The new news 24 thread

[Bren]

On 1/3/2022 at 6:00 PM, SiC said:

Mrs SiC emptied out the A4 earlier as, after I've drained some of the diesel out, I'll look to arrange having it scrapped this/next week. Seems almost criminal to scrap a car in this good condition inside and out, but without a working engine it's not very useful as a car.

Genuinely feel a bit sad getting rid of it. Between my parents and ourselves, we've know it over 11 years now. Really hoped to have got it to 250k.

Sad. Is it going to a recycler or some shithouse fly by night trader who will sell it with a slight running problem?

Like you say, seems almost criminal.

[SiC]

9 minutes ago, Bren said:

Sad. Is it going to a recycler or some shithouse fly by night trader who will sell it with a slight running problem?

Like you say, seems almost criminal.

It won't start at all and won't until it's had a new pump and injectors. I mean it might be sold as "won't start, unknown fault" but I suspect the body, panels and interior are too straight and clean to sell like that. 

Did a quote on RemoveMyCar. They requested additional info before quoting so I sent a bunch of pictures. They have got back and offered £1600. That's too much to say no to and certainly enough to not even consider fixing it myself!

[Spiny Norman]

Went to the local keycutting place today to get a spare done for the old Volvo Of Many Shiters since I only got one with it. All I was expecting to get was a key that physically fitted the door lock rather than a full immobiliser chipped one. Bloke rummaged around in a box, consulted a couple of catalogues before producing a blank that he said should do the job and said, "I haven't done one of these for about 4 years, I  think I've got a couple of chips that I should be able to do but they don't fit in the key blank so it'll just need to be taped on, be £40 if it works or a tenner for just the key if it doesn't."

15 minutes later he presented me with this, which I took and tried in the car and it works perfectly. Even gave me another chip in case it gets lost.
Autoshite problems require Autoshite solutions,  so now I (& the next lucky owner of this magnificent heap)  have two working immobiliser keys.

 

[cort1977]

My very nice neighbour just gave me a load of mountain bike parts and a frame.  I only asked him if he had an old 26" wheel.  He said he doesn't have 26" wheel bikes any more, couldn't be doing with trying to sell bits and I could have them.  Amazing. 

Will have to buy him several cases of beer.

[Yoss]

As electric vans still seem a distant dream for us poor posties, at least at our office, I've been cultivating my own moss gardens in the scuttle of our Pug Partner to reduce our carbon footprint. 

So imagine my delight yesterday when I noticed we have a tiny mushroom in there too. 

So not only do we offset the carbon from all the diesel we use but we now have our own food supply. I'm hoping the two separate gardens in each corner will spread to become one big one right across the scuttle. Should be able to grow enough to be self sufficient then. 

[brownnova]

Had another brief crack at the Yugo today with my (surprisingly) willing assistant. Still no catch on the first couple of go’s, and on investigation turns out we have no spark at the plugs. Which we must have done at some point on Monday as we did have spluttering. King lead is giving spark, so I’m going to guess distributor cap or rotor arm are at fault here. Plugs do look a bit black too, so time to get ordering and get a whole a set of new ignition bits.

I have a feeling this Yugo 45 will be suprisingly capable when it starts. Look forward to returning it to the road… momentum and mojo are  returned! 

The boy has said he’s really enjoyed helping getting the cars started and is disappointed we can’t get the bits tomorrow to see if we can get it going. 

[High Jetter]

32 minutes ago, Yoss said:

As electric vans still seem a distant dream for us poor posties, at least at our office, I've been cultivating my own moss gardens in the scuttle of our Pug Partner to reduce our carbon footprint. 

So imagine my delight yesterday when I noticed we have a tiny mushroom in there too. 

So not only do we offset the carbon from all the diesel we use but we now have our own food supply. I'm hoping the two separate gardens in each corner will spread to become one big one right across the scuttle. Should be able to grow enough to be self sufficient then. 

Is that why we haven't had any post since NYE? 

[wesacosa]

4 minutes ago, brownnova said:

Had another brief crack at the Yugo today with my (surprisingly) willing assistant. Still no catch on the first couple of go’s, and on investigation turns out we have no spark at the plugs. Which we must have done at some point on Monday as we did have spluttering. King lead is giving spark, so I’m going to guess distributor cap or rotor arm are at fault here. Plugs do look a bit black too, so time to get ordering and get a whole a set of new ignition bits.

The boy has said he’s really enjoyed helping getting the cars started and is disappointed we can’t get the bits tomorrow to see if we can get it going. 

Hope you make some progress, I am a sucker for a Yugo, would be great to see it running

[reb]

I'm having a look through my tattoo flash books and found this that I quite like:

It's a shame I don't have the money to get it done professionally.

Fuck it, here we go again.

[brownnova]

1 minute ago, wesacosa said:

Hope you make some progress, I am a sucker for a Yugo, would be great to see it running

I’m pretty determined having failed to do much with it so far due to lack of time. I know it does go, I’ve had it running, just need to work methodically through it to re-ignite it. 

[wesacosa]

2 minutes ago, brownnova said:

I’m pretty determined having failed to do much with it so far due to lack of time. I know it does go, I’ve had it running, just need to work methodically through it to re-ignite it. 

hopefully it cant be anything too bad. I do recall your thread from a few years ago but can't remember what you tried, but surely would be unlucky if it wasn't something ignition components and/or a carb clean wouldn't fix

[stuboy]

16 minutes ago, brownnova said:

Had another brief crack at the Yugo today

love these wee beasties

[brownnova]

6 minutes ago, wesacosa said:

hopefully it cant be anything too bad. I do recall your thread from a few years ago but can't remember what you tried, but surely would be unlucky if it wasn't something ignition components and/or a carb clean wouldn't fix

Last time it was that the mechanical fuel pump needed priming and once I’d got fuel pumping it started first time with a few weeks between starts. But I got busy and left it doing nothing for a year, and now it won’t go. With parts and proper time I’ll get it running. 
 

Then brakes, new tyres, a little welding probably and a general going through and tidying up. 

[wesacosa]

3 minutes ago, brownnova said:

Last time it was that the mechanical fuel pump needed priming and once I’d got fuel pumping it started first time with a few weeks between starts. But I got busy and left it doing nothing for a year, and now it won’t go. With parts and proper time I’ll get it running. 
 

Then brakes, new tyres, a little welding probably and a general going through and tidying up. 

Sounds similar to the Panda, when I leave it even for a few days it takes a fair bit of cranking to prime the pump, much more than any other mechanical pump cars I've had

[Asimo]

54 minutes ago, Yoss said:

As electric vans still seem a distant dream for us poor posties, at least at our office, I've been cultivating my own moss gardens in the scuttle of our Pug Partner to reduce our carbon footprint. 

So imagine my delight yesterday when I noticed we have a tiny mushroom in there too. 

So not only do we offset the carbon from all the diesel we use but we now have our own food supply. I'm hoping the two separate gardens in each corner will spread to become one big one right across the scuttle. Should be able to grow enough to be self sufficient then. 

What happened to cleaning the vehicle at the end of the shift? If the scuttle is that neglected, how is the sump?

 

[reb]

I chickened out of using the machine, so @stereotypeis doing it by hand. Slower, but they're really good at it so it's far more accurate than my cackhanded attempts with a machine.

[reb]

And done!

[wuvvum]

I nipped to Wilco on Tuesday to pick up an 11mm square drain plug key, and I went out to the Volvo earlier to see if I could get the in-tank fuel filter out.  It took some doing - I had to get the breaker bar on it and I honestly thought the socket in the drain plug was going to round out at one point - perhaps unsurprising given that it had probably not been touched for almost 50 years.  It came undone in the end though - the filter was rather manky but it also has a split up the seam of the mesh screen so it won't actually be filtering very much, although I'm not sure whether the split was there already or whether it happened when I was wiggling the filter out of the tank, it's a little bit fragile which is allowable at that age.  Brookhouse Volvo list a new filter for £12.95 plus the dreaded and delivery, so about 19 quid all in - a lot for a little mesh cylinder but not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, so I splurged. 

That does mean I'll have to wait until it arrives before I can put everything back together and refill the fuel tank, but if I do need to move the car in the meantime I can always run it off a jerry can under the bonnet.  I might try doing that anyway, to see if the engine runs any better - that would prove that it was definitely the in-tank filter and / or the line from the tank which was causing the fuel starvation issues.  If the new filter doesn't cure it I'll need to get an airline to blow through the fuel pipes, but that'll mean bringing the car onto the drive which will mean moving the Innocenti, so that will probably have to wait a while.

[catsinthewelder]

Had a fairly good car day yesterday, started off in a borrowed van as the car had a sticky brake.  This was an arse to park at the motor factors but I did see a good sign on the notice board by the door.

Wanted 

Discovery, Old type 

I thought brilliant until I read the next line;

Not rotten 🤬

So I went in, got all the service bits I needed along with a new caliper for my Focus.

Found the workshop empty at work, they were contemplating changing the oil on a newish A4 but were glad of an excuse not to so I set to work.

First the caliper, it was completely seized onto the hose but I'd already bought one of them when trying to fix it before Xmas.  Fortunately the hose wasn't seized onto the steel brake pipe. 

Seeing a problem ahead I unpacked the caliper and hose and screwed them together to save time dripping brake fluid, if doing it again, I could have saved more time by unseizing the steel clip that holds the hose to the bracket.  Fortunately it only dripped slowly so the increased fannying about didn't have too much effect on the size of the puddle.  Amazingly the rest all went together nicely, I reused the pads as I only bought them last month (hoping it would solve the sticky brake problem for longer than a fortnight).  The boss helped bleed them and we had a good pedal in 5 minutes which is better than I've ever managed with an eezibleed.

A quick service followed which was fine apart from snapping an intake pipe clip while trying to get to the oil filter.  It's running loads better now but the pipes popped off so I need to engineer a cable tie based solution today.

 

 

 

[JJ0063]

Decided to take the rest of the week as holiday from work so I’m thinking of popping to my local scrap yard to get a couple of bits for ambers Bini

If I go I’ll take a load of pics, it’s a proper AS scrappy where you take bits yourself and much of their stuff is proper chod. They don’t have much newer than mid 00s in there.

[Rod/b]

Got back from a few weeks in the UK to find the truck without sufficient electrons in the box to even unlock the doors on the button. Jumped it up using the Kia Mumbus and took it for a spin to see if i could persuade some electricity back into the battery.

Parked up and came back a while later to this:

Upon closer inspection this quick connect elbow on the bottom of the header tank has given up the ghost.

 

Also the battery was flat again so i boosted it and took it down to my tame mechanic as I haven’t got time for dicking about with cars at the moment.

On the way there the tyre light came on, and by the time i arrived the left front was flat. So that’s brilliant too.

The battery is testing is bad, oh and it needs a front wheel bearing.   Always happens right after christmas doesn’t it?

EDIT:

Update - the header tank needs replacing too. Quite excellently Ford have combined the air box and header tank in one unit and therefore it costs £200, which is more than the replacement 4x4 locking hub and bearing unit costs.

Here’s one of the pictures the garage keeps whatsapping to me.

[JJ0063]

I got to the scrappy at 12:36, they close for lunch at 12:30.. typical. I managed to run in and check but only r50 Minis in stock so nothing for me. Didn’t have time to have a full wander round for photos but heres a couple from the row I was on:

The other end is much better - AX, ZX, E36, old vans etc some proper early 90s chod there. 

 

[chadders]

Where is that please?

[JJ0063]

2 minutes ago, chadders said:

Where is that please?

Just outside Dereham, Norfolk

its called Warmers Car Spares 👍

[junkyarddog]

18 minutes ago, JJ0063 said:

Just outside Dereham, Norfolk

its called Warmers Car Spares 👍

Was there once,very tidy yard.

[SiC]

"New" car has just been delivered. Bought in the wet and delivered in the wet. Never actually seen it in the dry, so hopefully it's ok! Its the most I've ever spent on a car and much rather not have spent this much. But with the crazy market and needing a car, needs must.
Our dead A4 is due to be taken away on Thursday all being well.

[Rod/b]

1 hour ago, Rod/b said:

Got back from a few weeks in the UK to find the truck without sufficient electrons in the box to even unlock the doors on the button. Jumped it up using the Kia Mumbus and took it for a spin to see if i could persuade some electricity back into the battery.

Parked up and came back a while later to this:

Upon closer inspection this quick connect elbow on the bottom of the header tank has given up the ghost.

 

Also the battery was flat again so i boosted it and took it down to my tame mechanic as I haven’t got time for dicking about with cars at the moment.

On the way there the tyre light came on, and by the time i arrived the left front was flat. So that’s brilliant too.

The battery is testing is bad, oh and it needs a front wheel bearing.   Always happens right after christmas doesn’t it?

EDIT:

Update - the header tank needs replacing too. Quite excellently Ford have combined the air box and header tank in one unit and therefore it costs £200, which is more than the replacement 4x4 locking hub and bearing unit costs.

Here’s one of the pictures the garage keeps whatsapping to me.

See? Pic updates whatsapped all the way.

 

[JJ0063]

20 minutes ago, junkyarddog said:

Was there once,very tidy yard.

Yeah they’re nice down there too. I went to college many years ago with one of them. 
 

It’s my local yard, they never seem to rotate stock much annoyingly but it’s nice to just have a wander and look at the chod to be honest. 

I did many years ago get a 205 GTI steering wheel for £10 out of a 106 which I used for a few months then sold for £120 on eBay.

[dozeydustman]

That looks like a great yard to walk around.

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, Rod/b said:

See? Pic updates whatsapped all the way.

 

Sounds like heaven compared to trying to get updates out of most garages!