Datsuncog's Heaps: Sept 2023 - Another Year's T-Met Exemption Certificate...

[Noel Tidybeard]

unpainted bumpers FTW- give it the butterybiscuitbase look along with the painted steely wheelz

[They_all_do_that_sir]

unpainted bumpers FTW- give it the butterybiscuitbase look along with the painted steely wheelz

This, I would go for a sort of yaris rallye look, painted steels and a few graphics.....maybe something along the lines of the old starlet SR graphics?

 

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[Datsuncog]

On 7/28/2018 at 5:19 PM, GrumpiusMaximus said:

Go-faster stripes and a racing stripe right over the middle of the car.  Go on.  You know you want to.

 

On 7/28/2018 at 11:19 PM, Noel Tidybeard said:

unpainted bumpers FTW- give it the butterybiscuitbase look along with the painted steely wheelz

 

On 7/29/2018 at 8:49 AM, They_all_do_that_sir said:

This, I would go for a sort of yaris rallye look, painted steels and a few graphics.....maybe something along the lines of the old starlet SR graphics?

^^^ All good ideas... the new bumpers will be plain unpainted black on arrival, so a base look might be a possibility...

Vinyl stripes over the bonnet, roof and bootlid are a given. I'm thinking two stripes, offset to the left hand side, in sort of a tealy blue with orange edging... kind of reminiscent of the Gulf Ford GT40, but darker blue.

Although the Yaris appears to be very very grey, oddly when you open the bonnet the base colour on the engine bay is dark blue... and the V5 describes the car as "blue".  So I'm hoping it'll tone in, with the orange as the highlight accent colour.

I'm planning on flexing my Mad Photoshop Skillz ^TM and doing a bit of a mock-up to see how colours etc would match up...

So here's what we're working with:

A Toyota Yaris 1.0 VVT Colour Collection. French built run-out model, using whatever parts-bin shiz was lying around, making for lots of hilarious* conversations at the EuroCarPrats counter.

Bought for MrsDC by her recently-retired aunt as a going-to-university gift, it was ordered from Charles Hurst Toyota in Belfast and delivered in August 2005.

Six weeks later, some plum reversed their Volvo out of a space in Tesco carpark without looking, and piled into the side of it. The door was replaced, but as you can see, the colour match from the approved accident repairs place was abysmal, and they could never get the window rubber seal to stick, despite it being brought back three or four times. So there's a bit of wind noise.

It's had a hard life. There's currently 97k on the clock, but it spent a fair amount of its formative years parked up around Queens University in Belfast, where parking is a bit Wild-West - so parking dings and paintwork scores/keying are everywhere.

 

The pics don't really show how bad it is.

Plus I've made my own little ad-hoc modifications...

I crashed into a verge going downhill over The Knockagh one snowy morning in 2012, bending the front crossmember and distorting the bumper while smashing all the plastic undertray and arch liner stuff. Attempts to remedy it failed, but it's never been mentioned as an MOT advisory so I've kind of been ignoring it up to now.

The wind whistles through this while driving, which sounds just gr8. The new MOT requirements seem to state that fog lights, if fitted, must be working - but MrsDC is insistent that these were listed as driving lamps on the brochure, not fogs. Replacements are on the list... the nearside one is corroded inside and not working...

...while the offside one fell victim to a rogue piece of scrap metal dropped from a wagon on the Westlink late one night, which I didn't see in time... the lamp's retaining clips all got smashed. I attempted a bodge. It didn't last.

Other improvements I've added in my time include being a tad careless while changing brake fluid...

Yeah, that'll need a machine polish.

Also, in addition to the two battered original wheeltrims, the Yaris rakishly sports one wheeltrim from the dearly departed KAZ, plus one from another scrap Laguna I broke for parts a few years back (UKZ).

We also appear to have a problem with crows (or some other bastarding bird) who break off bits of rooftile in pursuit of breakfast (we assume), leaving lumps of masonry to fall down onto the cars in the driveway below.

So there we go... that's what we're starting with.

 

Interestingly*, Project Cockroach's predecessor (and MrsDC's first car) was another Yaris Mk1 but in fleet-spec - originally supplied as a competition prize and so as cheap as cheap could be, with all manner of cheeseparing deletions below the usual base spec. Sadly, nearly all pics of it vanished in a laptop meltdown a long time ago, but I'm informed it had an interior the colour and texture of an Airfix kit, with such pointlessly vindictive removals as the fabric strip from the doorcards and even one of the parcel shelf strings where it attached on the tailgate.

[Zelandeth]

With regards to stripes - I had surprisingly good luck using the sticky backed plastic from Homebase for that.

 

Grabbed some when I was thinking of putting stripes on the Cappuccino, but wanted to see what it looked like without first shelling out for actual vinyl. A year later they were still firmly fixed in place and not falling off or anything...I was well surprised.

[Datsuncog]

^^^ That's good to know - funnily enough, I was looking at rolls of sticky vinyl in B&Q just the other week! That could be a goer, indeed.

Although I wasn't much of a fan of the Mk1 Yaris when it first came out, I can now kinda grudgingly see the appeal (and I know there's a fair few of its brethren on the driveways of fellow shiters, providing dependable service as backup for more esoteric shite). My gripe back in the day was simply that it was a 'modern', and therefore not as good as, say, my 26-year-old Vauxhall Viva.

('Good' being an entirely subjective concept... the fact I cumulatively managed to get about 18 months of motoring/breaking down in the Viva over eight years of ownership shows where the twisted priorities of my younger self lay.)

The fact that there's still so many of these Yarises on the road (and plenty of Starlets round these parts, too) is testament to Toyota's build quality. I mean, compared to its late-90s rivals of the Fiesta Mk4, Corsa B and Saxo/106, all of which are much thinned in numbers, these cars are true survivors.

 

As an aside, MrsDC did once make an abortive attempt to trade the Yaris in against a new car - a Chevrolet Aveo, as it happens - around 2009, which was thwarted by a hopelessly incompetent salesman who managed to blow the deal even though she'd rocked up with a chequebook in hand and the Yaris all valeted and ready for part-ex. 

The smug, patronising wanker knew nothing about the car's features, couldn't answer even the simplest of questions, and insisted on addressing me rather than MrsDC even though it was her car, her money and her choice. 

In revenge, she proceeded to render him dumbstruck on the test drive by taking it out on the motorway and thrashing the bollocks off the Chev up to 95, before peeling off onto a sliproad and performing a few thorough brake tests in her incomparable manner, while he squirmed and gibbered in the passenger seat and I snickered in the back.

On arrival back at the showroom, blokey then advised that they couldn't do the 5dr version for the heavily advertised £5,999 price due to 'supply', only a 3dr - but could order her one at nearly twice the published price. When pushed, he disappeared for ten minutes, and then came back to say great news, he could knock £500 off the quoted £11,599. He seemed confused when we left. Nice going, dude.

On balance, this may have been a blessing in disguise as I'd be deeply surprised if the biscuit-tin Aveo was still going eight years down the line (usually killed off by gearbox issues, I believe?), while the Yaris has just kept on trundling along, despite the general lack of care meted out.

 

After the Aveo debacle, MrsDC announced her intention to just run the Yaris til it drops, expecting to maybe get another four or five years out of it - but as these jobbers do seem to just run and run, unkillable as a cockroach, then maybe after 13 years it's ready for a mid-life refresh...

So the MOT is booked for this coming Thursday, which is as good a marker as any... there's been a few previous failures, involving unbalanced brakes and an ongoing issue with a slightly squiffy replacement front headlight that's always been borderline on alignment (garages have tried and failed to improve it many times), so we'll just have to see what happens. MrsDC is fairly relaxed about MOT failure, employing my time-honoured "buck it through and see what they say" technique.

I have to say, it's been a tremendously reliable old bus, with the only couple of FTPs linked to a dying (original) battery, which was fine once replaced. Nine years isn't bad going for a box of sparks, we reckoned. 

Most expenditure has just been on consumables like oil, filters, plugs, brake fluid and what-have-you, plus tyres. I was a bit annoyed that the set of Avons I fitted in 2014 developed huge cracks in the sidewalls and needed replacement long before the tread was anywhere near worn. It's currently wearing a set of Michelin boots all round. The original exhaust lasted for ten years; its replacement lasted just two, so it's now onto its third.

It needed a new oil sender switch back in 2009; this had developed a leak and was the first component to actually fail on it, manifesting as a low oil light even though there was plenty in there. A tenner for a new one and five minutes work with a spanner, helpfully at the front of the block with easy access, and it was right as rain again. I wish all my shite was as easy to sort.

Around that time some banana saw fit to smash the front o/s headlight with a beer bottle while it was parked off Stranmillis. Perils of living in a squalid student area, I guess. An OEM Valeo replacement unit was fitted (requiring the removal of almost the entire front end, as it happened, which looked rather alarming) but the adjustment was never quite right, requiring the adjustor to be set at its absolute limit to just about meet the MOT beam alignment requirements.

I put a new water pump into it a few years ago as the bearing was becoming noisy, and popped on a new drive belt at the same time. The old belt still looked perfect, weirdly. I flushed the cooling system and refilled with long-life coolant at that point. Of course, neither the pump nor the belt were 'standard' Yaris and required a fair bit of backward and forwarding to get the right components.

While doing the plugs back in 2016, I noticed that one of the coil packs looked somewhat corroded inside so bunged on a new one; the others are still dandy.

It's also had a new set of discs put on as, like an idiot, I let the old pads wear down and score them. I tried to do the rear shoes at the same time, but on taking the drums off it was still like new under there - about 1mm had come off since it left the factory. So I left it. The new shoes are still boxed up in the shed; I'm not sure I'll ever need them.

Last summer, the driver's doorhandle mechanism broke. After much faffing about with epoxy resin and then Sugru (both of which held for almost a day before succumbing to the strain), I ordered up a new one, although MrsDC had rigged up rather a cunning interim bodge involving a horse lead rope clipped around the internal door release handle and fed through to the back, which meant that opening the rear o/s door would also open the front one... the replacement (Ebay special from Poland or somewhere) didn't fit and required much whittling to get into place, but is still going ok despite being the wrong colour.

In a way, I'm a bit unsettled that it hasn't yet needed anything like steering gaiters, ball joints, CV boots or brake hoses - all the things I'd commonly expect to start failing on a teenaged car. Although there's a smattering of surface corrosion underneath - there was a lot of salt dumped on the roads over the winter - it all looks fairly clean still. Of course, I may be tempting fate here somewhat. There's a feeling that they all may suddenly perish at once, which will then require some Hard Thinking.

Known faults on the car... well, other than the bumper and panel damage shown above, the top end is moderately tappety and could do with a valve clearance adjustment and new rocker cover gasket. The temperature sender switch for the fan seems to get jammed, so every now and then the fan comes on at start up and can continue for a few minutes, or even the whole journey. I ordered one up, but it turns out there are two temperature sender switches - one that goes to the fan, and one that goes to the dash. Guess which one I ordered...

Also, if it's unused for more than about three or four days, the EML tell-tale will illuminate and stay on for the best part of a day, then go away again. Not sure what the cause is, but hopefully it'll stay off around test time. In a similar vein, if it's left parked for a day or two in direct sunlight, the steering (electric PAS) will feel kinda 'notchy'. Again, it's done this for years, but only in these very specific circumstances.

So yeah... it starts, it goes, it stops admirably... both of us tend to refer to Yarises as 'cockroaches' due to their longevity and toughness, plus I fancy they have a slightly insectoid look about them too... hence Project Cockroach.

And, as a final note, y'know that MX-5 licker mentioned earlier, the fella who makes obscene mods for jollies?

Well, I ran into him in the lift this morning. He's just started working in my place, first day. What are the chances?

He has access to welding gear, laser cutters, a paint booth...

There could be mischief afoot.

[Datsuncog]

So Project Cockroach is up for MOT tomorrow night.

There's a bit of confusion about whether the new MOT regulations have reached Northern Ireland yet as, due to the somewhat bizarre political situation, we kind of have no central government to pass legislation and Westminster's been carefully looking the other way while humming and looking at their collective fingernails.

Hence I'm not quite sure whether the new regs are in force over here about how foglights, if fitted, must be working.

Well, there's only one driving lamp 'fitted', and it's very broken (the other is even more broken and rattling round behind the front valance)... so what to do, when you're bone idle and miserly?

A quick peek in the gutter seemed to provide a solution...

Free blanking caps, thankyewverymuch.

If the tester starts getting arsey, I have the owners manual to wave at him and shrilly argue that they're very clearly stated to be auxiliary driving lamps, not front fogs.

Realistically, though, this is probably the least of my concerns. However, I do love to focus on the trivial to the exclusion of the important stuff...

[Zelandeth]

I like that!

 

Was digging in the loft yesterday evening (for bits of actual bus), and found one of the boxes of miniatures.

 

So my version of the Sierra Ghia is back on display.

 

 

It is an astonishingly detailed one for the size isn't it, now I actually look.

[Guest Hooli]

Haha those blanking plates are brilliant.

[Parky]

Two instructions.

 

One -buy Dulux. Two - do this. If you look closely, you will see the fogs appear to have been blanked off on this one too! Wonder if they used Huhtamaki’s finest?

[Datsuncog]

On 8/1/2018 at 4:22 PM, Parky said:

If you look closely, you will see the fogs appear to have been blanked off on this one too! Wonder if they used Huhtamaki’s finest?

If they didn't, they're missing a trick... just received a message that 100 miles of motorway driving in heavy rain has been completed, and they're still in situ. No adhesive either; I just wedged them in there.

Has a new low been reached in Autoshite through using actual litter picked up off the ground in an attempt to effect an MOT pass? I thought my use of Shite-Tac on TAZ's drilled wheelbolt was appalling enough... it appears there's always further to drop!

Next time: getting the Subaru through its MOT using hair and toenail clippings.

[Parky]

Using litter to get a car through an MOT.

 

Is that a new low or a new high for this site? I can never tell...

[Jim Bell]

Blanking plates even have drain holes for road spray. Qwality.

[They_all_do_that_sir]

So Project Cockroach is up for MOT tomorrow night.

 

There's a bit of confusion about whether the new MOT regulations have reached Northern Ireland yet as, due to the somewhat bizarre political situation, we kind of have no central government to pass legislation and Westminster's been carefully looking the other way while humming and looking at their collective fingernails.

 

Hence I'm not quite sure whether the new regs are in force over here about how foglights, if fitted, must be working.

 

Well, there's only one driving lamp 'fitted', and it's very broken (the other is even more broken and rattling round behind the front valance)... so what to do, when you're bone idle and miserly?

 

A quick peek in the gutter seemed to provide a solution...

 

20180730_212000.jpg

 

20180730_211934.jpg

 

20180730_211941.jpg

 

Free blanking caps, thankyewverymuch.

 

If the tester starts getting arsey, I have the owners manual to wave at him and shrilly argue that they're very clearly stated to be auxiliary driving lamps, not front fogs.

 

Realistically, though, this is probably the least of my concerns. However, I do love to focus on the trivial to the exclusion of the important stuff...

I had MOT success the other week with the merc, and can confirm that they only asked to see rear fogs.

 

The certificate is a different design, has a section for advisories and shows both the mileage at test and the previously recoded mileage to deter bad boys like Quentin Wilson.

 

But in terms of what and how they test things, it all seemed business as usual.

 

Can also confirm that there is no change to the waiting times for an appointment, 3 or 4 weeks backlog pffffft

 

My usual trick of logging online every morning and evening to find cancellations again paid off in this regard.....

 

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[They_all_do_that_sir]

Oh and forgot to add, only one of my two rear fogs works (drivers side) yet they were still content. They asked rear fog, they got a light somewhere on the rear displaying redder than a brake light, they happy.

 

This was Newtownards mind. They have only recently been given the motorcar.

 

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[Sir Snipes]

Oh and forgot to add, only one of my two rear fogs works (drivers side) yet they were still content. They asked rear fog, they got a light somewhere on the rear displaying redder than a brake light, they happy.

 

This was Newtownards mind. They have only recently been given the motorcar.

 

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You only need a fog light on the driver's side.

[They_all_do_that_sir]

You only need a fog light on the driver's side.

Was wondering if the stricter "if fitted must be working" applied here

 

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[Datsuncog]

On 8/1/2018 at 6:17 PM, Snipes said:

You only need a fog light on the driver's side.

 

On 8/1/2018 at 6:18 PM, They_all_do_that_sir said:

Was wondering if the stricter "if fitted must be working" applied here

Yeah, that's indeed the kicker. Although, it would take an MOT tester to be very well versed in vehicle specs to make that call correctly...

Just as an example, my old bASe Laguna RN had a single rear fog light on the driver's side (as required by law), while the lah-di-dah Laguna RT Sport boasted an extravagant two rear fog lights, one on either side of the number plate. Now, the bASe version had all the wiring and a socket for the second fog light - but then had a plastic shield fitted which prevented a bulb going in.

But both cars looked completely identical at the back, lights-wise. Just that pressing the foglight button would only light up one side of the silver car's rear.

So, to a tester used to seeing a Laguna 1 with two fogs at the back (as nearly all of them are), the bASe might have fulfilled its legal obligations - yet still failed the MOT under the new 'if fitted, must work' rule since "one of your rear fogs is out m8".

I would have then had to explain that no, that's how it left the factory and Renault went so far as to make it difficult/impossible to fit a second foglight bulb to RN models.

Hmmm. Though fortunately, it does appear that the new GB regulations have not been transposed for Northern Ireland yet, because no government.

Does seem strange though, that the MOT - primarily carried out as a safety and environmental check - is now veering towards failing vehicles which still meet legal standards but deviate from manufacturer spec or have slightly dodgy sensors.

Well. I'll know in three hours' time what the craic is with La Cucaracha...

Updates to follow.

[egg]

Are there plans to go to online MOT's in Northern Ireland? No electronic query system yet?

[Datsuncog]

On 8/2/2018 at 5:25 PM, egg said:

Are there plans to go to online MOT's in Northern Ireland? No electronic query system yet?

Fuck knows... Probably plans to do so, since the old DVLNI was shut down a few years back and everything shipped to Swansea - but not much moves fast around here!

In the MOT testing ring now; Yaris of course decided to lunch a sidelight bulb between checking the lights yesterday and double checking them this evening... it's kind of a ritual now...

[Pillock]

I've got a theory that every MOT station has a powerful inductive loop in the roof, which means they can fry random bulbs on demand.

[The_Equalizer]

MoTs are worse than the dentist. Can't be far off a result. 

[Datsuncog]

RATS' COCKS.

It appears that six months of salt-drenched motorway driving have not proved beneficial to the brake lines. Who knew?

On the plus side, the tester was a decent spud and reckoned the brake lines don't need replacing yet - a bit of a rub down to get the surface corrosion off and a lick of paint should secure a pass.

Current MOT isn't up for another ten days, so hopefully this will not throw too many spanners in the works.

Still.

RATS' COCKS.

[The_Equalizer]

Always a pain when this happens, but at least it's about as straight forward a fix as possible. For the last couple of years I've moved to using DINITROL 4941 for the underbody bits including brake pipes. Comes in rattle cans for those of us without a compressor. It's not cheap buy, but leagues ahead of stuff like Waxoyl. On a similar note, does this mean you're going to bring a wad of well used fifties to Ballyclare?

[Jim Bell]

Ma brake pipes!

 

That sounds more Scottish than Northern Irish.

[Zelandeth]

This is why the pipes and the ferrules on the flexis on my cars get covered with copper grease.

 

My tester said he thought it was a bloody good idea, and also thanked me for telling him before he got a hand covered in the stuff.

 

I like CG for it as it tends to stay where I put it, rather than transferring onto every surface under the car except for where I wanted it to stay.

 

For me it's always bloody number plate light bulbs. I think the Lada's test back in June was the first one in about five years I didn't have that happen.

 

Not that it would be a problem, he'd leave me to swap it while he printed the paperwork, knowing I'd have spares in the car.

[Datsuncog]

Cheers for the encouragement and advice, folks!

After some intense negotiations, the agreed plan of action is to give the existing pipes a good rub-down over the weekend to secure an MOT pass, and then move 'full brake overhaul' onto the project list - so new lines throughout, flexihoses, caliper overhaul and handbrake cables (which are getting pretty baggy it has to be said, with only 23% efficiency recorded on the rolling road test), followed by caking the entire underside in some form of rustproofing - quite possibly Dinitrol.

The plan is still to keep this wee thing going for as long as possible; it's asked for very very little in its 13 years and 97k spent in MrsDC's custodianship, so we don't really begrudge doing the necessary work at this juncture.

Quite frankly, I'm astounded it's needed so little done to it up to now.

[Datsuncog]

On 8/2/2018 at 10:09 PM, Zelandeth said:

Not that it would be a problem, he'd leave me to swap it while he printed the paperwork, knowing I'd have spares in the car.

It's good when decent MOT testers give a bit of latitude for owners who plainly do give a toss - although sadly not an option with Northern Ireland MOTs, which are all carried out in government testing centres!

A duff bulb means a fail, book a retest for an available slot in the coming week or two, fix it and then bring it back (20mile round trip).

At least it had the decency to fail properly on rusty bits, as a bulb fail is most vexing.

[Zelandeth]

Based on my own experiences with cars around that age, don't be surprised and discouraged if it does go through a bit of a phase like a rebellious teenager.

 

Quite a few cars (both my own, and ones I've helped friends or family look after) have done this. They'll go and have a string of things - usually relatively minor in the grand scheme of things - decide to play up in quick succession.

 

However nine times out of ten, after that couple of month or so window, it will then go back to being utterly dependable again. As such I tend to refer to that window as the "terrible teens" syndrome.

 

Is yours the one with the funky "3d" digital dash?

 

Thinking back to your cosmetic ideas, here's the only photo I have handy right now of my Cappuccino with its stripes. I went for the "Baby Viper" look.

 

 

I'll try to dig a better one out when I'm at my desktop next.

[Datsuncog]

^^^ Oh, absolutely - which is why I tend to prefer cars aged about 15 years or over, as if they've made it that far then usually some hapless previous owner has had to pony up for shocks, fuel lines, ball joints, wheel bearings, track rods, and the hundred and one other bits that inevitably perish and wear out...

eBut we've accepted that it probably is going to be a somehwat expensive and demanding coupla years, though in the long run it'll probably be cheaper and lower risk to fix and replace bits as needed than taking a punt on an unknown car...

Your Capp looks great - was that just the B&Q vinyl roll?

EDIT: yes, digital dash version! Took me a while to warm to it, but now I do like it a lot. Super-easy to read.

[Zelandeth]

Yep. B&Q Value satin White self adhesive PVC.

 

Prep work came to a grand total of washing the car and giving the panels a wipe down immediately before starting to minimise bits of grime getting under it.

 

Survived the horrors of being a daily driver through an Aberdeenshire winter without and signs of failure whatsoever. I was massively surprised!

 

I'll try to dig out the better photos tomorrow.

 

I marked it out using a dry wipe market as it was easy to clean off both the car and the sheet.