The new news 24 thread

[SiC]

5 hours ago, N19 said:

Capri is in the garage for bearings on each corner, plus a replacement for a leaky rear cylinder, so should do both, oh and the flexis... In a typical case of one job leading to 3 others. Scuse me whilst I ask the boss for more overtime... 

I do like the tax disc though. An ebay repro, but the date stamp set to my birthday is an obscure hidden touch. Original dealer tax disc holder, printed on the rear, which I intend on digitising and then getting re printed. 

Even though your Capri is lovely, I'm more interested in your lift. Who makes it and is it any good?

A scissor lift is on my list of must haves for the Garage.

[DSdriver]

17 hours ago, paulplom said:

My dizziness is getting worse. I just up off the settee and fell over. It happened in slow motion. I could see what was happening so I just lay down really quickly, if you know what I mean, to avoid crashing through the coffee table. Very, very strange.

If you find yourself hanging on to the bathroom floor, trying not to fall off or move your head, and throwing up for hours on end it will probably be Meniere's syndrome. Often called meniere's disease which it isn't. Its not fun but mine went away with a change of lifestyle when I stopped freelance work.

[DSdriver]

The reason I came here is to flag up that there is a Vauxhall exhibition going on in Luton. I noticed this on the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-53916943

They do sometimes have some useful information, not just speculation and propoganda

[N19]

11 hours ago, SiC said:

Even though your Capri is lovely, I'm more interested in your lift. Who makes it and is it any good?

A scissor lift is on my list of must haves for the Garage.

I wish it was mine! This is the back corner of the garage it's in for work, rather than my lockup. 

There are some on the market and I'm sorely tempted. Make a lot of jobs much easier. My current lockup is reasonably sized, so I think I could get one in. It'd certainly make lots of jobs easier than axle stands. At some point I want to drop the gearbox on the Bluebird which would be much easier with a lift. 

[stuboy]

Never liked the position of the v6 badge on the wing,  always thought it should be in line with bump strips.  Petty yes..

[wuvvum]

Well this month continues to fail to go as planned.  Yesterday evening was a complete clusterfuck culminating in a late night drive to Nottingham and back, arriving home at 3am.  The silver lining is that the Mondeo has done the 270-mile round trip on around £30 of diesel, so I think I can definitively say that the overfuelling issue is cured.  Also my replacement debit card arrived in the post this morning - pretty impressive given that I only ordered it on Sunday afternoon, and will make life a lot easier as I was rapidly running out of cash.

[Mr Laurence]

Took the Mini to have the bodywork looked at and get a quote to have all of the rust seen to today. More money than I can spare at the moment, but not unexpected, and considering the amount of work that needs to be done, not an unreasonable price either.

There is a hole I found in the boot that I wanted to get sorted as soon as could, which they’ve agreed to fix for about half what I was expecting, so I’m quite pleased with that. I’ll report back in a few weeks time once it’s been done.

[SiC]

6 minutes ago, Mr Laurence said:

Took the Mini to have the bodywork looked at and get a quote to have all of the rust seen to today. More money than I can spare at the moment, but not unexpected, and considering the amount of work that needs to be done, not an unreasonable price either.

There is a hole I found in the boot that I wanted to get sorted as soon as could, which they’ve agreed to fix for about half what I was expecting, so I’m quite pleased with that. I’ll report back in a few weeks time once it’s been done.

Buy a welder and DIY? Plenty of panels available off the peg for the minis. 

[Mr Laurence]

4 minutes ago, SiC said:

Buy a welder and DIY? Plenty of panels available off the peg for the minis. 

I have considered this, but I just don’t think I have the time, patience or ability to do it properly.

That said, in an ideal world, I’d love to be able to weld

[RayMK]

Not much news from me, more like an excuse for a couple of gratuitous shots of my Tipo.  Anyway, today's beautiful weather tempted me to grab a flask of coffee, make some cheese and pickle sandwiches, a mini pork pie and a Cadbury's chocolate roll and then set off in the Tipo to Burton Dassett Country Park to watch the world go by. I even remembered to take my camera and binoculars.  The Tipo is booked in to a local old car tolerant/classic car friendly garage next Tuesday to have its clutch master and slave cylinders replaced. The clutch pedal has been sticking down at random times, usually inconvenient, despite no loss of fluid or collapsed pipework. The clutch itself works fine. As a temporary measure a few weeks ago, I added some hefty return springs to the pedal and clutch actuation arm which made the car drivable most of the time. Today the clutch behaved perfectly.  I was again impressed by the untroubled way the Tipo covers roughly surfaced minor roads. My modern Mitsubishi Mirage has me wincing and swearing over the same route because its suspension crashes and bangs - a combination of short sidewalled tyres, not much suspension travel and inadequate bushing (it's done it from new).  On the Tipo, my garage man will also warn me of any bits that need welding or replacement so that the MOT in December is not too traumatic. 

[Split_Pin]

I love the look of Tipos, sounds a good comfortable drive too.

[Split_Pin]

Right, getting a bit desperate for a car for Yvonne now, 2 of mine are too big and she doesn't want to drive the Corsa any more as no PAS.

The Mini is undrivable now and in the absence of a 'good' car for her, I need a beater for her meantime to get the school run done and get her to work and the shops. At least something that is relatively safe.

It's mainly overpriced scrap on Gumtree and Marketplace at the moment.

[Supernaut]

Saab now has new tyres. Avon ZV something or others. £50 a corner and A rated for wet grip and 68dB (E for economy though).

It's now even quieter and new tyres seem to have sorted the spurious ABS activations that happened once in a while. At motorway speeds all I can hear is a slight hum from the engine as it's doing just over 3k rpm at *ahem* 70mph, honest. I was definitely not pushing greyscale German SUVs out of the outside lane of the AWPR. Nope.

[blackboilersuit]

6 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

It's mainly overpriced scrap on Gumtree and Marketplace at the moment.

I was wondering if it was only me thinking that, obviously not. Although such places do always attract the best* members of society selling the highest* quality vehicles everything I look at right now seams to have an MOT until October or expired MOT and yet be priced as if it had FSH and a 13 month ticket.

Something will turn up, it always does. 

[Split_Pin]

Tell me about it, those Covid MOTs were fine in March but annoying now.

[barefoot]

We're on 'holiday' this week and our flight down to Rio appears to have been put on hold so we nipped out for a day in the Southwolds. We saw baby seals basking in the saltmarshes and folk forming orderly queues for a pint outside. Pubs are still off for us then. The Rover performed faultlessly, but because it has such a poxy little 65 litre tank & generally returns 27mpg I doubted its ability to cover 360 miles, so I refuelled it when we arrived at the seaside to avoid stress on the return journey. I needn't have bothered.

[Alusilber]

So today the Golf I bought new in 2009 blew its first ever bulb (brakelight judging from the reflection in the garage door).  Say what you like about VW but I think the OEM bulbs they were fitting 11 years ago were pretty good ?.

[BorniteIdentity]

26 minutes ago, Alusilber said:

So today the Golf I bought new in 2009 blew its first ever bulb (brakelight judging from the reflection in the garage door).  Say what you like about VW but I think the OEM bulbs they were fitting 11 years ago were pretty good ?.

Scrap it. ? 

[Borsuq]

Booked the Polonez for its inspection tomorrow. Please pray to whatever saints and/or deities are patrons of MOT passes.

It should be fine, but you know how things can be with 25 year old post communist sheds. That's precisely why I'm still slightly concerned.

[hairnet]

On 9/9/2020 at 8:31 AM, Split_Pin said:

Right, getting a bit desperate for a car for Yvonne now, 2 of mine are too big and she doesn't want to drive the Corsa any more as no PAS.

The Mini is undrivable now and in the absence of a 'good' car for her, I need a beater for her meantime to get the school run done and get her to work and the shops. At least something that is relatively safe.

It's mainly overpriced scrap on Gumtree and Marketplace at the moment.

98 mx5 full mot - drives nice...............(im gonna get abuse but reasons)

[N19]

Will a Mondeo estate fit in a slightly larger than average lockup...? 

Yes, yes it will. 

With the Capri in for work at the moment, I've taken the opportunity to get this undercover so I can deal with a bit of rust underneath. Bilt hamber applied and clingfilmed... Then will spray waxoyl tomorrow. It'll be used all winter so definitely worth getting out the way now. 

I've realised that I'm completely incapable of leaving a car alone. Although the Mondeo was intended to help purely with carting stuff around and long trips, its better fuel economy lends to daily commuting as well. Hence in the last two months I've treated it to new tyres, oil, coolant, filters, plugs, HT leads, cambelt and aux belt. Everything but a wash... 

This does mean that the Bluebird is a bit surplus, it averages 25-27mpg... But it's a reliable backup so definitely intend on keeping. 

[High Jetter]

I had an E reg T72 bluebird 2.0 diesel, brilliant car. Yours for sale?

[N19]

Mine is a 1.8GS with the carb engine. It's like driving a sofa, very comfortable. Primitive enough to work on, and reliable. I plan to hold on to it as backup-daily at least for the moment. To be fair, economy isn't too bad on long motorway runs. 

[Burnside]

On 9/9/2020 at 1:01 AM, RayMK said:

Not much news from me, more like an excuse for a couple of gratuitous shots of my Tipo.  Anyway, today's beautiful weather tempted me to grab a flask of coffee, make some cheese and pickle sandwiches, a mini pork pie and a Cadbury's chocolate roll and then set off in the Tipo to Burton Dassett Country Park to watch the world go by. I even remembered to take my camera and binoculars.  The Tipo is booked in to a local old car tolerant/classic car friendly garage next Tuesday to have its clutch master and slave cylinders replaced. The clutch pedal has been sticking down at random times, usually inconvenient, despite no loss of fluid or collapsed pipework. The clutch itself works fine. As a temporary measure a few weeks ago, I added some hefty return springs to the pedal and clutch actuation arm which made the car drivable most of the time. Today the clutch behaved perfectly.  I was again impressed by the untroubled way the Tipo covers roughly surfaced minor roads. My modern Mitsubishi Mirage has me wincing and swearing over the same route because its suspension crashes and bangs - a combination of short sidewalled tyres, not much suspension travel and inadequate bushing (it's done it from new).  On the Tipo, my garage man will also warn me of any bits that need welding or replacement so that the MOT in December is not too traumatic. 

Nice Tipo! I can vouch for there ride and handling performance. I owned a Silver 89 Greg 1.4 DGT which without doubt is one of the best all round cars I've ever owned. I'll have to get myself another one day. 

 

 

[High Jetter]

My bluebird was that red too!

[N19]

1 minute ago, High Jetter said:

My bluebird was that red too!

Flame Red I think? Quite popular. A guy over in Potters Bar I know owns 5... 2 of which are in that red!

[High Jetter]

Look after it. Only car I owned that let me know if either brake bulb failed. Quality.

[egg]

Thanks to the efficient transportation of @worldofceri and previous owner @Kiltox, I'm now the owner of the ex-@purplebargeken Hyundai i10 - which will be the daily hack, and was why I put the Mazda up for sale. 

As the previous most modern car I've owned was from 2002, this is a bit of a jump forward*! I hope we have many miles of white goods motoring...

[purplebargeken]

^^ Oh, nice one. It is entirely a white goods vehicle, simple, efficient and perfectly acceptable for most situations.

[egg]

9 minutes ago, purplebargeken said:

^^ Oh, nice one. It is entirely a white goods vehicle, simple, efficient and perfectly acceptable for most situations.

I almost bought it from you first time round! It would be good if it could be used for its whole life on the forum...