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Father Ted

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With the BMW E28 now sold, my Mini search is in full swing.

It seems that Classic Minis around at the moment is either priced correctly and disappears quickly or overpriced and hangs around with owners not wanting to budge. Went to message someone that listed a car earlier to view tomorrow, to find it had sold a few hours later.

Because of this, I'm having to be relatively un-picky on what I want now. Main criteria now is not another big welding project for this year and road legal (MOT or exempt)! Ideally carb and not SPI or MPI though as I'll miss not having a choke or carb to tinker with. Also ideally not ages away from MOT/tax exemption, as it would be nice to be able to drive into the Bristol CAZ for free.

In other news, the MGB is hesitating when accelerating. Pretty sure it didn't do this before I gave it to the classic MG specialist for a service. But can't say for sure. 

Going to have a fiddle with the carbs on it tomorrow and see if I can improve it. Hopefully just needs thicker dampener oil or something straightforward. Especially want to get it sorted as I'm all planned and looking forward to go to the Haynes Museum pre-80s Breakfast Meet next weekend. It's an hours drive and I don't want to miss it!

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2 hours ago, ruffgeezer said:

......I also did an injector leak off test as the starting has gotten a bit laboured. I regard this as inconclusive, perhaps @Barry Cadecould offer an insight?

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Numbers 2 and 3 look like they're not getting enough. Alternatively, 1, 4 and 5 are getting too much.

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1 hour ago, STUNO said:

Saw this from my front door a couple of hours ago. Was a lovely and immaculate 1956 Chev Bel Aire coupe

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Doesn't look to be from the engine bay. Possibly electrical fire in the cabin?

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8 hours ago, Barry Cade said:

 How did you do the test, and do you have any fault codes?  From a glance too much leak off and I'd have hoped the levels were a bit closer, quite an uneven feed of fuel over the 5 cyls.. 40ml a minute seems to be the max for the D5.

I'd try some quite concentrated injector cleaner for a week then test again.

I haven't scanned it for fault codes, but no engine light.

When I was last using it. I had noticed a drop in fuel economy and a bit of smoke on start/ cold idle. 

It's also getting a bit harder to start from cold, which when I bought it was down to one of the injectors leaking off too much and dumping the fuel pressure. 

We ended up going on holiday in it with a spare battery in the boot and a can of hairspray on hand to help get it going each day, Katy's Berlingo having been written off the week before!

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32 minutes ago, ruffgeezer said:

I haven't scanned it for fault codes, but no engine light.

When I was last using it. I had noticed a drop in fuel economy and a bit of smoke on start/ cold idle. 

It's also getting a bit harder to start from cold, which when I bought it was down to one of the injectors leaking off too much and dumping the fuel pressure. 

We ended up going on holiday in it with a spare battery in the boot and a can of hairspray on hand to help get it going each day, Katy's Berlingo having been written off the week before!

I'd get a diagnostic on it  check wanted and actual fuel pressure. Might be a dribbling injector, which is putting fuel into the cylinder when shut off, which would maybe give the harder starting and the smoke? Check rail pressure before starting to see if its holding.

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2 hours ago, SiC said:

Doesn't look to be from the engine bay. Possibly electrical fire in the cabin?

There was no sign of fire in the engine bay, the brigade opened the bonnet but shut it again to work in the interior.

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15 hours ago, MarvinsMom said:

i should have stayed in bed this morning,

when we got up, it was lovely outside, so, i says, "come on, lets go for a run in that little car", Kerry had been to work in it on Tuesday, and reported that it was running "fine".

so we went and got the mini, its started up, the odd cough now and again, but nothing to worry about.

we had planned to run over to Scarborough, then up the coast to Whitby, and then along to home, just because.

well we got to Staxton roundabout outside of Scartborough, and that occasional missfire was getting worse, so we turned and started back.

cough, cough, the car would loose power, then sort itself out, only for the same thing to happen a few moments later.

so one minute it was running great, then maybe 1/2 a mile later it was stuttering to a halt, then it would be kinda ok.

this went on all the way back, and when we made it onto the drive, it was a relief, the car would tick over, but then start buggering about under load. and there was a strong smell of fuel, so i dunno what's wrong, other than its something to do with the carb, maybe some shite has gotten somewhere where it should not have!

well we headed for home, with Kerry driving, we got within 3 or 4 miles from home she drove over a speed hump which was followed by a loud crack, a scraping sound and a pop. 

yes, we had broke a spring, and popped a tyre, a good one too, a bridgestone with plenty of tread on it.

BLOOD MARVELOUS.

luckily we do have a dustbin lid spare wheel in the Toyota, and after putting that on in place of the fooked one, i was able to get my folks to come and get me, so i could get the Rover while Kerry got recovery sorted,

so now that Toyota is sat on Kerrys drive, broken, along with the mini, which is also broken.

told you i should have stopped in fookin' bed this morning!

 

 

 

Dirt in the fuel causing the float chamber valve to stick open and over fill the chamber. Leads to over fuelling. 

 

Usually accompanied by fuel pouring out of the overflow.

If the fuel usage can't drain the chamber quick enough it starts to bog down.

 

That's my guess anyway.

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4 hours ago, Egrvalve said:

Dirt in the fuel causing the float chamber valve to stick open and over fill the chamber. Leads to over fuelling. 

 

Usually accompanied by fuel pouring out of the overflow.

If the fuel usage can't drain the chamber quick enough it starts to bog down.

 

That's my guess anyway.

that was Kerry's thinking, so, this afternoon we have had the top of the float chamber off, in bits and cleaned.

it WAS sticking cos it was all furred up, but having got it spotless, and functioning properly, the car if anything runs even worse.

it is spluttering underload, clearing its self, and then spluttering again.

it could be any damn thing, could it be the coil breaking down?

or that new condenser fooking up after maybe 2 or 3 hours running?

ot the inside of the carb all bunged up?

or the fuel pump failing?

or something else completely different, place bets now......

what i should do is just sell the ungrateful little fucker to Mr SiC and let him deal with it send it somewhere where they know what they are doing.

frankly at the ,moment setting it on fire or pushing it off a cliff are on the cards cos i couldn't feel any more hate for it!

 

 

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2 hours ago, MarvinsMom said:

Mini problems...

 

 

It's never the coil. (Unless it's the coil) if you get my drift. 

My money is on the condenser as DW suggested. 

Just double check the float chamber valve. See if you can blow through the fuel inlet with the valve closed. You shouldn't be able to.

 

 

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A colleague at work has one of the Saabillac things at work, an estate. Looks ok but it’d look better as a Saab 9-3. That said, for less than a grand with a year’s ticket it’s not a bad deal.

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2 hours ago, Leyland Worldmaster said:

From my News Feed:

https://www.autocar.co.uk/slideshow/21st-century-cars-already-vanishing-our-roads#2

I know of two cars from this list on one road! There were three at one point; the Dodge and two of the Cadillac Saloons in the list; incidentally. 😎

Cadillac XLR? I'm surprised it even reached here. LHD only?

I once saw a BLR coupé. Not bad.

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I haven't got quite as much done this weekend as I'd hoped due mainly to slightly shaky weather, but I've managed to do pretty much all the jobs the Swift needed for its MOT - I just need to fit one more CV boot clip tomorrow and then in theory that's it - whether I've done things well enough to pass (especially the brakes) will remain to be seen - although the brakes should be OK, the shoes were moving freely and there was fluid getting to the drums so hopefully the seized cylinders will have been the only issue.

Nothing was actually seized but various bits were a pain in the arse to get off.  The offside drum didn't want to come off and I had to bolt the wheel back on and use that as a lever to wrangle it off - that wouldn't work on a "normal" setup but the Swift has a combined drum and hub setup where the wheel just bolts to the drum and then the whole caboodle is just held in place by the dollywobbler hub nut.  Speaking of which I'm going to need two new hub nuts as the ones on there are pretty mangled and won't lock in place properly anymore.  The wheel cylinders came out easily enough though, the only awkward bit being that the bleed nipple is too close to the pipe union so I couldn't get my brake pipe spanner in there without removing the nipple.

The front suspension arm was a bit of a pain, partly because the ball joint didn't want to come out of the hub (it came out most of the way but got stuck on the last bit, eventually it was persuaded out with a lump hammer and a breaker bar) and partly because the rear bush had basically fossilised and so was an absolute nightmare to get off the car, and even when it was off required much scraping with screwdrivers to get the residue off.  The new arm is safely on there now though.  When looking for something completely different in the van I also found a random CV boot clip along with my special CV boot clip pliers, so the nearside is going to get treated to a proper clip (as long as I don't balls it up) - the offside has had to make do with a couple of Jubilee clips strung together, and mounted right on the edge of the hub because any further out and they foul the ball joint.

The Ypsilon flashed up a warning the other day, in a brief moment when the display was legible, telling me a brake light was out.  A quick check ascertained that the offside light wasn't doing anything (that's the side that took a punt - the indicator bulb had gone too when I bought the car).  No problem, thinks I, I've got plenty of brake light bulbs.  Except I hadn't factored in that it's a modern, and therefore different for no apparent reason - it takes some bizarre 25 watt wedge bulb which looks like a giant 501 bulb.  So I think I'm going to have to take a trip to the motor factor on Tuesday, and no doubt get bent over as usually happens with exotic bulbs - I once shoehorned a 233 bulb into an Alfa 166 for the MOT as I begrudged paying 7 quid for the fancy halogen side light bulbs it was supposed to take, but I don't think I'm going to have much option with the Ypsilon.

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Great start to the day... galaxy started 1st time in 2 weeks of jump pack, swap car place aa need it to go to FIL to the rubbish dump, 8am, need to go look after the mongrels but the b8stard galaxy is stone dead , it wouldn't jump off the pack, the v6, so got grumpy i ment the missus come jump off her disesl focus, thankfully she has grass outside her gaff so I can plug in battery charger whilst I eat crumpets and drink tea...

 

I reckon its the central locking draining the battery... as I've run out of ideas over 3 years..

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11 hours ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

Cadillac XLR? I'm surprised it even reached here. LHD only?

I once saw a BLR coupé. Not bad.

XLRs were all hardtop convertibles. They sold them in europe, I wouldn't be surprised if a few of them somehow made it to the UK. I'm more surprised the G37 coupe was sold here, I thought these all came from Japan as Skyline grey imports.

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