Zel's Motoring Adventures...Volvo, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & A Sinclair C5 - Updated 13/11.

[spartacus]

As you've got a new genuine belt on there, set to the manufacturers distance between pulleys, is it worth measuring the belt deflection in the middle of the runs to each pulley, that should give you a reference for when you fit the slightly narrower American belt?

 

[Zelandeth]

3 hours ago, spartacus said:

As you've got a new genuine belt on there, set to the manufacturers distance between pulleys, is it worth measuring the belt deflection in the middle of the runs to each pulley, that should give you a reference for when you for the slightly narrower American belt?

 

It shouldn't be a problem I don't think.  The new belt is well within the wear spec for the standard one.  The tape measure used here isn't exactly the height of precision anyway, and I took the width measurement of the original while standing on my head - so it's probably worth double checking it anyway.

6 hours ago, PhilA said:

Thought the transmission was after the belt on this?

Nope.  Engine - Centrifugal Clutch - D/N/R Gearbox (which also shifts the drive off to the one side and upwards) - CVT - Diff - Wheels.

[Zelandeth]

After three days of faffing around with it I've got the paint on the engine cover...looking not quite as good as it did before I started messing with it.

I just really need to accept that bodywork isn't really my forte.  It wasn't going to go well when after sanding things back and degreasing the panel, the primer proceeded to do this as it dried.

The worst of that was flatted back but I had to admit to having lost patience with the job a bit by that point. 

During the long cold evenings in the winter we'll see about totally stripping the panel back...or getting a professional to do it.

Trying to smarten this up was a daft idea and I should have left it alone.  Will get everything put back together tomorrow and leave it the heck alone.

In other news the Xantia has been getting some attention.  My local garage has been snowed under lately and asked a local Citroen expert (in a strange twist of fate, the car's former keeper) to help out.  So I've been lending a hand too.

The issue we started out with was s failed lower control arm bush.  Swapping this turned out to be slightly more of a headache than it might have been as the nut on the bottom balljoint refused to come off...so the whole wishbone had to come off complete with the hub still attached.

Next couple of photos are courtesy of the gent who's been doing most of the work.

She's also wanting new brake pads so those will be swapped while we're in there.  Looks like the caliper has been touching the edge of the disc as well so that will be given a clean up.  The car's been sitting since November so not surprised there's a little rust there.

Turned out that both the bush mentioned by the MOT tester *and* the rear "P" bush were stuffed...so they're both getting changed.

It was noted around the point the MOT was running out that the battery was struggling.  It was still under warranty (fitted in December 2018), and Costco swapped it yesterday without any quibbles. 

Turned out there was a reason for this.  The suspension on the Xantia wakes up when it detects a door or the boot opened, which can be detected if you know to look for it, by a quiet whining noise from the electrovalves.

While he was working on the car it was noticed that the system wasn't always going to sleep as it should have.  The culprit was (as is often the case apparently) the switch in the boot latch.  This has now been defeated (unplugged!).

Hopefully the battery will stop going flat now.

I'm just waiting for a new lower ball joint to turn up then we can start getting things reassembled.

[Zelandeth]

Ah, this game of paint reactions just keeps on giving.

I walked into the garage earlier today to find what looked like something from a Salvador Dali painting.

The paint appears to have reacted with either the base coat or the previous top coat and turned into a consistency akin to treacle. 

So, as much as could be manually scraped off was removed.  Next step will be giving it a thorough scrub down with some thinners, sand whatever is left vaguely close to flat, and then lay down a coat of the least reaction prone base coat I can get my hands on from my local paint specialists.  It may well wind up getting brush painted at this rate!

[LightBulbFun]

7 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Ah, this game of paint reactions just keeps on giving.

I walked into the garage earlier today to find what looked like something from a Salvador Dali painting.

The paint appears to have reacted with either the base coat or the previous top coat and turned into a consistency akin to treacle. 

So, as much as could be manually scraped off was removed.  Next step will be giving it a thorough scrub down with some thinners, sand whatever is left vaguely close to flat, and then lay down a coat of the least reaction prone base coat I can get my hands on from my local paint specialists.  It may well wind up getting brush painted at this rate!

would it be possible to sand it right back and just re-gel coat it?

[Zelandeth]

The biggest problem I've had with sanding it at all is that the original primer I used has a strange rubbery texture and just clogs any sanding media pretty the moment you touch it.

I've no idea what the deal with it was, but it's been a pain since the moment I started the cosmetic work.

[somewhatfoolish]

I'd have a cautious experiment with a heat gun if you have one, or paint stripper if you're feeling adventurous.

[Zelandeth]

4 hours ago, somewhatfoolish said:

I'd have a cautious experiment with a heat gun if you have one, or paint stripper if you're feeling adventurous.

A combination of those two will probably be next up.  I know the paint stripper won't touch the original finish unless left on there for hours, if I can get back to where *I* started though I'll be happy.  The finish on the engine cover save for some pitting wasn't too bad, the only reason it got painted was to match the colour to the rest of the car...should have just left it be with the first pass!

My heat gun is thankfully a pretty decent one and has really good temperature control so I don't run too much risk of damaging things unless I'm careless.

[vulgalour]

After you've cleaned it back, you can build up a barrier coat by spraying very thin coats of paint on, no heavier than what you'd use as a guide coat for sanding profiles.  With a bit of patience, you can build up enough layers for a uniform finish and it sometimes helps solve the reaction problem.  It sounds like it's probably the primer you've used hasn't cured properly, it happens, and that's coming through the other layers.  Spray painting (rattlecans are fine) should solve the problem better than brush painting, the thinner the layer of paint the less likely it is to react and the easier it is to remove if it does react.. usually.

I'm not a pro, this is just street-bodging experience trying to work to a budget and what I've got to hand.

[Zelandeth]

Okay, where we started out, what could be peeled off or removed with a plastic scraper yesterday.

On with the paint stripper.  Modern rubbish but better than nothing.

Left it for twenty minutes or so then went to town with the scraper.

I'm not bothered about wrecking the paint immediately below the engine cover as it wants redoing anyway - is only the one layer there though at least!

Repeat...

...and again.

...and where we left it today.

Have I mentioned lately that I hate paintwork? 

Hoping tomorrow I can hit that with the sender and hopefully get a surface I can then start to work with again.

 

[bobdisk]

I would take it off the car and do it in the garage on the workmate or a similar stand.  Wont do anything to the rest of it then.

[Zelandeth]

To be fair, it was removed from the car during application.  I did initially start working round the side of the house where there's a step ideal for this sort of thing - but immediately started to get eaten alive by ants, hence retreating back to the garage.  Where there's about 0.0002 square feet of available floor space.

[somewhatfoolish]

13 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

A combination of those two will probably be next up.  I know the paint stripper won't touch the original finish unless left on there for hours, if I can get back to where *I* started though I'll be happy. 

Isn't the original finish gelcoat?

[Zelandeth]

21 minutes ago, somewhatfoolish said:

Isn't the original finish gelcoat?

On this panel (where it's not cracked/pitted to hell) yes.  Though I found that the paint stripper wasn't really interested in touching the original paint on the car where it was painted either...which is why it's decidedly lumpy in some areas.  If you left it on long enough it would dissolve chunks out of the surface of the fibreglass...without touching the paint on top of it!  I also found when sanding that the bare bits if gel coat were softer than the paint, so trying to get things anything resembling smooth without smothering the entire thing in inches of filler is always going to be a challenge.

[somewhatfoolish]

Erk. I can't see a satisfactory finish being arrived at without shifting the 'teflon' paint remnants.

[Zelandeth]

42 minutes ago, somewhatfoolish said:

Erk. I can't see a satisfactory finish being arrived at without shifting the 'teflon' paint remnants.

Where there are chunks of it on the rest of the car that's definitely true.  That's a job I'm kicking a ways down the road and probably into the court of a professional body shop who probably have access to tools and solvents I just don't.

This car has been painted in the past when repairs were done to the bodywork.  I've no idea what sort of paint it is...but think the sort of stuff tractors from the 20s and 30s seem to have been painted with...that stuff which flakes away easily just enough to look scruffy but will then withstand any and all efforts to remove it, laughing in the face of your pitiful domestic solvents.

The engine cover actually wasn't looking all that bad though with my original effort at painting it - right up to where I went and tried to make it look better a week or so back!  I should have just left the few pits alone and accepted that nobody other than me was likely to care about or even notice the run below the number plate.

If we can get back to roughly where I was this time a year ago with this panel I'll be happy.

 

[Ben_O]

I could  (and would love to) do the paintwork for you but it would mean a road trip to the isle of wight if you were interested!

[Zelandeth]

7 hours ago, Ben_O said:

I could  (and would love to) do the paintwork for you but it would mean a road trip to the isle of wight if you were interested!

I will try - and probably fail - to keep that in mind for the future.  It's somewhere I'd love to visit one day, and somewhere down the line I really would like to get the body and paintwork sorted out more professionally than my half soaked attempts.

The Jag is now off the road until such point as I get the tyres replaced.  The front ones are ancient and had turned to more plastic than rubber and were out of round.  However at £220 apiece it's one of those jobs which it takes a bit of time to build up to, especially as my husband is now looking for work as their work contract has just come to an end, especially as while they weren't great the tyres were still legal and I just made a point of not using the car in the wet - especially as it's near impossible to keep the thing demisted without working air con.  The rear ones are older than ideal but still nicely compliant and have some life left in them.  However I can't really just change the front ones as the tyres it's fitted with aren't correct.  It should be fitted with 215/70 R15 tyres with a W speed rating.  Not the 205/70s with a H rating on the front or T on the rear. 

A very, very, very near miss with another driver (which looking back on it I reckon may have been a Crash for Cash attempt) earlier today saw me laying down a truly impressive set of skid marks, left a sufficiently dense cloud of tyre smoke you couldn't see through it, and has left a huge flat spot in both of the fronts.  The resulting vibration actually was sufficient that I pulled over as soon as it was safe to to confirm I hadn't blown a tyre completely.  The front tyres now are thoroughly dead as the vibration is sufficient to render the car pretty much undrivable above 30mph.  You can see the flat spot from about ten feet away.

It's my hope that we will have the Xantia back in service in the next few days.  If that's the case the timing will work out pretty well as there are a number of jobs I want to get done on the Jag which require quite a bit of stripping down - not least changing ALL the rubber fuel lines on the car for ethanol resistant ones, replacing the leaking cam cover oil seals, the blown inlet manifold gasket and changing some of the harder to get to coolant lines.  Have a set of front brake discs and pads to go on to.  Assuming I do get the Xantia back this week, the Jag can go into "dry dock" for a month or so while those jobs are tackled, and it can get the new tyres fitted immediately before returning to the road.  Hopefully by that point our household employment situation will be more solid so dropping a grand on tyres will be slightly less stressful...though given the current job market I'm not holding my breath.

Something I did spot that's a little worrying though was that there's something funky with the rear ride height.  I can't remember off the top of my head which is left/right here...but compare the two photos below.

 

Something ain't right there.  I did crawl underneath to see if I could immediately see any evidence of a broken spring (remember, there are two on both sides on an XJ-S just for added fun/misery) and I couldn't immediately see anything obvious...so further investigation may be required there.  I'll be able to get a better look when the wheels are off.  I'm *hoping* that there has historically been a broken spring/springs on one side and it's been replaced...and the difference is just because they were cheap about it and only did one side...so one side has 35 year old springs on, the other doesn't.  I rather doubt I'm going to be that lucky though.  I need to investigate that before going too far down the tyre replacement path as this has the potential to be hiding some really nasty bills.  Especially as I have a horrible feeling that a spring change is a subframe off job on this car.

 

The Invacar engine cover repaint has progressed today.  I gave it a skim over with the sander this morning which got rid of *most* of the remaining chunks of paint.  I'm not worrying too much about it at this point as I fully realise that there are about 50 steps needed to get a properly smooth uniform finish that I have neither the time nor patience for.  If I can get it back to looking reasonably cared for and more or less presentable from ten paces I'll be happy.  Somewhere down the line it will need to be more aggressively stripped and sanded back, the well and truly rusted on hinges and lock removed, the surface properly filled, sanded, filled, sanded many times over, before being repainted in a proper spray booth or at least a properly equipped garage.  That ain't happening today though! 

A couple of thin coats of cheap. basic primer (rather than the expensive high build stuff that started this whole mess) were applied and didn't appear to do anything unexpected.  So topcoat number one went on...For some reason I forgot to get a photo of the primer stage.

This was repeated a couple of times until I was satisfied I had decent even coverage, and I just had time to get the first layer of clearcoat down before it started to cool off and I started to lose the light.

It was then very carefully placed back on the car in the garage.

It will want a few more coats on, but should be able to get it put back together tomorrow.  Then I'll leave it the heck alone and concentrate on stuff which actually will make the car better to use rather than worrying what she looks like.

[LightBulbFun]

like for paint progress

not the trouser ruining experience in the Jag!

I guess the one of the (very few) "advantages" to driving in London over MK is even tho it looks like we share the same idiots, when these kinds of incidents happen if your in London your normally doing 10-20 Mph, 50 Mph max if your on an dual carriage way, so you can stop/see it coming easier/with more time etc

compared to the relatively fast 70Mph MK roads

[Zelandeth]

1 minute ago, LightBulbFun said:

like for paint progress 

not the trouser ruining experience in the Jag!

I guess the one of the (very few) "advantages" to driving in London over MK is even tho it looks like we share the same idiots, when these kinds of incidents happen if your in London your normally doing 10-20 Mph, 50 Mph max if your on an dual carriage way, so you can stop/see it coming easier/with more time etc

compared to the relatively fast 70Mph MK roads

It was very much in the same vein as the only actual accident I've had in that it was one of those things which you had *loads* of time to see coming, but the vast majority of that time was well after the point at which you could actually do anything about it!

As the road was quiet I was ambling along at 50-60 (before I lifted off as soon as I saw them starting to merge anyway - as I automatically treat any driver in front of me as a threat!), if I was bombing along at 70-90 as most drivers around here seem to I'd have wound up halfway through their car before I was even vaguely aware of anything going awry.

It really does highlight though that a dashcam is no longer a "good idea" it really is essential.  *ESPECIALLY* in MK where there's so much high speed stop/start driving done and there's so much potential for someone to pull out of a side road in front of you on a 70mph road.

[somewhatfoolish]

Ideal time to use up the knacked tyres by doing a burn out or three!  Release your inner Cannonballer.

[Zelandeth]

6 hours ago, somewhatfoolish said:

Ideal time to use up the knacked tyres by doing a burn out or three!  Release your inner Cannonballer.

Surprisingly difficult on a dry road thanks to the LSD...rather than spinning the wheels if you boot it from a standing start it just takes off.  In anything involving the slightest bit of moisture it's another story.  Granted the rear tyres are in several orders of magnitude better shape than the front.

Admittedly I've not got it rolling then given it a bootfull while turning, which always used to be the most effective way to get the Cappuccino to slide.  Not that there's anywhere around here I'd dare do that given anywhere and everywhere is always full of people.  Finding opportunities for the occasional moment of silliness was far easier back up north.

[egg]

11 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

A very, very, very near miss with another driver (which looking back on it I reckon may have been a Crash for Cash attempt) earlier today

I think I had one a while back too, and it shocks you for a couple of days afterwards. It was only on a 30mph - but the manoeuvre the driver tried in good conditions, and the haste with which they got away from the situation, plus the look in the eyes just gave me doubts about it being a pure mistake.  But impossible to know. Mazda 323 brakes were better than I thought...

I know you set yourself very high standards, but that paint looks good - and let's face it you already have the cleanest looking M70 in actual road use! 

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, egg said:

I think I had one a while back too, and it shocks you for a couple of days afterwards.

I've had four or five over the last couple of years which were absolutely blatant.

The favourite method around here is to cut in front of you when you're in the outside lane of a fast dual carriageway and brake hard in a car with no brake lights working.  2000-ish Mondeos and Vectras seem to be the car of choice here.

[egg]

This was a rough looking MK1 Focus, which did increase my suspicions!

[Zelandeth]

You have to be kidding...I went through my entire Citroen parts stash three times carefully to see if I had a lower ball joint in stock before ordering a replacement (which still hasn't arrived).

What do I spot today?  Sitting on the side of the pool table, about a foot away from the P bush which is waiting to be dropped off when the ball joint arrives?

Seriously?!?  I must have picked that up and moved it *twice* while I was going through stuff.

I really do worry about the state of my brain sometimes.

If the new ones arrive in the next 48 hours I'll hold off and use those though as I trust Lemförder parts rather further than Motaquip.  If not, this will be used as I really could do with the car back in service.

[Zelandeth]

Calling it done with regards to the engine cover on TPA for now.  Reassembled everything again this morning...

...Shortly after I had moved the block I use to set how far forward I park.  I need to keep the car a lot further forward than it looks like I do or the latch on the garage door will take a chunk out of the car when I lock it.

While I had the paint out I also gave the top engine cowl a quick sand back and spray over as the paint was flaking off that in several places.

With the Jag taken out of service by yesterday's tyre shredding debacle she was then dragged out the garage ready for being the transport of choice for today's errands.

Looking a bit better than the first time I took a photo of her in this car park.

Which once I was done with puts me comfortably beyond the recommended break in period for the new belt.

The packaging with the Dayco HP2020 belt instructs you not to exceed 50mph for the first 20 miles, and I've decided to treat the NOS one fitted the same.  It's actually surprisingly difficult to keep this car below 50 on the open road!

Just planning to get a few more miles covered in the next couple of days.  The only thing I do want to do first though is to readjust the brakes as now the shoes have bedded in there's a bit too much dead travel for my liking.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Happy to see TPA out and about as always, always makes me grin seeing an Invacar amongst all the moderns  

(on that note, I will admit it did tickle me how currently your only 2 working vehicles are a 30 year old coach built camper van and an Invacar, that is very Autoshite!,  well and the Sinclair C5?  )

[Zelandeth]

Oh it's very me.

Heck I've barely even touched the C5 this year!  To be fair it's usually the autumn it sees the most use though so we'll see. 

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, HarmonicCheeseburger said:

If you end up doing some donuts on a very wet carpark to finish the tyres off, bonus marks for playing the theme song for Last Of The Summer Wine, as loud as you can bear.

I still wish I had video of the faces of the boy racer crowd who tend to gather in what is locally known as the "Old Tesco Car Park" in Inverurie back when I had my first Lada.  I came by there one winter evening (it's a short cut through the town centre) when it had been snowing earlier in the day, so it was kind of half slushy around the edges.  There was then a distinct moment of "here's something you can't do..." as I swung the thing around to about 45 degrees and booted the hell out of it in second - and managed to hold it in a proper, graceful drift for what must have been a good three quarters of the length of the car park.  I don't think I've seen quite so many jaws hit the floor that quickly before or since.