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The old taxi has finally come back on the road again after 6 months of winter storage.

Had a really good day today.  Got Universal Credit approved so that's my safety net for 12 months (bit of a surprise, since I've never claimed I get the slightly less arduous 'new business' version as a self employed person) as well as info on business and art courses that are available to me as a mature student along with grants I had no idea I could apply for to help with costs.  This was tempered somewhat by coming back to find I had a parking ticket, the job centre hasn't got a car park and I was told I'd be good for an hour on a neighbouring street that's single-yellowed.. I got ticketed at some point during the 45 minutes I was in for my appointment.  It's a reflection on my state of mind that the prospect of a surprise £35 bill didn't make me that angry, just a bit disappointed.
Then went over to the art centre and got some excellent help and advice there on artist networking opportunities, gallery opportunities and an insight into just how active the local art scene is.  Also got to see what sort of thing the art centre promotes and quickly realised it's a very broad church with their featured artist doing abstract sculptures in materials you might consider to be rubbish (I loved them, if I had space there was one I would have taken home), another artist doing miniature portraits, and a shop full of samples of local artists work from wargaming miniatures to ceramics to jewellery to glass items.  My stuff is very different to what was there but then what was there was very different to everything that was there too so that's pretty neat.  There's local studio space I can hire that's not exhorbitantly expensive, a poetry night that is apparently both good and good for networking, and generally just a shitload of stuff that's made me feel rejuvenated about my job.
Having access to an actual meatspace art community really helps and something I've not had for above a decade.  Scunthorpe continues to treat me well in ways I was never expecting and that light at the end of the tunnel is looking a bit more like the exit than an oncoming train today.

Saving money wasting time.
As seen in a previous post the hoses are perished. Id had a look on the bay of E and found mostly rears but only a few fronts, a pair at 40 quid or a whole car set of 5 at £52.
Our computer catalogue at work found nowt and even cross refencing found nothing from my suppliers (not uncommon for oddball tat) however i had found some for a mg midget availible at about 5 quid each. A smidge longer so i thought id be able to make them work
 They were about 55mm longer it turns out and thats a big isssue on a ado16. I really wanted it done today and ive got the stuff to make them work, so 4 or more hours later id made two brackets to raise the pipe up into the inner wing. 

New brake pipes all round going in so not an issue.

The end result- meh. 
After doing the first one i then found some on ebay at 15.99 each. Was it Worth all that effort to save £21.98.
Nope not in the slightest , ahh well its done now. 

Went for my first spin in it. Wouldnt idle- noticed a split vacuum hose to the dizzy, which once sorted helped a lot; it seemed to also need a fair bit of choke. Its got an MOT currently so wonder if they leaned it off for a pass? So i ticked it a bit richer. After i got to a petrol station and added some fresh pez it ran better still. 
I think it probably still need needs a proper service and tune up but its running really nicely now…..

Today's job was to fit a roof rack to a camper which had hit a bridge and crushed the rack and bent all the brackets, after welding new rails onto it and straightening out the brackets we got the rough smoker forklift out and immediately had to mess about with 'fork extensions' 

Tightened on and missing fasteners repatriated, and also we fitted our own design of fabricated pannier box carrier frames to the door along with relocating a ladder to the side and number plate and lights to the top of the door !

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 !

Thankyou all for your kind words there's no doubt its going to be a stress fest but I'm relishing the challenge my sister has been the star really as I've basically thrown her right into the deep end with welding/fabricating and quite intense mechanical work without any sign of flagging so far, not bad for a former office based employee!
We're based at Derwent foundry, Whatstandwell DE4 5HG 
01629 818296
RRM Ltd facebook
RRM Ltd website

Who's a dickhead?
I'm a dickhead.
The piston rings arrived today, and wouldn't you know it? The parts seller was correct, they weren't the right ones I needed - I needed 1.75mm thick rings, these were 1.5mm. 
At this point, I've ordered another set from Autodoc and thrown in the towel - this isn't going to NL any more. I can't get it rebuilt, MOTd and tested in a suitable timeframe. Disappointing, but it's entirely my own bloody fault
To cheer myself up, I made a lunchtime trip to a random address in the next village over armed with some cash and came away with this:

A brand new Hella remanufactured alternator for the MX5, for just £50. Bloody stoked with that result! Had to drill one of the bolt holes out to remove the thread in there (I had to do it on the old one too) but that was it.
I'm getting good at fitting these now!

Took the battery off charge and went for a test start:

And all is working once again.
To celebrate, I moved the MX5 and uncovered an old friend.

Going to look at the exhaust this weekend to see if the replacement exhaust section I've got will bolt straight in, or if I have to get a new flange welded on.
Whilst the Beat aired out, I cracked on with the bits I had received yesterday, starting with the No.1 crank bearing hockey stick seals. These had a dab of hylomar applied to hold them in place.
In order to get them fitted in place without rolling or puckering, the Haynes manual recommends using thin strips of metal to allow the bearing cap to be fitted.
Step forward, the glorious Tennents can.

This was suitably chopped up and the cap manoeuvred into place.

Once in position, the crank bearing caps were torqued up. Following advice from Phill, he recommended turning the crank after every cap is torqued to check for free movement. This all felt fine so I'm happy.
The tails of the seal need to be trimmed to 2mm but it's advised to wait 24 hours for the seals to settle, so that's what I'll be doing. A smearing of hylomar was applied to the corners of the cap to ensure a oiltight seal.

After that, the exhaust manifold studs were fitted.

And the clutch lever arm bush was fitted. This ended up being a bit of a faff, as the new one had slightly thinner lugs than the original, and wouldn't hold in place.
I tried hammering the lugs to expand them, but they weren't playing ball, so I melted the lugs flush to the arm with a soldering iron, drilled a couple of holes and attached it with screws and washers. The bush was filled with rubber grease and the contact points of the release bearing got a thin smear of moly grease.

With that, I'll down tools on it until the rings get here. There's still a tiny chance I can get it all together and tested in time, but it seems unlikely now.
Cheers.

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 😁

I managed to make a bit more time for tinkering this eve. Not many photos I’m afraid as I just wanted to crack on.
First up was that breather hose.
The part listings online had the specs for it as an 18mm id. I did not bother removing one and measuring the hose tail. I lived to regret this.
It turns out the ends of the hose are a larger ID than the main body of it, so the 19mm oil hose I ordered didn’t fit.
I don’t want to wait for Autodoc to deliver a proper hose, and all the spares on eBay etc. are also located in Europe.
I had a scout around the garage and I discovered that my manual shite water pump that I keep handy in case of small floods has the perfect sized oil rated hose attached to it.
Bodge time:

It’s better than it was at least. The original pipe had cracked around about 75% of its circumference, and fell off in my hand. I’ve just cut it back to make it fit into a sleeve I cut from my hand pump. Job jobbed.
Then after some fucking around, swearing and pulled back muscles, I managed to get the spare pump in place.

Im really bloody hoping that woodruff key is located properly.


It’s all gone into place so I’m hoping that the key is still there and hasn’t been mangled. Once it’s all back together I’ll leave the timing cover off temporarily and bar it over first.
Im hoping to finish up tomorrow, all being well.

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..

No point pussyfooting around it, I had to do one of the most unpleasant jobs on a BX today.
The steering rack boot - usually a fairly simple swap. Not so with a BX.
The power steering hydraulic ram is external to the steering rack, so ram eye-end attaches to the nearside rack arm via a protruding lug (shown after I installed the boot)

First things first, the old one was whipped off. The track rod end was left connected to the hub on each side, and simply unscrewed from the steering rack, to roughly retain the tracking settings.

The old rack boot had been fouling a bent handbrake cable bracket, and had also dislodged it at one end.

 
The new boot was thrown into a boiling kettle for a while, in an attempt to soften the boot and give a bit more elasticity. The kitchen drawers were raided for spare spoons, in an attempt to allow the boot to safely stretch over the lug without tearing it. 
This was a total arseache, compounded by the fact the BX is on the lowest point of the axle stands at the moment. Crawling underneath it every few minutes was a pain, especially with the pigtail hydraulic pipes running through the middle of the engine bay.
Through divine intervention, I eventually got it on after much swearing. The aftermarket boot was much bigger at one end than the 44mm either side, so a jubilee clip was utilised to evenly take the slack up.

The other side was a breeze by comparison, and within half an hour, the offside boot was replaced and the track rod ends reconnected. The nearside boot does touch the hydraulic ram, but it shouldn't cause any issues.
Pretty sure this concludes the jobs around the engine bay. I'm planning to take two days off work next week so I can try and put some graft in to get back on schedule for the target date.
Oh yeah, here are a few random spots I forgot to post from last week:



The Xantia was very bouncy on the road, suggesting the spheres are not having a good time.
Cheers!

I thought I'd better check today when in May the MOT is due so I can try and be proactive and get it booked early. Turned out it was due today. Doh
Luckily they had a 4pm slot so now has 12m MOT.  Yay
 

Ffs I wonder about some people.

Apparently so, although the other 93b I know in the UK is also black! The last Swedish owner (in 2021) owned it for 31 years and worked at the Saab plant in Trollhatten as a detailer. The car was resprayed at the plant and took 7 litres of paint. None of which will have contributed to the demise of Saab at all  . It has not been on the road since import and I believe was not used for many years in Sweden either so I need to do a recommision.

So my grump is people who post 80% of their posts having a dig at people in the grumpy old man thread without a hint of irony.

Now stored safely until I make some room

That is it parked on the back of my friends 1978 Ford A series recovery unit

Spot on! 1959 93b 

Before doing any welding whatsoever, I made an extra long lance from 3 originals joined together. 

This is so I could arrange it in the correct position for optimum coverage, before putting the panel in position.

I used mini G clamps to hold the 3 layers together.

And here you can see how the holes in the outer panel are lined up with those in the middle layer, which I'd previously only tacked into position and ground back.

This meant I could create a decent plug weld, and tie all 3 layers together.

Once I'd done all the plug welds and tacked the front edge, I ground them all back ready for seam welding in stages.

I was trying to minimise the gap to make life easier for myself when it came to welding 1mm steel. I found that on a current sufficient to get good penetration on the first pulse, by the time I'd laid down 3 or 4 more pulses, the localised heat build up meant I was in danger of blowing through, so I just moved on to another location. And repeat...

Finally, it was a case of taking the flap disc to it, followed by the power sander to flatten out any imperfections. This should still be under the seal, so I dont think I need to use filler.

Then a coat of etch primer to protect while I treat the surface rust which is around the rest of the frame.

Lastly I used my new lance to spray cavity wax on the rear of the weld, which did reveal two pinholes...easily dealt with though. Time for bed now!

Whilst the VXR8 is technically roadworthy, it handles like a greased bag of particularly oily spanners. 
When the car was MoT’d the garage did the front tracking and everything was fine. 60 miles later and it’s an appalling mess. What I suspect is that all the new suspension has settled in a bit and in doing so, caused the geometry to be all out of alignment again. There’s also an alarming ‘hop’ that the back end does every half mile or so, like the wheels suddenly change direction by a few degrees and then return. Having watched the wheels via the mirrors they’re certainly not changing position or angle relative to the bodywork, so I’m beginning to wonder if the LSD needs fresh oil - theory being that the back end wobble is being caused by the diff locking very slightly on at least one side. Of course it’s a specialist oil, not widely available but apparently Land Rover also use it on certain diffs and most dealers should stock it. 
I’m also going to have a full four wheel alignment done to try and set the car up properly.
Still, at least it looks good:

Rewire complete. 

Have made a few changes. The switched fusebox is fed from a master 100A relay which is triggered from the ignition key. This takes the heavy load off the ignition barrel which could get extremely hot with all of the current for all systems passing through it.
The coil is fed straight off the barrel and is unfused, as it should be, so even if the relay fails the engine won't stop.
Apart from that I made sure all cable ends had good quality spade connectors and heat shrink wrap with adhesive. This way they're pretty tough and reliable and eliminates some of the nasty and corroded original connectors.
The engine bay is much cleaner now without the fusebox, relays, and associated wiring nests.

Wiring for the reverse lights and overdrive now run inside, and I've packed the gap around the gearstick with insulation to cut down on road noise.

Important upgrade done to the brake lights. The original brake light switch is a fluid pressure switch which tends to only activate when you're standing on the pedal. 
I've changed it for an electrical pedal switch, which needed a bracket made up.

A real pain to drill the bolt holes for this in the pedal box so the top hole is in at an awkward angle.

Still it does the trick and is a massive upgrade. The lights now come on as soon as you touch the pedal.
While the steering wheel was off I swapped the steering column coupling bush as it was really sloppy.


The steering column shroud also got a coat of paint after I did some repairs to the cracking brittle plastic with some epoxy.


Last few bits done inside. A new hazard switch.

I then remembered I bought a set of instrument panel stickers off Demon Tweeks.

So I then did what I originally meant to and sorted the dash light graphics.
Before.

After.