The new news 24 thread

[SiC]

I was hoping to get my P4 to this local meet today but not finished with the brakes yet. Met this chap with his 110 and got chatting. His son is actually local in the village and owned the immaculate Red Scoobie.



His P4 was rocking a Lockheed conversion too.




I think the local Morgan 3 wheeler club must have all turned up.


Push bike computer as the Speedo is a nice touch.



One of the new 3 wheelers





Not sure if this was a genuine Alpina



Yute!


A few other moderns but they didn't interest me enough to take a photo. So have some more oldies instead.

[lesapandre]

Car designer Chris Ruddell's website. A whole lot of good Jaguar stuff under 'galleries' I have never seen:

http://www.cliff-ruddell.co.uk/home.html

[HillmanImp]

I noticed that the handbrake was on in the Visa today, Imp Jr must've pulled it up at some point. 

I let it off and the car was stuck solid as has been sat for over a year. Oh well. 

I wandered off to do something else and came back to find it had rolled backwards about 3ftinto the bins behind it, so obviously wasn't as stuck as I thought. 

You can see the brick that was supposedly chocking the rear wheel on the floor under the car.....

In the plus side, we've found that missing shoe. 

Glad the bins were there, otherwise it'd have rolled into the Nissan. 

We then went and saw the Flying Scotsman when it came through Shipley. 

And someone drove into the back of the Mazda on the way home. 

Said we'd see if its a cheap repair locally but suspect it'll be going through insurance that. 

Fun fun fun. 

[wuvvum]

Liked for Visa and steam train, not for dent in bumper.

[Justwatching]

Passed my motorcycle theory test on Friday, and then on the drive home, the Ford LTD spontaneously repaired its own horn which hasn't worked since I bought it. Double win! 

[HillmanImp]

32 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

Liked for Visa and steam train, not for dent in bumper.

Meh, its like getting a dent in the washing machine 'innit. 

Just white goods the Mazda. But red. 

[brownnova]

Some fascinating stuff at the NEC this weekend! 

[Fumbler]

I buyed a clicky thing for the 850!

This should mean the car goes click-clack-click-clack-click-clack while frantically flashing the seatbelt LEDs again. I honestly didn't expect to find a flasher relay but it seems Volvo relays are rather cheap and plentiful.

[RoverFolkUs]

39 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

I buyed a clicky thing for the 850!

This should mean the car goes click-clack-click-clack-click-clack while frantically flashing the seatbelt LEDs again. I honestly didn't expect to find a flasher relay but it seems Volvo relays are rather cheap and plentiful.

I've got flashbacks from diagnosing an S90 with an ABS fault, half an hour in the footwell sussing out the ABS control unit against a sketchy wiring diagram with that relay clicking away while I had the engine running 🤣

[Schaefft]

11 hours ago, The Vicar said:

First outing this morning to a local gathering:

If I didn’t already love it I would now. It really is just so nice, and even if I’m a bit biased, so nicer than a W124!

I will keep you in mind when I come to sell, more than likely in August/September. I only really bought it to run around in for a few months of summer while I’m home on holidays! 

The blue leather really reminds me of my Toyota Celsior, they must have used exactly the same dye.

[stuboy]

On 3/23/2023 at 10:29 PM, stuboy said:

My dad's selling his car, same I can't afford it as bloody mint and perfect autoshite

talking to my dad/stepmum.... should i get a loan and saddle up with £100 loan for 5 years...  is it reliable and autoshite worthy

[JJ0063]

3 minutes ago, stuboy said:

talking to my dad/stepmum.... should i get a loan and saddle up with £100 loan for 5 years...  is it reliable and autoshite worthy

Having in the past taken a 5 year bank loan for a car, don’t bloody do it. 5 years is a very long time to be paying off an old car. 60 months of having £100 odd off your monthly wage. 

A car that will be 13 years in old, once you’ve paid off will be 18 years old. 

Seriously, it’s just really not worth it. 

[wuvvum]

This finally happened this evening. 

Now I need to get up on time tomorrow to get the hubs to the garage so they can fit the new bearings. 

[RoverFolkUs]

1 hour ago, stuboy said:

talking to my dad/stepmum.... should i get a loan and saddle up with £100 loan for 5 years...  is it reliable and autoshite worthy

Absurd how that shape of CRV has retained so much of their value. I'd never encourage a bank loan with £££ APR to fund a continuously depreciating asset ...

[wuvvum]

17 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Absurd how that shape of CRV has retained so much of their value.

I've seen them a helluva lot cheaper than that on eBay...

[RoverFolkUs]

4 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

I've seen them a helluva lot cheaper than that on eBay...

It does seem to vary greatly on area, I see them as not much more than £3k cars but having seen chops garage on YouTube he seems to be able to get £7-8k retail on a well specced one in Devon 🤨

[lesapandre]

Audi garage charging woes. There is not much sympathy tho...

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/mar/27/alarm-bells-rang-when-i-felt-i-was-being-overcharged-by-an-audi-dealership

[SiC]

2 hours ago, lesapandre said:

Audi garage charging woes. There is not much sympathy tho...

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/mar/27/alarm-bells-rang-when-i-felt-i-was-being-overcharged-by-an-audi-dealership

The problem is that many people don't know any better. Their car breaks and they believe the best or only place to fix such issues is at a dealer. Not helped by many (decent) garages been swamped and not wanting to deal with such electrical problems.

I do take issue with this comment though:

"I’m not sure when it became the norm for this type of diagnostic charging to take place, but it is now ubiquitous."

While Audi's hourly rate is bonkers expensive, someone has to pay for the time figuring the problem. If it's not the customer, it's the garage in lost time they could be doing paid work. In some/many cases the time to diagnose will be far longer than the time to replace the broken part. 

[dozeydustman]

Had a long weekend away and now back on Kia steering woes. Silverlake’s website isn’t working properly so the diesel Rio they are showing as available for parts has gone. They said nobody had wanted anything off it for the however many weeks it was sat there, so they put it through the baler. Wasn’t a wasted journey as I got a couple of bits for the C2 while I was there, which are needed for restoring the correct air filter housing instead of the rudeboy cone filter currently fitted. Also a nice gear knob, gaiter and an auto up/down window switch for passenger side. The mild fart cannon can wait until the back box is knackered.

There is a Pirtek in Portsmouth I discovered over the weekend so (hopefully) the rotten steering pipe will be off this afternoon and I can get a new one made up, or at very least the rotten section replaced.

[dozeydustman]

1/6th of a turn at a time. Who forgot his flare pipe spanners….

Not sure how this p-clip is held on as there’s no obvious bolt or nut. And no, it’s not the bolt head to the left

Yeah, that’s bollocksed. I’m off to Pirtek

[chaseracer]

On 23/03/2023 at 22:45, 320touring said:

When we arrived at Weston we went for a stoat to a local hostelry for scran, and met some Llamas 🦙

Saracen's Head?  Good scran there.

[320touring]

1 hour ago, chaseracer said:

Saracen's Head?  Good scran there.

Indeed it was

[stuboy]

19 hours ago, RoverFolkUs said:

I see them as not much more than £3k cars

i looked at 3k cars on ebay and they was rough

[RoverFolkUs]

14 minutes ago, stuboy said:

i looked at 3k cars on ebay and they was rough

Very true

[wuvvum]

I had a four day weekend this week (using up holiday) so got a few bits done, although not as much as I would have liked as the weather was shite.

The Visa and the Rover both got oil and filter changes - the Rover because it was due, the Visa because the sump was half full of petrol.  It now has the correct amount of nice new Duckhams 15W40, and the Rover got the 5W40 Redex oil that was reduced at Tesco the other week, and a genuine NOS MG Rover filter.

I've not really driven the Visa since the oil change as I've now SORNed it - it becomes eligible for free tax on Saturday and I didn't want the DVLA taking another direct debit payment.  I have been doing a bit of touching up of paint though - I bought a bottle of the correct paint code off eBay, and it's actually a reasonable colour match given the age of the car.  I've rubbed down and treated the worst of the rusty bits then painted over them.  The nearside rear door had a hole in the door skin which I've repaired from the inside with fibreglass and then skimmed over with filler and painted - it doesn't look brilliant but it's better than the hole that was there before.  Ideally it needs a door skin or a replacement door at some point but that's well down the priority list, especially given that it's never going to be close to a show car (and I wouldn't really want it to be).

I was going to take the Volvo for another drive but an examination of the offside rear tyre revealed that it hadn't particularly appreciated its high speed run up to the coast and back a couple of weeks back, and it's now quite badly cracked and the sidewall is looking a bit rippled.  So I've done what I was hoping to avoid doing and booked it in on Wednesday to have a shiny new Nankang fitted.  The nearside rear tyre is still fine, despite being just as ancient as all the others.  I've also got the number plate lights working properly - the offside one was sort of working but very dim, which turned out to be the lens being covered in crud, and the nearside bulb had gone so I splashed out a quid for a new festoon bulb from the local motor factors.

As well as an oil change I also treated the Rover to an EGR bypass pipe.

The EGR was extremely manky and I'm not a big fan of them anyway.  I also took the MAF sensor out and gave that a clean - it seems to run better now, it gets less breathless at high revs than it did before.  It goes even better with the MAF unplugged but then it gets a bit of diesel knock at certain engine speeds.  Ideally it needs a new MAF at some point but genuine ones are bloody expensive and aftermarket ones are generally shite.

The other job to do on the Rover was to try and get the driver's window working again.  The other three windows worked fine from their respective door switches, but none of them worked from the driver's door switch pack.  The switches on the passenger doors are "normal" switches (i.e. they just send power to the window motors) but the driver's switch pack works via the CANbus and sends a signal to the BCU asking it if it wouldn't mind winding the relevant window down (or up).  I'd tried a replacement switch pack which didn't help - I tried a replacement BCU as well and that didn't help either but those can need coding into the car to work properly so that wasn't a huge surprise.

I downloaded an app called TOAF onto my phone (diagnostic software specifically for the Rover 75 written by a Polish chap) and plugged it into the car to see what was what.  I checked for fault codes on the BCU - there were several but none that was window-related.  TOAF allows you to "ping" the various functions of the control units so I was able to wind the driver's door window up and down using the app, which was novel.  That showed that the BCU itself was fine, which led me to suspect that the culprit was a broken signal wire from the switch.  So I unbolted the BCU from under the dash and took out the multiplugs, then located the wire from the window switch (which took some doing as there are 54 of the feckers in one multiplug) and tested for continuity with the multimeter - there was none, which confirmed my suspicions.

So I toddled off to buy a reel of wire and then, having taken half the dashboard apart, I traced the wire again where it disappeared under the carpet to run across to the BCU on the passenger side.  I snipped it there and near the switch on the door, then joined the two ends with a length of wire.  I turned the ignition on and

This was my first attempt at repairing anything CANbus-related so I was quite pleased it worked out.  Obviously I then had the fun* task of routing the wire through the door and into the cabin through the door shut, then I had to put the door card back on which is a twat of a job on 75s, but it's done now and I have a full complement of working windows for the first time in a while.

I finally managed to get the nearside hub assembly off the MG, and this morning I took both hubs to the garage for them to fit the new wheel bearings.  Annoyingly they didn't get time to do them today so I'm going to have to wait until tomorrow - not that I'm in a huge rush but this evening was ideal weather for putting things back together, and it's now forecast to rain pretty much non stop for the rest of the month.  Still, I should really wait until the ball joint dust cover I ordered arrives before I put the nearside back together, otherwise I'll have to take it to bits again - I managed to get the offside apart without mullering any rubber bits so it's just the one that needs doing.

I've not managed to fix the reversing camera on the Toyota yet.  I thought it might be the camera itself that had packed up, so I bought a new one and plugged it in but that didn't show a picture either, so I'm now suspecting that it's the wireless transmitters that have died.  A new pair is only about 8 quid so that's the next thing to try.  I've also failed to discover why it keeps running its battery down - I thought the fancy Android stereo might be pulling current even when it's switched off, but with everything off the multimeter is showing a draw of 20mA, which shouldn't be enough to drain a battery in a week.  I've swapped the Mazda's battery onto the Toyota for now as that's a bit newer and might be in better health.

Talking of the Mazda, I was mowing the lawn this afternoon when an Aussie gentleman of a certain age pulled up and started asking me about it - he'd had a Ford Festiva back in Oz which he remembered fondly, and he'd also had a LHD one when he first moved to the UK (presumably bought off one of the military bases).  We had a bit of a natter about cars (which was very much along the lines of "oll modernz r shite") and he asked if he could take a photo of the car to show his sister who also has fond memories of Festivas.  It was the first time in my ownership that the Mazda has attracted any admiring glances - most of the looks I get are more along the lines of "WTF is that battered heap of shit?" so it made a nice change!

[brownnova]

Valuable lesson learnt today… 

An exhaust mount snapped on the Saab on Saturday, meaning that over undulations the exhaust scrapes. So tonight I decided to fashion (bodge) a get me to the Easter hols repair.

 This took me about 15 minutes, using some thin metal hooks I had lying around. It was solid, and did the job. 

I stepped back to admire my handy work… and thought… “I can do that better” so took it all apart again.

Of course, another 40 mins later I can’t do it better, and indeed I’ve now distorted the metal hooks out of shape so much I can’t get the original bodge back.

So now it’s even more Heath Robinson and I’m not even that confident it’ll get me to work tomorrow, let alone for the whole week! I guess tomorrow we’ll find out! 

Lesson: if it looks ok the first time, don’t try and improve your handiwork 😂

[Spottedlaurel]

Bonus LS400 appeared on the driveway at the weekend:

Despite being just six years between them Lexus managed to squeeze in another couple of versions, so what you're looking at here is my late Mk1 and Miss SL's BF's early Mk4. Bodyshells are completely different, the later car has a heavier look to it. It also gains 40BHP thanks to VVTi and other upgrades, taking it to 290, plus two more ratios in the 'box so it's both quicker and more economical. The latter is good as it'll be his sensible daily driver when the MR2 is hiding away over winter.

Had back-to-back drives around the block. Mine felt slightly softer and lazier but didn't suffer as much by comparison as I thought it might.

More toys in the later one of course, mine is pretty basic. The sat-nav and touch screen still work fine. I'd say the indicator/light stalk is on the wrong side, but that's me being old....

[Volksy]

Mercedes went in for it's MOT today.

It failed, but only on a fractured front spring - which I wasn't expecting! Only advisory was for a loose exhaust heatshield. Not bad for a street parked 19 year old daily.

Booked in at the local garage for a replacement, as I really CBA with stripping out a strut and potential beheading/death due to Merc springs being absolute bastards.

[Vince70]

I took my old terrible sounding speakers out today of the Mk1 Punto thinking that they were knackered originals and found they were custom Alpine speakers and replaced them with some unknown cheap brand, which I bought off Amazon for £25.

Although not up to Bose standards the sound quality is a 100 times better and I haven’t got what sounds like a fart going through the speakers anymore lol.

The weird thing is I can’t see any rips in the alpine speakers.

The fit on the new speakers isn’t as good as the Alpine speakers though although they’re supposed to be customs for the Punto.

Also I have gone all maxpower and fitted a team rally centre  dash today due to the broken air vents on the original.

 

[Spottedlaurel]

23 hours ago, Spottedlaurel said:

Bonus LS400 appeared on the driveway at the weekend:

Should be able to report more next week, but all being well another LS400 will be joining the extended family fleet soon....