The new news 24 thread

[twosmoke300]

Just changing what's in the reservoir will make no difference at all ! It's the caliper end of the system that gets hot

[danthecapriman]

The brakes in the RAV feel soft and horrible. The clutch pedal in the RAV feels soft and horrible. I'm actually thinking about changing the fluid in both, as it strikes me as the sort of car where this has probably never been done. (I'm also replacing the transmission fluid).

 

To my shame, and because I've mostly clocked up miles in LHM-equipped cars, I've never done a full brake or clutch fluid change. Is it just a case of feeding new fluid in while opening a bleed nipple and letting the old stuff out? Do you reckon a litre is enough for both systems? Clutch in particular can't be much capacity.

 

You can do it just using gravity to bleed the system, I do it all the time like this.

Use a big syringe or whatever to empty most of the old fluid from the reservoir, top it up full with new fluid then open up the first bleed nipple with a drip tray under it and simply allow the fluid to drip out. Keep an eye on the reservoir though and keep it topped up. Once the colour of the fluid changes it's done, close the nipple then move on to the next.

You can't get air in the system unless you let the reservoir empty doing this.

It takes a bit longer doing it this way but I just have a cup of tea while I'm watching it and if you don't have a bleeder or assistant it works fine.

 

Edit to add:

I did it this way when I changed the front calipers on my Granada recently so it will even work bleeding new air filled things like this!

[twosmoke300]

Yup gravity bleeding is often the best way but just takes ages . You need to let the first nipple on each circuit drip longer to drain the sections of the reservior drain . The second one you are just flushing the pipes

[garbaldy]

That's all well and good but how do you get the dirty fluid out of the callipers as the bleed nipple is at the top.

[twosmoke300]

Pushing the Pistons right back gets the bulk of it out .

[tooSavvy]

Fresh IN.. Dirty OUT.. If you give it a bit, on the pedal, I.S. couldn't hold on in there!!

 

TS

[danthecapriman]

When I was working in a garage, with the car on a 2 poster ramp, I used to put a dustbin under each wheel then top up the reservoir and let all four wheels bleed at the same time then just keep an eye on the reservoir level. Never had a problem, as long as you leave plenty of time to actually expel all the old fluid and keep the reservoir full.

I kept getting a bollocking for filling the dustbins up with brake fluid though!

[dollywobbler]

Mrs DW is fully up to speed with bleed processes. I shall do that. Hadn't really thought about the stuff still in the calipers. If the pistons push in, I'll try that. If they're bloody wind back jobbies, they can piss off. In an ideal world, I'd pull all the brakes apart and give everything a good going over. In reality, I'll be lucky to find time to do just the fluid change before the trip to France.

[drum]

Good turn out at our wee car club bbq

[drum]

We must have had 15 tractors

[Ghosty]

Love that Daimler pic.

[For Fiats Sake]

 

The orange one was driven to Stoke for the engine change, it's quite a job to change a 999cc carbed for 1242cc fuel injected 16v jobbie but Freddie (the mechanic) has it well in hand.  Suprised how little there was to the donor engine once on the bench but the wiring looked a nightmare!

Hoping to have close on to the mythical 100Hp out of the engine once sorted.  It's more about use-ability though, the carb has been a pain not letting the engine reach its potential restricting speed on the motorway and stalling out off road.

Of course I had two flat tyres, and ended up putting the off road tyres on as I hadn't any longer bolts to fit the alloys I had lined up for it.  I also forgot to take 3 items as I was arsing around with wheels for so long!

 

[wuvvum]

I managed to temporarily kill the Mobylette today.  I was hoping to get it running this afternoon - whipped the plug out to check I still had a spark (I did), drained all the manky old pez out of the tank and refilled it with fresh stuff, complete with Castrol fully synthetic 2-stroke oil thankyouverymuch.  It didn't want to go, although it fired straight away on a whiff of Easystart, which confirmed my suspicions re a blocked carb.

 

With my fancy new set of Allen keys I had the carb off within a couple of minutes.  This was when things started to go wrong.  I decided that rather than faffing around removing cables and taking the carb inside to clean, I'd do it out in the garden.  Unscrewed the two screws holding the float bowl - it came off easily, but as I pulled it off the float fell out.  I managed to catch the float and the pin, but the needle valve then fell out too and has vanished into the ether.  I have searched every square inch of the patio several times - it's not a big part but it's an inch or so long so not like looking for a tiny watch screw or something - and I can't find the bastard anywhere.  I think it must have bounced and ended up in the grass, which is quite long at the moment so my chances of finding it again are slim.

 

It's not the end of the world as I can get a new valve off eBay (albeit for a rather inflated £9,50 by the time P&P has been added on), or even a complet brand new Chinese copy of the Dell'Orto SHA carb for £20 delivered.  All these little expenses soon add up though, and it means I won't be able to get the thing going until next weekend.  It should be fairly straightforward now though as the rest of the carb is now sqeaky clean, with a nice unblocked jet and a nice de-gunged float bowl.

 

Nest job was to remove the alternator and water pump from the Volvo, which went surprisingly smoothly by comparison (once I'd found a 13mm spanner that was man enough to take the extra leverage from the Renault-6-exhaust scaffold pole without splaying open), apart from a random bolt that was preventing the metal pipe that pushes into the bottom of the pump from coming out - the bolt didn't serve any obvious purpose, and it was a bastard to get to because it was right above the anti-roll bar and access was too tight for my 1/2" drive socket set.  In the end I used the 13mm socket from my shitty little 1/4" set, with two adaptors to bring it up to 1/2" and then an extension bar to get the whole thing past the front of the block so I could get the ratchet on.  By this time there was so much play in the setup that I could only undo the bolt one click of the ratchet at a time, so it took a while, but once the bolt was out the pipe just pulled free and then the pump came away in my hands.  Hopefully fitting the replacement (I'm bidding on one on eBay at the moment) will be just as straightforward.

 

Only other thing I got done today was I noticed that the back of the Saab's exhaust was hanging down and banging around over bumps - one of the rubbers broke a few weeks back and the remaining rubber had apparently had enough of taking the whole weight itself.  For the moment I've shoved it back on there and put a big Jubilee clip around it to hold it together - I'll pick up some more rubbers in the week.

[hairnet]

Could be worse. You could be FPB7, driving a double-decker bus down the M6 from Scotland. Can you get stabilisers for buses?

Forth wasn't nice on the bike

[xtriple]

Took the dogs for a walk then went to the garage to try and sort it out a bit so two cars fit in there.

 

One: every time I go up and get one of the cars it's covered in snail crap! Like absolutely covered, it is beginning to piss me off.

 

Two: I am such a feeble old cripple I could barely move anything - tried to move a vice and couldn't! Ended up just sorting out a load of old clothes and chucking them in the boot of the KIA and dragged a few things into different places. I got so hot and out of breath I gave up and went to the beach!

 

I have now 'persuaded' a friend to come out to play on Tuesday when in reality he will be moving a load of old crap around in a boiling hot garage. I am such a good friend....

 

Got home with two wet and knackered dogs, a Mazda covered in snail shit and its interior covered in sand and salt. Car is now washed and dried outside, I shall attempt to do the inside tomorrow as it is proper ;minging'!

[Barry Cade]

Just in after another 18 hour day. I'm fucked. Employment reconsideration in process.

[Pillock]

Wuvvum, what is the needle valve made from? Anything magnetic?

[Eddie Honda]

Was driving down through The Lakes on the M6 yesterday and noticed in my driver's door mirror the rear bumper had come loose and was flapping around in the breeze.

 

Pulled in at Tebay and found what I needed in the pez station...

 

 

Sorted.

[Six-cylinder]

BL Day Yesterday, RobT and I represented the beginning and the end of Metros.

[cros]

Good turn out at our wee car club bbqDSC_0610.JPGDSC_0599.JPGDSC_0595.JPGDSC_0591.JPG_20160807_211253.JPG_20160807_211337.JPG

Mr Drum, the Austin van is indeed a rarity, do you have any info about it?

[dollywobbler]

Did another RAV video. May contain horrible, horrible noises.

[drum]

Mr Drum, the Austin van is indeed a rarity, do you have any info about it?

Sorry cros I don't. We have an informal judging of the best in show and it won.

[Bear]

Updated my car ownership spreadsheet.

 

166 cars since 1992. Hardly worth mentioning these days, I'm slipping.

 

Total spent out that I can track - £209,000 (I'd made an error and counted one monthly payment on contract hire, not the total costs) - not including maintenance.

Total recovered from that when cars sold/traded in, £58,000

 

Conclusion: I still think I should have bought a new Mercedes 600SL when I was 17 on some magical mortgage-like finance.

 

(Edit: Actual conclusion - I should have bought a new SLK when they were launched, as I've kept mine for almost 5 years and have no plans to sell it; I'd probably have loved a new one if I hadn't thought they were so ugly when released. And fought VERY HARD to keep the Mercedes 200TE my dad loaned me, then traded in for a company car instead of letting me just keep running it).

[cros]

Sorry cros I don't. We have an informal judging of the best in show and it won.

I can't find any reference anywhere to a Hereford van and this one sure looks as if it came from a factory. The closest I can find is the pick-up and you don't exactly see them every day. I'm assuming you're in the Scotland that sits on top of England and not the one on ULAS J0744+25?

[Sigmund Fraud]

After decades of running decrepit old shite, I finally decided it was time to use my meagre savings to buy myself a decent midlife crisis sportscar.

 

So I spent last weekend looking at some pretty tasty stuff, like S-series TVRs, Lotus Excels and Westfield SEs.

 

And then I somehow ended up buying a broken, pushrod-engined, front-wheel-drive Skoda for £100.

 

 

Hopeless. Just hopeless.

[RobT]

BL Day Yesterday, RobT and I represented the beginning and the end of Metros.

 

A grand day out too, as always.

 

Just before going home we had these three together.

 

 

Angrydicky's Meastro won Best Meastro Award, so he was beaming!  An added bonus was the award looked like something you'd win in a 1980s quiz show.

 

Six-cyl and I had luck at the autojumble.  He bought a back box for his MG Metro and I got a centre section and back box for mine, both NOS Unipart items.  I'm well chuffed as I've been after decent replacements for ages.

[vulgalour]

That Austin van looks like it was converted from a car rather than a pick-up too, which makes it even more unusual.

[r.welfare]

And then I somehow ended up buying a broken, pushrod-engined, front-wheel-drive Skoda for £100.

 

 

Hopeless. Just hopeless.

As someone who enjoyed your Polo resurrection thread, I look forward to hearing more.

 

I also look forward to Mouseflakes posting the 'best of' YouTube subtitles from DW's new RAV4 vid.

[cros]

That Austin van looks like it was converted from a car rather than a pick-up too, which makes it even more unusual.

If this is a non factory conversion the builder has shown taste with the painted bumper and forming 'window' panels in the side. Its an absolute spunker.

[mercrocker]

That van appears to be Somerset rather than A70 based, which makes it even more mysterious as I thought that the "Devon" based A40 van outlived the Somerset cars. 

 

I can't reconcile the body pressings to anything Austin produced, I know that some Dutch and Danish coachbuilders did Morris based vans that we didn't get here so maybe this is something Scandinavian or European in origin? 

 

Bloody lovely, whatever....