meshking

Hard graft!

My smax used to do a similar thing with the steering. Like the power pump had turned off. Cured it by flushing the fluid through about 5 times. 

Before doing any welding whatsoever, I made an extra long lance from 3 originals joined together. 

This is so I could arrange it in the correct position for optimum coverage, before putting the panel in position.

I used mini G clamps to hold the 3 layers together.

And here you can see how the holes in the outer panel are lined up with those in the middle layer, which I'd previously only tacked into position and ground back.

This meant I could create a decent plug weld, and tie all 3 layers together.

Once I'd done all the plug welds and tacked the front edge, I ground them all back ready for seam welding in stages.

I was trying to minimise the gap to make life easier for myself when it came to welding 1mm steel. I found that on a current sufficient to get good penetration on the first pulse, by the time I'd laid down 3 or 4 more pulses, the localised heat build up meant I was in danger of blowing through, so I just moved on to another location. And repeat...

Finally, it was a case of taking the flap disc to it, followed by the power sander to flatten out any imperfections. This should still be under the seal, so I dont think I need to use filler.

Then a coat of etch primer to protect while I treat the surface rust which is around the rest of the frame.

Lastly I used my new lance to spray cavity wax on the rear of the weld, which did reveal two pinholes...easily dealt with though. Time for bed now!

There isn’t any random little keys in the boot of this is there? 

Don't think I've ever had another car which looks quite so at home in a slightly shabby urban setting.

TPA comes close,  but does tend to stand out a bit more just by not being quite normal car shaped.

I've now trimmed the repair section for the other side. I'd wanted to have the joint on the curved section under the seal, both for neatness and also to minimise distortion. However on the passenger side I needed to cut out that little bit more, as the metal was quite thin.

I've also cleaned up both sides ready for welding; I've since painted with weld through primer but didn't get a photo.

Big shout out to https://www.weldingdirect.co.uk/ who had a new control board on the shelf for a 10 year old Chinese welder, and only £26!


Back to the LT, and I cut back a bit more of the pillar which had been thinned by rust. It's very little extra work to weld in a larger section, compared with battling constantly blowing through. I didn't want to use the whole repair panel though.

Reason being to weld in the top it would be quite tricky welding in the roof gutter, and potentially difficult to seal well again afterwards. So I wasted most of the panel and just cut out what I needed. 

Unfortunately I had to leave it there as despite wearing goggles I got something in my eye, so writing this post from hospital. 
 

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.

Not for me , the joy* of working!
Instead, a trek to Sunny Lochgoilhead for a walk and a spot of lunch.
130 miles covered, all good! 17/10 would hoor down single track roads again

The only option was a 50/50mix of TFR and water, plus a floor scrubbing brush.
Progress was swift and vengeful. 
 
It was done a panel at a time.
Skoosh on,
Sit for 30 secs
Attack with scrubbing brush
Decimate the ecosystem
Rinse off with water to avoid the TFR stripping the paint.
 
 
The results were spectacular!






 
After a pass over with a wash mitt it is almost passable.
 
It'd benefit from a polish and a wax - just to seal the paint and stop any recolonization of the panels.
 
Lastly, on the way home it was topped off with finest derv.

Bearing in mind this is a 55L tank, I'd say it was needing some fuel.
 
Then it was off for a jaunt up to Kinross for a stoat with some shiters

Today was mostly spent waiting for a landscaper who never turned up.  Being essentially unable to leave the house and not feeling I could get really stuck into any big tasks, I picked away at a few small ones.  
Firstly was doing a bit of tidying in the garage.  You can't really see much for it, but the mountain of stuff on and behind TPA has really shrunk a lot.  She was pretty well buried before!  Most of this accumulated when I was doing the head work on the Rover.

Still some stuff under the car, but the engine cover is clear now, meaning I was able to hook up the battery charger.  Hopefully actually get her out again sometime in the next few weeks.
Actually putting a lot of that lot away will happen once I've backed TPA out of the garage.  Trying to get to where anything lives is just such a pain with the car there - which is why I wound up creating such a mountain of crap there in the first place.
Still no sign of the landscaper, so I moved on to Trabant tinkering.  
Given she's in for the MOT tomorrow I wanted to make sure everything obvious was checked and do a little cleaning and tidying.
I did find we had one brake light out so got that changed.  Everything else checked out.
The windscreen wipers were still parking in a slightly odd spot, so I tweaked the position of the arm on the spindle which has fixed that.  I also did a little more contortion to tighten up the last two nuts holding the motor onto the bulkhead, so that's securely fastened in place and no longer makes annoying clicking noises each time the wipers change direction.
I grabbed the vacuum cleaner and gave the interior another quick going over.  It wasn't too bad, but I'd tracked in a fair amount of dead leaves, plus there was the usual omnipresent layer of dog hair, despite neither of them ever having been near the car.  Bit better now.

This bit of loose trim in the rear of the cabin was bugging me.

Obviously missing trim clips there which I duly replaced.  I bought like 40 of these and think I'm down to about half a dozen left now.

Not perfect, still a bit floppy towards the back seat because the panel is water damaged, but it's a lot better.

I then set about trying to remove some of the plethora of oily fingerprints which the car is basically covered in.   The paint had a lot of ingrained dirt everywhere too.

Things escalated.  I started polishing things - as that ended up being the most effective solution for removing it.  Safe to say this definitely makes a difference!

These cars never had a high gloss paint finish even from the factory - it's kind of halfway between an eggshell and gloss finish.  It's cleaning up pretty well all things considered, and is looking a lot better where I've gone over it.

Amusing looking at the side photo in that the car is a completely different colour now.  It's definitely shifted from "off white" to properly beige.
Started raining after I'd wrapped up.  Imagine it's been a while since the paint did this.

This car is never going to be a show winner, and I'm not putting tens of hours into polishing every millimetre, but I'd like it to at least look cared for.
To that end I'd really like to do something permanent regarding the crack in the front of the bonnet.  Which because of where it is is a bit tricky.  Might be easier to just get another bonnet and have it properly prepped and painted.
Oh, look what I found thanks to a member of the owner's club.

The paint on it is absolutely knackered, but I didn't see any cracks or large chunks missing at a quick glance.  It was free though so I wasn't going to quibble over it either way.  I'll take a closer look at that sometime in the near future.
What will the MOT bring?  We'll have to wait and see.  Rust is my biggest concern - I really haven't had a really good dig around the whole underside, so quite likely there could be rot under there I've not spotted.
The Partner is booked in to a garage to have whichever wheel bearing is making a noise sorted on Tuesday, so hopefully that will be sorted soon.  Though we will then the following week have the fun of getting that through an MOT - which *hopefully* shouldn't be too painful.

Oh for fucks sake, how did that fruitcake get it?

So, onto today's activities then.
First off, I lopped off the rotten upper section of the reinforcing bracket between the inner wing and chassis leg. New on was measured up and filed down a bit to make it match.

Got the welder set up and cracked on -

Ground the welds back and it looked pretty okay after that.

With that done, the repair sections were given a coating of weld through primer:

And the first panel clamped in place.

This one turned out to be a bit of a faff as there were loads of curves that I wasn't immediately aware of, but the hammer got everything in the right place for the welding to happen. Ground down, it even looked all right.

With that done, it was onto the next section.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a proper pain in the arse as my CO2 bottle ran out at 9pm. Not a problem as I had an Argon/CO2 bottle that I used for a couple of minutes in the cupboard.
What an arseache that ended up being. Not sure if it was the gas making a difference, but the welds weren't going down right and I was blowing holes every other time.

Aaaaand annoyingly, the replacement bottle ran out, less than five minutes into the job so I called it a night after grinding down what I could. Looking forward to moving on from the welding!
Cheers.

Minimal photos today, because I was incredibly pissed off with the entire day.
Firstly though, some good news arrived today:

A good used catalytic converter for the Beat - this may still need to go to the exhaust place for a replacement flanges to match the stainless link pipe.
So, on with the fault diagnosis. Reinstalled the cabin fan and headlights to aid the digging. Decided the fuse box needed to come out for a clean up, so all the connectors were marked up and disconnected

And eventually the fuse box was on the bench, given a stiff bristle brush and some contact cleaner before being blow-dried from the compressor and left on the dehumidifier to dry fully.

Yesterday, I came to the conclusion that the fuse feed box and battery positive lead were in need of changing, so more faffing occured and eventually the leads were on the floor.

Annoyingly, I had a niggly little voice in the back of my head to check this lead further, as it dawned on me that I hadn't fully tested it in isolation as the alternator and starter had still been connected to the supply. Figured it would be best due diligence to check It with all items out of the circuit, 
Connected it to the battery, and in all the imaginable combinations of test, they all came back with battery voltage, inexplicably.
This meant that everything had to get refitted, which I did not enjoy. The highlight was getting the cables back through the grommet into the cabin, made easier with a bit of steel wire and some tape;

Eventually it was all rebullt and the test carried out again...
5V.
I had a bit of a tantrum about this, but eventually found out the entire thing was my fault, mainly because I had gone for the 'Use a clean shiny big patch of metal as an earth' and it turned out to be pretty crap as an earth - testing the circuit and using a proper earthing point made all the difference and proves that we were getting battery voltage, but using the crap earth, we were getting just 5v which was a lie.
Next fuck up wasn't really my fault - the heated rear window WAS working the entire time - it transpired that a bulb had blown in the switch so I was never going to tell if it was on (EDIT: this turned out to be bollocks, see my next post). Seeing that the horn was still working, I rigged it to the battery which worked.
Checked the stalk connector again for power and it was negligible, so it's getting closer. I've now got a BX factory electrical manual and read up on the fuse box, which I reckon is the culprit (again,)
Sorry if the spelling is terrible, I'm absolutely exhausted and been doing the ol' nodding dog here which isn't helping so I'm off to bed.
Cheers

Yesterday I took a break from the hell that is currently life and polished and waxed the 75.


After some helpful advice on here I made sure that the one thing that HMRC or the greedy bastard solicitors aren't getting is my late dad's private plate. It's now off his car and on retention and will go on this at some point in the future. I'll put K500 on the TT, if I ever use it again that is, still on SORN just now.

It was a business called blue snail products who did a few other neat things too like a lights on alarm. Not sure if they’re still around.  It must have been twenty years ago, but it was a neat solution that included everything from the pull switch to the lamp itself and all wiring.
 
 

Redid the left bit which wasn't so bad. Looks lumpy below (which it is) and I can't get much to the back of it to bash it out. But it's below a straight edge, so a skim of filler should sort it.
The right .... well I've made my bed and now I need to sleep in it. 😅

A small patch that hopefully look seamless once finished with filler + paint. At least it's solid. 

My one the second.
A much more  slapdash affair ..
Uaz 452
 
+

Fuel pin ALL THE WAY ROUND.
MAX FUEL FOR DAYS
+
HOLSET Hx50

 
= mild lolz

Nearly 3 miles on this today. Feels like a brake is dragging and the new fuel pump wants to overcome the float at idle occasionally. Will need rectified but was good to get it out. May have a Fouter with the charging system later on as just got a solid 12.7v at idle and little more when revved. I don't think the new regulator is the best of gear.

Small world - hurleyford farm and caravan parks are owned by my uncle/aunt/cousins and so on.  Got a photo of the farm, not quite under water, yesterday from one of my cousins.

Cllr David Burfitt... Or Uncle David as I call him 😂

I don't know whether he took the photo, or someone else. Looks like the quality is shite . His farmhouse is bottom RHS.

Small world - hurleyford farm and caravan parks are owned by my uncle/aunt/cousins and so on.  Got a photo of the farm, not quite under water, yesterday from one of my cousins.

The initial plan this week was to combine two collection threads into one trip. This was especially prudent as both vehicles were within about 30 miles of each other...
As it happens, both sellers could not do the same day, so we had to split it into two 
 
This is part 2.
 
After digging the 595 out for the good lady to use
It was time to get on the road with @jaypee
We are currently on the m74 south, with that big yellow or causing issues again .

Ran it up to temperature and tried to burp the system. I think these Mercs are good in their design to not get air locks. Certainly didn't notice any major level drops even when up to temperature with the stat open. This is where having a handheld diag tool is invaluable compared to dragging a laptop out. I've got an OBD extender cable somewhere I need to find as this will make bonnet access of the tool even easier.
It seemed to peak at around 93 to 94c when revved at which point the engine fan kicked in. Sat there at idle it seemed to sit around 87c to 90c.

Gauge is just under the 100c marker now.

 
Went for a test drive on the same route as before. Now not a completely fair test as, even though I had dinner and it cooled off a bit, the car wasn't completely cold as per last time. Also I reset the mpg before setting off this evening as I'd been idling it a long time on the drive.
Anyway, unsurprisingly it got far better fuel consumption numbers than before.

Engine temperature stayed rock solid on the gauge. Maybe went up or down a notch but barely noticeable. Generally sat as above. Engine temperature on the scantool seemed to be around 87c to 89c which is the stat opening temp.

 
As I was quite warm and comfortable where I was sat, I thought I'd go for a quick spin up and down the motorway. Some of the junctions were shut, so I ended up going much further than initially intended. However it gave a good idea of cruising fuel economy. 

It was actually hitting 31.8mpg, just I lost a bit when I booted it past a load of bunched up cars/lorries so I could get to the junction exit easily.
Considering I got 30.9mpg on the long journey home and certainly never hit 31mpg, I can safely say there is a solid increase in MPG (thankfully). Biggest improvement will hopefully be town/village driving where it should warm up quicker and hold the temperature better.
Just need to go on a long run now and see what it really can get. I reckon 35-38mpg is do-able on a 60mph motorway run if I had the patience.
Another thing I've found is that the box gear changes are very old fashioned. Most modern gearboxes I'm used to will try kicking up to the highest gear possible at all times. So even at 30mph you find the box in 6th or higher on a modern unit. This however feels like a mechanical unit of old (even though it's fully computer controlled). So at an indicated 30mph cruise it is in 3rd gear and just under 2k rpm). However 31mph (exactly 50kph) it kicks up to 4th gear and 1.1k rpm. It'll stay there until about 27mph and then it'll drop back down again. So certainly careful use of speed when driving should also give quite a boost in fuel economy too.
Either way I'm massively happy the consumption has decreased - seems to be a solid 16% decrease for slower speed running. Right now it's not that far off what my very similar bhp Boxster 2.7 6cyl did (albeit that ran on super unleaded and this is regular).
If my maths is correct then a 80l full tank fill I'll be saving £19 per tank from the extra range. Basically two tank fulls of non motorway driving will easily pay for that thermostat and the replacement coolant.