The new news 24 thread

[High Jetter]

6 hours ago, JJ0063 said:

Have I fucked anything up here? It seems to function fine so I’m happy enough.

Slightly unconventional positioning of the non-hinge post, but I guess that's to accommodate a standard width gate. As said, if it works as a gate it's all good - but would point out that it possibly could be unbolted from the outside

[High Jetter]

6 hours ago, Rust Collector said:

I’m finally off to the county council - it’s taken about 3 months to go through the DBS checks and other vetting! I’m looking forward to it. Look out for me driving into eastbourne once a week in one of my shitters 😅

I'll keep an eye out. What are you doing for ESCC?

[junkyarddog]

Nice day for it. 

[24vdiamond]

Its looking like a car again, leg off, leg on! 😁

 

[ruffgeezer]

6 hours ago, vulgalour said:

I double checked, the vacancy is actually in Brigg which is about 7 miles from home, so they must just be doing the interviews all at one store, probably because not all stores have a suitable room.  Even if it wasn't I would have gone for the experience anyway, it's been a long time since I did an interview so it would be good practice.  Still not looking forward to it like, it's going to be a sweaty drive!  Did have me keeping half an eye on the beater market for something modern and spotted this interesting thing over on the blue.

https://forum.retro-rides.org/thread/226569/renault-megane-alize-classic-yorkshire

Not for me at the moment, but maybe for one of you lot?  Seems a reasonable proposition and a Megane of that age with a boot has to be a bit of a rarity.

Congratulations on the interview, hope it goes well.  As for beater market, the Rover 75 I have assuming it gets through the test will be available shortly thereafter.  

[ProgRocker]

2 hours ago, Matts_Rusty_Bus said:

I'll take the MK1 astra please 

Nice! I wanted to have a go in something rear wheel drive so I had a go in the beige Morris Marina in the background. Really enjoyed driving it. However I couldn't find first gear and the brakes had very little feel.  Drum brakes obviously. I'm used to disc brakes all around. 

 At the end of the drive I went to reverse park it. Found reverse a lot easily than 1st but then I stalled it. 

[Spottedlaurel]

Put the Carina E to work today:

First job, take a load of empty bulk bags from the last gravel delivery back to the merchant's.

Drove around listening to an old cassette I recorded in the early '90s, this one a bit of a dance-ish compilation with Stakker, Depth Charge etc.  This made me laugh, I wondered what were the chances, if any, of someone driving around in an automatic Carina E listening to Acid Over by Tyree.

Saw a few old cars bimbling around and remembered that it was the monthly autojumble/show/farmers' market thing at a local village, which for some reason I'd never manaaged to get to. Had some spare time so I called in, meeting up with this chap who I know from attending shows over the last 30 years. He's owned this fantastic Celica since it was a year old.

One stall had a box full of old tax disc holders from cars that had gone through their now-closed garage business, it was good to get this selection from a few around Ipswich that I remember.

Lots of stuff to unload when I got home - bags of landscaping bark to finally finish off the garden, new mower, lengths of timber, weekly shop and the  magazines etc I bought at the autojumble.

Carina E drove in that capable, comfortable way that seems to be particular to 1990s 1.8-2-litre midsize, non-sporty family cars, even with all the stuff on board. It has a decent turn of speed, good ride from tyres with a decent amount of sidewall and a roomy, comfortable interior. It still makes a lot of sense as a daily driver. Didn't really need it, and I still don't, but I'm glad I got it.

[JJ0063]

Some car sellers just seem to intentionally make life fucking difficult.

See car on FB, spares or repairs but it’s a simple engined car and the fault sounds relatively simple - been parked up a while, now when started the EML is on and it’s making a noise.  For the price of the car, it’s 100% worth a punt. Can’t really lose. 
 

Message seller - is it still available? Yes. Ok thanks, any chance of a quick vid so I can hear the noise, just to save both our time as there was no description of said noise. 
 

No reply. 
 

Ok, can I just come and have a look? Only 30 mins from me and due to the price, it’s worth the drive. 
 

Someone’s viewing at 6pm, will message and let you know. 
 

8pm, no message, advert still live. 
 

I message - “Did it it sell?”

”No, they didn’t turn up”

Ok, can I have that vid of the noise? 
 

“It’s stopped making the noise now, starts and drives just has EML”

Ok, when can I come and view?

”im at work now, il message you later”

 

I hate ones like this, the actual car looks very genuine. Only got 60 odd K on the clock, it’s a 2013 1.2 pez and would be a decent earner for £500 even if it needs a bit spending. 
 

The seller is a lady who claims to know nothing about cars and the actual description is fine, just shite at communication it seems. 
 

Not holding my breath but I’ll try and buy the shitting thing if I can arrange it. I have her address now, just no time as to when I can see it. 
 

I’ll take my diagnostics and see what the code is, if it’s nothing drastic it’ll get bought.

[Jenson Velcro]

Had a few hours to myself and with the lovely weather decided to go to Wiscombe Park and watch the hillclimb.

A relaxing time just chilling and saw one of my favourite cars in the metal. The Stovebolt Special.

[Popsicle]

Time to swap the all season tyres over to summers on the Caddy couriering van. I know this might seem daft as all season means well, all seasons, but I prefer to just use them during the winter months and a more traditional tyre during the warmer* months, with my mileage it does make a noticeable difference to fuel consumption, I also have 4 different sets of steel wheels cluttering up the garage.

During the swap over I wanted to have a trail fit of some 16" steelies I picked up cheap (£40) with bigger tyres on, 215/60/16, compared to my normal 195/65/15, this increases the circumference from 1993mm to 2087mm according to the wheel calculating sites. I won't use the tyres as although they have plenty of tread they are dated 2013, are perishing and are winter tyres.

Current all season tyres.

New 16" wheels.

They fill the wheel well a bit more, also not catching on anything, even on full lock, so happy with those, just need a sanding and a coat of satin black paint on the wheels.

The idea was to go with a taller sidewall, 215/65/16, I don't think I'm going to get away with it on the front without some wheel arch liner trimming, the 60 profile tyres are really close now.

Took it for a spin and it drives slightly better, more feeling on turning in on corners, probably due to a wider tyre. Speedo seems more accurate too, at GPS 60mph it was showing 61mph on the dash, with the old tyres it showed 64mph at GPS 60mph, it was also revving at 2.1k at 60, previously it was at 2.2k. Have I found the secret sauce for more mpgs? Or is the greater resistance of a wider tyre going to increase my fuel consumption? 🤷‍♂️

As mentioned in the grumpy thread one of the all seasons I took off had a present waiting for me. It was on the inner edge so I wouldn't have noticed it, good timing to be fair, it could have let go at an inopportune moment.

Thats fooked then, I've some Michelin Crossclimate 2's to match it with come next winter, so not the end of the world. The tyre is only 6 months/14k miles old, still with 6.5mm of tread left.

Just need to find some suitable 215/60/16 tyres now.

[High Jetter]

You're back on the road now, or soon?

[Popsicle]

28 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

You're back on the road now, or soon?

Not work wise, I'm having this year off.

[High Jetter]

6 minutes ago, Popsicle said:

Not work wise, I'm having this year off.

Lazy sod! 🤣

[Lankytim]

The 2cv was in desperate need of a battery and my pile of used batteries were all knackered (which is why they were in the pile, but it doesn’t stop you trying a couple). The Citroen branded battery that came with the 2cv was absolutely cream crackered and dated 1997. I did try to charge it, but of course it’s karked it.

Batteries are quite expensive aren’t they? A chance browse around Halfords while the wife was in Morrisons led me to then battery isle. The absolute cheapest batteries in their range are a sort of “Asda smart price” of batteries. With my trade card in hand an appropriate battery was scanned out at £38 odd. 3 year warranty so I took the chance.
 

Nothing says  cheapskate owner like a Halfords Essentials battery but there we are. I might peel off the shite Halfords sticker but then that might affect the warranty. Just a couple more things and it’s MOT time! 

[richardmorris]

30 minutes ago, Lankytim said:

The 2cv was in desperate need of a battery and my pile of used batteries were all knackered (which is why they were in the pile, but it doesn’t stop you trying a couple). The Citroen branded battery that came with the 2cv was absolutely cream crackered and dated 1997. I did try to charge it, but of course it’s karked it.

Batteries are quite expensive aren’t they? A chance browse around Halfords while the wife was in Morrisons led me to then battery isle. The absolute cheapest batteries in their range are a sort of “Asda smart price” of batteries. With my trade card in hand an appropriate battery was scanned out at £38 odd. 3 year warranty so I took the chance.
 

Nothing says  cheapskate owner like a Halfords Essentials battery but there we are. I might peel off the shite Halfords sticker but then that might affect the warranty. Just a couple more things and it’s MOT time! 

I see you have the dim dip set up still. Could be why your light switch was cooking.  I’d recommend you bin it.

http://www.2cvclub.pl/dokumentacja/nowe2014/Electrical/DIM-DIP.pdf

 

and

https://shared.yellowgrey.com/2015/11/22/removing-a-2cvs-dim-dip-system-quick-version/

 

 

[Popsicle]

13 hours ago, High Jetter said:

Lazy sod! 🤣

Its the self employed courier way mate, I've mentioned it in the deliveryshite thread, I'm a lazy person! 😴

[High Jetter]

33 minutes ago, Popsicle said:

Its the self employed courier way mate, I've mentioned it in the deliveryshite thread, I'm a lazy person! 😴

Enjoy! (I was only messing, I think I recall why you're off)

[Lankytim]

2 hours ago, richardmorris said:

I see you have the dim dip set up still. Could be why your light switch was cooking.  I’d recommend you bin it.

http://www.2cvclub.pl/dokumentacja/nowe2014/Electrical/DIM-DIP.pdf

 

and

https://shared.yellowgrey.com/2015/11/22/removing-a-2cvs-dim-dip-system-quick-version/

 

 

I’ve been advised over on Facebook to delete it. It seems to be as simple as just unplugging the relays and adding a jumper wire to one of the relay plugs. From what I’ve heard the dim-dip setup were a really bad idea to begin with and are best disabled. 
 

I’ve also added tell-tales for the indicators and main beam which should keep any MOT testers happy and make operating this contraption a little easier. The indicators don’t self cancel so without a tell tale I might end up driving around all day with the left indicator on or something. The flasher unit does make a noise but it might not be audible over the sound of the engine. 
 

I used a couple of dashboard lights of unknown origin, probably salvaged from a breakers many years ago from a Hillman Minx or something. They were part of the rats nest of wiring I removed recently, the previous owner had made an abortive attempt at adding tell tales and the whole lot was taped to the steering column. The tell tales didn’t quite fit the holes fitted with blanks on the dashboard so I got the cone cutter out and opened them up a little. A little hot glue gun action later and after connecting the factory installed wiring I now have a full compliment of dash lights! 

I’ll order a hazard switch this week and with that fitted I should have 100% working electrics. 

Any ideas what these “aftermarket” dash lights came from?

[SiC]

2 hours ago, Lankytim said:

Batteries are quite expensive aren’t they?

They are but they're also worth a fair bit as scrap! Hence the base material costs are high. 

[brownnova]

Went to a cracking car show on the Wirral today! 

 

Got home and put the 2CV in the garage just in time for the storms to arrive! 

[wesacosa]

42 minutes ago, brownnova said:

Went to a cracking car show on the Wirral today! 

 

Got home and put the 2CV in the garage just in time for the storms to arrive! 

some great stuff there, loving the Fuego and the Jesse Pinkman spec Tercel

[wuvvum]

Last weekend I spent a lot of time getting pretty much nowhere.  This weekend ended up being slightly more productive.

Last weekend I got the split intake hose off the Z4 and attempted a repair.  This turned out to be a waste of time as the little pipe that had split had to be stretched so far to get where it needed to be that I couldn't get any glue to hold it together - not helped by the fact that the rubber was perished.  So I had no choice but to fork out a ridiculous 42 quid for a new hose.  It arrived Friday and I fitted it yesterday (fiddly fecker of a job).  Fired the engine up and it ran spot on from cold - no missfiring, no engine light.  Took the car for a spin up the road and it was noticeably more responsive, and nailing it in third a couple of times it spun happily up to 5,000rpm with no misbehaviour (traffic and speed limits prevented me from giving it a proper caning).  So I'm going to call that fixed.  It's not perfect - there's still a slight hesitation when flooring it from low revs - but it's good enough.

Now I just need to fix the sticky steering (which actually wasn't too bad today despite it being the hottest day of the year so far) and it'll be fully usable.  I did start to have a look but I don't think I can get a socket and ratchet in there so I'm going to have to invest in a T11 Torx spanner before I can go any further.

The Lexmoto had been refusing to start, then it started pissing petrol out of the carb.  Diagnosing a stuck float I took it all to bits, but I couldn't get it to a point where it'd work properly - it was either not letting any fuel through at all or it was overflowing.  I looked on eBay to find the price of a replacement float and valve and discovered I could get a complete brand new carb for £14 delivered.  So that was the obvious solution to save even more buggering about!  The carb was also delivered yesterday, I fitted it and the bike fired straight up and ran fine.  So that's another job jobbed.

Shiny new £42 BMW hose:

Shiny new £14 Lexmoto carb:

I did also attempt last weekend to fit the replacement exhaust to the Spacy, but annoyingly although it's very similar there are enough differences between the 125 and the 150 that it's not a straight swap - one of the lower mounting holes is in the wrong place.  I could probably do without that mount but it'd be putting a lot of strain on the studs in the cylinder head, which aren't in the best condition anyway.  Also one of the other mounting bolts has seized solid (unsurprising being a steel bolt through an alloy crankcase) which is hindering things a bit.  I've not worked out a solution just yet. 

The Spacy did at least fire up though, after quite a bit of cranking, and ran happily for several minutes - the dip switch seems to have joined the gang of switches that have gone on the blink though, I can get main beam fine but I can only get dipped if I hold the switch in exactly the right position.  The switches on the spares bike are completely different so I can't use those.  I did get the headlight assembly off the spares bike though and I'll be fitting it at some point - one thing it does have that the Spacy's doesn't is a manual override for the pop-up mechanism, which has never worked on the Spacy since I've had it so the headlight has been permanently up.  It'll be good to be able to fold it down for the full '80s'futuristic look.

One job I was hoping to tackle this weekend was the valve clearances on the Renault 6.  Poking round under the bonnet though it soon became apparent that this was going to be a more involved job than I'd thought - I'd read through the procedure in the HBOL, but hadn't realised that they were doing it with the engine removed from the car.  To get the rocker cover off the throttle linkage has to be removed - this is held in with C-clips which are guaranteed to go pinging off never to be seen again, I do have a box of replacements somewhere but I can't find it at the moment.  Also I don't think there's enough clearance to get the rocker cover fully off without removing the gear linkage, and to do that I need to take out the cross brace that runs across the engine bay above the gearbox - but as well as the gear linkage the cross brace also has the top radiator hose running through it, which means I need to take that off and partially drain the cooling system.

I only had a couple of free hours left by this point and there was no way I was going to get it done in that time, and I need the 6 to be mobile so I can move it off the drive when I need to charge the Ampera, so that's going to have to wait for another weekend.  The tappets have been rattly for the 16 years I've owned the car, I'm sure another couple of weeks won't hurt...

So I went for a blat up the coast road in the Z4 instead.  Which turned out to be most enjoyable, very little traffic despite it being a lovely sunny Sunday, the only time I got held up (and then only slightly) was by a giffer in a Lotus Elise (!) but I was only behind him for a mile or so.

Now that it's running properly this car is definitely growing on me.

[The Vicar]

1200 miles covered in this over the weekend, Rome to Lyon and back. 

5 up with baggage and we were snug. Will be looking at a roof box next:

What can I say about it? I did Rome to Aosta (450ish miles) with a stop outside Bologna for LPG and Milan for lunch, and no real complaints. For a 1 litre 3 cyl loaded up to the gills it performed very well. I have no other experience of new 3 cyl engines, but I can say that if I knew no better I would think that this was a 1.6. 

I took to the passenger seat for the last leg of the journey and did Bologna-Rome yesterday on the return, so all in 650ish miles at the wheel. What can I say about it? The seats after a while can get a bit uncomfortable, I think the material is a bit tough/hard. Other than that, nothing really. I’m still really surprised at how well it drove. Whatever about the longevity of these engines remains to seen I suppose, but in the meantime I’ll call this a good “an car”

[wuvvum]

I'm slightly disappointed you didn't take the Ypsilon.  Actually that could almost be the first line of a joke - "How do you get five priests into an Ypsilon?"

[stuboy]

Yesterday myself, missus, the boy, the oldest stepdaughter and my niece popped up too the 'the stag pub' on the roundabout of charing Kent, these are the older motors there.. very nice too, there was some exotica like aston martin , mclaren etc if u like I can put them up too.

[dozeydustman]

1 hour ago, stuboy said:

Yesterday myself, missus, the boy, the oldest stepdaughter and my niece popped up too the 'the stag pub' on the roundabout of charing Kent, these are the older motors there.. very nice too, there was some exotica like aston martin , mclaren etc if u like I can put them up too.

That HA Viva is dribbleworthy

[lesapandre]

Travelling through France I came across a bunch of British touring with what I can only describe as Chit-Chitty-Bang-Bang cars. There were about 20 together - I did not manage to snap them all as only some stopped. I did not have chance to speak to anybody - maybe someone here knows who the are? The cars certainly weren't  simple restorations - more like variations on a vintage theme. Overall very impressive.

[Dyslexic Viking]

36 minutes ago, lesapandre said:

Travelling through France I came across a bunch of British touring with what I can only describe as Chit-Chitty-Bang-Bang cars. There were about 20 together - I did not manage to snap them all as only some stopped. I did not have chance to speak to anybody - maybe someone here knows who the are? The cars certainly weren't  simple restorations - more like variations on a vintage theme. Overall very impressive.

 

@barrett may be know these.

[Spottedlaurel]

1 hour ago, lesapandre said:

Travelling through France I came across a bunch of British touring with what I can only describe as Chit-Chitty-Bang-Bang cars. There were about 20 together - I did not manage to snap them all as only some stopped. I did not have chance to speak to anybody - maybe someone here knows who the are? The cars certainly weren't  simple restorations - more like variations on a vintage theme. Overall very impressive........

Maybe heading back from visiting the Historic GP at Monaco?

[brownnova]

1 hour ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

@barrett may be know these.

Came here to post the exact same!