Joey spud

This sad looking Fleetline that had been hit and then shunted against a wall back in 1978 was posted on a site recently. The story goes it was hit by a reversing fuel tanker. It was never repaired and got scrapped as it was due for withdrawal anyway. Surely as a twelve year old bus couldn't this have been a viable repair ?

Yep someone's done a jobby by in the Tardis again !

As posted elsewhere Boris did finally leave the back garden of my previous house and down the hill to his new home. But it was a tighter than expected squeeze to get him between my neighbours washing line pole and his garage wall. And I had to abandon the car in the neighbours front garden after Boris's condenser failed. I fitted two lamps just so he looked legal. The short run to my new abode was all down hill and it is hard to judge how he ran to be honest he was a bit jerky and needed plenty of choke to proceed which surprised me as I had let the engine warn up before I ventured out. Down at my new place he met up again with the Subaru which 100% will be back on the road next year. In-between new house stuff I have had little time to do anything much with him although I have been trying to improve his running. I can tweak the timing and set the carburettor mixture up so that he starts readily on choke and idles well once warm but when I go for a run out and go through the gears he starts to hold back after a minute or so and will only stay running on very light throttle like he isn't getting enough fuel. If I stop and idle for a minute he takes off again then repeats the holding back,fuel starvation antics. On one outting I kept driving until the engine cut,switched the ignition off a jumped out and removed the lid from the float bowl expecting it to be dry but it was full. The tank has plenty of fuel in it,the fuel caps venting ok and the SU fuel pump is fairly new and ticks nicely. The carb on him though is a eBay sourced bitsa,the tag says it was from a 1275cc A series and the code on the needle matches that too but I can wind the jet assy right down until it nearly runs out of threads and the engine still doesn't overfuel or choke up. Also I've noticed the four contacts in the distributor cap are wonky and so not parallel to the rotor arm when it passes them I don't think it's causing my loss of power problem mind. I have my suspicions that the carburettor is the culprit so I have acquired another later complete HS4 that was fitted to a mid seventies Marina to try when I get a moment. Also while out trying to get him running right I have noticed that there is a bit of a whine from the rear diff but only when you lift off and the supposedly rebuilt ford gear box sounds a bit agricultural too but I have no sound deadening,carpets,door cards or door weather seals fitted yet. And the front disc brakes work well but you do need to give a good shove on the pedal to slow down quickly so maybe I will fit a remote servo after all. Boris's is also going to have to live outside a little longer as his new home is still full of furniture and tat that we haven't sold,gifted or took to the tip yet.

My son has a much modified 300zx Nissan (really not my cup of tea) that has sat unused for about two years. Back in the summer it was started and wasn't happy so fresh fuel was added and it ran a bit better but then it choked up and stalled. When he tried to start it again the engine had now locked up. A bit of detective work involving removing the coils and spark plugs and trying to crank it over revealed it wasn't seized but no 5 cylinder was actually brimmed full of petrol that was now being ejected at great velocity onto my neighbours Kuga and cylinder 5 kept ejecting fuel even with the injector unplugged. I suspected the injector had stuck open where the car had been sat around for so long so it needed removing and testing. One of the injector hex screws was a doddle to undo but the other one required the intake assembly removing which looked a right faff. I've never had much success with grinding material away with Dremel type tools but my son had a genuine one so I set to and ground away a big chunk of inlet manifold to access the hidden hex screw. I gave the injector to my son who was going to get it tested/replaced but he was moving house at the time and lost it for a month or so then found it again and dropped it off a tuning company in Maidstone who also misplaced it for a while before finding it and declaring it perfectly serviceable. So fast forward to this week and a dry day presented itself yesterday so with new seals added the injector was refitted and the old thing fired up on 5-6 cylinders and sounded very top endy and smoked a bit out of one tail pipe. After more fresh E5 was added and the oil had got around the valve gear it came up onto six cylinders and quietened down nicely. It took a fair few runs up and down the village to clear the smoke from the exhaust but mostly it seems ok now. The worry is why did injector five fill its cylinder up with fuel then fix itself and will any of the other injectors decide to copy it later.

Add me in again please.

Just by the shows title and who the presenters were it was pretty obvious this program wasn't aimed at a fifty something white bloke in a shed. I have moved into the 21st century and got access to YouTube on my big telly and have come to the sudden realisation that there is very little on proper TV that I actually want to watch. I am currently enjoying the content from that Dom Chinea bloke off of The Repair Shop. He seems an affable guy who has a genuine love for all old rusty machinery and is currently rebuilding a right shed of a Porsche 356 (that'll take years) and also a 60's Triumph motorcycle that he's trying to keep its careworn appearance where possible but have it spot on mechanically. This is what I actually want to view.

As a kid I was also fascinated by the gearboxes on the 60's and 70's Atlantans I rode to school on. On a group for ex M+D staff there was a discussion going on about how various garages notably Gravesend and Tunbridge Wells had the ability to quickly trash a bus whereas an identical bus elsewhere in the county (Gillingham/Maidstone) would run reliably with just routine maintenance. Various old hands came forward defending their garages drivers and fitters competence which led to someone posting up this interesting image of how to correctly drive a bus with a pneumocyclic gearbox. From what I remember most of the school bus drivers would just flick through the gate with barely a lift of the throttle pedal only a few would genuinely pause and lift between changes.

Some M+D goodness,from my deceased local operator.

Tunbridge Wells and it looks like the Fleetline (?) minus it's n/s mirror has twated the lamp post or is it an old trolley bus gantry ? And the Audi passing by must have been a rare sight back then.

Lovely place is Rye.

Cheers but he's far from finished. There's no interior fitted,well it's in there but in boxes on the rear seat and in the boot and none of the lights are wired up either. The rear lights look odd at the moment as the current red ones are actually the indicators and another pair the same need fitting below for the stop and tails. And he has a horrible flat spot and hesitation when you accelerate hard so electronic ignition and probably a carb rebuild await. I insured him the other day and my new post code seems to have trimmed £18 off the policy to a very agreeable £68.58 (yes I am that old).

90's Nissan Terrano.