juular

Where we are going, this will be true.

Maybe.

So many clues. The transport vehicle of choice has been chosen.

All the clues are in the photos. I think..

Phase one completion in sight. Phase two underway.

Yes

I love the anal capital of Scotland.

£40 is a bit sore. After all if you're nursing a temperamental heap of shit from the other end of the country you're putting the effort and cost in to provide their exhibits, because let's be honest, nobody gives a flying fuck about the concours. Still, I might grit my teeth, complain and pay it. We make it a holiday out of it and usually spend a significant amount making it something nice. An extra tenner and a bit on top of that seems not enough to complain about in the wider picture. Still, feels greedy of them and I reserve the right to yell at a cloud about it.

What a very interesting rabbit hole.

All of this is exactly what I was trying to explain, especially regarding the tension causing a ratchet effect, but the way you've put it is much more succinct. Frighteningly, the other side is also loose. It's not quite got as far as ratcheting itself off the stud, because the taper has locked nice and solid. I was able to remove the nut with my fingers, which also suggests that it's not a quality Nylock nut, rather a plain nut with 'blue' in it. Needless to say that's now been done up with a castle nut and split pin as well.

Strongly agree! I'd feed this back to the supplier, but I'm not sure how much an 'FYI' from a completely unqualified amateur would influence a company making pattern parts. I suppose at least they couldn't claim there had been no previous issues.

Took me a while to get over myself and have a look at this. I don't really have a conclusive idea as to how this happened, which is worrying me. The cause of seperation itself was easily found. The nut was missing completely. How a Nylock nut became loose and unwound without any warning sign is a concern. Those who know me will hopefully back me up when I say I'm the most fastidious person when it comes to torquing and checking everything I've touched. At first I doubted myself but no, I definitely, without question had this torqued to spec. I've been driving a car when the suspension collapsed before (corrosion) and believe me it's enough motivation to never want it to happen again. Regardless, I checked this on Friday and again on Saturday afternoon after hearing a (completely unrelated) noise. It was there, and it was done up tight. Anyway, I have to just get over it and sort the problem and do what I can to make sure it doesn't happen again. It's easy enough to pop it back together with a jack. This time round I'm not taking any chances. I drilled the stud and used a castle nut and split pin as per the original factory set up. Then I put the panels back on. I'm going to speculate as to what happened. I think using a nylock on the bottom ball joint is unsafe because the design of the suspension means that the ball joint is always being pushed out of the hub rather than into it. If the very mild taper on the hub hasn't quite bedded in and isn't stopping rotation of the top part of the joint, then steering inputs could probably unwind the nut. Since it's always under tension as I said, it will keep unwinding the nut as you steer and might not give any warning clunks before it eventually reaches the end of the threads and pops off. I really think that bottom ball joint should have been supplied with a castle nut and split pin as per the factory setup.

The ball joint came from Parts Monster, which I believe are another trading name for PFS parts (Parts for Saab, Parts for Volvo). The joint itself is not marked with a name but I strongly suspect it's a PPS (Professional Parts Sweden) item as most stuff from them tends to be. They are a company specialising in aftermarket classic Swedish car parts. I've only ever had good things to say about PFS and PPS and have used them both a lot. I'll wait till I get the motivation to go do a post-mortem on the joint before speculating what has happened.

Right, now I've had a drink and vented a bit. We were out for a drive yesterday and I was having quite a lot of fun with it, in other words it was getting chucked around every corner. Rolled up to a roundabout near Bathgate, saw it was clear and floored it, only to hear a massive bang and what felt like the car bottoming out on the road. Thankfully still had a small amount of control and managed to get it close to the kerb although I was blocking a lane of the roundabout. At first I thought the spring had snapped, but when trying to winch it onto the truck, the wheels splayed out. Fuck. I had to take the wing off to prevent it being chewed up by the wheel, at which point I noticed the brand new bottom ball joint was no longer being a bottom ball joint. Thankfully we're fine, just very rattled. Also massive credit to Autoaid, the service was top notch. Picked up in less than half an hour, and in that time I'd had many calls from them just to check up on us. I'll have to get the wheel off and have a proper look at what happened. I'm particularly confused by this as I checked the suspension over as recently as Friday, including putting a spanner on anything critical just for peace of mind. I'm particularly angry as I was doing passenger rides in this 4 up on Saturday and this could have ended very badly. Trying to be grateful no injuries happened, and so far it appears no damage to the car.

</grumpy>

The most sober thing I can say is... Get it bought!

It does now. Hard to believe I've been driving it like this for a couple of years including a few thousand miles on road trips. I always thought the 'shoogle' was a tired engine mount as all the symptoms disappear as soon as you give it any right foot. What confuses me is how the compression figures on that cylinder weren't much worse than they were, being only 10psi or 6% down on the best cylinder.

Amazingly that's the inlet valve that's burnt. File that under "there's your problem". Not the end of the world, all parts to get it back on the road is around £75 which includes an oil and coolant change.

Bye bye nugget! That leaves just the Swedish trio of the C70, 240 and Amazon. Not much to say on the C70 front. Still just goes, and is the perfect winter car. The 240 has been in the naughty corner since around April this year as I couldn't get to the bottom of the random misfiring issue. As you'd expect it's only after replacing pretty much everything else that I narrowed it down to one cylinder that seems to give strangely different compression readings depending on the phase of the moon, and when the HT lead is plugged in for that cylinder the whole car shakes like mad. Of course I knew I'd have to take the head off and see what the valves are like, but I decided to clear the decks first and get the Amazon on the road. Basically I had a full calendar of displacement activities. Today I decided to crack on, and I'm not sure why I avoided this job. Looking at the timestamps on my photos, I started at 1515 and had the head on the floor at 1556. Redblocks are so good to work on it puts everything else to shame. Setting the crank to TDC and undoing the tensioner. Right as expected the tensioner spring flew into a garden a few streets away. Cam cover and sprocket off, manifolds off. Only two wires to unplug, and well that's it. Let's have a look. HG looks absolutely fine. And the valves. Well there we go. #3 is indeed doing very little in the way of actual work. The cams are fine, the clearances are spot on. The next step is to remove the valves and see what's going on.

OUT: 205 Honda Accord IN: Celica T-Sport IN AND OUT: Nissan Elgrand NO CHANGE: LS400 76 Toledo 88 240 GLT 64 Amazon 98 C70 GT 13 Trafic Camper IN LIMBO: 88 Citroen BX