Talbot

1958 mk2 scroggins Many years ago I saw someone taking the piss out of rivet counters at classic car shows with the comment "Akshually, I think you'll find that the chassis plate on a 1958 Mk2 Scroggins should be 3.2mm to the left of where you've got it". Rather stuck with me.

I love some of the oddities that AI will throw out: 1975 ford of some sort 1980 for estate in brown. Quite where the chinese 6 came from, I'm not sure! Not sure what I put in for this one, but it's not bad...

Do what pardon now? 😳

Came through without fees removed, so all good! 👍

To contribute directly (IE not through Ko-Fi) you need to go to Paypal, and do a "send money". The app/web page will give you the option for "goods and services" or "friends and family". If you choose "friends and family" you get no buyer protection (IE something you'd want if you'd bought something from facebook marketplace or ebay or similar) but the transaction also does not lose any fees. The email address "autoshitehosting@fastandfurryous.co.uk" is the address you use to send to. Ideally copy and paste that email address in as it is a bit of a fiddle to type out. Paying through Ko-Fi and using PayPal goods and services have (I believe) the same fees deducted. It's not a lot, but it does add up over time, hence the option of a fee-free payment method. If anyone has issues with PayPal or Ko-Fi and would like to do a bank transfer instead, although there is no Autoshite bank account, I can accept a transfer to my bank account. Private message for that please, I'm not putting sort code and account details on open forum for fairly clear reasons.

Fuckit. Unloading the dishwasher and I manage to drop a wine glass on the counter, and it just fucking exploded in razor sharp shards of glass all over the kitchen, so I'm stood there barefoot surrounded by glass like the shittest tribute to John McClane in Die Hard. Managed to get away from it without shredding myself, started clearing up and vacuuming the 8.46 billion shards of glass up, at which point a string of lamps we have up in the lounge (open plan) comes off their sticky pads, falls down and knocks a clock off the wall. Said clock falls to the floor and the 300mm diameter glass front.. you guessed it, explodes into another 5 billion shards, all over the entire room. Taken me an hour to be confident I've cleared up all the glass. It was absolutely sodding everywhere. Bits on almost every surface of both rooms. Fucks sakes! I'd suggest I need a glass of wine after that, but I broke my favourite glass. Bollocks.

It was an ASDF reference... Ironically, your reference was funnier!

Different MOT tester maybe? I've had cars that have absolutely fine headlamp alignment, which have passed for years then suddenly fail on too low/high/left/backwards. Adjust them so they pass, and they're so short they're dangerous. Adjust back up to something sensible, and then pass next year again.

Next few days... HAH! I'm ever the optimist of my own organisation. But I did leave it the month I suggested, so.... some kind of accuracy? Soooooo, where were we? Ah yes. £139.03 in the kitty, and then some costs. Some significantly improved costs, but costs nevertheless: September: £113.76 (better) October: £58.30 (that's more like it!!) November: £66.46 Which means the account is now (£99.49) in the red, which is a massive improvement over where I'd got it to in August, which was almost (£300) in the red. It's also clear now that (useage depending) our costs have been roughly halved over where we were. This is all very good news for the future of the forum. I'm aware that the C-word is looming, so lets do this now before it gets any closer: As per before, the fundraiser can be found here: https://ko-fi.com/autoshite Unfortunately, despite KoFi being superbly easy to use, when it transfers balance to Paypal, it's considered a business transaction, so some fees are lost. On the back of that, if anyone wishes to make a "friends and family" paypal payment directly into the Autoshite Paypal account, (IE bypassing KoFi's fees) that would be most welcomed. The email address to make a payment to is autoshitehosting@fastandfurryous.co.uk For anyone making a payment by anything other than paypal, or indeed would prefer not to use friends&family to make the payment that is no issue at all and payments through KoFi are very welcome indeed. Sending direct by Paypal friends&family is absolutely optional. But is also welcomed to avoid fees. I will, as before, leave this open for a while, to allow everyone who uses the forum to see this and contribute if they wish. I expect this raizer will cover us well into the new year. The explanation for the weird email address on page 1. Many thanks to all contributors, large, small or anything in between.

A rotten one. TBH, with current labour rates and the amount of fabrication and welding needed for that to be repaired properly. I can well imagine that is a grand's worth of work.

Reading this thread feels like: Work. More work. Welding. Stuff. Mechanical things. Cosmetic things. More work. Suddenly, Volvo.

File that under "yep, that'll do it."

Not only had the flares not been made as a double flares, and hence the tube had split, but the pipe from the 4-way to the NSF had been in contact with a steel oil pipe on the engine and had worn all the way through. Also the bends had all been hand-bent, so one of the tight ones into the union was folded almost flat. Pretty crap install really. Replacement pipe has double flares both ends, bends formed with a tube bender, and most importantly isn't rubbing!

Surely the correct solution to this issue is to purchase another car, which you will tell yourself will be the reliable car that just works while you fix everything else. ... which quickly becomes another project car, as it "just needs ..."

They do. Unlike most other cars, the W203 uses two links at the bottom of the McPherson strut rather than a simple track control arm, so at the front you have a lower front and a lower rear arm. 😁 If it is one of the bushes that is a bit knackered, replacement is probably a better solution. Once they wear you can get a lot of movement in them.

I'm sure you mean 21 don't you?

Yes, I meant the upper front arm... on the rear! They have multi-link rear suspension with 4 arms per side (lower main, lower front, upper front and upper rear) It's the little one on the top front that wears the fastest. Most of the others seem to be generally OK, but that one (especially at the subframe end) wears quite badly.

The most likely culpret for the squeaky suspension is the front upper arm. It doesn't quite have the "correct" angle of the bush versus the movement arc, so wears quite badly. Many mercs of this era suffer from it, my own included. Last time I checked, the Lemforder arm was sub-£10. But do check first!

Sensible. I still need to refurbish my old alternator. Turns out you can get replacement slip-rings for them too, which is essential, as they look like the grand canyon at the moment...

I appreciate the warning, however the OM612 that you have is about three generations newer than the OM606 in this car. Consequently, despite being plastic lines on mine, they are really very robust. I've already changed many sets of O-Rings on these and although you can't be rough with them, they're surprisingly robust for over 25 years old. Do it now. Not next week, not even tomorrow. Order one now and don't break down like I did! (or at least be able to get yourself out of a breakdown situation)

It would not be easy. The fuel system is entirely designed around O-ring fittings, meaning nothing has hose barbs on it. I suppose you could remove things and tap them for a thred, to then fit hose tails everywhere, but it's a lot easier just to order some new viton O-rings from a bearing supplier and just change them. I probably won't ever have to change them again, so it's a one-off job. There's about two-dozen O-rings overall, and I've changed something like 18 of them now. That's going to be the next installment.

There's very few, if any photos of this entire event, as I was rather more focussed on resolving it rather than capturing it, but the story's not entirely over. I'm now in the situation where I've a hire car on the driveway that needs to be back in Telford on Monday, and my car is up in their car park with a fairly flat battery and a dead alternator. I likely now cannot get an alternator for monday, as I've missed the boat on ordering one in time. Hmmmmmm. Enter the W202 C250 Turbodiesel that I accidentally bought about 8 months ago. It's got an OM605 in it, which is essentially identical to an OM606 but with one less cylinder. That means I have an alternator just sat there (which I know works) and I can borrow to get the E300 home. Soo-fucking-perb! Saturday was spent moving the C250 back from my work car park home (after jump starting it from the Focus. Very handy!) and getting the alternator out. Which was absolutely bloody filthy, as it's had an oil leak all over it, and hence it was caked in about 10mm of oily mud. Yeugh! So.. On sunday, load up the hire car with the alterator (now cleaned up a bit), every spare car battery I have, all straight off charge, two sets of jump leads and the tools needed. @chaseracer had very kindly offered me a bed for the night, as I hadn't realised how close Telford is to him.. barely 25 mins up the road it turns out. I'd already found out that the branch of Enterprise in question don't offer a key-drop service, so I had to be there Monday morning to hand the hire car back. But, I can likely get the Merc fixed on sunday evening. So, up to chaceracer towers, grab a spare Dave, and then up to telford. Dump the hire car back at Enterprise, shove a big battery on the floor of the Merc (battery is under the back seat) and see if it will start. It does, but is not on charge. No problem. Back to chaceracer towers as fast as is sensible, as of course the quicker I go, the less time the battery needs to hold charge. Was noticeable that with a big battery connected on jump leads, the volts were dropping a lot more slowly than they had been with just the Merc battery on, but it was still dropping quite a bit. I think the electrical load from items you cannot switch off is fairly significant. It did go onto charge a couple of times, but only for a minute or two, and then dropped off again. It's reasonable to say that if I hadn't stopped at Telford, I doubt I would have made it very much further. Out on the road outside Chaceracer's, and 20 minutes later I have the dead alternator out and the borrowed C250 one in. Engine started and it's solidly on to charge at a nice healthy voltage. Phew! Next morning, drive back to Telford, Fuel up the Focus (as I'd forgotten to the night before) hand it back to Enterprise, and then barrel back to West Sussex in the Merc so I can get to work 3 hrs late. All on charge and all working as well as it could do. What a palaver! Since then I've bought a new alternator, and plan to recondition the old one and carry it as a spare. I realised on one of my many journeys that over the years I have had more breakdowns due to failed alternators (4) than I have absolutely flat/wrecked tyres and hence needed a spare (3). So it would actually be more prudent to carry an alternator than a spare tyre. Actually, I'll carry both. The C250 has it's original alternator back, and I've treated the E300 to a new (and significantly larger) battery. The "correct" one for the car was about £120 and is a 100AH unit. Instead, I bought a £75 130AH deep-cycle leisure battery. It's the same footprint, and has plenty of CCAs to start the car. In fact it starts better and charges better now than it has done in my ownership of 70k miles. £190 (£115 alt and £75 battery) well spent.

Follow up from what happened: Where was I? oh yes, sitting in a car with a shagged alternator, a majoritively flat battery and no breakdown cover in Telford services car park. Not exactly ideal. So. Knowing that I have no breakdown cover to speak of, time to get creative. Using google maps, call around every single motor factors and parts stores in the area trying to get hold of an alternator. It's not a difficult one to change, and I likely have the tools with me to do it. Or I can just buy them.. whatever gets me out of trouble. I only need an E18 socket, a 13mm and 10mm spanner and a 6mm allen key. Can't be that hard to find an alternator can it? Yes, actually. Most places could do me one for monday. One place could do me one next day, but absolutely no-one can do me one today. Even Mercedes (surprisingly) couldn't help me. Fucksticks. Next plan. Pay the premium and join a breakdown service while needing their help. OK, it's going to be expensive, but worth it. Autoaid were every kind of useless on that front, but AA offered a service for a premium paid to join in a breakdown situation. Worth it. So paid the premium. Bloke was out to me amazingly quickly but concluded very quickly that it was not a roadside repair, and hence it would need to be a recovery to local garage. That's all well and good, but as he found after about 1/2hr of phone calls to local garages, no-one could do it as they couldn't get an alternator. I already knew this, so suggested (as the person on the phone at AA had mentioned) that maybe we were looking at recovery home. It's at that point I found out that by a lie of omission, the AA sales person had omitted to mention that recovery any further than to a local garage would be chargeable.. at FOUR POUNDS FIFTY ONE a mile. Fuck me sideways with a cactus... how much???? Yes, for a recovery home, it's going to be somewhat north of EIGHT HUNDRED QUID. That's clearly not happening. I'm at a bit of a loss now as to what to do. Thankfully, Ash (despite being a bit stressed with the situation, as we had dogs with us) suggested a hire car. Of course, a frickin' hire car. I was so focussed on getting the Merc home, it didn't even occur to me. Quick google search, and there's an enterprise car hire 3 miles away. "Enterprise car hire Telford" "Hi. What do you have that you can hire me *right now*" "What class of car are you looking for?" "Absolutely anything with 4 wheels that moves. As long as it's available NOW!" "We have a focus?" "Available now?" "Yes." "Sold. I'll be there in 5 minutes" So, the very helpful and kind AA man lent me is jump pack to help get the car started again (it probably would have started, but he had it there, so makes sense to use it) and followed me the 3 miles to Enterprise. Of course, the Merc went back on charge after about a mile, but I knew it was short lived and would likely fail again within a few miles. Got to Enterprise, and the AA bod was trying to encourage me to leave the Merc at a local garage for them to fix. Not something I had any interest in doing, as not only would I end up with a bill for a very expensive alternator, and likely several hours of labour (despite it being a 20-minute change alternator) but the car is running about 80% veg at the moment, and I don't really want others dicking about with it. So it got left in the Enterprise/general industrial estate car park, I get the keys to a 23-plate Focus estate, we move all the stuff that we needed to out of the Merc into the Focus, including 2 very well behaved dogs, a slightly-less-stressed housemate and all our luggage, point the nose of the Focus at West sussex and boot it. We then spent the next 4 hrs of driving home being very glad of how quick and efficient Enterprise were and how handy it was they had a car available. The hire car... was a Focus 1.0 3cyl ecoboost, with a horrible touchscreen for all it's car-functions, painful seats and seemingly sod-all power. But at that point, none of that mattered, as it was transport home. Got back about 3hrs later than expected, which is likely quicker than any recovery would have been. I also found out that if you ask them to, Enterprise will deliver a car to you at no extra cost, so I could have even had it delivered to us at Telford Services. I'm not sure I'm going to bother with breakdown insurance ever again, just make sure I know where the nearest car hire place is.. far faster!

Recounting the tale. This happened a few weeks ago.

How not to break down: While away for a week with my housemate and both of her dogs (in a very nice Air B&B, as hosted by @mat_the_cat) the merc decided it was going to start playing silly buggers. Having started to run the OM606 on Veg (as was always my intention) it started to gain some rather irritating leaks in the fuel system. For anyone who has run Veg in an older car, this is quite common. Veg is quite a good fuel system cleaner, and will clear years of built-up crap. Unfortunately, it also will highlight any weaknesses in the tightness of the system, and old O-Rings that have gone square and hard will suddenly start to leak like a sieve. On an OM606, the lift pump and injection pump are both higher than the fuel tank, meaning any leaky O-ring, even if it's on the pressure side of the lift pump, will let air back in when the engine is off, allowing fuel to drain back to the tank. This is even worse on an S210 (rather than a W210) as the fuel tank on the estate is under the floor, rather than the saloon where it's vertical behind the rear seats, so there is more height to promote drainback, and you can never fill the tank high enough to prevent it. ... which is exactly what was happening. So, the fix is to park facing downhill. If you do so, the problem can be reduced or even completely eliminated. So I was doing so. At least most of the time. When you can't do so, the car was taking quite a bit of cranking to start, bringing the battery down quite a bit. It tended to recharge ok though, but it was noticeable that voltages were all a bit lower than normal. Then on Thursday a bit of an oddity: While driving, the charge warning came on, and the voltage dropped away to off-charge. Curious. 1 minute later, it's back on charge again. Ooookaaaayyyy. Not ideal, but being 250+ miles from home, not a lot I can do about it. It then did it again that evening. Oh well, we're off home tomorrow, I'll worry about it when we get back. Start the journey back, and sure enough within no time at all, it's off-charge. Then back on charge. Then off. For the first 50 miles or so, the car was on charge about half the time. It is of course raining and dark, so it's essential to have wiper, lights and interior fan on, all of which together, including the current needed for the ECUs and other permanent circuits means when it goes off charge, the voltage absolutely plummets. It doesn't help that the battery has been working quite hard recently, and is by no means in it's first flush of youth. Within minutes the voltage is down to below 12V, and it got perilously close to 11V at times. Going round Shrewsbury, the voltage gets to 10.8v Not good at all. I know the engine starts to splutter at about 10.5v., so it's time to pull in. Various twatting of the alternator in the hope that it's worn out brushes and I can get a bit more out of them prove absolutely fruitless. Tried a massive engine rev, and sure enough it comes back on charge. Great, get going again.. we've still 200 miles to go. Predictably, within a few miles, it's off charge again and the voltage is dropping like a stone. Even with wiper off, lights on sidelamps and fan on minimum, we're losing volts fast enough that I have maybe 10-20 miles to make a decision. It then starts absolutely chucking it down.. Wiper needs to be on full speed, headlamps are essential, and we're beginning to fog up. This is becoming unsafe. Also, if I break down on the side of the road, we've got a real problem. So, the decision is taken to stop at the next services so that we're somewhere off the main road and safe. Telford services is next junction.. we're going there. No amount of revving the engine is putting it back on charge, and as we pull into the services, I'm down to 10.6v. Not good. So Ash (housemate) goes into the services to have a break, and I sit there 180 miles from home, knowing that my breakdown cover has expired, and wonder what the next move is...