The new news 24 thread

[junkyarddog]

Radio in the 205 had been acting up,so decided to replace it with this Top quality* two knob Harrier that I'd bought at a boot sale the last time I was in Norfolk for not very much.

It only works 😁

Looks period correct too.

Chuffed!

[Yoss]

Whilst I've got the Triumph out I thought I'd try and sort the garage out.

This is what I've got. Eight of these blue stacking boxes mainly full of Triumph spares plus a couple of open boxes. What was once a work bench is now stacked with more recently acquired, mostly Škoda bits. There's more in the loft. These boxes stack in certain parts of the garage and still leave room for the Triumph but I don't really have room for any more 

But I've been a bit ruthless and condensed the eight boxes in to five leaving three empty to fill up with the stuff on the workbench. Plus I've moved more, mainly lightweight and clean, stuff in to the loft.

But the strangest thing I've discovered is this. A little blue box.

I don't ever remember seeing this before. So I opened it and it's a fancy old tyre pressure gauge. But not any old tyre pressure gauge, it's only a bloody Borgward one.

And on closer inspection I noticed the slightly tatty box has a Borgward logo on it too.

What's also slightly weird is that we were discussing Borgwards briefly on another thread on here only a couple of days ago.

So I can only see two courses of action from here. Find somebody with a Borgward and sell it to them or buy my own Borgward to put in. 

 

[Dyslexic Viking]

The road that goes past the house is to be widened so a logging machine felled the trees along the road today, these are fascinating machines to look at when they are working.

 

[Dyslexic Viking]

39 minutes ago, Yoss said:

 buy my own Borgward to put in. 

https://www.carandclassic.com/car/C1617002 

[Wibble]

3 hours ago, junkyarddog said:

Radio in the 205 had been acting up,so decided to replace it with this Top quality* two knob Harrier that I'd bought at a boot sale the last time I was in Norfolk for not very much.

It only works 😁

Looks period correct too.

Chuffed!

I bought one those about 1987!

[Yoss]

30 minutes ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

https://www.carandclassic.com/car/C1617002 

That does look proper Autoshite doesn't it. The advert says it starts and drives but doesn't stop. I don't suppose that matters.

[Dyslexic Viking]

2 minutes ago, Yoss said:

That does look proper Autoshite doesn't it. The advert says it starts and drives but doesn't stop. I don't suppose that matters.

And it's cheap for one of these and not far from you so thought should share.

[Yoss]

14 minutes ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

And it's cheap for one of these and not far from you so thought should share.

It is cheap but I can see why. And it's about 2 hours away which isn't that far and I could stop in Lyme Regis on the way back where they have several excellent bakeries. Although it is very hilly so the lack of brakes might* be a problem.

[vulgalour]

Stuck the big chrome trims on the Princess again since I fancied a change.

[wuvvum]

As alluded to a couple of pages back I have finally got the new offside front strut fitted to the Z4, and I'm pleased to report that it's transformed the way the car drives - even the knocking that I had thought was a knackered balljoint has gone.  I've got it booked in tomorrow to have the tracking done and it should then hopefully drive as well as a 20-year-old 192k-mile car can be expected to.  Then I just need to sort out its other issues - the sticky steering, the battery drain and the engine misfire when cold / throwing a wobbly if I try to take it over 4,000rpm. 

I was intending to attempt to diagnose the latter two issues this weekend, but predictably when I tried to do so the car behaved perfectly.  I thought I was onto something with the battery drain as the multimeter was initially showing just over 1.2 amps with everything switched off, but after 10 minutes or so that had gone down to about 80mA, and that was the same each time I tried it.  It's now gone three days without flattening its battery, and that's with the smaller battery off the Zafira on there.  I also plugged in the laptop and took the car for a thrash up the coast road to see if I could get a fault code when the engine threw its usual wobbly, but instead it revved happily to 5,000rpm and beyond and didn't even put the engine light on.  I'm pretty sure it has a vacuum leak though as there is an audible hiss at idle, which gets much louder if I give the throttle a sudden blip, after which the engine will misfire for a few seconds.  It's going to be a two-man job to track the leak down though, so I'll run the car up to my mate's at the weekend and get him to listen while I blip or vice versa.

The Lexmoto also threw a bit of a wobbly on Sunday - I fired it up and it ran fine for a bit then cut out, and I noticed petrol pissing out of the carb overflow.  So it looks like that has a stuck float - I've taken the carb off and I'm going to take it to bits one of these evenings and see what's what.

The rest of the fleet has been behaving remarkably well.  I took the Mobylette for its first ride of the year on Sunday, and other than taking a bit longer than usual to start from cold and being a bit spluttery for the first mile or so, it ran surprisingly well - in fact I ended up taking it for the longest ride I've been on since I got it back on the road, and it didn't conk out once, although it still has a major flat spot on part throttle when it's warm so that will still need investigating at some point - not hugely urgent though given that most of the roads round here are NSL so the bike spends most of its time flat out.

The Renault 6 ran fine as it always does (although it's definitely getting more tappety, I really need to do the valve clearances this year), but what I am pleased about is that my brake repair from last year is holding up fine - I did a couple of fairly heavy stops and the brakes didn't stick on at all.  The bungee cord holding the bonnet closed also seems to be doing the trick, for now.  The Volvo also ran great, managing an uphill overtake of a dawdling giffer in an X-Trail (it's not a sporting engine by any means but it still sounds nice when given some beans), the temperature gauge held steady at just below half and it didn't seem to lose any coolant.  I do need to sort the brakes out this year though, they're OK but the offside rear still isn't doing much so it does still pull to the left noticeably under heavy braking. 

The Visa's brake pedal has gone a bit softer again but it's still much better than it was previously.  On Saturday I swapped the wheels front to rear (when I got the car the rears were the correct 155/65x13, the fronts were oversized and rather worn 165/70x13).  It's made a noticeable improvement to the steering - it's lighter at parking speeds and weighs up less in faster corners.  It does look a bit odd with the fatter tyres on the back, but the spare wheel has a nearly new correctly-sized tyre, so I only need to find one more to have a complete set.  To do that I need to find a tyre place that can balance centreless wheels...

[SiC]

Top notch facebook car fixing advice 

 

[SiC]

#LivingTheDream

I have just realised that garage door actually ending up costing more than what those two heaps combined were to buy. 🫠

[Mr Pastry]

Just a snapshot from the local 2CV group on Sunday, our regular monthly breakfast meet before we set out for Drive it Day.  With bonus Ancient Austin.

[vulgalour]

Had a really good day today.  Got Universal Credit approved so that's my safety net for 12 months (bit of a surprise, since I've never claimed I get the slightly less arduous 'new business' version as a self employed person) as well as info on business and art courses that are available to me as a mature student along with grants I had no idea I could apply for to help with costs.  This was tempered somewhat by coming back to find I had a parking ticket, the job centre hasn't got a car park and I was told I'd be good for an hour on a neighbouring street that's single-yellowed.. I got ticketed at some point during the 45 minutes I was in for my appointment.  It's a reflection on my state of mind that the prospect of a surprise £35 bill didn't make me that angry, just a bit disappointed.

Then went over to the art centre and got some excellent help and advice there on artist networking opportunities, gallery opportunities and an insight into just how active the local art scene is.  Also got to see what sort of thing the art centre promotes and quickly realised it's a very broad church with their featured artist doing abstract sculptures in materials you might consider to be rubbish (I loved them, if I had space there was one I would have taken home), another artist doing miniature portraits, and a shop full of samples of local artists work from wargaming miniatures to ceramics to jewellery to glass items.  My stuff is very different to what was there but then what was there was very different to everything that was there too so that's pretty neat.  There's local studio space I can hire that's not exhorbitantly expensive, a poetry night that is apparently both good and good for networking, and generally just a shitload of stuff that's made me feel rejuvenated about my job.

Having access to an actual meatspace art community really helps and something I've not had for above a decade.  Scunthorpe continues to treat me well in ways I was never expecting and that light at the end of the tunnel is looking a bit more like the exit than an oncoming train today.

[HMC]

[richardmorris]

2 hours ago, Mr Pastry said:

Just a snapshot from the local 2CV group on Sunday, our regular monthly breakfast meet before we set out for Drive it Day.  With bonus Ancient Austin.

Can I pinch the picture for the next Citroen car club mag please? Full attribution etc. ps which local group?

[Mr Pastry]

9 minutes ago, richardmorris said:

Can I pinch the picture for the next Citroen car club mag please? Full attribution etc. ps which local group?

You are very welcome to use it, it's the Wye Knots, at Newton Court, Leominster. 

[RayMK]

The continuing (but not for much longer) saga  of my FTP'd '94 Fiat Tipo 1.4ie...

The reality is that my unpredictable health combined with age is causing enthusiasm to evaporate on this one.  I want to relinquish ownership in the next 4-6 weeks. It is currently parked at the garage where the AA towed it.  The garage has been fine and is letting the car sit there for a bit longer. It has been there since mid July last year.  Obviously, to save it from being recycled the FTP cause will have to be found and, even if rectification is possible within a reasonable budget, the car will need recommissioning after sitting motionless for nearly 10 months.  Its MOT expired at the end of 2023.  I've also put similar words on the Fiat forum.  Price is negligible.  If you take my problem child away it will be free. 

I also intend to put my '61 Reliant Regal MKVI up for sale soon.  Drive-it day was going to be my last fling with it but my comfortable armchair won!  This one works and won't be free but an autoshiter discount would apply. It is technically road legal but has not seen many miles for the last few years. It would likely manage a local run with fairly low risk.  A trailer would be advisable until a new owner has gained some confidence in its reliability.

If there is any interest on here for the Fiat or the Reliant I'll put a proper advert in the for sale section. 

[Wibble]

Shame but I hope they find good homes and best wishes to you.

[egg]

On the Turner Prize shortlist this year....

[Rust Collector]

Any interest in a roffle of this beautiful* machine?

It's a 1.5DCi, it's tired, it's scruffy, it has a clattery and leaking sunroof, but it still drives and returns reasonable fuel economy and has a ticket up to Feb 2025. I'm thinking something along the lines of £13 plus some multibuy action.

[loserone]

47 minutes ago, Rust Collector said:

Any interest in a roffle of this beautiful* machine?

It's a 1.5DCi, it's tired, it's scruffy, it has a clattery and leaking sunroof, but it still drives and returns reasonable fuel economy and has a ticket up to Feb 2025. I'm thinking something along the lines of £13 plus some multibuy action.

Fuck yes.  Two please 

[RoverFolkUs]

1 hour ago, Rust Collector said:

Any interest in a roffle of this beautiful* machine?

It's a 1.5DCi, it's tired, it's scruffy, it has a clattery and leaking sunroof, but it still drives and returns reasonable fuel economy and has a ticket up to Feb 2025. I'm thinking something along the lines of £13 plus some multibuy action.

I'm more impressed that a 1.5 DCI from 2002 still exists courtesy of Delphi's batch of fuel pumps made of cornflakes 🤣

[RoverFolkUs]

1 hour ago, Rust Collector said:

Any interest in a roffle of this beautiful* machine?

It's a 1.5DCi, it's tired, it's scruffy, it has a clattery and leaking sunroof, but it still drives and returns reasonable fuel economy and has a ticket up to Feb 2025. I'm thinking something along the lines of £13 plus some multibuy action.

A further point - given the GVxx number plate, I'd bet that was originally supplied by Baldocks of wivelsfield Renault? Although the factory plates are probably long gone by now, perhaps earlier paperwork as well, so there may be no way of knowing. I'd be amused none the less if it turns out it was! 

[Rust Collector]

1 minute ago, RoverFolkUs said:

I'm more impressed that a 1.5 DCI from 2002 still exists courtesy of Delphi's batch of fuel pumps made of cornflakes 🤣

I should hasten to add that during my ‘Summer of Misery’ a couple of years back where I spent a long time chasing a persistent fault on this car, the injectors were sent off for testing. The chap was looking for any contaminants that would suggest pump failure as every garage and mechanic I spoke to said ‘fuel pump is deffo fucked M9, needs an entire fuel system’, and he came back to advise that whilst the injectors were showing some wear from age they were within spec and showed no sign of contaminants to suggest pump failure.

The fault turned out to be a crank sensor that would read at low RPM’s but couldn’t manage higher than about 1500rpm and would cut out.

Sensor replaced, car fixed!

Disclaimer: I cannot guarantee that the Delphi pump will not grenade at some point in the future.

[Dan29]

On 22/04/2024 at 20:25, Yoss said:

It is cheap but I can see why. And it's about 2 hours away which isn't that far and I could stop in Lyme Regis on the way back where they have several excellent bakeries. Although it is very hilly so the lack of brakes might* be a problem.

Any other tips for Lyme Regis? I'm going there for the first time in June - holiday / house-hunting 🙂

[grogee]

3 hours ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Baldocks of wivelsfield

This is made up AICM£5

[High Jetter]

5 minutes ago, grogee said:

This is made up AICM£5

It actually isn't, I can vouch for it.

[Dyslexic Viking]

The old taxi has finally come back on the road again after 6 months of winter storage.

[RoverFolkUs]

7 minutes ago, grogee said:

This is made up AICM£5

'nuff said! 

Now sadly closed to make way for HOUZIZ or something.. NIMBYISM etc 😅