Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - New Battery Day 25/10

[stripped fred]

Are you going to give it a skim of filler once it’s bare metal?

I was going to ask the same. I’m sure you could get that looking pretty good with a bit of effort.

[Stanky]

I did wonder about filling it, my concern is that its quite a fiddly shape there with multiple ridges. How would i go about sanding it down to the right(ish) profile? just carefully with sandpaper and my fingers? until its right?

 

I guess I'd need to sand it back, vactan it, prime it, filler it, prime again then paint and finally lacquer?

[Stanky]

I've had another look at the ATF dipstick this afternoon, and on a level surface, with the car having been sat for a good 40 minutes, the ATF level is at the notch in the dipstick marked '80c' - about 4cm higher than the top notch of the two marked 'cold'.

 

As such, I think it needs some ATF removing, would you all agree?

 

I have ordered some 50ml syringes which i needed anyway for lawnmower oil extraction duties and I'll try sucking some atf out the gearbox dipstick hole to get it back down to between the marks for 'cold' then take it for a bit of a run and then see where the level is once hot. Hopefully somewhere in the region of the '80c' mark.

 

Its clearly been like this for some time, how much damage does excess ATF do to a slushbox? Its an oldskool torque converter jobbie

 

I have also noticed that after a run, when the engine is warmed up, if you put the gearbox into park and sit with the enging running, there is a clicking noise from the gearstick area which isn't there when its cold. Not sure what that is?

[SiC]

How hot is the ATF? IIRC ATF in a gearbox can hold its temperature quite well as there is a lot of liquid and metal to store the heat in.

[Shoysty]

Did you check the level with engine stopped or running ? If stopped could be why level is showing high , should be checked with engine running really

[Stanky]

Ah, thanks - yes engine was stone cold and turned off, and had been (other than the ~30 seconds of moving it from the sloping bit of the drive to the flat bit) off for the preceding 48 hours.

 

So i need to check the level with the engine running, correct?

[Shoysty]

yes think so 

[Stanky]

Thanks, I'll try next weekend and see what it looks like. I foolishly believed it'd be like engine oil where you needed to measure with the engine off otherwise its impossible to get a good reading as its being sloshed about by the motion of the internals.

 

Thanks for your help

[red5]

Bollocks to the pela-type.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GRADES Automatic transmission fluid Type Esso JWS 3309

CAPACITIES Automatic transmission (drain & refill) litres 2.1 Automatic transmission (dry fill) litres 6.0

 

[Stanky]

Cheers red5, the stuff on the dipstick is a bit grim and brown-y so draining and refilling is definitely on the cards, especially as GM have seen fit to provide holes through which to remove the old fluid and refill with new! and even a mystical device with which to measure the contents!

 

Is JWS3309 esso/mobil specific, or can I use any manufacturer JWS3309 ATF? Genuine stuff is rather abruptly priced? based on the info above I reckon it'll need three drain & flushes to get to 95% new stuff in the box, at £30 a time for 2x 1l of genuine stuff. Or I can get 5 litres of Lubetech EXOL JWS3309 compliant ATF for £28? Or will this be like oil engine oil strained through a sock with some red food colouring added?

[red5]

https://www.halfords.com/motoring/engine-oils-fluids/gearbox-oil/halfords-automatic-transmission-power-steering-fluid-diii-1l

 

In theory x-references to the right gm spec

[red5]

be wary of 'fits all' - some don't , obviously.

 

 

I'll have a closer look later.

[Stanky]

With the engine running and warmed through, I checked the ATF level and it sits at 80c as it should, so i think I was doing it wrong (as usual) and measuring with the engine off. So the level is right, but the fluid is old and wants changing really. I'll do this in due course. Yesterday I took it out for a bit of a run and did ~50 miles on the M27, M3 and A31/32. When it was up to temperature I held it in 3rd gear most of the time to keep the revs up at about 3800rpm for a while up the M3 to see if it helped blow out some cobwebs. it didn't explode and seems a bit happier now, though the gearbox is still a slow-witted old thing!

 

Maybe fresh ATF will help?

 

Anyway, yesterday afternoon I decided it was time to pimp my ride a bit. Yonks ago i got a pair of Ring 'Rally Giant' spots from someone on here that might have been Garbaldy. They've been in a box in the garage ever since. Last week i finally got round to ordering a number plate bracket for mounting them and he's how it went.

 

 

£16 from Demon Tweeks (who I was astonished were still going). Arrived on friday.

 

Car, before I started

 

 

The number plate is held onto the extender thing with 2 big bolts into the black plastic mould on the front bumper, which in turn is held to bumper with 6 rusty bolts. Here we are with the number plate removed

 

 

With the number plate off I took it to my shed for fixing.

 

 

The bracket is made of thick 4mm aluminium and has pre-drilled holes. Unfortunately for me, they are in the wrong places so i needed to carefully measure and drill new holes in the bracket so i could bolt through the number plate, bracket and into the moulded bit in the bumper. The bracket is shorter than the numberplate so I needed to do some complex maths to make sure it was central. I got to use felt tips though so it was OK.

 

 

 

Next I bolted it back onto the front of the car, it seemed pretty solid to me

 

 

Then off to grab the spotlights

 

 

They bolted on really easily with some stout 13mm nuts and locking washers

 

 

 

I reckon that looks pretty purposeful. and being black and white already they 'fit in' with the colourscheme.

 

next up was to look to wire them in. I planned to fit a separate rocker switch and relay to the interior, running through a relay so it didn't catch on fire. however, plans have been changed somewhat by my wife going fucking mental about me having fitted them, them being a modification which will invalidate the insurance and demanding I remove them immediately.

 

So I duly did exactly that. CBA with the earache so if anyone wants a set of fully working spotlights and a universal bracket for mounting them then step this way. £40 and the whole lot is yours, including postage.

 

I thought it looked good anyway. Briefly.

[vaughant]

It did look good, kind of 90's rally slag styleee.

Can't see the in-sh-ewe-runce wanting much extra for those.

Getting around the wife though? Maybe not so easy.

[stripped fred]

Why not ring the insurance company and ask. I think they looked pretty good.

[Stanky]

With the wife and one of the kids out today, and it not actually raining (yet) I took it upon myself to sort out the paintwork on the rear passenger wheelarch on the Daewoo today. You've seen what it looked like when we got it, and driving it about in the salt and shit on the roads hasn't improved things. we begin here

 

 

not pretty. I'm not quite sure what the previous owner did to it, the door itself is utterly unmarked and the rust is only on the surface so it must be quite recent. It looks like they've cut a corner too sharp, but that'd have hit the door. All I can think of is that they tried to reverse round a corner with the door open, misjudged it and scraped the arch. its very odd.

 

I gave it a wipe over with a damp sponge, then dried it with a cloth to get the road muck off to begin with. Then gave it a rough sand over the whole area with some glass paper then 400 grit wet n dry to give the paint a half decent key.

 

First up I needed to grind back the rust and take off any flaky paint. Last time I did something like this I used a brass wire brush head in my drill, this was OK but didn't seem to take off all the rust. This time I deployed heavier weapons

 

 

My Einhell grinder with an Aldi steel wire wheel attachment. This made seriously short work of the paint and rust! Potentially overkill, certainly if you do this be aware it removes paint and rust incredibly quickly, a gentle pass and its back to clean metal

 

 

 

While I was kneeling on the ground cleaning it up with a cloth to get the bits off, I noticed that the damage goes quite a bit further than I originally thought. Its cracked all round the metal bit of the arch, so i fired up the grinder again and chased it all round. You can just see the start of the cracked paint in the top right of the second picture above.

 

 

Here we are with all the rusty bits and flaky paint ground off. given another year or two this would have been quite crispy I suspect so glad I've caught it now. I broke out the shiters favourite choice Vactan for the next bit.

 

 

Painted it on with a brush as I did with the Celica before. it says to paint it on 40 microns thick. I made sure* I was using my 40 micron paintbrush for this. I left it 25 minutes and went to have a look at it

 

 

It was touch dry so I carefully painted on another coat

 

 

And left it for about an hour and a bit. I think when it goes purple its sort of cured? Anyway, I had to take a load of old shit to the local dump so thought a drive along would help dry it out some more.

 

When i got back I gave it all a gentle rub with the abrasive side of a washing up sponge to remove the painted on vactan from the paint. It doesn't stick to the paint very well, even though I'd roughened it up with abrasive paper beforehand and as I was going to prime it next I wanted to make sure any flaky bits came off.

 

I used the same paintbrush I'd put the vactan on with to paint some Zinc182 hi-zinc primer onto the whole area.

 

 

 

Obvs it looks bloody awful right now, the primer needs to dry, then I'll sand it down so its smoothed off, than see if it wants another coat or not. it goes on pretty thick so I hope I'll get away with just the one coat but we'll see. The benefit of the thick primer is it should fill the scrapes in the paint and potentially avoids the need for filler. We'll see when its dried and been sanded back - probably tomorrow - and go from there.

 

I've never used filler before and its a pretty fiddly area so no masterclass like Inconsistant's Porsche 924 work here!

 

I'll update tomorrow when the primer is dry and I'll look at applying some coats of 'Daewoo Galaxy White' from a rattle can.

[Stanky]

pt. 2. For those still awake.

 

This morning the sun was shining and there was hardly any breeze. perfect painting weather.

 

 

The primer seemed pretty dry to me, having had 18 hours to dry off with no rain. Next it needed to be flatted back as it had been applied with a paintbrush. I got out the 400-grit wet n dry paper and a bucket.

 

 

First pass, still needed more smoothing down

 

 

Second pass, much better. Not perfect but definitely in 'that'll do' territory. I'd covered the wheel up with an old cot blanket ready for the next stage. Paint.

 

 

First of all I tested the paint on a bit of cardboard in case they'd mislabelled it and it was actually dynorod orange or something else humerous. Looks good to me.

 

Then first proper pass over it,

 

 

Not brilliant, but not bad. Colour is alright. A few more coats with 20 ish minutes in between to let it dry

 

 

Rolled back into the sun to dry out better

 

 

and a close up

 

 

I left it about 4 hours to dry in the sun and breeze then had a go at flatting it back with the wet n dry. This worked pretty well again, getting the runs out of it and not actually going through the paint

 

 

Not too bad. As someone said, it really wants some filler to make it perfect, but its a horrible shape with a ridge running round about 1" from the arch lip. I've never done filler before and didn't fancy learning on a panel like this to be honest. Maybe with an expertly cut cork block it might be OK but I had no cork blocks and am definitely not an expert. This improves the look about 80% with materials I actually know how to use - at least at a basic level.

 

Having flatted it back, cleaned it with a microfibre cloth and re-covered the wheel, I set to with the lacquer. Here is the final result

 

 

And the full resprayed area. TBH it looks better from 6 feet than 3 feet but there. Its better now than it was when I started i reckon

 

 

As you can see there was a fair bit of overspray, I should have masked it better but thats what meths and an old rag is for. its still a bit speckly but I ran out of my ancient meths so i'll get some more and try cleaning it better another weekend. I might give it another coat of lacquer too but not decided. its had two coats of vactan, two of zinc primer, 5 coats of white and 3 coats of lacquer. Still a bit biffed in, but from 6 feet is hardly noticable and this should at least stop the rust. i suspect untreated it'd have been pretty bad in a couple more years TBH. Living a couple of miles from the sea, and with the amount of salt the local roads get from october to march it wasn't going to fix itself.

 

any critiques of my method or abilities most welcome. This is probably the biggest, and most visible area I have taken back to bare metal, treated, primed and painted. If I had more time and ability I'd have liked to put some filler in and recreate the shape but I'd have never been able to get the radius right. At least this looks honest (he says...)

 

I'll get a photo with the door shut in the week once I've washed the rest of the car to see what it looks like to the casual observer.

[paulscavalier]

The main thing is losing the rust and stopping it coming back its quite a nasty biff on the edge but I reckon you've caught it in time

[Stanky]

Another feature* of the car which the seller told us about was that the clock was hopeless. With the ignition on its fine, it counts time properly. turn the ignition off and it sort of doesn't. Sometimes it will remember what the right time is, sometimes it decides its 4.17. it seems to like 4.17 but i don't know why. Sometimes it shows nearly the right time, having lost a few minutes. Its a bit annoying frankly. I didn't realise how much I used the clock until I didn't have one.

 

I did a bit of googling, but since these didn't exactly sell like hot cakes over here, there isn't much info about why the clock might go wrong, and more importantly, how it can be fixed. A secondhand clock is about £30 from ebay which seems a bit pricey to me.

 

Tonight I thought I'd remove the pod it lives in and take it to bits to see if there is obvious damage.

 

Here it is in pieces on the computer desk

 

 

There is an old article that suggests that the track in the PCB can get worn through by the case and this is the fix that the chap has suggested:

 

"I have soldered a wire from The hot live to the upstream diode"

 

Solder, yes. Wire, yes. Whats a diode? What does a diode look like? Looking very closely at the PCB it looks fine to me, no damage, rubs or otherwise. The only visible damage I can see is this 'burnt' looking bit on the LCD display

 

 

Is that likely to have borked it? I have precious little understanding of electronics, but my tiny brain says that a damaged display is unlikely to have damaged the brains of the thing that keep time? The display works fine (4 digits with a : seperator) and the 'burnt' doesn't encroach much on the display. its really only noticable with the whole thing take apart like this.

 

Is there anything I should check or look more closely at? Or just bail and buy a replacement from ebay?

[SiC]

That isn't an LCD, it's a VFD - Vacuum Fluorescent Display. What you used to have on old VCRs, ovens and the like. The blob in the corner is normal and part of the manufacturing process.

 

There is a (zenner) diode on the bottom right hand corner of that picture. Labeled up as ZD1 on the white silkscreen text on the PCB.

[SiC]

In regards to ATF oils, I've used the MANNOL JWS 3309 stuff in two gearboxes that required it. Worked great and had no problems. I wouldn't bother with the super expensive Mobil1 stuff if you don't have too much cash invested in this.

[cort16]

I think i would have bought a 5 quid tub of filler and filled that before you painted it.  A little bit of pudding in there would have made a big difference and all your prep was bob on.

[sierraman]

Probably way I’d have done it was a flap disc on the grinder, take the lot back to bare metal, then fill it. Filling on top of paint is a no no.

[cort16]

I normally just knock it back so there's a key in the paint, primer it then filler it. It's more likely to rust if you go back to bare metal as you're losing all the factory protection.

[Stanky]

Cheers all - so filler on top of bare metal, then paint, right? How do you manage to get the creases right? For example there is a radius crease thats about 1" from the arch lip, how on earth do you recreate that without it looking awful and wobbly?

 

Seeing how fast the grinder took the paint and rust off I'm not ruling out taking it back to bare metal again at some point in the future, filling and the painting it again - its hardly a massive area, my concern is how to make the filled area look right.

 

SiC - re the zenner diode, I see what you mean - so I need to try soldering in a wire from the perm live on the plug to the diode? How do you know which side is 'in' and which side is 'out' if thats not too stupid a question?

[cort16]

Cheers all - so filler on top of bare metal, then paint, right? How do you manage to get the creases right? For example there is a radius crease thats about 1" from the arch lip, how on earth do you recreate that without it looking awful and wobbly?

 

Seeing how fast the grinder took the paint and rust off I'm not ruling out taking it back to bare metal again at some point in the future, filling and the painting it again - its hardly a massive area, my concern is how to make the filled area look right.

 

SiC - re the zenner diode, I see what you mean - so I need to try soldering in a wire from the perm live on the plug to the diode? How do you know which side is 'in' and which side is 'out' if thats not too stupid a question?

 

 

I wouldn't go back to bare metal unless its rusty and needs treated. If you buff it right back you'll remove all the factor galvansation.  

Put the filler on the rub it back with sand paper on a block which will allow you to keep a flat edge. You can always add more so don't be scared of it, it might need a bit of sculpting to get it right. Once you're done, start with 120 grit then get it finer and finer. 

If you think it starts to look decent spray a bit of dark paint on it and that will show you if its any good. Just take your time and it'll be be fine. It's quite rewarding.

[tobyd]

-ne side of the diode is marked with a band which I think is visible in that pictar. usually its the -ne end has the band but worth a test if you can a multimeter.

[sierraman]

I normally just knock it back so there's a key in the paint, primer it then filler it. It's more likely to rust if you go back to bare metal as you're losing all the factory protection.

When you apply filler over paint it creates little islands when you flat it back. Filler bonds best to metal.

 

Ideally you need to set aside a day to get it to the primer stage, paint removal discs to take paint off, coat of rust converter then fill, leaving an hour between sanding it. Obviously in a workshop you’ve ways of speeding up the whole process because you’ll undoubtedly have heaters to bring the filler curing quicker and DA sanders to flat back quick.

 

You want to apply filler in long sweeps to get the rough arc of the arch then flat it to where you want to be.

 

Point taken though when you are doing bits and bars between work etc then it’s not easy to do it the ‘proper’ way.

[Stanky]

New (to me) clock arrived today and I've just fitted it and set it to the right time. Lets see if it still says the right time when I leave the office for home at 4.30 shall we?

[Stanky]

To bring this up to date, the new-to-me clock keeps time correctly now, which is a relief. The old one is going into the bin as i can't see me either repairing it, or wanting to reinstall a clock that doesn't keep time.

 

The wheelarch respray seems to be alright, so much so I pressure washed it the other weekend along with the rest of the car and all the paint didn't come off like Beko (?) and the 406 that had been apinted with christmas glitter spray or whatever it was.

 

Anyway, after a clean here's how it looks

 

 

 

I'm not unhappy with that TBH. The paint is a great match, and its covered well. Sure, it'd look better if a pro wobber had done it, but for now it'll suffice. I may return to the area in due course with some filler and a sand-down but suspect it'll look a hundred times worse once I'm done with that than it does now.

 

Next stop will be an ATF change after payday I think.