project Blackboilersuits Bodging Blog

[SiC]

I absolutely love rebuilding SU carbs. For me it's one of the most satisfying and rewarding jobs on a classic British car. 

[GeorgeB]

18 hours ago, blackboilersuit said:

Not as much as yours does though! If you want to have a bitch about other people, please do it elsewhere.

Sorry about that. I enjoy this thread so get excited when a new post appears.

When it is as dull as that one it annoys me a bit.

[blackboilersuit]

The Toledo still had sealed beam headlights and one of them blew on dip not long after I got the car. So what to do? Dolomite 1300 headlights are a straight swap and have a regular H4 bulb fitment. Downside is they are only available from Rimmers as a complete assembly with the back shell and cost £118 each! While not adverse to spending that much on car parts I didn't want to just yet as the headlamp mounting panels are 50% metal and 50% bran flakes and hope. I will address this in time but wanted a cost effective interim solution. Internet wisdom suggests Bedford Rascal headlights can be made to fit so I rolled the dice and spent £34 on a pair delivered to my door.

They are 10mm higher and wider than stock so the retaining rings and adjusters don't fit. They do fit perfectly straight into the bowls though and can be held in with a mixture of old and new hardware that still allows for a degree of adjustment for alignment.

The downside is that the front of the lens sits 30mm further back in the car than before so the bowl needs to be packed out from it's mounting panel on spacers.

It does look half devent (from a distance) though. While it was apart I rubbed down the grills and sprayed them with some generic silver wheel paint and polished the bumper.

Next up was to fabricate a wee bracket to hold some relays

....and wire the hi/low through them to take the strain off the headlight switch.

And there you go, nothing award winning and it's still a 30ft car but it's well enough done to last a long while and has functioning lights with replaceable bulbs. I even used lucas bullet connectors to tie into the existing wiring so no original parts have been hacked!

[blackboilersuit]

Bit more Toledo love. Had to wait a while on them being made but these beauties arrived in the post.

New front engine mounts. One of the ones in the car was in tatters making the engine sag too low and bounce around too much at idle. There are only 2 choices for replacements. Cheap repo parts that are the wrong hardness of rubber and will be toast inside a year or these beauties that are the correct shore hardness of poly mated to stainless backing plates. £80 a pair but worth every penny.

A pair of jacks were deployed and they were replaced one at a time. The totally foobar one came out in two pieces.

The other was still in one piece but starting to go bad. Original metalastik so a fair old age.

Made a massive difference and worth every penny. 

With the engine now sitting firm again I could then replace the fan belt. The one on the car was 35mm shorter than standard and I think may have been fitted to stop the alternator hitting the battery with the engine bouncing around on worn mounts. Downside of this shorter belt was you couldn't get #1 spark plug out with the belt on. Correct belt fitted and the alternator still clears the battery and all the plugs can come out. Which is handy because I wanted to pull them to make setting the valve clearances easier.

Check out how clean this valve gear is.....

Clearances were all still pretty much spot on so to celebrate I painted the rocker cover.

Before sticking it back on with a new gasket and giving it a quick run up to temp to charge the battery.

Next up is to replace the engine ground strap as the original is too short for the non-standard battery, do an oil and filter change and then some test runs and plug checking to get the freshly rebuilt carb set up. After that it's coolant flushing and heater hose replacement but that can wait until we get some better weather again.

[blackboilersuit]

Bit more Toledo tinkering over the last few days.

First up I cashed in a ton of nectar points to get a DA polisher from Argos for a net cost of £0.00.

I then set to with a bottle of metallic t-cut chosen because I'd had it lying around for over a decade so it too cost £0.00. Net result was I ended up looling like a smurf...

But the bits of the car with good paint looked jolly good indeed.

These pics were taken after giving it a coat of MER polish post t-cut. Again the polish was chosen because it'd been lying around forever.

Next up was replacing the perished heater hoses. The two 90 deg elbows were replaced with silicone elbows and the two longer shaped hoses were just replaced with good quality coolant/fuel hose. Hopefully they'll last longer than the repo ones that were on the car and falling to bits.

The install of the reversing light last year had been somewhat rushed so next I tidied up the wiring and fitted a nice looking lucas copy switch and nameplate both courtesy of ebay. For the time being they're just stuck onto the plate that holds the USB charger for the dash cam that used to be in the car. I also wired in a 12v buzzer so I don't drive off down the road with it switched on.

After that I spent a couple of hours driving around, pulling plugs to check colour and adjusting the carb. It's not perfect yet but it's good enough for now. Ever so slightly on the lean side up top but the engine would like to be leaned out ever so slightly at idle. I replaced the jet when I rebuilt the carb so I think the next port of call will be to take a look at the needle. Just me being a bit picky though, for now it runs and drives just fine without pinking or running hot so no sense of urgency.

 

[High Jetter]

OOF

[Split_Pin]

Nice job on the polishing, looks grand.

What's the score with buying silicone hoses? I need some new ones for the back of the Cavalier's inlet manifold but they bend at quite an acute angle. Can you choose from a range of diameters and angles off the shelf?

[blackboilersuit]

12 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

Nice job on the polishing, looks grand.

What's the score with buying silicone hoses? I need some new ones for the back of the Cavalier's inlet manifold but they bend at quite an acute angle. Can you choose from a range of diameters and angles off the shelf?

You sure can. Just search ebay for "silicone elbow" to see what's available. Large variety of diameters and different degrees of bend. You can also get aluminium joiners as straights and bends which make replicating more complex stock hoses possible.

I bought these ones simply because it was a big UK based supplier with massive feedback selling branded parts. 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/45-90-Degree-Silicone-Hose-Bend-Pipe-Elbow-Air-Water-Boost-Intercooler-Pipes/401823561758?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item5d8e8cf81e:g:SO0AAOSwfmFeKsKt&amdata=enc%3AAQAFAAACcBaobrjLl8XobRIiIML1V4Imu%2Fn%2BzU5L90Z278x5ickkTboA95HSvGa1O5UmCCGJLqaj4cwQYPnk2YPtj1vnojEGf%2BPF9VK4ylLbt7jnRbupsIIbVIkVD9RfXWZ3RTCQWMOdMzHifmihUGC0hr7I4BNkDiHkeuKlRaI9wZwrakPZDRDU%2BIHg2ZSl8j5X3R8pljDKYJVDD0kBCTOe3GuaZf4cGTL4uKrsqcogpON%2BNkq8R%2F6uZdH5OO%2FNeiEGkIVOnO%2B5c8CYwKGV9X%2FTQvmPbWG2AOttz%2Fj9ED5boGhFmBhl8eo4l3EAblcS3ALAO7f5i5BVCt1%2B1g55pAL6%2FyxdCoRQ4jkVoVAZ0EWEC9%2ByJRuWB%2F5ma%2FaIT%2Fe6IVb7azQaBrJvMPGUFQCOe4gfq966aZgyCywn0gplTTM4PLp07xdEuLsdzCwRNKTwbrXocgk0PVPGK3oX71pIvT5Vanz25tl7nm%2FDYvaJQF7Fdtyh5mTVJuIrkQUOQ4Wvu%2FvkVk0YHZeWMZPMGDmO%2BzPZaQ6JNnnkM8Nr7MxduQSYBAjCtYZgyYRTPLvkUKSoizL%2F7U7gFDzsPJsoVr25FczU8mGPVg%2BlEDG9dLp%2Bul6dZdeLdVRYBmWw%2FjUzMeFHAEqLgI6ne2WQCfz4cC3N8c%2BfxSIGR7blBHDlgI290HGa1CH%2Bf%2FtXJZN9u69oyVMrF%2F97fgZ%2B5XzfCEBYnrsvQjLP3BQp90Kv5ObcXg6IhtpHOkP2g%2B5HWnfGJlMW%2B6jEI01IxgIrlFl7g%2ByQDdEFEQrwCIfSfPE8k05DaAqceLasIlXk1tMyJ6HE6yqrSOHo4FGrE1i%2FAw%3D%3D|cksum%3A401823561758f44796b0fbb74734981bd2faac1ed7ee|ampid%3APL_CLK|clp%3A2334524

 

[Split_Pin]

Cheers chap, I'll get on it!

[blackboilersuit]

So the Saab made a return to the fleet a few weeks ago after being out on loan to @captain_70s for the last six months.

First order of play was to address the random refusal to start issue as documented in the captains thread. 

Code reader wasn't giving any clues...

But the culprit seemed pretty obvious. Symptoms were sometimes not cranking in the start position, sometimes cranking but not starting and one time cranking, not starting but then bump started as soon as the clutch was lifted. Everything pointed to a faulty ignition switch.

Haynes rate getting to the ignition switch as a 3 out of 5 spanner task on the difficulty scale. Can't be that hard can it?

Yes it can! Getting the gear change mechanisim disconnected was a real swine as the connection is inside the big anti theft gearchange unit that holds the ignition switch. Eventually swearing and determination paid off and the unit was removed.

New* switch was obtained from ebay.

And was transplanted into the base of the unit.

Back in one piece and Saab goes vroom once more. Might be a heap but it's still a very fast boosted heap. 

Other minor repairs included a broken key being invisibly* mended with lockwire and araldite.

A broken number plate was also replaced as my driving is bad enough in this car so I don't need anything else to draw the attention of the law!

A rattle from the back turned out to be a broken exhaust hanger so that got a little attention from the welder.

Two issues remained. An airbag fault caused by something in the passenger seat and a fault with the Xenon headlight levelling system. I checked all the obvious things, connections etc in both but to progress these issues really needs the car to be scanned with Tech2 to pinpoint why it's unhappy. 

At that I did the sensible thing and sold the car! A friend was in need of a cheap estate with a bit of MOT and is a serial Saab fondler so knows the score with all the faults and foibles. 

I'd always planned to move the Saab on this year as part of a 2021 fleet rationalisation. With the year almost 50% gone I can now say that the fleet reduction plan to sell one car and one bike this year remains on plan. This will probably end badly with a drunken ebay purchase in December but for now I'll celebrate the success......

 

 

 

 

[sdkrc]

🙏 praying for a drunken eBay purchase. 

Toledo looks superb.

[blackboilersuit]

Very long time without an update, my bad! Not a lot of tinkering has gone on at boilersuit towers for many months as work has been really busy in the second half of the year and I've been focusing on long overdue work on the house and garden when I wasn't working. A month ago though I noticed some uneven tyre wear on the Accord and investigation showed an upper control arm ball joint had a bit of wear.

Arm was pulled out with greater ease that first inspection suggested would be the case.

Then the ball joint was removed with the assistance of fire and an air hammer.

New giant g-clamp style ball joint tool was procured from eBay. A snip at £50. 

Despite the kit coming with a "comprehensive" set of sleeves to suit "most applications" a 3/4 whitworth socket still had to be added to the mix to press in the replacement joint.

To finish the repair a scrappy special wheel and tyre combo was added. Rim was in mint condition and the rattle can repaint is a perfect* colour match for the rest of the wheels.

It's a few days away from 1 year since I bought the Accord and thus far I've racked up 11k miles in it. It's now got a weak clutch that slips if you boot it from low revs in a tall gear (like I used to do all the time - doh!). Apparently a very common problem with this model. Changing driving style to drive with a few more revs and not touch 6th gear below 80 means it still works ok and returns 42mpg. 1500 miles like that with no further deterioration so we'll see how long it lasts. Clutch is a mare of a job and would be £750 without flywheel and £1350 with at a local garage so hopefully manage to keep going as is for a bit. It's a great do everything car though so I'd still be tempted to fix it if it came to the crunch.

Sonic the Toledo has been used a fair few times during the year and remained 100% reliable after getting some love through last winter. Off the road for the winter now to keep it away from the salt unless some emergency transport is required. Still gets started every 4-6 weeks just to warm through and charge the battery. Always fires straight up as if it was only used the day before. I do love having a second car that just works when you want it to. That's a bit of a novelty for sure!

 

[Squire_Dawson]

If the headlamp is same as those on Allegro I have some spare.

[Tickman]

On 6/20/2021 at 10:45 AM, blackboilersuit said:

This will probably end badly with a drunken ebay purchase in December but for now I'll celebrate the success......

Still a few days left...

[blackboilersuit]

3 hours ago, Squire_Dawson said:

If the headlamp is same as those on Allegro I have some spare.

The headlight glass is the same as the Allegro and early Capri's amongst others. The problem is the mounting bowls/clamp etc are unique to the Toledo and 1300 Dolomite and finding a good used set of them is difficult going on impossible. Mine might be salvageable but I'm putting off looking at them again until I've welded some actual metal into the front panel to make it worthwhile having headlight adjusters! Once I get to that stage I'll be sure to give you a shout if I can make do with just new lamp units. The current rascal units are adjusted down enough to not risk dazzling oncoming traffic so I'm going to live with the current setup for now while I try to work through the "still to do" list this coming spring/summer.

[blackboilersuit]

3 hours ago, Tickman said:

Still a few days left...

I'm working Mon-Fri this coming week so Hogmany will be the last chance for drinking heavily while in charge of an ebay account.............