Carlo_Raffo_TDS

Another Update on the Civic!!
With this little dry warm spell of weather that is happening i decided to get a move on and use it to my advantage. The Drivers side was desperate to be repaired and i finally took the angle grinder to the rust and started cutting. 
Heres a Before photo just to give you an idea on the rust situation:

 
With this being the worst side, the whole sill needs to be replaced. which seems rather daunting as ive never done something like this before. Although using the skills ive picked up from the previous side it should be a challenge which will be worth well doing for the final outcome. Im probably going to have to Brace the car as im unsure if im going to have to cut out the area where the floor is spot welded to the bottom edge of the inner sill. If so ill weld in some pieces from the floor to the upper portion of the inner sill to give the floor some strength and if needed a  bar will be welded across the pillars just in case. 
But for now im currently just focusing on the rear section of the sill. I Ideally want to get the rear of the car welded first, then progress to the front of the car where the rest of the sill and jacking point need doing. The Rover 200 and 400 Owners Club are reproducing the Front Jacking point panels which will come in handy as the Civic and 400 are the same car. Saves me making it all myself. 

Like the otherside the backside of the sill was covered in that black underseal which i rubbed off using thinners and it came up pretty well again which is great!

Unfortunately the rust on this side goes from the rear arch to the front jacking point. So i intend on getting the  Rear Arch done once the rear sill section is complete. thankfully i have a rear inner closing panel and some metal left over from the other sides closing panel which i can modify and fabricate in order to fill in the rest of the inner arch as it will have the same profile.

Thankfully it doesn't look like it has gone too far up into the inner wheel arch. the worst of it is probably where the bumper bolts up into the arch. 
 

So i got an area cut open to inspect the rust, and thankfully the upper part of the inner sill isn't as bad as i thought after a good clean up with some thinners to reveal the original Coating of Primer. 
 

I opened it up a bit more to reveal more rust. and as you can  see the sill gets worse as you work your way to the front, and Rust has crept up between the Rear and Middle section join. Which resulted in me drilling the spotwelds out and peeling back that skin of metal to see how far it had spread in that join. If im going full on with this i may as well get rid of all the rust or it will just come back resulting in more repairs years on down the line. 

So i cut a bit more out to reveal the panel behind and thankfully the rust hadn't spread too far up that seam. As you can see this is where the floor starts to be spot welded to the sill. 
This seam will be all cleaned up and treated or replaced if needs be. it was also nice to see that the Floor Lip isnt rusty. 
 

The idea will be to get all the area prepared and cleaned up ready for welding. I still need to cut out the bit of rot on the inner arch where its welded to the back of the sill, Which can be shown on the photo below.

Once thats all cut out i will then Trim up the repair panel i have made for it. This side i messed up a bit with the measurements and its about 0.5mm too big so im going to have to cut it and trim it down so that the inner sill will sit flush with the inner sill not much of an issue but still kind of annoying. 
 

Here is the Panel i have trimmed up to put in Still needs some fettling and cutting down in some places with the finger sander so that its perfect. But i aim to get this all welded up in one piece rather than tonnes of little bits. I had to cut the lower bit of the inner sill due to my measurement cock up, 0.5mm will then be trimmed off the other piece to get the profile right. 
 

But for now that is where i am up to, hopefully tomorrow i can get some more progress done and perhaps even some welding if all is good!

Further to these two threads:
It looks like I will soon be the owner of a very tidy 1987 Ford Sierra Sapphire 1.8L.
I was looking for a poverty spec Sierra in the south east of England but thanks to @cort16 my next toy currently resides with a collector based in Northern Ireland. A deal has been done and Sierra will be put on a low loader on Monday and arrive here in Buckinghamshire the follow day. I have spoken with the seller, checked out his comprehensive Facebook presence and he seems totally genuine. WCPGW? Nothing. There was talk about me picking up the car in person, however for logistical reasons and my imminent big birthday that will keep me busy for a couple of forthcoming weekends, I wouldn't be able to fly to Belfast for at least the next 3-4 weeks. 
I hope to receive more photos from the seller later today but these are images taken from his Marketplace listing.



The Sierra has a genuine 33k miles on the clock, apparently with adequate paperwork to back this up. Online MoT records go back to 2005 and it is clear that the car has seen very little use over the past 18 years and passed most MoT tests outright. 37 year old Sierras don't look this good unless they've been looked after and have clocked up low mileages. 
More about this gem once progress is made with the seller.
The reason why I wanted a poverty spec Sierra is because when I was a student, I bought a D reg Sierra 1.6L from my then girlfriend's dad. I paid £800 for the car, which was about 10ish years old at the time and was owned by girlfriend's dad from new. It was mint. I sold it and bought a Guards Red Porsche 924 but that's another story.

Sometime later I bought a Sierra 2.0GL estate. I bought it cheap and it came with Ford Escort S2 Turbo 15" alloy wheels, which I sold for a decent price and fitted a set of Sierra steel wheels and Mondeo trims, which I got from a mate for free. I sold the car a few months later for a lot more than I paid for it. Win.

Fast forward (not Fast Ford) a good few years and when I bought my first house, I needed a cheap estate for tip runs and trips to DIY centres. I bought another red estate, this time a 1.8L, fitted with a lovely CVH engine that snapped its cambelt on the second journey. I had it fixed by a local garage for £250. It needed three valves and a new belt. Later, this became my wife's first car, however as it didn't have power steering and was too heavy to drive, it was quickly replaced with a Vauxhall Vectra 2.0 GLS. That was a good car.

Fast forward even further, my wife and I moved to a rural spot in Buckinghamshire and I treated myself to a lovely Sierra Chasseur estate, again fitted with a 1.8 CVH motor. That was a one owner car, an ex Ford employee who was given the Sierra as a retirement present from Ford management. I kept it for a few months, sold it to a friend who was later diagnosed with a terminal disease and I ended up selling it for him to a complete stranger who looked very pleased with himself as he was driving away. He should have been, it was a lovely car.

Whilst I had the Chasseur, I bought a Sierra 2.0i Ghia hatchback for £150, a runner, with MoT but it was shabby and I flipped it as soon as the V5 arrived, in the process doubling my money.

So, ladies and gentlemen, this is why I want another low spec Sierra. I want to relive the good old times and have a car to play with that won't be flashing an EML at me, won't need an EGR delete and will put a lasting smile on my face.
More soon.

Incoming!
Man maths says this should not count against me in 2024 because I first asked to buy this 1968 Morris 1300  in July 2022 and it has taken this long to come to fruition!
As I knew I was buying a car that needed some fettling I had it taken to the FoD but when it arrived it started easily and sounded sweet so when it became time to go back to the house I could not resist taking it home. It has a bit of a misfire but still cruised along at 50 mph no trouble.
Winter is not a great time for a 55 year old BMC product, but I am looking forward to the summer with it.

So today ive been finalising the metalwork by filling areas with weld that needed it mainly around the outer arch section as i grinded too much away (whoops) anyways ive managed to rebuild it as best as i could. there is a few pin holes but i may just leave them as i really dont want to make more work for myself again. ive tested the structure of the arch and it seems strong so thats good. I will use a fine layer of filler just to get it all smoothened out so that it looks right, so a day of sanding i dont think will be too bad after all the work ive had to do today lol. 



 


Today i also managed to flood the sill with cavity wax, made sure it got into all the areas and especially the areas where the welds were as the paint will have burnt off on the inside. i also managed to get it up into the arch too where i had to fill it with weld so that should hopefully be nice and protected from the inside now. I used Bilt Hamber S50 Cavity Wax which came with a handy lance to get into all the tight areas. 
 

 
And Finally here it is with the Door on:

The Door needs slightly lifting up, i put it on in a rush as it was getting dark so thats something to do on another day.
 
For the next part of the project i will be focusing on this section of the front jacking point and floor on the passenger side. It just needs a small patch where it joins the floor. I really dont want to have to open this up but if it comes to it then i will have to. but i think once thats done i will be taking a break from the welding due to winter, and ill put my focus onto the other jobs, perhaps suspension and such who knows ill see. 

 
 

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand we're back!
Big lot of updates have been applied, so hopefully everything is still golden.
There is a bunch of post update tasks (database indexing) that the forum is running in the background, so things may run a tad slower for the next couple of hours.
I'll write up a thread in a bit on exactly what was done.
EDIT: The write up and technical discussion is here: https://autoshite.com/topic/55178-autoshite-server-infrastructure
 

Im hoovering and it’s fucking boiling.
Assuming owner must have been a gardener. Everywhere seems to have an inch layer of garden waste, under the rear seats even.

My next door neighbour when i was growing up had a corsa with the reg plate of K155JTO. I have no idea why I have remembered that for nearly 30 years

My next door neighbour when i was growing up had a corsa with the reg plate of K155JTO. I have no idea why I have remembered that for nearly 30 years

Went to the tip, such good tip cars, and a little drive along the front, then came home cos it's too hot.

I'm really sorry for the prolonged outage. The server got borked in several interesting ways for unknown reasons.

The site will be doing ol' Whores-Drawers dance for a bit while I fix stuff properly so apologies for that.

Strange one today!
Because our Allegro Vanden Plas 1500 was not quite ready from having extensive work done I decided to help a fellow Allegro member who had his Ankle in a cast, but wanted to go to the Allegro 50th Anniversary  at Gaydon today and his car to be there.
I went to Bedfordshire to collect the Allegro 1100 DeLuxe 2 door in brown and meet the owner and his son for the first time. He then trusted me to drive him the 140 mile round trip. I came away impressed by the car which drove very well and it surprised me at how well the 1098cc engine coped with hills. 

Perfect. 
 

 
fitted. 
 

 
got it down. Flicked the ignition on. Nothing. Needle doesn’t move. Check for resistance, 0.00. Ok, maybe there’s no fuel in it? It’s been running ok? Chucked a gallon in it, now the gauge comes up to the bottom of the empty mark. Dodged a bullet there me thinks! 

Also I got some plates made up. Mainly because the existing ones are original so they're delaminating and generally a bit crusty.
I did consider getting the 'Rowstock' and Austin Rover logo made up but then I thought it might well stretch the budget a bit too far. So I settled on some red writing and the original (0235) area code for the phone number, £38 posted and they arrived within 24 hours.
I'll keep the originals safe somewhere as they're a nice historic artifact that goes with the car.

I went to see Kevin yesterday, handed over some envelopes of cash for his hard work. 
Shiters beware, I think he feels a bit hard done by on this job. "I've spent way too much time on it" he said. Which is probably true, and good for me if true. How much time does £REDACTED buy anyway?
So please feel free to contact using details above but he's got a backlog of work to get through first. I can hardly blame him for prioritizing 'easy' jobs where bolts aren't rusted out and it's just a case of spraying and bolting a few panels.
He's sprayed up the drivers door I provided which is good because the current one has quite a lot of wob in it. Saying that I might save that job for next year.
I do need to find some adhesive tape for the rubbing strip on the NSR door (also new/2nd hand). In my head I'm thinking 3M but I don't really know what to buy.
Then there's the roof trim whatsits. There are two rubber strips that sit in the roof seam, he's removed these for spraying but I need to put them back. 
And of course the little spoilers in front of rear wheels. I've seen a lot of MGs that have these removed, presumably because they're a rust trap, but I do think they look cool in a "BL Sports" kind of way. 
Ceri is booked for Wednesday to bring it back to the garage, but we've had good news on the house buying front and should be moving mid May. So all hands to pump and try and get it running for June.

Not a silly question. It was a combination of pictures I sent, plus then another assessment when it got there. I provided panels and doors needed: 2x sills, 1x rear arch panel, 1x front wing (to provide rear arch section for opposite side), 2x doors.
When he took rear bumper off there was a lot of rust around the rear floor so there was an additional piece of work to repair that which neither of us knew about.
So, in summary: provide as many photos as possible. Be prepared to source hard to find panels. And be ready for the bill to go up beyond what you might have expected...
In addition I've had to get @worldofceri to transport it. I could risk driving it back to a booked MoT but the tyres are a million years old and the handbrake doesn't work.

May I ask a possibly silly question? Did you trailer the car to him and then worked out what needed to be done when he saw it? Or did you take pictures of the crusty bits and he went off that and was happy to fix it?
I need an old motor welding up but unsure how to go about it when they potentially havent got car in front of them
 

May I ask a possibly silly question? Did you trailer the car to him and then worked out what needed to be done when he saw it? Or did you take pictures of the crusty bits and he went off that and was happy to fix it?
I need an old motor welding up but unsure how to go about it when they potentially havent got car in front of them
 

Well I may as well just share it here. 
Kevin James works at Threeways (or possibly Three Ways) garage in Northampton: Dallington Industrial Estate, Heathfield Way, Nhants NN5 7QP. His number is 07989 037879.
I should caveat the above info/photos with the statement: I HAVE NOT YET SEEN THE WORK UP CLOSE. IT MAY BE COMPLETE SHIT. YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY. OBJECTS IN MY SHITE THREAD MAY APPEAR BETTER THAN THEY ARE.
Saying that his workshop seems full of other stuff so he can't be that bad.

I had grandiose plans to get loads done the last two days. A combination of getting up late and having to sort out life's paperwork has meant only this afternoon/evening have I had time.

While I had decent access, I decided to weld up the footwell. I should have done this when the inner sill was off. Instead it just made it more difficult for access. At least I wasn't trying to do it with the side panel on.

Cleaned up the existing join as best as I could with the wire wheel.


Then welded. Welds look shit because of the shielding gas being mess up with the filler/paint/underseal flames and fumes. Also I'm well out of practice.


They look even shitter when cleaned off with the wire wheel.


Passable after grinding through. This will be under carpet/rubber mat and so shouldn't be visible usually anyway. At least these hold unlike the original. Panel is slightly warped from the heat but I don't care too much about that on a footwell.


As a brief interlude and for shits & giggles, I put the panels on the car to figure how it'll look and check for alignment.
Generally looks okay but might need the outer sill a tad higher. Also some cutting down of the footwell side panel.



Panels removed and set to work welding this inner sill on.


Managed to burn a hole through my air hose FFS. It touched the body and melted it. The ends are crimped on so not easily fixable. It's part of a retractable unit too and I'm not sure if that pipe is user replaceable. Irritating.

The air line is an essential part of my work flow. When you either get too much smoke or the flame won't go out, it's useful to blow it out. Also cool panels to not have them warp too badly.


Welds didn't turn out too terrible. Actually these are some of the best I've done for a while.


Penetration isn't bad either.


As a quick job before I closed down for the night, I welded up the jack mount.


Which I should have done tomorrow as I rushed and made a mess of it.


Grinder session should fix/improve it though.


The front floor pan is going to need a repair section to fill the gap between the inner sill and floor as the right angle is gone. However I need the outer sill on first as a straight edge to clamp the inner sill too. Will make welding in the floor pan more tricky.

There might need to be a bit of fiddling/cutting of the body to get the outer sill on properly at the ends but it doesn't look too bad. I'll plug weld the bottom and tops. Which means a good hour drilling holes all the way along! I think the closing panels will need welding into place first as I don't think it's possible to get them in once the sill is on. Dunno, just need a fiddle to figure.

Hopefully tomorrow's job if I get a chance.

Been using the Cav most days.
If you listen carefully I'm sure you can hear it fizzing, but fuck it, I'm enjoying the experience of just using it as intended. 
 I'll try and jet wash underneath whenever I can. 

 

Apropos of nothing, have a pic of me in 1992 with my Mini 1275GT. I'm staying at my stepdad's house, and this pic is in his downstairs convenience.
First car, loved it, it was shit, etc. Actually it wasn't shit but it was a bit shonky.
Also, I weigh about twice as much today.

The good news is that the MOT pass will take my car to its 30th birthday next March, god willing etc. 
So that's like driving a 1963 Cortina 1200 in 1993....

Purchased this little monstrosity in April and have done about 300 miles since then, albeit slowly, whilst I did a few jobs to clean it up mechanically and cosmetically.
Now it's the dreaded MOT tomorrow, a week early because I just NEED to know what has to be fixed.
Jobs done by me so far
- full service (oil, air filter, fuel filter)
- front brakes stripped and cleaned which also helped with a binding front wheel
- new timing belt, auxilliary belts and water pump (surprisingly easy job and of course I didn't use Citroen's special tool) and coolant changed
- exhaust tarted up but it's still leaking
- the very small amount of surface rust treated and the underside waxoyled and some bits painted with Corrosol.
- leaking rear shock cleaned up (new one bought anyway)
Issues which will cause MOT failure;
- leaking brake cylinder (I'm expecting the brake shoes to be shot also)
- absolutely no nearside handbrake action
- exhaust leak
- cracking tyre wall on offside rear
- EMISSIONS - praying the catacleen and Esso 99 I pumped in does the trick
There's also a nasty noise under load which I'm putting down to a worn rear engine mount (purchased!!) causing excessive movement in the exhaust system and making the cat hit off the floorpan. Or something like that. It's actually ruining what is a very nice driving experience so it needs fixed.
Also helpfully the central locking has ceased to work. All wires have been checked and are fine as is the fuse. Thus I can only put it down to the little box that lives beside the handbrake. Anyway we shall see.
 
 
 
 

Well unbelievably I’ve made it to Pandino!

The show doesn’t start till tomorrow and the town was pretty dead this evening so I headed to a local pizzeria which was classically Italian and great.
Its been a really tough day today. Set off early from Briancon in baking heat. Drove over the border into Switzerland, got the usual rodding for a Vignette. I then proceeded to spend 2 hours stuck in traffic round Lausanne although the lake is bloody beautiful. The cars radiator fan has been running full tilt all day.
I then drove the Great St Bernard pass over into Italy, which was both fun and spectacular. Something I’ve wanted to do for a few years.

Hi all, I'm Lucy and I'm a very big fan of Toyota's:
I'm planning to expand my fleet of cars in the future some day, but for now as a student all I can do is have my one car, and here it is:
It's my very own (ZZE120R) 2005 Toyota Corolla 1.4 T3 saloon, and in manual variety. I got it for something like £2000, and its on about 26600 something miles? The MOT says 27170 latest, but the man at the garage was supposed to put 26170. Oh well. It seems to be in decent shape, and the 4ZZ-FE runs great and suits my city driving demands.
Anyways, updates may go here. Thanks for reading!