The new news 24 thread

[skattrd]

My pet MOT tester likes to advise on things which other testers would regard as trivial .....

 

Mine does the same, it's quite annoying at times. Light misting on shockers was one of his favourites last year.

[RobT]

Garage just phoned to say he can't find anything wrong with the Beemer, no vacuum leaks so atleast I know it's fine in that sense. He suggested changing the coolant temp sensor when/if the problem becomes worse, and to be honest it has only done the bad misfire thing three times in the last 6 months so it's not as if the thing keeps letting me down. Still annoying though so a new sensor it is. I asked him how much I owe him and he said "not to worry, apart from checking for leaks and running it up to temp we haven't done loads". I appreciate that sort of honesty so will drop him a few quid for a drink

[Mr_Bo11ox]

My best advisory so far is 'dirt on headlamp lenses but not affecting beam pattern'

[Shep Shepherd]

My best advisory so far is 'dirt on headlamp lenses but not affecting beam pattern'

 

My best one has to be the one which The Volvo got in 2006: "rear brake pad retaining pins slightly loose"

[dollywobbler]

My favourite so far is "body corroded all over." That was a warning 2 years ago that my 2CV was going to be in need of overhaul. It had boot floor and inner wing repairs immediately after that, but then I did nothing for 2 years...

[Guest]

I've had 'slight crack around number plate screws.'

 

Yes, so slight you have to stick your face into the bumper to see the aforementioned freaks. Dunno, mustn't have been his day.

[CortinaDave]

Heading to work the afternoon in the Saab 93 stunning day so roof down and happy. Crossed the Forth Road Bridge and felt a sudden lurch then a drop in power. Wondered if I was imagining it so soldiered on, and stopped outside a post office in Edinburgh to send some stuff I'd flogged on eBay. when i came back out it wouldnt start, then did but was surging like buggery.

 

It then cut out. Started it again and moved off. It kangarooed along the street. Swore A LOT. Nursed it into the work car park where i whipped out the OBD 2 reader I keep in the glovebox. Fault codes P1300 and P0300. Google diagnosed misfire likely either the DI cassette, or plugs, or a vacuum leak.

 

Wondering how the hell I was going to get to work tomorrow when I start at 6am I went for a look. Didn't take long. The main vacuum pipe had fallen clean off the throttle body. Total cost to repair - £0. reaffixed, tightened jubilee clip, job done. I like those types of fault - the nil cost 30 second fix ones. Happiness returns.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

I always assumed the oil leak advisory was only given if the tester was dripped on.

[vulgalour]

Brother broke down in the Astra yesterday. Because of needing to ferry people around to effect a rescue, we decided to take the BX. The BX then broke down so we had to limp home and get Dad's Omega which I then had to drive back, and it decided to keep dropping into limp mode. Astra had a rubber injector bung with a split that the RAC man replaced and now the Astra is fine. BX has burst the tired LHM return pipe I've not been able to sort out and has effectively grounded me until I can get a new pipe and some LHM, all of the inner arch, the brake and the back of the wheel is covered in LHM... lovely. The Omega has a fault with the gearbox selector unit, a new part arrived and will be fitted soon, apparently there's a knack to getting limp mode to turn off I just didn't have the knack.

 

Oh, and today the Princess decided it was going to start pissing fuel out of the carb again so that's another job to resolve, I reckon a rebuild kit for it has now been bumped up the very short list of jobs as I've known the carb would need attention eventually, being laid up probably hasn't done it any favours. The big needle in the carb is worn and slightly bent and the float valve needle thingy is also worn and in need of replacement.

 

In happier news, I got a surprise long-term-loan of a stick welder and all the safety gear. Shame the sticks it came with are for 1/4" steel plate, but everything else is functional so that saves me a lot on the welding front. The new BX back box turned up too so it's not all bad news in my car adventures.

[HillmanImp]

You may well have problems welding any bodywork on a car with a stick welder. Chassis etc fine but stick welders are generally for thicker stuff.

[vulgalour]

Most of the welding just needs to be solid, rather than pretty, so I'm hoping I can fudge it with what's to hand. There's some chunkier things that need doing on both cars so I'm sure it won't go to waste, but obviously any sort of welding is going to be hard going on a BX due to weird French metal they're made from, or something.

[cobblers]

Honestly man, you'll flipping do your nut trying to weld bodywork with a stick welder.

[vulgalour]

There's not a great deal I can do otherwise at the moment. I'll practice on some scrap and see what happens before committing to anything important. I'd read that stick welder isn't ideal for bodywork but isn't impossible either. It's a free welder loan, it'd be rude not to at least try and find a use for it, even if it is just to learn how to use one well.

[Pete-M]

I've always found that MOT testers who ride motorbikes tend to be the ones who advise or fail on oil leaks. Possibly because they don't like the idea of being killed by someone who doesn't mind chucking a litre of oil a month on the road instead of fixing the leak. I don't blame 'em.

 

They tend to advise so if you've not fixed the leak the next year they can send your car to the scrapyard.

[Lord Sterling]

Came back from work, put feet up and chilled out for a bit, when the new resoldered fusebox I bought for the Sterling caught my eye. It was still light outside and everything about me was just saying 'lets fit this now, otherwise it'll never been done', so work clothes were put back on and soon I got working on taking the old fusebox off.

 

Rover (particularly the 800s) electrical problems can usually be traced back to the fusebox as they often suffer from dry joints, resoldering the existing box or fitting an already soldered box usually solves the electrical problems.

 

Never done this job before but it looked easy enough if a little fiddly, took off the connectors (some of which needed prising of forcing off) undid the bolts, took old box out and reversed the procedure. All in all it took about half an hour, everything seems to work well, the windows don't play up anymore (so far) and all electrical items seem to be in good shape, not that a lot used to go wring anyway.

 

Tomorrow I should be off to Warwickshire to pick up a newer wing, rear bumper and boot lid from a breaker which is the same colour as my car. Hopefully the Rover will look a little tidier in the next few days.

[dollywobbler]

Sadly I agree with the others. Trying to weld bodywork, especially think Citroen bodywork, with a stick welder will just cause you to blow holes everywhere.

 

As for the return pipe leak, that shouldn't (LHM level permitting) prevent you using the car. When I got the silver one, BOTH returns were knackered and it still only needed topping up once a month. It does make everything a bit sticky in the area though... Word of warning - the metal clips that hold the return pipe in place are very effective, but also very tricky to get into place. I'd have a read up on the forum about it before you attempt it. Cable ties are acceptable but difficult to get entirely oil-tight.

[cort16]

You might be okay with the thicker chassis stuff VA if you get the right sticks and some practice but the exterior stuff I think will be too thin.

[MrDuke]

Decided to do the incredibly simple* job of replacing my wing-mirrors this afternoon. For reasons best known to Citroen, this necessitates the removal of the entire door-card (held on with about 75 torx bolts in at least 20 different sizes and the obligatory self-destructing plastic clips) and partial removal of the glued-on plastic liner, which of course rips into shreds. Having screwed nearly everything back together, I had to deal with the most needlessly complicated lock-button I've ever seen. There doesn't seem to be any way to re-attach it accurately, other than with blind luck. If it's not pushed onto the metal rod hard enough, it falls off again. If it's pushed on too hard, the rod can't retract far enough and the central locking won't let any of the other doors lock - oh, and the tiny release tab will then be totally inaccessible so you can't remove the button to try again. After an hour and a half with a selection of tweezers and chisels, I've finally got it to lock, albeit with a totally butchered button.

To finish the job off nicely, I discovered that unlike various other unfitted options (like electric-adjust seats), there were no wires in place to connect the mirrors to. So I'll have to repeat the entire sorry process again in the near future for some dodgy soldering action. Can't be bothered with the drivers' side now.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Trying to weld up a rusty citroen BX with a stick welder (whilst learning to use the stick welder at the same time) will definitely result in a fail, I can say that with 100% certainty i'm afraid. Both in the MOT sense and in the mental health sense.

[HillmanImp]

You are fairly local to me aren't you? If you want you can come up to mine for a crash course in mig welding and can borrow my welder for a short time? I do need it back shortly as am beginning a weldathon on the GT6 in May but am happy to help out. How much welding needs doing?

[dollywobbler]

AAAARGH! Why did I sell a perfectly working BX? The red estate has just sprung a major rear suspension leak. As in, can't drive to the other side of the village without the stop light coming on. At least I've discovered which vehicle is dropping oil everywhere...

 

Likely cause is rear suspension cylinder failure. These have thinner walls on estates, as they're bored out to allow greater carrying capacity. That does mean that they can literally wear out. If that's an original unit after 306,000 miles, it's doing pretty well...

 

I cleverly decided to get the ramps out, so it's now arse-up in the air awaiting attention. Rear cylinders are nigh on impossible to find though, and I was meant to be taking it to London next weekend. Looks like I'll now be left with either the Merc (leaky rad) or 2CV (noisy). I'm a bit nervous about taking the 2CV to a big city...

[vulgalour]

@hillman: I'm 50 miles away from Leeds, close but not doorstep close. Because you need the welder back so soon, I don't think it would be fair of me to take you up on the offer as I'm at the whim of both weather and brain. I have some other options for resolving the bodywork and since I'll have off road storage I can get time on my side to trudge through it all.

 

I'll probably still give the stick welder a go despite advice to the contrary. I know that stick isn't ideal and is difficult, and I can see why having trawled through videos and tutorials and websites on the subject but I'll give it a go off-car anyway to see what I can achieve. You know how I am with these things, I managed to make brush painting work after some practice and research, and I can usually apply the same to other skills. I like to have a go to see first hand why it doesn't work rather than just writing it off straight away as impossible.

[Cavcraft]

Finally put the new centre pipe on the 306 estate, the one I collected last week was the wrong one (too short) but CES sorted that this morning. Now the actual exhaust is loads quieter but I misfitted it and the bastard is knocking against the body somewhere and driving me crazy. Have a look at that a later date.

Typically being French it had to shit it's pants again, this time the electric front windows packed up. Luckily it'd only 'done a BX' so pushing the wiring loom on the driver's door shut had them working again!

[ruffgeezer]

Ruffgeezer's fleet update for the last month:

 

Citroën C15 Trev3 (Out to motorhome specialists for spares)

Citroën C15 Trev2 (Out to Wilko220)

Citroën Dispatch 1.9td (In from trade in at work)

Fiat Scud-o 1.8 DW8 (Incoming this week for parts for the above)

Mitsubishi Delica L400 Space Gear Exceed (Outgoing pending payment)

 

If anyone wants any bits from a Y reg Dispatch/Expert/Scudo shaped thing with a PSA dw8 engine, just drop me a pm!

[wuvvum]

Had a thoroughly enjoyable day today at RAF Marham in the company of Spottedlaurel and Baz, hooning around in Spottedlaurel's V6 Camry. Also had a passenger ride in a Rover 200 Vi, which I was pretty impressed by. Weather was perfect too.

 

This evening I bought a folding bicycle off Gumtree for £35, then went to see a mate who sold me a bass guitar and practice amp for £40. I don't really play the bass guitar, but I've been wanting to learn for a while now and at that price I couldn't really refuse.

[dollywobbler]

Another 150 miles in the 2CV today for Drive It Day. Was good fun. Actually saw some other classics out and about too, which was nice. Not much shite about though. Perhaps we should instigate Drive Shite Day, where we try and recruit more to our cause (while telling them that they probably can't actually join our cause due to technical problems).

 

May have good news about the BX as well. Turns out it's not losing enough LHM for a ruptured cylinder to be a problem. May be some sort of fault in the return gubbins - the description of which is probably simple but makes my head have a confused. Probably because I'm still knackered from being ill last week. I would very much like to get the BX working for the weekend as I just can't be arsed to live with the insane volume of the 2CV for a 14-hour round-trip to London. Three years ago, I happily drove this car to Switzerland and back. I've become all soft and boring.

[Lord Sterling]

What a day!

 

Woke up this morning to start work on the Sterling. Details to follow on my Rover thread.

 

Then, a couple of hours ago I went to meet Campbell at Hopwood services, we had a natter about cars, drank some Coffee/Hot Chocolate, then went out again and started nattering about cars, just as we were due to shake hands and set off on our seperate ways, myself and Campbell witnessed a drunk driver in a Silver Astra clip the wing of a Blue E46 BMW 318 coupe smashing its mirror and housing. The Astra was driving the wrong way up an exit road. Just after the Astra clipped the BMWs mirror, the girl driver of the BMW then got of her car and started chasing the driver all around the carpark (I've never seen a girl sprint so fast ) the drunk driver was trying to escape the carpark but obviously in his drunken state couldnt find the way out, then the Astra driver found the exit route in the carpark but the BMW girl still trying to chase him on foot wouldnt let him pass, then the 2 other guys in the BMW drove up behind the Astra man opened his door and took the keys out of the ignition.

 

Some cops (South Wales Police on thier way to pick up someone) were in the carpark too. Myself and Campbell went over to pass out details to the Police and people in the BMW (The girl was really nice, I was trying to give hints to 'contact me anytime' ) myself and Campbell hung around for a not giving our details over and explaining what we saw until the (rather rotund) West Midlands cops came over.

 

Campbell had a look in the Astra and saw a load of empty beer cans in the passenger footwell. We hung around until it started getting dark when myself and Campbell realised that we had make our way to our homes so with all said and done, details passed on, we set off. Passing a couple of HIDEOUS chavved up Corsas, one with its plate taped on with electrical tape or something

[cobblers]

I was swapping the coilpack on the Ka that I'll one day get MOTd for my nan, which is a fucking pain of a job cos it's screwed on the back of the engine. I know from experience that it's easier from underneath, but I wasn't really in the mood for jacking the thing up etc, so I persevered from above. It doesn't misfire anymore, which is nice. I noticed the ten bob millionaire ballbags over the road were having some kind of keeping-up-appearances party, so I decided it'd be a good idea to rearrange the vehicles to make the place look as much of a mess as possible and get the angle grinder out:

I've been putting off doing a few bits of welding to the van for ages, but the other day I worked it out and I could probably have them done in a week or so of evenings, if the weather holds out.

 

Anyway so I started with the worst bit, it looked like this:

 

I was fairly sure that when I hit it with a wire wheel it would end up holey, and I was right - I needed to replace a few inches at the bottom of the B pillar, and some stuff leading up to the seam on the arch. You can buy new panels, but the arch is £45 and the B pillar £50 (and on back order) plus I'd only use maybe 10% of each, so I decided to just make do. I've always really done welding and metalwork for friends with much better "workshops" so I was fuppin struggling for stuff to bend metal over etc, I ended up using the gaps between two paving slabs on the steps.

 

Right so I knew there would be rusty stuff behind the seam etc, so rather than piss about I just lopped the whole bottom 8" of the arch off, I would fix the bit on the bench (floor) then weld it back on

 

As you can see, it wasn't in a good way:

 

 

Neither was the body of the van where it should be welded to:

 

Here's my best effort of putting some bends in a bit of steel - I'd have killed for a bloody vice. Turned out perfect in the end though.

 

I sliced the end and bend it over to make up the "seam":

 

I welded the gaps up and smoothed it all out etc, but here's where I forgot to take any photos. I promise that I chopped out and welded up all that guff inside the arch, then cut 1" off the right hand side of the wheelarch bit and welded on some steel with a 90" bend in to replicate the seam

 

Anyway here it is all finished:

 

I'm pretty happy with it for a few hours work, it's actually a lot cleaner than it looks in the pictures and will only need a very fine skim of wob to make it good. That said, the bottom of the B pillar swage thing does look a bit pissed in the photos, It was OK in real life I think..

 

Vehicle tinkering MOJO has returned bigtime, so the van isn't for sale any more - I might as well just do all the welding, do my best with the filler work and then either paint it on the drive or send it up the road to the backwards bloke who paints cars for a living behind his house.

[trigger]

I've made the most of the lovely weather today and gave the Cortina good clean this morning before driving to Colchester this afternoon to see the in laws, unfortunately whilst nipping around a mates my throttle went click and dropped to the floor, bollox.

 

Broke! by Trigger's Retro Road Tests!, on Flickr

 

Luckily I have breakdown recovery with my insurance so a quick phone call and 45mins later a Mercedes Vito turns up instead of the lowloader I asked for, seems there was a "control room error", the van had a rather cool towing dolly built in the back that lifts down but the driver wasn't sure if it was man enough for the Cortina, well there's very little man enough for it but it did a pretty good attempt.

 

Oh dear! by Trigger's Retro Road Tests!, on Flickr

 

Oh dear! by Trigger's Retro Road Tests!, on Flickr

 

Annoying but it save me £20 in petrol getting home with it, Just need to find a new cable now.

[cobblers]

If you properly struggle for a throttle cable, Venhills (http://www.venhill.co.uk/) do universal cable kits and they're pretty good quality - there's one on the above van cos I needed one about 15 meters long.