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1980 Austin Princess


vulgalour

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Right, well, update then I guess.  Stopped in at the machine shop and he's still a man down and work is piling up, as it does, and he's not been able to do my pipe.  He's asked for another two weeks and honestly, what am I going to do?  I don't know anywhere else locally that I can take it to that'll do it.  Now he tells me he's having to make the pipe so... okay. Two more weeks it is I suppose.  That'll take us to 7 weeks on this job and I have to say I won't be surprised if I go back in two weeks time and he needs more time so... we shall see.  I know I said I wasn't in a rush and I know it's shitty when you end up short staffed, especially when you're self employed, so I'm not going to get upset about it.  Things happen, he does good work, sometimes good work takes a ridiculously long time for whatever reason, that's life.

In better more progressy news, I got the door I was working on welded up.  Not my finest work, I must have rushed it a bit because I clearly got it too hot in a couple of places.  No oil-canning, thankfully, it's just not as nice a job as it could have been if I'd slowed down a bit more.  Filler and paint will make it presentable enough, as will getting the better hammer and dolly on that lower edge to sharpen it up a bit, I just ran out of steam to really finish this off nicely.  I'm happy it's not rusty at any rate, that was the goal after all.

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It's certainly no worse than the front door on the same side so it'll do.  I was surprised at just how much I needed to replace on this door and it'll need more work once I fit it on the car because the trailing edge isn't quite the profile it should be, but I can't sort that until car and door are in the same place.  It's another job off the list at any rate.

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Great thread, hats off to you for the work done on the Princess :grinning-smiley-043:

I always liked those motors, great motorway cruisers I seem to recall. I knew a bloke had a 2200HLS (an early one with the funky wool/velour type interior). The 2200 made a very nice noise.

I wonder if any of the Princess hatchback conversions survived (Torcars did it I think). I once saw one in a scrapyard back in the late 1980's, quite a cool conversion, pity Leyland didn't do it themselves.

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One Torcar is known to survive and was up for sale by its original owner recently.

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They really are at home on the motorway, even my problem child is a lovely place to just waft along in the slow lane or go barelling along in the German car lane.

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4 hours ago, ETCHY said:

.... Trust BL to fuck it up !

That's British management* for you. And over the decades,  such expertise* has been steadily exported worldwide.  So, theoretically,  much of the world may become similarly incompetent. 

Except maybe the Chinese.  The Chinese will exploit it, just as they do now. 

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3 hours ago, vulgalour said:

I don't know what might be causing that.  I've been uploading direct to the forum, so the pictures should show fine.  Might be worth taking it up with one of the tech bods, whoever that is.

I've been posting to the update thread, but so far no answers. :(

 

Back to the usual "we can't find that" error now, so looks as if the permission thing was temporary problem. ;)

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  • 3 weeks later...

How very odd.

---

I finally picked up the head today.  I'd been given so many different conflicting stories about where the pipe had come from that I really didn't believe it was sorted, and while I did get a sincere apology for the owner of the shop losing his rag at me for putting too much pressure on... well.  Let's just say it's a shop I shan't be using again.  I'm not going to name-and-shame either, I don't believe that's necessary in this particular instance.  I got the head back, I got the job done, and while it has been frustrating it's just one of those things.  Everyone is human and honestly, I think I've run afoul here of someone whose personal life is causing problems with his professional life.  The sincere apology was enough to convince me that he knew he crossed a line, professionally, and there's no need to go any further with that.  We're only human, after all, and I can certainly empathise with where he seemed to be, I just hope he gets it all straightened out.

All that said, I'm not entirely happy with the work done.  I paid for the pipe that was made, that's only fair, but the pipe has no flange on it.  The pipe itself is a custom turned piece and fitted to the head with weld-seal, I think that's what he called it, much like Porsche do with their coolant pipes.  The lack of flange doesn't worry me too much as the radiator hose we temporarily repaired likewise has no flanges and hasn't leaked or fired off so I'm moderately certain just double-jubileeing the hose to the pipe will be sufficient.  If it isn't, well, we'll have to figure out what to do about it I suppose.  It was £45 for this and, honestly, I'm not sure how to feel about that.  The job is technically done and £45 isn't a lot of money BUT it was a war to get it done and that's left a bit of a sour taste over the whole experience.
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Still, at least I can move on with this now.  The next challenge is finding time when my friend over in Lincolnshire is off at the same time as I am so we can rebuild the head properly.  I picked up an oil filter today - local motorfactor had one on the shelf, which was really useful - and I'll be getting some fresh oil, coolant, and a flush to make sure everything is nice and clean when it's all put back together.  The Princess will ride again soon.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Nearly a month on and how far along are we with this job?  Well, clashing schedules haven't much helped on the speedy repair front but everything is now lined up and this weekend I'll be off to my friend's place so we can extra double check the shims are correct before final assembly on the head.  I've no real cause for concern on the shims, but since my friend has spare shims and the suitable tools for checking, it seemed silly not to do it and it's always nice to visit friends in far away places.  Before I got all that underway, an impulse purchase saw me snag a couple of Princess hubcabs online so I now have a full compliment and a spare.  I've also got a spare Allegro hubcap (pictured) if anyone fancies it, it's in reasonable shape and would suit a not-show-car vehicle.  Here, you can see the difference between the Allegro (on the left) and Princess (on the right) hubcaps.

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On the engine front, it was the tedious job of valve lapping mostly.  They didn't need a huge amount of work at least and Mike had already cleaned off the deposits on the stem side for me so I didn't have to faff with that, so it was just a fairly straightforward process of twiddly stick and grinding paste followed by plenty of cleaning.

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Once they were nice and matchy-cleany again it was time to reassemble.  It's a bit awkward to do but not really difficult.  New valve stem seals on the  valves that needed it, as per the book.

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Once all the valves and springs were in, it was time to refit the shims and buckets.  Again, this is straightforward.  There's no noticeable wear (to the naked eye) on the components, or on the camshaft, so I suspect that when we check all this on the weekend we'll change nothing and just button it all down.

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I replaced both camshaft seals, tightening the camshaft pulley to torque as per the book after replacing the big seal.  Then I loosely bolted the cam box top half down so nothing comes out of place and popped the whole thing in its box ready for the weekend.

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I can't wait to get this back on the car, it looks so nice already!

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  • 3 weeks later...

 

 

The theme tune to this sodding job.  So, let's go back a bit before I contracted [insert melodramatic illness here] after visiting my friend over in Lincolnshire who had volunteered to help out with setting the valve clearances on the head before reinstalling it.  After an horrendous drive that took nearly five hours to travel nearly 150 miles, and then getting punted off onto unlit country roads I didn't know and finding one of my headlights was way out of alignment, and hitting flood water I couldn't see, and having to emergency stop to stop a suicidal pheasant from obliterating bits of my wobbly plastic French car... destination was achieved.  Then I learned the really good pizza shop had shut down, so there wasn't even traditional really good pizza to be had.  Disaster.  Anyway, the following day was more enjoyable, involving a few errands that got me a look at a lovely bare-metal Riley special.  I digress.  First up was to measure the valve clearances and they were all over the place.  The ideal is 12 thou and of the eight valves, only one was what we wanted.

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To measure the clearances you need a feeler gauge and something to clamp the camshaft down with.  Fortunately, my friend had the special O-series tool for the job which is essentially three blocks of alloy that bolt down over the bearings and have little nylon blocks that screw down to clamp everything in place.  This means you can get in at the gap between camshaft lobe and bucket with the feeler gauge and find out what the gap actually is.  He also had a wide array of shims on hand so we'd hopefully have enough to sort the clearances properly.

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After a lot of maths, and a few rounds of removing the special clamps and camshaft, lifting buckets to replace the shims, clamping everything down and remeasuring, all of the tolerances were brought up to a much more acceptable and even measurement across the board, as close to 12 thou as we could get.  This was all done after I'd already lapped the valves in properly which, of course, affects your clearances since material is being removed.  What I had thought was a machined circle on one side of the old shims was actually wear.  In this next image you can see the special clamps and, to the right, the micrometer for measuring the shims.  I'd go into more detail about the facts and figures and how we actually did all this but I've forgotten, which is why I normally do the write ups immediately.

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I then came home, not in a particular rush, and made the same journey in about 2.5 hours instead of nearly five, my wonky headlight fixed when we found which adjuster needed repair, and I had every intention of getting on with the rebuild and sorting this all out.  Then I got ill, and I stayed ill, and am still ill.  Undeterred, I bullied myself into reassembling what I could of the head and quickly found out that yes, I am still ill and perhaps I should wait a little while longer before trying to do the head swap.  I reassembled the two halves of the head with assembly lube on the rotating surfaces and some Wellseal on the joint between the two halves of the head.  The Wellseal is good enough for sealing a K-series head and it'll be good enough for this, it's also a nicer job than using the recommended generic sealant as I've done before.  I installed the end plate with a new paper gasket, and gave the cam a few rotations to check everything is as it ought to be.  I'd already installed the new seals at each end of the camshaft too.  I can't fit any of the other components to this head until I remove them from the head on the car, things like the mechanical fuel pump blanking plate, the bracket for the belt cover, and the distributor.

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Another item I ordered was an in-line radiator top hose filler, it took me a while to find a UK supplier for this and what turned up is really very nice (no picture, you'll see it later no doubt).  I made a measuring mistake and bought one that takes a smaller cap than the one on the car, but I've found that the pressure rating of the car's coolant system is close enough to MX-5 systems that I should be able to use a cap from one of those with no bother.  The bonus here is that MX-5 components are plentiful, and affordable, so should I need another cap for any reason, it should be easy to replace.  The new hoses and clamps I need have also been easy to source since Mike has left over stuff from other projects that are suitable.  I have everything lined up ready to do the head and fluids swap, the only thing holding me up now is this wretched virus or whatever it is I've contracted, so as soon as I'm well again, I'll get this job done.

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Finally, it is time to do replace the blown headgasket and install the new head. I'm hampered somewhat by the time of year reducing the outdoor working hours to very little, especially with me working nights, and the fact that we're now in the middle of the rainy season.  To begin, Mike helped me maneouvre the Princess from the overflow drive to a spot in front of the garage on the main drive so that I could use the up-and-over door as a shelter.   First job was to set the car to 90 degrees before TDC as per the book - this gets all the pistons to sit in a neat level row - and then the work could begin.  Because the car sits just a tiny bit too low for me to get a good swing with a ratchet, I had to jack it up to undo the sump plug, and then let it back down to drain, then jack it up to put the sump plug back in so it was ready for fresh oil.  Amazingly, I didn't get oil inside my sleeve, I didn't drop the car onto the oil pan crushing it and throwing oil all over the drive and, when I moved the pan I didn't spill oil everywhere.  This didn't bode well, on a job like this you don't want to peak too soon with competence!  The oil was fairly clean, which was no great surprise since it wasn't done that long ago, and while there were some blobs in it, they were soft and non-metallic and looked like it was just old gunge that had been flushed out which was entirely expected given the cars chequered service history.  Apologies in advance for the terrible photography in this update, my ancient potatocam was no happier about being outside in the rain than I was.

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I fitted the new oil filter - pre-filling it and putting a little bit of new oil around the seal first - and then moved on to more disassembly.  The book recommends unbolting the manifold from the downpipe but I've got the downpipe sealed and intend to keep it that way, so I went for the more awkward approach of unbolting the manifold from the head, but not the downpipe.  This makes lining up the bolts and gasket a little awkward on reassembly but it's the only way I know to prevent that downpipe seal from blowing so I don't mind the extra faff.  Plug leads, distributor, mechanical fuel pump blanking plate, temperature sender wire, electronic ignition connectors, battery, timing belt (after slackening off the tensioner), carburettor, and air cleaner (I think that's everything) were disconnected ready to remove the head, and then the coolant was dropped and flushed through.  While the oil came out relatively clean and free of water contamination, the coolant was brown with oil contamination and didn't smell particularly good.

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At this point I still had a good amount of light and was optimistic, if a little grumpy, about the job.  Until I discovered I didn't actually have a spark plug tool.  A trek over to the unit for that and a few other nicknacks and we were back in business.  Plugs out and a final check over to make sure I hadn't missed anything - I had, one rubber hose at the back of the head- and the head was ready to come off.  The plugs are fairly new but I'll be replacing them anyway.  They'd probably go again, but I feel like it makes sense to replace them since I'm doing everything else anyway.

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Then, finally, something went wrong.  The temperature sender in the head needed to come out, I hadn't bought a replacement because it hadn't crossed my mind.  Since it's a soft brass thing I didn't want to apply to much force so used an appropriately sized ring spanner and gently applied pressure.  PING.  That'll be the head of the sender firing off somewhere, propelled by the spring inside.  Great.  That means I can't put coolant in the engine when the new head goes on because I've nothing to go in the hole on the new head so I'll get one of those ordered. At least they're cheap and easy to acquire, normally.  I've never had one of these shear before, so it was quite surprising.

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Moving on, I got the head off without too much bother, it didn't put up much of a fight happily.  It's quite black inside, I suspect it's been running rich, except for one valve which is very clean compared to the others.  There's no obvious failure on the gasket apart from it not sitting entirely flush on the same side as the one comparatively pale looking valve.  I'm not sure what the issue would be there, I'm not an expert, but I imagine it's related to the problem and possibly related to me trying to chase down just why the engine wouldn't run quite right.  There's not a huge build up of carbon etc, but it's also not the nicest looking combustion zones I've seen.  I'll be glad to get the new head on there.  The block side, as it happens, looks infinitely better, with nice clean piston crowns and cylinder walls.  I don't remember what I did to this head when I pulled it from the '79 car it came off and fitted it to this one, I don't believe it was as in depth as I've been on this round.

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By the time I got the head off it was too dark to see what I was doing and I didn't have suitable lighting to help out.  I can't get the car into the garage because of still being mid-house-move so it's still full of boxes and furniture (urgh, another saga that's going on too long) otherwise that's just what I would have done to get things finished.  So at the end of play today this is where we're at, and the only reason you can see this so well is the camera flash, I couldn't actually see this anywhere near so well in person.

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Rather than plonking either head back on there before I've cleaned the block surfaces properly, I plopped some cardboard down to keep stuff out of the block until tomorrow.

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I'll attack this tomorrow. Annoyingly, I shan't have the car running tomorrow because of that temperature sender but I'm going to make hay and take the opportunity to de-purple the engine bay while I wait on the parts arriving.  Oh and yes, the Princess does have a bit of a lean on.  It's partly the drive, partly the driver's front displacer, so I need to send the front pair away to get regassed to sort that and when they're away, I'll take the opportunity to fit the new bumpstops I got for the front end that it's never had in all the years I've owned the car.

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With some better light today I could get a better look at the block face and, it turns out, find the point that the head gasket had failed.  There was a brown oily-rusty stain on that cylinder with the paler valve, while everything else was in good shape.  No idea why it blew here, or how, but it did.

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I then went over the whole block face and cleaned it up, as well as cleaning up the cylinders and piston crowns as much as I could for a general health inspection.  The vertical lines in the shot couldn't be felt with a fingernail and if you moved slightly the light wouldn't catch them and they weren't visible, so I'm assuming that's just normal wear rather than anything to worry about.  No ridge at the top of the cylinders that I could feel, just the transition from the dirtier oily bit at the top and the shinier clean bit below.  Apart from the cylinder that was next to the blown part of the gasket, the cylinder crowns all looked very clean.  A little oily, but nothing a very quick wipe with a tissue couldn't solve so maybe the piston rings are a little worn which might explain why the car consumes a little bit of oil on a longer run.  I'm not tipping gallons of oil in every week even in regular use so I'm certainly not worrying about it for now.  I bought a set of piston rings anyway, because I found they were surprisingly plentiful and affordable, so that will hopefully help in the future should I want to rebuild the bottom end of the engine.

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The block face cleaned up very nicely, I went over the whole thing with a Stanley blade to get rid of the old gasket material that was stuck, and then some fine wet and dry sandpaper on a block before wiping it all down.  No signs of pitting or corrosion, or any build up of nasty stuff in the waterways, so I tapped the locating dowels home and plonked the new head gasket on.

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Then I plonked the head on and started bolting bits to it.  First up was the exhaust manifold since it's the biggest chunk of thing to do.  I line it up, feed the gasket through the gap between manifold and head, and then put a bolt through at each end to hold it in place.  It's a bit fiddly, but saves me splitting that downpipe join.  Once those two bolts have got a few threads in I add the rest and tighten everything down evenly.  I've found making a couple of passes across all the bolts seems to make the best seal rather than dogging each one up in turn, so that's what I did.

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Then I needed to find what in the bag of spare hoses fit.  Annoyingly, only the hideous blue silicone hose was the correct diameter and, perhaps fortunately, didn't have quite the right shapes I needed for the application.  Served well for mock-up.  In a way it's good I'm doing this because the old top hose - which is slightly too small a diameter and also not quite the right shape - has started to perish so is definitely due to be replaced.  I'll have to order some new bends, in black, of the appropriate dimensions so that I can get this all together.  The new parts will take pretty much exactly the same route as the old ones, so this has turned out to be a fairly elegant solution.  The only difficulty has been working out exactly how the in-pipe thermostat works, but after some trial and error I figured that out.  The filler point will be slightly higher than the top of the engine, which I understand is pretty much ideal, and the thermostat can really go in anywhere on that length between the filler and the radiator itself, you just push it into the hose far enough that you've enough hose past it to clamp to the pipe outlets, so I'll likely put it in the pipe right next to the filler, or right next to the radiator.  A jubilee around the thermostat then holds it in place on the pipe.  It's not the most attractive solution, but it's cost effective and sensible for this application.  The split in the hose where I've put the thermostat for mock up is not where the thermostat will be, nor will  that hose be split there.  I have a theory that less joins in the hose is better in part because it means less points it can leak, and in part because it's probably just better somehow.

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Before fitting the timing belt, I noticed the camshaft had moved ever so slightly off the point it needed to be, so I tried to move it.  No joy.  It was jammed, which was very strange because off the car it rotated quite nicely and I had used assembly lube to prevent just this.  Rather than panic, I pulled the cambox off and found that the O-ring seal that looked like it should go at one end of the camshaft had just torn and jammed everything.  I'm glad I spotted this now and not when I tried to start the car.  Now, this seal is a bit of an odd one because it doesn't really need to be there.  The end plate on the  head allows oil to circulate anyway and the camshaft doesn't need that O-ring to support it since the bearing does that, there's also nothing that needs the oil to be kept on one side or the other of it... so I removed it and didn't fit another one.  This was in part because I didn't have another one to fit but also because I'm pretty sure another O-ring would do exactly the same thing.  With that sorted, I fitted the timing belt and everything turned freely.  I gave the engine a couple of rotations to work the assembly lube about a bit better and just check things felt right and they do, there's nothing amiss that I'm aware of now.

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With that done I was aware that it was getting colder and darker and I'd not yet done the de-purpling I meant to, so I quickly popped the oil filler tube, starter motor, and starter motor bracket off and got them painted before it got too cold to do it.  Then quickly stuffed them in the house where it was warm so the paint didn't go all weird.  I was going to use more black, but I didn't have much, so used copper instead which matches the timing belt cover I did a while ago.  Should look fine once reinstalled.  Oil pick-up tube got a black fade at the bottom, which was unintentional at first since it was the last of my black paint but I rolled with it since the block is black so it now sort of fades into the copper.  For the starter motor it's just the middle casings that are done in copper, the rest of the bare alloy is kept just like that, which should look smart enough. Neither of these paint jobs will last, it's not exactly the right paint for the job, but it'll do for now and looks more cohesive than the mismatch I had before.

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Then it was time to pack up and wait for the parts I need to arrive later this week. We're all ready to go, but until I've got the new hoses and temperature sender I can't really go any further just yet.  Oh, and the expansion bottle went in the dishwasher because, and I quote "it's due a cleaning cycle so we might as well", or at least that's what Mike tells me.

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You'd think that, but I can't actually swing the elbow join that way because it'll foul on the timing belt cover.  I've ordered the various pieces I need to make the new hose and, for what I'm getting, I didn't think it was too bad price wise.  90 bend from the head to the filler, straight hose from the filler to a metal 135 degree elbow, and then a reducer hose from that to the radiator since the radiator outlet is a smaller diameter than the rest.  The insert in the head should have been the same size as the radiator outlet but that's another thing that was done wrong on that so it's actually marginally bigger than everything else.  Fortunately, it's not such a big size increase that the hose won't fit onto it but still, it's another mark against that particular item.

I don't mind the silver cap, it matches the one on the expansion bottle.  Speaking of, that's come out of the machine looking much cleaner and, as Mike put it "the colour of an old person's eye", which it is.  Lovely.

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There might be space to put it in the elbow pipe before the filler section, if not it has to go after the filler neck.  That's pretty close to the head and not far off where the old waxstat lived so it should be fine I'd think.  Not really sure how I'd get it any closer tbh.

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Well, that's pretty much what I was looking for before going the R5 route, so that's a nuisance.  Oh well, I'm committed to this now.  Annoyingly the thermostat I've got is just a tiny bit too big to go in the pipe in the head and there's not enough material on either item to shave down to make things fit.

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Things have been progressing, though it feels very much like two steps forward and one back. For some reason I don't understand, the number plate system used by parts suppliers is bringing this car up as a 2.2, which it isn't, so trying to find the relevant part and part number is proving difficult. The supplier that did have one told me it was broken and could they have my reg to try and find an alternative stock. This was fine until my details didn't match up with their details and then they wanted a list of details as long as my arm, including things like which are the driven wheels and what the VIN number is. I've done this dance before. Basically they don't have the part and they'll take loads of details to in the end tell me they can't get it. The reason for ordering another sender was my own stupidity when I managed to order a pair of 2.2 senders that look the same as the 1.7/2.0 sender, but are much larger. But seriously, try putting GBT563W into a parts site and you'll see it comes up with the 2.2 engine, which mine has never been, it comes up as a hatchback instead of a saloon a lot too, and I've had that result in a supplier refusing to supply a part.

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Fun times. Anyway, the one thing that was correct that did arrive was the new Beru spark plugs. I spent a bit more, I didn't really need to, I just wanted to go with something that should be that little bit nicer than the usual NGK stuff I put in (which is perfectly fine too) to try and iron out any running niggles I might have. I'm not sure they'll make any difference at all in reality and I've kept the old NGKs I took out because there's nothing inherently wrong with them and it's good to have emergency spares just in case.

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I then reinstalled the starter motor, it's bracket, and the oil fill tube. I think they look much nicer now they're painted to match everything else.

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Now I just have to wait on the hoses arriving to finish that, a new sump plug washer since it turns out I don't have one the correct size in stock, and a new temperature sender that's actually correct. It's all a bit frustrating at the moment.

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Because chances are that'll be wrong too when I go to order.  My reg has always brought up the correct details when I've used it, until very recently when the system was presumably updated and now it's wrong.  Also, in my experience with giving a reg that isn't the car in question, and then giving them another to try, they soon pull a Computer Says No on you so you can't try again.  It's absurd.  I can go into a shop with the part in my hand and say "I want this for a Make Model Year" and they'll ask for a reg and if the computer says no, I can't have it.  I've even tried to buy a part for the car, with the car sat outside, and I've shown them the part fitted to the actual car so they can see exactly what I want for exactly what UNMODIFIED car, and the exact reg and all the rest but if the computer says no, then the computer says no.

It does my head in.

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