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tooSavvy

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    tooSavvy reacted to Rust Collector in I'll get round to it at some point - Finishing starting   
    It's definitely on my hit list to check it as there's a possibility it was disturbed when I removed the throttle body recently. I've managed to dig out the relevant readings from the service manual which I can check with my diagnostic kit hopefully.
  2. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to Rust Collector in I'll get round to it at some point - Finishing starting   
    At the weekend I was sent out in the Mercedes estate to pick up some storage units by my Mrs. Our lives seem to revolve around not sleeping and buying things to store toys in currently.
    Whilst on this mission, I drove down a ramp into the car park of the flats I was visiting...
    CRUNCH.
    That'll be the radiator carriage torn off again. For fuck's sake.
    One positive is that it's given me an excuse to insure the Pontiac again at massive expense, because I need* to use that as my daily now. The Mercedes is still technically driveable, but you can hear the radiator flapping about which doesn't instil confidence.
    I'll take the radiator out the Mercedes at some point and do a proper job of welding the carriage back in this time. Fuck knows why it struggles with clearance so much though, the spring perches appear to be fine and my last S210 didn't used to ground out constantly. I should really get a longer pair of front springs.
    No updates on the Lexus, it's still useable as long as you avoid full throttle so we've just been driving around the problem. I'm all ears to anyone's suggestions though - to recap, it's massively down on power when you open the throttle fully, and if you do it whilst rolling (for example to overtake, or speed up after someone else manoeuvres) then it bogs down completely, there's a massive backfire and then it springs to life again 😥
    For now I'll resume trundling about in the Pontiac and trying not to think about the growing list of problems elsewhere...
  3. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to Rust Collector in I'll get round to it at some point - Finishing starting   
    Catch up time then.
    Since my last post, child number 2 has arrived. This means that I theoretically have less time, but also I’m on paternity leave so I sort of have more time. This is possibly man maths in action.
    However, it does mean that today I had some time to look at the Lexus.
    Between now and my last post I removed the old starter and tested both.


    So it turns out the solenoid on the old one was bad, it only throws a couple of mm. I’ll take it apart at some point and have a look at its guts to see if it can be brought back to life.
    The new* starter then went in.

    In hindsight, life would’ve been much easier if I had of taken the coolant cross pipe off. I didn’t though, and I endured misery for the sake of saving draining a bit of coolant and buying two gaskets. Possibly a poor life choice, but here we are.
    Whilst I was in here I decided to take a look at the non functioning inlet butterfly thingies. The car was showing the check engine light due to a fault on these. The vacuum gubbins below control them.

    Some testing with a pump and a power probe showed that this solenoid was fuckulated.


    I ordered China’s finest* £20 replacement and waited, then fitted it once it landed. It verks!


    I then spent about 50 million pounds on a pair of inlet gaskets.

    This brings us up to today, where I put everything back together. In true Haynes spirit, refitting was the reverse of removal. Luckily* I took no photos as I took it apart, and removal happened weeks ago and my memory is shit. Fortunately, Japanese cars seem to be put together fairly logically, and I managed to put it back together by basically playing Lego. At the end I had no fasteners left over, and I didn’t put anything together in the wrong order which was a bit of a shock.

    Ive left the dress up plastic cover off until it proves to me that I don’t have to go back in there.
    The moment of truth then:

    She fired up first go, sans check engine light. That’s the result we wanted!
    Remove the towing eye of shame!


    You can barely* tell I’ve been in there.
    I took it for a test drive, and I was a bit deflated.
    The car was hesitating badly, and the gear shift was incredibly delayed. The brakes were awful, pulsing and grabbing. The car felt shit to drive.
    Ive taken it out again now it’s quiet and thrown it around the country lanes driven it under a range of conditions. The Italian tune up seems to have cured the hesitation and delayed shifts, it’s nice and responsive now. I also visited the stretch of road that I bed brakes in on, and I’ve given the brakes some abuse to get the shite off them and they’re now applying smoothly. The car feels nice to drive again.
    To wrap up, this job was a bit of a slog but definitely worthwhile. I’m glad to have the car back in operation again, as despite being a V8 barge it’s actually very practical and more importantly it’s really enjoyable to drive. I’m looking forward to being able to use it again!
    The only downside to finishing this is that now I have no excuse not to crack on with finishing the XM and the Lada…
  4. Haha
    tooSavvy reacted to Rust Collector in I'll get round to it at some point - Finishing starting   
    They were already bent so I didn’t feel too guilty about chucking the stands under there and I wasn’t going under it so wasn’t too stressed about it falling. I’d normally find somewhere solid underneath like you say, but it was dark and pissing down so fuck rolling around on the floor to have a look 😅
  5. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to egg in eBay tat volume 3.   
    https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/769791874786783/



  6. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to Rocket88 in Can we have a little chat about the Vauxhall 10/4?   
    I ran one of these as a daily…. Brilliant things

  7. Like
    tooSavvy got a reaction from DirtyDaily in How bad a decision can one make - XJR edition   
    @DirtyDaily... My Hero
    *Standing in my toasty kitchen...
    Nice Mottah M9 👍
    🚙💨
  8. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to Peter C in 1987 Ford Sierra Sapphire 1.8L - Bumpers sorted, I think - see page 19   
    I left the adjustable nozzle on, set it to spray a fine texture, it worked a treat.
  9. Sad
    tooSavvy reacted to cobblers in 1987 Ford Sierra Sapphire 1.8L - Bumpers sorted, I think - see page 19   
    Yep that's the stuff we use.
     
    Silicone is really a nightmare, even a tiny bit hangs around and will ruin any paint finish that "flows" as it knackers the surface tension, like a single drop oil on a lake causes a flat spot 30m in diameter.
    A local bodyshop was more or less put out of business about ten years ago when a disgruntled customer smashed a little window and pierced a few cans of trim shine and threw them in, every job that was in progress had to be re-started, and they were getting defects for months/years!
  10. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to lesapandre in The new news 24 thread   
    As an aside the BBC reports that "as District Judge Daniel Sternberg disqualified the Tory environmentalist from driving, he warned that drivers who speed "emit more harmful emissions" even in hybrid and electric cars."
    Interesting legal point there - that the judge is taking in the whole scope of these limits in his consideration of the offence ie not just the danger aspect.
    Of course the admonishment may have been directed with some irony at Zac Goldsmith as a prominent "environmentalist" driving an electric car.
    But the jist of the judgment is that some limits are indeed there to protect the environment overall. 
    Interesting point of law bought out there.
  11. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to Spottedlaurel in The new news 24 thread   
    Earlier tonight I had to go and collect four youngsters who'd been enjoying St Patrick's Day drinks nearby. It seemed only right to use the Carina E, a natural for such taxi duties? Made a bit of a discovery on the way:

    I knew the HRW worked OK, with every element still doing its thing - not bad for an old estate car. As it was a bit damp I thought I'd give the other switch a try, which I believe is for a heated element or two in the front screen. I don't know whether it did anything in that regard, I think it's more intended for snow/frost, but I discovered that's how the heated door mirrors are operated. Everything else I've had with heated mirrors they just work off the HRW switch, and I'd just assumed they didn't work any more. Result!
    Perhaps even better was that there was no vomiting, so I didn't have to apply penalty charges.....
  12. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to cort1977 in The new news 24 thread   
    Saab back in service today after time off over the winter. Got down to Edinburgh no problem but a few issues appearing, oil leak now joined by power steering leak and a general baggy feel means a few new bushes are in its future. Still not bad for 220k and 32 years old though.

  13. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to Joey spud in The new news 24 thread   
    I recently bought an old Casio watch off eBay, one that I've always hankered after but when it arrived it didn't have the crisp clean dial of the one on the listing but a rather cloudy one instead.

    It's like over the years a dusting of the luminous coating has transferred to the back of the crystal. So today after watching a YouTube clip of an American chap sitting on his bed successfully pull a similar watch apart I had a bash at taking the mechanism out of mine and giving it a clean up.


    A bit of Tesco's finest glass cleaner and a soft cloth and it's come up like new again.
  14. Agree
    tooSavvy reacted to Talbot in 1964 Volvo 122S - Amazonian rustforest. Upgrades.   
    Bcoz Sprotscar.
    I think this is fast becoming the car with the most difference between "how it looks" and "how it is mechanically"
  15. Agree
    tooSavvy reacted to brownnova in ULEZ Expansion Solution* - Skoda Estelle , Czech it out   
    I get exactly the same, especially when I see restored Yugos… 
  16. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to DirtyDaily in How bad a decision can one make - XJR edition   
    Unusual update.
    So I've bought another XJR. 500 mile round trip in the range rover which is such a good tow car and I'm really glad I got it. This one is FAR nicer than the one I have however it is on 176k miles. When I first found this one I thought I'm going to steal a "few" parts off of it to make mine nice. Having seen it in the flesh it is WAY to nice to do that to it. It's got a running issue which I believe is down to some serious botchery by a mechanic who last worked on it. See pictures for a hacked up o2 sensor wiring, hard to see but the mechanic has chopped off the connectors and put a house block connector in. Completely exposed to the elements. Predictably it is showing codes for this.
    Has a slight oil leak but I think it's from the drain plug so easy fix with a service. Other than that it's been fastidiously maintained by a proper enthusiastic owner. See bill for £7.7k when he bought it.
    So, get running right, fix leak, MOT and then decide if I want to keep this one or my original one. One of them will be going up for sale and I will of course offer it up on here. Either way it'll be the cheapest XJR in the country.
  17. Agree
    tooSavvy reacted to hairnet in The new adventures of brownnova! An ode to a Volvo…   
    Nuffink rong wiv it
  18. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to juular in 1964 Volvo 122S - Amazonian rustforest. Upgrades.   
    Some more stuff tackled. Trying to keep in my head all of the things I thought about fixing while on the Rustival trip. Writing notes? How quaint! Just stay awake at night trying to sift through jumbled thoughts until 3AM.
    It would probably be good to sort out the broken headlights.  Brief recap. A few weeks ago I fitted a latching relay which allowed me to control the full beam entirely through the flasher stalk instead of the antiquated floor switch. This worked brilliantly until it didn't.  Turns out that £3 of Chinese "INDUSTRIAL CONTROL" electronics aren't suited for, you know,  anything.  So the PCB basically melted (it wasn't even carrying notable current).  Before the Rustival trip I simply reinstated the floor dip switch to get us on the road.
    Turns out I wasn't wrong to try and get rid of the floor switch because as soon as it got dark, I went to switch between main and dip on a dual carriageway and lost all headlights. We pulled into a layby, consulted the wiring diagram, and crimped a couple of wires together so that we had headlights (but no mains).
    Time to fix that permanently.  
    The solution here is to use a 'proper' relay, in this case one designed for an old VW bus / beetle. The relay number is DNI 0127. There are also Meyle and Durite equivalents, so they are easily come by.
    Step 1, remove floor switch and hurl it into the depths of the garden.
    Step 2, crimp spades on the end of the wires to the floor switch.  Also tee-solder the smaller red wire into the bigger one, as that's more structurally sound than crimping two wires into one spade.

    Step 3, RELAY

    Here is the pinout.

    And here is what that looks like in real life.

    Step 4 : Replace the fuse you blew because you forgot to disconnect the battery, and touched the permanent +12V against the metal dash. Oh wait, there's no continental fuses left..  

    So it turns out this lighting setup is even better than the one I set up previously with the INDUSTRIAL CONTROL relay.  
    - When the dipped headlights are off, the flasher stalk operates as a main beam flasher.
    - When the dipped headlights are on, the flasher stalk toggles the main beam on and off like a modern car.
    - The relay also serves the purpose of being a relay for both the mains, flasher and dipped.  So it takes away the load from the light switch, provides full current to the headlights (brighter!)  plus it means I can remove the flasher relay and wiring in the engine bay as it is no longer required.
    So far this seems a far more robust and efficient setup, time will tell.
    Engine and gearbox mounts replaced.  The gearbox one was particularly hanging and the propshaft was bouncing off the bottom of the transmission tunnel.

    A set of high performance air filters attached.  The purpose being twofold. The generic SU HS6 pancakes I had on would sometimes smack against the clutch master cylinder reservoir on hard cornering or acceleration.  I also felt they were strangling the engine as they were so thin and miserable looking.  These by comparison are offset specifically to fit the Amazon, and are significantly more chunky.

     
    Y THO   |  Y THO

     
    Test drove this and was quite impressed.  The wishbone poly bushes have sharpened up the steering a fair bit. The engine and gearbox mounts have changed the gearshifts significantly, and overdrive seems to snick on in a much more dignified fashion. 
    A little bit of the induction roar from the pancakes has actually disappeared, but it still sounds great when opened up. I'll take it.
    Next up, I'll be fitting the sports exhaust, more polybushes, and doing a number of electrical upgrades to make it more reliable.
  19. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to warninglight in 1964 Volvo 122S - Amazonian rustforest. Upgrades.   
    Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

  20. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to juular in 1964 Volvo 122S - Amazonian rustforest. Upgrades.   
    Made it!

  21. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to juular in 1964 Volvo 122S - Amazonian rustforest. Upgrades.   
    Detailing, furiously detailing


     
  22. Haha
    tooSavvy reacted to juular in 1964 Volvo 122S - Amazonian rustforest. Upgrades.   
    Detailing

  23. Like
    tooSavvy reacted to loserone in 😎.. SavvGetzWiththeprogram   
    At some times of year you will struggle to drive 5 miles here without flattening a rabbit.  
  24. Agree
    tooSavvy reacted to Dyslexic Viking in ❗❗🚨 Major Autoshite Server Maintenance and Downtime - Completed 🚨❗❗   
    Yes, it makes sense and is understandable even to me. And the increase in image size has made the forum much better so thanks for that and all the good work you do here it is appreciated.
  25. Like
    tooSavvy got a reaction from MorrisItalSLX in eBay tat volume 3.   
    @MorrisItalSLX.. there's a tatty 'Countryman' estate (met red..🤔) monte knocking about Wallsend.
    🚙💨
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