Stanky

Well that was a more than averagely productive lunch break. 

I’m having a lovely long weekend away.

I’m in Mittenwald, Bavaria, almost on the border with Austria.
Colin is also here making his usual demands.

„Gib mir Vögel und Kastanien, Frau.“
 

<trollface> Have you tried removing and refitting the front bumper? </trollface> 

Last day of leave from work and once again, no parts arrived. So, more cleaning and little jobs instead.
The remainder of the gearbox was sprayed with degreaser and left to work in for a bit.
First shitty job was the bonnet catch.

Absolutely caked in old sticky grease and grime from 30 years of spraying any old shite onto it.
Bit more degreaser and some aggressive scrubbing got it looking presentable again.

Whilst re-lubricating the latch and operating the mechanism, it was clear that something wasn't quite right. The big spring on the left hand dislodged and was gouging into the catch.


I held the spring in place with steel wire and twatted the top of the bracket to bend it over to retain the screw - job done.

Was going to adjust the cable as there was quite a lot of slack in the system.

Nice and simple, just one tiny screw to undo aaaaand...

Never mind, it works just fine, I was just being picky.
Next small job, the temperature sensor earth return terminal had came away from the cable - my old crimping tool was well past it. Annoyingly, I ran out of my tiny ring terminals, and with the clearance available, a generic one wouldn't work.

In the end, I drilled out a male spade terminal to match the screw thread size and it fits perfectly.

Anyway, with that done, I cracked on, and cleaned the rest of the gearbox up.

Not perfect, but a hell of a lot better than what it was! Decided there was no better time to change the driveshaft seals. Old ones looked fine, but I had new ones so it made sense to change them!



Both sides were changed, and rubber grease syringed into the seal cavity.

I also greased up the gear change rod ball joints.
In all honesty, there's very little I can do now until the last of the engine parts get here, so I'm going to take a break.
LOL, as if.

Herman has been sat on the drive since November, and his MOT has lapsed. There's currently an ABS fault that I need to look into, but as it was the first dry day with no BX work in months, I decided to start small and fit some bits that I've had on the shelf.

For years and years, I've been told I need to change my throttle cable by Phill because it was corroded and the pedal felt stiff throughout the range of travel. I bought two replacement OE cables last year.
First up, the throttle pedal cable.

Surprisingly easy to strip and disconnect at the pedal box end, although the bulkhead clip was a bit of a twat to undo, due to the sound deadening. Brute force force got it out though. Followed the routing and it was adjusted and ready to go, resulting in a much smoother and lighter pedal.

Next one was even easier, this was for the traction control.
The actuator had to be unshipped for access to the other side of the cable. With a strong clip either side, I ended up taking it into the garage, clamping the free end of the cable in a vice, applying constant tension to the cable whilst simultaneously undoing both retaining clips.


But it worked just fine the was a pleasant job.
Sadly, whilst it needed changing, it wasn't the one I was intending to change, I was after the one for the cruise control actuator:

The cable in this one is also pretty shagged, and at £90 for a replacement one, I'll be trying my luck at the scrappies in due course. It does work for now so it's not urgent.
Whilst the airbox was out, I noticed some paint fretting and light corrosion on a contact surface. Treated it with Kurist, and applied some anti-chafing tape to the affected area.
Anyway, with that all done, it was a quick and easy reassembly.


Didn't start it up as the battery is still on conditioning charge in the garage.
Up close, you can see the replacements were required!

Anyway, I did decide to knock it on the head early for the night. I tidied the tools away and hoovered the garage floor, ready for the next evolution.
Tomorrow, I'm back to work and we have a torque wrench tester. Going to take mine in so I can see what I need to set the torque wrenches to, in order to get the 20 and 60nm figures required for the head bolt torquing.

Cheers!
 
 

<trollface> Have you tried removing and refitting the front bumper? </trollface> 

Pah, you're obviously wrong! He would only have needed to work 40 hours a day if he worked 7 days a week, or he could have only worked 24 hours a day if he'd worked 12 days per week.
Honestly, this is basic stuff man. This exact question was Q1 of my GCSE maths exam. 
Q. "Paul works in a MG Rover specialist in <somewhere northern>, he moonlights as a chauffeur in a 200k mile Mercedes S-class, how many days a week does he have to work to put 960,000 miles on the S-Class in 12 months assuming he never stopped for fuel or food, pissed in the footwell on the move and did 70mph everywhere, all the time? Show your working"
A. 12 days per week (crude drawing of a stick man pissing in a Mercedes footwell)
93 marks

<trollface> Have you tried removing and refitting the front bumper? </trollface> 

Sorted. A folded up bit of paper on top of the battery to press it down more has worked 😂

<trollface> Have you tried removing and refitting the front bumper? </trollface> 

<trollface> Have you tried removing and refitting the front bumper? </trollface> 

<trollface> Have you tried removing and refitting the front bumper? </trollface> 

Brave

Just back from a little pub social, and had a great time.  I even remembered to hand out some business cards for once.  Tonight was made even better by one person mentioning their dad has two Princesses he's "getting around to one day", so I'll have to find out more about that.  Couple of other folks were facing a bit of a trek on foot in the cold to the taxi rank, so I gave them a lift and that seemed to be quite exciting for all concerned since I so rarely have passengers.
Princess is behaving suspiciously well, going to have to give it some attention this weekend to keep it sweet I think.  Just generally having a nice time, it's good to have a break from the stress and actually be making connections with new people.  Got to remember days like this when I'm feeling a bit stressed on other days, it's what'll see me through the bullshit.

Another day with no parts, so it was lots of small jobs to prep for reassembly.
First job was to source a new set of exhaust manifold studs. As I had a day off work, I went around all the local factors, including an exhaust specialist to get what I needed.
And I came back empty-handed. Luckily, I've found a company that does the specific studs and nuts for a BX for £11 delivered online, so that'll arrive at some point.
I also popped into @twosmoke300 who had a camshaft sprocket bolt, as well as lending me a set of engine head stands to check the valve clearances again. These turned out to be okay, only one was just out of limits and it wasn't enough to merit stripping down the head.

I also removed the fuel manifold pipelines to measure up the required lengths and diameters of pipelines to replace them. Whilst dismantled, I gave the unit a clean, and marked where the pipelines go.

I did get lucky at the exhaust place though, and got a manifold to downpipe fitting kit - I had to angle grind one of the bolts off during the engine removal.

The cup washers required a sustained twatting effort to remove, but they gave up the goods eventually and I fitted the new cup washers and the conical mesh gasket. One of the bolts had to be fitted with the washer as it cannot be fitted afterwards.

I gave the manifold mating faces a bit of a clean and scrub up too.

Next, I cracked on with the inlet manifold.

The carb had been replaced during my ownership by Dan, but I had a new set of carb gaskets and it seemed silly to let them go to waste.
Noticed a little bit of erosion damage on one of the chamfered edges, so I filed it down slightly.

Removed the old traces of gasket until the face was smooth.

Then I blanked the holes and got busy with some parts cleaner and a brush - the entirety of the engine bay is bloody filthy, and lagged in a thick coating of oil-based grime.

After a bit of time, I reassembled the inlet manifold. Looks much cleaner and nicer to handle!

I also fitted the inlet manifold studs back into the head, after wire brushing the threads, they went back
Finally, I decided to step away from engine and turn my attention to the next big component awaiting fitment. If the engine was considered dirty, this would be considered filthy.

Annoyingly, as I removed the clutch arm for access and a re-grease, the pivot bush disintegrated. Annoying, but better it happened now instead of when I put it all back together. £7 for a replacement bush on eBay and we'll cross fingers that it arrives soon.

The inner bellhousing did clean up nicely though.

The outside of the box is also taking a bit of time, but there is progress being made.

You can see the layer of grime I'm having to scrub off here, hopefully I'll finish this job tomorrow morning.

I'm still waiting for the piston rings and hockey stick seals for No.1 crank bearing to arrive, once they're here I can really get cracking with the rebuild, but I'm not holding out much hope for the NL trip now.
Not the end of the world as it's been a great target to strive for, but finding faults etc along the way adds extra time to the final date.
Cheers 😁

Pah, you're obviously wrong! He would only have needed to work 40 hours a day if he worked 7 days a week, or he could have only worked 24 hours a day if he'd worked 12 days per week.
Honestly, this is basic stuff man. This exact question was Q1 of my GCSE maths exam. 
Q. "Paul works in a MG Rover specialist in <somewhere northern>, he moonlights as a chauffeur in a 200k mile Mercedes S-class, how many days a week does he have to work to put 960,000 miles on the S-Class in 12 months assuming he never stopped for fuel or food, pissed in the footwell on the move and did 70mph everywhere, all the time? Show your working"
A. 12 days per week (crude drawing of a stick man pissing in a Mercedes footwell)
93 marks

Been a lot of hits and misses this weekend.
First up, trying to torque the camshaft cap studs was a pain, 15nm was simply not happening, even with the two nuts tight against each other, it was still turning down the shaft when close to 15nm. Tried adding a third nut to see if that would help matters, but ended up stripping the threads on the nut.
In the end, I went for 10nm. It'll be fine, I hope. Fitted the cam, and new front cam seal before I torqued down the caps (minus one nut).

Then it came to the camshaft pulley. Following the torque figure, I didn't even get close to the Haynes figure before disaster struck.


That was....not ideal. I messaged Phill on a blind panic asking for advice, and he suggested drilling a 3mm hole in the bolt shank and hammering a torx socket into the hole to extract it. There were almost tears of joy when this came out.

Then joy turned into anger when I decided to check the figures in my Autodata technical data book.
Haynes (stated 80nm) for the sprocket bolt.

Autodata?

So the bolt failure was caused by a massive overtorque. Arse biscuits.
To try and take my mind off it, I tackled some of the minor jobs, first job was removing and re-sealing the body seams around the bootlid hinge. Forgot to get any photos, but I scraped the old, dry seam sealer with a plastic scraper, masked the area off with tape and applied a healthy layer or Pureaflex40 to the joins.
Whilst I was in the area, I managed to push the split section of the wiring rubber grommet into the hole, so it'll be a much better seal than the empty space that was there before!
I continued the minor jobs, treating screen rust spots before they become sinister,

Swapping out the rocker cover gasket:

And getting this dirty bottle cleaned up as much as possible.

Which cleaned up alright, but had highlighted how big the crack in the side of the tank was:

As it was the rarely-used rear washer tank, I elected to try and repair it rather than replace. I used an old soldering iron to re-melt the plastic along the crack. It's not pretty, but it's sealed up and shouldn't leak so that's a win.

The bottoms of these bottles have a sharp lip around their manufacturing joins which has been suggested aids corrosion by chafing through the paint - these were sanded down prior to install. The scuttle area had already been heavily lanoguarded about six weeks ago so all should be well there.
Unrelated to the BX, but a mate  followed me on the commute to work and told me one of the Rovers brake lights wasn't coming on every time. Luckily, I have spare bulbs, but it was quite interesting to see the where the filament had broken loose, flapped around a bit until it made the circuit and 'tacked' itself back on. Herman has had a front fog light doing that for years, so the build-up there must be spectacular.

Eventually, I decided to carry on with assembling the 3 pistons and liners, I'm still awaiting parts to assemble the final cylinder but this is a good start.
Turns out I needed to order another set of piston rings too, thanks to my ill-fated attempt to fit them last time:

Annoyingly, this was a pain in the arse. Autodoc did them at a reasonable price, but the delivery time takes the piss at around a fortnight. I found some on eBay with a two day delivery, so I placed the order on Sunday. I then sent the seller my details, and they cancelled the order! Apparently they weren't compatible. I've told them I want the rings and will assume the risk - the manufacturers of the piston rings list the set as compatible for every 1.6 XU engine except the XU52C. I can't see what difference there would be though, so I guess we'll find out in a couple of days.
Anyway, the ring gaps were checked prior to fitment, they were all bang on at around 0.50mm.


With the new set of plier-style piston ring compressors, I was STILL having issues with the rings. 
I asked Phill for advice, and he very gently pointed out I was being a bit of a fuckwit and assembling the oil control ring at the bottom incorrectly, which in turn meant the ring wasn't compressing properly. 
With the correct advice dispensed, and a slight tweak to the piston ring compressor, we were finally making progress! A fresh seal was fitted to the base of the cylinder liner before slotting it into place.

Eventually, I got all three complete assemblies in.

And clamped the liners down.

Then I nipped back to the house for a pee, and noticed that Mini had snuck into MrsH's car whilst she was unloading, and got himself locked in. Tit.

I decided to crack on with bolting in some external components, so the oil pressure switch, water pump and timing belt tensioner pulley went on (the old one was really rather grumbly and rattly)
The pump came from Autodoc and was their own brand (RIDEX) and it seemed pretty well made.

Next up, the crank bearing seats were cleaned, new shells were fitted, and the crank lowered into place. This was a pain in the arse with the liners and pistons fitted as the conrods were in the way, this was aided with some steel wire to hold them in the middle position.

The crank bearing caps had fresh shells and an oiling before being loosely assembled.

I'm still awaiting the seals for No.1 bearing cap so I've not fitted that yet.
After that, it was applying the last coat of lacquer to the windscreen frame rust spots. The paint colour match is pretty poor, but it won't rust and that's what matters.
I spent the remainder of the evening googling part numbers, dimensions and specs of the cam cap nut. The Citroen parts catalogue specified a nut and washer assembly, the Peugeot catalogue specified a flange nut. Seeing as this was what was fitted, I went with that, got the size and thread pitch and started searching. I eventually got three part numbers, and the phone numbers for potential dealerships that could have the nut I need in stock.
A bit of phoning around yesterday morning ensued. The Peugeot dealership said they could source the nuts, but they wouldn't be here till Wednesday and were £1.25 each.
My second dealership took the part number, said 'Yep, we've got 14 in stock here, and they're 63p each+VAT'. Didn't bother ringing the third.
The dealership?

Yep, I went in my Rover that's really a Honda, to a BMW dealership to pick up some nuts for my Citroen, which was sourced using specs from a Peugeot parts catalogue.

The parts fella that came out was very friendly, and couldn't believe what vehicle the nuts were for I ended up having a chat with him about the Rover parked outside and he was really enthusiastic. Ended up buying 10 nuts as it makes sense to replace the entire set.
Got home and checked the nut - it's a good fit, a bit taller and with a wider flange than the originals, it feels much more substantial. The nut is originally used to hold inlet manifolds onto various BMWs.
I started checking valve clearances but this ended up being a pain to rotate the camshaft without the sprocket bolted in. I checked the first 4 and found them to be juuuuust within limits, I'll check the other 4 later when I've got the camshaft bolt and torqued it in.
Boring stuff, but prepping for when it gets reassembled, the fuel pump gaskets were changed, thedistributor oil seal was replaced:

And the inlet manifold gasket was tackled. 

This took an absolute eternity - it was properly on there! The mating faces were eventually cleaned with a scotchbrite pad and WD40 to get a smoother mating face.

Today, I'm into my two days off that was pencilled in for engine building - not much bloody use of I've not got all the parts together! I'll be working on various other little jobs instead.
Cheers.

I fixed the Bini driver side window mechanism, at the fourth time of asking. 
 

 
Would anybody like to read a write-up (shite-up?) about how much of a bitch of a job that was? 

Contracts exchanged on new house. Double garage and 3 car drive.
Friend heard of my issues losing my car storage last month. Contacted a friend of his friend, who has found me a nice, small, dry barn to rent 2 miles from the new house for what amounts to beer money. 6 months of the barn (will fit 2 cars) is the same as one month of the commercial car storage.

I had a day off work today so made use of some tinkering time.
First job was replacing the rear inner light lens. One of the previous owners has reversed into something I think, there is some scuffing on the bumper, a very small ding in the metal quarter panel, and a crack in the rear light lens which is hard to see, harder to photograph but easy to replace.

Its not too bad, but water has got in and its going green in the cracks, and is only a matter of time before it mists up and makes the car look tatty and uncared for. I bagged a replacement unit for £16 on ebay which arrived earlier in the week. Easy enough to do, open the boot and remove the sound deadening felt

undo 3x 10mm nuts through the access holes and gently lift it out

I took the opportunity to clean the muck out of the stamped recess in the panel before reassembling it all with the new unit. 

Much better.
Then onto some other jobs. The Laser 4880 oil filter tool had arrived earlier in the week too so I lifted the front end up and had another go at getting the oil filter housing to release. I followed @RoverFolkUs advice and used a 24mm socket on it, rather than fitting the cup tool direct to the 12" breaker bar. I used the Power of Grayskull and amazingly it undid - I was sure I'd trashed the cup wrench again, but astonishingly it survived. I drained the oil out of the filter housing (maybe 1/2" litre?) into a washing up bowl and then replaced the filter and o-ring, making sure I cleaned up all the threads and mating surfaces with a rag, put a tiny bit of copper grease on the mating surfaces on the not-threads side of the o-ring, then refitted it. I did it up hand tight, then a tiny bit more on the ratchet. Hopefully next time I need to undo it it will come off without a fuss. 
I got given a BIN offer on a caliper and carrier so I took the lazy route and just bought it, and swapped the whole shebang. It was £150 which I could have done without, but the old one was basically fucked - I could have spent a significant amount of time heating it up, hammering it and getting it to free off, then replacing the slider and reassembling it all, but I'd probably have broken something in the process and immobilised the car so just took the easy route and assembled the whole caliper and carrier on the workbench, removed the old one and swapped the brake flexi over, refitted the pads, pins and wire retainers and then enlisted my eldest daughter to do the pedals end while I did the caliper end and bled it through.
All sorted out and working fine - so thats another issue off the list.
I think the next thing is to get some tyres, it has 4 mismatched budgets on currently, and they're all at, or close to the 3mm wear markers. it looks like I can get a full matching set of Kumho Ecsta tyres for £300, or Uniroyal Rainexperts for £340. I know and trust the uniroyals, the Kumho's are supposed to be just as good in the rain as the Uniroyals, so might be worth taking a punt on, thats something for next month though I think.
I had to go up to Manchester for work last week and the Lexus handled it all beautifully. 550 miles there and back via Telford, it behaved impeccably and delivered 38mpg, and 35mpg over a combined 20 gallons of 70% motorways and 30% crawling round local roads.
 

Last weekend was the VSCC Light Car Section Welsh weekend. this year marked 100 years since the RAC Small Car Trials, which inspired the event, and in which a Palladium did exceedingly well over 1000 miles of hard test driving at the hands of its designer H F Smallwood. Since the aim has always been to take my Palladium on this event it was absolutely essential that it was back up and running in time. Sadly it hasn't been driven for about 4 years, since it suffered some mechanical problems (on the way home from Wales, funnily enough) which resulted in a load of water in Number 4 cylinder and a couple of bent valves. Anyway, we rallied some troops and had a mad week of putting it all back together (absolutely minimal input from myself, obviously) and a few days before the trip it was running for the first time and sounding nice and healthy. I did a quick trip round the block and all seemed well, so all that was left was to keep a positive attitude and pack lots of tools. Here's how things looked after about 100 miles.

And approaching the border

Noo hood or weather equipment wasn't great considering we were in the grip of Storm Kathleen, but the weather was pretty kind on the way up and I did 200 miles behind the wheel with no problems whatsoever. Made it to Wales and spent two days fannying about, actually much more challenging than the drive up, driving on small roads with lots of hills etc. Here it is in the middle of a section through normally-closed Forestry Commission roads

It shed a sidelamp lens going over a nasty bump annoyingly. Here it is resting at the summit of Bwlch-Y-Groes, 'the Welsh Terror', a absolutely nasty very long climb which saw off a few competitors back in 1924, but which the Pall sailed up without any problems (in first gear)

And here it is going down the other side

After all that, we set off quite early on Sunday. The first leg was quite tough going with awful rain and wind, but the last 100 miles were pretty great going.

Got back by 6pm which was alright. The best part of 700 miles covered in four days, which might not sound like much but it takes a huge amount of concentration and energy to drive this thing at speed. Apart from a blocked slow runnning jet there were zero mechanical issues for the whole weekend. The number plate bolts came loose, one of the wing valances sheered the rivets holding it in and was rattling around, I think the gearbox is possibly even nosier than it was before but otherwise it was smooth sailing! So glad to actually get this heap to Wales and re-enact the 1924 event, which was the marque's most notable achievement, particularly on this anniversary year. Next stop: get a hood made.
 

For aslong as I can remember I've wanted to be directing my own path in business but never had the actual confidence to overcome huge self doubt and fears of failure, in 2021 when I nearly met with my mortality thanks to covid I remember hating that I'd played things safe as houses like a boring nobody and literally despite continued health maladies I feel that I've got a second run up at life , so I'm starting from nothing at 35 and want to get pushing forward with what is abit of a dream for me .
So basically my sister and I have teamed up to create a new garage/engineering works of which provides the usual bread and butter garage services and also more specialised work less commonly found like large manual machining capability and welding.
We're looking to stock up on a range of common classic parts too so that we can take on most project work without waiting on parts turning up in ebay etc albeit limited space prevents stocking a vast amount.
So far over the last 8 months !

Obligatory huge lathe brought back somewhat inappropriately 


Company car brought down , inappropriately 

Lathe electrical rebuild done because it was dangerous as hell, 415 through the soaked push buttons etc ,,horrible ! Once cleaned and generally setup it's been put to work straight away!

 
this s100 k series swap was quite aquite to drive, getting one to fit the earlier car isn't bolt in like with the estelle and rapid !

Cambelt snappage job on an iveco 2.3, lots of new valves and lapping required!

loads of work done, and loads more hopefully to come ! 

I got some proper hacky looks before Christmas, picking up the kids from school in the Clio when the starter was a bit sticky and having to single handedly bump start it in the dark and snow.  I thought I did pretty well doing it smoothly though!

I had a day off work today so made use of some tinkering time.
First job was replacing the rear inner light lens. One of the previous owners has reversed into something I think, there is some scuffing on the bumper, a very small ding in the metal quarter panel, and a crack in the rear light lens which is hard to see, harder to photograph but easy to replace.

Its not too bad, but water has got in and its going green in the cracks, and is only a matter of time before it mists up and makes the car look tatty and uncared for. I bagged a replacement unit for £16 on ebay which arrived earlier in the week. Easy enough to do, open the boot and remove the sound deadening felt

undo 3x 10mm nuts through the access holes and gently lift it out

I took the opportunity to clean the muck out of the stamped recess in the panel before reassembling it all with the new unit. 

Much better.
Then onto some other jobs. The Laser 4880 oil filter tool had arrived earlier in the week too so I lifted the front end up and had another go at getting the oil filter housing to release. I followed @RoverFolkUs advice and used a 24mm socket on it, rather than fitting the cup tool direct to the 12" breaker bar. I used the Power of Grayskull and amazingly it undid - I was sure I'd trashed the cup wrench again, but astonishingly it survived. I drained the oil out of the filter housing (maybe 1/2" litre?) into a washing up bowl and then replaced the filter and o-ring, making sure I cleaned up all the threads and mating surfaces with a rag, put a tiny bit of copper grease on the mating surfaces on the not-threads side of the o-ring, then refitted it. I did it up hand tight, then a tiny bit more on the ratchet. Hopefully next time I need to undo it it will come off without a fuss. 
I got given a BIN offer on a caliper and carrier so I took the lazy route and just bought it, and swapped the whole shebang. It was £150 which I could have done without, but the old one was basically fucked - I could have spent a significant amount of time heating it up, hammering it and getting it to free off, then replacing the slider and reassembling it all, but I'd probably have broken something in the process and immobilised the car so just took the easy route and assembled the whole caliper and carrier on the workbench, removed the old one and swapped the brake flexi over, refitted the pads, pins and wire retainers and then enlisted my eldest daughter to do the pedals end while I did the caliper end and bled it through.
All sorted out and working fine - so thats another issue off the list.
I think the next thing is to get some tyres, it has 4 mismatched budgets on currently, and they're all at, or close to the 3mm wear markers. it looks like I can get a full matching set of Kumho Ecsta tyres for £300, or Uniroyal Rainexperts for £340. I know and trust the uniroyals, the Kumho's are supposed to be just as good in the rain as the Uniroyals, so might be worth taking a punt on, thats something for next month though I think.
I had to go up to Manchester for work last week and the Lexus handled it all beautifully. 550 miles there and back via Telford, it behaved impeccably and delivered 38mpg, and 35mpg over a combined 20 gallons of 70% motorways and 30% crawling round local roads.
 

No point pussyfooting around it, I had to do one of the most unpleasant jobs on a BX today.
The steering rack boot - usually a fairly simple swap. Not so with a BX.
The power steering hydraulic ram is external to the steering rack, so ram eye-end attaches to the nearside rack arm via a protruding lug (shown after I installed the boot)

First things first, the old one was whipped off. The track rod end was left connected to the hub on each side, and simply unscrewed from the steering rack, to roughly retain the tracking settings.

The old rack boot had been fouling a bent handbrake cable bracket, and had also dislodged it at one end.

 
The new boot was thrown into a boiling kettle for a while, in an attempt to soften the boot and give a bit more elasticity. The kitchen drawers were raided for spare spoons, in an attempt to allow the boot to safely stretch over the lug without tearing it. 
This was a total arseache, compounded by the fact the BX is on the lowest point of the axle stands at the moment. Crawling underneath it every few minutes was a pain, especially with the pigtail hydraulic pipes running through the middle of the engine bay.
Through divine intervention, I eventually got it on after much swearing. The aftermarket boot was much bigger at one end than the 44mm either side, so a jubilee clip was utilised to evenly take the slack up.

The other side was a breeze by comparison, and within half an hour, the offside boot was replaced and the track rod ends reconnected. The nearside boot does touch the hydraulic ram, but it shouldn't cause any issues.
Pretty sure this concludes the jobs around the engine bay. I'm planning to take two days off work next week so I can try and put some graft in to get back on schedule for the target date.
Oh yeah, here are a few random spots I forgot to post from last week:



The Xantia was very bouncy on the road, suggesting the spheres are not having a good time.
Cheers!

I had a day off work today so made use of some tinkering time.
First job was replacing the rear inner light lens. One of the previous owners has reversed into something I think, there is some scuffing on the bumper, a very small ding in the metal quarter panel, and a crack in the rear light lens which is hard to see, harder to photograph but easy to replace.

Its not too bad, but water has got in and its going green in the cracks, and is only a matter of time before it mists up and makes the car look tatty and uncared for. I bagged a replacement unit for £16 on ebay which arrived earlier in the week. Easy enough to do, open the boot and remove the sound deadening felt

undo 3x 10mm nuts through the access holes and gently lift it out

I took the opportunity to clean the muck out of the stamped recess in the panel before reassembling it all with the new unit. 

Much better.
Then onto some other jobs. The Laser 4880 oil filter tool had arrived earlier in the week too so I lifted the front end up and had another go at getting the oil filter housing to release. I followed @RoverFolkUs advice and used a 24mm socket on it, rather than fitting the cup tool direct to the 12" breaker bar. I used the Power of Grayskull and amazingly it undid - I was sure I'd trashed the cup wrench again, but astonishingly it survived. I drained the oil out of the filter housing (maybe 1/2" litre?) into a washing up bowl and then replaced the filter and o-ring, making sure I cleaned up all the threads and mating surfaces with a rag, put a tiny bit of copper grease on the mating surfaces on the not-threads side of the o-ring, then refitted it. I did it up hand tight, then a tiny bit more on the ratchet. Hopefully next time I need to undo it it will come off without a fuss. 
I got given a BIN offer on a caliper and carrier so I took the lazy route and just bought it, and swapped the whole shebang. It was £150 which I could have done without, but the old one was basically fucked - I could have spent a significant amount of time heating it up, hammering it and getting it to free off, then replacing the slider and reassembling it all, but I'd probably have broken something in the process and immobilised the car so just took the easy route and assembled the whole caliper and carrier on the workbench, removed the old one and swapped the brake flexi over, refitted the pads, pins and wire retainers and then enlisted my eldest daughter to do the pedals end while I did the caliper end and bled it through.
All sorted out and working fine - so thats another issue off the list.
I think the next thing is to get some tyres, it has 4 mismatched budgets on currently, and they're all at, or close to the 3mm wear markers. it looks like I can get a full matching set of Kumho Ecsta tyres for £300, or Uniroyal Rainexperts for £340. I know and trust the uniroyals, the Kumho's are supposed to be just as good in the rain as the Uniroyals, so might be worth taking a punt on, thats something for next month though I think.
I had to go up to Manchester for work last week and the Lexus handled it all beautifully. 550 miles there and back via Telford, it behaved impeccably and delivered 38mpg, and 35mpg over a combined 20 gallons of 70% motorways and 30% crawling round local roads.