Burnside

@EspenO was right on the money.
I borrowed my wife's floor steam cleaner, which has a small brush adaptor that is just right for cleaning Sierra wheel arch liners.

Great tool. No noise, no mess, just steam that goes straight onto the desired surface. I could see brown water dripping down the liners, the steam managed to remove 95% of dirt.

The liners were clean but not shiny enough for me, so I gave them a wipe over with a tiny bit of this stuff.

The results speak for themselves.




I can relax now, knowing that when I drive the Sierra down the road, the wheel arch liners that are hidden behind the wheels, which no one will see, are now nice and clean.
The rear bumper is fucked. The greyish blueish paint coatings are peeling, it has numerous scratches and two vertical cracks in-line with the number plate lights. Some of the scratches are very deep.





I rubbed the heavily scratched areas with 120 grade paper, in a circular motion, which got rid off the worst imperfections. I prepared and cleaned the bumper and masked it off. 

And gave it a coat of primer.

The front bumper is in better condition but it is far from perfect.



The bumpers are not black and I have acquired an aerosol can of gloss black. On the basis that I have to fix the rear bumper, consequently I also have to do the front one.
I cleaned the front bumper and masked it off. The top section of the bumper is black and mostly ok so it will not be re-sprayed.

And gave it a coat of primer.

I will leave the primer to dry overnight and spray the bumpers black in the morning.
The chrome* strips in the bumpers are weathered, especially the front one. I have a cunning plan how to sort them out.
I had a two minute break for a cuppa and chocolate croissant.

The front grille was chipped and  cracked.

I filled the chip and crack with chemical metal.

Rubbed it down.

And gave it a squirt of primer.

I will spray it black in the morning.
A few minor cosmetic jobs aside, the Sierra is ready to hit the road. However, I still have tomorrow and another four man days (two weekends) to do a few more jobs before the maiden voyage scheduled for the 1st April. I want to clean and spray the front suspension components, clean and re-paint the engine sump and spend a bit more time touching up the brush painted areas. 
More tomorrow.
 

The problem.

I'm struggling to find a replacement tail light lens.
So I bought this, which cost about £3.

And achieved this.

That's not bad at all.
If I'm lucky, I will find a replacement tail light at an autojumble this spring / summer. 

I had a bit of time this afternoon to complete a couple of small jobs.
I wanted to remove the redundant front fog light brackets.

I, incorrectly, assumed that undoing the two nuts and bolts would enable me to remove each bracket. Yes and no. The bracket also forms part of the bumper support, which is fixed to the chassis above. In the end, I just bent back the parts of the bracket that secure the fog light.

Lying on the floor looking up at the bumper, I realised that if I am going to re-spray the rear bumper, which is a must, I might as well do the front.
Next, was a simple job of refixing the rear number plate. Or so I thought. Turns out, whoever fitted the replacement number plate drilled two new fixing holes in the rear panel and the one on the right side is located exactly where the jack abuts the inner side of the panel. This explains why the screw that I removed was angled at 45 degrees. I put it back as it was for now but to sort this out properly, I need another rear number plate.
Note the reflection in the boot lid of the E46 parked outside.

I re-fixed the non-factory aerial. It fits ok but to make it fit, the mast leans towards the front of the car. I might have another go at aligning it but ideally I would like to source a Ford factory aerial.

As the paint in and around the arches was now dry, I wanted to replace the arch liners.
I spent a fair bit of time cleaning them and removing overspray but they still look shit. I cleaned the front ones with a pressure washer, a stiff brush and soapy water and with neat paraffin to remove the overspray. I am not happy with how they turned out. I know that they won't be visible with the wheels back on but that's no excuse to leave them looking dirty.
Any ideas what else I can try to make them look cleaner? I don't want to paint them as the paint will flake as the wheels kick up stones etc. 




All being well, I will respray the front and rear bumpers this weekend.

I've been looking forward to this day since I bought the Sierra.
I used T-Cut and water to cut the paint where it was faded but not scratched.

And this stuff where the paint was badly damaged.

And then this stuff to polish the paint after cutting.

The cutting made a huge difference.


Looking better already.

Another before / after photo, spoiled by a crappy iPhone camera.

Job done. The paint responded well to the cut and polish. The deepest scratches remain and I did not try to get them out as I didn't want to risk cutting through to the primer. I almost did along part of the bonnet. Under my workshop LED light, the scratches are still obvious but under a halogen light and, most likely, daylight, the paint should look ok.
Since my first inspection of the Sierra, I knew that the paint was bad and getting it to this standard wasn't quick or easy and I am happy with the results. The nearside front door is not a good colour match and there are various flaws around the car where it was previously painted. Doesn't matter, it looks ok. 




It will look better outside, in natural light.
Then my wife brought me lunch.

After lunch, I had to do something with the two tone sills.

I masked off the bottom of the doors and sprayed both sills with the blue aerosol (no primer). Again, no chemical reactions, no cracking or wrinkling. 


Much better.
I'm getting there.

The fuel gauge is reading way too high, I think.
The sender unit looks like this.

Aa the boot floor doesn’t feature any access hatches, it looks like the only way to get to the sender unit is to drop the fuel tank, which could be a world of pain.
I’m not going to bother doing this for now. Once I start using the Sierra, I will know more about the fuel gauge’s behaviour and chances are that a few full to empty tanks may wake up the sender unit.

I made good progress with the bodywork repairs today.
I got the Sunday Times out again and had another go at spraying the windscreen pillars.


Success, this time no more chemical reactions. The paint match is approx 95% correct.

I had a third attempt at spraying the bottom of the offside rear door. This time everything went ok.

I used a 240 grade padded sand paper to take the shine off the sills. Messy business.

But a good result.

I painted both sills with the new paint I bought on Monday. The previous colour was too loud, it looked more turquoise than blue. This shade is darker than it should be but looks less offensive. 
As previously advised, my iPhone's camera struggles to correctly present the original blue paint. The flood light doesn't help either. The paint match is actually a lot better. 


Next, I had to sort out these storage scars.

I rubbed down the corrosion down to fresh metal.

I masked up the scars to keep the repair patches as small as possible.

I then squirted blue aerosol paint into a pot and used a small sponge to dab multiple thin coats of paint over the masked off patches.

I did this wherever the paint was damaged.

With the masking paint removed, you can see where the paint was applied, however once cut back and polished, the repairs should look ok.


There was a deep scratch in the middle of the offside rear door.

I applied masking tape close to the edges of the scratch.

And applied numerous thin coats of aerosol paint.

With the masking tape removed, the scratch is almost invisible and will look better still once the paint is cut and polished.

The rear screen side plastic panels were also damaged during storage.

I dabbed some matt black paint onto the plastic. The paint was still wet when I took this photo.

Last week I found out that acrylic primer and aerosol paint reacts with oil based paint and causes wrinkles and cracking. Today, by chance, I discovered that dabbing the blue aerosol paint over the oil based paint that was applied 3 hours earlier, without using primer, does not cause any problems. Very odd. I dabbed paint over the offside rear arch, which now looks a lot better.


The fuel filler panel seal was covered with blue overspray.

Five minutes with a stanley blade got the old paint off. Much better.

That was it for today. 
I will leave the paint repairs to dry overnight and tomorrow I am getting busy with this stuff.

I hope the paint will respond well to a good cut and polish.
Can't wait to see the Sierra shine. 

My G ref 1.6 pinto 'laser' no rev counter, no central locking ans very stingy spec

I acquired this key fob years ago and hitherto had no use for it.

It will be put to good use until I find something more appropriate. I’ll be going to Beaulieu Autojumble and the Enfield Pageant in May, where there should be a good choice of bargains.

I used the +12V socket located in the boot of my new Quashqai to pump up the tyres.


13” Sierra steel and a 19” Hyundai alloy wheel. The same but different.

The spare wheel looks happy.

A standard sized stapler wasn't man enough for the job so I brought this beast home from the office today.

It worked a treat. The meaty staples went though the carpet and folded over the velcro strips, which are now securely attached to the carpet.

VIN talk sent me off trying to find mine, I didn't find it, but did find the invoice for when my dad bought the car from Godfrey Davis at 3 years old and 51k on the clock (later sold to me). It was a massive upgrade on our previous family car - MK2 Escort which we'd had since 1980.
£5,795.

Glad to see good progress on this fine machine.
You’ve just reminded me of the fact that there is an estate sat in my local scrapyard at the moment. Not sure what’s left of it but I know it’s a 1.8 CVH, L-spec.

And if you can find a proper old-school key cutting place, they may even have one of these genuine leather fobs still hanging on a little carousel display by the till...

Great to see all the work that's been done here, and the excellent results so far achieved.
More power to your elbow.

Dagenham all the way my friend.

I bet that rides well. 

Am I the only one here who thinks that the Mk1 looks better as a saloon but the Mk2 looks better as a hatchback?

yes they are but no idea on numbers as the DVLA etc doesn't record it - if I'm really bored at some point I'll go through the K-reg survivors and work it out.

Saw that too. 
I was watching this one on ebay that's not long sold. The owner was so rude in their response to me asking basic questions (primarily "what is the nearest train station to you?") I didn't bother. I assume the saloon is a much rarer beast then the hatch? That one had the timing belt changed and looked alright. Ive had a couple of mk1's but love an early K/L car

More work by this chap on saving the 'scrapyard Mondeo'. Nice vid.

That's a high mileage for a petrol. The highest mileage petrol Mondeo taxi I had was only in the low 200Ks although I did have a couple of diesels with over 250K on the clock. 
I should add though that the only reason I disposed of those cars was due to the local council and their eight year limit for PH cars, not due to mechanical failure.

Sitting in a state of "I'll get around to it one day" 🤣🤣

Yeah, probably the highest mile one left.

We're down to about 500 taxed MK1's total (K to P), but 3,000 SORN....
Mine was built 31 years ago this week.

This is the original fuel pump housing; as I mentioned earlier it has been modified so that the supply hose connects directly to the pump, although this means a tight bend leaving the housing.

The pre-filter had also been damaged (presumably when the housing had been previously taken apart) so although you can still buy the earlier bare pumps, we really needed the whole assembly which is no longer available.
At least not as a new part, but managed to find a reasonably priced used one, at £40 delivered. The filter was in great condition too, in fact the only downside was a slightly messy repair to the wiring where it enters the top of the housing.

It was easily fitted, and the hose routing is much improved.

After @Puglet has been using it for a few trips it's obvious there is a problem with the idle speed. When hot it will rev at around 3k rpm, unless you blip the throttle in which case the idle settles down to around 1k rpm. Which tends to rule out a permanent air leak.
What it seems to be is that the throttle butterfly is not closing fully, unless you cause it to snap shut by blipping it. I wonder whether the throttle position switch is stiff and holding it open slightly, or perhaps the spring is weaker than it should be. The throttle body is new though, so a fault seems unlikely...

I know I suggested recreating the photo, but this wasn't what I had in mind!

(On the way back from a Cars & Coffee meet, on only its second trip out!)

I previously said that the plan was to rebuild the supplied 1.9 axle, that was until a rebuilt one (with receipt) came up on eBay for half what it would have cost to do!

This was just the bare axle, so stuff like the caliper mounts were bolted on.

Then new bearings (integral with the hubs) and calipers.

You can actually buy brand new ones for little more than the price of a rebuild kit, but my experience with cheap calipers is that it's a false economy. Perishing rubber and unplated pistons meant they seized fairly quickly. Hopefully Febi calipers should be a little better, but time will tell. The rearmost brake hose brackets on the donor axle were beyond repair, but new still available.
Discs and pads were surprisingly cheap also, so duly fitted.

It's now ready for the dampers to be refitted, but I'm just cleaning them up and painting first. They appear in good order and are genuine Peugeot parts - I'm a bit wary of 'uprated' parts which swing the ride/handling compromise away from real-world usage.

The original axle now has a new wheel cylinder and the new handbrake cables adjusted, so as soon as it stops chucking it down it can be taken for a drive!