GeorgeB

Nice, steady day today.
The sealant dried sufficiently last night for me to throw another coat of primer and a coat of paint on last night. The primer got a blast from the IR heater, and the paint was left to dry naturally overnight.
Had a lovely lie-in today, and eventually got up and threw another coat of paint on, with the IR heater left on during breakfast.


Went with Matt black for the underside areas, not that it'll matter as it'll be stone chipped at some point.
Either way, that wasn't today's job. Today was the start of the head gasket change, and I was taking my time with it.
First things first, the timing belt has to come off.

Some of the covers that came out had different sized nuts etc - I just used a paint pen to identify which nut goes into which hole with a series of dots.

I didn't take many photos today because I was focused, but after a bit of trial and error, the timing belt was in my hands.

And I was immediately pissed off because I was holding a 113-tooth timing belt, and in my pile of parts, I had a 114-tooth timing belt kit. ARSES.
This was because the BX was on a changeover year for timing belts and tensioners - the general rule of thumb was plastic timing belt top covers have 114, metal covers have 113.
Naturally, this meant my BX was pre-mod for the timing belt, but with a post-mod timing belt cover. This has pushed me back a bit as I now need to order a new kit. 
Ah well, I cracked on anyway, removing various bits and pieces in order to get access to the head.

As I was popping hoses off, it was a reminder that hoses are lifetime components, and sometimes the damage can be hidden.

Fuel hose from pump to filter. This looked fine from the outside.


Coolant hoses to and from the carburettor - the split occured during removal, but the cracking rubber has been on my radar whilst I've been working on it.
Eventually, I called it a day. Bit miffed at the Haynes manual, it makes no mention of removing the exhaust manifold or inlet, or any of the components attached to them, but most of this is rocket science.

I've got the in-laws coming down tomorrow for a few weeks, so I'm going to be in the garage even more 😅
Cheers!

Not gonna lie, I was up early this morning (for a Saturday) to get some welding gas. Halfords turned out to be the cheapest for CO2 at under £14.
Got this panel in nice and quick:

As I wanted to get onto the remaining complicated panel.

This is the last of the wheel arch repair sections, so it needed to follow the curvature of the  arch itself. Typically, this requires a stretcher tool if you need a 90 degree lip, but I didn't have a stretcher tool, I had an angle grinder.

This kept going back and forth in place to get the curvature right - the more lines chopped into the lip, the finer tweaks you can make to the bends.
Eventually, I got it following the existing curve pretty nicely.


So it was a case of firing up the welder:

And very carefully welding them up - this requires a lot of time to cool in between welding the lines, as rushing it could distortion the gaps and give a different curve to the panel.
This bit isn't pretty, because it's welding to fill the gaps of already thin metal, so naturally it blows holes every five seconds.

It does grind down pretty nicely to make a solid panel.
Next was popping the spot weld holes in the lip, which was not helped by the tool jamming with the panel stuck in it.

I then expanded the holes with a drill bit and caught myself getting lazy - the finger of the glove got caught in the drill bit, but I escaped any injury myself, which was a nice wake up call! 🤦‍♂️

Whilst working this panel, it made sense to prepare the last panel needed for the arch, so I got that sorted too. Doesn't need to be pretty because it's out of sight.

Both items got a coat of zinc primer and a blast by the IR heater - this dropped the drying time considerably, and justified the purchase price 😅

Once dry (and cooled down!), it was magnetted into position:

And tacked into place. This took a while to get perfect, so the tacks kept getting cut off to make it a flusher fit.

Took my time with it and got decent penetration with the welds

Didn't picture it, but the lower panel had another go around with the welder as I wasn't content with the penetration when it was on the Argon mix.
The repair stiffener bracket was also welded back in place, as was the little bracket that goes on the lip of the inner wing:

A coat of zinc primer applied - dry in less than an hour thanks to the IR heater:

And Puraflex added to all the joins.

Hopefully, this will be dry by the time the kids go to bed, so I'll pop back in, add another coat of primer, stick the IR heater on and put a coat of paint on before bed.
Tomorrow will be a good day to apply the stone chip paint and bring a close to all the welding/bodywork jobs!
Cheers.

So, onto today's activities then.
First off, I lopped off the rotten upper section of the reinforcing bracket between the inner wing and chassis leg. New on was measured up and filed down a bit to make it match.

Got the welder set up and cracked on -

Ground the welds back and it looked pretty okay after that.

With that done, the repair sections were given a coating of weld through primer:

And the first panel clamped in place.

This one turned out to be a bit of a faff as there were loads of curves that I wasn't immediately aware of, but the hammer got everything in the right place for the welding to happen. Ground down, it even looked all right.

With that done, it was onto the next section.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a proper pain in the arse as my CO2 bottle ran out at 9pm. Not a problem as I had an Argon/CO2 bottle that I used for a couple of minutes in the cupboard.
What an arseache that ended up being. Not sure if it was the gas making a difference, but the welds weren't going down right and I was blowing holes every other time.

Aaaaand annoyingly, the replacement bottle ran out, less than five minutes into the job so I called it a night after grinding down what I could. Looking forward to moving on from the welding!
Cheers.

Not much of an update today, it's the slow, boring bits at the moment.
Chopping out the afflicted metal is a dull task, with spot welds everywhere that needs drilling out.
This bracket was covering some weak metal directly above it.

So it was removed. The uppermost mating face is heavily corroded in places too, so that'll need changing.

This was hiding behind an equally grotty panel, however it is substantial enough and has survived a wire bush so it'll get cleaned up further.

Eventually, I had what I was hoping to be the last grotty bits chopped out of the car.

This had left quite a complex hole behind.


And I had to be extra careful as I was at the end of this sheet of steel - I bought this back in 2015 to restore the Mini, but that never ended up happening!

I got two panels roughly bent into shape before I decided to call it a night - they were the trickiest two to do so I just wanted them to be out of the way.
Tomorrow, I'll prep the surfaces for welding and make the last of the repair patches, with ambitions to weld a couple in on Saturday evening.
Cheers!

I think you missed a comma, or things will get very repetitive

Not one to rush a job I've made a start on the A pillars. I was right, there was more rust hidden!


But I've already bought the A pillars, which I initially thought would be all I needed. However the lower panel has also holed through in places, so will need to find one of those, or make up a repair strip from some angle section. 
I've cut out the worst of the rot now but am leaving the lower bit until I know what I can replace it with, as that will dictate where I cut. Also need to fix the welder before I can do anything!


At least it makes it easier to replace the aerial now!

Well bugger me sideways, I've only gone and done it.
It's remarkable just how easy it is when you have the correct information to hand - this came in the form of OEM wiring diagrams for the fuse board itself.

With that, I tracked the lines and worked out which continuity checks needed doing. Was surprised to note that the fuse board connectors went in reverse order (6,5,4,3,2,1) as you view it.
It became evident that the very first continuity check was open circuit which was promising.

This meant it had to come out (again) 

With the board on the bench, it was a lot easier to repeat all the required continuity checks, and we finally had the fault pinpointed.

There was an open circuit from the 'cold' side of the fuse socket, to the first junction of the horn/heated screen circuit, namely the high power input for the heated screen relay (this then carries on to the horn side of the circuit)
Unfortunately, it's a double-layered board and I was unable to access the actual board. Luckily, I had a surplus piggyback fuse with a flylead, so I elected to add a flylead to the relay terminal. Ended up using solid core wire on the board half as it's quite a high amperage circuit.


With that all assembled, the board was re-tested and continuity was restored. The board was reconnected to the car and the horn now works!
Also, billy bonus, the HRW works and the switch illuminates, so I must have been talking bollocks about it working beforehand.

With that all confirmed to work, the interior was rebuilt (glovebox light fixed)


As an aside, I noticed the oil level gauge wasn't working any more - this was traced to the sensor plug coming off for some reason so that's an easy win.
So, I'm back to bodywork repairs for the rest of the week, hopefully without any more nasty surprises!
Cheers.

Check your knickers for evidence.

Another productive few hours.
Ran the BX for 15 minutes to get the oil/Berryman mix up to temperature before draining. The exhaust fumes fill the garage quite quickly, so I tried helping it along with the spare Laguna pipe 😅

(It did not help.)
After fifteen minutes of idling, I cracked open the drain plug and noticed just how thin the oil coming out was. I know I'd added about 800ml of Berryman, but even with that factored in, it was too thin.
I slapped another coat of primer onto the areas I'd applied Puraflex to.


And left the oil to drain as much as possible.
Had another check of the LHM system and started preparing it for a first run. Pleased with how the repairs look now everything is back in place. OSF sphere screwed back on and looking fine!


Once the oil fully drained, the sump plug was refitted, a new oil filter attached (old one was stamped 2016, which would tally up with the lack of use it has had since then) 

And the oil topped up to roughly the correct level. The car wasn't level so I didn't want to overfill it.

Next job was to reattach the front wheels, I also slid a set of ramps underneath the wheels to give a bit of clearance.

As I was planning on priming the LHM system, I needed the cooling system to work, so I ended up changing the thermostat. Was going to do it at the same time as the timing belt, but there you go.

The LHM belt was reattached to the pulleys and the HP pump supply line was disconnected and primed.

MrsH was roped in at this point to start the engine whilst I connected the supply line. For some reason, the LHM pump belt lost its tension so this was resecured.
And after a few minutes, success! The car was suspended on LHM for the first time in nearly a year.

Early indications are promising for the engine smoke too, there seemed to be a lot less clouds on acceleration. Once the engine got warm and the levels were re-established, I started exercising the suspension by alternating between max and minimum extension. The struts are a little bit sticky and creaky but nothing too unexpected for a car that's been sat a while.
I bled the cooling system of all air and was dismayed to notice the temperature gauge still wasn't giving a reading, despite the new thermostat proving serviceable and the top hose getting hot. I shut the engine down and suddenly:

Ah, everything IS working fine, it's just me being the idiot. I've had a prod with the multimeter and found the 'earth' terminal I was connecting to is a perfect earth in Key position 1, but 12v comes through when set to ignition.
Luckily, I added plenty of spare wire to the earth wire so I can simply connect it to a proper earth point instead of being lazy.
Anyway, seeing as it's mother's day, I'm knocking it on the head tonight to enjoy some time with MrsH. I'll pop in tonight to put a final coat of paint on the welding repairs before moving onto the next section.
Last thing I did was place four clean rags at each corner to check for static LHM leaks. Hopefully they'll still be clean tomorrow!

I'm currently debating whether it is even worth doing the head gasket any more. Any advice? 
Cheers.

Not communicating with you is surely all the more reason to play the fuck right off card?

Can you not just tell Idiot Sister to fuck right off? Seems a reasonable solution to me. 

Went back again today and paid my respects properly.
If I'm honest, the food wasn't as good as yesterday...

'Ring Camera'..... snigger

I can’t stand people like that, utter cunts. Sorry to hear you had to put up with that mate.
I think I wrote a while back about a similar spat I had with a bloke who hit the landy whilst parking. He was adamant he didn’t hit it despite me watching him, and got quite angry. I left him to fuck off, and then when I left I also didn’t hit his car.

I ve never understood how mc pukes get away with calling it food I'd rather eat the box it comes in,( plus if it's so good why do they have to bribe kids with free toys) same for rest of them! 
Gimme a good chippy or sandwich shop anyday.

I have never seen the point of eating food in your car purchased from a place who’s car park you’re in, and is 50ft away with tables and somewhere to wash the grease off rather than smear it all over your car and clothes. Particularly pointless when the queueing time at the drive thru ( I even hate the spelling), is at least twice that of walking into the “restaurant”.