Project Domes shonky autos - Grand Cherokee departs, Kangoo titivation and 911 dug out.

[dome]

Jeep

First up I changed the plugs in this a month or so ago. There was no history of these getting done and I spotted the correct platinum plugs on Rockauto for about £30 posted so snapped that up. It was a bit of an arse getting them changed but was worth doing for peace of mind. 

Here's the old ones. A few were a bit worn but thankfully they were the correct plugs👌

This was then dropped off with a transmission specialist in Glasgow to fix the noisy rear end. He had experience of these and diagnosed and fixed noisy diff carrier bearings for me. Definitely glad I farmed that out!

I've also changed the blacked out(badly painted) grill for a standard one. As an Overland it would've came with a fully chromed grill but they look a bit gash so I got a standard one.

Now onto the rear suspension. 

I have a bill for over £2k worth of work to the front of it from last year.  This included Old Man Emu(well known in off road circles) springs, Bilstein shocks as well as brakes and balljoints. All good, however the back end is, well, tired. 

At this point I should probably mention I stuck it in for an MOT last month to make sure it was worth spending money on. The tester confirmed it was a decent example but have some advisories, mainly on the rear end.

So, I now have sitting here for it

Rear OME springs and Bilstein shocks to match the fronts.

A full set of new trailing arms with bushings

Drop links

New rear discs and pads.

New steering damper

2 new* calipers (cheap off eBay as I snapped a bleed nipple on one of mine while trying to bleed the brakes up)

So, let's crack on then. It's lived by the sea for 8 years, how bad can it be?

Actually, not that bad!

It's at this stage just now. Everything old is off it and I've fitted a new caliper and disc to one side. 

The old springs were definitely passed their best, with the weight of the car on them there was a noticeable bend in them. They had this "hockey puck" lift which consists of runner spacers to jack it up. As the new springs have a 1.5" lift to match the front they're a bit longer.

Might be fun getting these in. 

That's where it's at now. I've ordered a new brake line to replace the really crusty one in the pic above.

In this pic you can clearly see the problem. My old stealth bomber was rusty.

[dome]

Finally got a chance/could be arsed to start putting this back together.

New balljoint fitted to the diff and new upper boomerang/stealth bomber fitted 

New lower arms fitted

New springs and dampers fitted

New caliper and disc fitted to the offside. 

It's all on and needs torqued up. Was a bit of a fight getting it all lined up but got there in the end - the axle has managed to move itself a few inches to the left so it took a bit of finagling to get the upper balljoint in. 

Still do do:

Drop links and anti roll bar bushes. 

New rear pads which I forgot to order

New brake pipe to be fitted to the rear

Bleed brakes

Torque everything up

Take the propshaft off and see how seized it is as reported by the place that fixed the diff. There's a place fairly local that should be able to fix that. 

Fit new steering damper to the front. 

 

[dome]

On 08/12/2023 at 18:47, dome said:

 

Drop links and anti roll bar bushes. DONE 

New rear pads which I forgot to order DONE

New brake pipe to be fitted to the rear NOPE

Bleed brakes NOPE

Torque everything up NOPE 

Take the propshaft off and see how seized it is as reported by the place that fixed the diff. There's a place fairly local that should be able to fix that. DONE-arranged to pick up a new prop locally. Mine doesn't feel too great. 

Fit new steering damper to the front. NOPE - will be done when the back end is on the deck

 

Came back to this to remind myself what I had to do. Made some progress as you can see but struggled with the brake lines-i had to replace a couple of unions and struggled to get the (copper) brake lines flared with my cheap brake pipe flaring tool on the car. Have sacked it off for the day and will get a loan of a decent tool so I can try again.

[dome]

I finally got the Jeep back together. I really struggled to get the new brake line installed, it ended up with me fucking the threads in the first one I bought and having to buy another 😭 Turns out it needs sae flare and not the other kind. Every day's a school day and all that. It's now sorted and has new lines from about the drivers seat back. 

The place that rebuilt the diff had point out a seized UJ on the propshaft. I toyed with the idea of a second hand prop but decided to get a new joint fitted. Same day service from a local place, can't argue with that!

Naw it isnae.

After some gentle* persuasion I managed to get my other half to go to the trouble of sitting in the drivers seat and pressing the brake pedal so I could bleed it. 

All done and back on it's wheels for the first time in well over a month. 

Stance is about right for one of these, they always sit slightly higher at the rear. It's driving a lot better now, thank fook!

I'll soon sort the stance out when I shove the 911 engine in the back to go for its rebuild...

[dome]

Speaking of 911s i needed to get the engine stripped down and ready to go off for a rebuild.

In case folk wonder how the other half live, here's how us 911 owners like to work on our engines 

If you look really closely you can definitely* see signs of the £10k rebuild 5 years ago...

It's stripped down and ready to go to Hartech in Bolton later this week. Eep

[Bren]

What kwality work could you see?

[dome]

9 hours ago, Bren said:

What kwality work could you see?

There's no signs of bodgery, it's more just the general condition of the engine and fasteners. We had a few seized bolts and it generally doesn't look great for an engine that was rebuilt 5 years and 7k miles ago. 

To be fair however those 7k miles were in the north of Scotland and there were no undertrays fitted to the car when I got it which won't have helped.

[cort16]

23 hours ago, dome said:

Speaking of 911s i needed to get the engine stripped down and ready to go off for a rebuild.

In case folk wonder how the other half live, here's how us 911 owners like to work on our engines 

If you look really closely you can definitely* see signs of the £10k rebuild 5 years ago...

It's stripped down and ready to go to Hartech in Bolton later this week. Eep

Christ and here’s me moaning I can’t get my bonnet open .

[dome]

Heep gained an extra 6 cylinders today.

Fits perfectly! That's handy.

Southbound and down today.

Tradition, old charter etc...

And the engine has been delivered here. 

Seems like it's came to the right place. 

They'll strip it down and tell me what it'll take to make it right. They guessed a dropped liner from my description of what happened. 

I suspected this too, I'm keen to see if it's one of the 2 liners that had been replaced previously though...

Slight drama with the Jeep, the lpg system developed a leak as I arrived at Hartech. 

I did the right thing and left the lpg system off til i got onto the motorway (it seemed to only leaked when being used but I wasn't sure) and then ran it til it was empty. Then had the pleasure of if filling it up with petrol for the journey home 😳

 

[Saabnut]

I can highly recommend Angus Autogas in Arbroath if you need assistance and he sells LPG. You can have a look at my Lancia whilst there as well.

[dome]

3 hours ago, Saabnut said:

I can highly recommend Angus Autogas in Arbroath if you need assistance and he sells LPG. You can have a look at my Lancia whilst there as well.

Thanks, they're the guys that converted my S4 originally. 

There's a guy in Kirkcaldy who helped me with the Rangey, I'll try him first as he's more local.

 

[Jenson Velcro]

Liked the post for solidarity and support with the problems, not the events themselves.

[dome]

OK, time for an update.

Manta

First off, I started assembling the 2.5 Duratec for the Manta. The block and crank have been checked and polished by an engine builder so I started by installing that along with new bearings. 

 

Pakora sauce applied

And I'm happy to say it rotates beautifully, as you'd expect.

I'll get round to the pistons, the new rings are filed and ready so it's a case of fit them to the existing conrods and get them mounted.

Jeep.

LPG leak. Bugger. It was definitely leaking from near the tank/solenoid valve.

It has copper pipe from the tank to the engine bay.

This didn't look too clever

And nor did this.

Don't worry about the rust, it's surface rust on the spare wheel well, the tank is inside that. 

I decided to replace the copper pipe with the correct hose for LPG. If that didn't fix it I'd take to A Professional as fuck messing with the scary bits of LPG. I knew that the shutoff solenoid worked and that the leak was downstream of that. I also knew that the tank was pretty much empty as I'd ran it out on the way back up the road. 

Anyway, it took me a month because

1. I ordered 3m of hose and needed at least 4

2. When I finally got enough hose I discovered that I had the wrong size of fitting for the tank end. Thankfully I managed to get the correct fitting from my local guy who also gave me some confidence in what I was doing and identified where he thought my leak was from the old pipe/fitting

3. The weather here is pish just now.

Anyway, I finally got a chance this week and cracked on.

Snake!

More snake!

Got enough hose this time

And the compression fitting fitted and ready to go. 

The hose is routed along the inner chassis rail and runs alongside the brake/fuel lines. I'm pretty happy it's secure but will double check it after a few miles. 

With this fitted and ready to go it was time to test it. I hoped there would be enough LPG in it to get it switch over and idle so I could check for leaks. 

Handily we had 30mph winds on the day I was doing this so I drove it on petrol to somewhere remote within walking distance of home and switched it over to LPG.

And-it worked! Either that or I've lost my sense of smell...

I celebrated by driving it to the local LPG station and filling it up. It's running fine on LPG with no leaks. Win! I even treated it to a wash but it's getting dark so you're out of luck for a pic.

It felt strange getting back into it after a month of driving more modern stuff but you soon get back into the way of an old school 4x4, it burbles along very happily and is a nice way to cover distance. Which could come in handy as...

 

911 

After a week or so I got a phone call from Hartech with the results of the strip down. It had spun a main bearing wrecking the crank. They also reported bore wear on the engine and gave me a price for a rebuild. It turns out that the £10k rebuild from the "specialist" pictured a few pages back was essentially a work of fiction. 

I've thought long and hard about it and have [Pistonheads]pulled the trigger[/Pistonheads] on a full rebuild with an upgrade to their 3.7 conversion. 

I'm also shipping the car down to them for them to get it running and mapped with the new engine, possibly trailering it down with the Jeep.

Because fuck installing it myself with the money I'm spending on it😶

So, the Porsche has gone from scratching an itch and hopefully getting out with my wallet relatively intact to being a long term keeper. At least until 996 values approach what I'll have in it. I'm thinking of it as a long term investment plan. Which will go like fuck and get used as much as possible. Euro trips coming up!

 

[Boycie]

On 28/09/2023 at 17:09, dome said:

And we're back on a boat.

 

 

Rammel!

Dempsey's here too. 

 

Best theme song ever , they were in my work one day ...in the only day id taken a holiday in 4 months ....still gutted

[dome]

4 hours ago, Boycie said:

Best theme song ever , they were in my work one day ...in the only day id taken a holiday in 4 months ....still gutted

Don't worry, it's not like you missed out on seeing a young Glynis Barber wandering about your office.

Oh...

[Boycie]

1 hour ago, dome said:

Don't worry, it's not like you missed out on seeing a young Glynis Barber wandering about your office.

Oh...

...... I still cry myself to sleep 

[GingerNuttz]

Couple of Manta pics.

 

Just doing tons of bodywork.

Test spray of the colour on the boot.

Quarters are body worked ready for the kit to be bonded on but I need to wait till  @dome is here so I canny be blamed for any squinty arches.

Doors are all prepped and in primer with the rears ready to spray on Wed or Thurs.

Engine bay and all the inner arches should be white before middle of next week.

There's piles of other pictures but I canny be arsed going through my phone for em, slept 3 hours since yesterday so I'll update it all at some point or just post pictures when it's painted since it shouldn't be long.

 

[dome]

Smoll update. 

911s engine has been built so it was time to ship the car down to them for installation and fettling.

I paid a man to do it, it was actually cheaper than it would have cost me by the time I'd rented a trailer, paid for fuel for the Jeep and Tebay pies

I'm kind of a big deal, only personalised trailers for my shite.

The Manta is coming on too. @GingerNuttzis busy getting the body ready for the 400 kit. 

And I decided to sack off the Corsa VXR seats I'd bought for it-they were heavy and were going to be awkward to fit. It's getting more like a rally car so might as well have some proper buckets.

I ordered up weld in seat rails which were of course the wrong size. I've got that sorted now so next up is seat fitting. 

We're moving house in May. Here's what you need to know about the new house.

 

I can't wait to be able to fettle shite indoors

 

[Jenson Velcro]

Have you moved in yet? Looking forward to updates on the 996 and Manta. Saw the Porsche on the lcbl thread and realised hadn’t heard anything on yours for a while (or are you trying to forget the bill)

[dome]

44 minutes ago, Jenson Velcro said:

Have you moved in yet? Looking forward to updates on the 996 and Manta. Saw the Porsche on the lcbl thread and realised hadn’t heard anything on yours for a while (or are you trying to forget the bill)

Yep, we've moved in. House prices have lowered significantly with the addition of these two to the driveway.

And talking about lowered, the Kangoo was worked hard.

No officer, I don't know why it's dragging its arse along the road🫣

More importantly, I've treated myself to a new toy for the garage...

Yet to be used in anger but it's going to be a game changer I'm sure.

Manta wise @GingerNuttz has been getting some paint on it.

We're due to have a crack at fitting the body kit tomorrow and then the rest of it can get painted.

911 wise I've not had an update for a couple of weeks. It did fail an MOT on brake pipes last week(which I knew were dodgy and had planned to fix over the winter before it shat itself) but I've not heard from the garage. I'll leave it with them🤷‍♂️

[Jenson Velcro]

Congratulations, that looks like a fantastic play room, and with the lift as well……. Very jealous 

[dome]

So, after a month of settling in to the new house it was time to get back onto fleet maintenance. 

The Heep has had a slightly wayward feel to the steering which I tracked down to the 2 bushes which secure the front axle to the upper arms. The sort of job that would be a pain in the ass without a lift of some sort...

Turns out having a lift just makes it easier to get to the hard bit 🤦‍♂️

To be fair, the first bush wasn't too hard to get out, although I spent fucking ages trying to find the correct size of sockets/nut and bolts and random crap lying around the garage to make a press of some sort. Handily this one was fucked so it came out relatively easily.

Aye, that'll be fucked.

I soon worked out that the new one wasn't going to go in easily so picked this up on facebook marketplace.

This made things a lot easier for getting the new one in. 

The socket in the picture is stopping the two flanges from getting pressed together when pushing the bush in. Great* bit of design there.

At this point sadly the success ends. The other bush, which to be fair wasn't nearly as bad, refused to budge. Conscious of having a dead Heep on my drive and also of the worrying amount the front axle moved when you undo these arms I decided to play safe and leave it as it is.

Here's me using a ratchet strap to drag things back in line. I ended up lowering it down on its wheels(carefully!) and everything lined up. 

 Great* fun

It definitely drives better now so I'm calling that a win. The other bush can wait.

As can the porous sump.

As can the fossilized exhaust downpipe bolts which would need to be removed to replace said sump 🥲

[dome]

Just went into the freezer to grab a Magnum and found the bush I was due to fit on Sunday. Wonder how long before the other half notices it😂

[High Jetter]

3 hours ago, dome said:

Just went into the freezer to grab a Magnum and found the bush I was due to fit on Sunday. Wonder how long before the other half notices it😂

I think she'd know if her bush was in the freezer 🤣

[GingerNuttz]

I'm not dead and still trying to get everything done 🤣 

First lot of primer shot today 

Needs blocked and all the wee crap bits filled in etc but it's getting there.

Worst fitting body kit ever and I'll never fit another one as long as I live.

[dome]

Got this old heap back today too.

 

Needs a brake line and handbrake sorted for its MOT, they couldn't get the work done quick enough for me down there so I got it dragged back up here to sort it myself 

[dome]

Got a wee bit of time on the Porsche today before I headed off for the weekend. Up on the ramps and front wheel off to check the brake pipe. 

Aye, that's fucked. 

I've started the process of getting things freed off. Both(!) bleed nipples are thankfully free. The union on the pipe at the flexi end is going to put up a fight so it's being marinaded on plusgas while I'm away, I'll get stuck into it when I'm back. 

The handbrake is the other thing that'll need attention, the drivers side rear does nothing at the minute 😔 Brake pipe first then I'll have a look at it. 

 

[dome]

Slight update on the Porsche. It's been a bit of a 1 step forward, 2 steps back on this.

Can't argue with the brake pipe fail.

A combination of heat and plusgas got it off thankfully and I made a new pipe up from stock 

Step 3 in changing the brake pipe on one of these-remove the headlight...

This allows access to this thingy which the line attached to which, to be fair, makes life a lot easier than having to route it up to the master cylinder. Headlight comes out with a 5mm socket under the "bonnet"

That done I moved onto the handbrake. It had always felt a bit shite, 6 months of sitting outside over a Scottish winter hasn't helped surprisingly*

It's a drum in disc setup in these and thankfully it all came apart ok.

No, I've no idea why that handbrake isn't working 🫣

At this point I ordered up some handbrake shoes (£23) and had to wait. I stripped the other side down and flushed the cables out and got things moving again. 

Fast forward a few days and the shoes arrived. The first side went together fine, the second side I broke the end off a retaining spring 🤬 It still kinda works but I don't want it coming apart at 70*mph and wrecking the inside of the disc. 

I did what I'm sure will be familiar to Porsche owners - called the dealers for a price, swore quietly under my breath and then checked the price from "specialists" 

Then went back to the dealers and ordered a £25 spring 😳

I also went to my local factors and managed to get a rummage through their brake shoe fitting kits to see if I could find something suitable. Turns out a 2003 on Micra is very close but not close enough 🥲

One side together at least.

After all this I went back to try and bleed up the front brake. Somehow I had managed to get a leak from the (old) stainless hose that attaches to the new section. FML. 😭😭😭

I'm waiting for a new hose to arrive and then we'll see if we can get the fucking thing MOTd.

In the meantime I fitted the double DIN android auto stereo that arrived 2 days after the fucking thing blew up🤣🤣🤣

 

[dome]

And, sadly, I've spent the last half hour or so writing a for sale ad for the Kangoo. As much as I've loved having it it's just not getting used. 1500 miles between MOTs last year. I'll give it a clean up and take some pics and then get it advertised. Sad times but I've got plenty of toys, including a fucking gorgeous Opel Manta shell coming back home soon thanks to @GingerNuttz

[High Jetter]

Did someone say Kangoo for sale? Colour me interested