Rust Collector

I have since bought a set of socks and a set of chains for it, so I was feeling brave 🤣 I forgot to include this on my original post, but I had traction issues today when retrieving the Lada… It had sunk into the ground and the handbrake shoes were stuck on. The clutch was stuck for good measure as well. Starting it in gear sorted the clutch, then holding the revs and bouncing it on the clutch freed the handbrake off and bounced it out the ruts. After that it reversed up the hill no bother! Cheers for having a poke around for the hose - I’ll definitely be replacing it ASAP as the last thing I need is for it to dump the coolant out on my commute.

Today was Retrieve Lada From Field Day. I’d like that one please: Not pictured: The chain harrow that my Dad left upside down in undergrowth. I drove onto it in the Land Rover (how it didn’t burst the tyre I don’t know), and then when I got out to find out ‘what the fuck was that noise that sounded like a tyre popping’ I went foot first onto one of the spikes. I had my boots on but I still fucking felt it. Cheers Dad. Using the power of swearing, I dragged the chain harrow out the undergrowth and relocated it into the hedge. With that sorted, I turned my attention to starting the Lada. Surprisingly, it was happy to crank over despite the tired battery. Unsurprisingly, it wouldn’t crank long enough to draw fuel and start. Luckily*, the jump pack in the Land Rover had gone flat. It was fully charged last weekend and has just been sat in the boot. Noco stuff is absolute shite. I went back home and grabbed the battery that I had previously charged for the XM and brought that back to the stables. I ‘forgot’ my tools (they’re blocked in the garage by the leaning tower of crap) so I had to make do with what I could find in the boot of the Lada. 2 spanners, a pair of pliers and the pry bar I’ve been missing for months. Ok then. Success! (You’ll have to take my word for it as there’s no rev counter) It was absolutely filthy from being sat under a tree, so I gave it a quick jet wash before driving it home. Green: White*: Time to drive it home then. None of us were very excited at that prospect: However, once I got off the main road and I was rolling around the local roads along the seafront I felt a lot better. I’m sure my confidence will come back with this car. Home safe: And then the last job for the day was to go and chuck the recently disgraced Mercedes into the discarded S210 pile. I’m growing more confident that the noise is something simple like a fucked mount or a loose heat shield. I’ll have a poke around after I’ve done the Lada clutch and the starter on the Lexus… Bonus Content: I forgot to put this into the post, but handily it got tagged on at the end as I uploaded it… I should probably replace that hose.

It’s a fishing/port town so it’s always had problems. But up until about 15-20 years ago it had a decent high street with independent businesses bar the post office, banks and Safeway. We’ve lost our local police station, the fire station crewing has been reduced down to a day shift and a single watch, the ambulance station has been closed. The fishermen’s club was the first social club to go - it got flattened for a vanity project the regeneration* of the west quay. No doubt the social club that closed recently will be replaced by flats. There were a few car dealers, there were large manufacturers and industrial operations. There was always the slow ferry, but we had the sea cats as well with a 2 hour crossing - I remember my Nan taking me to see it when it left or came in. It’s really gone to shit since retail parks, the internet and a drive for cheapness have taken over, the town has no real structure or community anymore. Everything is just getting turned into shitty housing estates filled with bland boxes and fuck all infrastructure. It’s not the place I grew up in, and even though there were shit things about it when I grew up, it’s difficult to process how shit and dead it is now.

There’s loads of good ones, just not in the towns normally. The Plough and Harrow in Littlington is the best near to me. Most of the pubs in Alfriston are good. The Gun at Gun Hill is really nice, as are the Oak near Abbots Wood and also the Yew Tree at Arlington. To name a few. The weatherspoons nearest me (Brighton or Eastbourne) would be a wasted journey; might as well go to the local flat roof pub, which would be The Good Companions in Peacehaven.

Whilst I was sat in my favourite trap in the work bogs yesterday I was idly thinking about a V8 swap I read about someone performing on an R170 SLK. I've always quite fancied it and I do have a fucked R170 SLK and a spare V8 Mercedes engine. However, my mind then decided that wasn't ambitious/unachievable enough and thought why stop at V8 when you could buy a 6 litre V12 S Class as a donor and have that sat around as a rusting hulk too. So I reckon with my £10k I'd probably buy a V6 R170 SLK in doom blue and a poorly V12 S Class. I'd then stare at them decomposing on the driveway for the next 10 years or so to avoid broaching the fact there there just probably isn't the space to mount the 6 litre lump in the engine bay of the car.

One day I hope that the little part of them that believes ‘maybe Josh will sort out the cars and sell the ones he doesn’t need, have one sensible car for himself, one sensible car for his partner, and maybe one project car’ would finally just wither up and disappear. There’s talk of a family holiday in France this year, which will make for 6 of us including the babies. The Discovery isn’t big enough, so I’m going to have to own up to the Pontiac at some point!

I suspect it's the profile of what we manufacture that has changed over time - manufacturing things cheaply here isn't easy from my experience and so you need to manufacture things of value that can support a healthy margin.

One desk calendar please, good sir.

I had to drop a colleague off in the centre of Newhaven yesterday. I was surprised to see that the social club there appears to have closed down - always used to be busy when I was younger. I think the railway club may still be going, which is probably the only place left in town now to get a cheap drink. That said, I'm not sure you can call any of the pubs left in Newhaven high street trendy. Most of the pubs in the surrounding urban area have gone 'gastro pub' though.

Another self submission; more shite from the stables

Self submission alert. Shite corner:

Update time I guess. The Mercedes is still fucked and I’ve not had time to look at it properly. I did find a small pool of something that smelt and tasted like automatic transmission gravy underneath so that’s not a positive sign. It’s currently parked down the street where it can have a think about what it’s done/upset the neighbours. If I’ve got another S210 with a fucked gearbox then that’s 2 for 2. A couple of spaces down is the Lexus. I have no idea if it will start again, I’m certain the battery will be flat, and I’m pretty sure the people who live opposite where I parked it will put my head on a spike if they see me near it. Next weekend I may attempt a daring nighttime recovery so that I can get it home and fix it. The only working car at the house is the Discovery 3, which kind of sums up how badly things are going. My mrs needs a car so as not to be stuck at home all day, so I’ve fitted a new brake switch to this (previously I taught her to drive around the fault like a true shiter) and it now doesn’t do dashboard bingo when the brakes are applied lightly. She’s having the disco as her daily then, and will be going full JLR yummy mummy mode. The Pontiac is the logical thing to use, but I work at the same place as my mum and she doesn’t know I own it - I’m not sure I can take more parental disappointment so that is currently on SORN at the back of the driveway until we get into the new month. Lada it is then. For the next couple of days I’ll be getting dropped to work by my mrs like I’m an overgrown school boy, and then at the weekend I’ll liberate the Lada from its slumber in the field and it will be going back into daily duties. I’m still shit scared of driving it after my crash, but I’m going to have to deal with it. Im very much sick of the slipping clutch though, and I’ve got a clutch kit on the shelf. That’s this weekend’s job sorted then!

That’s absolutely shite, but it seems to be happening in a lot of different retailers of late. Like you say, it seems to be shit training combined with shite management. Did you pay by credit card? Might be worth giving your card provider a nudge if so.

'following standard budgeting advice, which says you shouldn't spend more than 10 percent of your monthly income on car-related expenses'

Estate update time I guess. This one works*: These ones are all… Errrr… ‘Resting’: I have an unhealthy relationship with estate cars.

Those old Saabs are beautiful creatures.

That's cool. I know this is a worm can, but can you bolt a 5th wheel on to the chassis of a vehicle in the same way that you can fit a tow bar & ball (type approval shenanigans aside)? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/386178496250

Ooh it's close, but I'm afraid that the answer we were looking for was 'To protect and swerve'.

I can't help with the technical problems, but can I take a moment of your time to talk to you about the word of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?

When I bought my Insight, it came with yellow H4 bulbs in the headlights which can only have been fitted by the Japanese owner who had it before me. It seemed like a weird thing to do to a Japanese car, although I know that yellow front fogs are a thing out there. At any rate, yellow headlights do seem to be helpful in the rain and fog. They don't seem to cast light as far as white lights, but at the same time they seem to preserve your night sight a bit better and so you can see a bit more detail in the area outside of your headlight beams. Kind of like sodium street lighting versus LED street lighting. When they finally blew, I replaced them with yellow H4 bulbs again as I liked them - I can't seem to get replacements that are as durable as the original Japanese ones though, the ones from ebay/amazon all seem to be cheap chinese shite.

It would be practical but with only one of us working and the second baby due next month the idea of finance isn’t very palatable at the moment. I could do with a little Honda or Toyota hatchback to replace the Insight temporarily - we’ve ended up with too many cars that have a high liability factor to them. However with current prices it’ll most likely be cheaper to repair what I’ve got rather than buy something new. I’ll probably stick a new brake switch in the Land Rover so that my mrs can drive that for now, and I’ll use one of the less civilised vehicles such as the Lada. My neighbours are probably* missing seeing it outside my house anyway.

And to prove that as one hand gives, the other takes away; I’ve just driven the mrs’ merc to the tip aaaaand… It’s suddenly shit itself - don’t know if it is the rear diff, the driveshaft or a bearing at the back end but as you slow down on the brakes or by letting off the throttle there is a loud, cyclical knocking. Sounds like it’s in time with the drivetrain and not the engine. Either way it’s not usable now, and my mrs is understandably fucked off that out of everything we own there isn’t anything that isn’t so broken that she can’t drive it currently. This seems to happen every winter, so I’m fairly sure that the way to prevent this next year will be to procure a few WBOD’s to hedge my bets.

Update time: yesterday and today I’ve been tinkering with the Pontiac. My UNC/UNF tap and die set finally arrived, and by arrived I mean wasn’t left in my safe place two days in a row and then I had to wait until Saturday morning to collect as the office is only open 2 hours a day… Cheers Royal Mail. It meant I could at least clean up the shitey threads. I also bought some long bolts as the 5/16 threads were deep in the block - this was a good shout as the taps were too short so I made this beauty* using the angry grinder. You can’t see the threads so this pic is pointless, you’ll have to take my word for it that they’re all sorted: Next up, it all went back together: I did as the shop manual instructed and used a smear of RTV on the mating surfaces, and torqued everything up. The coolant system was pretty grim: So I treated it to a delicious dishwasher tablet. Then I left it running on the driveway with the funnel attached. It’s getting tap water for now, as I’ll dump the coolant and put fresh stuff in after it’s been run for a bit. It got up to temp, the thermostat opened, the bubbles slowed to a stop, no leaks were observed. It still doesn’t show as very warm on the dash, but with a new pump and thermostat I can only assume that either this is how it is normally or the sender is crap. Either way, I chucked the coolant left in the funnel into the header tank and I’m calling it done for now, hopefully closing the lid on this for a while: It’ll be interesting to see how it performs in service now that it actually has coolant in it.

My Grandad had a couple of these, the last one he spent a long time restoring and it was mint. He told me that they're miserable to work on, to never ever get one, and that he wouldn't be inflicting the car on any of the family after he died. I quite fancy one.

That’s what I should probably do to be fair, there’s more spurs than good posts now. I’ll have to put a couple of new panels in at the very least.