project Fumbler's Crocks- Boring Oil Change

[Fumbler]

Oh God, not this again

Anyway, that was the end result, this was what I was actually doing

I, for some strange reason, had come to me senses and decided that the 1cm pulley misalignment, between the (supposedly OEM) alternator and the crank pulley, was probably* going to make the belt shred itself at the worst possible time. Using Man Logic I then went about smashing yet more parts from the deceased original alternator, with the Lucas alternator, to make some form of franken-alternator Mk. 1.5.

I probably put too much effort into it- trying different shims, fitting the alternator, eyeballing alignment, seeing if the belt was shifting to the left or right, running the engine, realising I had shorted the alternator charge wire to the engine mounts causing fire, helpfully dropping the 'OEM' alt while carrying it from the bin lid workbench etc. I noticed that all my woes would be sorted if I could remove a spacer on the 'OEM' unit, as its pulley was dished, and that would effectively get rid of the misalignment. Well that would've worked but, of course, Valeo had to put Loktite on the threads. It's as if they didn't want me taking it apart... So out the window that went. I couldn't keep that misaligned belt situation unless I wanted to get used to replacing lunched belts and patching LHM lines that'd be eventually shredded by the belts. I started off by sanding the spacer and thrust washer I already had installed. This went well until the cast washer shattered while being clamped by the molegrips. Oops. Faced with Problems Ahead, I raided the toolbox for the washers I'd saved from when I started out on this whole saga and got to work trying different ones out until I got the alignment as good as I could get it. I took the centre picture above to remind me that the washer in focus was conical and could only go on one way, as the spacing between outer and inner circles was 1mm, which was just enough to make me think "FUCK I've got it wrong AGAIN" and pull the thing out for another round of fannying about. I've got it as good as I think I possible can do without getting a lathe to  make something that'll work just right.

I wanted to give the alternator's body a bit of a paint along with the  but that can wait for never another day. So instead I compromised and just painted the bits on the shaft. Sure, the ali casting willbloom up and turn into candyfloss but I just can't be fucked anymore. I must have gotten good at fitting and tensioning these things because final assembly only took a few minutes. I remember when it took me an hour alone to get the thing out, let alone in. Still, all done. Am I happy? Yeahhhhhhhhhh it'll be reet.

I think I've finally killed this one dead. Maybe I do like the misery...

 

 

[Fumbler]

Before:

After!

I'm perilously close to doing unspeakable things such as detailing and paint correction, and both of these are WRONG.

I promise the only other thing on this car I'll restore properly/paint the right colour is the nearside front wing, because it needs it. The rear wing can stay a hideously contrasting shade of red. I will try to keep the car looking care worn.

[jamescarruthers]

29 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

Before:

After!

I'm perilously close to doing unspeakable things such as detailing and paint correction, and both of these are WRONG.

I promise the only other thing on this car I'll restore properly/paint the right colour is the nearside front wing, because it needs it. The rear wing can stay a hideously contrasting shade of red. I will try to keep the car looking care worn.

Looks great!

Get a hot air gun on it. Here’s me doing mine… it’s astounding how it fixes it!

 

[Fumbler]

6 minutes ago, jamescarruthers said:

Looks great!

Get a hot air gun on it. Here’s me doing mine… it’s astounding how it fixes it!

 

Aye I'll do that if I really want to, but I'm curious to see how this works in comparison to bumper gel. All it's doing is replacing the oil that's evaporated from the plastic's surface so I'll be interested to see if it lasts longer or shorter than Autoglym bumper gel and equivalents.

[stuboy]

good work polishing it up

[jamescarruthers]

4 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

Aye I'll do that if I really want to, but I'm curious to see how this works in comparison to bumper gel. All it's doing is replacing the oil that's evaporated from the plastic's surface so I'll be interested to see if it lasts longer or shorter than Autoglym bumper gel and equivalents.

Your oily trim gel will look great, just won’t last so long— Autoglym does last a decent amount of time though.  A combination of bringing the oil up with the heat gun and then a few coats of trim gel had the bumper looking new. 
 

I reeeeealy want my red BX back now!

 

[Fumbler]

Just now, jamescarruthers said:

Your oily trim gel will look great, just won’t last so long— Autoglym does last a decent amount of time though.  A combination of bringing the oil up with the heat gun and then a few coats of trim gel had the bumper looking new. 
 

I reeeeealy want my red BX back now!

 

What I've used is Polytrol, which I'm pretty sure is glorified linseed oil with plasticky goodness within. Smells like linseed oil, applies like linseed oil, smells like it too. When I safely* disposed of the paper towel I used to apply the stuff, it certainly burned like linseed oil!

Was you old one A***XRL?

[jamescarruthers]

16 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

What I've used is Polytrol, which I'm pretty sure is glorified linseed oil with plasticky goodness within. Smells like linseed oil, applies like linseed oil, smells like it too. When I safely* disposed of the paper towel I used to apply the stuff, it certainly burned like linseed oil!

Was you old one A***XRL?

I had A966 XRL, a 16TRS, which was on the cover of a magazine recently and seems to get to a few shows, although I’ve never seen it;  and B316 AMP, a 14E which a guy bought for some sort of collection but he never MOTd it again which I found weird as he was desperate to buy it. Dream is to buy back the B-reg one day— I plan on asking on a year or so. 

[Fumbler]

2 minutes ago, jamescarruthers said:

I had A966 XRL, a 16TRS, which was on the cover of a magazine recently and seems to get to a few shows, although I’ve never seen it;  and B316 AMP, a 14E which a guy bought for some sort of collection but he never MOTd it again which I found weird as he was desperate to buy it. Dream is to buy back the B-reg one day— I plan on asking on a year or so. 

Does B-AMP still exist then? I remember seeing the TRS at last year's FoTU, and very nice it was too.

[jamescarruthers]

11 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

Does B-AMP still exist then? I remember seeing the TRS at last year's FoTU, and very nice it was too.

B- AMP: yeah it’s still around I think. I found a receipt for it a few years ago and it was a good excuse to email the guy and offer the receipt but really just be nosey. He has a collection of old Citroens which I think are all nicely kept under cover so I’m hoping it would just need a bit of TLC rather than having rotted away, which would be sad. I could never work out why he let the MOT run out and never drove it again— it was in great condition.

Sale of the TRS left a bad taste in my mouth so won’t be enquiring about that one. Plus he’s restored it really well so it probably will never be for sale or if it was, at silly money. 

Nicest Mk. 1 in red I’ve ever seen is the automatic TRS which the same guy has pampered from new and he’s a really nice guy. He goes to loads of CCC event and it glows!

[Fumbler]

3 minutes ago, jamescarruthers said:

B- AMP: yeah it’s still around I think. I found a receipt for it a few years ago and it was a good excuse to email the guy and offer the receipt but really just be nosey. He has a collection of old Citroens which I think are all nicely kept under cover so I’m hoping it would just need a bit of TLC rather than having rotted away, which would be sad. I could never work out why he let the MOT run out and never drive it again— it was in great condition.

Sale of the TRS left a bad taste in my mouth so won’t be enquiring about that one. Plus he’s restored it really well so it probably will never be for sale or if it was, at silly money. 

Nicest Mk. 1 in red I’ve ever seen is the automatic TRS which the same guy has pampered from new and he’s a really nice guy. He goes to loads of CCC event and it glows!

It'd be nice to have another 1.4 (especially an early one with the skinny AF tyres!) to come back on the road. Honest* John reports only 16 14REs still in on the road. I doubt there's more than 10 14Es still trundling along.

[jamescarruthers]

1 minute ago, Fumbler said:

It'd be nice to have another 1.4 (especially an early one with the skinny AF tyres!) to come back on the road. Honest* John reports only 16 14REs still in on the road. I doubt there's more than 10 14Es still trundling along.

You’d love yours a lot more if you were to try the early 1.4 suitcase engine! It’s very old school compared to your perky TU.

It does have a charm to it though and I’d happily have it back. Gearbox is in the engine sump, chain driven, a bit whiney, rattly at idle…. but charming. With hindsight I did drive the ancient thing quite hard!

[jamescarruthers]

[Fumbler]

21 minutes ago, jamescarruthers said:

You’d love yours a lot more if you were to try the early 1.4 suitcase engine! It’s very old school compared to your perky TU.

It does have a charm to it though and I’d happily have it back. Gearbox is in the engine sump, chain driven, a bit whiney, rattly at idle…. but charming. With hindsight I did drive the ancient thing quite hard!

Those pictures have the car looking very good! I really wouldn't mind having body coloured sills- I know it mightn't be strictly original, but the bottom half of the car was resprayed and the red is starting to show through the stonechip paint with every wash.

[Fumbler]

-A bit picture heavy-
Yes, this old chestnut again. I did some painting. Can you tell?

I sprayed 4 shades onto the nastiest wheel on the car. Here they are in detail:

I've decided to unwedge my finger and get the wheels done up so I can put the trims back on. I was spending some time finding various greys and silvers and came up with these 4. From left to right:

• Hammerite hammered silver
• Hammerite smooth silver
• RAL 7047
• Some other RAL colour that might as well be called "a weird shade of white"

If we look at the photo of the wheel again, the two Hammerite colours blend in the best with the current wheel colour, which is a weird slightly metallic grey- it's got some sparkly bits in it but not many if you catch my drift. I then put a repainted wheel trim against each colour (in the same order as above):

The 4th shade is already out of the game because white on silver looks a bit weird. It works well with the Hammerite silvers and there's just enough difference between the centre colour and the trim to look rather nice IMO.

Here's what the wheels used to look like:

So, what's the consensus? Hammerite hammered, Hammerite smooth or the RAL colour?

[Crackers]

Smoooooth. 

[AnnoyingPentium]

+1 on the smooth.

[Fumbler]

2 minutes ago, Crackers said:

Smoooooth. 

 

Just now, AnnoyingPentium said:

+1 on the smooth.

It's certainly the most...

...of the lot 😁

 

[CaptainBoom]

^^^ What they said

 

[mitsisigma01]

Choose a colour , paint all 4 edges of the rims first in your favourite colour then spray the centres until you run out or do a combination of the others (except no4) and because their hidden under the hubcaps no-one is going to see them so it doesn't really matter 🤷🏻‍♂️

[AnnoyingPentium]

17 minutes ago, CaptainBoom said:

^^^ What they said

 

Feck you've beat me to it.

[Fumbler]

1 minute ago, mitsisigma01 said:

Choose a colour , paint all 4 edges of the rims first in your favourite colour then spray the centres until you run out or do a combination of the others (except no4) and because their hidden under the hubcaps no-one is going to see them so it doesn't really matter 🤷🏻‍♂️

My plan was to pay special attention to the rims of the wheels as that's all you see. The paint on these wheels is rather tough anyway, so most of it (apart from the scabby bits) will probably be staying.

[RoverFolkUs]

#2 - hammerite smooth gets my vote too, if it's worth anything of course!

[eddyramrod]

I agree.  After Hammeriting the wheels on my Famous Five Volvo I can vouch for the results.

[Fumbler]

I've started going through the Micra's list of needs and wants to make it decent again. I started off with something easy*

Yup, looks good.

And in with minimal* hassle. I was rather surprised. You have to remove the battery and dislodge the air intake. You can't remove it because it is bolted in two places, 1 of which is underneath the expansion tank. Fortunately, both are plastic and flexible, and some persuasion got the two to co-operate.

The water in the old tank was mostly murky sludge. When I opened up the radiator, I was pleasantly surprised with fresh green coolant, which was lucky as I didn't have any to hand.

I put in some water from the Brita jug and then gave the car a run to get it up to temperature. It seems to be gradually turning green, which is a bonus!
So I can strike that off the list of things to do. I'll attack the welding some point this weekend.

 

As an additional plus*, I've discovered the car DOES have a low fuel light, because I saw it briefly flash 1 morning last week. That's the first time since I bought it in 2018 I've ever seen it work. You can barely see the warning light's outline on the binnacle

Wonderful, innit?

[AxWomble]

3 hours ago, Fumbler said:

As an additional plus*, I've discovered the car DOES have a low fuel light, because I saw it briefly flash 1 morning last week. That's the first time since I bought it in 2018 I've ever seen it work. You can barely see the warning light's outline on the binnacle

Wonderful, innit?

All three of the cars I’ve bought have shown me their low fuel lights on the test drive, must be something about the calibre of cars I buy 😂 always with a petrol station within a few miles, but it got a bit tense when the AX started coughing 2 minutes down the road

[Fumbler]

6 minutes ago, AxWomble said:

All three of the cars I’ve bought have shown me their low fuel lights on the test drive, must be something about the calibre of cars I buy 😂 always with a petrol station within a few miles, but it got a bit tense when the AX started coughing 2 minutes down the road

Heh, every car I've helped collect or bought has also been near empty! I've always assumed this car never had one, despite running the tank down the the red line on the gauge every week.

[Fumbler]

Father wanted to take the BX home today, so a load was lugged

The seats weren't folded down properly (he insisted he knew what he was doing!) but still; non-estate-estate-car yo.

Anyway, speedometer. Again. The story behind this most recent borkage starts at the beginning of the month, coming home from the FoD. I was about 10 miles down the M1 coming home, and the speedo went from reading 70 to 120. I whacked it and the speed rose a bit more. 30 minutes and more whacking later, the speedometer is reading off the end of the scale. Rather suboptimal, so I laid the car up for the week and took the (welded) Micra to work. I reached out to the club to ask if someone had a speedo going spare, and they did! This was lucky as replacements on eBay were over £100.

I began by taking the binnacle out of the dashboard and flipping it over onto the steering column, a job I've become really good at as of late. I addressed an easy issue first- the sidelight lamp blew last Sunday and it was duly replaced.

I like the design of the lamp holders. You twist them anticlockwise to unlock and clockwise to lock in place. The only drawback with this is that it presses the contacts onto the traces on the binnacle, so they could eventually bend out of shape and cause the light to flicker/not work.

I took the speedo cable off and was greeted with shitty oily mess

Mmmm.... tasty filings.

The instrument panel was then extracted. Not much hardware is used on these. The real niggly bits are these grab washer things that are attached to the two locating pins on the bottom of the panel. The rest slots in and screws in pretty nicely.

The car then looked like this.

I could then move inside to go about with changing the speedometer itself. We've two 7mm bolts to remove on the back

And while I was there I also replaced another backlight. For some reason the car has a lamp installed in the glowplug socket, so I just swapped them over. The plastic front was then removed to expose the front of the instrument panel

Two 5mm self-tapping screws later and it's out! There's a fine mist of oil everywhere.

 

New and old:

I tried to clock the new speedometer, but unfortunately instrument manufacturers were getting clever around this time and there's an anti-tamper mechanism on the wheels:

The wheels have two sets of rounded bumps. Between them are these square nubs which have to all be aligned for the wheels to turn and count the miles. If they're misaligned, the mechanism either binds up or just rotates once each wheel reaches 9. I gave up and transplanted the wheel assembly from the fucked speedometer into the unfucked one. Interestingly, the new one has a fulcrum for the retention bar slot which made it easier to remove and refit.

Lovely. Now to install it.

...And this is where the pictures end . Sufficed to say it wasn't all that painful. I used brake cleaner on the speedo cable itself to clear out all the shitty oil to avoid a repeat of last time. I put it all back together and only* busted the HRW switch. Never mind. I have spares. I then did a road test to make sure it worked and indeed we're back to wobbly (but accurate) speeds. All that foreplay for nothing, eh?

Now some autopsy shizzle. Here is how the speedo shoult work internally:

The drive turns a bar magnet within an (presumably for eddie current reasons) aluminium cup or dish. There is a tiny airgap between magnet and dish because the magnet is pretty weak. The dish itself connects to a thin shaft with the speedo needle and two clock springs attached.  As the magnet turns, it starts to drag the dish along in the same direction, however, the dragging force is counteracted somewhat by the clock springs. When the magnet RPM increases, the rotating magnetic field also speeds up, making the cup slowly turn, being regulated by the clock springs. It's a sort of really basic magnetic clutch. These springs are pretty weak because the magnets are weak and the needle is pretty light. This was useful to know when I looked at the old speedo.

The old speedo's insides is caked with metallic oily sludge. I'm fairly certain the sludge was ferrous as it loved to be stuck to the magnetic poles. This is a bit of an issue, as it means there's constantly a blob of oil bridging the magnet and the cup. When I tried to turn the drive with my screwdriver, it was super hard to turn and I noticed the cup was also turning more readily. I flipped the speedo round and the needle was over-reading like crazy. The weak clock springs did little to help: the more oil there was in the cup the more viscous the coupling was between the magnet and the cup itself, meaning there's less slip. I'm sure with some brake cleaner and Q tips I could fix it up nicely. I think this all came about from when I oiled up the cable when I installed it. There's some sort of packing on the speedo drive which failed when driving home and let oil that was sitting there leak through and onto the rotating magnets and gears, kind of turning the assembly into a fluid coupling. The new speedo looks like it's got a fair amount of grease packed in it so this shouldn't happen again. Shouldn't. I hope.

[Fumbler]

Jesus man, shit's been occurring. Where should I start?

Ford Fiesta
I bought one. It's blue.

It was also out of refrigerant, so I did the right thing and regassed it properly* with a can from Halfords. It requires removal of the OS headlamp which is slightly inconvenient.

It promptly ceased to work a week after, so there's an obvious leak somewhere. It's booked in with a specialist a few miles away who does vehicle HVAC and only that. The engine isn't very torquey at low revs. You definitely feel the car slow down when the A/C compressor kicks in at low speed or pulling up hills.

There's not actually much to report on this. It needs work: timing belt, tyres, wheel (and trim) paint, a few blemishes and rusty patches need to be dealt with, and an under-oiling wouldn't go amiss. It's hadly interesting and easily forgettable, so much so I've only taken these two photos.

Father's V70
We re-silvered the headlight reflectors a good few years ago. They worked alright-ish, but the MoT tester wasn't very fond of them and the light output was not very good. A few weeks ago, father managed to get some later style headlights from a scrap S70. Instead of using the lens being used to difract the light, these later ones use a segmented reflector to do the job instead.

The indicators now look a little out-of-place, but clear ones are available. I, personally, prefer the old ones. Makes the front less agressive than the clear lens headlamps. The new ones use HR3 lamps for the main beam which costed £20 each (!). Still, we got two spare H2s out of it. Light output much improved.

BX
Speedo shat itself again. More gooey ferrous sludge made its way into the new speedometer. I washed it out with the last of my brake cleaner and drilled a weep hole in the cable sheath to try and get rid of the stuff. So far, everything's working well. Time will tell how long that lasts. Meanwhile, I fitted the wheel trims. >6 months after I repainted them. It's nice to be on schedule and on target.

Bonus symbolic cow pat. Car's for sale BTW. ~107000 miles, wealth of spares, good clutch, has bonus metal sills and boot floor, MoT until 02/23. £1400 ONO.

OVLOV
Yessssss, finally I've broken through into the wonderful world of Volvo ownership. I've thrust myself into this lifestyle by flying over to @rml2345's manor and dragging home this magnificent beast

105/10 WOOD EXCHANGE CASH FOR VOLVO AGAIN.

It did the 422.3 mile trip absolutely wonderfully, until the (clearly Scottish) OSF wheel bearing suddenly decided it didn't like England when I joined A66.

Now accompanied with healthy* noises from the wheels, I soldiered onwards and managed to get back at just past 20:00, which was rather good going.

Initial impressions: Ride is good, interior noise is good, handling is nice. This thing could cruise all day. The Pioneer stereo in this isn't my kind of thing, so one day I'll install a PROPAH Double-DIN Volvo headunit in, provided the loom connectors weren't lopped off when the aftermarket headunit was put in. Even my parents like it. They didn't find the pictures of it before I bought it particularly convincing, father especially. But, when they came out to have a wee look, they actually approved! Win. They prefer this to the BX for some reason. Perhaps this car screams "SOLIDITY" louder than the BX does, I don't know. My mother was so enthusiastic she even broke out the upholstery box and fixed the tears in the vinyl boulster.

It needs some love though. First up is replacing the offending bearing, then onto replacing the NS wing and repainting the OS wing. The fuel tank heatshield/protector is made of rust, as are the straps, towbar, one of the plugs in the spare wheel well and NS chassis rail for some reason. I daren't take the sill covers off 😂. The headlining shall come out at some point to be replaced/re-covered, and while I'm at it, I might try and source a replacement sunroof. I also need to repair/replace the bonnet release catch. The rivet on the release arm isn't riveting anymore, causing the handle in the grill to stay put when it shouldn't.
 

I did start some work of my own today! I was eager to get rid of much of the towbar as possible, especially the electrics. This is what I was greeted with at the battery:

I managed to pull the wire out of the crimp pretty easily. But it gets better! Here's expert splice 1...

And expert splice 2...

...Which then goes to a smaller black cable. 10/10 already and we're not even at the rear. This wire was zip tied to a front - rear brake line into this clump of shit

I don't really understand what the installer actually intended to tow, because they installed 1 7-pin plug with this grey cable attached, and only 1 wire (and pin) was actually being used. Naturally, installed with the correct* grade components for undercarriage connections,  SCOTCHLOCKS. This black 12V wire was spliced a second time and run up to this clusterfuck up at the OSR light-

Whoop-de-fucking-doo. All these supplied the other 7-pin plug on the tow bar. Points given for scotchlocking some wires twice either for this weird beeper box at the bottom or for some other reason. I'm glad they were easy to remove from the host wiring that goes to the plug on the cluster. I then removed the tow ball assembly from the rear, after discovering the bar itself is rust welded to the rear end. It'll disappear shortly enough.

Lovely mess.

I then had a look at the replacement wing. It was grey, but we saw flecks of red. After two coats of paint stripper, it's apparent it originally was on a flat red car before being fitted to a metallic grey one. I'll have fun respraying this.

Hopefully more to follow.

[Ghosty]

What in the name of expletives did you buy a facelift Mk6 Fiesta for?