aldo135

It actually drives great.
It runs straight, brakes straight, rides really well, has no suspension conks, and is generally a fun enough and economic way to scoot about. Once cleaned, the interior is tidy and undamaged. It's a happy little thing and I'm really pleased with it. 
It needs a few jobs but once done I think it'll be a very good little car. 
 

 

 
Fiat Pa-cma-nda. 

Jim Bell collection threads are my favourite collection threads.

Two more stops to top up and made it home grand.

 

 
Well done little panda. 

And away we go!
Early start. I missed breakfast so popped to WH SMITHS so I could grab a cheap snack. 
Now I know why they've installed FUCKING DEFRIBULATORS at Darlington rail station. A bottle of water and a Twix came to a kick in the arse off of five pounds. 
Thanks Brexit. 

 
Thanks Tracey. 
 
Felt like a right bell end. 
So I went and stood at the bell end of the station. 

*But only if it's Scotland or Wales. 
As is sometimes the way, the car was far away in the Northland's beyond the wall. Thankfully I have fine friends amongst you troupe of car perverts and @juular and @Lacquer Peel kindly went and had a quick look for me. It got the 4 thumbs up so I booked a train up the hill. 

After a bit of doom scrolling and ruling out anything parked on gravel, parked on grass, parked with a caravan or dog in the background, being sold by someone also selling 9 to 27 other cars, any seller with a flag as their profile pic and any car with a pic of the key in the ignition that clearly still has an auction tag still attached, I found something that raised my spirits. 
 

Not buy car fever is the biggest killer of shrimp and fat northern men after suicide, heart disease and murder. There are ten stages and I was feeling thirsty (stage 8).
I really must buy something before I go ded. 

Well bought mate! Love a family car collection and that’s some interior to travel back in 😊

Trampolines next I hope 😂

Trampolines next I hope 😂

Trampolines next I hope 😂

Nutter

"two hours is too far for a collection"

Trampolines next I hope 😂

Trampolines next I hope 😂

Yay, another collection including swimming, @aldo135 the trend setter...

Minor ailments with this currently include one of the carb needles becoming loose resulting in raw fuel being dumped out of the exhaust (pretty stains on pavement) and a somewhat temperamental fusebox connection. Both easy fixes I suppose.
In preparation for a long journey down to Rustival, a 700 mile round trip, I thought it would be good to add a few features.
First up is a working 12v socket. The wiring had long since disintegrated from this do it had to be redone.
To begin I stuck it in phosphoric acid to clean up the rusty insides.

Then made up new wiring. Originally this is fed off the ignition switch and is both permanently live and unfused. Not happy with this, I've made the wiring to fit into a switched live on the fusebox, and added a tail onto it for future use.

That meant I could then use a portable inflator to pump the tyres up that were all sitting at 20psi.
Next up, I wanted to do something about the high-low beam toggle which is operated by a foot switch next to the clutch pedal. 

That's not it in location but you get the idea. My problem is my feet are way too big to use the switch and I keep pressing the clutch instead.
The full beam can also be flashed by pulling the indicator stalk towards you so my plan was to modify this so that it can be used as a toggle switch, then I could do away with the floor switch.
The advantage here is that the stalk flash is fed through a relay, so I can make modifications that don't need to handle the current. The floor switch by comparison is straight wired to the headlamps and is consequently chunky as hell.
So here's the plan. Splice into the feed to the flasher stalk and wire in a bistable (latching) relay. That way you have one flick for full beam on, then another for full beam off.
The relay is easy to come by for a staggering £3.43.

And here is how it wires in.

Temporary wired in with alligator clips.

That'll do.
Next plan is to improve the indicators. You'll have to take my word for it, but as standard they're so damn slow. Going all the way round a roundabout it'll probably flash twice, which I feel is dangerous as the non-lit time is far too long.
This one is simple enough to fix, the original flasher relay is binned and a modern relay with adjustable speed wired in.
No need to explain this really as it's a like for like swap, I just had to make up a couple of wires to connect the pins into the existing plug. I kept the old plug so that for any reason the old flasher can be put back on.
Waaaaay better.
Final electrical mod: hazards. Seems odd for a Volvo not to have hazard lights but there you go.
This required splicing into the yellow wire coming from the flasher relay, adding a 4 pin switch, and splicing the output straight to both left and right indicator bulb wires, bypassing the stalk.

Hardest part of that was cutting the loom wrap in the right place to find the green and blue wires for the indicators to cut into them.
I'll feel a bit better about using motorways now.
Time to celebrate with a chippy.

 
 

WTF is going on with the mirrors?

I came home to this and was rather puzzled.... Turned out we have a Great Tit who has taken it upon himself to attack a deadly rival bird who mysteriously only appears in car wing mirrors! He can spend ages hammering his head against a wing mirror so Mrs MDH took it upon herself to fix the issue! 
 

I had a very fun day on Sunday. A week ago, a friend of mine was questioning which of his cars to bring to the RACV British and European Motoring show, a well known show amongst car enthusiasts here in Melbourne. He considered bringing an orange R16 along but it needed some work fiddling with the brakes. I suggested that he should bring along his 1966 Mini Deluxe along, a car bought new by his grandmother and since then has been kept in the same family since. He liked the idea, and decided to get it out of storage on Saturday, meanwhile I made an information sheet on the car featuring the interesting history of it. I woke up about 6 on Sunday morning, got down to the opposite side of Melbourne and met my mate an hour and a half later. On the way to the show grounds, we had a small convoy with another friend of mine driving his '71 VW 1600 'Square-back' following behind us. 

It was my first time in a (proper) Mini, I was surprised with the leg room and how I didn't feel claustrophobic with the amount of glass around me, comfortable for an hour-long drive to the show. The quarter lights in these Australian spec Minis are a game changer, especially in hot weather like that afternoon.

Both cars received a fair bit of attention being displayed at the show, I underestimated the weather and did get sunburnt on my neck, but it was a very enjoyable time regardless. I'll post my spots from that show on a seperate thread if anyone else wants to see them, I thought I could create my own thread so I don't dump hundreds of photos on the lazy spotters thread.

I think I am being stalked by a car… went for a run trying to clear the last of the lurgy out of my system. The last time I attempted a run I spotted this
beside a nice looking farina shaped Cambridge/Oxford was the ex @HMC @sdkrc  @RetroShite Limo. 
 
On my latest run I stopped to take a picture of the Water of Leith, but didn’t see what was in the background until I got home…
In case this turns into some Christine type horror I’ve decided not to go for a run today in favour of coffee and a stolen Pop Tart 😂

Like that “blown turbo” came before “bulletproof”