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Father Ted

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My son moved his motorcycle out of the garage today. Whilst access to the Reliant (1961 Regal MK6) was clear I connected the battery which was still showing 12.58V and it started on the second attempt, sounding perfectly healthy on choke and then idling fine off choke. There was a noticeable flat spot when trying to rev the engine. It eased considerably as the engine further warmed up but it would need a precautionary carb jet clean before driving the car.  I last started it and drove a few miles last August. I still intend to sell it before this summer.

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4 hours ago, Lankytim said:

My 79 and 3/4 years old Father is a retired electrician. He used to replace loads of this type of equipment, along with servicing street lighting fitted with sodium lamps etc. He’s still got a really old light bulb tucked away that he found on a job decades ago. I’ll try and find it and post some pics. 

Oh thats really cool! I look forward to seeing the old bulb that he saved :) 

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Home safe, or at least to my shite dumping ground.

BB06C03B-698D-43EF-840D-A3CA30E5585C.thumb.jpeg.c6b8d51d0ff743226fb32115ea23f948.jpeg

I’ve had a quick poke around and at a casual glance it’s better than I expected. I will try and do a write up in my thread of both recent arrivals as they are now the priorities to get sorted and into use.

After an uneventful drive back, I got this light as I pulled into my hometown:

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I think a separate cooler for the ATF is in order, it currently shares the main radiator and the V6 motor puts out a hell of a lot of heat. In the time it took me to poke around the merc it had cooled enough to put the light out.

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Not been the best weekend for the wuvvum fleet.  It started when I took the 107 to the car wash on the way home from work on Friday evening - the car is now clean but most of the badging on the back got washed off so the car is now a    EU  O .

Then later in the evening I jumped into the Rover to go and see a mate - it was making a strange noise but I couldn't immediately see anything - then as I turned the steering it started to clonk and vibrate violently.  Turns out the offside front spring had broken and the broken end was sat on top of the tyre.  So I abandoned the Rover and took the MGF instead.

Yesterday I jacked the car up and took the wheel off, then brought the Maxus round to the car park so I could plug the angle grinder into the inverter under the van's bonnet.

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It made short work of slicing off the (quite sharp) broken end of the spring, and I was able to get the spare wheel on so the car is now movable, albeit down on one side.

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The nearly new GoodYear Eagle Sport tyre is fucking toast though.

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I'm quite pissed off about that as it was the best tyre on the car and a bit of an awkward size to replace (215/60x16, not a size most of the local part worn places have in stock, and rather expensive for a decent quality new tyre).  

I did start to try to take it apart in preparation for the new spring - the drop link came undone easily enough and the nut came off the bottom ball joint bolt without too much of a fuss, but the bolt itself has hitherto shown zero interest in moving.  I've left everything soaking in Plus Gas and when my mojo is a bit better I'll have another go but with the car up on the big jack so I can get a proper swing at the bolt with the lump hammer.  All rather annoying as I'm going to Devon on Wednesday for a funeral and I'm now going to have to take the 107, which is less than ideal.

The next job was to jack the front of the MGF up to try and ascertain which wheel bearing is making noise.  From a spin of the wheels I think it might actually be both of them, which is a bit of a pain as they're not a DIY job on these.  Further investigation was hampered by the discovery that the car has locking wheel nuts and no key - it turned out that the one on the offside was only finger tight anyway but the nearside was on there properly and necessitated much hammering of smaller sockets before it'd come undone.  I've ordered a set of non-locking nuts to replace the locking ones as nobody nicks OEM alloys anymore - they're all after the cats.  Speaking of which, the MG could ideally do with a new silencer as it's starting to hole at one end and is also blowing from the join with the down pipe, but the cheapest one I can find is 96 quid and I'm not spending that so it's just going to have to keep sounding a bit farty.

I still can't get the Visa to run properly.  I replaced the dodgy nearside spark plug and it fired up immediately and ran fine for a few minutes until it started overfuelling again.  It's definitely the needle valve not closing properly as when I noticed the carb start to fill with fuel I switched off, took the fuel line off the pump and blew and I could blow through into the carb - it wasn't wide open but it was obviously open enough to be letting petrol through to places it shouldn't be going.  I have no idea what's causing it though - everything is moving freely and when I take the top off the carb and lift the float up manually it closes the valve as it should.  I've taken the carb off the car again so I can have a better look but at the moment it's got me completely baffled, and it's starting to piss me off as that's now the only thing standing in the way of the car being usable.  In fact I'm actually wondering if the car might be haunted, as when I was taking the carb off the electric fuel pump randomly started ticking several times, despite the ignition being off and the keys in my pocket.  Weird...

On a more positive note, I got in the Volvo yesterday for the first time in a couple of months and was pleased to note that the windscreen cover seems to have managed to stop the water ingress into the cabin.  I stuck the key in the ignition just to see if there was any life left in the battery and greatly to my surprise the car fired straight up and ran fine.  So that was nice.  Cheap eBay batteries FTW...

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After nearly 3 months of procrastination pissing about careful deliberation, I finally got round to setting up my new Moto G82 phone. I was initially stumped as it wanted a double-ended USB-C cable to copy stuff from my 4yo G6 but in the end did it by bluetooth / magic. Smoothest transition so far, even transferred most of my my saved passwords, which I'd been dreading. I have had to set-up my homescreen pages though, which is actually no bad thing as I weeded out some no longer needed stuff.

It's much faster, and has better data connection, even in a couple of places I couldn't get online with the old one. Slightly bigger screen but, strangely, text on web pages (including AS) is slightly smaller. Early days, but for a £240 phone I'm happy so far.

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On 2/5/2023 at 6:41 AM, sutty2006 said:

I can’t wait to visit your lightbulb museum one day Mr @LightBulbFun .


 

 

the experience will be enlightening.

 

it may give me some bright ideas for future projects. 
 

 

 

sorry. 

if nothing else, it should be well lit 

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I took the opportunity to leave the roof off the ropey Boxster all day as it was tucked in the corner of the works car park, and it’s at the point where I think I’ve fixed the leak into the cabin, but it’s taking ages to dry out, given the time of year.

No doubt the foam backing will need properly drying by pulling the seats and carpet to sort that properly. But that stripped out autoshite version of a GT3 lightweight can wait until the spring.

To think Porsche used to charge more for less content; I’m getting it for free!

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19 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Not been the best weekend for the wuvvum fleet.  It started when I took the 107 to the car wash on the way home from work on Friday evening - the car is now clean but most of the badging on the back got washed off so the car is now a    EU  O .

Then later in the evening I jumped into the Rover to go and see a mate - it was making a strange noise but I couldn't immediately see anything - then as I turned the steering it started to clonk and vibrate violently.  Turns out the offside front spring had broken and the broken end was sat on top of the tyre.  So I abandoned the Rover and took the MGF instead.

Yesterday I jacked the car up and took the wheel off, then brought the Maxus round to the car park so I could plug the angle grinder into the inverter under the van's bonnet.

20230204_134537.thumb.jpg.b52af533936156e1f7f4c8e10545f70e.jpg

It made short work of slicing off the (quite sharp) broken end of the spring, and I was able to get the spare wheel on so the car is now movable, albeit down on one side.

20230204_134544.thumb.jpg.70e93cb1ec1913ab5dc7c5b80d9f8797.jpg

The nearly new GoodYear Eagle Sport tyre is fucking toast though.

20230204_134553.thumb.jpg.42fecaf19585a5a0423c0e7b8a0487c8.jpg

I'm quite pissed off about that as it was the best tyre on the car and a bit of an awkward size to replace (215/60x16, not a size most of the local part worn places have in stock, and rather expensive for a decent quality new tyre).  

I did start to try to take it apart in preparation for the new spring - the drop link came undone easily enough and the nut came off the bottom ball joint bolt without too much of a fuss, but the bolt itself has hitherto shown zero interest in moving.  I've left everything soaking in Plus Gas and when my mojo is a bit better I'll have another go but with the car up on the big jack so I can get a proper swing at the bolt with the lump hammer.  All rather annoying as I'm going to Devon on Wednesday for a funeral and I'm now going to have to take the 107, which is less than ideal.

The next job was to jack the front of the MGF up to try and ascertain which wheel bearing is making noise.  From a spin of the wheels I think it might actually be both of them, which is a bit of a pain as they're not a DIY job on these.  Further investigation was hampered by the discovery that the car has locking wheel nuts and no key - it turned out that the one on the offside was only finger tight anyway but the nearside was on there properly and necessitated much hammering of smaller sockets before it'd come undone.  I've ordered a set of non-locking nuts to replace the locking ones as nobody nicks OEM alloys anymore - they're all after the cats.  Speaking of which, the MG could ideally do with a new silencer as it's starting to hole at one end and is also blowing from the join with the down pipe, but the cheapest one I can find is 96 quid and I'm not spending that so it's just going to have to keep sounding a bit farty.

I still can't get the Visa to run properly.  I replaced the dodgy nearside spark plug and it fired up immediately and ran fine for a few minutes until it started overfuelling again.  It's definitely the needle valve not closing properly as when I noticed the carb start to fill with fuel I switched off, took the fuel line off the pump and blew and I could blow through into the carb - it wasn't wide open but it was obviously open enough to be letting petrol through to places it shouldn't be going.  I have no idea what's causing it though - everything is moving freely and when I take the top off the carb and lift the float up manually it closes the valve as it should.  I've taken the carb off the car again so I can have a better look but at the moment it's got me completely baffled, and it's starting to piss me off as that's now the only thing standing in the way of the car being usable.  In fact I'm actually wondering if the car might be haunted, as when I was taking the carb off the electric fuel pump randomly started ticking several times, despite the ignition being off and the keys in my pocket.  Weird...

On a more positive note, I got in the Volvo yesterday for the first time in a couple of months and was pleased to note that the windscreen cover seems to have managed to stop the water ingress into the cabin.  I stuck the key in the ignition just to see if there was any life left in the battery and greatly to my surprise the car fired straight up and ran fine.  So that was nice.  Cheap eBay batteries FTW...

I had these fitted to my '75 and they gave piece of mind. 

https://rimmerbros.com/Item--i-RSC000131

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23 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Those are actually a bloody good idea.  Wish I'd known about them sooner...

There is quite a bit of information about them on the Rover 75 and ZT OC. 

They're not perfect, however I do remember seeing a number which saved tyres. The 75 seems to like going through front springs for sure... 

Best of luck with getting your car sorted! 😎 👍

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I got my Dolomite back from the barn at the weekend after not seeing it for months, amazingly it fired straight up, even the battery was full charged and it drove back home perfectly.

I can't get over how good condition this 1850 is, everything works other than the speedo under reading which is a worry as i think i have have sped through a average speed camera on the A12 on the way home, (doing 60mph instead of a indicated 50mph 😒) There's no rust anywhere apart from the chassis that i stupidly crushed with a axle stand and there's no rattles or squeaks, amazing for a mid 70s BL car!

Again as i had the camera out i thought I'd take a load of photos!

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Lovely @trigger! Reminds me of a p plate 1850 auto I had in about 2004. It had a lovely Webasto roof and was the same colour. Sadly after being rescued from a barn and put into daily use something wierd happened with the rear axle and (to date the only time this has happened to me) a rear wheel fell off the car. I needed new underpants after that!

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