CreepingJesus

Xmas day shite spot while out with the pram. 
 
isuzu! On the H plate. Awesome. 

Well why not 😁 seemed appropriate 

This has just driven past our window. 

Somebody is enjoying their Christmas. 

Did you know Princess Anne had one of those?

A C15 must be one of the only things that won't overload that beavertail.

Spent all day yesterday with these nice old motors. Great to see some older wagons still out daily earning their keep. 


ERF isn't upside down, just the forum software having a fit. 


The ECX's sister went into retirement just a couple of days ago, apparently. 

No, really...


😁

This...

...is finally booked in for some TLC from this man...

...who drives this...

...very quickly, and is also famous for this bonkers idea...
This can only end well.

Spotted at a small village garage in Hampshire
Yes, It’s the V6. From the street view it’s been there since 2008, the RX8 has been there for at least five years. 

Starlet & early RAV4 hiding behind the Stag.
\
SA Defender. 

I wasn’t the only MR2 there. 

Spotted in Membury Services, a functioning Quattroporte IV! A late one on a W plate.

Aye the wood in kiln dried and I didn't know that the 1 hour per inch guide was supposed to be doubled if you are using kilned stuff. That means these things are going to have to stew for four hours. The other thing I took from the carriage maker chap is that he was doing it under pressure to get the temperature up. 
One thing we are not short of is steam and while it would be a bit annoying to do it because they are drained down for winter it's not much of a biggie to drag one of the Sentinels out to use as a steam generator. Last time we used one of those daft Karcher things which at least you could run them continuously rather than the wallpaper strippers that you needed to turn off to refill. We have a piece of 4" aluminum pipe that is long enough to take the beams  - attempt one with the 4" soil pipe did not end well - but now I'm wondering if we need to make something a bit more butch that can be pressurised. 

Better battered Brighton shite
 
 
 
 
 

Part Two
I arrived home at 15:15, weary but pleased I got back. So naturally I then embarked on changing the alternator. Easy job..... right?!
It all started so well... I firstly went about loosening the wrong tensioner bolt

...this one's the locking bolt for the hydraulic pump. I found out after I tried to push the altenator down and off for 5 minutes.
So that was a good start. Then, when I took the old alternator out of the vehicle, I discovered it was absolutely pooched.

So that's not going back in again. The rear bearing was dry as a bone. The front bearings on these are sealed but the rears are just normal unsealed ball bearings with a plastic grease cap over them. As you can see, this one had the cap busted off.  I wonder if  the bearing started rumbling or something and someone attempted to repack it with perhaps the wrong grease. This was futile as A. the grease would have been flung out owing to a lack of grease cap and B. this side is right next to the hot exhaust manifold, so the grease would have evaporated if it were the wrong type.
By this time it was 15:50 thereabouts and light was fading fast. "Better get the fresh new alternator in!"

Oh. I can't. Alright then, Lucas, you win for a second time.

This is on the fecking compatability label on the damn box.
Does it fit? Does it fuck.
Here's the issue. The alternator I've got will fit on a Suitcase engine, but, for some strange reason, they also claim it'll fit on a TU... either that or Lucas engineers thought the 1.4 BX used the Suitcase engine throughout its production run. I didn't take a side-by-side picture of the two (and I wish I did but oh well) but not only is the hole for the hinge bolt lacking in width (so it flaps around when bolted in), the hinge bolt hole is on the opposite side to the old alternator, so it won't fit in the first place! What a fantastic waste of my time.
Unlike the starter motor, which was cheaper and had no hopes of ever fitting, I noticed the actual alternator portions of both were the same, with both being made in France. So, instead of throwing in the towel, buying another (but correct!) alternator and living in misery, I threw caution to the wind and made a modernist art installation.

I crown thee: "Trust* Lucas"

Violence was used to get the front cover off the old alternator

Which involved cutting the alternator shaft, using a puller and other violent instruments. This part alone took about 1 hour. In just getting to this stage, I was whacking the thing, I sheared one of the bolts tieing the the alternator parts together... Basically it was a fight.

I then tried to remove the NOS bearing, firstly by hijacking the cooker so I could heat up the cover and not the bearing. This ultimately failed.
By contrast, I stripped down the new alternator in a fraction of the time. I then retreated into the warmth* of the porch which had a little more light than the Anglepoise lamp I was using:

The good news was that the innards were well and truly identical, so that's a win. I cleaned up the alternator front plate and rotated the bearing a bit to see if it was as ruined at the rear one was. The good news is that it isn't, although there's radial play and it feels slightly gritty. I can try to replace it but I doubt there's much chance of it failing anytime soon. I iused an improvised parts heater to expand things a little, and the thing slid onto the new alternator like butter*. Well, more like a block of lard you've just taken out of the fridge.
Fast forward a few more minutes and there's this:

Good, good. Now, onto the slight* problem of fans and pulleys. Because I managed to cuntfuckulate the old one and couldn't reuse it. Yep, I bent one of the pulley sheeves and fucked the fan up completely. This is wonderful, because the new fan and pulley don't exactly work with the engine, either. Of course not, because fitting perfectly would be silly.
The old alternator fan and pulley arrangement consisted of washers, a spacer between the fan and pulley sheeves, and the sheeves themselves. Once you undo the bolt that secures everything in place, they all fall off the shaft in a confusing arrangement to ensure you'll never be able to reassemble them again. The pulley was seriously, seriously worn anyway, so even if I did use it, It'd still be having problems in the future. I discovered that the fan on the new alternator was plastic and the pulley was metal, so I inserted a screwdriver and *pop* they separated and flew across the room. Once I retrieved them, I then used a combination of old and new parts to get it roughly similar to the old one:

And a test fit on the car proved this would work. By this time it was well and truly dark and around 20:45. Oops. Now all would be well and good, but the shaft on the new alternator is shorter than the old one, and as it happens I've destroyed the old one and canae use it. Because of the new spacer, the pulley was resting on the threads instead of the shaft, so it was able to wiggle side to side. Bad. Very bad. So I did the right thing and made a shim out of a coke can I cound in the bin:

And after 3* attempts (well, maybe 5 but I've forgotten) it was just about ready to put on the car. I tightened down the pulley bolt and washer, made sure everything still spins correctly, and bunged it in the car.

...with the usual tensioning nightmares because the belt is the wrong size. Even though it looks old it isn't cracking and isn't too glazed, so I left it be. I do have a replacement in my parts stash. The glazing may disappear now that a new pulley is being used.
With fingers and toes crossed, I started the car, put the headlamps on and held the revs at 3000-

We has an victoree.
That was at 21:19 for crying out loud. I still don't know how I did it, but I did. Today I woke up super early to take my brother back from getting jabbed, in pain and stiff as a board from yesterday's palava. At least nothing fell off/exploded/caught fire on my journey.

I'm going to break this down into parts, because this went from 'meh' to OMGSOMUCHWORK!!1!!!111!!!!!.
PART ONE:
Here's an invoice of work done to peruse:

They want it back next year so they can get to the bottom of the oil leak and fix the blown bulb in the binnacle etc. Lots of work was being done on it, but were halted due to Crimbo.
The oil leak wasn't fully sorted as they were relying on getting a new distributor O-ring and then carrying on seeing where the oil was coming from. Despite buying from Citroen and then a third pary, neither arrived. They had the rocker cover back off again, adjusted the tappets, inspected the gasket and fitted the correct type of breather hose. A new leak has opened up by the timing belt cover which makes me wonder if the rocker cover is warped and pissing oil no matter how much I tighten it down.

For now, they've cleaned the block and told me to occasionally inspect for fresh oil.
I still chuckle looking at the gearbox problem-

The rest of the work included replacing the rotten fuel return hardline with the big job being fixing the suspension goofyiness once and for all.
I now haz new grenadez-

The dark patch on the fuel filler hose suggests the old spheres were blown like I suspected. It now feels so good to drive, like, no longer stiff and weird-feeling, which is nice 😉
They also removed the centre console, cleaned and lubricated the ride height lever linkages, set the ride height and fixed the clunk-no-full-height-for-you issue I had. Even intermittent intermediate height now works! Nice.
The drive home was absolutely horrible, though. No fault of the car -it was great!- it was the Christmas traffic. On the A1(M), we were bombarded with arsehole van men doing racing lane changes and making everyone else panic and brake, then on the M25 we had foreign HGVs using every lane slowing everyone down. The sheer weight of traffic wasn't great either. Certainly wasn't the nicest drive I've had.

I think it deserves a wash now.

The BX was driven to the venerable Chevronics. It's in good company:

26000 miles no less. I spotted this absolute beast at FoTU and didn't think I'd see it again. Same age, same engine, same nearly everything apart from the trim and maybe the gearbox. I forgot to check the centre console sticker.

15 minutes later and its having its undercarriage inspected by Rob, the owner, and one of the (super duper experienced) mechanics. Off the bat he noticed:
Gearbox is separating from the engine 😲 Diesel pattern exhaust fitted, which is what I thought it was too. They'll fit the correct backbox to stop the bumper melting Tuning fork bolt on the front suspension linkage is fouling the height corrector- this may be our smoking gun with the weird height problems Subframe caved in (not too badly) because of a trolley jack being used in the past (not by me) Timing belt covers missing Fuel return line corroded but not leaking yet Body-wise, both he and Rob are impressed at how solid it is. They've given me additional places to point the waxy wand once I pull my finger out and get to work rustproofing it. He's going to give it a thorough inspection and diagnosis of the oil consumption, oil leak, stiff rear end etc. etc. I'm assured there will be a list of stuff he'll find which I then can sit down and see which ones need doing. Hopefully this'll ensure the car is mechanically sound for some time yet.

I've obviously had it a while, my forest is getting out of control.

Just realised I've put 100,000 miles on it since I got it, on top of the 169,000 it already had. Turns 23 years old on the 20th too

battered Brighton shite

I finished everything on this a few weeks ago, and got it booked in for an MOT last week at 8.30. Unfortunately woke at 8.29 as I was knackered and they wouldn't rebook me in, so went with another place for tomorrow!

There was a weird clonking from the front slowing/coasting to a stop - I rechecked every bolt underneath the front and a few weren't exactly tight.

As I tightened the very last one (possibly the LAST thing to do on this car), I noticed smoke pouring from inside the cabin and on investigation, the interior was one fire. Throwing whatever containers of rainwater I had lying round didn't help so connected the water hose up and dowsed the entire thing with water. Not sure what or why it decided to self-immolate itself at this moment, took the new paint off with it though.
So close to getting this on the road as well. Does anyone know of anyone that breaks these - they only made this specific dashboard/wiring loom etc for a few years and the later one won't fit.
 

I’ve fully built the engine up, everything’s timed up and ready to go on the chassis



I got every single bolt nut and bracket zinc plated -professionally- on the car, there’s about 8kg of metal in a big box, and took a month to get back, wasn’t expecting it to be this shiny. Worth every penny and the wait IMO.  I can’t remember where most of these go unfortunately



 
im waiting on some other bits to come so hopefully will arrive this week so I can get it fully mobile and can get the body in for tidying up and last bit of welding.

Here is my nickel plating method - this is the first time I’ve tried it to be honest, I'm just going off online info.
 
I bought the nickel ingots a while ago and here’s what I used - the creation of the nickel solution I used a 12v battery charger - the plating, something with a lower voltage, so one of those switchable adapters.

I bought a plastic tub, filled it with white vinegar, popped the two nickel blocks in connected to + and - and left it for twelve hours.





The vinegar turns a greenish hue, which means it’s all nickely. I put this in a Pyrex jug as it was easier to see.


This needs about another eight hours I reckon before I start the plating bit.
 

I can’t believe I’ve had this nine months. It sat in the garage for a month, the mot ran out and I decided to ‘prep’ the body, but it’s been tricky and been stressing a bit, so I took the body off. I think the next stage is getting it primered but not sure when that’s going to happen now.
Worst part was cleaning the underside. It was caked in mud and had wayoyl under that. I did it with a wire brush in an angle grinder and it was grim.

 
the front was raised and the body ‘slid off’ onto wheel castor things




ive cleaned up the chassis and painted it in Upol Raptor paint, which is textured and sets really hard.


The underside, inside and engine bay has also been done with this stuff, it’s amazing.
It has that stipled effect that you see on new car undersides and in the cavitys. I thought four would be enough, but I bought 12 and reckon 8 will cover everything.





I'm not sure how this can ever rust again


I have the paint already, it's Audi Nardo Grey direct gloss, which everyone is doing nowadays.
This has been my 'inspiration', this looks something else:


My next adventures are electro-rust removing and nickel plating, cleaning up running gear and lowering blocks.
 
 

Probably won’t update this again but welded the rear arches and floor up now.



tapped the end of the welder and the whole tip broke off. I would have had this done if if were not for these occurring maladies. 😪 Welder is fantastic, but everything is going wrong in a way.

I'm trying to source bits needed to complete the build for the Suzuki 16v engine but it seems difficult so I’ll stick it on eBay and might put a C20XE in it. I know them in and out and gearboxes are always available and easily adaptable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found a small hole near the accelerator pedal - someone had put a piece of metal over a rust hole and then screwed the pedal base to that.

 
Look at them wood screws of random lengths.

I’m using the old door for my metal, the metal on this is quite thin, but it’s better than rust.


The garage poltergeist pushed my gas bottle over and broke my brand new one hour old regulator clean off at the union, and nearly sent the bottle off into the stratosphere in a rush of escaping co2 gas, so that stops any welding for a while.

Bastard!

A bumper pack of new underpants? I reckon anything over 70hp in a SJ would be terrifying.