The new news 24 thread

[stuboy]

Thought I'd check on the zephyr and deceased uncles place... house ok... but storms blown out window of the garage...thankfully I was in my car with absolutely no tools... savaged any old wood found 4 large nails and large screws..and tiny screwdriver..and massive hammer

[wuvvum]

The Charade failed its MOT this morning, which I wasn't surprised about - the leaking front shock and front ball joint were both advisories last year.  It also needs a bit of welding.  The only issue is that parts are bloody expensive - the cheapest I can find a front suspension arm is 80 quid, a new shock is another 50, plus whatever the welding costs and then a gearbox service and it really needs a new front tyre as well - it scraped through but in another few months it'll be illegal.

So I've got to decide whether it's worth doing or not - I do like the car and it's a fun thing to drive but it's rather battered so it's never going to be worth much, and it's also pretty shit on fuel for what it is.

[juular]

Life has been an utter, utter twat the past 10 days and I'm just about scraping through at the moment, but I tried to keep the motivation going at the weekend as every member of the fleet has thrown a strop in one form or another.

The van has been flinging an ABS fault every time I get above 60, which is nice when it's slush / ice outside.  Here's why:

 

The rear reluctor rings are part of the brake discs on these. Since those came up in an advisory I decided just to do discs and pads.

 

And THIS is why you can never trust a garage.  This is the work of my normally completely trustworthy place. They haven't seated one of the rear springs even remotely in place after changing an axle bush.

Brakes are no problem on this van, about 1.5 hours for both sides taking my time to clean and grease everything.

Adjusting the handbrake is a different story.

 

This always happens on x83 vans and I always end up having to bodge something together to replace the adjuster.

Then I found the NSR handbrake cable was seized solid inside its sheath, so that was another hour of dismantling, greasing the life out of it and moving it backwards and forwards.

Next up, the Mrs's Honda Accord 2.2 diesel needed an aux belt as the whole area sounded like a bag of rocks.

I absolutely loathe working on Jap cars now, nothing is ever simple.  The tensioner is difficult to access thanks to the daft engine mount design, the bolts are made out of cheese and torqued to 10000000Nm and even things like hose clamps are designed to get in the way of access to everything. Should be a simple job, but this took 3 hours. In. To. The. Fucking. Sea.

Had to improvise a tool to release the tensioner (which is also ridiculously overpowered).

That didn't work, the jaws of the spanner simply snapped off - I mean the tension is ridiculous.

I sacrificed a socket instead.

This worked. As you can see the belt really needed done.

Shiny.

The C70 needed an inner tie rod done. This was ridiculously easy. I actually enjoy working on Volvos because things tend to be quicker than I expect rather than being a fight.

5 minutes:

8 minutes:

10 minutes:

Total time : 20 minutes

35 minutes all in which includes getting some axle stands and fishing line and resetting the alignment on that side. 

Finally, I have another incoming fleet member that needs a bit of TLC. This is @Lacquer Peel's 205 that wouldn't start and has a few problems needing resolved, so I agreed to take it on and give it a chance to live. It needs some work on the brakes and a bit of welding, after which I will probably be putting it up for sale.

I swapped the fuel pump over from another XUD, timed it up and fed it from a can.  With a bit of tinkering and a lot of cranking, it finally burst into life.

Behold the glorious clatter of an XUD.

 

 

 

[stuboy]

Decided I'd make a start on digging out the looxor scooter... much stuff binned.. as im fed up with hoarding stuff I not used in years ( insert joke about my taliwackle).. just gotta put it back together and sort the permanent oil feeding through... reason why I took it apart to fix a while a go..

[grogee]

46 minutes ago, juular said:

Life has been an utter, utter twat the past 10 days and I'm just about scraping through at the moment, but I tried to keep the motivation going at the weekend as every member of the fleet has thrown a strop in one form or another.

The van has been flinging an ABS fault every time I get above 60, which is nice when it's slush / ice outside.  Here's why:

 

The rear reluctor rings are part of the brake discs on these. Since those came up in an advisory I decided just to do discs and pads.

 

And THIS is why you can never trust a garage.  This is the work of my normally completely trustworthy place. They haven't seated one of the rear springs even remotely in place after changing an axle bush.

Brakes are no problem on this van, about 1.5 hours for both sides taking my time to clean and grease everything.

Adjusting the handbrake is a different story.

 

This always happens on x83 vans and I always end up having to bodge something together to replace the adjuster.

Then I found the NSR handbrake cable was seized solid inside its sheath, so that was another hour of dismantling, greasing the life out of it and moving it backwards and forwards.

Next up, the Mrs's Honda Accord 2.2 diesel needed an aux belt as the whole area sounded like a bag of rocks.

I absolutely loathe working on Jap cars now, nothing is ever simple.  The tensioner is difficult to access thanks to the daft engine mount design, the bolts are made out of cheese and torqued to 10000000Nm and even things like hose clamps are designed to get in the way of access to everything. Should be a simple job, but this took 3 hours. In. To. The. Fucking. Sea.

Had to improvise a tool to release the tensioner (which is also ridiculously overpowered).

That didn't work, the jaws of the spanner simply snapped off - I mean the tension is ridiculous.

I sacrificed a socket instead.

This worked. As you can see the belt really needed done.

Shiny.

The C70 needed an inner tie rod done. This was ridiculously easy. I actually enjoy working on Volvos because things tend to be quicker than I expect rather than being a fight.

5 minutes:

8 minutes:

10 minutes:

Total time : 20 minutes

35 minutes all in which includes getting some axle stands and fishing line and resetting the alignment on that side. 

Finally, I have another incoming fleet member that needs a bit of TLC. This is @Lacquer Peel's 205 that wouldn't start and has a few problems needing resolved, so I agreed to take it on and give it a chance to live. It needs some work on the brakes and a bit of welding, after which I will probably be putting it up for sale.

I swapped the fuel pump over from another XUD, timed it up and fed it from a can.  With a bit of tinkering and a lot of cranking, it finally burst into life.

Behold the glorious clatter of an XUD.

 

 

 

Well done for beating Crap Life and getting out there and fixing some motors. I hope that's given you a sense of achievement and made you stronger for whatever life throws at you. 

I'm well impressed with all these fixes and you're right, when it comes to garages: trust no-one. That's a horrible sight to see on your van. Are you going to have it out with them?

More power to your spanner. 

 

[Rust Collector]

So the other day I absent mindedly clicked on the ebay tat thread to check what obscure vehicles were doing the rounds. I didn't realise I was so far behind, and inadvertently started reading a page from January thinking it was current. I saw something cool*, got massively excited and then realised the advert was at least a month old. Cue feeling a bit glum for missing out on something unusual. I still tracked down the advert on Facebook regardless, just to ask what happened to the car.

I've put a deposit down on it today 😁

If somebody could now just block me from reading the ebay tat thread and seeing more chod then that would be marvelous.

[juular]

27 minutes ago, grogee said:

Are you going to have it out with them?

I know the garage supervisor pretty well and he's done me lots of favours, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and going to speak to him nicely as a heads up, in the first instance. I don't want anything from this, just an acknowledgement that maybe someone needs their collar felt about safety and double checking their work.

[beko1987]

1 hour ago, juular said:

Life has been an utter, utter twat the past 10 days and I'm just about scraping through at the moment, but I tried to keep the motivation going at the weekend as every member of the fleet has thrown a strop in one form or another.

The van has been flinging an ABS fault every time I get above 60, which is nice when it's slush / ice outside.  Here's why:

 

The rear reluctor rings are part of the brake discs on these. Since those came up in an advisory I decided just to do discs and pads.

 

And THIS is why you can never trust a garage.  This is the work of my normally completely trustworthy place. They haven't seated one of the rear springs even remotely in place after changing an axle bush.

Brakes are no problem on this van, about 1.5 hours for both sides taking my time to clean and grease everything.

Adjusting the handbrake is a different story.

 

This always happens on x83 vans and I always end up having to bodge something together to replace the adjuster.

Then I found the NSR handbrake cable was seized solid inside its sheath, so that was another hour of dismantling, greasing the life out of it and moving it backwards and forwards.

Next up, the Mrs's Honda Accord 2.2 diesel needed an aux belt as the whole area sounded like a bag of rocks.

I absolutely loathe working on Jap cars now, nothing is ever simple.  The tensioner is difficult to access thanks to the daft engine mount design, the bolts are made out of cheese and torqued to 10000000Nm and even things like hose clamps are designed to get in the way of access to everything. Should be a simple job, but this took 3 hours. In. To. The. Fucking. Sea.

Had to improvise a tool to release the tensioner (which is also ridiculously overpowered).

That didn't work, the jaws of the spanner simply snapped off - I mean the tension is ridiculous.

I sacrificed a socket instead.

This worked. As you can see the belt really needed done.

Shiny.

The C70 needed an inner tie rod done. This was ridiculously easy. I actually enjoy working on Volvos because things tend to be quicker than I expect rather than being a fight.

5 minutes:

8 minutes:

10 minutes:

Total time : 20 minutes

35 minutes all in which includes getting some axle stands and fishing line and resetting the alignment on that side. 

Finally, I have another incoming fleet member that needs a bit of TLC. This is @Lacquer Peel's 205 that wouldn't start and has a few problems needing resolved, so I agreed to take it on and give it a chance to live. It needs some work on the brakes and a bit of welding, after which I will probably be putting it up for sale.

I swapped the fuel pump over from another XUD, timed it up and fed it from a can.  With a bit of tinkering and a lot of cranking, it finally burst into life.

Behold the glorious clatter of an XUD.

 

 

 

That's a decent bit of spannering 👍 I had some new washer jets arrive yesterday as mine stopped working right even after a rod through and new ones were a fiver and I've been putting that job off so far... Feel bad now 😂

[Dyslexic Viking]

42 minutes ago, juular said:

I know the garage supervisor pretty well and he's done me lots of favours, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and going to speak to him nicely as a heads up, in the first instance. I don't want anything from this, just an acknowledgement that maybe someone needs their collar felt about safety and double checking their work.

Unfortunately, I have learned that one can not trust anyone. So even the garage I use now that I have a good impression of, I check everything after they have worked on it.

[grogee]

1 hour ago, juular said:

I know the garage supervisor pretty well and he's done me lots of favours, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and going to speak to him nicely as a heads up, in the first instance. I don't want anything from this, just an acknowledgement that maybe someone needs their collar felt about safety and double checking their work.

I think that's the right approach. 

[beko1987]

1 hour ago, beko1987 said:

That's a decent bit of spannering 👍 I had some new washer jets arrive yesterday as mine stopped working right even after a rod through and new ones were a fiver and I've been putting that job off so far... Feel bad now 😂

Oh joy... 

I did get some motivation, so went out and swapped them round... 

I then ran them with the pipes off to blow out any crap, but the flow was a bit lacklustre... New jets confirmed that all is still not well... They work as well as the old ones did. Filled the tank up, still the same

Old ones are soaking in de scaler atm but I've been there before, the pump is gunked up or failing, guess its time to knock new headlight bulbs, front bumper off and wing off and do the rust treatment fairly soon 😂

[Split_Pin]

I spent all afternoon getting the paint a little more presentable. 

I used this Farcela G3 scratch remover with a stiff pad on my machine polisher. It was a swine to get off but it actually worked well. I then went back over it with AG Super Resin and then some Meguairs Wax. I'm buckled now but it looks a lot better.

[dollywobbler]

8 hours ago, wuvvum said:

The Charade failed its MOT this morning, which I wasn't surprised about - the leaking front shock and front ball joint were both advisories last year.  It also needs a bit of welding.  The only issue is that parts are bloody expensive - the cheapest I can find a front suspension arm is 80 quid, a new shock is another 50, plus whatever the welding costs and then a gearbox service and it really needs a new front tyre as well - it scraped through but in another few months it'll be illegal.

So I've got to decide whether it's worth doing or not - I do like the car and it's a fun thing to drive but it's rather battered so it's never going to be worth much, and it's also pretty shit on fuel for what it is.

Aye. Parts are a bloody nightmare - seemingly in Australia too watching Mighty Car Mods. It's a great car, but rot and part prices/issues even getting parts make owning one a bit stressy. 

Speaking of which, got the engine out of ours today. 

The most ambitious thing I've done in years. That represents about twelve hours of work, which is fairly quick by my standards. Now need to clean up the engine bay and do some de-rusting, fit new belts and things to the new engine, swap the gearbox over then shove it all back in and try to remember where everything goes...

[Angrydicky]

7 hours ago, juular said:

Life has been an utter, utter twat the past 10 days and I'm just about scraping through at the moment, but I tried to keep the motivation going at the weekend as every member of the fleet has thrown a strop in one form or another.

The van has been flinging an ABS fault every time I get above 60, which is nice when it's slush / ice outside.  Here's why:

 

The rear reluctor rings are part of the brake discs on these. Since those came up in an advisory I decided just to do discs and pads.

 

And THIS is why you can never trust a garage.  This is the work of my normally completely trustworthy place. They haven't seated one of the rear springs even remotely in place after changing an axle bush.

Brakes are no problem on this van, about 1.5 hours for both sides taking my time to clean and grease everything.

Adjusting the handbrake is a different story.

 

This always happens on x83 vans and I always end up having to bodge something together to replace the adjuster.

Then I found the NSR handbrake cable was seized solid inside its sheath, so that was another hour of dismantling, greasing the life out of it and moving it backwards and forwards.

Next up, the Mrs's Honda Accord 2.2 diesel needed an aux belt as the whole area sounded like a bag of rocks.

I absolutely loathe working on Jap cars now, nothing is ever simple.  The tensioner is difficult to access thanks to the daft engine mount design, the bolts are made out of cheese and torqued to 10000000Nm and even things like hose clamps are designed to get in the way of access to everything. Should be a simple job, but this took 3 hours. In. To. The. Fucking. Sea.

Had to improvise a tool to release the tensioner (which is also ridiculously overpowered).

That didn't work, the jaws of the spanner simply snapped off - I mean the tension is ridiculous.

I sacrificed a socket instead.

This worked. As you can see the belt really needed done.

Shiny.

The C70 needed an inner tie rod done. This was ridiculously easy. I actually enjoy working on Volvos because things tend to be quicker than I expect rather than being a fight.

5 minutes:

8 minutes:

10 minutes:

Total time : 20 minutes

35 minutes all in which includes getting some axle stands and fishing line and resetting the alignment on that side. 

Finally, I have another incoming fleet member that needs a bit of TLC. This is @Lacquer Peel's 205 that wouldn't start and has a few problems needing resolved, so I agreed to take it on and give it a chance to live. It needs some work on the brakes and a bit of welding, after which I will probably be putting it up for sale.

I swapped the fuel pump over from another XUD, timed it up and fed it from a can.  With a bit of tinkering and a lot of cranking, it finally burst into life.

Behold the glorious clatter of an XUD.

 

 

 

Top tool improvising skills there!

[Stanky]

8 hours ago, wuvvum said:

The Charade failed its MOT this morning, which I wasn't surprised about - the leaking front shock and front ball joint were both advisories last year.  It also needs a bit of welding.  The only issue is that parts are bloody expensive - the cheapest I can find a front suspension arm is 80 quid, a new shock is another 50, plus whatever the welding costs and then a gearbox service and it really needs a new front tyre as well - it scraped through but in another few months it'll be illegal.

So I've got to decide whether it's worth doing or not - I do like the car and it's a fun thing to drive but it's rather battered so it's never going to be worth much, and it's also pretty shit on fuel for what it is.

 

17 minutes ago, dollywobbler said:

Aye. Parts are a bloody nightmare - seemingly in Australia too watching Mighty Car Mods. It's a great car, but rot and part prices/issues even getting parts make owning one a bit stressy. 

Speaking of which, got the engine out of ours today. 

The most ambitious thing I've done in years. That represents about twelve hours of work, which is fairly quick by my standards. Now need to clean up the engine bay and do some de-rusting, fit new belts and things to the new engine, swap the gearbox over then shove it all back in and try to remember where everything goes...

It isn't fast, but amayama.com is an absolute goldmine for OEM daihatsu parts.

They have warehouses in Japan and UAE, so postage of parts takes between 4 days and a week and a half, but quality is top notch.

You will need to know the equivalent JDM Toyota model, but the site has superb exploded diagrams.

[richardmorris]

On 2/28/2022 at 5:37 PM, brownnova said:

If only you had an excuse to knock on his door… 

 

“Sorry sir this letter was too big to fit in your letterbox” 

“But it’s only an A5 envelope”

”Soooo those Suzuki swifts…”

 

I expect there are rules against that sort of thing. Perhaps accidentally* post the  neighbours’ post in their box and have to ring the bell to collect. Has happened to me twice recently.

[High Jetter]

1 hour ago, Stanky said:

 

It isn't fast, but amayama.com is an absolute goldmine for OEM daihatsu parts.

They have warehouses in Japan and UAE, so postage of parts takes between 4 days and a week and a half, but quality is top notch.

You will need to know the equivalent JDM Toyota model, but the site has superb exploded diagrams.

I'll have a look at that, thanks.

[Zelandeth]

Figure it's worth a two minute update here rather than perpetually bumping my thread for the sake of a two minute update!

Have heard back from the current owner of the Merc V123 I'm looking at and arranged to drop by again tomorrow afternoon for a second visit.  Targets will be to get the replacement rear quarter window in and to go over the sills and inner wings with a hammer to see how much of the car I make disappear.

If time permits I'll see if I can get it up and running for more than 30 seconds and see what works and what doesn't.

Then I'll make a decision on what I'm doing with it.  There will be three options.

1. I take it on as a resurrection project for me.

2. I take it on as a short term "Get it running well, fix a few things, get it cleaned and into a more attractive state to sell" basis.

3. Leave them with a documented list of what I've found and wish them all the best.

So long as we don't get totally rained out tomorrow we should have a decision on its fate (with me anyway) hopefully.

[tommotech]

Had a look at a Qashqai for a mate earlier, it’s due for MOT but won’t pass in this state. Apparently this is a regular failure point, but how can a modern car be made of such poor metal? Cost cutting from Nissan / Renault or supplier squeezed hard, so uses chinesium to compensate. Either way, I’d want to be able to trust my rear suspension arm for longer than 9 years!

[stuboy]

2 minutes ago, tommotech said:

Had a look at a Qashqai for a mate earlier, it’s due for MOT but won’t pass in this state. Apparently this is a regular failure point, but how can a modern car be made of such poor metal? Cost cutting from Nissan / Renault or supplier squeezed hard, so uses chinesium to compensate. Either way, I’d want to be able to trust my rear suspension arm for longer than 9 years!

dam what year?

[tommotech]

3 minutes ago, stuboy said:

dam what year?

It’s only 9 years old.

[SiC]

Earning it's keep. Glad it's this getting dirty and destroyed rather than the Civic.

Replaced the key rubber. Cheap and a little thing, but scruffy buttons are annoying.

[stuboy]

4 minutes ago, tommotech said:

It’s only 9 years old.

jesus

[SiC]

Replaced the A4 window regulator tonight with a £15 eBay special. I hate doing these as they are always a pallava and this didn't disappoint.

Door card came off pretty easy. Duct tape on the inner liner suggests someone has been in here before.


Quite clear why it no longer worked when the motor was removed.


Inner liner was a fight. Ended up cutting the glue as best as I could without ripping the liner.


On these, the whole top of the window comes out. This era VAG seems to do it differently on every model. Golf V/A3 have a removable outer door skin. Skoda has the glass come out instead.


Old regulator unbolts from the glass. Sliding the glass down is easy when it's all fallen to pieces and the cable snapped.



New regulator fitted.


Then back in the car. Found that one of the threaded sections didn't fit the original bolts. One side did but for some reason the other didn't. I secured it with a bolt and threadlock nut instead of the screw.



Then two out of the three screws that hold the motor on sheared. To add to my woes, it started chucking it down despite the original forecast to not. Used a fat cable tie around the motor to hold it in place. Seems to work just fine. Bodge but the only option would be to fit a new regulator as they have sheared in the winder.


So I gave the window a whirl and it worked so far and then slowed right down. Looking at the other side it was obvious what the problem was. I didn't put the wing mirror cable on the correct side. FFS.


With the window fully open and removing the speaker again, I could get the connector back out again. Then reroute on the correct side. Much better than pulling the whole window back out again.


Then I finished putting it all back together again.


The car is mostly sorted now. It desperately needs the cooling system flushing out as the cabin heater is lukewarm at best. I wonder if someone put washer fluid in the coolant reservoir rather than topping up with the wrong type of coolant. Either way, the cold weather makes it unpleasant to have a cold car.

Also have an aux belt with pulley kit to fit. Hopefully remove the squeal it has. Part of the kit has an alternator overrun pulley. Never replaced one before, so that'll be something new to learn. Already got a cheap tool to allow it to be removed.

[dollywobbler]

10 hours ago, Stanky said:

 

It isn't fast, but amayama.com is an absolute goldmine for OEM daihatsu parts.

They have warehouses in Japan and UAE, so postage of parts takes between 4 days and a week and a half, but quality is top notch.

You will need to know the equivalent JDM Toyota model, but the site has superb exploded diagrams.

Someone else recommended that site, but I struggled to find L251 bits on it. Not sure there was an equivalent Toyota?

[Stanky]

5 hours ago, dollywobbler said:

Someone else recommended that site, but I struggled to find L251 bits on it. Not sure there was an equivalent Toyota?

Ah, sorry yes I see what you mean. I've checked and I'm not 100% sure but can't seem to find a corresponding Toyota JDM model for the L251. I would imagine that parts will be available, but you need to know the part numbers and then Amayama will be a great resource. What is it you need specifically? Certainly for my Sirion I was able to get part numbers from Amayama and either order from them, or if I needed it more quickly, order from a Toyota main dealer quoiting the part numbers at them. The second option was expensive though.

The exploded parts diagrams are all taken under license from epc-data.com, might be some info there?

[stuboy]

Added a 'clear' tarpaulin and some weight to stop it blowing up and away...

[Zelandeth]

17 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Figure it's worth a two minute update here rather than perpetually bumping my thread for the sake of a two minute update!

Have heard back from the current owner of the Merc V123 I'm looking at and arranged to drop by again tomorrow afternoon for a second visit.  Targets will be to get the replacement rear quarter window in and to go over the sills and inner wings with a hammer to see how much of the car I make disappear.

If time permits I'll see if I can get it up and running for more than 30 seconds and see what works and what doesn't.

Then I'll make a decision on what I'm doing with it.  There will be three options.

1. I take it on as a resurrection project for me.

2. I take it on as a short term "Get it running well, fix a few things, get it cleaned and into a more attractive state to sell" basis.

3. Leave them with a documented list of what I've found and wish them all the best.

So long as we don't get totally rained out tomorrow we should have a decision on its fate (with me anyway) hopefully.

This has now been rescheduled to Friday on account of the seller having had a scheduling conflict pop up today - and the weather being bloody awful.  Though that also kinda makes me even more anxious to get that window sealed up!

[stuboy]

Changed the oil filter on the galaxy ..dam it was stiff

[anonymous user]

Some of you may remember this. I bought it a few years ago off Station (now DavidB?).

I ended up selling to a friend of mine who subsequently sold it on. He bought it back last year and it has just got through another MOT. 

No I haven't bought it back off him, but have loaned him my estate to move some stuff. The MINI still drives well.