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Father Ted

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Unplanned day today. Parents couldn’t come down as planned so I had to get up at 7am and pick up the eBay wing for the Corolla.

Pleased with it though, it’s a pattern part which probably hadn’t been on the car for very long. Couple of dull spots which will buff out with a bit of T-cut

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And home.  Felicia has temporarily taken up residence in the "white 5-door hatchbacks with pushrod engines" section of the car park.

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I'll have a poke around it tomorrow, weather permitting, and decide WTF I'm going to do with it.  It appears to have developed an exhaust blow on the way home, but otherwise it drove spot on.  It's not an unpleasant thing to drive at all - not fast, and definitely not a driver's car (steering is very vague), but it's comfy enough - ride is a little bouncy at times but the seats are decent - and it rolls along OK at motorway speeds.  The rev counter doesn't work until about 3,000 rpm, at which point it springs into life and over-reads comically to make up for it, and it currently has no choonz or lighter socket, but all the essentials seem to work.

I haven't had to add any coolant - I will check in the morning to see how much it's used, but I've done over 180 miles in it without topping up and it still has a steady temp gauge and a warm heater, so not bad at all really.

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Just had a moment where I randomly remembered that I forgot to turn the heater off in the van earlier.

Cue distinct moment of appreciation for modern technology when I was able to connect to the heater controller through the network and confirm that yes, I had forgotten to turn it off...and to actually turn it off.  Without needing to move any further than required to pick my phone up.

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The Afterburner heater controller really is a handy bit of kit.  Still need to finish up hooking up one of the GPIO outputs to the exterior lighting so I can turn that on/off remotely as it's nice to be able to check that corner of the driveway if something sets the dogs off without walking all the way to the front door to turn the garage light on...

Aside from the remote connectivity, knowing there is a frost protection mode (mainly for the benefit of the water heater which is probably the most at risk bit of equipment) and a humidity limit mode which will bring the heating on gives a good bit of peace of mind.

The stock controller they ship with is pants, but the diesel fired heater itself is a good bit of kit.  The real test we had was last November up in Livingston when it was well sub zero (this was before I had the new controller).

It was rather chilly.

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In less than fifteen minutes all the cab windows were de-iced and the interior was up to a nice toasty 25C.  The double glazed windows on the living area didn't start to react for ages though, so do seem to provide good insulation.

Right...back to trying to get at least some sleep.

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2 hours ago, richardmorris said:

I need a bilge  pump for the Mercedes :-(

That's never a fun discovery, especially on a relatively modern car.

Mate has a similar issue in their 2013 Octavia and has asked me if I can look at it.  I politely declined but suggested a couple of areas to check.  That's a can of worms I'm not personally opening!

It might just be a blocked scuttle drain...or it could be the bonded in windscreen coming away from the surround.  Investigation of either involves no small amount of dismantling of things that were never designed to come apart though which is no fun!

If you have a sunroof the drain tubes from that have to be a favourite to check first.

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24 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

That's never a fun discovery, especially on a relatively modern car.

Mate has a similar issue in their 2013 Octavia and has asked me if I can look at it.  I politely declined but suggested a couple of areas to check.  That's a can of worms I'm not personally opening!

It might just be a blocked scuttle drain...or it could be the bonded in windscreen coming away from the surround.  Investigation of either involves no small amount of dismantling of things that were never designed to come apart though which is no fun!

If you have a sunroof the drain tubes from that have to be a favourite to check first.

It’s the windscreen / scuttle rather than the sunroof. It is leaking into the car from the centre / heater intake area. Car is parked on a slight gradient with nearside front downhill. So I’m keeping the lake confined to the passenger footwell - carpet is out of the car anyway and mats are in the boot.  Braving the weather occasionally to wring out the cloths soaking up the water.

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3 hours ago, richardmorris said:

It’s the windscreen / scuttle rather than the sunroof. It is leaking into the car from the centre / heater intake area. Car is parked on a slight gradient with nearside front downhill. So I’m keeping the lake confined to the passenger footwell - carpet is out of the car anyway and mats are in the boot.  Braving the weather occasionally to wring out the cloths soaking up the water.

So you have a beautiful stylish well maintained 320 Coupe and I have a scruffy 200TE.

Forgive me my moment of glee and gloat because it has now stopped raining, I have checked all the floors and they are all dry as a bone. We have had 3 days of rain and the car has been driven in some of it.

Now where is the mouse trap, keeping the car dry has seen a mouse move in by the evidence of chewed plastic under the drivers seat!

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37 minutes ago, Six-cylinder said:

So you have a beautiful stylish well maintained 320 Coupe and I have a scruffy 200TE.

Forgive me my moment of glee and gloat because it has now stopped raining, I have checked all the floors and they are all dry as a bone. We have had 3 days of rain and the car has been driven in some of it.

Now where is the mouse trap, keeping the car dry has seen a mouse move in by the evidence of chewed plastic under the drivers seat!

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Well the mouse obviously likes it as it’s dry and not minging wet!

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It’s pelted it down here in Tavistock. Not an ideal location for the famously watertight* passat b5. True to form the scuttle drain was blocked and there was a pool of water sloshing about under the bonnet, with the edge of the pollen filter housing submerged.

After rodding that imagine my surprise that under the carpets its bone dry. Very untypical for these tubs. They usually weigh in quite well at the bridge as the foam backing to the carpet on average holds a million gallons of rainwater.

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Didn't get a great deal done today due to the poxy bloody weather, but it did dry up for long enough for me to have a quick poke around the Skoda.  It looks remarkably salubrious underneath - both sills are dented near the front, presumably where some plonker has tried to jack it up in the wrong place, but there's little evidence of grot.  There was a bit of bubbling in the paint at the front edge of the offside sill which worried me slightly, but after a poke and scrape with the screwdriver it doesn't seem too major - once it dries up a bit I'll slap some Kurust on it but it should be OK.  A couple of the brake pipes could probably also do with a wire brushing, but none of them looked too bad.

It's going to need a centre exhaust hanger, and a hole in the rear silencer patching up (it's on the end plate so not bandageable but I'll slap some gun gum on it for the test).  The lights all work but a couple of the indicator bulbs will probably need replacing as they've lost their orangeness.

I drove it to Norwich and back this evening and the headlights are pants, especially on low beam - the aim seems very low which isn't helping, and the self levelling doesn't seem to do anything.  Also the dashboard illumination is going to need looking at - the rev counter is vaguely lit (which would be great if the rev counter worked) but the speedo is in complete darkness.  I think someone's had the instrument cluster out before as it felt a bit loose when I was setting the clock yesterday, so shouldn't be too hard to whip it out again and see if I can get some bulbs working.

Overall though, first impressions are that it should be quite feasible to get it through another MOT - obvs I can't comment on things like emissions and brake balance, but all the obvious bits look OK.  Which is good.

 

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I “may” have posted this before but worth it again if I have. Blame the wine.  Just took this pic recently in local village to me (Dublin). Slammed ‘73 Imp with my humble ‘90 (previously from this parish) in the background. 
For the record, the Pug is now on 15” steelies with nice tyres and has had further suspension work to improve d’ride.. Still going like a bomb and may have some exhaust work soon.

CFD 

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Been floating about in the sub-£500 end of the shite pool with half a mind of picking up a Winter Beater.  I've got two broken cars, what's one more?  Thing is, I'm hedging my bets in case when the head comes off the Princess the OMGHGF is something more involved than just a bad gasket.  A case of keeping the options open.  Trying to find anything local (less than 100 miles away) that's sub-£500 is one thing, trying to find it with an MoT is harder still, and trying to find something that has even a tiny bit of anything interesting about it without it being something I'd fall in love with makes things almost impossible.  Still, so far I did find these potential candidates.

Peugeot 106 XN Zest.  The idea of the Winter Beater is not to acquire something I'm going to get attached to and spend money on, but also something that I'm not going to be bored by.  This, unfortunately, would end up being a keeper because of the colour scheme and how much fun they are to chuck about at totally legal speeds.  I would definitely get attached to this so I'm not allowed to buy it.

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Nissan Almera from 2005.  This would be the newest car I'd ever owned going by date of manufacture, to date the newest car I've ever owned was a 1997 Ledbury Maestro.  This is a pretty good candidate really, It's a nothing car that will likely be 100% reliable, in a colour I like, so by the time I was ready to be rid of it, I'd probably be bored of it.

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Purple automatic 1.4 Astra.  Miserable.  However, a VERY long MoT and still has rear arches, a set of wheel trims or just chucking the ones on it and running on bare steels would make it a million times better.  I do like this era of Vauxhalls, it's one of my favourite colours for these Astras and it's probably only the automatic gearbag that would stop me from getting attached.  Tempting.

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Then I sit back and think about how much this cheap winter beater is actually going to cost.  Purchase price, plus tax, plus collection, plus insurance... well by then I'd be as well paying someone to fix the Princess for me and that's proven itself a perfectly adequate winter beater several times in the past and at least I know how that's going to go wrong if it decides its going to.  I'm not really looking for another project, or another keeper, but I'd rather not drive at all than be totally bored by a silver appliance.  It's just boredom browsing, isn't it?  I have an empty parking space and feel obliged to fill it with something.  I've also learned I'll forgive a car a LOT if it's an interesting colour, except for that metallic pink Ka that needed sills, I'd totally drive around in a metallic pink Ka, it's a great colour and they're fun to drive, but I draw the line at rusty sills.

 

 

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10 hours ago, wuvvum said:

I drove it to Norwich and back this evening and the headlights are pants, especially on low beam - the aim seems very low which isn't helping, and the self levelling doesn't seem to do anything

Probably worth deleting the switch to avoid an MOT fail. Quick google suggests it is a TADTS

https://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/83783-skoda-felicia-headlight-adjustment/

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