Talbot

Twas the mid-90s when almost no-one had a camera on them. Suffice to say that the washer pump created a LOT more foam than I was expecting. The jets weren't so much water as they were pure foam.

TBF, it's probably far less bad than just driving along a salt/grit covered road, and as long as it gets a decent rinse off as part of the wash, won't be a problem. Driving in winter, I've had thick layers of salt on the bodywork of a car before now, so a bit of Lairy Liquid is unlikely to cause any issues at all.

I'm not sure how much truth there is in this, but I've been told in the past not to use fairy-up-lipsquid to wash cars as there's a fair bit of salt in it, which isn't going to be ideal. One thing I know for absolute sure is you should never use fairy lipsquid as a screenwash additive. That did NOT end well.

I would have thought that as long as people turn up for it, then it's worth it. If you need to just get it started and then hand over the administration of the meeting to someone else to run it, I doubt that's an issue. Will see if my shonky internet connection will allow me to connect tonight without 3.2hrs of lag.

When you say it won't release, is that when you pull the handle on the right, the pedal doesn't come back up again, or it does come up, it's just the brake is still on? If the pedal isn't coming up, then it's not the brakes themselves but the release mechanism. Fairly easy to access, and if you need a spare setup I can likely get one from another W202 fairly easily. It's sortof similar to a push-button release for a normal handbrake, but using a cable rather than a pushbutton. With the lower trim panel out above the driver's footwell, you can get to it moderately well.

This depends a lot on your expectation. My main experience with a 3.5 V8 on carbs is in a RR classic, and that drove like it had a permanent leak from the fuel tank. 15mpg was reasonable. 12 if you like the sound of a V8 and maybe 18 if you were bimbling along on a longer drive. 20mpg was impossible. For that you need a later 3.9EFi and a light right foot. That V8 wuffle, whilst lovely, was ruddy expensive.

Carringdale. I though that sounded familiar. I've driven past that site on-and-off for the last two decades. Here's how it looks now, as seen in 2010: It's been like that (boarded up with an abandoned filling station out the front) for as long as I can remember. I can vividly remember driving past there in about 2001 and it being essentially the same, and I'm absolutely sure it had been like that for several years beforehand, so that Carlton was purchased there not that long (likely only a few years) before it closed down.

Never mind. Found it:

The cam carrier is held down by the head bolts, hence the reason the cam carrier came off after the head was removed, so there isn't a separate bolt set or torque setting. We'll definitely need the torque/angle information for the bolts. The order of tightening I can work out/have an educated guess at. It's not generally absolutely critical, just as long as the gasket is tightened from the centre of the block outwards, it's fine. If anyone has a haynes for a MK2/3 Cavalier, or MK3 Astra the information will be in there too.

Definitely a bit of an odd one this. Several items that I expected to fight me all the way were actually incredibly easy and required zero effort to remove. As stuff was being disconnected, I was expecting to find the head gasket had been chaned within the last 3 years or so. However, the HG itself was/is completely knackered and falling to bits, so either it's older than I think, or it's been run with seawater in the cooling system for the past few years and rotted everything out, gasket included. Still, it came off without much issue, leaving a trail of brown mayonnaise everywhere.

If I had a pound for every time I've taken the body tub off a Series land-rover to do chassis work like this... I'd have most of a tenner. Still, massively easier than welding up frilly car bodywork. S2 Chassis are beautifully easy things to work on, even if you need to break out the grinder for every. single. fecking. bolt. Be aware of cheapo chassis sections. I've heard stories of them not fitting very well at all. Most of the work I did was fabricating my own repair sections, so fit wasn't an issue. The comment above about re-fitting the body tub to get the alignment of

What did you say? Eh? Say that again... nope, sorry, I can't hear you properly, you need to TURN DOWN YOUR CAR!!

That's the point that the impeller came off the pump shaft. Shove a new pump on, job done.

I'll bet there's a product on the market somewhere that lets you do that. Would be absolutely brilliant!