit itself out of spite

So, that was last week. 
Forward to yesterday and I got a few packages in the post:

Which meant dismantling this again!

All my efforts were around the centre dashboard area again:

And this fella first:

Yes, I'd managed to source a replacement.
See, the fella I bought the Beat from had two for sale at the time, the yellow, and this silver one:

And has since turned it into a barchetta version by cutting the window frame off:

(Project thread: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=47&t=1768960&i=0 or @beatchetta on IG)
Suffice to say, he doesn't need a heater any more, so he sold me the heater and as a bonus, two brand new heater control knobs, which are unique to the Beat at a very reasonable price - what a legend!
All I needed was the plastic frame itself, so I transposed all the components onto the new unit.


It's not perfect, but it's fully functional and it's given me an idea with my old unit - to be continued, I'm sure!
Fitted it back in and onto the next job:

Once again, a drill was employed:

This was to accommodate the final piece of the stereo puzzle:

A USB and 3.5mm aux in extension. The USB was connected to the cigarette lighter connector and for the Aux-in, a splitter was fitted to the Bluetooth amplifier board, with the standalone Bluetooth receiver being connected to one output, and this 3.5mm extension being connected to the other. This provides yet another option to connect audio to the stereo via an iPod or what have you. As the input is shared, the only difference would be to ensure the Bluetooth music is paused before switching to the iPod. The USB is there to aid charging my phone etc, and a weatherproof rubber cover is fitted too. 
All fitted back up:

Finally, the last job completed was to apply these stickers - very apt, as there is one on the windshield scuttle from the previous owner and the car is a smol yellow buzzy boi!


And that's me up to date! There's a few more jobs on the horizon, but nothing that's going to stop me from enjoying it for a while first and getting out to some classic shows.
Thanks, as always to @twosmoke300 for all his advice and sarcasm over the project

All this other work was going on whilst in between doing the really important stuff - further rustproofing!
With the car up as high as it'll go on axle stands:

There was evidence of surface corrosion in some of the crevices where the bitumen stuff hadn't quite reached. The areas I wanted to work on were the front and rear inner arches, the floorpans and the inner sills where it meets the floorpan, plus any other bits encountered along the way.
There aren't many photos of this because it's boring as fuck, but Kurust applied:

Then straight to rust/metal primer:

Then, I applied two brush coats of grey epoxy stone chip. Once dried, I applied two coats of black hammerite because I obviously bought the grey stone chip paint by mistake!

You can also see I fitted a rubber bung in the inner arch on both sides - they must have gone missing during the rebuild. There was also a bung missing in the rear of the drivers footwell - evident by the perfect circle of tar on the underside of the drivers carpet! Once all this was done, the bottom of the outer sills and the front wing bottoms were taped off and the lower sections had hammerite applied - this had been previously bitmuen'd and was coming off, looking quite unsightly.
Naturally, whilst working in this area, the inner sill cavity box sections got absolutely drowned with cavity wax, as did the area inside the side grille panels. I'll look to make some foam blanks up to go in the grilles during washing as the water will just sit in the area otherwise - clearly a very obvious rot trap!
During all this, the Amazon man arrived with all the parts I needed for my stealth stereo install.
Most important was this wee fella, a Bluetooth amplifier board. 

This little box of magic is powered by 12V DC, and contains a Bluetooth receiver, 3.5mm Aux input, two speaker output, and adjustment knobs for volume, bass and treble.
My wishlist for a stereo was quite simple - I wanted Bluetooth, an Aux input, and I wanted to be able to control the music. This box did most of what I wanted, and there were simple workarounds to get exactly what I wanted.
A quick rummage through the house found a suitable electrical connector from a surplus power brick (Blue tape means it hasn't been used since we moved house in 2016 - clearly not needed!):

A bit of soldering action:

Using some spare accessories I had loafing in different cars:

Produced this as an end result.

Now to try and explain it!
I wanted to be able to control the music playing over Bluetooth, but the amplifier board's inbuilt Bluetooth did not have that facility - all you can do is adjust it on your phone if connected as there are no buttons. However, the aux input meant I could connect a standalone Bluetooth receiver, complete with external controls. This receiver, pinched from the MX5, is powered via a USB connector, so some live and earth leads were soldered onto a double USB cig lighter connector and taped up, and the live/neautral lines connected respectively up to a 3-way Wago connector for connection to the switched live and earth lines sat at the chocblock in the car. As the speaker wiring is relatively low voltage, I was content to just replace the chocblock and connect it that way. The circuit board of the amplifier unit was also coated in a protective electrical lacquer to hopefully stave off any corrosion issues.
The benefit of this system is I have control of the music playing through my phone without touching the phone, and the inbuilt Bluetooth takes priority over the auxiliary input, so if my passenger wants to play their music from their phone, they can just connect directly to the amp board and control it through their phone! Everyone wins!
Next, mounting it. The stereo cubby was the only logical place for it -

After a lot of drilling, sanding and filing (The panel was very thick so an air file was used to reduce the thickness to allow the board to be successfully mounted), this was the result:

Once fitted and connected, it was time to give it a proper test (It was Burns Night the night I was working on this - there's a can of Tennent's just out of shot!)
Once tested, I remembered that the drivers' side speaker was still in need of repair, so I got onto that too:

Both are refitted and sound much better with no hint of blowing! Result!
Re-araldited the centre vents as they broke a bit:

Next up, I used a kit that been sat in my inflam locker for years, getting covered in grease in the process!

This made the instructions 1000000 times harder to read, but I thought I did pretty well:


Till I got to the part where it said 'park it in sunlight'. 
Not a problem, except a) the car was on axle stands and immobile, and b) it was well past sunset.
Thankfully I had a UV light from my phone screen protector, so that saved the day:

This did the job - it wasn't a flawless finish, but there were so many things against the job it's hard to say which part caused it. My fault, surely. Much better than it was though so who knows?
Finally, there was the job of giving it a thorough wax and polish. Now, the paintwork wasn't exactly applied in a dust free environment:

But that's no reason not to protect it. Two coats of Auto Glym SRP and two coats of some Simoniz hard wax that's been in my garage for nearly a decade:

And it's come up rather nicely. The wheels also received the same treatment. 
As a bonus, I managed to get some deep scratches out of one of the tail lights with some metal polish, saving me from sourcing another!
With everything coming to a close,, it was time to apply the most important finishing touch of them all:


I even found some spare floor mats from Herman in the rafters, which were actually a really nice fit, as well as being thick and luxurious. The pleather seats were also throughly cleaned - even managed to get the white marks out of the passenger seat base!

The sill join crevices just forward of the side grilles was also painted, lacquered, and waxed to try and stave off any future corrosion around that area.
So, with everything done, all the tools I had been throwing around the garage - 

were packed away, and I could take the car off the axle stands!


Noticed a couple of bumper grilles were missing - one will have been removed from when it was converted for a rear fog:


Found some extra interior plastics in the rafters too, so fitted them. No pics though, but its the vertical panel behind the seats in the next photo.
Finally, the boy was loaded up:

And we took it out for a test drive to get him a haircut!

It drove lovely, but the clutch pedal is still a wee bit stodgy. Once we got home, the car was washed and parked in the garage with the dehumidifier on:

All of this work was done with one purpose in mind - @chatsharriswas coming to visit and it was the first time I'd seen him in months. He was a former 'half-owner' of the Beat with me but has let me buy him out of his half. Least I could do was get it looking absolutely spot on and let him out for a drive!

(He loved it!)
Last part to follow, then I'm up to date!

Whilst the door card was off, I noticed that the speaker cone rubber had separated from the cardboard ring that mounts to the metal frame, presumably due to loads of moisture ingress (The MX5 did exactly the same thing)
Replacing the speakers would have only meant it happened again in the near future, so I decided the remove all the old traces of cardboard, and bond the cone rubber to the metal frame directly.


Not pretty (Applied with a gloved finger as I didn't want to waste a paintbrush), but certainly effective, as it has held nicely and there's no hint of flapping now! 
Also, yay for free repairs.
This was also completely redundant, as the Beat didn't even have a stereo fitted. The cubby is not wide enough to fit a standard DIN stereo, so the previous one was installed where the glovebox was supposed to be. A total bodge, and one I wasn't happy to accept (Old picture for reference)

A quick plug in of the unit revealed the passenger speaker wasn't playing - connection fiddled and it was working again - revealing the driver's speaker was also sounding blown. Wonder what's happened there? 🙄
Either way, that evening, we were left with this:

It doesn't take a blind man to notice there is a LOT of red on that stereo loom, and you'd be correct - this has been completely butchered:

Red tape hiding a whole multitude of sins:

Even black tape hiding - can you guess?

Wrong! It was somehow worse.

Clearly, there was going to be no real way to save this loom, nor would I want to as there's nothing good about it. 
Whipped it all out at the handily inserted chocblock connectors and yeeted the entire lot into the bin:

I took a bit of time and had a thought about what I wanted in terms of a stereo installation, and more specifically where. Once I had the idea and the list of parts required, I ordered everything and cracked on elsewhere.
Such as with this dirty, lumpy washer bottle.

Bit of scrubbing and it came up very nicely.

Co-incided nicely with replacing the windscreen washer pipes.

After the inital wash of the Beat, there were traces of rusty water leaving the bonnet. The bonnet was repaired as it was completely rotten and repainted - although paint can't get everywhere as this little orange giveaway shows.

So, I applied an entire can of cavity wax to the internal skin of the bonnet, propped it up and let it dry, leaving the front end draped in bin bags to protect from run off.



In order to speed up the drying process, in the evenings a bedsheet was draped over the bonnet area and a dehumidifier placed in the spare wheel well. Worked quite well.

Once dried, seam sealer was applied to any areas of the bonnet underside with orange bits, showing either rusty water or wax has seeped out. Will paint at some point.


Not everything cleaned up nicely. This fuel cap was not getting any better!


More to follow - down to the last 40 pictures! 

As mentioned before, I was fancying a change from working on the BX. Show season was coming up, and for once I had something interesting enough to exhibit. Unfortunately, whilst it had a lot of work carried out to make it road legal, the Beat was in need of a lot of post-maintenance maintenance to tidy things up.
First things first, the BX was evicted and a new cover bought for it - this was a Halfords all-season cover, and I'm really chuffed with every aspect of it, feels durable, and fits really well (This was a size Large).

The Beat was washed and parked in the garage overnight with a dehumidifier going to dry it out thoroughly:

DISCLAIMER: Almost all of these jobs were carried out concurrently to reduce the amount of time off the road - as soon as something had a drying/curing time, I moved onto another job in the meantime. This makes the pictures a bit hard to correlate, so please bear with me!
Before I picked the Beat up from Tony, he had coated the underside in a bitumen/tar based substance to protect it. Whilst I'm sure it is very effective, it did leave millions of these tiny overspray dots all over the paintwork. Thankfully, with gentle application of WD40 or thinners, they all eventually came off:


Some bits of overspray were more obvious!



All bits cleaned up equally well though! (There was also a lot of yellow overspray on the windows etc which came off, but that wasn't photographed (I was on a roll and just cracked on!))
EXCEPT for one bit. The dashboard was coated in the same overspray which came off nicely with thinners. However, the heater control panel responded very poorly to this, with the front face 'matt effect' coming off in great blobs, and the switches suddenly started gumming up. Removed it to see what the crack was.

Clearly, this is the type of plastic that reacts badly to thinners - the runners for the pushbutton switches had completely melted and were still soft hours after being cleaned with parts washer.
Once dried, the front panel looked even worse.

Clearly, this wasn't ideal, so I started souring a replacement. For the time being, the front panel was covered in a light coating of grease to remove the white deposits. The A/C button is completely seized, but the other ones were managed to be freed up with a small screwdriver cleaning up the runners.
 
Ah well, onto the other jobs.
 
A small section of black vinyl missing from the windscreen pillar?

EASY! Just get a Sharpie 😂

Next up was using this absolutely cracking tool:

Crammed myself into an awkward position (Did not want to take the roof off!)


And did a full clutch fluid flush and change (was like muddy water in there!)


The biting point still wasn't what I was expected or wanted, so I adjusted the clutch cylinder rod at the pedal:

It's still not perfect and I think the  fix would be a replacement master cylinder, but I'll keep at it.
Brake fluid was also flushed and changed out. Needed it.


The passenger side lock cylinder fell into the door after a few goes. Took the door card off and popped it back in. Fiddly little bastard, but got it in eventually!

Next part coming dreckly!

Whilst moving stuff around the garage, I decided I was never going to need the Beat's boot rack again, as it required holes drilled into the boot lid. As they're quite a rare accessory, I decided to get it ready for sale.
It did have quite a lot of surface rust:



Luckily, child labour is cheap, and with some fine wire wool and a bit of elbow grease:


We came up with the final result:

(Forgot to brush off the steel wool dust after doing it, so now my bin lid is rusty)


5 kilos, what's the bloody point? 😂
There's still a few bits of rust here and there, but overall it's much, much better than it was. Haven't put it up for sale at the moment as I have no idea what to ask for it, but I'll probably see if anyone wants to swap it for any Beat goodies

So, first things first.
 
After several days of utterly miserable weather of both the wet AND windy variety, a driveway shuffle took place to get the MR-doo out for a further gander/assessment.

With a sponge and water thrown over the car, it was time to get my finest poking finger out.
The car itself was a 1998 Toyota MR2 2.0GTi-16, with a sunroof instead of the targa top. Owned by my friend Joe for several years, he had gone through a few issues with this particular car over the years, notably the water pump shitting the bed, which necessitated an engine change, and more notably, the body modifications brought on by that old classic characteristic of the SW20 MR2 - snap oversteer. In this case, it was approx 25mph  at a roundabout. A hydraulic press was rudimentally used to roughly get the shape back, slapped on a new rear light and cracked on.
 
Sadly, an MOT failure for rust, coupled with a recent house move forced his hand and he wanted to scrap it. I intervened, a deal was made and I picked it up for scrap value, driving it back from Plymouth. I found it drove very nicely but wasn't without faults, notably the tacho needle would start dropping back down if the revs went about 2500rpm and the passenger central locking solenoid wouldn't operate. 
The positives were the Toyo Proxes had loads of meat all round, the replacement engine had a recent timing belt and water pump, and the interior was exceptionally tidy.
I took loads of photos of the rot, and bought some steel.





















Completed the driveway shuffle too:

Too many key bundles to move the cars around.

Sadly, I then had a rare bout of sensibility and realised a married father of two does not require a third Japanese two-seater car. I put the car up for sale on Facebook for £1200, endured enquiries from a vast number of fuckwits expecting a concours vehicle, before selling it to a shipmate for £600 who is planning to restore it. I sent some of the proceeds back to my mate Joe to put towards either a new car or some new appliances in his home. He chose a vacuum cleaner 😂
So, we were back down to a much more manageable 5 car fleet, but I didn't fancy working on the BX for a while.