Zel's Motoring Adventures...Peugeot, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar, Volvo & A Sinclair C5 - Updated 09/10.

[Dobloseven]

28 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Oops.

Well I've just A - Made a load of work for myself.  B - Ensured my imminent demise. C - Made a load of work for myself.

Well done that man. They always say you regret the things you didn't do, rather than those you did. If you specifically want one, there's not a lot of choice.Mine found me rather than the other way. Had a look at the advert and the lacquer peel seems to be the biggest issue. It does look a good colour and trim combo. Hope to see it one day. Perhaps a photo shoot with my Phase 2 GTS auto. Keep us posted, as I'm sure you will anyway. 

[Zelandeth]

13 minutes ago, Dobloseven said:

Well done that man. They always say you regret the things you didn't do, rather than those you did. If you specifically want one, there's not a lot of choice.Mine found me rather than the other way. Had a look at the advert and the lacquer peel seems to be the biggest issue. It does look a good colour and trim combo. Hope to see it one day. Perhaps a photo shoot with my Phase 2 GTS auto. Keep us posted, as I'm sure you will anyway. 

The biggest issue for me I think was that I was always going to be picky.  I personally really prefer the look of the phase 1 cars.  Plus I kind of felt that it had to be *the* Monaco given my prior experiences with one...and you don't have much choice!

If Howmanyleft is to be believed anyway - though this is one of those cases I'm inclined to believe it as this was a factory edition rather than something the dealers could forget to input on the reg system or anything like that.

To be fair, this one found me pretty much.  It popped up in a Telegram chat I only look into now and then when I happened to be there, if it hadn't been for that I'd have been totally oblivious.

[Surface Rust]

1 hour ago, Zelandeth said:

Oops.

Well I've just A - Made a load of work for myself.  B - Ensured my imminent demise. C - Made a load of work for myself.

Yes, all that is true, but it is also brown.

[Noel Tidybeard]

how much brown?

 

fucking all of it!😁

[Dobloseven]

I suppose it's winter now and there could be some running cars that get taken off the road and put on SORN. Still not many though! The tax is quite expensive, think mine is around 26 quid a month. I try to use mine at least once a week, if the weather isn't too bad. Is it a runner, advert seemed a bit vague, perhaps the seller being cautious? My only memories of them, like many, were the cringe making adverts on the telly back in the day. 

[LightBulbFun]

38 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

The biggest issue for me I think was that I was always going to be picky.  I personally really prefer the look of the phase 1 cars.  Plus I kind of felt that it had to be *the* Monaco given my prior experiences with one...and you don't have much choice!

If Howmanyleft is to be believed anyway - though this is one of those cases I'm inclined to believe it as this was a factory edition rather than something the dealers could forget to input on the reg system or anything like that.

To be fair, this one found me pretty much.  It popped up in a Telegram chat I only look into now and then when I happened to be there, if it hadn't been for that I'd have been totally oblivious.

for what its worth, your ( )  Monaco is correctly registered as a Monaco with the DVLA under the proper Make and Model codes L2 198

so it is likely one of those 2 taxed cars in that statistic! 

[Zelandeth]

17 minutes ago, Surface Rust said:

Yes, all that is true, but it is also brown.

Bronze thank you very much.

I actually like the colour - especially when it's actually clean and we're not looking at it on a grey December day so you can actually see it's metallic!

13 minutes ago, Noel Tidybeard said:

how much brown?

 

fucking all of it!😁

Yeah, I did have that moment of "Oh yeah, these are not small cars..." moment when I went to reverse into a parking space for the first time!

[Noel Tidybeard]

20 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Bronze thank you very much.

 

yeah, yeah, whatever you say!🤓

[Crackers]

That is a brown car. 

As we know, brown cars are good. You have nothing to be ashamed of. 

[CaptainBoom]

That is awesome, I think as others have said, your abilities and eye for detail will make this great

[ETCHY]

5 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Oops.

Well I've just A - Made a load of work for myself.  B - Ensured my imminent demise. C - Made a load of work for myself.

Gorgeous. The interior will be a beige leather fest. I love Monaco interiors they're just soooo cool.

[Zelandeth]

Okay, have had a chance to sit down for more than two consecutive minutes now, so let's get a proper post written up.

Back in 2003 I had a Saturday job at a little independent used car dealer out in the middle of nowhere in Aberdeenshire.  I quite often found myself pursuing their trade ins which they deemed to old to be worth cleaning up to sell themselves.  Which I used to be welcome to basically for scrap value - which in 2003 meant about 30p.

I got a few pretty good bargains I reckoned.

This Renault 11TC was £125 I think. 

Sailed though the MOT and I got a decent year's motoring out of it.  I only really sold it on because it turned out that this straddled the line between the pre and post facelift car and had been assembled from whatever they found laying around the factory floor.  A lot of things didn't even vaguely match what either the phase 1 or 2 cars should have had.

Plus by then it had done the main thing I wanted it to, which was keep the Metro out of the worst of the winter.

This Saab was £60.

This was the good side, the other one had a huge poor accident repair on which had been painted with what appeared to be red telephone box paint.  It was also absolutely rotten around the driveshaft tunnels and boot floor.  The gearbox had serious issues and the engine hadn't had an oil change in about ten years and made some truly interesting noises.  This was bought as a "run it on nothing unnecessary till the MOT runs out" basis.  It did then yeild a good number of useful spares.

The front wheel looks odd in that photo because I was in the middle of replacing the wheel bearing so things are just sitting there - which I think was about the only thing beyond a service I really did to it.  Think I maybe changed the thermostat.

It basically expired about a week before the MOT ran out when a missing manhole cover in Aberdeen ripped out the lower nearside ball joint.

There was a free Astra 1.3 Merit (in beige) which I don't think I have a photo of, and a £20 Proton 1.5GL which I basically did my last learning how to do driving test relevant things like reversing around a corner on a local private road (we literally had a mostly paved mile plus long farm road 100 yards from the house which I was allowed to use with permission from the land owner).

However probably my favourite of all the random stuff that followed me home was this.

Which cost me either £20 or £60, I can't remember.  It had a couple of days MOT left, so shortly after I got it home my father took it down to the local car guy in the nearest village to see what it might need for a test.

Sadly it was condemned as the rear suspension arms were rotten.  Bearing in mind the car was worth...well...I'd just paid that for it it wasn't worth repairing.  Now I'd have kept it around just as a lounge to listen to my music on the epic sound system in - but as my father was the one making the calls because I was at college, it turned out that I never saw the car again.  I drove it about 3 miles in total I think.  Which also means that the above is the only photo I have of it save for a horribly grainy underexposed one of the interior.

We were always a family who tended to forgive and forget, but that was one thing which I really did hold a grudge about for many years, just saying to bin it without even consulting me.

I always vowed that one day I'd properly own another one.

Fast forward to ~2010 when I was more a master of my own fate and had some usable disposable income, they'd basically gone extinct.  So I stopped looking.

Until someone in a Telegram chat posted a link to the C&C classified as for this a couple of days ago.

Is was clearly somewhat scruffy, the photos weren't great but the ad sounded like it was written by someone who was into cars.  Plus it was actually written in real English which in 2022 feels like a real rarity.

Initially I sat firmly on the "I absolutely do not need another project" idea.  However having then looked up how many were left and realising it was pretty local I decided it had to be worth a look.  If I didn't I'd forever question if I'd made the right call, and am not expecting to find another pop up.

This is despite the fact that the car I'd already got on my driveway for the spring 2023 project was parked on what used to be my front lawn because I'm already out of space.  So if I bought it something would absolutely need to move on - one in, one out and it isn't optional.

So I sent a message to the seller.  What followed was an entirely pleasant E-mail conversation back and forth completely out of character with any experience buying or selling a car to the general public that I've had in the last ten years.  It was arranged that I'd pop over this weekend to have a look at it.

I was going into this with the expectation of finding it to be quite rotten on account of a somewhat colourful MOT history, and knowing there were a bunch of little other things off the bat in need of sorting.  So my expectation was to view it and probably walk away.  

I'm greatly appreciative of @Six-cylinder and @AnthonyG (I think - correct me if I've tagged the wrong person) for ferrying me over there today and to assist in sorting out some further logistics I'd fouled up.  

I got there and found the car...pretty much exactly as described.  I didn't obviously have it up on a ramp and there's only so much you can do trying to lay on the ground on an active public road, but while there have been some patches here and there, it looks by and large pretty clean.  I think the suspension arms (which wrote my original one off) have been replaced as they look far newer than the rest of the car.  

The only rust I immediately found which will want attention sooner than later is some on the inner wings where some seam sealant has blown out.  The outer wings bolt on and I don't think it will be the end of the world to sort once they're off.  Might actually be far enough away from the strut tops because of how far back they're set not to be an MOT issue - but it wants sorting either way.

Interior was in decent shape, leather desperately want drowning in leather feed, but everything's there and looks in decent shape.  Bit of obvious wear here and there not no splits I've noticed yet.  Especially glad the Monaco specific door cappings are okay as they'd be an absolute nightmare to find replacements for I imagine.

We had a quick trundle around the estate and the car seemed to drive fine enough.  There's a drop-linky sort of rattle from the offside front and it's got the usual horribly baggy 80s Renault gear change that needs it's bushings replaced, but from the driver's seat that was about it.  Temperature gauge sits higher than I'd like, but I'm positive I've seen that on these before, and the highly technical "how long can I hold onto the hoses for?" Test and "Can I smell coolant?" Tests say it's running at a perfectly sane temperature.  Most importantly though the gauge got to that spot then stayed steadily there rather than jumping around all over the shop.  

I was prepared for the brakes to be in a bit of a sorry state given she's only done a few hundred miles in the last five years, but they actually seem absolutely fine.

Despite having basically told myself it was going to be too much of a project before we got there, I had to admit it was actually a pretty good candidate for a rolling project to tinker with and fettle.  To be absolutely honest with myself, much more in line with my abilities than some of the stuff on the Cavalier.  Particularly that one bit of welding on the offside inner sill which I would almost definitely wind up needing to get someone in to do.  Chassis leg I reckon I can manage, but the sill is a bit more complicated.  

So a deal was done and we headed for home.  I'd originally expected to take Six-Cylinder along to drive it back as I'd generally found short term insurance (I'll get it transferred to mine on Monday) to be really steep lately.  So when it came back at £19 I was surprised - and just set that up there and then and off we went.

No petrol station shot as the seller had already filled it up for us!  So have one in a random Waitrose car park instead.

It's always a little unnerving driving a car back when you've bought it - especially a 34 year old French barge which even when it was new had something of a reputation for flaky electronics.  Double that when it's barely turned a wheel in the last five years.

However she wafted the 40 miles or so home without missing a beat and in utter comfort.

Did I mention, comfort?

I kind of expected that my 19 year old memory of the levels of comfort were very rose tinted.  Nope, I was spot on.

So...issues.

Initially I thought someone had stuck a silly rear exhaust section on.  I recall these being annoyingly expensive even back in the early 00s, so that wouldn't have surprised me.  However a bit of quick investigation...

Figured out it was just a trim...so that's now gone.  Much better.

She needs a clean.  Like really, really needs a good deep clean.

Exactly as per the advert, the paint does indeed need help in several areas.  There's some pretty epic clear coat peel.

The radiator grill is peeling particularly badly too.

Plus a nasty scrape running a good portion of the way along the driver's side.

The passenger's door catch clearly needs adjustment as it requires an unreasonably heavy slam to latch fully.

The LCD display for the clock/stereo/outside temperature display clearly needs either a cleaned zebra strip or replacement ribbon cable.

The warning light for the washer fluid level is lit...

That may be as simple as it actually just needing to be filled, haven't even had a chance to look yet.

Heater blower is a bit squeaky.  

Nearside front door speaker grill likes to eject itself from the door when you close it.

Few lamps out in the dash/switches, but nowhere near as many as I expected.

Does look good at night.

I do remember thinking that the style of lights they used on the central cluster in the dash with the brightly lit symbol on a dimmer field looked really smart.  Still do.

Though speaking of the dash, it's hard not to mention this strangeness which wouldn't have been out of place in a Citroen to be honest.

I haven't tried the windows yet, nor the sunroof - which I didn't really notice until we were underway - that will definitely not be getting touched until spring!

Central locking does try to work, though it doesn't quite manage to actually get all the doors locked.  Sure a clean and grease of things will sort that.  I do only have one set of keys (and no remote sadly), which I'll need to resolve sooner than later - though it remains to be seen how much of a pain that weird door key is to get cut.

Overall, seems a reasonably solid base to work from.  Hopefully will get a bit more of a chance to look at it further in the daylight tomorrow.

Did it make *sense* to buy?  Probably not.  However I have literally been after one for the last 19 years - so logic be damned.

[Dobloseven]

Seller sounds like a good sort. Really looking forward to seeing what you make of this. Looks like an excellent project to gently improve whilst being used. Blower motor is a piece of cake to access. Had mine out the other week when it seized.Was a bit wary of the sunroof on mine. PO told me not to touch it at any cost. Was a bit sticky at first, but freed up with some WD40 and has been fine ever since. This was in the summer, mind! 

[mat_the_cat]

Well bought sir! I almost ended up with one of these by accident, as we viewed a house in 2003 which had clearly been owned by someone elderly, and hadn't been touched decor-wise since the 80s. In the garage was a 25 Monaco, and I recall asking the estate agent whether we'd get the house as-is, or whether there was still some clearing out to be done. The answer was basically as we saw it, but sadly when we moved in they'd taken the car (and left us some rather questionable furniture!)

Given that this was in Gloucestershire, I just wonder if it's the same car. Surely there can't have been huge numbers left in 2003.

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, Dobloseven said:

Seller sounds like a good sort. Really looking forward to seeing what you make of this. Looks like an excellent project to gently improve whilst being used. Blower motor is a piece of cake to access. Had mine out the other week when it seized.Was a bit wary of the sunroof on mine. PO told me not to touch it at any cost. Was a bit sticky at first, but freed up with some WD40 and has been fine ever since. This was in the summer, mind! 

I'm not touching it in December...that just sounds like tempting fate.  The roof doesn't have any issues with clear coat peel, so I'd rather not have to go sticking duct tape all over it!

[Shite Ron]

I will certainly be following updates on this, very well bought. Looks a great project. I am a big fan of the colour and the beige interior. I remember a boy in my year at school had wealthy parents and his dad had an identical one brand new. A world away from the E reg Escort 1.3L my dad had at the same time! I was never a fan of Renault’s but the Monaco is a real cut above the rest, it is fantastic. I understand your dilemma regarding lack of space/ too many cars but as someone has already said you regret the things you don’t do more than the things you do. I believe you made the right decision and that this was meant to be. Congratulations! this is an absolutely fantastic early Christmas present to yourself.

[dollywobbler]

Brilliant. It was a search for a Renault 25 for a mag feature that brought me to Autoshite many years ago, yet still a car rarely seen even here.

[Dobloseven]

53 minutes ago, dollywobbler said:

Brilliant. It was a search for a Renault 25 for a mag feature that brought me to Autoshite many years ago, yet still a car rarely seen even here.

Possible renactment of the classic 80s TV ad? Where you tell the current Mrs Hubnut you're going to go it alone making videos and selling T shirts. And the Renault 25 will have to go back. She meanwhile plays with the electric windows and tells you not to be too hasty. You can borrow mine if Zels isn't available. 

[Zelandeth]

First gripe discovered.  The seatbelts are ridiculously short.  If you're plus sized you're going to struggle.

If I'm in the driver's seat with a reasonably bulky jacket on I've got about 8" of slack and while I'm not built like a rake I'm hardly huge.

For such a big car I'm surprised they're so short.  Though I do wonder if they're actually exactly the same belts as used on the lesser models just artificially made shorter by the bulk of the seats.

Going to need to source an extension for the passenger belt for a couple of folks who are likely to be in here now and then.

[Six-cylinder]

1 hour ago, Zelandeth said:

First gripe discovered.  The seatbelts are ridiculously short.  If you're plus sized you're going to struggle.

If I'm in the driver's seat with a reasonably bulky jacket on I've got about 8" of slack and while I'm not built like a rake I'm hardly huge.

For such a big car I'm surprised they're so short.  Though I do wonder if they're actually exactly the same belts as used on the lesser models just artificially made shorter by the bulk of the seats.

Going to need to source an extension for the passenger belt for a couple of folks who are likely to be in here now and then.

I did have that problem yesterday! 

[richardmorris]

My dad an I entered a Renault dealer competition to win a Renault 5 Monaco. Same colour and interior it seemed very smart. Obv. Didn’t win - but would have been a great first car.

[LightBulbFun]

15 hours ago, mat_the_cat said:

Well bought sir! I almost ended up with one of these by accident, as we viewed a house in 2003 which had clearly been owned by someone elderly, and hadn't been touched decor-wise since the 80s. In the garage was a 25 Monaco, and I recall asking the estate agent whether we'd get the house as-is, or whether there was still some clearing out to be done. The answer was basically as we saw it, but sadly when we moved in they'd taken the car (and left us some rather questionable furniture!)

Given that this was in Gloucestershire, I just wonder if it's the same car. Surely there can't have been huge numbers left in 2003.

the change from the 1st keeper to the 2nd happened in 2003!

so you could well be onto something!

[Zelandeth]

Didn't have quite as productive a day today as I'd hoped.  Apparently I didn't budget my energy yesterday quite as well as I thought I had, so got kicked in the behind this morning and it wasn't until the early afternoon that I was really mentally firing on all cylinders again.  Which is particularly annoying as I'd really hoped to get along to the last MKCC breakfast meet of the year with the R25, moss and all.

I always find it slightly surprising when people go and spend major amounts of money resurrecting a vehicle...

Then don't change things like tyres.  The newest tyre on this car dates from 2003.

With two of them being from pre-2000, they're all budget brands too.  So a full set of tyres is going to be number 1 on the list.

A slightly worrying thing from the driver's seat is the fact that the temperature gauge sits roughly here under normal driving.  Moving around pretty much exactly as you would expect on a car with a real gauge rather than the nonsense a lot of moderns are fitted with when traffic etc, but with no signs of distress that I'd tend to expect if we were near enough brushing the red.  I got the IR thermometer out today and confirmed that it's sitting somewhere around 90C (the actual head even on the exhaust side is around 120C), which is about what I'd expect to see.  Even when pulling off the road and immediately checking it, the hoses are uncomfortable to touch, but not burning so and there's no excess pressure in the system.  We'll see if a new sender sorts that out.  Though I'm sure I do vaguely remember this being a somewhat common issue.

In an effort to extinguish the washer fluid level warning light I checked that - oh look, it's full.

So that will be a problem with the level sensor then.  Unfortunately it's not a simple matter of unplugging it as both the washer motor and level sensor use a combined connector - curse you Renault!

I have a sneaking suspicion given how long this car sat around off the road (and that the tank appears to just be filled with water) that the reservoir will be somewhat full of slime and the float is probably just stuck to the bottom of the tank.  I'll really need to get it out of the car to investigate though as it's pretty much impossible to even look down the neck of it in situ.  I need to delve into the scuttle anyway to clean and lubricate the heater blower motor which is a little squeaky anyway so may as well hit both of these jobs at the same time.

The engine bay is filthy.  Though astonishingly free of bodges for a car of this age.  The only obvious thing I've found is an aftermarket cooling fan having been fitted and the wiring for that being a little untidy (though perfectly serviceable)

It always felt to me like that manifold should have a heat shield on it, though I've never actually seen one on any of these.

Edit: Thought about the studs on the exhaust manifold - hot air riser for carb models?

Though this does pretty much confirm my suspicion that while the car was serviced when it was put back on the road in 2017, it's not had one since.

So that will be happening pretty much ASAP.  The oil isn't horrible but it definitely isn't what I'd call clean.

Speaking of clean, the coolant expansion tank is absolutely foul inside.  The actual coolant I can see looks nice and clear, but the tank is grim.  I think this was used on a whole bunch of models, so replacing it (so I can actually see the coolant level without having to remove the cap - you currently can't) might wind up being the easier option there.

Under the bonnet contains the worst corrosion issues I've found so far.

Plus a little hole down here.

Which isn't anything which fills me with too much dread.  The outer wings bolt on, and once they're off access to do a proper repair to these areas shouldn't be a problem.

It's always nice on cars like this when you find a set of factory mats still present, as aftermarket ones never really fit as well.  I don't think these are original to the car as I think they would have been a lighter colour - though I'm quite prepared to be proven wrong there.

There are a few bits of glass floating around the interior as she's obviously had the passenger window smashed at some point.

Given this is a Northampton registration number, I'm guessing these may actually still be the original dealer plates.

This sticker in the rear window has fared slightly less well.

One nice feature I was glad to see what still there was the original stereo - these were rather special by the standards of the time and were very much part of the look of the dash.

Sadly I've not been able to get any audio out of this save for a soft thump when it's powered on - though that may well be tied in to the issues we have with the digital display as if there's a problem with the comms to that panel which might make it think a button is being permanently held down it could lock the system up.  Failing that I'll need to do some further digging.  This wasn't just a flashy looking bit of bling either, the stereo in these cars sounded really good, especially by the standards of the time.  I remember being really impressed with it back when I had my previous one in 2003, and my home hi-fi wasn't exactly poor then either.

There are quite a lot of nice touches on this car, one of which I'd forgotten about until noticing it this afternoon is the mini-sun visor in the middle.

Which does away with the usual gap you get between the left and right ones around the mirror.

There are (really rather large) door pockets hidden away under the arm rests, which you could be forgiven for missing entirely if you didn't know they were there.  A nice way of reducing visual clutter, and keeping stuff out of the way of prying eyes.

I am in the market for a couple of parts.  Firstly, an offside tail light as this one has a crack in and has a small ecosystem merrily growing inside.

I'll clean it out and seal the crack up, but it will want to be replaced long term.

Additionally one of the prongs that holds the cap onto the driver's door driver's side electric window switch is broken so the cap falls off.  There was a spare in the car but it turns out to be for the passenger window switch, and they have differently keyed connectors.  I'm sure the switches are actually identical and it's purely to aid in assembly (as the switches are visually identical), so I could just hack away the extra bit of plastic if it came to it.

Interestingly the boot was hiding a box full of a set of wheel trims...which while for a French car, not *this* French car.  If anyone with a BX wants these, drop me a PM.

Few scuffs around the edges of a couple but they could absolutely be cleaned up.

I went to pick up to dispose of what I thought was an empty plastic bag sitting down by the handbrake only to discover there was actually something in it.

Keys!  Most importantly a spare door key as I was expecting getting hold of one of those to be a right war as they're such an odd type.

Also present was a key blade for fitting to a remote fob...and two of said fobs...one in decent shape, one rather ratty (this key isn't for this car by the way which is why I've not bothered keeping the bitting of the actual key hidden at all).

My theory was that the one that was falling apart was for this car, and the other one was from a scrapper intended to donate the case.  The innards of both remotes worked with a fresh set of batteries, but sadly neither locks or unlocks the car.  Shame, but it was being a bit optimistic.  As I understand it these remotes are paired to the car at the factory and there's no way to sync a different one with the car after the fact.  So unless I could get one coded to the car from Renault (which I really rather doubt at this point) I'm probably out of luck there.

Does mean I've been able to assemble a remote style key for the car though, so I can use that instead of the "backup" style one shown to the left below.  This is a good deal less fiddly to get into the ignition it has to be said.

Ran out of daylight and energy by that point though, so that's where we draw to a close for today.  Tomorrow I'll get the necessary items for a service in and a set of fresh tyres ordered up.  If time permits I'll start cleaning it, but I suspect the three and a half minutes of usable daylight we have at this time of year will run out before I get that far.

[Dobloseven]

When I bought mine,the PO had strapped a big plastic bottle of water to the inner wing. He was a bit cagey about it, saying it was just in case. Like yours it'd had little recent use. It was July last year and pretty warm. Noticed the temperature would rise quite rapidly if the car wasn't moving, dropping pretty rapidly once underway. Soon realised the fan wasn't cutting in. Cleaning the connector soon cured that. Decided to change the coolant ASAP. Found the hose to the overflow bottle was completely blocked and needed poking out with a stick as flushing with mains pressure did nothing. Flushed the radiator and blew core out with compressed air. Had awful trouble refilling and getting air out. It had also had trouble with the automatic choke which seemed impossible to set right. To get it to tickover cold it would be much too fast when hot and vice versa.A good tickover is important with an automatic. Struggled with this for a while, finally realising the choke worked off water temperature and wasn't warming up. The water flowed through the inlet manifold, through the heated carburettor flange to the choke heater. The carb flange was completely blocked and had to be poked out with a small screwdriver. Once all this had been done, it all worked as well as it's likely too. Regarding the seat belt, I tried mine and it doesn't seem too bad, though I have to have the seat right back to get enough legroom,being quite tall. One thing I like, there's plenty of room under the bonnet to access things. Timing belt was almost a pleasure to do. 

[Zelandeth]

54 minutes ago, Dobloseven said:

When I bought mine,the PO had strapped a big plastic bottle of water to the inner wing. He was a bit cagey about it, saying it was just in case. Like yours it'd had little recent use. It was July last year and pretty warm. Noticed the temperature would rise quite rapidly if the car wasn't moving, dropping pretty rapidly once underway. Soon realised the fan wasn't cutting in. Cleaning the connector soon cured that. Decided to change the coolant ASAP. Found the hose to the overflow bottle was completely blocked and needed poking out with a stick as flushing with mains pressure did nothing. Flushed the radiator and blew core out with compressed air. Had awful trouble refilling and getting air out. It had also had trouble with the automatic choke which seemed impossible to set right. To get it to tickover cold it would be much too fast when hot and vice versa.A good tickover is important with an automatic. Struggled with this for a while, finally realising the choke worked off water temperature and wasn't warming up. The water flowed through the inlet manifold, through the heated carburettor flange to the choke heater. The carb flange was completely blocked and had to be poked out with a small screwdriver. Once all this had been done, it all worked as well as it's likely too. Regarding the seat belt, I tried mine and it doesn't seem too bad, though I have to have the seat right back to get enough legroom,being quite tall. One thing I like, there's plenty of room under the bonnet to access things. Timing belt was almost a pleasure to do. 

Thankfully the lines on this are clear, the water in the expansion bottle moves when you squeeze a hose.  Equally I also don't have carb adjustments to deal with, which kind of surprises me with yours being that much later.  I wonder if the injection option was part of the Monaco package.

I find it highly amusing that the handbook seems to have precisely as big an issue with clear coat peel as the car!

[Marm Toastsmith]

That is SO nice.

[mat_the_cat]

4 hours ago, LightBulbFun said:

the change from the 1st keeper to the 2nd happened in 2003!

so you could well be onto something!

Is there any way to see the previous keeper's details any more? Swallow Crescent was the address, and the date fits with when we moved in!

[Noel Tidybeard]

these 2.0 litre renner lumps cooling system can be an absolute see you next tuesday to bleed

my b-i-l used to service a 21 and it usually took 3 sesions to bleed!

[LightBulbFun]

24 minutes ago, mat_the_cat said:

Is there any way to see the previous keeper's details any more? Swallow Crescent was the address, and the date fits with when we moved in!

not with my tools sadly! 

but a V888 which Zel could do, can still get you at least a line of the address, a few examples of said 1 lines from each keeper of a Model 70 I helped trace the history of  

West Linton, Leven, Edingburgh, Billingham, Johnstone,

that sort of detail, dont know if that would be enough for you or not?

 

BTW while I have your attention so to speak LOL, you dont happen to have any better pictures of the fluorescent fixture in the back ground? I have been scratching my head trying to figure out what it is and I cant quite place it and that bugs me LOL

one end looks a lot like an Atlas super slim, dark grey-green lamp holder but the other end is showing a cream lamp holder which is not a super slim! LOL

[Broadsword]

That is an amazing purchase, really well done! I have similar feelings for a long lost R21 Savannah diesel we had. They are extinct now of course, but the one we had was just perfect even though it was shabby. Still miss it and would have another.