Project Rusty Triumphs in Scotland - COLD START EVERYTHING - 24/03/26

[comfortablynumb]

I had a Peugeot 505 estate fail on 'horn too quiet!'

If that was all it'd failed on I'd have argued the point, but since there were other things I didn't bother.

Either it says 'beep' or it doesn't?🤔

[danthecapriman]

19 minutes ago, comfortablynumb said:

I had a Peugeot 505 estate fail on 'horn too quiet!'

If that was all it'd failed on I'd have argued the point, but since there were other things I didn't bother.

Either it says 'beep' or it doesn't?🤔

I had an advisory on my Capri years ago for ‘horn sounds harsh!’ Really weird to see it on the advisory sheet, but it was. It made a noise but rather than a horn sound it sounded like someone was strangling a cat!😄

[comfortablynumb]

Doesn't the MOT Bible say something about 'audible warning?'

I've often wondered if you could get away with 

"GETOUTOFTHEBLOODYWAY!!!"🤣

[captain_70s]

3 minutes ago, comfortablynumb said:

Doesn't the MOT Bible say something about 'audible warning?'

I've often wondered if you could get away with 

"GETOUTOFTHEBLOODYWAY!!!"🤣

Sadly not...

I think @davidfowler2000 had an MOT fail for a horn that did more of a sad quack than a honk.

[juular]

More than adequately covered by that fuel pump.

[SiC]

I have a monotone voice, does that not count if I shout?

[Dyslexic Viking]

A quick search on eBay and there are a lot of really loud horns there, install one of those and make the tester deaf.

[comfortablynumb]

Ever seen 'The Mask'? 🤣 @Dyslexic Viking

[Dyslexic Viking]

5 minutes ago, comfortablynumb said:

Ever seen 'The Mask'? 🤣 @Dyslexic Viking

No, I haven't and I don't want to.

[davidfowler2000]

2 hours ago, captain_70s said:

I think @davidfowler2000 had an MOT fail for a horn that did more of a sad quack than a honk.

It did sound fucking shit. Like an empysemic goose on a 80 a day habit.

[captain_70s]

Another day, another free MOT retest missed...

The Volvo was moved into flight mode and the front brakes cleaned and pistons rotated/worked back and forth until binding was absent.

Then I set about taking the rears apart.

The disk/drum was quite well attached to the hub...

I also noted the flexis were looking a bit perished so ordered some up with a NOS handbrake cable.

This is the handbrake mech. All adjustment is done elsewhere.

Anyways. The handbrake cable arrived and I immediately noted it had "740 1983-1987" written on the bag in pen...

Yes. Naturally the design was changed in 1988 and there was no good way of bodging the wrong cable in place.

Arses. Well, no making my free MOT retest so may as well rebuild the calipers now I'm here. 😂

The weather has been ideal, 5C and rain even when the forecast is dry...

One stripped down with relative ease, a foot pump providing enough pressure to eject the pistons.

The other? Not so much...

Turns out you can actually buy a pair of pattern calipers for £60. So that's what I've done. 

The exhaust is also well fucked, you can see right through it in multiple places so I suspect I'll be throwing a new system at it shortly.

New (correct) handbrake cable fitted, seems to work.

I also did a bit more metal bending for the Cresta.

Namely my workbench...

Turns out having the metal shrinker in the vice and repeatedly leaning my whole body weight on it is beyond the capabilities of what is basically shelving...

Anyways. More bits constructed.

I had grand dreams of making this in one piece before giving up almost immediately. It is now three pieces butt welded together.

Once this A pillar/sill end is done it is a pretty easy run of flat panels along the sill before the next nightmare which is the rear inner wheelarch...

Naturally, due to my excellent planning and repair ability I'm currently borrowing a car from @juular which actually works.

Frankly this does not feel a decade older in design than the 740. It is probably one of the nicest driving cars I've experienced...

[captain_70s]

Tonight, in the Waste Of Time Olympics:

The brake backplates are at end of life but I'm too cheap to replace them so we're going to do the right thing and try and pry another year's service from them.

A visit from the wire wheel and a dose of Thatcher's Tears (phosphoric acid) followed by a liberal coat of zinc primer...

Rattle can black.

New calipers, cable and hoses.

The grotty spots on the inner arch also got the same treatment.

Ditto the other side.

I refitted the original disk/drums and shoes/pads with the original pins/springs etc. Utterly barbaric but everything was in decent condition and I forgot to buy a set of pads...

I was then struck down with the lurgy and have yet to bleed the system or adjust the handbrake.

I suspect the exhaust has seen the end of its economical life...

I'm going to do the right thing and gently wrap it with aluminium tape, because a steel exhaust is £350 and I'm currently in the process of buying a house and have no money...

240 continues to be all the car you'll ever need, as well as a decent fog generator.

[hairnet]

On 19/11/2025 at 18:30, captain_70s said:

Sadly not...

I think @davidfowler2000 had an MOT fail for a horn that did more of a sad quack than a honk.

creak of his wallet when he goes for petrol in the volvos?

had the horn that sounded like a quack - only told verbally as it made some noise

[captain_70s]

Slow progress has morphed into no progress.

Weather alternating between pissing rain and sub 0C has put a damper on my motivation, I've also been busy doing Christmas/Hogmanay/Birthday/Social things seemingly endlessly over the last month. Anyhoos, I've ordered the last few bits I need to complete my Volvo bodgery and should hopefully be able to wrangle Fiancée_70s into helping bleed the brakes this week...

We've also been busy buying a house, namely the one we already lived in. 

In late September our landlady relayed the idea she might want to sell up via the letting agent to us. I ran some numbers and came to the conclusion that we could conceivably afford to buy it as while it is a big house in a nice area it features a dated and disintegrating budget kitchen, plenty of aged decor and rotten 40 year old windows/doors. We also aren't exactly extravagant, and tend towards saving money rather than spending it.

We said we'd be interested in buying if she wanted to sell and she immediately vanished off the face of the earth for a month before getting back to us to say she still wasn't sure she was going to sell...

We went and looked at some other houses in the interim which were nice enough, but quickly realised that most stuff worth having was going for £10k-30k above asking price, and the asking price was usually also the home report value. So we'd have to lower our budget to accomodate making up the difference in mortgagable value and what stuff was selling at. This would be about 25%, at which point houses with driveways/garages rapidly dried up. My other half also had a few requirements that meant we were locked into pretty pricey areas; walking distance to a train station, no more than 30 mins from her parent's place and not surrounded by schemes.

A look at the rental market showed that a comparable house would be 15-25% odd more than we were currently paying and most wouldn't have a garage.

A mild panic was setting in when the landlady announced she was getting the place valued. At the same time, the house attached to ours also went up for sale!

It was even quite a bit less pricey than I thought it'd be, although it hadn't really been decorated since the 90s. Unfortunately the garage had also been converted to an extra room, with the up-and-over door just opening into a bike/bin store area. Bugger. It sold within 4 days.

Then the landlady got the valuation back but wanted £10k above home report value on the basis she had "expected it to be worth about £40k more than it'd been valued at". I was miffed at this point, as we've paid her £40k over the last 3 years and put up with a dodgy washing machine, dead dishwasher and leaky garage roof, among other things and have generally not bothered her unless things were genuinely fucked. She also inexplicably went through an estate agent as a middle man when she could have contacted us directly and she could have avoided all the fees!

This meant that we'd need to find an extra £10k down the back of the sofa to make up the difference on the mortgageable value, this we did not have. If the house had been valued at £10k more putting that on the mortgage would have been no issue, but having to have it up front just wasn't going to be an option.

Then Fiancée_70's gran died and the money allocated for her being in a nursing home suddenly became avaliable. Holy shit. This might actually be doable.

So, a mortgage was agreed in principal and we went with a lender who offered a free valuation as part of the package in the hope that they might actually value it higher than the first mob so we could get a mortgage on the full value. Which they did! 
So long story short, we bought our house and now also have some extra money to replace the windows/doors/boiler. Which would be nice, as it has been a steady 15C in the living room this winter.

I am currently praying the new neighbours aren't going to be an issue. They moved in on Monday and are currently gutting and redecorating the entire house. I never knew the garage was now adjacent to an actual room rather than another garage, and the act of car restoration can be loud and smelly... 

I really can't advise buying a house, utterly horrible experience. We also had it about as easy as it could possibly be, clean credit scores, good income, no chain on either end. The only way is down...

Anyhoos, more relevant to this thread I can finally do something useful with the shitty patio behind the garage.

The plan is to remove one of the barn doors, butt a cheap 14x7ft shed up against the garage wall and patch in the gaps.

This will basically be used for storing all the shit I currently have to keep in the garage proper on racking, thus making more room for working on the car.

Mildly concerned about dumping a timber shed into what is essentially a tight fitting trough... I do plan on leaving a gap on all sides to allow clearing out debris and probably using chicken wire type mesh to prevent too much shit getting under the shed.

To be honest a £1500 shed isn't going to last more than a few years regardless, and if I was going to spend real money on this enterprise I'd be looking at actually doing a proper job. Digging into the lawn to make more space for an 8ft wide structure, having a proper level base, and essentially ending with a double length garage.

I did briefly look at making my own shed, but timber is so expensive that you just end up back at being as well doing the job properly in the first place. Which is far from being in budget currently. Very much a "maybe in 5 years" sort of concept...

Oh, of course as soon as everything was rolling and started getting locked in with our house, interest rates started falling. So you have me to thank for that...

[comfortablynumb]

Since there appears to be a dwarf wall all round that area @captain_70s, I'd be inclined to build it on top of the wall, rather than next to it, gives a bit of drainage at the bottom, and hopefully protects the wood a bit.

Congratulations on the purchase, you'll soon fill up any storage space you create 

Ask me how I know... 🤣

Edit - just to rub it in, my mortgage last payment is in August this year...🎉

After then, I don't care what interest rates do

[Mally]

Shed should last more than a few years. It's the roof that lets them down. If it's felted,  at first sight of damage cover it with something more substantial.

I put steel roofing sheets directly on top of the felt. Just be careful the screws hit a joist.

 

[captain_70s]

New car!

1972 Volvo 145 DL auto estate.

Collection thread is HERE, documenting my 450 mile drive from Portsmouth to Falkirk.

Features:

2.0 OHV. Should have a single Stromberg but has been modified to twin SU carbs. BW-35 3-speed auto provides forward and backward movement.

4 wheel disc brakes, on a family car in 1972!

Full length webasto sunroof.

Huge roof rack.

Boot full of spare bits.

Un-features:

Doesn't run properly.

Brakes are binding.

Previous body "restoration" failing.

Why?

To be a fun MOT/tax exempt winter beater and do practical estate car things. Will replace my 740GLE, which is a better car but it a bit modern to hold my interest.

What needs doing?

I need to work out why it run properly. It sometimes bogs down in the midrange and then pings under heavy acceleration. Carb mix/balance seems fine but the ignition advance seems all to pot.

This should be a B20A engine, being a single carb. Twin carb cars got a B20B higher compression cylinder head and different dizzy weights. They also got a vacumn retard system rather than vac advance!

I have no idea what combo of block/head/dizzy I have. Then there is carb jets to consider. Bits from the B18 engine are also compatible, but different!

Currently the vac advance/retard is disconnected entirely which has made it less shitty but still obviously unhappy and down on power.

The alternator connections are also dodgy and it'll stop charging if you hit a bump of close the bonnet.

The brake servo does work but seems to leak internally as it does a big sigh when the engine shuts off.

Interior lights and numberplate lamps are dead, rear wiper blows the fuse.

All of the brakes seem to bind a bit, front left gets very toasty.

Bodywork is poor all over.

We have the classic dual layer rear wheel arches and crusty window frames.

Random bubbles and blisters everywhere. Somebody spent good money having this restored at some point not too long ago but there doesn't seem to be much/any rust proofing and I suspect plenty of filler over rust was employed.

This is ideal for me as I can stick sills on it and not worry about ruining a nice example with winter use.

The interior is all there but tired and hacked about.

So, first plan is to get it running right, then I can spruce it up a bit bodywork wise.

Frankly, I can't complain as I paid parts car money for a car I drove home, and scrutiny of the photos showed it was a 20 footer.

Also I now get to see this from my living room window:

We'll ignore the fact I can't put it on the driveway because it won't currently start...

[High Jetter]

It's simples tho, like Triumphs, so you'll get it sorted swiftly.

[N Dentressangle]

7 hours ago, High Jetter said:

It's simples tho, like Triumphs, so you'll get it sorted swiftly.

This all day.

I'd be tempted to go back to the single Stromberg (head permitting). Twin SU's are never that economical and have to be kept in tune, so the correct single would be easiest IMO - one of these https://ebay.us/m/X2nPUC I'm guessing?

[Weird Car]

@captain_70s if you did want to go back to single carb I believe there were at least 2 and the respective manifold in the huge pile of spares in the boot, I’d imagine you’d be able to make a good one from the pair 

[captain_70s]

Having dug through the spares I can confirm there is a inlet/exhaust manifold for a single carb and no less than three Strombergs!

I also found a few Amazon bits which were donated to @juular, and he aided me in removing the roof rack. As having that above your head with a canvas roof does not make for a quiet car at speed!

I don't think there is any benefit to twin carbs with the low comp head. Maybe a 5bhp gain, at the expense of a few mpg and more faff tuning them?

It would be nice to have a full twin carb setup as that'd bring us from 90bhp to 115bhp!

First mission is to unstick the starter motor and get it off my lawn...

[vaughant]

Love this already 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻.

Great news on buying the house. I didn't get why the landlord/previous owner felt they should go through an estate agent but quite often it's family/friends pressure that pushes them into it and I suppose a lot of " what if's".

Seeing the one next door going quickly can ring alarm bells that her's is too cheap and you'll always get one estate agent that tries it on at a stupid price. Looks a really nice leafy suburb as well so not hard to sell the dream.

 

[juular]

1 hour ago, captain_70s said:

I also found a few Amazon bits which were donated to @juular

The holy grail of Amazon loot, in fact.  An indicator switch which latches in both directions!

[captain_70s]

Mashing the starter motor with a rubber mallet while Fiancée_70s turned the key got the starter spinning, but after coughing a bit it stopped firing...

Quick check of wiring showed we still had spark... Hm, surely not?

Yes. Exactly as when I first picked it up it couldn't pull fuel up from the tank! 

Chucked most of a 5L jerry can in the tank, whipped off the air filter housings and filled the float bowls manually. Ran the car on that until it pulled some fuel.

With the car on the driveway I set about the most pressing task and fixed the driver's side wing mirror.

The arm was attached to the base with a rawl plug and woodscrew and I think our vandal had tried to forcibly unscrew it rather than snap it. 

I professionally reassembled it, with a fresh rawl plug and the same shitty woodscrew and washers.

[N Dentressangle]

Really funny the jobs you start on, isn't it?

I fixed the pop-up headlights 🤣

[rusty_vw_man]

Shit running, poor brakes and hissing vacuum servo could well be related. 

I had a T25 which developed a leaky master cylinder, but it leaked into the servo. The brake fluid didn’t agree with the servo pipe work and one way valve, of the servo diaphragm. 

This meant everything ended up more porous than ideal, so the engine effectively had a massive air leak, the brakes often lost pressure without any obvious leaks and it was all a bit shit but looked fine. 

Suspect your running may be more down to lack of vacuum advance so that it’s too retarded under some running conditions, but thought I’d mention the servo as symptoms are similar and I don’t find it until the brake fluid started dripping out the servo! 

[Sheefag]

On 14/01/2026 at 18:36, comfortablynumb said:

Since there appears to be a dwarf wall all round that area @captain_70s, I'd be inclined to build it on top of the wall, rather than next to it, gives a bit of drainage at the bottom, and hopefully protects the wood a bit.

Build the shed on top of Plastic Pallets.
It'll keep it well out of any moisture and support whatever you throw at it.
Have a look on Facebook Marketplace and expect to pay around £3 each secondhand.

https://plasticpalletsuk.co.uk/product-category/new-plastic-pallets/

[timolloyd]

Congrats on the new house. Always enjoy reading your updates.

I remember when you were hauling Dolly engines up and down to your flat.

Don’t worry too much about the neighbours - you were there first!

[JMotor]

Moses sandles!

That'll be some going to town rig. Shall look forward to Volvo updates in the future.

Congrats on hoose purchase as well.

[hairnet]

did you take off the roof rack yet

needs v8