The new news 24 thread

[twosmoke300]

Like 90% of bolts on a vag engine then !

[Parky]

Went to Germany today. Been up since 4am and got home about half an hour ago.

 

Things I discovered:

 

It was very hot in Frankfurt today

 

Borussia Dortmund were sadly lacklustre against an inferior Eintracht Frankfurt side who managed to win 1-0

 

Both teams had an excellent repertoire of songs and drumming and took turns in slagging of each other's parentage. Polite.

 

German football fans don't feel the need to kick your teeth in for wearing a different colour shirt to the one they have. In fact they all wanted to talk about Leicester and Liverpool and how great it was to have a travelling contingent from the UK. Seeing the number of different shirts chatting afterwards over a beer in the sun was a great reflection on German fans. I cannot say the same about many uk teams.

 

My son can eat his own body weight in shite foods without gaining an ounce or feeling sick

 

Germans love classics, I saw some beautiful cars being used including a massive Mercedes thing which looked like it had just arrived from pebble beach and a silver Triumph Spitfire with the chrome painted black which looked the tits

 

Stansted's passport control makes a bath of eels appear well ordered and co-ordinated

 

Nissan Juke hire cars are not very good and I wish I had insisted on the Hyundai i20 I had originally ordered

[spike60]

It seems all new cars/Vauxhalls are indeed shit. Friends company Insignia, 1 steady driver, has it's flywheel rattling like a good 'un at 29k/64reg. This will not be a surprise to the good folk in AS land.

[spike60]

How did Renault manage to evolve this

 

 

 

Into this? I'd have any Alpine but 80's ones are not a pretty thing. Harewood Hillclimb yesterday.

 

[dollywobbler]

To be fair, it was Alpine who did the evolving, not Renault. I love both myself. The turbocharged V6s are surprisingly quiet though!

[Keymaster]

 

Pineappleless 1994 Golf L. Manual everything, but curiously it has a rev counter. Never had a VW before, so what better way to start than with a base model of the unloved mk3!Any questions and I'll try to help you out. My family have run a 96 Golf L for about the last 7-8 years and I've done lots of things to it to keep it on the road. I'm guessing 1.4 single point injection. Air bag steering wheel?

Thanks, hopefully I won't need to take you up on it but good to know there is some knowledge on here if needed ☺. Yes 1.4 injection. No airbag on this one. I've only done 40 odd miles in it so far but all seems fine.

[Sigmund Fraud]

"It was acceptable in the '80s."

 

No different to a '60s Dino eventually being replaced by an '80s Mondial...

[skattrd]

I'm a fan of pretty much all Alpines, and love the styling of 80s D501.

I sold my GTA  V6 Turbo last year and would love an A610 ... Unfortunately I think I've missed the boat on that one.

 

edit: the A110 to the A310 was the major evolution in looks, I love the look of the A310

[Royale80]

Changed the rear two exhaust boxes on my Range Rover Friday evening and changed the rear pads on the Sierra yesterday-as mentioned ended up wrecking part of my calliper wind back kit because I forgot how to use it.

 

Steve

[HillmanImp]

I love the look of the later GTA Alpines and considered buying one about 10yrs ago but as I have said on here before, I just hate the dashboard.

 

 

TBH it actually looks a bit better than it used to as it has a bit of retro charm that was missing when it was more recent but its still pretty grim IMO.

 

In an ideal world though I would have an A310. Sexy as fook.

 

 

Not sure what a dash in that looks like though, not even sure I have ever seen one in the flesh. I might not actually like it when I meet it.

[Skizzer]

Who was I perving over a white A310 with at Chumley last year - Skattrd, was it you?  Anyway, it was indeed a fabulous beast.

 

I'll add my voice to the defenders of the A610 too - though it looks more like a sporty GT than a barely tamed racing car. 

[skattrd]

Who was I perving over a white A310 with at Chumley last year - Skattrd, was it you?  Anyway, it was indeed a fabulous beast.

 

I'll add my voice to the defenders of the A610 too - though it looks more like a sporty GT than a barely tamed racing car. 

 

Guilty, I'm often found perving over Alpines.

 

Whilst on about hideous dashboards, part of the reason I bought a GTA was I hated the Lotus Eclat/Excel dash. The GTA has an awesome digital display for the fuel gauge, and makes funky electronic beeping noises for the indicators.

 

[spike60]

As I said in the post I would have any of them, it's just that to me the Alpines got progressively clunkier styled as time went on. A310 uber cool but I don't think I've seen one in the wild unless at Le Mans. A friend had a 87E Turbo 20 years ago as a daily, eyewatering running costs at the time.

[BorniteIdentity]

Glorious day here in Britain's Greatest New City* - and I'm stuck at work.

Anyway, came in Britain's oldest Ford Sierra as we've got a little date this evening.

More later.

 

*It's not actually a city*

[tooSavvy]

Oft quoted about these parts... Kinda mythological fable...

 

Ha Ha Ha Ha..... drove past a Disco 'kettling it' at the side of the A69, on the way back from Hexham today.

 

*oops - hope its not anyone on here

 

 

TS

[Asimo]

Just bimbled across the Cotswolds, Rover P4s everywhere! All a bit shiny, but they are charming old things. One P2, a P6 and an SD1 also encountered. Google tells me the P4 Drivers Guild (!) have their National beano at Toddington near Stow today.

 

And a wheel bearing is dying on the Suzuki modern I advised* my wife should buy. I shall keep quiet about it, I suspect it will be my fault if I point it out and then I would be forced to try and get the retailer to fix it under their "warranty". A battle I can't be arsed with.

[tooSavvy]

Daughter (PIP free car) is having a run out with her brood.

 

She txt me they're going into Rheged Discovery Centre, Penrith. Free to get in.

 

Everyones hungry - ha ha, she will get royally fleeced if they eat there.

 

Im such a c#n# I know

 

EDIT didn't get out az it wozz heavinn.

 

 

TS

[BorniteIdentity]

Big up to SeanRG for organising the Sierra's first date.

 

We decided on an informal blind date at Burger King, and the cars looked great in the late afternoon sunshine.

 

 

There were about 6 or 7 hovered around the 3 cars. The red one really is very bit as good as it looks, and has the ability to make my car look even worse than it already is.

 

 

The beige car is delightful. No carpet, loose rear seats, appalling brakes and about 7 keys to do everything. Obviously I tried to buy it.

 

 

A well spent 45 minutes. Nice to meet Sean, John and his entourage and hopefully next time I'll be in the Base Sierra.

 

[dollywobbler]

Fantastic. Aero wiper blades though? Yuck. (says he who has fitted a set to his XM...)

[320touring]

my brother obviously thinks I don't have enough on my hands with the actual CX...

 

[richardmorris]

Big up to SeanRG for organising the Sierra's first date.

We decided on an informal blind date at Burger King, and the cars looked great in the late afternoon sunshine.

1462727801947.jpg

There were about 6 or 7 hovered around the 3 cars. The red one really is very bit as good as it looks, and has the ability to make my car look even worse than it already is.

1462727953027.jpg

The beige car is delightful. No carpet, loose rear seats, appalling brakes and about 7 keys to do everything. Obviously I tried to buy it.

1462728035414.jpg

A well spent 45 minutes. Nice to meet Sean, John and his entourage and hopefully next time I'll be in the Base Sierra.

1462728114978.jpg

I know that I know the answer somewhere in my memory, but why does the red one have no grill? I do know I have a silver corgi model of one in my car box sans grill.

 

Also, the more photos I see the less I like them. Sorry- I'm glad they're being taken car of but jelly mould styling is not for me.

[Skizzer]

Minor facelift in about 1985 (C-reg, anyway) saw the unslatted nose and double-wide headlamps extended down to lowly L and GL versions, these having originally been unique to the Ghia and then XR4i versions.  The posh ones kept their different bumpers though, with a bit of extra moulding and the wrap-around indicators and separate foglamps (or sidelights or whatever they are).

 

I rather like early Sierras, especially Ghias, but they were always a bit Marmite.  I'm actually quite glad that's still the case.

[Junkman]

Yeah, I'm more a Taunus man, me.

[trigger]

I'm really not jelling to this Audi, it's not a terrible car but it's definitely not for me, I'm quite fussy and hate faults on cars and I'm normally happy to sort them but on this i just can't be arsed, they are all niggliy things but mount up.

 

The exhaust manifold still blows which is embarrassing, it doesn't idle well when cold although i think that's a split pipe which I'm waiting for some liquid rubber to arrive so i can glue it up, the sunroof catch has gone so the roof won't stay up, the headlining has now dropped and looks shit and I'm still not sure the front suspension feels quite right.

 

I'm going to get it moted during the week and probably sell it on at a massive loss to myself.

 

[Richard]

Minor facelift in about 1985 (C-reg, anyway) saw the unslatted nose and double-wide headlamps extended down to lowly L and GL versions, these having originally been unique to the Ghia and then XR4i versions.

 

The inner headlamps on some of the lower models were dummies.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Big up to SeanRG for organising the Sierra's first date.

We decided on an informal blind date at Burger King, and the cars looked great in the late afternoon sunshine.

1462727801947.jpg

There were about 6 or 7 hovered around the 3 cars. The red one really is very bit as good as it looks, and has the ability to make my car look even worse than it already is.

1462727953027.jpg

The beige car is delightful. No carpet, loose rear seats, appalling brakes and about 7 keys to do everything. Obviously I tried to buy it.

1462728035414.jpg

A well spent 45 minutes. Nice to meet Sean, John and his entourage and hopefully next time I'll be in the Base Sierra.

1462728114978.jpg

Did you hang around till it got dark , then do doughnuts in the car park of Railtrack?

[wuvvum]

I'm really not jelling to this Audi, it's not a terrible car but it's definitely not for me, I'm quite fussy and hate faults on cars and I'm normally happy to sort them but on this i just can't be arsed, they are all niggliy things but mount up. The exhaust manifold still blows which is embarrassing, it doesn't idle well when cold although i think that's a split pipe which I'm waiting for some liquid rubber to arrive so i can glue it up, the sunroof catch has gone so the roof won't stay up, the headlining has now dropped and looks shit and I'm still not sure the front suspension feels quite right. I'm going to get it moted during the week and probably sell it on at a massive loss to myself.

50 quid colect 2nite m8

[trigger]

That might be a tad low ball! I was thinking more like £700!

 

[dugong]

605 is going to be in a film next week.

 

Yeah, I was confused too.

[wuvvum]

As usual I had a list of jobs I wanted to get done this weekend, and as usual I only managed to get through about half of them, due to things taking much longer than I expected.

 

I've mainly been concentrating on the Transits this weekend.  I still haven't decided which one to keep, so I wanted to sort out the fundamental flaws on both to level the playing field a bit.

 

The main problem with the Smiley (apart from the fact that it's hanging, which doesn't really bother me) is that it can't be locked.  Or rather it can, quite easily, but it's then almost impossible to unlock again.  It took me 20 minutes of fiddling to get the rear doors to unlock, and the side door didn't want to know at all.  The cab door locks don't work either, but that doesn't bother me so much as there's nothing in there worth nicking and there's a full bulkhead.

 

I went to the nearest hardware place looking for a hasp and staple, but the only ones they had looked like they would snap off if a small child pulled on the door, so I ended up buying a big stainless steel bolt.  Fitting the bolt itself to the van wasn't too bad - I held it where I wanted it on the door with double sided tape, then drilled the holes for the four self-tappers and the two coach bolts that hold it on (well three of the self-tappers anyway - the 3mm bit I was trying to use to drill the pilot holes snapped before it had even made an impression on the metal of the door, so I went to the hardware shop in the village and bought a Draper Expert bit, which managed to drill three holes before snapping). 

 

The bit the bolt locks into (I don't know the technical term) was a bit more involved, as due to the design of the Transit door there is a very narrow area that is single skinned between the catch and what would be the window frame if the van had windows, and the bolts weren't long enough to get all the way through the double-skinned bit of the door.  So I had probably about 2mm of leeway either way or the bolt thread would be too close to the door structure and I wouldn't be able to do the nut up.  I am one of those people who shouldn't really be allowed near power tools, so it took a couple of attempts to get the holes lined up, but I got there in the end.  Then I found that the padlock I'd bought had been packaged with the wrong keys, so the van's not quite secure yet.  I also treated it to a new sidelight bulb and cured the rattle from the bulkhead by spreading the remaining bolts around more evenly (it appears to have lost a few over the years).  Then I made a start on rubbing down some of the worst of the filler - although there's still a way to go with that.

 

The main job on the Mk6 Transit was to remove the rear seat - it's a 3-seater bench from a minibus and it's all very well but it limits the load area somewhat, especially lengthwise.  It was bolted through the floor with seven 17mm bolts, and it'd obviously been in there some time because the bolt threads were rusty as feck.  Despite liberally soaking them in GT85 the nuts were an absolute bastard to undo.  In the end I resorted to locking the bolt heads inside the van in place with the ratchet and 17mm socket, then getting underneath with my newly purchased long reach socket and the breaker bar and heaving.  Three of the bolts snapped; the remainder eventually came undone, but it took bloody ages as the bolts were quite unnecessarily long.  They were also too hot to touch by the time I got them undone, so the threads must've been seriously bad.  I got there in the end, then found that the seat was a lot heavier than I'd anticipated, and I nearly threw my back out heaving it into the back of the Movano (which is still fulfilling the office of shed).

 

That's about all I got round to doing, although I did have one of my regular fiddles with the wiring on the Innocenti to try and get the indicators working again.  I was going to do some bits on the Volvo, so wound the sunroof open so it wouldn't be too oven-like when I got in, but I hadn't had time to do anything by the time I went out for dinner last night.  I forgot to shut the sunroof before I went though, and when I got back 5 hours later I found the poxy cat had decided to jump in for a sniff around and then couldn't get back out again.  She doesn't seem to have done anything untoward in there though, which was a relief.

 

The Spacy really needs its back brake adjusting, but that's going to have to wait until next weekend now - I'll just have to hope nobody pulls out in front of me this week...