JakeT

Today is actually spring and warm, so can now open up the garage for the first time since October.
The first job was to add a diesel additive and then change the fuel tank cap as the old one was leaking.
Old one don't look so good.
 
The only new one I found was this which a Mercedes specialist said would fit and it did.


 
Then it was time to start it for the first time since October and it started quickly this year, faster than last year but as always was a bit grumpy in the first few minutes.

 
My current phone doesn't film as well as the last one so this isn't the best but it's something.
 
Now got the charging tested after I made a completely new charging system this winter and the result is 14.56 at idle without headlights and 13.10 at idle with headlights, so can call this a success. The next thing is to look at the cooling system and change the coolant and maintenance and it is ready for the road again. Hope it happens within 2 weeks waiting for the roads to be clean and safe from salt.

Christ almighty was that a fight getting it back in. A helper would have been very useful in doing it. I really did not want it taking nearly two days to do. I had the weekend to myself and I really wanted to get on with my Midget. Right now I have a backlog of things left to do in the house and not going to get any more car time this evening.
Also these bastard clips kept falling apart. They go into the metal body work and the trim fixing screw goes through it. The threaded nut thing kept falling out and into awkward places. Usually as I just got one side in then the other side fell out. 

Also discovered the screw cover on the jesus handles acts as a prop when open to stop them closing up. Neat little bit of design there.

 
Anyway it's now in and fully tightened up. Definitely not a job I'd be in a rush to do again.
Colour is obvious different but it's a million times nicer than it was. The headliner is more ivory (even though it was supposed to be beige) and the standard type you usually get in lighter coloured interiors. I'm sure the other trim pieces could be had (or redone) in ivory to make match as it looks like standard VAG light coloured interior. Beige in the Golf I think was a one year option and very rare anyway.
As is, is certainly not horrendous though and a million times nicer than it was. At the very least it's nice not to have it raining foam into your hair every time you close the door. 
 

"Hi, where are your drills?"
"Aisle B, back". 

Good news! Fairly expected ones to be fair. The ULEZ refugee E38 passed another MOT, same advisories as before and 222 miles later, 6 miles more than the year before... With so many other cars around it doesn't see all that much action, the only long trip its done last year was taking family to Cragside in Summer and it's not seeing the roads outside the estate at all during the salty season (which is basically half a year now it seems). A quick trip into town to have some Chinese dinner (it was great) was enough to confirm everything is still spot on.

Why do these look so goooood?! I might replace the rear lower control arms eventually to get those two points off the advisory list, no clue where they still found a seeping powersteering hose. With the replacement rear bumper and plenty of other parts for preventative maintanance and cosmetics in the boot I'm hoping to have another wave of improvements done on it over the next few months.

Quite a bit of persecution complex going on in this thread.  Me9, have you considered beta blockers?

Highest tax burden since?  What was it? 1948?  The party of low taxes, apparently?  The Conservatives are a complete and utter shower and you know it just as well as anybody.

Eight years ago today this turd landed at mine. Tomorrow I will apply for historic tax and, judging by the complete lack of progress on the Mini, proceed to use it over the next few months. 

Both the other cars in this photo since sold and scrapped, the house SSTC and and my lovely friend Emma has moved onto a better place. Then again she lived in Hemel, so a move to Strangeways would have been a positive move. 
Happy bASe day, fellow motorist. 

Well, the ferry was an emotional experience - key lowpoint was out overtired 2 year old just wouldn't go to sleep, and kept getting up, and wanting to wander about. I totally understand that, she'd been sat in the car seat for nearly 11 hours at that point.
They all eventually fell asleep, leaving me to stay too wired to follow them.

We got out of Dieppe ferry port around 0515, and immediately happened along the Alpine factory 😁

Didn't realise just how poor the lights got after the beam deflectors were fitted, they were like bloody candles!

Thankfully, a reinvigorated MrsH had planned ahead and filled a thermos of tea, which was still piping hot the following morning!

Can tell the British influence in the Rover, it was practically made for this purpose!

This only worked on the French roads, which were impeccable, with only two potholes observed. Belgian roads are a different kettle of shitey fish altogether.
Entered NL, and took a quick photo whilst adding to the PC.

And triumphantly arrived 45 minutes later at my destination, staying with my brother @chatsharris and his wife who has recently had a baby.
The Rover was absolutely faultless, it worked an absolute treat the entire time and I definitely made the right call to take it. Even the seats that were a bit firm at the beginning, became supportive in the end.
PC: 7, with one false start.

The inner panel is now cut back to decent metal, revealing rust which had crept between the layers of the lip.

Before cleaning it up I welded the marks from the spot weld drill. I wanted to make sure the metal was full thickness so when it comes to welding the layers together I can crank up the current without risking blowing through.
It took a while to remove the rust, as it had pitted quite deeply in places.

There's a little bit of light rusting on the inside, which I've treated with phosphoric acid to hopefully stop it getting worse. I'll inject with cavity wax after welding, obviously. 

One casualty was the angle grinder I use for knot wheeling - only a cheap one so really a disposable item.

Brakes built up. Surprising how easily everything went back together. The back plate and all its trimmings are completely rot free. Nothing fell to bits. 
 
Drum is on, just need to bleed the cylinder up and hopefully job is done 
 
 

First proper drive since I took it off the road in October.
Going to the MOT and back barely counts.

It drives... better than it has before in my ownership. The front suspension doesn't wallow, the gear change feels positive, it doesn't creak and squeak over bumps, the brakes don't bind. It's sorted.
I bought an amazing tin sign while I was out.

Malaise as fuck.
 
My to do list is now to set up a saved search on eBay and find a smol hatchback, then scrap the Astra.

I am 100% behind ULEZ zones.

For years I have said, albeit slightly tongue in cheek because I had no proof, that if diseasels were banned from our roads on a Monday morning, come the weekend you'd be able to taste, not just smell the difference in our cities. And what happened? Covid lockdown came along and lo and behold the skies cleared, the air was sweet, your asthma got better and unexpectedly I was proved correct.

Modern petrol engines don't cause city centre poluution, if anything they clean the air as they drive through the soup of particulates and other effluvia from the agricultural machinery that for the last 20 years has been masquerading as an acceptable power source for private cars and small commercials. The sooner we rid the roads of these filthy clunkers the better we'll all be.

Probably the cleanest MOT pass I've had on anything in years.

 
I need to wait for these guys to clear off first. They've been busy replacing three power poles today. I'm standing at the top of the farm yard to get a whiff of 4G.

 

The only option was a 50/50mix of TFR and water, plus a floor scrubbing brush.
Progress was swift and vengeful. 
 
It was done a panel at a time.
Skoosh on,
Sit for 30 secs
Attack with scrubbing brush
Decimate the ecosystem
Rinse off with water to avoid the TFR stripping the paint.
 
 
The results were spectacular!






 
After a pass over with a wash mitt it is almost passable.
 
It'd benefit from a polish and a wax - just to seal the paint and stop any recolonization of the panels.
 
Lastly, on the way home it was topped off with finest derv.

Bearing in mind this is a 55L tank, I'd say it was needing some fuel.
 
Then it was off for a jaunt up to Kinross for a stoat with some shiters

Fast forward bro Saturday and I was over at the Clio doing some welding.
@jaypee was also in attendance and keen* to get stuck into this tub!
 
Many thanks to him for all his graft!
Much hoover and @sdkrc's wet vac were deployed to great success.


 
The rear seats are incredibly easy to remove for cleaning, and the fronts are a couple of nuts and a couple of grub screws each.

Before anyone asks, no the 323f is not mine nor is it for sale!





 
Over lunch we had a "Skoda Inception" by sitting in an Octavia, looking at an Octavia. Both had done time as private hire vehicles, and despite 7 years (and two iterations) between them, the mileage difference is only 50k.

Suffice to say @jaypee 's MK3 Octavia has had a much easier life doing airport transfer runs!
The interior is now so much nicer it is hard to believe it is the same car!
This was independently* verified by @sdkrc on a jaunt in it on Sunday.
 
 

What a huge turd. I love it.
 
Been busy tonight, boss?

What a huge turd. I love it.
 
Been busy tonight, boss?

Quietly confident about the MOT on Wednesday.



Gingernutzz' work from October 2022 still looks fresh. I gave the front offside jacking point a wire brush then a coat of stonechip. Then the entire sills and floorpans got brushed over with lanolin underseal, plus the rear arches too.
 
All the lights seem to work, no fluids pissing out, all the tyres are round and full of air.
I guess all I can do is submit it for its test!

Well, replacing the sunroof seems to have fixed the leak, no water making its way into the car anymore! The alarm doesn't seem to randomly go off either after unplugging the bonnet sensor (naturally with me writing this it now will at 4am tomorrow), it might have just decided to expire right around the time I installed the new headliner. I won't plug it in anytime soon either to prove my theory...
I celebrated the occasion by finally cleaning the interior properly, messy footwells begone!


I'm still looking for an original beige driver side floor mat, the car did come with one but it literally desintegrated after having been submerged for a year. Naturally most of them are long worn out nowadays.


As controversial as it may have been originally, I think this is still a good looking car. I'm not sure if I'm going to tackle any of its remaining issues anytime soon (the only really urgent thing is a potential small leak in the powersteering cooler), everything else planned really are just minor niggles or retrofitting a few options like electric blinds and soft-close which it didn't come with originally, which can wait.

With the 7-Series out of the drive the Senator is back. Thanks to @24vdiamond I finally have a replacement for the faded bonnet badge, something I wanted to get sorted since I got the car in 2017:

Not sure if the bonnet ever received a respray but the glue of the badge certainly stood the test of time. Naturally the badge crumbled to pieces trying to get it off:

I'm not sure if its just me but I'm fairly sure the two locating holes aren't perfectly level.

New badge installed.

It may seem like a small thing but badges on a car just complete the design for me, which is one of the reasons I don't get debadging, people are turning their cars into more generic versions of  the designer's intent. The Opel Blitz might not be the most prestigous logo but it finally completes the look after so many years. Now I just need treat that corner trim to look black again.

It's not unlikely that we will reach an agreement with the vendor of the house mentioned further above tomorrow. Should that happen I will start having to advertise the Audi. I'll also have to get my shit together and sort the fuel supply issue on the S-Class Coupe thats been waiting in the background for some action for the last 3 months, and reinstall the front suspension on the W140 behind it, which has been on axle stands for a year now. I'll probably have about 2-3 months to sort all of this so I'm starting to feel the heat!

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!

Did it work?

TL;DR the site will go for some major maintenance this coming Friday afternoon/evening. I’ll figure exact times closer to the point. Expect a few hours downtime when this is all going on.
The current server setup has been online for nearly half a decade and in computing world, that’s an actual lifetime. It has had a good innings but it’s coming to end of life.
Not only is the server operating system getting close to not being no longer receiving security updates (end of June 2024 is the cut off) but the underlying server hardware is pretty old technology now. I suspect the hosting provider has chocked that server full of other clients and hammering it hard too. Both reasons are very likely why things seem to go really slow at times and you may on occasions get that very frustrating 502 Bad Gateway errors when trying to access parts of the site. This occurs when the site takes too long to generate a page and times out (around 30 seconds). 
Ultimately, we need to migrate to a new server and do it soon. Hopefully it will eliminate those errors. Of course I can’t guarantee for certain those errors will completely go away but I fully expect them to. Likewise, its important we move to continue getting the latest security updates to keep the site stable and secure.
To use an analogy, previous recent updates have been the oil and tyre changes on the bus. This is basically a whole new bus where the branding/customisations need to be reapplied.
A few months ago in the background, I have built up and started testing a new server enviroment. Some may have seen the previous announcement a few months ago about the testing site at https://autoshitetesting.co.uk - thanks everyone who checked out and gave it a poke. The server that this site is on will become the new server the forum will live on (will still stay as autoshite.com when fully live). This is the latest version of our Server Operating System (Debian) and should give us security support till the end of June 2028. The hardware is the latest technology in CPU, memory and disks. These all should offer multiple times the performance of the existing server setup. I’ve jigged things around so hopefully it will keep it to around the same monthly hosting cost despite the increase in performance.
It’ll take a good few hours to copy all the data from the old to the new and then make the switch. I don’t expect any major hiccups but there maybe a few kinks that may need ironing out once live too. I’m hoping that most machines should pickup the new server IP address automagically and we won’t lose anyone along the way. I’ll try putting up a site somewhere else that we can still provide support if things go wrong (probably https://autoshitetest.co.uk). So note that down now.
I’ve been wanting to do this for a while and have had everything roughly in-place, but I’ve needed to find time to finish this off and go live. Life has been busy for me recently and I’ve needed to find a good slot. Not just a few hours but possibly a day or two if things go really awry. I certainly don't expect any issues (otherwise I wouldn't be kicking this off!) but I need to budget contingency as its a major switch with a few unknowns.
The aim is for possibly Friday afternoon/evening to kick this off. I can’t say exact times yet but hopefully can say closer to the time.
I like being on here as much as many of you do and this work is needed to keep this forum all hunky-dory.
I'll leave this thread unlocked for now if anyone has any questions or concerns on this.

MOT time. Wish me luck 👍

Did some more silly bullshit at the men's shed today. I've figured out cutting outlines right through the material...


 
Oh. Also, I'm a total car hypochondriac. The BMW was not leaking coolant. I just thought the overspill dribbling past that pipe (from the cap and bleed screw directly above) was actually the pipe leaking.
Duh.
It now has coolant in it and a weak heater. Probably needs a drive to sort it out. Fuel level is almost on the light, and I'd rather put it in with the tame mechanic for a pre-MOT first.
So that's the next stage.
 
 
Random thought; is automotive grade spray paint compatible with MDF? That sign above is made from a random offcut of MDF. I might spice it up with some colour...

Off that way tomorrow, will keep an eye out.