Joey spud

Now that's a half sensible mod.
Keeping a big thirsty70's Vauxhall saloon on the road as a daily ride has to be applauded.

I fitted this1.8 turbodiesel and matching 5 speed gearbox into my FE.
Went surprisingly well,although was slow enough of the mark,but combined with the FE's higher ratio automatic rear axle it could happily cruise along without feeling strained,it once showed 90+(on a private track Cough cough )there was more there,but the old FE wasn't able 🤣

I saw a few years back a Triumph Stag fitted with a 1.8 TD from a P100. It was awful, hand painted in Hammerite, wiring in engine bay was a right birds nest as well. 

There's a Morris Minor with a 1.6D Escort van engine fitted on a MM group I browse. I can only guess it must be pure torture to pilot. Surely even a tired heavy breathing A series has to be better.
Back in the nineties when these were popular and smoke testing became part of the MOT the leggy ones near me were an absolute bastard to get through.
A doddle to do the cambelt on though as the inj pump was gear driven. I had a bit of a shock the first time I did a 1.8 and found two belts under the cover.

Progress. 
 
What does it look like. 
 
Sometimes you really have to look.  
 
This current phase of trying to get back onto the C10 build started around the 20th of February. 
So I make it four weeks of work and brainstorming. 

Now keep in mind, none of you have a clue of what junk I have and just how chaotic my stuff may be. Hidden in so many places, sheds, the house etc. So despite the progress seemingly being tortuous and slow, it is progress, more so than if I were watching long Netflix episodes.  
 
And as my mentor (bollocks me gently if I screw up) and friend Fil says, it’s a lot like going to the gym. You know you should but you don’t   So when you start, it is slow, but you keep going and start to reap the rewards. Of course as another wise man said “Touch it, Feel it, See it. Move it, That is Progress” 
 
So Wednesday Night I was on a roll  came in, had some dinner and saw Sally who popped in for dinner, for an hour then went back to the garage and carried on till 9.15pm  Not happened for a very long time  
I managed to get this far  

 


George was down there the whole time   
He says nothing, doesn’t judge me, but I suspect that if I died or got mortally injured, he has his knife and fork ready, along with a bottle of hot sauce  

 
At about 8.30 I came in to grab a glass of Pepsi Max. Walking back the view made me smile again.  
 
There has been Progress here  
 

 
Then came in by 9.30 to shower, thought screw it, watched an hour or so of YouTube videos and got to bed  
 
Lying in bed, I ran through the last four weeks and thought about how much better I feel about this . And of course I made some cash out of the clutter  
 
Life is good   
 
 

Astro Love. 
 
 
I am quite ruthless (if there really is such a thing) about the cars that are on my drive 
 
 
 
Anything is for sale or possibly even for trade if the trade item suits my quirky needs. 
 
 
@Marm Toastsmith is looking for something interesting that can be applied in multiple ways. 
 
 
The Astro would suit his needs in so very many ways and possibly even the value I associate with it.  
 
 
But I realised (tbh I know) that I was not yet ready to see it burble off into the sunset. 
 
 
After having mate John sort out replacing the radio that was fitted to it when I bought it, along with the new dash I managed to find in Arkansas, and knowing there’s a few more maintenance type jobs to get it up to the next level of ownership, I decided that I was not ready to see it off. Maybe I never will be. 
 
 
I have maintained for years that if you don’t look back at your car when you walk away and smile, you have bought the wrong car. 
 
 
This Astro is really weird. 
 
 
Until I sell the Rezin Rockit, it has to live outside my kitchen window, then it will move into the carport. It deserves that treatment. 
 
 
BUT……. I honestly find myself looking at it from indoors or when walking in from the garage, that it always makes me smile. 
 
Pretty boring ehhhh? 
But that’s what it does to me  
 
 

 
 
Back to the reason for this long write up  
 
 
 
This week I was using the van to donPost office runs, not the cheapest way to save money, and to go food shopping  
 
 
 
Stopping at the post office I realised again that unless someone really needs this car a lot of queens faces more than me, ir may be stuck here for a while  
 
 
 
This view really makes me happy  
 
 
 

 
 
 
Yesterday I was busy working in the garage, still clearing up and finding stuff that was shoved into boxes, onto shelves etc the last 7 years. 
Rediscovered my Big Foot gas pedals that Andy in Oklahoma had made for me. 
 
 
And so I went to see if I could find a way to fit one into the van. 
It does kinda make the van’s residency more permanent here. 
 
 
Looks like a fit. 
 
 

 
 
And so a bit of etch primer. 
 
 
Followed by masking around the edges
 
 
 

 
 
 
And some Chevy Engine block high heat orange followed by clear lacquer. 
 
 

 
 
Later today I will get back to it and polish and sand back all the proud surfaces and then drill and tap some holes in the rear for some mounting holes and brackets. 
 
 
In the meantime I’ll get to a frw other jobs as well. 

Wait what

Remember those Mini rear lights I had, thought maybe pickup but they turned out to be for a van. 

Off to Ontario, Canada, to be fitted to a V-Tec converted van. 
Removed from the plinths, double wrapped, bubble wrap, box and into a padded envelope. 


Going into this van once complete as the builder also builds and supplies subframes and front ends for Honda V-Tec conversions. 
Pretty cool place for them to end up. 
New floor going in currently. 




Currently he is contactable via Facebook group as  DBCOOPERS

I am really pleased it went to the right guy who will use it. 
Life is good. 
 

Some quick pics of the Shad as promised, Mr WC already wants to take it out in Convoy with the Guy Arab when that’s back on the road so expect some Rolls and Bus action soon, I also took it to work this morning and managed to attract a crowd almost instantly mainly from my colleagues who were probably wondering if the CEO of First Bus had just showed up for a random Audit 😆
I’d like to give it a really good wash and detail very soon as it got absolutely filthy from the drive home yesterday 

Ah, tantric trades: you stay in all day and nobody comes.

Mine is of a similar age and has been wrapped up in the loft awaiting repair for longer than we have lived here which is over ten years. You just spurred me on to dig it out.

But I think the panel gaps were better than yours before it broke. This is me pinching it together.

Still visible but not as much yours. It's par for the course with Airfix of the time though isn't it. I have memories of having to clamp fuselages together whilst the glue dried as they were so bowed. 
I repainted this one as XH558 many years ago but I'd used all the transfers previously so everything on this is hand painted except the fleet number which is Letraset. Even the roundels and Union Jack are hand painted. I had more patience in those days.


 
If you want no panel gaps you could try an inflatable one.

This has 1984 stamped on the bottom.

It's been a minute. There hasn't been a lot to report over the last month. I've been travelling with work so the fleet has sat mostly idle. I did enjoy a rather large F150 in Texas for ten days. It impressed me with it's sheer pace considering it's size. Apparently it was the 400hp twin turbo V6 version. Quick in a straight line but terrible ride quality. I did take it off-roading over the weekend and unfortunately it wasn't very good as it was only the RWD version with road tyres. But I still gave it a go.

 
Roll forward a week to today and the sun has been shining today so I took out my MGF for a spin. Despite it being a rather rough example it doesn't look too bad in the rolling countryside. It isn't the quickest car with the CVT gearbox but it makes for a nice bumble round the country lanes.

 
After I went out for a spin I set about some more welding. It feels like a long time since I last did any welding. Partly because it has been! But today I did manage to finish off the rear panel. When I took off the boot hinge panel the boot floor was also rusty. So I started by cutting all that out.

Then replaced the central section.

Then set about cutting out the other corner

Unfortunately I made the mistake of not measuring twice and ended up cutting the panel too small as can be seen here... A bit of cardboard aided design helped fix that. Although I also had to cut out a bit extra due to thin steel.

New panel under the rear light too

Then onto the hinge panel

Finished off with a lovely coat of brown direct to metal Hammerite

And that's it for today! There's still a hole in the wheel well to fill which can be spotted earlier on in the pics but I ran out of time today. That'll be next weekends job as well as hopefully starting on the rear floors in the passenger compartment

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…

Time for a roundup of recent work completed!
The Lada needs the floor welded up before I put the gearbox back in. So naturally, I have sourced a gear knob from our very own @jakebullet and fitted that instead.


I’ve also bought a few cans of paint, before deciding Fiat Bossa Nova White is the closest match without putting much effort into looking.


Ignore the tide line, it was some rust on the swage line that I mainly sprayed. I’ll sand all the shitey stuff back once the weather clears and paint the car a more uniform colour. The aim is not to get anything particularly presentable, I just want it to not look like a completely fucked rust bucket.
I also definitely wasn’t running it without a working windscreen washer system. However, here is a plastic bladder that I installed to contain washer fluid.

Moving on, the E class clicked over 180k. And I missed it.

It was rewarded with a carpark special headlight alignment

Theres always time to do it right the second time.
Next up on the Mercedes I will be replacing the prop shaft centre bearing, as currently the prop shaft convulses like it is possessed by satan. That’s a job for another day though.
Next we have the XM, which I drove to the farm in anticipation of putting in for a ticket. On the way there, I discovered that the ABS would kick in just before you came to a halt, causing the car to creep and me to shit my pants.

This was caused by the air gap on the ABS sensor.

I solved this by attacking the sensor bracket bushing with a hacksaw

I then liberated the front wheels


And had them shod with the finest pair of part worns that £45 could buy

These were then thrown on the car

And after a short test drive, it was confirmed that a) the ABS was behaving now, b) I need to fit the rear ABS sensor (balls) and c) XM’s are handsome bastards even if they are constantly broken

Last but not least, all ‘harr harr the neighbours hate me’ joking aside, I did leave the LS430 dumped halfway down my road since Christmas and I was losing sleep worrying about how fucked off the people living near it may or may not be.
So on Thursday I went nuclear and called my dad to give me a hand, and we towed it to outside my house where he saw the Pontiac. Luckily, the part of him that cares about what cars I buy has finally died, and he wasn’t fussed at all. Part of me feels bad about that.
Today he came back and we pushed it on to the drive, and if I needed proof that my direct neighbours don’t hate me then I had that in the form of the nice chap two doors down coming out to lend a hand pushing. My Dad stuck around, and despite him having no interest in cars whatsoever he pitched in and we tackled this together

To remove this

And be left with this

Me and my Dad don’t really share any common interests at all, and so we have never really spent much time together. I really enjoyed working together and chatting the last couple of days, and so to be honest I couldn’t be happier that my incredibly hard to access starter motor shat itself.
That pretty much brings everything up to date. Tomorrow I plan to pull the old starter and bench test it, and assuming it is as fucked as I think it is then I’ll replace it with the new* one. I need to order intake and throttle gaskets and then I’ll be ready to put it all back together and hopefully use the LS again before the ticket expires.
*edit*

Fuck me, has it really been that long?! I feel like I’m getting less and less productive by the day.

It's update time again. I've been picking away at things since last weekend. Not all of these have gone as planned.
Car Tetris
The Lada needed to be in the courtyard. This space was 3 cars deep in shite with flat batteries, which is actually a better situation than normal. Everything moved out the way ok, although I realised that I left the window open on the Trans Sport last time I was in it 😢
 
The marks on the headliner were already there, as the roof gets really damp from condensation when not used - incredibly, the interior below the window was fairly dry. I think the fence saved me a bit there.
I've also found out exactly where the gauge reads before the Pontiac cuts out:

Luckily that happened just as I got it to where I was parking it.
Bonus content for @Zelandeth 

Lucky I've got the socks...


Bastard. The Landy had to pull it out in the end.
Car Tetris complete, it was time to actually do something. But first, storm preparation:


The Lada
As you can see form the last photo, it was now suspended up in the air ready for some TLC.

Then it was time to procrastinate by replacing the fuel filter


I ran it for a bit, and it would appear that there's loads of shite in the tank.

That's a job for another day though.
Knob out off.

Gearbag oil removed


Not much shite on the plug

And after a good clean I feel it looks worse, not helped by my appalling focus.

Golden retriever attack



Downpipe loosened off (I was worried it would just fall out if undone fully. I was wrong to worry). Free escargot.

Exhaust clamps removed. The first one came off with the spanner from the toolkit without fuss. The rear had* to be snapped off with a breaker bar.

Eastern European beer can repair discovered

And a ghost from the past was discovered by rolling onto it, I must have been having a bad day when I made this

Clutch slave removed

Starter motor removed

It's an enormous bastard of a thing.

I'm going to sort this spaghetti out as it makes my teeth itch. For good measure, earth coloured wire is used on both the +ive and -ive leads which could absolutely definitely not end in disaster.

Exhaust out. What a bastard. I couldn't split it underneath the car, and it's an absolute wanker to get out whole.

Split up, to make refitting easier. Possibly.

Forbidden Donut bolts removed.

More propshaft shittery. I had to spend ages cleaning up the threads of the studs as they were coated in underseal. They came off ok though.


It nearly twatted me in the head despite me being careful as I absolutely knew it would twat me in the head. It came out though.

The UJ's are all in good condition, as it the centre bearing. All the grease points will get a good pumping.
Getting there...

Now for a brief interlude. The bonnet stay was missing on this car from when I got it. The meant that the bonnet was instead stayed by the grille and headlights, which always made me feel incredibly uneasy.

A replacement was as much as £10, but comes from abroad which means waiting.
Whilst wandering around the garage looking for a bucket handle, I found something easier to work with...

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?!


Glorious.
I will get a proper one. At some point. Probably.
Back to work then.
Every 1/2" extension in a 5 mile radius was used to get the top two gearbox bolts.

The bottom two are easily accessed.
For a while I've quite fancied getting one of these gearbox trolley jack stand things.

However, I've continued to procrastinate and for now we have a piece of gravel board and two 'danger orange' ratchet straps on a pressed pallet block of dubious vintage.

You'll notice the rusty outriggers. More on that later, sadly.
Rear mount undone, and the box slowly comes away

Obviously I checked the manual and made sure that I'd removed everything, and I definitely meant to leave the speedo cable connected like an umbilical.

Error rectified, and she's out.

I'll be back for this tomorrow:

Back round to the rust then.
Whilst underneath the car I couldn't help poking at the scabby bits, as I wanted to weld up anything that wasn't right whilst I'm here - I don't want the car going back out with any serious rot on it. Sadly, the scabby bits spread further and further as I poke. I've gone through the driver's footwell, both outriggers, and the floor pan in the driver's side is a state. The underseal means that the underneath looks alright bar the odd blister, but the rubbery coating on the interior of the floor has trapped moisture and the rot appears to be coming from the inside rather than the outside.

I'll be cutting that out then. To save time I will probably buy premade outriggers, and to save money I will probably make up the floor from the sheet steel I have here.
There's also some other bits that need sorting before she sees the road again. The indicators are in a bit of a shite state, it needs new mirrors, there's a hole in the rear floor pan to patch, the spare wheel well is knackered, the rear valence is also shot. I want to carpet the interior as I think the rubber it had in there is worse for trapping moisture/condensation than if there was carpet fitted properly. I want to look at the weather seals to try and seal any routes for water ingress as I think this has been the biggest contributor to the car rotting - most of the rust is in places that water has pooled on the interior. The front alignment needs adjusting. There's general scabbiness and surface rust on most panels, I want to sand all that back and get paint over it before that in turn becomes worse. I don't like the underseal / stone chip tide line so I will be sanding that where flakey  and painting with more stone chip to seal the bits that have blistered off and then painting it all white. There's probably other stuff I've forgotten.
I think the car is very much at a turning point in its life - it needs a lot of work now to ensure it remains safe and usable going forwards. It would be irresponsible to turn a blind eye to the issues and put it back on the road, I'm also certain that doing so would also probably seal its fate in terms of rot.
So, that's going to be a long term project then... that will mean a reshuffle of cars here to make space for it whilst leaving room to work on other cars, it will also mean I need to fix something else to use to get to work.
Cue:
The Mercedes
If you recall, this thing was making awful noises from underneath when coasting, and lots of vibration and clunking at other times. I may or may not have mentioned that after my initial panic, I decided that it was possibly the driveshaft hitting a heatshield. Best have a look then.
I bloody hate lowered suspension. I had to jack it from the sides on to spare steelies in order to then jack it from the subframe onto stands.

I would much prefer this ride height:

I finally found a use for the stack of about 10 trailer wheels that I have laying around

The photo may or may not show it clearly, but turning the back wheel revealed that the weight thingies on the prop shaft are just rubbing the heatshield.

A bit of adjustment with the heatshield calibration tool did the job.

This is of course a temporary measure - the centre bearing appears to be gubbed, so needs replacing. That's next weekend's job then!
For now the car no longer makes awful noises, and will be able to make the short journey to work and back for the next few days.
Once the prop shaft is behaving itself, I'll be going after the thermostat (again), t suspension clonk and the rather violent unlocking of the torque convertor. Then it's service time, and afterwards I want to tidy up the shabby bodywork. This will probably be the car I use for business travel going forwards, as I can't see the Insight getting sorted anytime soon and I need some MPG's.
Bonus content:
The Land Rover
Incredibly, it's still working*.
However, one of the side repeater bulbs blew.
Apparently the units have a small spring clip on, push them against the spring and they release out the hole.
Mine eventually pushed in and came out, and just as I could see the spring clip it went 'sprong!' and fucked off into the void in the door.

Wanker.
Best put a sticky pad on that for now then, and order some new side repeaters. It currently has clear ones, so I'll probably go back to orange for full tango effect.
Phew! I think that brings us up to date.

Don't go making plans for the journey just yet, bits of fresh metal are being welded-in right now!

Bought this last week as something to do.  It came with half a tank of pez so have a viaduct shot instead.

1.2 HLX with working City mode.  Paint is thoroughly knackered but it drives fine, and will do as a stop gap whilst I sort the Xedos out come MoT time next month.  I initially thought the tow bar was for trailer tip runs, but the seller used it to occasionally shift his MG Midget about.

Update: 1994 Tipo 1.4ie which FTP'd last July and was recovered to a garage:    Don't get too excited.  Hardly anything has happened except that I've had a brief discussion with the garage.  We agreed that as it was a 'back burner' job in a busy garage it was unlikely to receive attention in the foreseeable future.  In the next week (+/- a few days) it will be made accessible to a trailer or whatever so that I can have it transported to my house where I can tinker with it and generally ponder its future.  Towing is not possible because it is SORN'd and no longer MOT'd or insured. Although I've missed having the option of driving a vaguely interesting, practical, manual car, in all honesty it has been quite convenient to have just two cars outside the house.  My '61 Reliant is still with me and roadworthy/road legal but requires considerable enthusiasm to clear its way out of my garage, something which is lacking these days. It rarely gets driven.
Rather than just give up on the Tipo (it was tempting), I'm hoping that circumstances will allow something favourable to happen in the next several months. I can always polish it to improve my morale and extend its period of grace for a while.   

As it happens I took the winter cover off the Subaru yesterday and run him up and down the farm track. Not sure if it was stale fuel or the often moody Hitachi carb but he wasn't at all happy.


It's still waiting for me to finish the repairs to the o/s rear inner wheel arch. I'd like to say this'll be the year but the new workshop is currently full of furniture and house hold tat.

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.

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.

As it happens I took the winter cover off the Subaru yesterday and run him up and down the farm track. Not sure if it was stale fuel or the often moody Hitachi carb but he wasn't at all happy.


It's still waiting for me to finish the repairs to the o/s rear inner wheel arch. I'd like to say this'll be the year but the new workshop is currently full of furniture and house hold tat.

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.

Winner!

Had this one for about ten years though haven't done as much as i should with it! Ive fitted a 105 groupset though it retains its suicide shifters, original front mech and most notably brakes. It goes well, stops less so though a little better with non original pads. 
Needs some bar tape and now a wash due to some off road this morning whilst following my google route I thought was all path!

Great bike though does make me smile