jamescarruthers

On pretty much any car except the XM I would say ditch the HIDs but the XM has average-at-best headlights due to a few bits of wonderful design that didn’t quite work out in reality as the were at the cutting edge of modern lights as we know them.  There will be some lenses (maybe missing from yours now) and they will be yellowed with age. Plus the self levelling suspension is meant for such things.
 

I do agree that the colour of yours is pretty awful. Can you change the bulbs? I have yellow HIDs in the C6 and they look ace, would look even better in your XM IMHO.

There was  a huge topic about retrofitting HIDs to the XM years ago on Club XM and someone put a real good amount of work in to it. There can’t be many people who have bothered so maybe it’s your car?!  However, I’m not sure of the legality of a conversion nowadays but you could always leave “as is” unless you fail— I think it is a failure but if a good installation you may get away with it  

Good luck with it all and hope you can get it going soon  

On 4/19/2022 at 7:17 PM, jamescarruthers said:

Our baby is being born tomorrow— that’s a grin anyway, but not really Autoshite related.  😁
 

What is, however, is that the 480 is out of the garage and in daily use this week as the chariot of choice for hospital duties and bringing the baby home.  

New baby boy came home in Dutch wedge style today. 7lbs 11oz. A good start to life I think!

As @wesacosa mentioned earlier, there can be a pin code immobiliser on these. Have a read on Club XM before you go doing anything with it— even unplugging it!

I see you have some extra wiring in the engine bay. If you are lucky this isn’t full bodgorama and it just an untidy installation of a starter solenoid relay which is a really common necessary addition on these. 
 

That’s a really good looking XM!

Have you seen it’s a known car on Club XM? Ray Noon was a wonderful guy but sadly departed a few years ago now. 
 

Nice one. Series 1 I see and 24V alloys! 2.1TD is a superb engine. In manual I found mine quite brisk  

Don’t be too scared, mine was quite kind to me after plenty of initial TLC. 

Our baby is being born tomorrow— that’s a grin anyway, but not really Autoshite related.  😁
 

What is, however, is that the 480 is out of the garage and in daily use this week as the chariot of choice for hospital duties and bringing the baby home.  

1 minute ago, Fumbler said:

It'd be nice to have another 1.4 (especially an early one with the skinny AF tyres!) to come back on the road. Honest* John reports only 16 14REs still in on the road. I doubt there's more than 10 14Es still trundling along.

You’d love yours a lot more if you were to try the early 1.4 suitcase engine! It’s very old school compared to your perky TU.

It does have a charm to it though and I’d happily have it back. Gearbox is in the engine sump, chain driven, a bit whiney, rattly at idle…. but charming. With hindsight I did drive the ancient thing quite hard!

11 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

Does B-AMP still exist then? I remember seeing the TRS at last year's FoTU, and very nice it was too.

B- AMP: yeah it’s still around I think. I found a receipt for it a few years ago and it was a good excuse to email the guy and offer the receipt but really just be nosey. He has a collection of old Citroens which I think are all nicely kept under cover so I’m hoping it would just need a bit of TLC rather than having rotted away, which would be sad. I could never work out why he let the MOT run out and never drove it again— it was in great condition.

Sale of the TRS left a bad taste in my mouth so won’t be enquiring about that one. Plus he’s restored it really well so it probably will never be for sale or if it was, at silly money. 

Nicest Mk. 1 in red I’ve ever seen is the automatic TRS which the same guy has pampered from new and he’s a really nice guy. He goes to loads of CCC event and it glows!

16 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

What I've used is Polytrol, which I'm pretty sure is glorified linseed oil with plasticky goodness within. Smells like linseed oil, applies like linseed oil, smells like it too. When I safely* disposed of the paper towel I used to apply the stuff, it certainly burned like linseed oil!

Was you old one A***XRL?

I had A966 XRL, a 16TRS, which was on the cover of a magazine recently and seems to get to a few shows, although I’ve never seen it;  and B316 AMP, a 14E which a guy bought for some sort of collection but he never MOTd it again which I found weird as he was desperate to buy it. Dream is to buy back the B-reg one day— I plan on asking on a year or so. 

4 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

Aye I'll do that if I really want to, but I'm curious to see how this works in comparison to bumper gel. All it's doing is replacing the oil that's evaporated from the plastic's surface so I'll be interested to see if it lasts longer or shorter than Autoglym bumper gel and equivalents.

Your oily trim gel will look great, just won’t last so long— Autoglym does last a decent amount of time though.  A combination of bringing the oil up with the heat gun and then a few coats of trim gel had the bumper looking new. 
 

I reeeeealy want my red BX back now!

29 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

Before:

After!

I'm perilously close to doing unspeakable things such as detailing and paint correction, and both of these are WRONG.

I promise the only other thing on this car I'll restore properly/paint the right colour is the nearside front wing, because it needs it. The rear wing can stay a hideously contrasting shade of red. I will try to keep the car looking care worn.

Looks great!

Get a hot air gun on it. Here’s me doing mine… it’s astounding how it fixes it!

I work away and this is my last shift abroad before the baby comes. On my trip to the airport, 2 hours,  my two older and wiser mates insisted on coming with me to reminisce about their own children being born, generally offer advice and just hang out one last time before life takes a big turn. 
 

Not just a grin but a slightly damp eye at their wonderful friendship. 

13 minutes ago, wesacosa said:

thanks. Will look to head out to one of those

Yeah, CCC events always very welcoming and usually open to non-members for just a few quid more. I went for years as a non-member before joining up. TBH Club XM has everything you need for XM life (as I think you are finding as I still read it regularly, though my old XM is on here with @chodweaver) but I thought it was nice to contribute and the monthly magazine is worth a read.

Hope to see you at the Chevrons rally! 

22 hours ago, jamescarruthers said:

480 went in for MOT today with zero prep. I had it done a few months early as our baby is due just before expiry. Crossed fingers I wouldn’t have to add more jobs to my expanding list of jobs and the wonderful old thing passed! Usually they need handbrake adjustment every year.

C6 tomorrow… I ‘m pretty confident in that doing the same. 

C6 also passed with a few advisories! Woohoo!

Fleet of shite and all going well. Feels strange!

12 hours ago, Pieman said:

Checked in for a flight to Barcelona on Sunday, and now the airline (Vueling) will not let me access my boarding pass either via my phone or as a document to print.

Don’t worry too much over this. It is quite common to not be able to check in online now as some airlines want to physically check some of your documents before you check in now. For example, vaccination, Covid test, insurance, passenger locator form. It does vary massively with airline and destination.
 

For Spain: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/spain/entry-requirements

480 went in for MOT today with zero prep. I had it done a few months early as our baby is due just before expiry. Crossed fingers I wouldn’t have to add more jobs to my expanding list of jobs and the wonderful old thing passed! Usually they need handbrake adjustment every year.

C6 tomorrow… I ‘m pretty confident in that doing the same. 

24 minutes ago, Motown said:

Yeah the one i have has a trip clock also displays information such as mpg... brake status... fluid levels... lights... what doors are open/locked etc. It still works but the screen is slighty fragmented in places thankfully not over anything important such as brakes and fluid warning levels etc.

Its actually German made by Borg in the 80s and 90s I have contacted them before with regards to getting the screen repaired or sourcing replacement parts but they basically told me to gefickt werden which i think means get fucked in german! 🤣

XM screens are from Borg I believe. Do you have any particular problems? I think they have LCD bleed and flexible connector problems. 

http://www.club-xm.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3047&p=31964&hilit=Borg#p31964

On 3/12/2022 at 2:06 PM, sierraman said:

Harold Shipman and Dennis Nilson were Doctor and a Civil Servant. You’d willingly buy a car from either of those.

Beggars can’t be choosers when I comes to choice of Mk. 1 Espace though. 

The only Autogas (LPG) supplier in Cambridge, CamGas, (3 miles from my house and en route to town) has decided that they aren’t going to refill their vehicle tank as they need to prioritise people’s heating tanks for now. A little bit of me thinks this is fair enough but also am a bit pissed off at this decision.  

The next nearest is 13 miles from home and in a direction I never ever travel, Morrisons in Cambourne.

I suppose I’m lucky as I don’t drive to work but petrol C6 funding on its proper fuel is rather costly. 

Trying to see the bigger picture and accept it but struggling to accept the gas company wilfully not filling it up, rather than actually having run out. Huge sympathies to the people actually properly struggling in Ukraine but the increase isn’t all to do with Russia, the energy market went mad before that. 
 

Oh and the heating oil has gone up to four times the price it was in the (admittedly cheap!) pandemic times. Still double what it should roughly be. Had to order 1000L a few weeks ago, due tomorrow. Have heard from friends that it has gone up another 30p/L since I ordered.

“Shitting their kinky, blissed out peak”. I think this is how I’d describe my life if I had a DS or something  

Well done to The Guardian!

“On an adventure before dementia” seen somewhere in the West Midlands a few weekends ago. I thought this was very clever. I wonder if they thought of it themselves or if it’s a common joke among pensioners having one last hurrah.
 

I can see me being one of these one day. Good on them.
 

(Bumper suggests probably need a reversing camera for safer future adventures.)

1 hour ago, stereotype said:

What the fuck you lot? 

Clearly you've never been close to an addict and seen the shit these people suffer with nor been one, take your privilege off this fucking forum you nasty piece of work. Just because you can't rationalise a decision doesn't mean someone must be doing drugs to make that choice. Maybe you should find some drugs that make you less of a grumpy fucking wanker. Sincerely, someone with addiction issues.lockquote widget

 

@Missy Charm "Have kids these days never heard of paper?  It's so much more convenient for drawing on than one's own skin..."

Could you be any more ignorant? We're in our mid 20s, just because you had no fucking fun in your life. We're not children and maybe you'd get a crumb of respect of you didn't talk like we are. You have no place to judge someone else's body. And you know what's more convenient than carrying around an entire body's worth of your favourite art, memories and stories? Getting them stuck on you forever. Even in the 21st century you're ignorant, not to mention the complete dismissal of the millennia of work, research, history, culture, everything that's gone into tattooing. Never come by my shop unless you want a self portrait of a penis on the back of both hands. 

 

 

Both of you seem to lack something along the lines of comprehension of consent. @reb *wanted l* this tattooed. I *wanted* to tattoo it. That is all you need to worry about, and if you don't like it, maybe don't say anything now that it's done? Just be a decent human being and work on your fucking conscience. 

 

if you have no concept of how tattooing works, the only thing you can comment on is whether or not it's aesthetic to you, then your opinion is completely irrelevant, the only one who needs to like it is the one who's wearing it. Kindly, everyone else can sod off.

 

Sorry Dez for fighting ableist and patronising cunts in yer comments, I'd rather give em incentive to block is now rather than later 

Dear Tattoo-psycho,
 

Wanna hang out and be friends?

Lots of love, Scrap-psycho 😘

I feel I've seen bits of this before.  Sorry if its a repost!

This was so interesting to see although the weird speeded up bits look like bad CGI with chipmunks in charge of voice over!