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Memoirs from the Hard Shoulder: bASeman's Spot of the Year award.


BorniteIdentity

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  • 3 weeks later...

Regulars to the thread will remember my hatred of my garage door. It’s never worked properly despite many repair attempts. Here it is, flaccid on one side. 
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Having bumped my head once too often, I decided it was about time I fixed the problem once and for all. 

This is typical of me; put a problem off for ages and then finally fix it for good - wishing I’d done so years ago. 

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Fixed!

 

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9 hours ago, PhilA said:

Isn't that a little.. extreme?

You clearly never twatted your head on it, or had it fall down on your bonce in the slightest breeze, or had to hold it up in the pissing rain whilst someone else drove a car in/out (!)

Silliness aside, it was condemned by the surveyor when we bought the house 8 years ago.  I negotiated £10k off the price we'd agreed as it wasn't really a garage, and then proceeded to use it ever since.  However, it's of poor construction... has heaved... has a leaky (cement bonded) asbestos roof and was genuinely horrible.  I won't miss it and honestly believe the cars will be better outside being used than stuck in damp squalor.  

The garden will be infinitely more enjoyable for the kids, the house gets much more sunlight and I've got a gold star for commitment.

I will probably have to lose one car from the collection unless I can find a favourable storage place somewhere nearby.

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  • 1 month later...

So. What’s it like running about in a 24 year old car with 156,000 on the clock?

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Proper. Really do love it. Not a single issue since collecting it, and I’ve now done over 3,000 miles in it. Plan was to service it this weekend but the weather’s too nice! 

As for the garage?! Well - it looks better as a lawn. 


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  • 1 month later...

Finally got around to servicing the Rav. It really is a joyous thing to have, and underneath it’s fairly close to perfect. I’m continually amazed by it.

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Usual story when I service a car myself for the first time. Sump plug was genuinely finger tight, oil filter meanwhile ended up like a crushed coke can. Anyone know how to enter the mechanics olympics? Oil filter tightening is clearly a sport. 

Wonderful things to service these - front facing oil filter, sump near the front and - for the first time ever - I probably had the car too high! I could barely reach to take the oil filter out, and I’m 6’1. 

Next job is to spray up the underneath this summer and two front tyres are required too. 

Took it to Tesco and found a fellow V reg Toyota chum. 🥰

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157,677 (Not Out)

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 7/14/2023 at 5:16 PM, greengartside said:

Happy 40th Birthday to the bASe! 🎂🎂🎂
 

Registered on this day in 1983.

Yes! Somehow I missed your post. Well done for remembering! 

The tweet (or X or whatever I'm supposed to call it now) proved popular too.

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As mumbled elsewhere, we took the old lady to Festival of the Unexceptional on Saturday.  The car hadn't turned a wheel in two months (since the MOT I went for when the guy had double booked himself) but behaved immaculately until we parked on the field.  It seemed to blow a bit of water out of the expansion tank overflow thing, so we had a cloud of steam for about 30 seconds.  Nothing since then so I'm putting it down to the inordinately long wait to get into what has become an incredibly popular event.

We got papped quite a lot, largely thanks to being parked next to a Delorean.  I'm delighted to say that lovely Keith Adams included it in his roundup for Car Magazine (further reading here https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-events/festival-of-the-unexceptional/?fbclid=IwAR3WqjZcDbBqCds7q3FvriuthSmiIlGza2fEEFuHEI-8nisZWpYP2bbNmKs)

It also featured in quite a popular Instagram post, although I did take umbrage at the author crowbarring ULEZ into the conversation.  As I reminded him, it's now free of all London charging, so not a fair point well made at all.

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With any luck it'll be off to @Angrydickynext month for some repairs, maybe October if we get an Indian summer and I can get a bit more enjoyment out of it first.  The offside doors really are toast and the snapped clutch adjuster is annoying (it rattles!) but, otherwise, it did us very very proud indeed.

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  • BorniteIdentity changed the title to Memoirs from the Hard Shoulder: bASeman.

Thanks for the update Bornite. Gotta agree, there’s a whole load of people out there who can’t help but turn a positive thing into a negative. Just an inevitable consequence of social media I guess. 
 

Good to hear that the base Sierra looks to have a secure future and look forward to seeing it further improved in due course. All the best. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

A little RAV update then.  It's been with me for nearly six months now and I've clocked up just over 6,000 miles in that time.  It is glorious.  At some stage, when summer makes an appearance, I will go through the undercarriage with this Lanoguard that everyone's raving about and see how it compares with the Dynax I've been using for the past few years.

I noticed the rear plate was starting to delaminate a bit.  Needing a yellow plate for my trailer, I decided to indulge myself (and the car) so pulled the trigger on a beautiful set of dealer repro plates.  I found the correct ESSEX PARK footer on Flickr (thanks to a fellow nerd who, amazingly, wasn't @Spottedlaurel) and sent it over to the dude at Retroplates.  He showed me the proofs for approval, took my money and delivered them four days later.

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Thanks to the utterly shit photo compression on here, I decided I'd make them look even worse on purpose.  (Fuck my life)

Anyway, here's a close up that will - undoubtedly- be reduced to a grand total of 9 pixels.

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Pretty, eh?

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • SiC pinned and unpinned this topic
  • 2 months later...

You could get those hella grills at the time; I nearly bought one about five years ago when I had that pretty green Sierra.

That is, I have to say, a lot of very useful stuff all packed up neatly* in a Sierra shaped shell.  If i was a wealthy man, and these cars were still cheap, I would simply buy it and pull all the bits (particularly interior) out that I needed - sell the engine and box and bail the rest.  I reckon it's just too far gone, and few people will be interested with 5 doors. 

 

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