The new news 24 thread

[High Jetter]

1 hour ago, vulgalour said:

Just got back from the opticians, many pennies lighter, and have new specs on the way.  I'm a bit overdue because of *waves hands at world*.  Prescription hasn't changed much, but just enough to push me into needing varifocals.  Hope I get on okay with them, it'll be nice to not do the specs shuffle when I'm working on the car with instructions, or when I'm checking stuff in the supermarket.

It will take a while to get used to them, hope they work OK for you.

[C3C3]

Okay there was way more rot under here that I originally thought but its all cut out now. Lots of grinding & hammering to do. 5 Plates in total due to the floor being pin hole city. It nice to know that this is the worst of it though.

[Dyslexic Viking]

This came out when I drained the coolant on the Zetor tractor I am working on. Has anyone experienced anything worse? 

[grogee]

In case you think you're having a bad day, here's a Lexus parked in a duck pond up the road from us (Long Itchington).

No idea how it happened. It's a 30 limit straight road next to that pond...

[brownnova]

MoT result: FAIL

Thankfully both of my fixes passed, couple of trifling things (TRE & a tyre had a cut on the back) but could we get the emissions to come in under the limits? Could we bollocks. 

That’s why I usually stick to pre 2000 stuff! 

[Six-cylinder]

50 minutes ago, brownnova said:

MoT result: FAIL

Thankfully both of my fixes passed, couple of trifling things (TRE & a tyre had a cut on the back) but could we get the emissions to come in under the limits? Could we bollocks. 

That’s why I usually stick to pre 2000 stuff! 

So from your list that is either your Elgrand or MG ZS EV!

[MJK 24]

1 hour ago, brownnova said:

MoT result: FAIL

Thankfully both of my fixes passed, couple of trifling things (TRE & a tyre had a cut on the back) but could we get the emissions to come in under the limits? Could we bollocks. 

That’s why I usually stick to pre 2000 stuff! 

The K series Elise’s can have emissions issues for the MOT.  

It seems to be that the Cat needs to be hotter than the surface of the sun to get everything in order!

[wuvvum]

Nice warm day today.  Spent the morning (or what was left of it by the time I dragged my sorry arse out of bed) pottering about and going to the post office to pick up some eBay purchases which had come while I was out.  Then @Lankytim came to pick up the Laguna, and while he was here we had a play with the Volvo and Tim ascertained that it's only firing on the rear three cylinders.  A test using a handy bolt showed that the front cylinders had a spark, so it's obviously still a fuelling issue, which my expert* carb fettling has failed to remedy.  So the front carb is going to have to come off again for further investigation.

Once Tim had headed off westward I stuck the 107 up on the ramps to crack on with the brake pipe replacement.  It went about as smoothly as such an intrinsically unpleasant job could reasonably have been expected to go - everything came undone, even the manky rear union unscrewed from the flexi easily enough once I'd hacksawed through the pipe and got an Irwin on the nut.  One of the purchase I'd picked up from the post office in the morning was a replacement wheel cylinder as the bleed nipple had sheared off on the original cylinder - for the sake of £12.93 I thought I might as well treat it to a new one.  To my surprise the drum came off easily, the wheel cylinder mounting bolt came out fine and the cylinder popped out with just a gentle bit of prodding with a screwdriver, and the new one went in just as easily.

Ooh, shiny!

Getting the new pipe on and routed sort-of-properly was a faff, but I knew it would be.  Most of the retaining clips had snapped off when I was removing the old pipe so I routed the new pipe through the channels and then held it in place with teeny tiny cable ties.  A fair bit of bending and wiggling was needed to make sure the pipe didn't foul or chafe on anything, and when I got to the front I found I had far too much pipe so I had to loop it round on itself before I could connect it up.  I thought I'd got my measurements wrong but I later noticed that I'd cut a corner at the back compared to the original routing which is probably where most of the excess came from.  Still, it's on there now, and I've got most of the brake fluid off my arms and out of my hair.  I didn't even need to bleed the brakes - I just opened the rear bleed nipple on the new cylinder with the front of the car still up on the ramps and it wasn't long before a trickle of fluid came out.  The pedal seems fine, so I'm going to leave it at that - I now just need to book it in for an MOT and keep everything crossed that the EML deigns to stay off.

I went out in the Jag last night, and I'm beginning to think that what I thought was a noisy tappet is in fact an injector on its way out - it started missfiring at one stage and when I put my foot down to clear it, the tapping got really loud momentarily until the engine cleared its throat and picked up, so I think the noise is diesel knock rather than anything "mechanical".  Annoyingly the car isn't showing any fault codes so I can't immediately ascertain which injector is the problem - I know it had a new one at the last MOT but I'm not even sure whether that one can be discounted or whether it was maybe not coded in properly and is playing up.  My Delphi knock-off doesn't seem to be able to display things like injector flow rates for this engine so I might have to take it to somebody with more Jaguar-specific diagnostic equipment - I'm kind of loath to do that though as I did say that I wouldn't start throwing money at it if it went wrong - but if it can be sorted for a couple of hundred quid then it's worth doing...

[Popsicle]

8 hours ago, vulgalour said:

Just got back from the opticians, many pennies lighter, and have new specs on the way.  I'm a bit overdue because of *waves hands at world*.  Prescription hasn't changed much, but just enough to push me into needing varifocals.  Hope I get on okay with them, it'll be nice to not do the specs shuffle when I'm working on the car with instructions, or when I'm checking stuff in the supermarket.

Take it easy when you first use them, it makes the world a strange looking place, things that you no are dead straight start to become curved in your periphery vision. Worth persevering with though, I still automatically look over my specs for close up things after 10 years of the varifocals!

[Lankytim]

10 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Nice warm day today.  Spent the morning (or what was left of it by the time I dragged my sorry arse out of bed) pottering about and going to the post office to pick up some eBay purchases which had come while I was out.  Then @Lankytim came to pick up the Laguna, and while he was here we had a play with the Volvo and Tim ascertained that it's only firing on the rear three cylinders.  A test using a handy bolt showed that the front cylinders had a spark, so it's obviously still a fuelling issue, which my expert* carb fettling has failed to remedy.  So the front carb is going to have to come off again for further investigation.

Once Tim had headed off westward I stuck the 107 up on the ramps to crack on with the brake pipe replacement.  It went about as smoothly as such an intrinsically unpleasant job could reasonably have been expected to go - everything came undone, even the manky rear union unscrewed from the flexi easily enough once I'd hacksawed through the pipe and got an Irwin on the nut.  One of the purchase I'd picked up from the post office in the morning was a replacement wheel cylinder as the bleed nipple had sheared off on the original cylinder - for the sake of £12.93 I thought I might as well treat it to a new one.  To my surprise the drum came off easily, the wheel cylinder mounting bolt came out fine and the cylinder popped out with just a gentle bit of prodding with a screwdriver, and the new one went in just as easily.

Ooh, shiny!

Getting the new pipe on and routed sort-of-properly was a faff, but I knew it would be.  Most of the retaining clips had snapped off when I was removing the old pipe so I routed the new pipe through the channels and then held it in place with teeny tiny cable ties.  A fair bit of bending and wiggling was needed to make sure the pipe didn't foul or chafe on anything, and when I got to the front I found I had far too much pipe so I had to loop it round on itself before I could connect it up.  I thought I'd got my measurements wrong but I later noticed that I'd cut a corner at the back compared to the original routing which is probably where most of the excess came from.  Still, it's on there now, and I've got most of the brake fluid off my arms and out of my hair.  I didn't even need to bleed the brakes - I just opened the rear bleed nipple on the new cylinder with the front of the car still up on the ramps and it wasn't long before a trickle of fluid came out.  The pedal seems fine, so I'm going to leave it at that - I now just need to book it in for an MOT and keep everything crossed that the EML deigns to stay off.

I went out in the Jag last night, and I'm beginning to think that what I thought was a noisy tappet is in fact an injector on its way out - it started missfiring at one stage and when I put my foot down to clear it, the tapping got really loud momentarily until the engine cleared its throat and picked up, so I think the noise is diesel knock rather than anything "mechanical".  Annoyingly the car isn't showing any fault codes so I can't immediately ascertain which injector is the problem - I know it had a new one at the last MOT but I'm not even sure whether that one can be discounted or whether it was maybe not coded in properly and is playing up.  My Delphi knock-off doesn't seem to be able to display things like injector flow rates for this engine so I might have to take it to somebody with more Jaguar-specific diagnostic equipment - I'm kind of loath to do that though as I did say that I wouldn't start throwing money at it if it went wrong - but if it can be sorted for a couple of hundred quid then it's worth doing...

It was great meeting you today, pity we couldn’t get the Volvo to run right but at least there’s some progress of sorts. I was going to do a collection thread but the journey was pretty uneventful so I’ll stick the pics here. Wuv treated me to a ride out in his Renault 6 which was amazing fun! It’s given me the mojo to get my crocks on the road, especially the Visa! 
 

The drive home in the Laguna was great, it’s a pretty nice car. Hopefully I’ll be able to improve it and fix some of the issues it has. 

[auntiemaryscanary]

3 hours ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

This came out when I drained the coolant on the Zetor tractor I am working on. Has anyone experienced anything worse? 

Stick it all back together and see what happen. Didn't you say it was a running 70yr old tractor when ya dad bought it?

[High Jetter]

3 hours ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

This came out when I drained the coolant on the Zetor tractor I am working on. Has anyone experienced anything worse? 

Only when very ill, self-inflicted...

[brownnova]

2 hours ago, Six-cylinder said:

So from your list that is either your Elgrand or MG ZS EV!

Was the MG TF! 
 

I need to update the list! 

[SRi05]

On 3/11/2022 at 12:02 PM, SRi05 said:

Some of you may remember this Honda from the roffle thread a few weeks ago:

 

 

 

 

 

Scrubs up not too bad eh  ? I made the mammoth collection of around 3 miles from my house and it had sat on the drive for a week as I was busy at work. Finally took it out for a wash & a little get to know you drive & a short time later a brake hose decided to shit about 5 billion litres of fluid out on the way home which was a laugh*  So it was immobilised for another week or so till yesterday when it was finally replaced.

I'm trying to sweet talk a mechanic I know into swapping the gearbox over, it has a known issue dropping down from 3rd to 2nd gear were it makes an extremely unpleasant crunch, I can drive around it for now though. Plan is to get it through it's MOT in May and take it from there. I'll probably use it more than an I initially thought due to petrol prices being OMFG, makes sense when the rest of the fleet are thirsty bastards.

Overall VELLY PLEASED

 

[3VOM]

21 hours ago, vulgalour said:

Just got back from the opticians, many pennies lighter, and have new specs on the way.  I'm a bit overdue because of *waves hands at world*.  Prescription hasn't changed much, but just enough to push me into needing varifocals.  Hope I get on okay with them, it'll be nice to not do the specs shuffle when I'm working on the car with instructions, or when I'm checking stuff in the supermarket.

Just to add my experience. When I first got them, I found it difficult to get use to things like the edge of stair treads, steps and the like. Just be careful when you first start wearing them.

[artdjones]

I'm reasonably ok with my varifocals but will go to bifocal next time. At least on Specsavers varifocals, the reading portion is tiny.

[Split_Pin]

3 hours ago, SRi05 said:

 

Superb man, that's a bonny example.  Did you get the box changed?

[SRi05]

49 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

Superb man, that's a bonny example.  Did you get the box changed?

Not yet, I was waiting to see what the script was come MOT time before going baw deep in it. I'll be looking to get it done though as it's a really nice wee motor. 

It's needed a couple of brake lines and an ABS sensor which were done prior to the MOT, then a big fat FAIL came in due to a bit of rot under the driver seat rail. Aberdeen registered car gonna Aberdeen. Permitted the man to attack it with the sparkly stick and it's all good. No other worries corrosion wise thankfully. 

[Aston Martin]

On 11/06/2021 at 08:23, Aston Martin said:

The X-class is pointless anyway, but I've just seen it in Dacia Sandero spec... In 2021.... On a "Mercedes" 🙁

 

OK, now imagine a Sandero exterior.... And for whatever reason. They make the interior in fabulous brown leather and real wooden dash.

 

 

 

 

The wooden dash may or may not be a sticker. 😎

[stuboy]

Got frustrated with it looking crap with exhaust paste and clamps underneath so declined child care duties and got out the welder..

 

 

[Split_Pin]

2 hours ago, SRi05 said:

Not yet, I was waiting to see what the script was come MOT time before going baw deep in it. I'll be looking to get it done though as it's a really nice wee motor. 

It's needed a couple of brake lines and an ABS sensor which were done prior to the MOT, then a big fat FAIL came in due to a bit of rot under the driver seat rail. Aberdeen registered car gonna Aberdeen. Permitted the man to attack it with the sparkly stick and it's all good. No other worries corrosion wise thankfully. 

Sensible approach. At least you got the garage to weld it, none round my way would even consider this!

[17-Coffees]

A Smart car can (indirectly) be used to jump start an LS400...

On another LS400 related note, would anyone be interested in an LS400 as a restoration project? 

[Split_Pin]

We were child free for a few hours today as my son was at a birthday party so we went for a coffee in the red 93. I'm getting to grips with the remap now as it's completely changed the car.

The car now has 360nm of torque which is 5 less than an E46 M3, which was noted for that figure at the time. Its incredibly quick now with a very fast throttle response and just wants to get on it all of the time. 

I checked with Karl at Noobtune if the autobox could take this as it seems a hell of a lot of torque but he says he's never had a failure reported back yet. One of his customers in Thailand, where autos are apparently more popular, has a Saab with an engine delivering 500nm just to see how far it can be pushed. No destruction noted as yet.

My wife says it's way too quick for her liking though. Result!

[SRi05]

1 hour ago, Split_Pin said:

We were child free for a few hours today as my son was at a birthday party so we went for a coffee in the red 93. I'm getting to grips with the remap now as it's completely changed the car.

The car now has 360nm of torque which is 5 less than an E46 M3, which was noted for that figure at the time. Its incredibly quick now with a very fast throttle response and just wants to get on it all of the time. 

I checked with Karl at Noobtune if the autobox could take this as it seems a hell of a lot of torque but he says he's never had a failure reported back yet. One of his customers in Thailand, where autos are apparently more popular, has a Saab with an engine delivering 500nm just to see how far it can be pushed. No destruction noted as yet.

My wife says it's way too quick for her liking though. Result!

Hmmm, you are tempting me! 

[Back_For_More]

3 hours ago, 17-Coffees said:

A Smart car can (indirectly) be used to jump start an LS400...

On another LS400 related note, would anyone be interested in an LS400 as a restoration project? 

You are literally at the other end of the country from me......... I do miss my Celsior soooooooooo much though.

How much did you have in mind? Asking for a friend 😀

 

[vulgalour]

Neighbour was continuing with his clear out so I ended up with a whole host of light bulbs, electrical connectors, metal drip trays, more tools (including a really neat old-fashioned torque wrench with the swing arm indicator on it), and a good sized bottle of welding gas that he no longer needs.  Even if the gas is only a little sniff in the bottom of the bottle that's fine by me, I've only got the tiniest bit to do on the Maestro and haven't been able to get a refill sorted due to other expenses lately.  He's warned me that there might be more stuff up for grabs as he continues the clear out and I have zero complaints, so much of the stuff has been genuinely useful odds and sods, some of which has been used quite regularly.

[Split_Pin]

59 minutes ago, SRi05 said:

Hmmm, you are tempting me! 

https://noobtune.co.uk/remapping

£100 cash in the box with your ECU plus £8.95 RM special delivery down to him, the £100 covers the return postage. I removed mine on Sunday night, sent it Monday and was out driving again by Thursday. Rude not to!

[wuvvum]

Had a poke round the Jag's engine this afternoon.  The noisy injector (if that's what it is) is in the left bank, but it doesn't seem to be the new one - the screwdriver-to-ear test showed that that one was the quietest.  I'm not 100% certain which of the remaining two is the culprit though - I'm going to have to find someone with software that can give a readout of injector flow rates or whatever to see which one is out of spec.  On the plus side my Delphi software reckons it can code a new injector in if it does need one.  This is the noise it makes:

I had another play with the 164 this afternoon - for some reason today it wouldn't start at all, it was firing but not well enough to keep running.  My neighbour came by and offered to help squirting Easy Start into the carbs while I cranked it over - this made no difference at all when squirted into the front carb, but when aimed into the rear carb (which is the one that seems to be working) it actually stopped the engine firing.  Which is all rather odd, and I'm not sure where to go from here...

[Essex V6]

On 5/22/2022 at 12:24 AM, vulgalour said:

Just got back from the opticians, many pennies lighter, and have new specs on the way.  I'm a bit overdue because of *waves hands at world*.  Prescription hasn't changed much, but just enough to push me into needing varifocals.  Hope I get on okay with them, it'll be nice to not do the specs shuffle when I'm working on the car with instructions, or when I'm checking stuff in the supermarket.

I got those varifocals recently - they take a bit of getting used to. It seems a strange thing to say but you have to have your head at a very particular angle for them to be in focus!

[DVee8]

As I'm off for a few days I decided to pull the contents of the shed out, to tidy it up. Bloody last time I have a good idea.

In one box I found radio cassette and the spare headlights  for the Daimler, so not a total waste of time.    No1 son asked if he could have the Pioneer.