JMotor

After my Mito was condemned due to rust, I decided to go old skool for its replacement - 50 mile drive home - goes spot on. Forgot the pez shot sorry 😎

Things are moving forward!
Following a few days of local trundling, I decided to test the Mondeo on the motorway. 
I figured that a gentle run at 50-60mph would be wise first, so I popped up to Stevenage, then full speed on the return. Suitable period signage deployed.

 
Arrangements had been made for the car transporter to pick up the Capri, so time to get things ready. The car was pulled out into daylight...

...giving space, whilst waiting for the transporter, for a good wash of the garage floor with de-greaser.  The engine, previously having been down the side, has been moved into the middle (note - moving a pinto with gearbox attached, on your own, is not recommended).

Scuse the terrible picture, but it was taken quite late in the day!

Now wait to see what the painter thinks of it. In the mean time, there are parts to order...

loads of excuses this time i swear i'll get around to making some actual progress eventually
got the engine crane assembled:

and then the gearbox in the Golf promptly shat itself. Good stuff
Cue a very sketchy (and very noisy) trip to Chigwell to pick up a replacement gearbox of unknown functionality

actually looks worse than the one in the car, but it's what's on the inside that counts, right?
Couldn't fit it myself as there's a 504 in the garage, and didn't really fancy dropping the gearbox on the street (it's a busy road, and it's a hill, which just makes things awkward)
so chucked it in the boot and took it to the garage I usually use (I'm sure they absolutely love me as a customer - not the first time I've asked them to fit utter shit to this car).
Anyway turns out it's from an 1984 car which has a different clutch fork just for part of that year for some reason (you can't tell from the outside), so we had to wait for a different clutch kit to arrive..
Got the car back after about 3 days, with a cute note:

Ok I'm aware of the first two, it's literally been like that for over a year, but the third one is new to me
Whatever, drove back to work and left it parked in the street.
End of the day, I go to start the engine and it's just cranking. Hmm.
Pull the choke a bit more and it pulls out of the dash way too far - ok someone's been a bit rough with it at the garage and the cable's come off the carb.
Fine, open the bonnet, remove the air cleaner (it's dark now), re-attach the choke cable, go to put the air cleaner back on and drop one of the securing nuts down the carb throat. Fuck sake.
While I'm fishing for the nut, I hear a strange dripping noise... That's odd. Open the expansion tank, there's literally zero coolant. Ok.
Look under the car, it's all on the floor.
Run to Iceland to get a pack of water bottles and slowly make my way home, stopping about 3 times to refill.
What's the verdict?

Metal pipe that runs behind the engine is leaking from the gasket. I'm guessing because it hangs slightly over the gearbox, it got nudged by someone during the job and the seal failed.
Wouldn't exactly call it a "slight" coolant leak though, this was after 1 minute of running the engine:

New o-ring (not pictured because I forgot to order one first time and thought I'd get away with a paper gasket) and some barbeque sauce

and all reassembled:

Yes I am a heathen and after 8 years of owning this thing replaced the Pierburg with a Weber back in December. I am sorry.
Thing is you could rebuild it, and get it running perfectly for 6 months (autochoke and everything), and then for whatever reason one day you'd wake up and all your work would be undone.
Got sick of rebuilding the bugger every year, and then the last straw was a very weird running issue where all of a sudden it'd flood itself when going over speed bumps, and die going up-hill. Spent ages trying to work it out then just put it in a box and closed that stupid chapter of my life.
 
Of course now that the gearbox noise is gone I can hear what sounds like a dying front wheel bearing, the fun never stops does it.
Oh and the sting in the tail, few days later got this:

On the test drive the garage managed to go through a ULEZ camera
 
Why does all this matter though?
I still need a welder for the 504, and can't go and get one if I haven't got functioning transportation.
So in the meantime disconnected everything from the engine, which refreshingly was about 3 wires and the starter motor.

 
Does anyone know where I can find these hose clamps? Can find similar things online, but I find the mechanism on these really cool for some reason

 
Next went to remove the exhaust from the manifold.
Access is very good* of course

2 nuts off (miraculously), but the last one inevitably stripped.
So begins several days of my life wasted:

Tried to get some leverage through a pre-existing access hole:

Didn't work.
Ok steering rack out:

Disgusting. Though pretty serviceable at least (needs one track rod end and a boot)

chewy chewy. It's actually silver under there.
Not much better under here either...

Finally got the bastard off by dropping the exhaust manifold and drilling out the nut (not sure why it took me so long to work that out):


Two of the three studs are predictably fucked:

And the casting is an awkward shape so will have to see how to remove them, drilling out from the back might be a challenge. Would rather not fuck it up as it'll probably be a while before another exhaust manifold pops up on eBay.
 
Only thing left to unbolt now is the transmission
So at present we're waiting on me to find the will to investigate the noise with the Golf, or find a welder relatively local to me so I don't have to drive that far to get it.
 
Last thing is a side-note that I'm getting really pissed off with working on a non-sealed concrete surface.
Every time I sweep the rust out from under the 504, it comes with part of the floor as well:

 

The caliper came today, it was dry outside and I had a few free hours in the afternoon and evening so I cracked on.
Horrible job tbh. I've done a few calipers but this one was very awkward. For a start, the only spanner size I don't have is an 18 and guess what the caliper carriers are held on by? A quick dash to Halfords netted an offset ring 18 and a combination 18 as well. Although almost everything bar the carrier is aluminium, all the bolts were incredibly tight and hard to access. I had to use a scissor jack under the spanner to get some leverage as my breaker bar would not get near the carrier bolts.
Got there eventually though:

You can see that the rear seal of the piston has been pissing out fluid.
Cheerio

New one on:

Comes with a new handbrake motor

Theres a bit of a procedure surrounding all of this. First, you need to put the car in 'jacking mode' so the air suspension stays level when one corner is raised. Next, you need to wind back the handbrake motors via the scanner. Before fitting the new caliper, you need to remove the handbrake motor to access the torx fitting which allows you to wind the piston in with the pads fitted until they just touch the disc in no more. Next, after bleeding the caliper, you need to reset the parking brake with the scanner,  before finally turning off jacking mode via the MMI menu.
The brakes on this car aren't very good and the pedal has never been that sharp. The car rewarded my toil by throwing up a brake pad warning. There was at least 6 or 7 mm left on them so they were reused but obviously that's not good enough😅 I think it needs new pads all round but fuck that for today. At least I can drive it again when I come back from my holiday.
 

So the paints knackered, and its a bit accessorised. So very 1990. But then again its unwelded and original- not very 1990 at all.
 

Not many, because pre digital and all that - here's when I bought it from an ad in the Sporting Escorts owners club magazine

The whole reason I bought this one was because my parents had an identical T-reg (local FN registered) from 1980-until the mid 90's

As mentioned before, when dad sold it, I kept the Serck plates, which to this day are in the shed

This one (still with the first owner when I took this photo back in 2015!) went to the UK as well. Solid car, despite living near the coast its entire life. 

Having a look at the freight rover again, I decided to whip out the +0.5mm pistons to reuse in a seasoned 1.7 engine block as I feel the bores in this engine have suffered through an over heat, so I instructed the chief apprentice sister to whip the sump off and bop out the pistons so I could strip the 1.7 to a bare block and get the parts off to the rebore shop expeditiously 

Easy work for wor kidda who is a bloody fast learner at this sort of work 

i compared the crank to a B series but alas the bastard is different, I could have coverted a spare 1.7 to 2.0 without much effort if so !

this VW 2.0tdi which runs of three but feels like every cylinder has compression actually snapped off 2 of the exhaust rocker arms so it might be that with a set of new ones fitted that it might be OK however I dislike the idea of valves that have been forced up by the piston so will recommend a head rebuild at the very least.

Thankyou all, very kind uplifting words
So today's work has been in 2 stages 

This crafter is in for a mystery engine problem, it was bought by the owner stripped like it is with the engine unable to start, when attempted it basically just made like a knock sound every crank rotation and would just fire, so checking it manually I found all 4 cylinders felt like they had compression 1 maybe less than the others and the timing marks all made sense, so I kept persevering to which it did fire up and run on 3 seemingly

Next up today this bad lad, 2.0 petrol freight rover in the exact spec i wanted for a recovery truck, decent underneath too !

The convoy doors offend me greatly it had to be saidbso I'll have to swap those for some earlier jobs 

Chassis is all sweet so that's getting painted up ASAP and the cab will go BL blue I think 

Here's a wierd thing, the pistons stop short by 8mm which to me seems mad, its a 2.0 O series so has the 89mm stroke rather than the 75mm of the 1.7, the engine itself seems to have been bored out 20 over and maybe overheated a few times as the radiator is new as is a few ignition bits, it running terribly prompted me to take off the head as the carb settings and ignition timing seemed to make no difference to running at all !,,I might end up building a new 2.0 out of a 1.7 and reusing the oversize pistons !

Mot time today.  Clean sheet, no advisories!!! Happy days. 

Finally set about doing the service. Turns out the sump plug bolt was fairly rounded so instead of wasting time and effort trying to botch it off and risking damaging the sump I bought an electric oil extractor pump. Was £30 from eurocarparts. 
I'm actually very impressed  sucked out 5L in next to no time. All sorted now until the next 6 months!! 

hi there, thanks for having me.
This is my exploit yellow Punto 75elx that I have owned for 10 years, and have restored.
I love this car, enjoy the photos.
simon

Gasket arrived today (thanks, Royal Snail). I've bunged it straight on and have bolted most things back into place but it started drizzling plus Master Grogee needs feeding so I've stopped for now. 
I'll be doing a compression test before anything else because it'll be interesting to see if the compression is improved and maybe it'll change after getting hot/being run. 
It also has the added benefit of getting the oil pressure up before firing it up properly. 
It'll be nice if I can get a healthy running car back but I'm skeptical after all this fucking about. Plan C would be to source an engine. I did find one for £75 but it's in Pompey, plus there's the added faff of needing to get hold of an engine crane. 

Absolutely!  That was its first ever Rover gathering amongst its siblings. We did the 'part two' of that show the next day also, at the Churnet Valley Railway. 
It's still the daily driver and racking up the miles. I don't want to tempt fate, but its been a reliable and very comfortable way to get around!
 

Thanks 2Flags - appreciate it.  I'm trying to start my own development company (property development) - been working for others for 20 years and thought...........why don't I do it for myself?...................but it's taking a v v long time to put the legals together.  Perhaps too long.  I've found myself (reluctantly) applying for jobs too - i simply can't last a year earning nothing.  
In the meantime I'm trying to work on the lotus - she definitely helps take the stresses away (by creating new ones!!) and allows me to step back.  I'm a firm believer in things happening for a reason.  
I've wanted my own development business for years but things have conspired to stop that (not least, money) but I've thought..........if you don't try now it'll be too late...........and there are opportunities right now; we're going through the greatest transfer of property wealth the world has ever seen as the silent generation and baby boomer generation start to pass away.............as property transfers, the inheritors don't always want to continue (with the businesses handed down or the property associated with those businesses - the types of sites I'm targetting) so there are opportunities.  Enough on that however; tend to bore people rigid when I get going! 

Following my post above, which is now a long while ago 🫣 have some pics of the metro repairs to the rear valance…



As expected, definitely MOT quality rather than restoration, but keeps the car alive!
in the time since then, I got out to a show with the Metro

It was nice to use it rather than fix it!
however, the good times didn’t last long! Earlier this year she started over heating again, which is very disappointing 😞. Seems ok if your able to keep moving, but gets hot quickly if your sat still, could be the thermostat stuck closed, it has a new rad, but the hoses to the rad are not getting hot. I think I will take out or replace the thermostat and see what happens. Either way, the car is currently banished to the naughty corner (again!) as I want to get my Jag fixed and back on the road!
A broken Metro added to the broken Jag and a broken camper van, meant my old car motivation has been pretty low the last 6 months…

Yes. Yes it is. So it's collecshun day. Still some hours to kill before leaving, so I'm still working. But let's go trough the checklist:
 
Breakfast: coffee and cigarettes
Poo count: let's not go there.
Lunch: in an hour or so.
Weather: nice British weather we're having, a storm was here last night and more rain and heavy winds are expected.
Distance to car: google maps says 127 kilometers by car.
Mode of transport: multiple.
Destination: Buzău.

Last day of leave from work and once again, no parts arrived. So, more cleaning and little jobs instead.
The remainder of the gearbox was sprayed with degreaser and left to work in for a bit.
First shitty job was the bonnet catch.

Absolutely caked in old sticky grease and grime from 30 years of spraying any old shite onto it.
Bit more degreaser and some aggressive scrubbing got it looking presentable again.

Whilst re-lubricating the latch and operating the mechanism, it was clear that something wasn't quite right. The big spring on the left hand dislodged and was gouging into the catch.


I held the spring in place with steel wire and twatted the top of the bracket to bend it over to retain the screw - job done.

Was going to adjust the cable as there was quite a lot of slack in the system.

Nice and simple, just one tiny screw to undo aaaaand...

Never mind, it works just fine, I was just being picky.
Next small job, the temperature sensor earth return terminal had came away from the cable - my old crimping tool was well past it. Annoyingly, I ran out of my tiny ring terminals, and with the clearance available, a generic one wouldn't work.

In the end, I drilled out a male spade terminal to match the screw thread size and it fits perfectly.

Anyway, with that done, I cracked on, and cleaned the rest of the gearbox up.

Not perfect, but a hell of a lot better than what it was! Decided there was no better time to change the driveshaft seals. Old ones looked fine, but I had new ones so it made sense to change them!



Both sides were changed, and rubber grease syringed into the seal cavity.

I also greased up the gear change rod ball joints.
In all honesty, there's very little I can do now until the last of the engine parts get here, so I'm going to take a break.
LOL, as if.

Herman has been sat on the drive since November, and his MOT has lapsed. There's currently an ABS fault that I need to look into, but as it was the first dry day with no BX work in months, I decided to start small and fit some bits that I've had on the shelf.

For years and years, I've been told I need to change my throttle cable by Phill because it was corroded and the pedal felt stiff throughout the range of travel. I bought two replacement OE cables last year.
First up, the throttle pedal cable.

Surprisingly easy to strip and disconnect at the pedal box end, although the bulkhead clip was a bit of a twat to undo, due to the sound deadening. Brute force force got it out though. Followed the routing and it was adjusted and ready to go, resulting in a much smoother and lighter pedal.

Next one was even easier, this was for the traction control.
The actuator had to be unshipped for access to the other side of the cable. With a strong clip either side, I ended up taking it into the garage, clamping the free end of the cable in a vice, applying constant tension to the cable whilst simultaneously undoing both retaining clips.


But it worked just fine the was a pleasant job.
Sadly, whilst it needed changing, it wasn't the one I was intending to change, I was after the one for the cruise control actuator:

The cable in this one is also pretty shagged, and at £90 for a replacement one, I'll be trying my luck at the scrappies in due course. It does work for now so it's not urgent.
Whilst the airbox was out, I noticed some paint fretting and light corrosion on a contact surface. Treated it with Kurist, and applied some anti-chafing tape to the affected area.
Anyway, with that all done, it was a quick and easy reassembly.


Didn't start it up as the battery is still on conditioning charge in the garage.
Up close, you can see the replacements were required!

Anyway, I did decide to knock it on the head early for the night. I tidied the tools away and hoovered the garage floor, ready for the next evolution.
Tomorrow, I'm back to work and we have a torque wrench tester. Going to take mine in so I can see what I need to set the torque wrenches to, in order to get the 20 and 60nm figures required for the head bolt torquing.

Cheers!
 
 

Another day with no parts, so it was lots of small jobs to prep for reassembly.
First job was to source a new set of exhaust manifold studs. As I had a day off work, I went around all the local factors, including an exhaust specialist to get what I needed.
And I came back empty-handed. Luckily, I've found a company that does the specific studs and nuts for a BX for £11 delivered online, so that'll arrive at some point.
I also popped into @twosmoke300 who had a camshaft sprocket bolt, as well as lending me a set of engine head stands to check the valve clearances again. These turned out to be okay, only one was just out of limits and it wasn't enough to merit stripping down the head.

I also removed the fuel manifold pipelines to measure up the required lengths and diameters of pipelines to replace them. Whilst dismantled, I gave the unit a clean, and marked where the pipelines go.

I did get lucky at the exhaust place though, and got a manifold to downpipe fitting kit - I had to angle grind one of the bolts off during the engine removal.

The cup washers required a sustained twatting effort to remove, but they gave up the goods eventually and I fitted the new cup washers and the conical mesh gasket. One of the bolts had to be fitted with the washer as it cannot be fitted afterwards.

I gave the manifold mating faces a bit of a clean and scrub up too.

Next, I cracked on with the inlet manifold.

The carb had been replaced during my ownership by Dan, but I had a new set of carb gaskets and it seemed silly to let them go to waste.
Noticed a little bit of erosion damage on one of the chamfered edges, so I filed it down slightly.

Removed the old traces of gasket until the face was smooth.

Then I blanked the holes and got busy with some parts cleaner and a brush - the entirety of the engine bay is bloody filthy, and lagged in a thick coating of oil-based grime.

After a bit of time, I reassembled the inlet manifold. Looks much cleaner and nicer to handle!

I also fitted the inlet manifold studs back into the head, after wire brushing the threads, they went back
Finally, I decided to step away from engine and turn my attention to the next big component awaiting fitment. If the engine was considered dirty, this would be considered filthy.

Annoyingly, as I removed the clutch arm for access and a re-grease, the pivot bush disintegrated. Annoying, but better it happened now instead of when I put it all back together. £7 for a replacement bush on eBay and we'll cross fingers that it arrives soon.

The inner bellhousing did clean up nicely though.

The outside of the box is also taking a bit of time, but there is progress being made.

You can see the layer of grime I'm having to scrub off here, hopefully I'll finish this job tomorrow morning.

I'm still waiting for the piston rings and hockey stick seals for No.1 crank bearing to arrive, once they're here I can really get cracking with the rebuild, but I'm not holding out much hope for the NL trip now.
Not the end of the world as it's been a great target to strive for, but finding faults etc along the way adds extra time to the final date.
Cheers 😁

Lost my job after a month, and only 2 days in the field, as I'm 'not a good fit'. I know there's more to it, I've done fuck all wrong and just been shit on so they could give an excuse to fire me.

Better get the Civic running, then.

What an absolute honey this is! 

I fixed the Bini driver side window mechanism, at the fourth time of asking. 
 

 
Would anybody like to read a write-up (shite-up?) about how much of a bitch of a job that was? 

Now that it's properly spring I thought it was time to dig the Renault 6 out of the garage.  It always needs a jump start after it's been sat for a while, and I cleverly* hadn't left any room to get to the bonnet when I put it away - I remember thinking at the time "that's going to be a problem - oh well, fuck it, I'll worry about it in the spring".  Well the good news is that my brake repair last year seems to have held as the brakes were still free, and thanks to the new tyre on the nearside front all the tyres were fully inflated.  So all I needed to do was climb in through the tailgate, knock it out of gear, climb back out again, grab hold of the back bumper and pull, and out it came.  
The Rover 75 and a pair of jump leads soon got it running, and I took it for a quick run round the block and was reminded of the issues that had cropped up shortly before it went into hibernation and that I hadn't had a chance to look at properly.  So that was the first task for today once I finally got my arse in gear.
The first issue is that the bonnet latch isn't locking the bonnet.  I couldn't immediately find what was causing this, but removing the latch soon revealed the problem - the mechanism is made of plastic (yes, really) and after 51 years one of the bits had decided it had had enough and snapped off.  So that's irreparable then.  Of course bonnet latches for Renault 6s are completely unobtainium, but a Google session suggested that the Renault 12 latch is similar - or at least the plastic bits are - and those are available (albeit at some expense), so I'm going to order one - worst case I can butcher it for its plastic bits and make one good one out of the two.  For now I've put a Bungee strap on to stop the bonnet flipping up - it's a forward opening bonnet so in theory shouldn't be an issue but aerodynamics can do strange things.
The other two were easier fixes.  The nearside rear indicator was behaving funny when the lights were turned on - this turned out to be a cock up on my part, when I refitted the light unit after the car was hit last year I put the earth wire behind the clamp instead of between the clamp and the nut, so it was flapping around and barely making contact.  The other problem was that the choke wasn't returning properly when the knob was pushed in - this was a slightly stranger one as it transpired that the clamp that holds the end of the cable had come off the carb - I certainly don't remember doing this (and I would have remembered as it was a fiddly bastard) so can only assume that the bolt had vibrated loose and fallen out.  One of the three screws holding the end plate on the carb had also vanished, but I found suitable replacements for both in my stash so that's all sorted.
I then chucked a bucket of water over it to get the garage grime off - next job is to make a template up for the repair section I'm going to need to make for the nearside front floor, but I didn't get time for that this weekend.

Most of the rest of the weekend was spent playing with pushbikes.  I did get the Mobylette fired up - it took a few more kicks than last year but still not bad for an elderly two-stroke engine that's been sat for six months - but I didn't get a chance to take it for a spin as I'd been hoping to do, and the forecast looks shite for this coming week so that might have to wait a little while.

Took erindoors, mini stuboy and niece up to a car themed pub on there open day, seemed was manly lotus, I do love an esprit... place called 'the stag' missus says food prices are good and decor inside Is car themed..

Added a rear ARB to the Yaris. It's made a huge difference, the car feels loads more confident and planted - new springs and dampers probably help too. Close to pretty much fully overhauling it!