yes oui si

I have been compared to Jesus, it's true.  If he let himself go and enjoyed crisps a bit too much.

The Chinese can make high quality parts, the problem is that Western consumers won't pay proper money for them.

I own a MK4 Golf and I like it.

Congrats to @grogee for guessing correctly.
Meet my latest financial burden. 1988 Mitsubishi Colt GLX 1500.

Anyone moaning about this should ask their grandparents about when daveb47 had the keys, the site randomly went down for days and days on end with no real explanation other than sob stories about how he was doing it all as a volunteer and it was very upsetting to be asked to be competent, featuring bonus donation tin rattling.
Having a couple to a few hours downtime, publicised well in advance, in order to upgrade the site for real operational reasons, is nothing for people to be wittering about.
Kids today, etc.

I hadn't done any welding in a while so spent a few hours over the last couple of days welding this Lada.


 
Outer sill was very frilly and inner sill wasn't much better. I rebuilt the inner sill then welded on a new outer I'd purchased last year.

 
After that I finished some bits around the b-pillar and around the rear arch.

 
I trial fitted some wheels but can't decide whether to fit them to this or the other Lada.
 

 
The other Lada is already lowered so might pull off the wheels better.
 

Good luck! 

Ive got to say i just dismissed the p38 as junk but basically its nicer to drive, less rot prone and WAY cheaper than a classic, and also more unusual than an L322. As those age they are throwing up their own issues (weirdly they seem more rot prone than a p38)

Well, replacing the sunroof seems to have fixed the leak, no water making its way into the car anymore! The alarm doesn't seem to randomly go off either after unplugging the bonnet sensor (naturally with me writing this it now will at 4am tomorrow), it might have just decided to expire right around the time I installed the new headliner. I won't plug it in anytime soon either to prove my theory...
I celebrated the occasion by finally cleaning the interior properly, messy footwells begone!


I'm still looking for an original beige driver side floor mat, the car did come with one but it literally desintegrated after having been submerged for a year. Naturally most of them are long worn out nowadays.


As controversial as it may have been originally, I think this is still a good looking car. I'm not sure if I'm going to tackle any of its remaining issues anytime soon (the only really urgent thing is a potential small leak in the powersteering cooler), everything else planned really are just minor niggles or retrofitting a few options like electric blinds and soft-close which it didn't come with originally, which can wait.

With the 7-Series out of the drive the Senator is back. Thanks to @24vdiamond I finally have a replacement for the faded bonnet badge, something I wanted to get sorted since I got the car in 2017:

Not sure if the bonnet ever received a respray but the glue of the badge certainly stood the test of time. Naturally the badge crumbled to pieces trying to get it off:

I'm not sure if its just me but I'm fairly sure the two locating holes aren't perfectly level.

New badge installed.

It may seem like a small thing but badges on a car just complete the design for me, which is one of the reasons I don't get debadging, people are turning their cars into more generic versions of  the designer's intent. The Opel Blitz might not be the most prestigous logo but it finally completes the look after so many years. Now I just need treat that corner trim to look black again.

It's not unlikely that we will reach an agreement with the vendor of the house mentioned further above tomorrow. Should that happen I will start having to advertise the Audi. I'll also have to get my shit together and sort the fuel supply issue on the S-Class Coupe thats been waiting in the background for some action for the last 3 months, and reinstall the front suspension on the W140 behind it, which has been on axle stands for a year now. I'll probably have about 2-3 months to sort all of this so I'm starting to feel the heat!

What I'm more amazed about that photo is not the photo. It's the fact that it's hosted on a Photobucket account that someone has actually paying them for to not have the watermarking. 

The only possible way to make this better is if @KruJoe walks round his garden 4,000 times to raise money for PWA (pleasure wagon awareness) then mysteriously ends up with a big fuck off conservatory on the side of his house. 

RIP, it's gone to heaven with Diana and all the angles. Let it be her Maj's and Sir Captain Tom's passion wagon now.

Yes indeed. Yesterday it definitely made the difficult decision for us. It's a sad end, but it has brought the world much joy. Eg:

I will reshare the pictures as I continue to find them. 

TL;DR the site will go for some major maintenance this coming Friday afternoon/evening. I’ll figure exact times closer to the point. Expect a few hours downtime when this is all going on.
The current server setup has been online for nearly half a decade and in computing world, that’s an actual lifetime. It has had a good innings but it’s coming to end of life.
Not only is the server operating system getting close to not being no longer receiving security updates (end of June 2024 is the cut off) but the underlying server hardware is pretty old technology now. I suspect the hosting provider has chocked that server full of other clients and hammering it hard too. Both reasons are very likely why things seem to go really slow at times and you may on occasions get that very frustrating 502 Bad Gateway errors when trying to access parts of the site. This occurs when the site takes too long to generate a page and times out (around 30 seconds). 
Ultimately, we need to migrate to a new server and do it soon. Hopefully it will eliminate those errors. Of course I can’t guarantee for certain those errors will completely go away but I fully expect them to. Likewise, its important we move to continue getting the latest security updates to keep the site stable and secure.
To use an analogy, previous recent updates have been the oil and tyre changes on the bus. This is basically a whole new bus where the branding/customisations need to be reapplied.
A few months ago in the background, I have built up and started testing a new server enviroment. Some may have seen the previous announcement a few months ago about the testing site at https://autoshitetesting.co.uk - thanks everyone who checked out and gave it a poke. The server that this site is on will become the new server the forum will live on (will still stay as autoshite.com when fully live). This is the latest version of our Server Operating System (Debian) and should give us security support till the end of June 2028. The hardware is the latest technology in CPU, memory and disks. These all should offer multiple times the performance of the existing server setup. I’ve jigged things around so hopefully it will keep it to around the same monthly hosting cost despite the increase in performance.
It’ll take a good few hours to copy all the data from the old to the new and then make the switch. I don’t expect any major hiccups but there maybe a few kinks that may need ironing out once live too. I’m hoping that most machines should pickup the new server IP address automagically and we won’t lose anyone along the way. I’ll try putting up a site somewhere else that we can still provide support if things go wrong (probably https://autoshitetest.co.uk). So note that down now.
I’ve been wanting to do this for a while and have had everything roughly in-place, but I’ve needed to find time to finish this off and go live. Life has been busy for me recently and I’ve needed to find a good slot. Not just a few hours but possibly a day or two if things go really awry. I certainly don't expect any issues (otherwise I wouldn't be kicking this off!) but I need to budget contingency as its a major switch with a few unknowns.
The aim is for possibly Friday afternoon/evening to kick this off. I can’t say exact times yet but hopefully can say closer to the time.
I like being on here as much as many of you do and this work is needed to keep this forum all hunky-dory.
I'll leave this thread unlocked for now if anyone has any questions or concerns on this.

Pictured here beside my neighbour's MK2 Polo* 
The size difference is interesting


*The Polo is owned by a young lad across from us, who inherited it from his grandfather, and he's been running it as a daily for a couple of years now. In honour of his grandad he will not restore it or 'improve' it at all, choosing to keep the mismatched wheel trims and missing trim bits as they were when his grandad had it. He's only done essential mechanical jobs, such as welding, carburettor overhaul and head gasket. I have mentioned autoshite to him before, I think he'd fit it well here! 

After the TY175, it'll be the E28 on for a "Shite Giveaway"

P38 now has full oem rear underlay/ carpeting fitted . The underlay is rubber/ foam backed and has made quite a difference to the interior noise levels. 
I went for a walk along a disused railway with a misbehaving beagle and got a picture of the p38, and its reputation.

Which on the basis of my experience so far, is unfounded.

VK51 FPC Has passed MOT, needed Track Rod end and rear suspension arm bush.
 
Job Done
 
I love this car!!

 

Want. 

Well, wire brushing, and a load of black waxoil (the parts shop sold me spray on copper grease, what a horrible mess that makes) and...

Not sure whether to sell it now. Hmm.

I have brushed them with a wire brush, but it seems I have no grease or black underseal lurking so I'll have to get some in the morning.
The rattly exhaust is the heatshield that's dropped because a corner has corroded where it fits on. WD40 on that then a BIG WASHER. I can see a couple of bits of surface rust on the floor so I'll treat those 'one day' if I don't sell the car. It does seem to be SLK season on Autoshite again.

I could use some tiny axle stands to feel comfortable, but I think these should be okay wire brushed and greased - for now? I reckon the tester wouldn't suggest it if they looked too bad.


Definitely not the worst SLK I've seen!

My car groans a bit from the suspension and gearbox, more so when the weather is cold. This week I had the radio turned down listening for these noises and it seems to have developed a new one that sounds like a bearing and doesn't go when warmed up as most seem to. First thought is the propshaft centre bearing but that was replaced not long ago so I guess I will have to stick it on the ramp and have a nosey and see if I need to get a shift on and make the other car roadworthy. 

Major problems on this one are the SBC fault and leaking air springs, both cars Mot's run out at similar times so I was hoping to leisurely repair this one, Mot in the last 28 days then retire the other one as a supplier of parts and swap all the newer parts over in time.
I'm still not keen on the beige interior, l like the tan & dark grey Designo on the current one that also has parking sensors and electro hydraulic tailgate. An interior swap would involve changing the dash and headlining as they are different colours and there is a parkometer in the rear headliner. That would make retrofitting the tailgate hydraulics easier if the wiring can be fitted and then coded in along with the parking sensors.
The newer car has a memory drivers seat, I expect that could be coded out and the multi-contour Designo seats fitted but I'm wondering if I could build a multi-contour memory drivers seat out of the two being a glutton for punishment! Seems a shame to lose all the memory options.

So it’s been a good couple of weeks since floodgate on the BMW and I’ve been using it regularly with no issues. 
 
Drove to the NEC and back today 140 miles each way with no issues sat at 52MPG and ate the miles up lovely so we’ll take that as a “it must be fine” 🙌