coachie

We're now at the stage where I've made my rotisserie, or at least the business ends of it:

The castors were 700kg rated cheapies off Ebay for about £11 the set. All the rest of the wood I had lying around or left over from other jobs, which answers the question my wife always asks me.
Engine bay is now fully stripped, engine mounts undone and lump ready to pull - might do it tomorrow if I'm in the mood:

Interior is also now fully stripped out. There are a couple of holes in the corners of the rear floorpan which I knew about:

The front floorpans are a different story:


Bad enough to make me give up on the project tbh. I've put some feelers out and got a chap called Fred coming over this afternoon for a look. Wants to bring his mate Barney, who reckons he's a bit of a mechanic. Let's hope they're genuine - can't stand timewasters.

Sounds like a majority of votes for the 998 so far.
Fitting discs means either 12" wheels, or going for a 60's Cooper disc conversion to stay with the 10" ones. All doable, and bear in mind I'm used to tenuous drum brakes from many kiles of Series Land Rover driving.
Anyway, more progress.
Car up on stands now and wheels off:

I had a mate helping today, so with another pair of hands we decided to tackle the rear subframe.
BANG and the subframe's gone!

Covered in scale and filth, but plenty of prodding suggests it's sound and no obvious holes or weak areas:

I'll clean it up and it can go again. Obvs I just chopped through the seized handbrake cables, although I did nicely remove the brake pipe union. One of the shocks came undone OK, the other ended up having the top nut sliced off with the electric spanner.
The most fantastic thing was this. All of the front subframe bolts came out whole and fairly easily with a gentle and sensitive hand on the ratchet. What a fuckin relief. Second brilliant thing was that the heelboard is sound. The pics might not show it too well, but a bit of dirt and scale is all there is. Here's the n/s:

and here's the o/s:

Might not look much, but between those two things there's several days of making and welding saved right there. The 25 was FAR worse in that area, with loads of fabbing needed on the n/s and a good bit on the o/s, mostly because the local garage had rammed it full of filler at some point in the past. Little tinkers.
Here's one of the worst bits though - the boot floor:

Not much left of that. But, you can buy a complete floor for £300 and as the subframe's saveable there's money in the kitty for it.
All the pick-up points around the perimeter of the panel are good and solid too - arches, rear panel, firewall - so the rusty old floor can be unpicked and a new one welded in without too much making good.
So far, no surprises and plenty of areas which could be awful but aren't, so I'm pleased.

😁 Cheers - And I am more aware than anyone that it is quite the 'minor over winter resto' 😂 If it was something else it would pretty close to only be fit for parts, but early, RHD, matching numbers, 911 means you could throw a fair bit of money at restoring it and genuinely still be 'quids in' so to speak.
Its not 'really' mine - Was my Granddads who died about 18 months ago, it is just one of the oddities he left behind that I am fighting my way through - Shame he left it in a bush for 35 years! 
The Beetle Cabrio in the sale is mine/his too.  Chalk and cheese on the condition front mind!

The garage whacked a pair of Invovic EL601 on the Saab. Sounds like something you’d hear on Shooting Stars

tuesday morning the postie left me a red card of doom, this time i had to collect my parcel from the local post office instead of the usual depot in town. 
as the girl was handing it over, she commented on how heavy it was - i said something like “it’s bits to fix my engine” and ended up chatting to her colleague for ten minutes about the lotus esprit he is restoring - not sure the queue behind me appreciated it  
Fragile ? well, yes, the old one certainly was

my problem here is the threaded holes for removing the pulley are part of the bit already off the car  

i tried a few tentative grinder cuts then set about making a puller. i drilled and tapped threads in the remains of the pulley and got stuck in 

nope - that pulley is only coming off in pieces
which it did




being extra careful not to damage the end of the crank
well, i did my best

i wonder if the supplier will want this sent back ?

now to get the new one on and that belt fitted

all done  

and to celebrate, the number plate fell off again 

all seems to be well so far, on the test drive i heard a clonk from under the car - i bet that’s the 16mm socket i dropped earlier 

aye, that’s the one

this lot can go in the bin 

definitely a job i should have taken to a garage but it’s done now - let’s hope this one lasts a bit longer  
 

Last night, last lot at Anglia Car Auctions, 70K miles, one owner, licking my lips in anticipation when the bloody online bidding thing borked on me - I think it sold for £450 or thereabouts

Haven't had a "count down the 2 weeks" for a while...
It's only a bus lane, but I found myself in one earlier for a few seconds
There was a left arrow in the bus lane, and a left/straight on for the middle lane
Trying to plan ahead, I reacted to the left turn only and signalled into there. Then I noticed the [very badly faded, in my defense] solid white line and encountered a "BUS LANE" marking a few seconds later
Quickly got out, there probably wasn't a camera in such a short space of time but I'll find out in 2 weeks. 
Fucking annoying, because faded road marking really piss me off. 
Maybe it would be contestable because of that but a bus lane fine is usually £30 or so, therefore I can't be bothered with the aggro if it comes to it. Just one of those things. 
Still grumpy though...

"Hocus pocus, there's dog shite on your Focus" in a Scottish accent. 
Sorry, probably not all that helpful 😂

😂 Unfortunately it has been living in a hedge for the best part of 30 years, never mind putting you through one.  I can confirm it rolls, and so you can indeed sit in it and make brum brum noises, but thats about the extent of its abilities at the minute.  Last moved under its own steam at some point in the eighties I would have said.
It used to be my Granddads till he died 18 months or so ago, but lack of facilities, storage and time at the minute mean its being transported out of my possession, not into it unfortunately (well, assuming it sells at auction this weekend anyway).  
I know 911s arent autoshite bread and butter, but given its a '68, a sportomatic (semi-auto), has triple webers (who doesnt like triple webers?!?), is mustard coloured, has the small engine (2.0 flat 6) and is buggered, I guess it qualifies.  The state of it is even more upsetting when you realise he had plenty of covered storage, but it was full of other, less useful or interesting crap, so this sat in the open on a drive for years instead
It has been around all my life, and I've always, always, ever since being a tiny kid and playing in it, thought I would put it back on the road one day, but real life gets in the way sometimes.   I'm secretly hoping it doesnt sell 😁
I suppose I could equally put in in the 'grumpy' thread, but given my main reason for posting was  to thank Ceri, that might have been a bit of a back-handed compliment 😂

Good news!  A solution to the cause of the sale has presented itself and this car is no longer for sale.  What a relief.
Apologies if you wanted to buy it.

So yesterday was a busy day, I drove the Getz from Chichester to chesterfield where it now awaits collection from its new owner and picked up our new family wagon from @RichardK my partner has been hinting at getting a bigger car for a holiday abroad next year and with 2 teenagers and 7 small dogs a Hyundai Getz or Rover 75 Saloon wouldn’t cut it, so here we are! 
 
What a beast! 
plenty of room for everything we need, and LHD for continental holiday! We still have the Rover 75 for daily duties thankfully 
I’ve got to tickle the arches with my welder before the next mot so keep an eye out for updates on that but for the money I absolutely love it! 

So, as the title suggests, it only bloody runs!! Properly this time!
Video evidence if you so require!
https://streamable.com/m0djqr
Unfortunately my oily sausage fingers did not hit the record button while I was one handedly trying to turn the key while also monitoring the dash to make sure the oil light went out in good time.. 
But anyway, it "runs like a swiss watch!"
Removed the alternator to refit that poxy clamp I left off, fitted the alternator, fitted the power steering lines (which do not appear to be leaking, yay!) , fought with the stretch belt and got it on via the frowned-upon method which is rotating the engine backwards. No, you shouldn't do it, but that won't stop me 😄
Filled the cooling system, went for the grand start up, and it fired into life straight away! 

Idle was a bit lumpy again to begin with, but a later fault code scan revealed it was historically trying to relearn the throttle idle position. It's sorted itself out now
EML and ABS lights were on due to everything getting it's knickers in a twist, but after clearing the historical codes out which were triggered after removing the original engine - we had no warning lights with a running engine!! Fantastic  - that means I didn't forget to plug anything in!

I ran out of time to get it fully up to temperature, but the heaters were getting nice and warm quite quickly thanks to the new thermostat - something I had always ignored on this car and subsequently suffered every winter!
Something that was doing me a slight concern is that it unfortunately seemed a bit smokey.. I'm hoping this will clear and stay away, it may have even been a sensible yard that put some oil down the bores during storage, but I strongly doubt this.. so I'm hoping it will fix* itself. Wasn't plumes of smoke, but it was that unmistakable smell of burning oil
But I'm not going to sit there stressing about it, the engine is installed now and it's not coming back out! Fingers crossed it all turns out to be ok 🤞

I drive through a village called Usk every day on my commute.  It is almost obligatory for the residents to have some sort of USK plate.  However I noticed a geordie interloper today in his BMW, Y1 USK.
 

I wouldn’t want two old Citroens in the same colour now, that’d just be sad…

I’m a sick man 🤣

Maybe a little late to the party, @eddyramrod, but I’ve got a spares X350 on the back of the truck currently and it’s got a few new rear suspension bits on it.
If there’s anything you need to get yours back on the road as cheaply as possible, let me know. Yours for the price of postage unless anyone can shitely them up from Colne BB8 to Eddieland 🙂👍

If at first you don't succeed, double the price, that's why they call me Terry Tibbs.

Ford LTD vandalised by some low-life on a birt bike this afternoon. He was riding somewhere he didn't have permission, and was quite rightly told to leave. I wasn't present or involved, but the dumb cunt evidently had a tantrum at being told what to do and used his bike to spray mud and rocks all over my car. Front wing got it worst and the paint is fucked, just covered in rock chips. The witness wasn't able to provide any useful info, so I'm just going to be left with the damage. 
Whoever he is, I hope he crashes his bike and dies.  

Not losing the will to live or anything but, you know when you wish you hadn't started something...
TEDIOUS!
That is the word of the week kids. I still have a crate of bits to clean and paint but they are all basic castings so not very in depth.
The other head got painted and all the threads tapped out and cleaned. The new studs turned up and both heads got fitted up and a final prep clean ready to be fitted. The supercharger was put back together and got prepped for fitting. Needs oil yet.
Washers... forgot to get some washers for the manifolds. Out of the billion bits of hardware I have stashed, nothing worked well enough so I ordered some thick, stainless jobbies and a 100 normal stainless M8's as I'm out apparently, these are for other things.
What was looming on the Horizon was the pig arse job of cleaning the block, pistons and engine bay in general. I wasn't looking forward to this and just didn't know where to start with it. At the beginning is my usual resolution.
Rust... 

Potato cam engaged! This is the bottom of the O/S turret. A great shit trap on all these models. Crap is accumulated in this box section from within the inner arch and sits on the chassis rail FOREVER. Here we can see (sort of) that the grot has seeped down the overlapping panel and destroyed it, marked in the yellow pen. I intended to cut a small section and weld in new plate but decided to cut the whole lot out and weld the panel cut directly to the chassis rail.
Snip...

Then the rust could do one and sparkly stick commences. Note the Gr8* condition of the unfinished paint, thanks Jag, but look below for improvements!

Racecar.
That was shit, so moving on...
Pistolas!

Grim yeah? Watch this...

BOOM!
Then I proceeded to clean 89% of the engine bay with degreaser and a toothbrush!

What a load of bollocks that was, but it's the last worst bit out of the way really. Now it opens up for a bit of painting, wiring repairs, and a general tidy up. In the above image, the bubble wrap is inadvertently covering my latest modification. I decided that in order for this to be a real race car, the AC needs to be ripped out. It doesn't work and I found that it had been bodged which was shocking. One of the Schrader valves must have been leaking and instead of changing the simple valve, clearly the better option was to fill it with JB weld and stick the cap back on. Yeahhhhhh.
Anyhoos, by removing the ridiculous AC pipework and the massive cooler in the rad pack, I have gained an inch of space and extra air flows for the important stuff. I should measure up the compressor mounting and pulley position so that I can eventually bin in and fit an idler pulley or just get a shorter belt if it works, don't know yet. I don't use AC in cars, never have, and it never works!
A day off tomorrow perhaps. I want to get the looms fixed up good next but I'm running the risk that in a car renowned for breaking it's wires, I've had to move these looms a fair bit and I'll get it all done and then have to go tracing seventeen broken wires when it's all done... I guess whatever happens, happens right? 😆
 

If at first you don't succeed, double the price, that's why they call me Terry Tibbs.

If at first you don't succeed, double the price, that's why they call me Terry Tibbs.

If at first you don't succeed, double the price, that's why they call me Terry Tibbs.

Finally concluded my late Aunt’s estate today. It’s been 4.5 years of grief and our solicitor yesterday asked for an updated electronic  transfer form to be sent. I threw my toys out of the pram at this.
They’d been sent one a month ago and acknowledged receipt. So I asked why? They just said our accounts dept have requested it. Advised them this meant printing it, posting to Scotland, taxi to post office and another 3 weeks delay for something they already had.
 
I advised nothing had changed since the last one was submitted and I was tired of their constant delays, mistakes and frankly stalling tactics and was now concerned about where the money actually was. Suggested I may now have to speak to the Police.
Low and behold,  no need for new form, funds transferred to mum this afternoon. Cunts! Sister is adamant she is now going to the Irish law society to complain about the utter incompetence of this shower of shit law firm. 
 
Mum is in shock and can’t quite believe it’s finally over. She was in good health when it started and is now wheelchair bound. Pisses me off they’ve robbed her the chance to enjoy it, as her sister would have wanted.

If at first you don't succeed, double the price, that's why they call me Terry Tibbs.

Yes! It’s an Audi 100 from 1983 with a 69hp non-turbo  2 litre 5 cylinder Diesel. It’s rare as hell, at least here in Sweden.  I’ve seen an estimate of 5-7 cars.
Not too fond of the Fondmetal wheels and I will change back to yellow indicators. Almost completely rust free. 

Update!
I went to WBAC this morning and they started chipping.  The best offer they could give me was £400.  So obviously I drove home again.
Since then I've been at an event at the Lakeland Motor Museum, where I was in conversation with a party from the garage I called at on-spec the other week.  I showed them the fail sheet.  When I said I already had the strut, smiles broke out.  Consensus seems to be that a set of tyres can be brought in just under £400 and the rest is relatively easy.  So I'm taking it in on Monday afternoon for them to look over.
It looks like Handsome has a future!