Burnside

Acquired one of these lately.

Looks a bit “unhappy” to my eyes. 

Pininfarina design and build apparently. Presumably this one wont feature in future glossy portfolios of their work.

Familiar focus vibes from the view out front. 2.0 duratec/ manual. Its a bit flat in a car this weighty (think its about 1500kg) but its quite a comfy cruiser to potter about in.

MGF progress 
After a pump up (i had a hand pump that i got off e bay years ago) it now sits at the spec ride height. So much more comfortable, presumably it was skittering about almost on its bump stops.  
I was a bit worried the shit ride quality was also blown displacers, but is now manages to be both sporty and a lot more supple.
 

 

Took the shed-MGF out for a spin.
I think it might meed the attention of a hand pump I bought when I had my last mgf, and also used on 2 rover 100s i previously owned. Cos its LOW. I mean, it looks nice and low but the ride is pretty stiff. Maybe im just getting old?
Photos show the dreadful paint. But it drives a lot better than it looks, thankfully!

The “16v “ badge is none original (what isnit off?) but it feels period as when valveage was proudly displayed on the car bodywork feels a long time ago now.

Unforgiving light- but basically all the laquer has come off the NSF wing, and it’s falling off the front bumper/shroud and the bonnet.
Im enjoying pottering about in it. When I last had one ( a long time ago) I used to try and unstick it on b roads an generally behave like an imbecile.  Eg I remember I attempted a 4 wheel drift but it ended up correcting and recorrecting snap oversteer. What an idiot. Somehow i didnt crash it.
Anyway im happy just pottering now, and to be honest with its metro underpinnings maybe this suits the car better anyway.
 

Got to say i’m really glad @Weird Car bought it as having younger people prepared to get stuck in with old cars is fantastic. And this isnt, say, an allegro, its a rolls royce silver shad! Looking forward to fun road trip / general updates!
For me this is what enjoying older cars is all about, id happily put a flamethrower to all carcoon / dehumidified air chambers. Driving is living imo.

There was one locally, for a decent price but decided against. Any excuse to buy a car, but lately ive been interested to scour the bargain bucket depths again. After covid things went a bit tits up for the casual banger buyer. Stuff got more expensive! I found it a bit depressing. Ive always been fascinated by how little money can provide a functioning motor car in no need work to be usable. Probably what lead me here back along.
Lately ive found things changing, and for people prepared to dredge the internet, and sift through crap its possible to get road legal cars again, harbouring no terminal issues for not a lot.
I nearly bought a 1998 volvo s40 for £250.  1.8 auto. Had a long ticket, and despite apparently a water leak into the rear footwells and some minor scuffs and scrapes it seemed legit.
I decided against as ive never really lusted after mk1 v40s.  Also having a van/ people carrier is quite handy with the ever changing friend profile resulting from collectively 5 kids between myself and ms_hmc. The need to haul bikes / other peoples kids/ have the interior trashed with dogs gave a specific set of requirements.



 

Obviously its a bit rough, ready trashed, if you will; but it runs and drives just fine, and has an mot to jan 25. 2.3 manual- im suprised just how rapid it feels. Ideal to fill with booze over on a french trip.
it was up at £895 (too much imo) but i sniffed a willing seller when it was parked on their grass and hemmed in by other vehicles. Apparently it was bought as a stop gap and no longer needed. Would sir accept £600? Yes, yes he would. Plus according the the vendor he was overwhelmed with messages from old skool ford people wanting him to have the engine but not the rest of the car?

Not bad MOT history too.
Hope the coolant leak is not too worrying.
Weird I'm more excited about an MPV than an MGF.
Had both. I prefer the Galaxy.

The guy i bought it from just had gumtree offers to buy only the engine. Basically i got the whole car thrown in 😂

Im quite good at eeking out decent economy figures from unlikely vehicles, but having seen ms_hmc’s Russian dashcam driving style, im expecting gallons per mile from her side, but we will arrive earlier than expected, wherever we go.

Meanwhile, the mgf is tucked in 

This £600 ford galaxy 2.3 is doing dog/ children duties. Another bargain bucket with about 11 months mot

Almost forgot to post this one, the only moment I had both of them parked next to each other. You'd think that two similar age, segment and origin cars would offer the same ownership experience. In reality these two cars have very different personalities thanks to their design inside and out and driving characteristics.

Hopefully the much larger drive of the new house will allow me to do these kind of side by side comparisons more often.

Nice, I still got my copy as well. This came to be after an editor asked about anyone owning interesting classics they wanted to get featured in the BMW E39 FB owners group iirc. It took them a few months to publish it, its quite a condensed version of the email I sent originally. Also I dont know why but they completely made up my dreamcar lol.

Anyway, the Audi A8 of many shiters has now gone to live with @Split_Pin, thanks again for the easy sale! Naturally I only found out today that it was actually financially completely unnecessary for me to sell this car but I've at least shown some goodwill towards my gf and her parents🤷‍♂️ The BMW Z3 has taken its space in my multicar policy so hopefully I can get it out on sunny, salt-free roads soon!
As mentioned above the NEC happened this weekend and I've been there with two mates who haven't been before this year. It was a good show, still a little smaller than pre-Covid but great nevertheless. The ticket prices are rather high though and charging £17.50 for parking for a few hours on top is insane, especially if you have to walk 15mins to get anywhere. Naturally my favorite car of the show was this first generation Mercury Sable thats been living in the UK since 1992. Of course someone had to turn into into a copcar replica at some point, it was still great to see a Sable in person, I don't think I ever have such an early one!


To get to the NEC the 540i needed a bit of work. As mentioned further above in typical BMW manner it snapped a spring and destroyed a droplink the weekend before, so those needed to get sorted in the short moments of sunlight after work during the week:

Using everyone's favorite, the dodgy spring compressors, I managed to get it all reassembled, only to realized that I wouldnt be able to get the compressors off the moment the strut would go in the car.


So out it all came again, spring compressors released and reinstalled the other way around (none of which was easy), only to now see that the strut wouldn't fit underneath the car without losening the lower control arm.


That fortunately did the trick and revealed that the bushing of one of them must be so knackered that there was very little restriction at all lowering the strut assembly to get it in. Thats of course not good and another thing that needs sorting eventually.
For some reason the ABS sensor managed to remove itself, quite mind boggling considering its held in by a bolt and is usually seized inside the hole it resides in. The bolt decided to just snap at one point so the sensor was just dangling there.

A bit of superglue made sure that its not going anywhere anytime soon, but only after reseating the sensor a second time as it immediately triggered an ABS light the first time around. Extracting that snapped bolt will be a job for another time.

All back together, everything seems to work fine. As always, tighten up the control arm bolts with the car on the ground and loaded to avoid tearing up your bushings. This is the sparewheel that came with the car, which happens to be the same wheel design my Z3 was equipped with from new. I'm planning to keep this car as unassuming and stock as a non-sport pre-facelift E39 can look (pre-fl headlights with gingercators coming soon) but this design of alloys is currently at the top of my list for the Touring.

Which was quickly put into use to deliver the '64 Tbird trunklid I picked up for a mate in Berlin over Christmas. He ended up strapping it to the roof of his Peugeot 106 (only passed its MOT a day before after he had to replace both of his inner front wheel arches) and transported it that way all the way from Shepshed near Loughborough to Norfolk, an easy 140 miles.

Since I couldn't return to Newcastle empty handed after the NEC I toured pretty much the entirety of the Midlands to pick up a replacement E39 Touring tailgate (wouldn't recommend transporting one with 3 people inside the car) and a replacement rear bumper for the E38 later, something I've been searching for in the right color for ages.

As you can see, it all fits, just about. Even with this being a fast V8 estate its still earning its keep being a practical parts and scrap hauler. I left around 7am in the morning and got back at midnight, certainly put a few hundred occasionally pretty rough miles on it on that day.

I didn't have time on the day but had a look into the factory toolkit of the new tailgate yesterday, only to find the fabled original BMW branded blue polishing cloth still in its place. Naturally these are usually long gone and impossible to find nowadays, especially with the logo still in place, making this a very rare and desireable accessory for many BMW botherers. Considering the going rate for them in Germany this made my day as it paid for half the price I paid for the thing. The rest of the toolkit is in excellent shape and worth decent money, too.
To thank the car for its services it finally received a (used) replacement oem drivers mat, have the mandatory before and after for cleaning them for the first time:


Could have another go but considering this car is used regularly this should be ok for now. I've also got replacement sill/kickplates for it but didnt take any photos of that. The car will continue to receive regular action but with a house purchased soon locked in I need to get all the broken Mercedeses back on the road soon, more on those soon!

Thanks guys, hopefully I got some good news about it next week.
Until then, I've spend most of yesterday properly cleaning up the A8, polishing the front bumper and headlights to give it a little more curb appeal. The car's look now match the way it drives, more about that later.
Meanwhile, my mode of transport to the NEC has decided to snap a spring while it was parked. This is certainly not the first snapped BMW spring but its annoying nethertheless.

It doesn't help that it tore up the backside tire wall before I even noticed what was going on. That tire barely had any miles on it and I'm currently contemplating whether it would be safe to drive the 400 miles to the NEC and back without dying.😂 I don't think it damaged the cords.

So out it all comes, surprisingly straight forward:

That certainly doesn't look right either...

And certainly nobody has been in there to change an ABS sensor!

Here's the damage then. I've already ordered a replacement spring and droplink which should hopefully arrive in time for me to throw them on the car.

It pains me a little to replace a single spring as you should always do this in pairs. Now would also be the time to replace the shock mount and pobably the shock absorber itself considering it might still be the original one. It's a little hard to tell what has been done on it in the past without any history really. The plan is to do a "lets just replace everything ala Mercedes W140 but I don't have the funds for that for the next few months.
Speaking of the W140 S-Class, after months of nothing happening at all I've finally started to install all the shiny new parts I have gathered for it over the last year or so!

I don't think I ever showed any progress on any of the work done on the subframe. I didn't drop and sandblasted it as it should probably be done. I did wirebrush the hell out of it though, Rust-anode and POR15 should ensure that it stays this clean for at least a few years to come. Here's what it looked like before:



Pretty much everything you see will be replaced by OEM quality new parts. I think in the end it's only the ABS sensor, swaybar and knuckle that will stay. The brake disc shield will be installed whever the wheelbearing needs doing.

The swaybar bushings were probably the ones seeing the least wear. Almost forgot replacing those.
Anyway, that's it for the moment. I'll see if I can make some more progress on both the Mercedes and 540i next week, the latter really needs to be ready for the weekend as it'll once again be used to haul parts all over.

Good luck.
The progress you make outside on a driveway is staggering, can't wait to see what you can achieve with your own place to work on them.

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!

We've viewed the house we are planning to put a counter offer in a second time today. I think the A8 doesn't look out of place although the XM might have felt even more at home!

Anyway, a little progress on the E65. I mentioned above that there was still water somehow making its way through the sunroof which I didnt understand as the drains were unblocked and any gap water could come through located right above the tray it would normally drain from. Yet here we were:

Funnily enough these drops would make their way onto the headliner and down towards the A-pillar where it would drip onto the seat from, apparently that dripping was enough to trigger the interior alarm, something I didn't notice until a neighbor up the street actually told me. I'm praying that this might also be the reason why the battery would go flat more recently...

After a lot of trial and error it could only be water running down the sunroof tracks, an area that should be physically impossible for rain water to reach (and hence was never properly sealed off). I got a few suggestions on FB that the sunroof seal itself could let too much water through, overwhelming the drains, but this didnt make much sense either, the seal looked alright aside from a tiny gap in the center, none of which would cause water to get through in such volumes to flood the sunroof tracks. I taped it shut but it didn't seem to make a difference.

It took me most evenings after work this week before I noticed this:

Not the replaceable seal around the sunroof hole but the damn seal around the sunroof glass itself somehow started to separate from the glass. And since that seal wraps underneath the glass and reaches way beyond the channels that were intended to guide the water into the drains some of it made it past that seal and onto the tracks, eventually ending up on the headliner.

You could squeeze the seal and water would come out of it. If that isn't a smoking gun I dont know what is...

Fortunately its easy to get the glass out, 6 bolts are all that hold it in place. It actually started to separate in several areas around the edge of the glass pane, no idea how I didn't notice this earlier. Fortunately I still had the sunroof glass of the donor car which was in perfect condition. I installed it yesterday and re-initialized the sunroof. Wish me luck that this will finally be the last water leak in this car... A replacement seal for the hole in th roof would have been around 80 quid from the dealer, a replacement glass (seal not separately available) would have been close to a grand...

Im not sure if I'm gonna announce anything in here beyond what I've written above but I appreciate the enthusiasm.😄 Let me know if you are interested in anything specifically.
Anyway, quick update on the Senator. Thanks to @24vdiamond I finally have a replacement Opel bonnet badge which I will put on the car at the earliest opportunity. It also came with the nut and locking washer for the steering wheel so once again thanks for the easy transaction!
The crusty sills are at least protected from further damage now, at least until this gets dealt with properly with the sparkly stick. Rust-Anode and a bit of paint should keep things under control for a while.

I could have easily covered this up with wob to look like brand new but that wasn't really the point.

The core support got a little love as well, surface corrosion on there so really just a cosmetic improvement.
Some more progress on the E65. For some reason its battery went flat over the last 2 weeks, which wasn't a problem before. It might have been because the amp under the driver seat wasn't plugged in (which would be odd) or because the driver seat fell over (not yet bolted in), triggering the interior alarm. If it isn't that then thats another issue to investigate. Unfortunately I've confirmed that there is still water somehow making its way into the car through the sunroof. It's not a lot and the drains are free but this is something that just needs to be fixed to avoid any damage to the new headliner. People suggest it could be the sunroof seal, even if it looks fine. I'll have a very close look at it tomorrow after work.

I had a closer look at the radio tuner which likes to fail on these even without water damage, this obviously doesn't look promising. I tried to clean it but no luck, another part to add to the list, I plan to update the entire infotainment system to the post-facelift spec anyway.
With the interior now pretty much back together I had a moment to slap the V12 kidneys on the car. Normally an easy job but naturally one of the bolts seized in the aluminium bonnet and had to be removed with some violence. I now have a cordless Dremel that will replace the old one as best tool anyone can have in their toolbox.

In case you are wondering why I bother, the V12 kidneys (top) are shaped slightly differently and are nice and thicc now, clearly a symbol of status and exclusivity.

Done. If you are shaking your head looking at this, if you own the car you do notice and appreciate the subtle difference!

In other news, I dropped off the Celsior at the garage yesterday to have the exhaust mended. This is the same place that fabricated the stainless steel exhaust for the Corona, welded in the cat section for the Oxford green E38, built the exhaust for my ivory Mark VIII and possibly more that I can't think of now. Japanese-market exclusive post-cat sensors meant that the shop had to be extra careful removing them.

Seems like they managed to do just fine, I picked up the car tonight and its nice and quiet again. I'll get a slow tire leak sorted tomorrow, I'm hoping that this will be the last big bill on this car to get it onto reliable daily shape, the rest is really just convenience and cosmetics.

Obviously I've glossed over parts, and made this appear to be a simple 'Throw on some new bits and MOT'
But some diagnostic work and time has gone into this, for instance the vacuum leaks, wasn't a simple case of 'Yeah this pipe', the drivers seat repair and fettling of door locks. 
So now I'm at a loss, its a fully working car that just does what it needs to do, in comfort and relatively reasonable MPG (even the blooming Aircon works), but it's just not me 🤷‍♂️
If anyone wants to literally give me what it owes me, I'll happily try dig out reciepts etc for proof .... but it's open to be purchased.

'Ooft, must eat juice being a V6'

The autobox seems to change up early, meaning you're never stressing the engine, it just wafts, BUT press the sport button and its a different version of events, I can see why they chose a V6 in the mental Clios.
A few weeks (month ?) Of wafting around in this, and I won't lie it is THE most comfortable car I've owned, I even lent it to a friend, and even he said 'this floats along similar to my old Bentley, just needs less aggressive tyres to be silent' , genuinely not making that up !!! .
Anyway non of this work would have been worth it, if it couldn't pass a MOT

MOT WHILE YOU WAIT. 🙈 These sort of places never normally end well, but:

Yep, advisory free PASS.

This nifty chap turned up (old one pictured)

So we've had new plugs, new coils (x2 - Still awaiting others to be in stock) , new injector and a new Airbag plug.
Checked everything was plugged in before refitting the inlet manifold, broke open the new gaskets, torqued down to spec, and ...
It fired straight into life 🥳, so decided to treat it to a new air filter, as I wasn't too sure when the last service was (Juley ?)


A quick trip around the block, and I could still hear a air leak - Can't be manifold as all gaskets are new here, but peaking beneath the throttle body, I found this

Rang up Peugeot/ Citroen dealer, and they basically said 'LOL NO', so unfortunately had to sleeve it, with some pipe. Refitted and no more unmetered air. The idle seemed to be much smoother now too.
So the next few days I put some miles on it, as I wanted to make sure all this work (and more) was worth it.

267 miles later, I can confirm it's a good car.
So with that in mind, it got MORE NEW STUFF

New brakes all round - discs, pads and shoes.
 

At this point I was waiting for the injector to turn up, so turned my attention to other things.
Airbag light was illuminated, thankfully the previous owner @406V6 was spot on with his diagnosis - Drivers seat being the culprit. Didn't grab any pictures of this, as I was kneeling on gravel, and just wanted to get done, but found the offending item:

With that snipped out, a new plug and socket was fitted

 
Did it work?
Did the injector turn up ?
Will it ever see the road again ?
*Dramatic music* Stay tuned for updates 

So with everything out the way and a  compression test done, I had a niggling in the back of my mind - 'Do we actually have good spark, is the injector getting a pulse??'
One way to find out

Apologies for the poor picture, but with a noid lamp -  (Freshly purchased from https://www.sealey.co.uk/product/5637205125/6pc-noid-light-set ) , it was confirmed we had injector pulse.
And Halfords spark tester  (https://www.halfords.com/tools/hand-tools/electrical-diagnostics/laser-ignition-spark-tester-in-line-208694.html ) , it was also confirmed we had spark, but a rather weak looking one. Tried a new coil and things looked much healthier, result.
Old plugs removed and replaced 

I actually forgot !
You have to take the inlet manifold off, in order to get to the rear bank -

As you can probably see, it covers the back 3 cylinders.

Hhmm lovely, lots of instant gasket.
Thankfully before pulling anything apart, I thought to order a set of gaskets (Did so too, as I was adamant I could hear a vaccum leak)

Also making an appearance is the new coil (No idea why Beru / Behru came in BorgWarner boxes)

Obviously I missed Ceri dropping this off, so he as always, parked and secured this in a Professional manner. 
Once home I cracked on:

Lets try understand what is going on 

She's certainly unhappy about cylinder 5, but why ?
The previous owner told me he'd spent good money on having new coils and plugs fitted, so at first I ruled them out and ordered an injector, so whilst waiting for that to be delivered I cracked on, removed the engine cover and investigated further.


Three different makes of coil, now my OCD / finicky head really dislikes mismatched brands, so I hit up euro car parts - Non in stock, tried local factors - no, Autodoc - x2 Behru in stock. Ordered, and add to email list when back in stock.
Lets not waste time waiting for parts 

Checked compression of all cylinders, and all returned satisfactory results.