The new news 24 thread

[richardmorris]

Just changed the dashboard bulb in the x1/9. All other illumination comes from this via fibre optic cables. After 35 years it was a little past its best. Black with thermal desorption of the filament. 
if anyone knows what the equivalent led bulb would be I may try one of those.

 

[artdjones]

4 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

You had the obligatory plethora of people lugging flatfaced dog breeds about while you hear then screaming and gasping for air 

It's more likely to be the owners. I don't know what's happened in the UK, but when I visit the town streets are a traffic jam on mobility trolleys. I hardly see any in Ireland, and I just spent a week in France without seeing any at all.

Seriously though, breeding pugs and bulldogs and the like is canine abuse.

[RoverFolkUs]

14 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

It's finally car boot sale season

Pretty chaotic today

You had the obligatory plethora of people lugging flatfaced dog breeds about while you hear then screaming and gasping for air 

The people aggressively haggling over a £1 monopoly game at a charity stall. This chap was insisting to pay 50p, at which point despite having no desire to have it I handed the lady £1 and took it off the table from in front of him. Once he'd stormed off in a strop, I re-donated it to them to sell again.

I got some steals though, a joblot of Halfords advanced tools for £30 which was too good to refuse, loads of larger odd size spanners for 50p each, a diecast MGB for 10p

And a few electronic bits and pieces.

What made my day was a beautiful golden retriever coming over to see what I had, and generally lapping up any fuss that was going. Yes I have a soft spot for dogs!

A nice morning out

Oh, how could I forget! 

Easily the find of the day, I'm actually over the moon at getting this: 

A good old Autodata catalogue. From a cursory flick through it's got Daewoo's in there so there's bound to be gems of information that you'd never find anywhere else easily. Also from Citroen Xantias to the C4 Picasso, so basically late 90's to early 10's

Well worth the fiver I gave for it! No idea what it would be worth, but I think my money is safe. 

[RoverFolkUs]

21 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

It's finally car boot sale season

Pretty chaotic today

You had the obligatory plethora of people lugging flatfaced dog breeds about while you hear then screaming and gasping for air 

The people aggressively haggling over a £1 monopoly game at a charity stall. This chap was insisting to pay 50p, at which point despite having no desire to have it I handed the lady £1 and took it off the table from in front of him. Once he'd stormed off in a strop, I re-donated it to them to sell again.

I got some steals though, a joblot of Halfords advanced tools for £30 which was too good to refuse, loads of larger odd size spanners for 50p each, a diecast MGB for 10p

And a few electronic bits and pieces.

What made my day was a beautiful golden retriever coming over to see what I had, and generally lapping up any fuss that was going. Yes I have a soft spot for dogs!

A nice morning out

Something which I'm really kicking myself about was a Cisco cloud router/WAP doowhacky. The guy was asking £3 which my gut feeling told me was an absolute steal. But I'm sick to the back teeth of buying things for the sake of it so I tried to look it up on the spot but I had no phone signal. 

Eventually I had signal and upon looking it up, yep, £60-120 online. 

Could I remember where it was? No. Fuck. 

An hour or so later I stumbled across the stall. Except a lady had it in her hands and was also on her phone. I saw her eyebrows raise slightly and she quickly handed him £3. 

Fair play... Fair play... You snooze, you loose. That'll teach me, but it probably won't! 

[GingerNuttz]

3 hours ago, Saabnut said:

This makes me nervous.....

At least the other side has a pillar......

Fair play that pillar has a big hole in it and the sill looks made of cheese but it's still a win over the passenger side 🤣

[Jenson Velcro]

The sun is out and I had some time to myself so went along to the local autojumble. Nothing worth buying but plenty of interesting vehicles 

[Jenson Velcro]

2 more 

[RoverFolkUs]

2 minutes ago, Nyphur said:

For future reference buy pretty much anything with a Cisco badge on for a fiver or so (with the exception of really old 4 port routers / modems).

Most stuff is useful to those preparing for the CCNA/CCNP etc for creating home labs so there is always some level of demand. Even old 100Mbps switches are worth £30 or so.

 

The thing is I just knew! I had that gut feeling...

Next time.... can't win 'em all!

[wheel nut]

My Dacia Logan has steel wheels which I had previously painted black with grey rims.

I like this look but couldn’t help wondering what it would look like with a bit of colour in the wheels. I have always liked hot-rod red for wheels but didn’t think a mundane car like the Dacia would pull it off. hence I decided to tone down the red a little by adding some black

 

Bugger! I only added a little black (ratio about 6:1) but clearly have overdone it ending up with a sludgy purple. 

 

Still, one of my wheels in particular had the paint in a terrible state so I decided to press on regardless. Yep, that colour looks crap. 

So put a couple of coats of black on top and repainted the grey rim.

So all in all a bit of a pointless exercise but at least I’ve learned not to underestimate the effect of dark colours when mixing paint. 

[Asimo]

Changed the van’s heater resistor pack  after unpleasant grey smoke poured out of the Connect’s dash. I was expecting the worst but guessed heater fan and turned it off and the smoke faded. I don’t know what made it fail but it melted a hole in itself and in the duct it is fitted into. Amazon delivered a replacement in less than 24 hours and the job is done.

What should have been a half hour job turned into a ten minute job because everything that can be removed from the passenger side of the dash was already gone because I have been chasing a water leak. The hole melted in the duct can stay.

Odd to have this fail, last repair I did was to Mrs Asimo’s Vitara heater control, just days before it was sold. That one failed because the heater motor seized - quick unsieze and lube required. The van’s heater motor was fine, but I lubed it anyway.

 

[stuboy]

7 hours ago, RoverFolkUs said:

You had the obligatory plethora of people lugging flatfaced dog breeds about while you hear then screaming and gasping for air 

seen few them today, normally the dad wearing oversized sunnies and too small white t shirt...

[louiepj]

Oh, how could I forget! 
Easily the find of the day, I'm actually over the moon at getting this: 

A good old Autodata catalogue. From a cursory flick through it's got Daewoo's in there so there's bound to be gems of information that you'd never find anywhere else easily. Also from Citroen Xantias to the C4 Picasso, so basically late 90's to early 10's
Well worth the fiver I gave for it! No idea what it would be worth, but I think my money is safe. 

I have some earlier ones including a 2011which I paid £25 for off of evilbay last year but was watching other post 2000s go for up to £45 + postage.

[richardmorris]

Edited May 21, 2023 by richardmorris

[morrisoxide]

20 hours ago, High Jetter said:

An A60 was first car I ever drove*, age 3 or 4 on Dad's lap. G reg is very late, tho?

Austin A60s went upto 69 Morris Oxfords carried on until 71 I think. Most of the later ones where Ambulance cars, white paint with black interiors but I think they made it into general circulation.

Ha! The first car I "drove" was sat on my Dad's lap in his 5 Series.

This very car.

 

[RoverFolkUs]

10 hours ago, BeEP said:

With the 1300 sold, this morning I had a lovely 80 mile pootle around Norfolk in the LDV and along the way wisely* invested some of the proceeds in this...

...will probably be up for sale/roffle in a month or so!

Ooh, it looks like the alloys have got more than 3 spokes. Worthless m9 😅

[McRusty]

Just spent 20 minutes removing an ABS sensor - from a car that doesn't have ABS. Only one wheel had one, together with all the right clips. Must have been fitted from the factory as the car is very original.

Good old MG Rover

[RoverFolkUs]

5 minutes ago, McRusty said:

Just spent 20 minutes removing an ABS sensor - from a car that doesn't have ABS. Only one wheel had one, together with all the right clips. Must have been fitted from the factory as the car is very original.

Good old MG Rover

More likely had a replacement knuckle at some point in its life, seized pinch bolt(s) etc? 

[McRusty]

3 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

More likely had a replacement knuckle at some point in its life, seized pinch bolt(s) etc? 

It's possible. If it did they went to a lot of trouble to fit the clips and brackets. Nothing at all on the other corners.  Only done 31k miles.

 

[SiC]

26 minutes ago, McRusty said:

Just spent 20 minutes removing an ABS sensor - from a car that doesn't have ABS. Only one wheel had one, together with all the right clips. Must have been fitted from the factory as the car is very original.

Good old MG Rover

Does the sensor supply the speedo speed?

[High Jetter]

1 hour ago, morrisoxide said:

Austin A60s went upto 69 Morris Oxfords carried on until 71 I think. Most of the later ones where Ambulance cars, white paint with black interiors but I think they made it into general circulation.

Ha! The first car I "drove" was sat on my Dad's lap in his 5 Series.

This very car.

 

His was E reg, grey with a white flash. Years later, I bought an Oxford, JER 553F, at Shoreham auctions for £35. Used it for a couple of years, commuting. Sold for £120, first car I made a profit from.

[McRusty]

1 hour ago, SiC said:

Does the sensor supply the speedo speed?

No, thought of that too!

[Popsicle]

The front wheel arches on the Caddy have been getting a bit rusty over the last year, this is caused by a nice lump of foam that VW popped between the wing and arch liner soaking up water and road salt 😒, with nice weather this weekend it was time to sort them out.

Advance warning this won't be a top quality job, just functional to stop it spreading and having to stick duct tape on it at MOT time. Also I bought matching paint at vast expense, can't find it anywhere! So I'm using Toolstations finest generic black paint - black paints black paint innit?

View on the other side. Archliner is off on this side and it looks solid enough, just a bit of surface rust starting.

Poxy foam put in at the factory.

Got a flap disc on the angle grinder and attacked the wings.

Used some Vactan on the rusty bits, primed it, smoothed it, primed it again, smoothed it again, painted it and clear coated it - really needed a bit of filler, but as mentioned just needs to be functional and not getting worse and I'm crap with filler. I'll polish it up in a few days when the paints cured, hopefully look a bit better.

Also gave the arch tubs a seeing to, Vactan, zinc primer and underseal, should keep the rust at bay for a bit.

Thats the front end all done, think I'll tackle the back arches next weekend, no rust showing but I'd like to get behind the liners and have a shufty.

[Popsicle]

I also tidied up an annoyance, previous owner colour coded the side door sliding rails - it looks shit.

Easy enough to remove, just 5 spline bolts holding it in - a bit of sanding and scrapping later and a panic when I couldn't get the centre roller lined back up to get the rail in and it looks much better to me.

And yes the van has twin side doors so I had to do both sides, at least I knew how to line the roller up second time round.

[High Jetter]

If it's like Hijets, the centre roller bearing can fail. Probably a generic one, may have number stamped on it.

[Popsicle]

2 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

If it's like Hijets, the centre roller bearing can fail. Probably a generic one, may have number stamped on it.

The roller seems fine, just user error on my part, the roller has some up and down movement in it that I hadn't realised and I couldn't line the trim back up with the roller, I opened the door a bit more to help align it and the top roller came out causing a panic as I thought the door was going to hit the deck!

[High Jetter]

That happened to me once, as Hijets have a gap in the channels to remove the door. Fuck me, they're heavy!

[wuvvum]

It was a lovely sunny weekend so some fettling occurred, although not as much as I would have liked as I was feeling a bit rubbish yesterday.  First job was to slap some white paint on the worst of the rusty bits on the Renault 4, which I'd rust treated last week.  It's a really rubbish job using a brush and Lidl white metal paint, but it looks better than it did and it's always going to be a scruffy car anyway.  I went out it in this morning and got caught in the middle of a load of old Yank hot rods out for a run, which was interesting.  Also got stuck in the outside lane of the A47 when some senile old twat in a HR-V decided to put his foot down while I was overtaking him - I had to push the poor old 4 up to about 75 and it sounded like it was about to put a rod through the block.  

This afternoon I treated the 75 to a transmission fluid change - only a partial one though as I really couldn't be arsed with trying to drain the torque converter.  I got three and a bit litres out, and replaced it with exactly the same quantity of fresh fluid - I have no idea when it was last changed (if it ever has been) but it still had a bit of a red hue to it, didn't smell burnt and there weren't any metal particles floating around so I don't think it can have been too bad.  I took the car for a quick drive and didn't notice any immediate difference in shift quality, but I will give it a longer run at some point and see if it's any quicker to kick down now.

I made a start on fitting the replacement rear strut to the MG - got all the nuts and bolts loosened off and the anti-roll bar disconnected, so it should now be the 30-minute job it would in theory have been in the first place if rust wasn't a thing.  I'll hopefully get round to finishing the job one evening this week.

Then I ran the Renault 6 up to my welding mate's for him to have another look at now that the extent of the grot was a bit more apparent.  He told me which bits of floorpan to slice out, which was easily done with my shiny new Parkside grinder.  Then weldage occurred.

There's still a lot more to do, but at least it now has a floor which is actually joined on to the inner sill, which is a definite improvement.  I've left the car up there and cycled the 12 miles home - I don't really want to be driving it too much until it's finished.

[Popsicle]

3 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

That happened to me once, as Hijets have a gap in the channels to remove the door. Fuck me, they're heavy!

Side doors are stupidly heavy, I've changed a couple on Sprinters deffo a 2 man job.

[Six-cylinder]

Like a Mini Shitefest!

 

For those who don’t trawl through my 547 pages of drivel this weekend Friday-Saturday-Sunday-Monday 26-27-28-29 May we are opening up our small holding known as FoD to Autoshite members to visit.

Visit for an hour, day or the long weekend.

Camping for FREE is welcome as is entry.

Family’s and Pets are welcome.

Camping with us and going off and doing your own thing is welcome.

What is there to do:

·         Sit around, Drink tea and chat

·         Plenty of space for ball games

·         Great footpaths for a walk and bridleways if you bring your horse

·         Work on your own car or stuff you bring

·         Fit the engine back in our Saab 95 and make it run

·         Wire the headlights on our Peugeot 404

·         Make a moped or two run again so we have site transport

·         Can we make it run, Vauxhall Royal edition

·         Scalextric  

·         Camp fire

For guidance the nearest large town is Milton Keynes

PM me for joining instructions or questions.

 

[GingerNuttz]

Holes......

Pillar is fine so that's a win 🤣