Craig the Princess

Fitted the starter and rectified the issues left by the clutch replacement.
Had a good long road test with my youngest,  we've discovered that the A/c doesn't work and the cutting out issue still exists.  I'm suspecting either crank sensor or fuel pressure regulator. 
Here's a cool, fat, fella with his latest crap car...

Well,  it was fairly cheap given the current market and it isn't totally ditched inside...
The positives stop there really;  it's small, diesel and has only one key. 
Oh yes and it cuts out when driven -  and the starter motor is Nafferton Athletic. 

I shall be dragging it home later in the week all being well.

@Kiltox is our resident expert on these matters, but I would assume so, given that Renault can't / won't actually replace a Fluence battery if it sharts itself now, so the lease agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on.
That's almost close enough to get back to mine on a charge, and it's almost cheap enough to be tempting...

Not really news but Adrian Flux remain absolute gits. And now charge 38% APR for monthly payment on insurance!

Took the MG down to the FOD yesterday.  It wasn't really floppytop weather - well it was when I left home but it'd turned tae shite by the time I got to Milton Keynes - but the car hadn't had a good run in a while.  It managed the 270-mile round trip without a hitch, and when I got home the oil and coolant were both at the same level and the same colour as when I left.  Great day out as always, culminating in a ride out in a vintage Rolls Royce, although I did manage to lose my drone which was annoying.
Today I fitted a new fuel pump to the Visa.

Relatively straightforward job once I'd found a socket and extension small enough to fit down the gap behind the oil cooler.  Access isn't brilliant and my magnet-on-a-stick came in very useful both for retrieving the nuts after they'd been removed and, once the new pump was on, getting them far enough onto the studs so that the socket could take over.  A run to Tesco confirmed that the new pump is pumping as it should, although I had to abort the first attempt as the battery light came on and I lost all lights and indicators - I turned round and headed for home where it turned out that it was just a multiplug near the battery that had come unplugged, so that was an easy fix.  Great success.
Then I had a crack at doing the front brakes on the Ampera.

Shiny new disc and shiny new pad, so one might be forgiven for assuming another great success, but annoyingly one would be assuming incorrectly.  Everything came apart relatively easily (the caliper bolts were a twat but I expected that) and even the old disc came away with a few taps with a hammer, but the brake pads I'd bought off eBay don't fit.  Well the outer pad does but the inner one doesn't, it can just about be persuaded into place with a hammer but then it's stuck fast.  I tried filing it but my file didn't seem to be making much of an impression - I might stick it in the vice and give it a quick tickle with a 40-grit flap wheel tomorrow, or I might just bite the bullet and get a set of (hopefully) better fitting pads from the motor factors.  The thing that's making me hesitate is that the old inner pad appeared to have been sticking as well, given that it looked like this:

and the inner face of the disc was scored to buggery.  The caliper itself is fine - the slider pins move freely and the piston pushed back in with no problem at all - it was just the pad failing to move within the clips.  I need to get it sorted fairly pronto though as I'm supposed to be driving the car down to Somerset on Friday, although obviously I can take the Rover if all else fails.

Collectioning has ensued. It's brown.
She's running like a dream so far. One quick pez stop (not pictured) and now just paused for a quick check over before we hit the motorway. 
I'm in love. 
Better pics to come later. 

Model S, 3, X and Y
Because Sexy
What a cunt Musk is.
I find they're often driven by people who have never owned a car with any performance before so don't have a fucking clue how to use it and how it affects others.
Aye, all very good that you can do 0-60 in 2 seconds but if you can't go round a corner faster than a Kangoo with the wrong engine in it then fuck right off

In my case I've been dealing with chronic fatigue syndrome since my late teens.  Prior to getting COVID it was something that would occasionally kick me in the balls if I over-stretched myself a bit, and would result in the occasional crash.  It wasn't something requiring daily monitoring.
Now though it's serious enough that I really do need to plan out every day to at least some extent and have contingencies in place in case I run out of steam.

Bollocks

Worst part of it is that I actually quite like the fucker so I’ll have to spend the money on fixing it 😅

For the first (and no doubt last) time in my life I can genuinely say I've been to Mercedes to pick my car up.
 
Expectations

 
Vs reality
 

 
It's been in for one recall that turned out to be three: Cruise control (they've been known to stick on), front seat belt clips and some sort of pipe brackety thing.
 
Disappointingly, it's not the worst they've seen ('far from it') and they didn't give me a full tank of petrol or £85,000 off a new AMG. They had some absolutely MEGA motors in the showroom: hate new cars all you like, but if I had the spondulicks I'd be in Merc's showroom first. 

I finally got something done today that I've been meaning to do for a while:

My serial-Jag-bothering neighbour pulled up earlier in a late metallic red X-Type.  Which surprised me as the last time I saw him he was driving a metallic brown 3-litre diesel XF, which he'd paid quite a lot of money for.  Turns out he'd got so pissed off with the XF going wrong and having to spend money on it that he'd decided to cut his losses and stuck it in the auction.  Moral of the story is, if you're going to buy a modern Jag buy a cheap one, as you'll lose less money when it inevitably sharts itself.
The X-Type is rather nice to be fair, as X-Types go.  2.2 diesel auto and looked to be top of the range, with touch screen sat nav etc.

Long story short, I work for BCA appraising cars and in our particular branch we deal with a lot of We Buy Any Car detritus which usually means an endless line of Qashqais, Jukes and Picassos in various stages of knackered day in day out. The upside to this being that we also get some incredible high end stuff in, and more interestingly to people like us, very low end stuff too.
One such car was this 1995 Hyundai Accent which rolled into the hangar to a series of jeers back in February. From a distance it looked bloody awful, the paint was flaking off in chunks and it was about 10 different shades of pink, however upon closer inspection I realised that it was possibly a bit of a rough diamond. A look inside revealed that it had done 26k from new, everything worked fine and upon appraisal other than the obvious paint damage there wasn't much to report beyond a couple of parking dings.
Needless to say, I was smitten and knew I would have to be the one to save it. For those who don't know, BCA sell exclusively to the trade and unfortunately stuff like this which has little to no market value usually becomes landfill which was something I couldn't let happen. As I say, BCA is strictly trade, which means purchasing as an employee isn't as easy as you might think, various hoops have to be jumped through but after a number of interactions with confused higher ups the red tape was cleared and my bid was submitted. 
A day later I got news that unsurprisingly my bid had been the only one and that once I'd paid up I was free to take it when I was ready. Brilliant news. I knew as soon as I saw it this car that it needed saving and that's just what I'd done. A few days later I took it home, parked it up... and then promptly did nothing with it for months. This was the issue, now I'd saved it, what do I do with it? I have a perfectly good daily driver and realistically it didn't make financial sense to spend any money on restoring it. 
So that was it really, that is until May came around. I'd got a few days off for my birthday and wrangled a ticket to the Retro Rides Weekender. The plan was to drive down in my Rover 75 Tourer, sleep in that and enjoy a no fuss weekend. But then the cheeky little Accent started winking at me. Could I really trust a car I'd basically never driven to do a 400 mile round trip and get me there and back safely? Well, the answer was a resounding yes. It didn't really like doing more than 60 but for a car that had seemingly rarely left London, that wasn't too surprising and if you let it set its own pace it bundled along quite happily. Surprisingly it got a great response at Retro Rides too, getting lots of smiles and comments and confirmed to me that I'd made a good decision, even if I still wasn't quite sure why I owned it. 
After that it went back and forth to work a couple of times when the 75 was out of duty and I found myself beginning to enjoy its simplicity and cheerful manner and I slowly began to realise that not only was I going to be the one who saved it, but also the one that was going to preserve it, regardless of any sense it made financially. This was confirmed when we took it to Festival of the Unexceptional a couple of weeks ago where again it got an amazing response and more than one offer to buy it which were promptly but politely knocked back. 
So, what's the plan? Well essentially get it painted really. It honestly doesn't really need much else, but the paint is totally beyond repair and being such a great colour it seems a shame to not get it back to its former glory. Other than that the only other problem areas are the plastics which are unfortunately beginning to perish and crumble meaning things like inner door handles all need sourcing and replacing. 
As for historical significance, I'm not sure these cars will ever have much to a wider audience, however to a niche audience such as ours its worth noting that this is a launch year car since the Coupe didn't arrive until 1995 making this one of, if not the oldest remaining survivor in the UK. It is also as far as I know a one owner car and seemingly didn't venture far from where it was sold in Muswell Hill, though unfortunately I stupidly forgot to take note of the previous owners address on the old V5 as it would have been nice to let them know it had been saved.
So yeah, that's it really. Work on the paint should hopefully begin in the winter ready to get it back out for shows and events in the spring and I hold out hopes that it will be deemed good enough once finished to enter into the FOTU concourse which is really my big aim for the car. Here's to my impending financial ruin.

As it appeared in the hangar.

The one good bit of paint and closest to the actual colour.

The evening I received the keys.

Retro Rides prep.

Made it there and back with no drama.

Enjoying Festival of the Unexceptional.

At French stock car racing today...
Extreme cruelty to small cars...

Got the rear door stripes painted back on and the interior trim reinstalled.  Looks loads better for it.  Not much to go now.


The black tape on the front doors?  Yeah... to celebrate the driver's door corner fell off because it was a massive chunk of filler.  Frankly amazed it clung on for as long as it did.  Not to worry, front doors are next on my welding hit list with this one anyway, just a case of waiting for weather, work, and free time to line up so I can get them done.  Hopefully whoever takes this on after me won't have much to do on the welding front, certainly nothing serious as far as I'm aware.  Once I've done the doors I can get the better dashboard and centre console fitted.  Also learned that Volvo Dark Grey 228 looks to be a reasonable match for Flint interiors, not a perfect match, but certainly close enough to spruce up tired and faded items without them looking too out of place.

Ahhh shit. I own a Volvo SUV… and I swapped an estate for it.
I’m the problem aren’t I. 
 
 
I do love my XC90, I’d still prefer an estate in my heart. 

The idea of a Volvo estate being hard to park/manoeuvre is ridiculous. Try reverse parking a 240/940/850 wagon and then do the same in a 2 foot shorter last gen Fiesta without parking sensors and see which one makes you sweat.  And if it all goes tits-up? Well....Volvo bumpers.


I've  given up trying to be interested in cars, well new ones at least. We're going to be fed nothing  but a constant stream of near identical 3 ton EV SUVs in the future and I can't work up a single spark of enthusiasm for them.

why thank you, good sir !
have an action shot for your trouble 

I've been away for a while but that is absolutely stunning.  

I drove a  Ampera when they were new, seemed strange at the time. 
 

Oooh an Ampera! Remember talking about these at Shitefest. Well bought, and I’ll watch with interest! 

This is what I've bought, if anyone's interested. 

Probably of more interest from an AS perspective is this Dutch-registered beauty I passed on the A1 

couple of nice easy jobs today - mirror, screens and grill refitted

 

The Saab of many shiters is currently having the head gasket done. The mechanic said the timing belt was holding on by thoughts and prayers alone.
 
Once I've spent a load on that I'll have an un-MoTed car with a broken roof.