Schaefft's Bargain Barge Extravaganza - Not one but TWO V8s join the Fleet!

[Zelandeth]

Worth contacting Bigg Red to see if they could rebuild that caliper?

I had them rebuild a big four pot Mercedes one (apparently same as used on the current G-Wagon), and was staggered when they only charged £110.  Bearing in mind I'd just paid more than double that for a "reconditioned" caliper on eBay which turned out to be dead on arrival, which I then spent about a month trying to get my money back for.  I'd far, far further trust a caliper they've rebuilt to one from some random eBay shop that's quite possibly been stored underwater in a shipping container for the last five years.

They were honestly refreshingly polite and efficient to deal with.  I dropped the caliper off, and think it was ready for collection two or three days later.  As I'm just an hour's drive away I just picked it up, but even if they'd posted it I reckon I'd have had it back inside a week.

[Westbay]

Another one for ....

Bigg Red

[Schaefft]

14 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Worth contacting Bigg Red to see if they could rebuild that caliper?

I had them rebuild a big four pot Mercedes one (apparently same as used on the current G-Wagon), and was staggered when they only charged £110.  Bearing in mind I'd just paid more than double that for a "reconditioned" caliper on eBay which turned out to be dead on arrival, which I then spent about a month trying to get my money back for.  I'd far, far further trust a caliper they've rebuilt to one from some random eBay shop that's quite possibly been stored underwater in a shipping container for the last five years.

They were honestly refreshingly polite and efficient to deal with.  I dropped the caliper off, and think it was ready for collection two or three days later.  As I'm just an hour's drive away I just picked it up, but even if they'd posted it I reckon I'd have had it back inside a week.

 

4 hours ago, Westbay said:

Another one for ....

Bigg Red

Nice one, I gave them a ring and they said no problem. I don't need them painted so the default grey should work well enough. I'll see if they can rebuild the old seized caliper that came with the car as well. If yes I can basically sell the good one that's on the car and make almost the entire cost of the refurbishment back.

[Schaefft]

Decided to take off the caliper (now sent off to Bigg Red to be rebuilt) and tackle the upper balljoint yesterday evening. The ball-joint is its own bolt-on component so how hard could it be? Italian-engineering-what-the fuck-were-they-thinking-hard...

First of all, turns out that the balljoint wasn't so worn out after all, it was one of the bushes of the upper control arm (and the lower balljoint as I found out later) that had some excessive play in them. The control arm had to come out anyway and the bushes are available separately (albeit at an eye-watering 60 quid a pop) so to work I got. Only to immediately find out that one bolt holding the arm on cannot actually come out without dropping the strut:

and the other side being blocked in by the brake hardline. What the actual fuck?

The strut didn't turn out to be too bad as its a coilover design that drops in one unit, no spring compressors (which wouldn't fit anyway) needed. All I had to do is move the coolant reservoir out of the way, the bolts are deep in there:

That didn't drop the strut nearly enough to give me the clearance I needed though. Instead I had to partially drop the lower control arm the strut mounts to as well. As usual access was limited and anybody who ever replaced a balljoint knows that doing this without ruining it isn't easy. Ruining this one would be several hundred quids worth of new lower control arm, they do not come separately. However, as mentioned before, it has quite a bit of up-and-down play anyway, which means it might need replacing in the future no matter what...

With that popped out I had just about enough clearance to get the bolt out. The second bolt squeezed past the hardline with a bit of mild violence, hopefully no permanent damage done:

With everything flipped over this finally revealed the nut for the upper balljoint, now upside down. It doesn't look like it here but I honestly don't know how Maserati expected anybody to undo this nut with either things still in place or taken apart, there are several oversized wiring brackets that completely prevent proper access to it. Being surrounded by the structure of the knuckle you couldn't just use a spanner either, not that it would ever come off with one in the first place:

I ended up hammering a 22mm socket onto the nut without regard to any the brackets above it, most of them should bend back again when needed.

It took me about 4 hours to get to this point due to completely out of control "engineering" not allowing you to work on this control arm without removing everything else surrounding it first. Who mounts a hardline or wiring brackets right in front of a bolt when there are so many other places they could sit?! I'm getting flashbacks to the Alfa 166, just garbage, short-sighted design with little thought put into things being serviceable or with longevity in mind. German cars might be overly complex, Italian cars are just half-assed.

The nuts holding the balljoint to the control arm, surrounded by a layer of corrosion. I scraped some of it out here already.

This is the better of the two bushes...

It took one hell of a battering to get these studs out of the aluminium arm, naturally they were completely seized in place. I've ordered the bushes last evening so I'm hoping for them to be here on Thursday. I already now how fun it'll be to remove the old ones, fingers crossed that'll be all thats needed on the suspension front. 

Until then I can only stare at this miserable sight and dream of driving my masterfully crafted Italian sportscar along the Scottish coast...

[dome]

Excellent work! Great to see you getting stuck in to this

[Schaefft]

No big news on the Maserati yet, I've managed to remove the old bushes from the control arm with the usual violence and pressed the new ones in without too much trouble (very different experience to doing the W140 ones which were literally impossible to press in due to their size). There wasn't much left of the old ones in the end, they had been a few years past their time anyway:

I ruined the ball bearings on my bushing tool though, I'll see if I can find replacements somewhere. It worked very well until then though. Using my bin as work bench, probably no different to how Maserati built them:

250 quid later we have a refurbished control arm. That's still several hundred quid less than what a new replacement would have cost.

It's back on the car but I messed around with the old worn lower ball joint trying to get it's nut back on which took another 2 hours or so. I'm only waiting for the calipers to return from Bigg Red now, aside from those I should hopefully have everything needed to get this car done for an mot end of next week, time permitting.

Meanwhile, the E65 currently is the go-to "nice car" for all occasions. We visited our hopefully soon to be home to talk to the current owners again and met our neighbors for the first time.

The sellers are in a chain, that's where things are currently slowing down a little, a move in November instead of this month is more likely now. There were a few open questions I had, one of them was the important matter of actual garage dimensions. Well, it's 5.10m long so the E65 wouldn't fit but it's just big enough to fit the Z3/SL/E39/Senator/Corona and still be able to close the door without having to climb over them.

The Cadillac certainly wouldn't fit. Took it for a ride out in Whitley Bay today, some lovely streets where it doesn't look out of place all that much.

Hopefully some more progress on the Maserati tomorrow.

[Schaefft]

Well, not that much progress unfortunately. Everything is reassembled in the front but I'm still waiting for my calipers to return. Called Bigg Red on Friday to see whats up, they've finished them last Tuesday and sent an email but that never arrived. Hoping to get them next week Tuesday now, which means I only have a few hours after work to install them and do the rear parking brakes which I already know will be a pita before a test next Saturday.

The Cadillac did pass its MOT though! Couple of things ticked off since last year but the brake pipes will need doing soon. It thanked me by refusing to supply fuel to the engine on my way back:

Fortunately not far from home so 25 quid and about an hour later and the car is back. It did exactly the same thing 2 years ago, at its very first MOT test. We discovered that the fuel pump was fairly new and was changed before I got the car, I even still have my new pump in its box from 2 years ago. It didn't act up once since (thank god not while I was in France either), commenting on that yesterday obviously immediately jinxed me so I can now figure out what the problem might be. Swapping fuses and relays didn't help.

In even less fortunately news, some knobhead keyed a few cars yesterday. Not an issue on those that needed paint in the same areas anyway but it really annoys me on the Infiniti (which is near pristine) and the Z3. It won't be anyone in the estate annoyed by the cars (everyone who'd genuinely care knows we are moving soon, one neighbor even wants to buy the house) so its really just some chav again. They'll join the Celsior (Newcastle) and Cadillac (Sunderland) who suffered the same fate with their previous owners. There just too much lowlife scum around here, this just proves it once again. I'm surprised nobody tried to nick the Senator again.

[Schaefft]

The scratches didn't put me off from taking the Z3 out for a drive and retracing some of the roads seen earlier at Twixfest'24 though. A little colder this time around but still just as beautiful!

[loserone]

Ooh, we had the express our there earlier too!

[R Lutz]

If you need to store a car out the way until you move, I'm quite happy to help. 

[Schaefft]

7 minutes ago, loserone said:

Ooh, we had the express our there earlier too!

We drove to Groverake mine and then back Blanchland to have a look around, fortunately no red Express in sight!

4 minutes ago, R Lutz said:

If you need to store a car out the way until you move, I'm quite happy to help. 

I'd happily take you up on that offer, even if its just to get the Z3 or Infiniti into safe storage.

[R Lutz]

I've got a parking space until 31st Oct on my drive. Possibly in my garage depending on size.

[yes oui si]

Does @Schaefft own any small cars? 

[Schaefft]

8 hours ago, yes oui si said:

Does @Schaefft own any small cars? 

The Z3 is the smallest! The R129 and Corona are about E36 sized if I'm not mistaken.

[Schaefft]

Finally an update on the Maserati! I've basically spent any free minute of last week to get the car done for its MOT today. My brake calipers arrived on Tuesday which were the last parts I needed to get everything sorted. They turned out great despite going for the quick and "cheap" option of not having them properly painted:

I've already bought a brake caliper paint kit for a fraction of what it would have cost to paint them, for now these will do though. Since I've been under time pressure I only installed the side that needed doing, no photo for some reason so lets move on to the back:

Since most of the hardware was missing (and the rest from the car already not original anyay) I had to puzzle these together from all kinds of random sources. The discs came with the car and are genuine Ferrari, the brake shoes are for the Maserati, the pads are for the 993 911, the hardware for 90s BMW and the Volvo XC90...

I had to drill out the holes for the mounting spring, the Maserati variant must have been slightly different. One side assembled:

Here's what the rear brake discs looked like before...

And once everything was done:

I've adjusted the shoes to the point where the rotor would drag quite a bit to make sure the drum side was tight. However, even with the central adjustment (cable coming from the lever) completely maxed out it still wouldn't hold the car on a steep incline, and that's the only adjustment outside the drum you have on these. My mate Theo came over today to help me figure things out, it was extremely helpful just to have another person see what's actually going on when I pull the handbrake lever. 4 hours later we are still not quite there yet but we are at a point where it just about holds itself in place. That was after the time slot for the MOT had passed. It didn't matter though as the brake hose decide to just rip out of the fitting somehow:

It's now plugged with a screw but even if the brakehose set arrives in time for me to throw it on the car in 4 days it will be too late to pass an MOT. We have a trip via a few sections of the NC500 lined up, I need to leave Thursday afternoon, I doubt it'll be ready for that now.

This is basically how things look like when working on the car. I can't lift both rear wheels up as the slope of the drive is just too steep to not rely on at least one wheel being on the ground (gearbox in reverse). It's a right ballache, hopefully I'll have it all sorted by tomorrow and can finally move on to the next jobs.

[GeordieInExile]

On 01/10/2024 at 00:24, yes oui si said:

Does @Schaefft own any small cars? 

The Maserati?

[Schaefft]

The Maserati indeed is probably one of the smaller cars. So is the Z3 (maybe the smallest), which finally got a wash today in preparation for now being the NC500 car instead.

The "AI" of my phone is doing a good job hiding the huge scratch there. The neignor's son (I assume) visiting parked his MX-5 across the street. Funny how the Z3 probably wouldn't be without the success of the 1st gen Miata.

I always considered owning one but thought why not get a Z3 instead? With prices as they are right now I think the bimmer (with a manual and straight 6, forget the rest) is the much better buy unless you must be part of the scene or appreciate its historic significance (that would be my excuse).

Speaking of Mazdas, a new purchase might have happened... It's probably the Mazda with the smallest scene in the UK but still a very special car for the make.

One internet for the person guessing it correctly (excluding the people who know what I've been looking for recently).

[hairnet]

xedos?

or a 929

[EyesWeldedShut]

RX-8 

[HMC]

Mazda 323F?

[OM646]

1 hour ago, Schaefft said:

The Maserati indeed is probably one of the smaller cars. So is the Z3 (maybe the smallest), which finally got a wash today in preparation for now being the NC500 car instead.

The "AI" of my phone is doing a good job hiding the huge scratch there. The neignor's son (I assume) visiting parked his MX-5 across the street. Funny how the Z3 probably wouldn't be without the success of the 1st gen Miata.

I always considered owning one but thought why not get a Z3 instead? With prices as they are right now I think the bimmer (with a manual and straight 6, forget the rest) is the much better buy unless you must be part of the scene or appreciate its historic significance (that would be my excuse).

Speaking of Mazdas, a new purchase might have happened... It's probably the Mazda with the smallest scene in the UK but still a very special car for the make.

One internet for the person guessing it correctly (excluding the people who know what I've been looking for recently).

Xedos 6? I remember bumping into you on the comment section of Curbside Classic 

[loserone]

[hairnet]

bongo

[HMC]

787B? 

[Schaefft]

RX-8s are waay to popular for me! I always wanted a 323F (either generation) and if I found an 929 HD/Sentia in this country I'd be on my way to it right now - please share any leads! I know there is (was?) at least one in the UK.

I've owned a Xedos 6 before and I got very close to buying one recently, it just would have been an absolute pain to get it to Newcastle, or even out of the owner's London backyard.😂

[Schaefft]

2 minutes ago, HMC said:

787B? 

I don't think any of my organs would be worth enough 😂 

[ProgRocker]

I know what it is.   

[Schaefft]

Here's another fact that should make it easy:

The car's platform is unique to this one Mazda model, it did not share it with any other vehicle either.

[Soundwave]

Cosmo (JC platform)?

[Schaefft]

33 minutes ago, Soundwave said:

Cosmo (JC platform)?

Similar to the 929, if I found one for reasonable money I'd have one tomorrow. I love them, first car that came with a Satnav!

The mystery car here had another first though, a combustion cycle that was different to that of any other production car of the time, only becoming a more common thing recently.