yes oui si

There's only one though.  Your clearly wearing a Russian hat in the first pic. 

I meant an A2

I passed one whilst sat in @gms Exocet, just after he went over that humpbacked bridge… 😳

I keep passing a brown one just outside Alston

The company MG4 is now giving a 300 mile range fully charged , apart from taking a whack while parked ( company fixed with our charging my excess ) it's been perfect .... All for £15 quid a month car tax ...work even pay for charging 

It certainly will…it’s back at the workshop now where the head will be removed next week and sent for testing and skimming before being rebuilt and thrown into use 🙂

Think I’ve lost a bit of trim coming out of Pately Bridge though…I heard a bang from under my side and assumed I’d run over a bit of wood or something 🤬

In other news, the object of the collection has indeed been collected.
Currentiy 10 miles in at McDs for coffee and all is fairly well so far. The heater is still heating so we’ll stock up on water and caffeine before hitting the A1 again 👍

If you haven’t worked out what it yet, it’s very burgundy in here… 😂

It certainly wasn’t!!
The great news is I’ve discovered I fit comfortably in an Exocet so I have no need to bother welding my NA up now! 😂

That. Is. Fucking. Mental.

Ftfy 😂

Phase 1 completed, although Burnley is gridlocked for some reason so sustenance will have to wait until York. Train is due in 7 minutes and I’ve only just got here…

 
Claire is working from home today and one of the spaniels is laid under her desk and farting like a trooper so I’m glad I’m out of the way!
 

Haven’t washed this in weeks, it’s been used and abused but doing great. 
 
Im probably a bit weird but I actually prefer the look of most cars with roof bars fitted. I always buy a set for my cars as I often find myself moving random stuff so when I saw a set of genuine BMW ones on eBay the other day at a sensible price, I grabbed them. 
 
Must give it a wash soon.

@St.Jude Would it work better to arrange a mutually convenient time between you and those on here who know their way around these reasonably well and then do a teams call or similar? You could use your phone to show the relays/wiring and then could take advice live while you're at the car. I know trying to coordinate a time between you all isn't straightforward, but it could be way more effective to test things there and then, with advice on tap. 

I hope you at least read the advert thouroughly. 
 

 

I was given a minor concussion by a purple dildo whilst crashing in the halls at Oxford Brooks after seeing erstwhile British agit-rockers Pitchshifter, supported by Lostprophets. 

Ordered a replacement gas pedal for the BMW for 18 quid. It's probably the throttle body that's the actual issue but its worth a shot.
In Celsior news, the car finally received fresh brake fluid, pads, hoses and wear sensors this weekend. I've also done a few other minor jobs while in there and unfortunately revealed a little more carelessness by the bodyshop. Let the wrenching commence!
Front brakes first. I actually didnt end up using the caliper piston rebuild kits on the left, the pistons were still sliding back in nice and smoothly.

Well, I think we can say I got my money's worth out of those pads. I don't know when these got changed the last time but it certainly been a while considering the car didn't do that many miles in the last 15 years.

The loose wire in the left photo is the wear indicator sensor btw, for some reason whoever replaced the pads didn't know how to or didn't bother installing it again. This is also what I originally expected to be a cut ABS sensor wire a few years back btw, the sensor plugs into the wiring loom of the ABS sensor, bit of an odd design on early Celsiors.

Can't say these are the worst pads I've seen but we haven't had a look at the rear ones yet.

Quick look underneath to see where the minor exhaust leak is coming from. Like the exhaust shop said, one of the exhaust temp sensors is blowing, they tried to goop it up but no luck. Unfortunately impossible to buy now, not sure if it could get welded? I've also had a look at the O2 sensors and tried to measure their resistance. Well, it seems like there is infinite resistance which of course isn't right, it should be somewhere between 5.1-6.3 ohms at around room temperature. I unplugged them to see if it would make any difference to the way the car runs. It doesn't so new sensors it is!

The 135 quid Maxpeedingrods which I only bought to get the car through the MOT are holding up surprisingly well. I've greased them up before installing them so everything is still moving nicely. Unfortunately I just remembered while writing this that I should have put some fresh grease on them... I also found the source for my very noticeable front suspension clunking. I originally blamed the coilovers but its actually the front swaybar bushes that are so worn out that the swaybar can freely move from left to right. So new swaybar bushes are added to the shopping list. I've also fixed the messed up passenger side bumper corner I accidently caught on a wall. No photos yet but some hot air, a tactical ziptie and reinstalling a bumper bracket did wonders.
The rear is next. Working on an incline lifting a rear weel driven car is always fun.

If you are wondering why Im using different brands for pads and hoses compared to the front, so do I. I think they just ended up reducing the combined shipping costs when I ordered them from Rockauto like 2 years ago. Motul RBF600 is probably some of the best brake fluid you can get if pedal feel matters to you.

Yeah, I think its about time to replace those pads...

The disc is getting very thin as well so rear discs are added to the shopping list...

Certainly cutting it thin with these. The rears actually had the wear sensors properly in place, replacing this one finally got rid of the last (permanent) dash warning light. Unfortunately the passenger side rear caliper piston was really struggling getting pushed back in so I might need a new caliper there. I'm not sure how much extra I paid for the Bosch pads compared to the Beck/Arnley ones but they were certainly much more neatly packed and actually came with a sachet of brake grease. I used copper grease on the sliders for the front calipers instead.
About the bodyshop's carelessness mentioned further above:

The rear trailing arm bolt is completely loose, the nut was never tightened after the sill got welded there. Mistakes can happen but I'm really starting to get the feeling that things were just slapped together in the end to rush the car out the door. Something like this is pretty dangerous. I had to replace the nut (with a Mercedes one no less) as it wouldn't properly tighten anymore, I'll have to have another look the next time its on a lift though.

While having the wheels off I finally had a chance to raise the rear coilovers by 20mm to level out the car a bit better. I don't think its perfect yet but lowering the front should result in a nicely balanced stance.

Let me know what you think! The rear discs, swaybar bushes and O2 sensors will hopefully be the last few bits to make it mechanically solid. Being 32 years old now it'll probably always need something but any MOT relevant work should near with these 3 things soon.
Some bonus content, the Cadillac is finally moving again and received a wash. That immediately revealed the various paint defects it has, the photos are hiding them remarkably well fortunately!

Another big blue landyacht that will receive some more attention this summer.

Thanks for the advice, I'm still hoping to get a call back from the agent eventually because the sale did end up falling through (way too early for that at the moment though). The property was rare enough with the combination of price, seller's motivation, location and curb appeal that I can't imagine anything similar coming up anytime soon. We've been looking for over a year by now after all and our set of requirements are quite specific. But we'll see.
Quick update on the Celsior today. The new driver seat triggered a seatbelt warning after putting it in the car. Turns out even the seatbelt buckle is slightly different on the Celsior, it has 4 wires coming from it while the UK LS400 one only has two (which are used for the nighttime illumation of the buckle on both cars). The wiring loom of the seat is identical, it's really only the loom of the buckle thats different, very odd but an easy fix.

I finished (for now) polishing the bonnet as well. I could keep going forever to get it all perfect but a) I got enough after like 5 hours and b) my Halfords polisher died once and for all. That means it might be time soon to finally get a better polisher with more power that should hopefully speed things up significantly.
600 grid wetsanding to get the worst scratches out first:

1500 and 3000 grid discs next (thats where you really need to be careful to not burn through the clearcoat. In hindsight I didn't have to be nearly as careful as I was, the super close-up results probably would have been better.

Done. These photos were actually before I spent another 2 hours today polishing the paint further, daylight wont show all the fine scratches that would become very visible under streetlights.

It's probably still not perfect but the difference is like night and day. The before photo below was after me cleaning the hell out of the bonnet, including using the claybar that normally removes everything. I ended up having to sand the dirt off of it.


So yeah, there's the proof that you can polish a turd as long as there's some clearcoat left on it. The problem really is that damage over such a large area takes absolute ages to remove. A better polisher might make a difference but as of right now it would take days to really cover the entire car. It might save you a respray though.

Depending on when I get a replacement polisher I might have a go at saving the paint on the front bumper. Its mainly scuffs that should mostly come out. The rear bumper received such a piss poor respray at some point that there's little hope in rectifying that though. Next update is hopefully me figuring out what O2 sensors I need to order and finally doing a brake flush. I might even change the ancient pads and/or hoses.

A stock Chevette pisses all over a stock mk2 escort. 

Cornish Coastlines and Scottish Crabs is the name of my sex tape autobiography alt-folk band. 

Next was onto small service items. The car did seem a bit flat and felt a bit missy occasionally at times so start with plugs I guess. 

 
 

 

 
using the power of my sheepskin house slippers I was able to read the plugs in mystical ways and came to the conclusion that yes, I'm pretty sure it's about time that these be changed. 
 
Air filtre. 

 

 
Out with the old, in with the new. 
Also did the oil and filter and added a go slower sticker. 

 
Rear wiper improvements. 

 
 

 
 
 

Love the plate!

After my Mito was condemned due to rust, I decided to go old skool for its replacement - 50 mile drive home - goes spot on. Forgot the pez shot sorry 😎

I've still got two full rhd dashes left if you want to convert it,   I bought 5 as done a few now,  
They're very easy to convert and the mk1 is  easier again. 

Growing up there was one of these down my street. a 1.3 GL 4 door. Aged 10 you could keep your ferraris etc, what i really wanted was one of these. I absolutely loved them.
Back then they were cheap first cars (around 1990) couple of hundred quid and scrap it when the mot was up. That is assuming it hadnt dissolved already, or been crashed.
Then a strange thing happened. They vanished overnight and then slowly they started getting expensive. By the time i started driving they were not mega expensive, but just hard to find.
My route to a mk2 escort was avoid 2 door (££££££) avoid uk RHD (££££££ plus most heavily welded or rotten)
So here we have a solid LHD import 1.3GL which is being delivered next week…