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juular

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Everything posted by juular

  1. Right. The 240. I checked and it's still there. Damn. Mulling over what could possibly be wrong with it, I have absolutely eliminated ignition, unmetered air, and fuelling, and have eliminated the other 3 cylinders. The only thing left is compression on #3. Compression on #3 when tested with a gauge shows it being a maximum of 5% and a minimum of 0% down over the others depending on the phase of the moon. I suspect a standard compression test isn't telling the whole story, but I don't have the kit to do a leakdown or dynamic compression test. Basically, it's got to be the compression ring, right? It's either stuck or broken. The car was originally stood for over 10 years which does tie in with this theory. My first attempt at trying to sort this without dismantling the engine is to throw some special sauce down the spark plug hole and leave it for a week. In this case, a 50:50 mix of Acetone and ATF. Place your bets now!!
  2. Some more stuff tackled. Trying to keep in my head all of the things I thought about fixing while on the Rustival trip. Writing notes? How quaint! Just stay awake at night trying to sift through jumbled thoughts until 3AM. It would probably be good to sort out the broken headlights. Brief recap. A few weeks ago I fitted a latching relay which allowed me to control the full beam entirely through the flasher stalk instead of the antiquated floor switch. This worked brilliantly until it didn't. Turns out that £3 of Chinese "INDUSTRIAL CONTROL" electronics aren't suited for, you know, anything. So the PCB basically melted (it wasn't even carrying notable current). Before the Rustival trip I simply reinstated the floor dip switch to get us on the road. Turns out I wasn't wrong to try and get rid of the floor switch because as soon as it got dark, I went to switch between main and dip on a dual carriageway and lost all headlights. We pulled into a layby, consulted the wiring diagram, and crimped a couple of wires together so that we had headlights (but no mains). Time to fix that permanently. The solution here is to use a 'proper' relay, in this case one designed for an old VW bus / beetle. The relay number is DNI 0127. There are also Meyle and Durite equivalents, so they are easily come by. Step 1, remove floor switch and hurl it into the depths of the garden. Step 2, crimp spades on the end of the wires to the floor switch. Also tee-solder the smaller red wire into the bigger one, as that's more structurally sound than crimping two wires into one spade. Step 3, RELAY Here is the pinout. And here is what that looks like in real life. Step 4 : Replace the fuse you blew because you forgot to disconnect the battery, and touched the permanent +12V against the metal dash. Oh wait, there's no continental fuses left.. So it turns out this lighting setup is even better than the one I set up previously with the INDUSTRIAL CONTROL relay. - When the dipped headlights are off, the flasher stalk operates as a main beam flasher. - When the dipped headlights are on, the flasher stalk toggles the main beam on and off like a modern car. - The relay also serves the purpose of being a relay for both the mains, flasher and dipped. So it takes away the load from the light switch, provides full current to the headlights (brighter!) plus it means I can remove the flasher relay and wiring in the engine bay as it is no longer required. So far this seems a far more robust and efficient setup, time will tell. Engine and gearbox mounts replaced. The gearbox one was particularly hanging and the propshaft was bouncing off the bottom of the transmission tunnel. A set of high performance air filters attached. The purpose being twofold. The generic SU HS6 pancakes I had on would sometimes smack against the clutch master cylinder reservoir on hard cornering or acceleration. I also felt they were strangling the engine as they were so thin and miserable looking. These by comparison are offset specifically to fit the Amazon, and are significantly more chunky. Y THO | Y THO Test drove this and was quite impressed. The wishbone poly bushes have sharpened up the steering a fair bit. The engine and gearbox mounts have changed the gearshifts significantly, and overdrive seems to snick on in a much more dignified fashion. A little bit of the induction roar from the pancakes has actually disappeared, but it still sounds great when opened up. I'll take it. Next up, I'll be fitting the sports exhaust, more polybushes, and doing a number of electrical upgrades to make it more reliable.
  3. Has he got a thread for this? Sounds like something I'd love to see the engineering work involved in. Personally I think it would suit an old loping pushrod V8 to go with its mini-US styling, but I've also heard of 1UZ and Rover V8 conversions which sound fantastic. It's a wide enough engine bay, but that steering box / column really does screw things a bit!
  4. Feels like Christmas, and Rally Santa has been. What's more, he's left me a pair of Prats this time. Started on the upper wishbone bushes as they started being quite loose after Rustival. Value for money has been fully extracted from these. Those were so knackered I just poked them out with a finger. Absolutely shagged. Poly bushes back on. Next up will be to polybush the rest of the car, and fit the new exhaust, which should sound a little bit like this. Or maybe like this? https://m.facebook.com/reel/926911235414875/
  5. Must admit the location looks pure dead good like.
  6. I forgot to mention the autojumble. Something sorely missing from FOTU. It was excellent!
  7. Homeward journey in the Amazon went well. It absolutely tanned the M6 north. Without the pressure to get to a destination intact, we both opened it right up and enjoyed it. @Ronkey wanted inspiration to get his finished. Get stuck in, because it'll be worth it! A couple of stops for coffee, but mainly to tip jerry cans into the frustratingly small fuel tank. That fuel tank seemed increasingly small on the way back as with the car being pushed hard, let's just say the earlier 34mpg was a distant fantasy. But who cares! Stopped off at @warninglights place for a cup of tea, and to poke round his collection of really interesting Volvo projects. The Laplander is something to behold and is already looking like a completely different beast to when he got it. I won't give away anything, but this is going to be brilliant. Lolvo meets Volvo. And home. I enjoyed every minute of driving this. It was comfortable, surprisingly rapid, and with very few modern touches, totally capable. With the longer diff installed the speedo no longer over-reads like most cars, and a 70 on the needle is a true GPS 70. As such it felt like we were flying past the traffic. It was keen for more, and without trying you'd notice you'd drifted up to GPS 80 and it had plenty left without being remotely loud. And that's before you flick the overdrive off, where you get a surprising burst of power available. The K cam and overdrive puts this right in the sweet spot for motorway driving as it's at the foot of the powerband. Having that at the flick of a stalk means you can really piss off middle lane drivers who don't want to move, but don't like being overtaken by a 60 year old shack. Tough! I am surprised Volvo never offered the M41+OD+1.41 axle combo in production cars, because it's just so right. It does rob a fair bit of your 0-60 and standing starts aren't as lively, but the K cam more than makes up for that, you just hold the gears a little longer. Rustival was fun and I would do it again. The very best part of it was seeing people, @Talbot, @chaseracer, @mat_the_cat, @Puglet @Sunny Jim, @Six-cylinder, @Mrs6C, @Andyrew. Thank you all for such a brilliant weekend. What a great bunch of lads. Enjoyed the autojumbles, perhaps a little too much as we came home with a set of four Lucas driving lights. The enjoyment of the trip spurred me into getting some more things sorted on the car, so I have now spaffed the best part of a grand on a branched manifold, sports exhaust, a better intake, and a full set of polybushes, plus a load of electrical parts to try and fix niggles and improve the (still bodged) lighting. To round things off, when I got home I had a nice surprise waiting in the form of a Professional Prat.
  8. I forgot to add, it's great to have such a big show at this time of year. It's nice to have something to look forward to after the long dark winter without having to fight for calendar space with all the summer ones. I did like the stage being small and not in your face. The one at FOTU is getting increasingly obnoxious year on year. Hope my post didn't seem negative at all. I had a really nice weekend.
  9. It was a fun weekend. Pinging @dollywobbler on the customer service line, for what I hope is taken as constructive feedback for next time and not an old man rant. TLDR; I enjoyed it and I will come back, but there's scope for betterness(tm) without big changes. Having to apply separately for a parking space within the event is a stupid idea. The distinction between attendee and exhibitor was made so blurry it didn't exist. I bought a ticket (very early), it was weeks before I realised the need to apply to park. Many said they didn't know about having to apply until the last minute when it was too late. As a result some interesting stuff wasn't there, or was parked miles away. That's a little sad really. Having a default first come first served space with a block at the museum reserved for mobility seems fairer. Communication. Almost everything official was posted on Facebook. Facebook is an echo chamber unrepresentative of the outside world, and more people I know are off it than on it. We had to rely on word of mouth or continually pinging the Rustival email address for clarity. To their credit they were shit hot at replying and were nice about it, so kudos. I found that facebook information conflicted with what was on the Rustival website and differed again from what was being said on the Gaydon website. To compound; there was a video doing the rounds of what to expect, details differed again. 9 mostly serious adult people were sitting round a table the evening before the event trying to arrange a convoy, but we had all gleaned different details from the scraps we picked up. I wasn't emailed tickets, so I'm glad I screenshotted the website booking confirmation otherwise I'd have done a 700 mile trip for nowt. It might be worth looking into that, as I definitely wasn't the only one. It may not have been intended this way, but Mayfair did feel a little out on a limb and that cars were a bit scattered and/or grouped into bunches of car clubs. We really felt that Mayfair was Rustival Unofficial, a separate event for those that didn't get the memo. Meanwhile, notable empty spaces in VP, or they were taken up by modern yawn that I could enjoy* outside Tesco any day of the week. An age limit or some other gatekeeping just to gently press the ethos might be a good thing. Positives, and there are plenty. It's got a nice feel. Really friendly. A refreshing absence of rivet counting. Lots of people saying hello and welcoming inspection of their shitheaps. On the whole the cars that showed up were ones that we wanted to look at. Despite my comments about organisation, we all just rolled off the M40 and slotted into a parking space. It was fairly seamless in the end. @Talbot however did not have the same experience. Being at Gaydon and having access to the museum and its facilities was tremendous and sets it apart from FOTU in that regard. I mean the ticket price was a positive too, no doubt. FOTU is going to shoot itself in the foot with that. ANYWAY. No point doing photojournalism as others have that covered, but here's my personal favourites. @Sunny Jim's C15 is all kinds of right. I really want one now. The Carina. Would suffer mechanical failure anywhere in this and be happy about it. TR2. You win. DAF(T) but cute. I'm really not sure what to think of this. I don't like the rear spolier but otherwise it has grown on me. Would probably really enjoy cruising around listening to synth music in this. I can imagine it being sold today as a retro-modern and I'd probably want one. For the record, we were the ones in the concours Amazon, next to Dave's absolutely stonking Dyane, which I struggled to keep up with on the way back.
  10. You're knocking this into a different postcode. Really good to see it being done properly. I must admit when I got to this point I'd lost a lot of motivation and large gaps got filled with mig wire. Your fabrication is spot on and that is going to last forever. It will be worth it.
  11. The space just happened without any particular intent. Glad to have an AS representative next door.
  12. Can't decide between the TR2 and the Carina..
  13. That was a fun day. I'll stick up some photos later once I've recovered. Amazon tried to jettison its gearbox on the M40 while attempting to chase @chaseracer That Dyane is absolutely ace in every possible way. Anyway, yes, one gearbox to bellhousing bolt is now stuck in someone's front grille. The other was held in by mere hope. As such the gearbox was shunting back and forward against the engine and it popped out of gear a few times. All fixed now thankfully! The solution was to fling away the original Volvo bolts that have Allen heads and are difficult to torque without rounding out, and replace them with normal hex head bolts. Still proud of the old heap.
  14. Somewhat missing the point by adding shiny tat, but that's me done. Also, look at this.
  15. Arrived no problem, despite the minor issue of headlight failure about 20 miles from destination. Even managed around 32mpg at a GPS 70 by initial fag packet maths.
  16. That's just the square sausage part of the convoy. Gretna services achieved.
  17. Moment of truth, as if we are leaving for rustival we are going today or not at all. New alternator is charging at 13.7V so that's a good start. Just need to fix a couple of niggles and then force every tool I own into the boot just in case. Mega thanks to @Lacquer Peel for digging me out of a hole last night. Old new alternator can rest with the fishes at the bottom of the garden.
  18. Worse than that, I ended up in an industrial estate in Baillieston. The emotional rollercoaster continues. Did I mention we're meant to leave tomorrow morning?
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