The new news 24 thread

[R9UKE]

Thank you gents - it got more looks than the Avantime today

[Mr_Bo11ox]

HOLY SHIT, that Rover is a beauty!!! Is it an 'e' or an 'i'?

[R9UKE]

It's an "i". Being a BL virgin I'm unsure as to which is better... ?

[CreepingJesus]

The 'i', it's the multipoint injection. The 'e' was single point iirc.

Top buy, it looks well.

[Angrydicky]

That Rover is gorgeous. Looks really tidy as well!

[ashmicro]

That XX is astonishing. Top find.

[Cavcraft]

'All of the above'.

 

That Rover is bloody lush, top bombing.

[eddyramrod]

Agreed, another lovely Rover.

 

Meanwhile, today I thought I should resurrect my bikes. My "free" mountain bike has been sitting on a flat front tyre all winter, so I loaded it into the pickup and will take it down the bike shop in the morning. They do puncture repairs at no charge, but I think the tyre's pretty rotten and will also have to be replaced. Won't be expensive. So, having got "bike" in my head, I dragged out my Eddy Mercx Giro d'Italia which moved here in bits, as I'd stripped off the rotten tyres and tubes and bought new but never fitted them. Bit of air in the new tubes and... one has a gash. I found it by dumping the tube in the swimming pool and pumping it up a bit... OK, so that one goes in the truck too, they can repair that at the same time. The other one is fine so I've fitted it to the back wheel and put it on the bike. Tomorrow afternoon or Tuesday morning, I should have an actual choice of cycles, for the first time in years!

 

Pumped up the tyres on Mrs R's Raleigh too and she's been riding it round the yard a bit. Getting on and off is a bit of a struggle but once she gets going she finds it helps her knees. So that's good!

[wuvvum]

Picked the Primera up on Thursday evening and have been running it around for the last few days. It's quite bizarre driving a modern(ish) family car with variomatic transmission. It's a lot like a scooter in that it doesn't respond as instantly to the throttle as a conventional auto as there's a fraction of a second pause while the engine revs up and the transmission takes up the slack, and it's also odd to hear the engine revs dropping as the speed is increasing, but it seems to work well enough, and its top ratio is quite high-geared for a Japanese hatch - 70 is around 2,500rpm. The manual override is a bit odd as it shifts gradually up to the next "step" rather than instantaneously. Down shifts are a lot quicker.

 

Overall it's not a bad thing though, handles bloody well (although the steering is a little on the light side for my tastes), the seats are supportive, it's reasonably quick once it's up and moving (off the line isn't brilliant) and the computer reckons it's averaging 36.5mpg. We'll just have to see how the belt drive copes with being thrashed round Marham for hours on end...

[Mike D]

Swapped out the rear speakers, repaired the doorcards and winders, changed out the parcel shelf holders on the mondeo, and got these:

 

 

for Pete M

 

Do they look ok dude?

[Cavcraft]

Have you track day-ed an auto before Wuvvum? I wouldn't mind throwing the CLK round Oulton Park one day, but despite the fact it's Tiptronic (or whatever bollocks it's called) I'm thinking the lag would be a right pain in the arse, especially coming out of corners.

[wuvvum]

Nope, so far all my track days have been done in manuals. I do know that there are several auto-boxed cars that do turn up at Marham though - some of the Skylines and the occasional Beemer or Senator - and they seem to enjoy themselves just fine. I suppose you'd just get used to the lag and get on the throttle slightly earlier than you would in a manual.

[Cavcraft]

Aye, sounds like a good plan that, thanks. I just need to consider the possibility of grenading it I suppose, maybe getting a £200 shit heap (instead of a £1,000 shit heap) would be best to start off with.

[wuvvum]

I have to say the most fun I've had on trackdays was with cars that were so cheap / disposable that I really didn't give a flying feck about breaking them - last time I went to Marham I took a Renault 21 Turbo, and I think I hit the redline once during the whole course of the day - the rest of the time I was short-shifting up at 5,000rpm to avoid caning the engine, which kind of defeated the point.

 

The first time I went was in a 2-litre non-turbo Legacy estate, which wasn't particularly quick but it cost me £150 and spent the whole day bouncing off the rev limiter as I really didn't care if it went bang. Did an amusing line in lift-off oversteer too, that car. As it happened it did go bang two weeks later on the A11 (and had to be towed to the next services behind the Innocenti ) but I got my money back in scrap.

[Mike D]

I'd be mega wary of grenading the 722.6 auto box Billy, they're shite!

[CreepingJesus]

I worked with a guy who used to chip in with his mates to buy a vaguely sporty, short T+T heap from the auctions. Then they'd thrash it round Knockhill until it broke. One of the notable failures was an ex-Fife Constabulary 'interceptor spec' XR4x4. It survived two or three trackdays before they took pity on it.

[Lord Sterling]

Finally managed to stick a new tyre on the spare wheel. There was a bit of shuffle around of wheels as the spare had been put on the front to pass the MOT. The spare wheel was still pretty much clean compared to the other wheel so I decided to have a new spare tyre put on that wheel, the old wheel laying in the boot had the tyre from what was now going to be my spare wheel (If that makes any sense)

 

Now all I've got to do is clean out the spare wheel well and clean up the spare wheel to make it sparkle.

 

Also - Tried some of that Turtle Wax leather cleaner/feed not sure abot the 'cleaner' bit didnt seem to be able to shift anything, the seats are ok but I think they need a clean as does the carpet. Bloody hell, looking forward to that

[wuvvum]

Took the A3 down to the petrol station this afternoon to check the tyre pressures as the OSR was looking a bit low, and the speedo has decided to start working, having been inoperative for at least 18 months. The only thing I can think of is that I replaced the fuse for the reversing lights the other day, but why that would affect the speedo I have no idea. Anyway, it should make it easier to sell, and it also means the trip computer can do its thing properly, so the average fuel consumption readout is now reading 37.5 mpg, rather than the 23.5 it defaulted to before.

[R9UKE]

^ Sounds like a French car.

[Danblez]

After reading a very informative thread over on the blue forum about Coolant/Antifreeze I realised I had put the wrong stuff in the camper as an emergency during the cold snap. So coolant change was set about, drained the rad ok but could I find the drain plug in the block? Decided that it would be better off not snapping that off anyway and so flushed, topped up and flushed 3 times until it was pretty clear and filled up with the correct IAT coolant.

 

http://retrorides.proboards.com/index.c ... 618&page=2

 

Also dropped the oil and changed the filter whilst I was there. MOT time in a couple of weeks so need to do a couple of small jobs before then.

[Cavcraft]

Cheers Mike, Wuvvum. I couldn't afford to trash the Merc so will wait for some dish and go and buy an old banger to razz round Oulton in.

[dollywobbler]

BX door is reattached thanks to using two nails (as temporary measures until I could hammer in the hinge pins) and a trolley jack. An added bonus is that this replacement door has a door check strap that actually manages to hold the door open! This afternoon's fun and games will involve refitting the door latch and lock mechanisms, the window glass and electric assembly and no doubt slashing my arms on those lovely sharp edges on the door gaps.

[barefoot]

Porsche chucked two pints of coolant on the drive at the weekend.

I thought I'd better see what it was larking about at & the rubber had fell off the radiator cap.

- new one - £5 - sorted

 

Oh, and a VC10 appears to be flying circuits at EMA - you wouldn't believe how noisy it is!

[eddyramrod]

Both bikes now sit on inflated tyres! I stripped the old ones off the racer back in 2006/7 and bought new - finally I've fitted the buggers! Rode it around my yard a little bit to celebrate. The brakes are crap. Mountain bike is up and running again too, and Mrs R has been round the yard on hers again. It's all happening on the bike front!

[Negative Creep]

Not sure if I'm being paranoid, but I'm sure I'm starting to detect a bit of clutch slip. Arsebeans (maybe).

[RobT]

MoT day tomorrow for the BX and the anxiety is already building up!

 

I finally got round to replacing the cracked front reg plate yesterday so that's one less fail point. The front brake pads need renewing (which I've got) but I'm hoping it'll get through the test so I can do them at my leisure. It had no advisories last year but that doesn't stop me being anxious.

 

If it passes OK my Dad can have it as my Montego is now more or less fixed.

[DSdriver]

Both bikes now sit on inflated tyres! I stripped the old ones off the racer back in 2006/7 and bought new - finally I've fitted the buggers! Rode it around my yard a little bit to celebrate. The brakes are crap. Mountain bike is up and running again too, and Mrs R has been round the yard on hers again. It's all happening on the bike front!

Great to hear that Mrs R. is well enough to ride her bike, hows's her balance?

[tonedepear]

AAARGH + HNNNGH + FFS. Bloody modern fiat/vauxhalls.

 

Albert will laugh at me, but here it is.

 

Night shift.

 

Plan for the day: sleep.

 

Actual sequence of events: wake up at 11 cos it's hotter than the sun in south facing bedroom. Decide to make the most of sun and get round to changing oil in car. Spend 2 hours rounding off appalling GM hollow sump nut and swearing. Drive to tame garage down the road and offer a tenner to anyone who can loosen said nut half a turn. Stand in sun for an hour watching two of them struggle with it. Gain reassurance that I'm not being soft and nut has probably not been out since factory. Drive to Vauxhall dealer and buy replacement nut. Open can of cheap cider. Cover self in boiling oil. Fit new nut. Fill with new oil. Drop old oil on drive / new trainers. Notice oil filter still in packet. Curse. Walk dog. Go to bed. Labour time 5 hours.

 

Untitled by Tony Lloyd, on Flickr

[cort16]

I know how you feel. It took me three hours to change one disc and set of pads on my 7 series last Saturday. On Sunday I spent another 3 hours doing the other one but had to give up as the nut on the caliper rounded off after the 800ft breaker bar I was using slipped off as I was pretty much sitting on it bouncing up and down trying to free it. Mechanics of the world do not re-fit every single nut with impact guns!

[Pete-M]

The day of 604 has arrived! I've finally driven it on the road.

 

First mile or two was interesting as the front brakes were battling with a few years of rust on the discs but after a couple of miles they freed off and are now sound. Fan belt was a bit loose so tightened that up for now, will replace shortly. New wiper blades and a headlamp bulb sorted a few little minor jobs. Rack gaiters and an exhaust gasket and it should be all good.

 

Ride quality is spaffingly good. Auto box is smooth, nothing rattles and it sat happily at 70 once the brakes had freed off. Ace.

 

It's at the MOT station now, will hopefully have a fresh ticket tomorrow.