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A long time ago in a Galaxie far, far away (and other shit)


sdkrc

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RIP Alfa. 

It was indeed the crankshaft pulley wobbling but the pulley itself was fine. 

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Here's a video of the crankshaft timing pulley wobbling with the aux pulley off and the aux belt off. 

 

There are 2 retaining bolts on the crankshaft timing pulley, they were fairly loose so there's a chance that this has been a problem since the timing belt was done in July 2021. High chance that this was just put on askew but it's a timing belt off job to find that out and there's no guarantee. 

With the oil leak, guffed bodywork, lack of funds/time/tools and an overloaded driveway it's scrapping time. I reckon it would continue driving as is but I can't risk it grenading itself with motorway commute and a kid in the car. 

Next step is to get a working, MOTd car. Lexus needs 2 front springs and shocks so it's first in the queue. I'm all outta money so Alfa needs to go before I can buy these parts 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Alfa is away to @Schaefft, highly rated purchaser. Apologies for it being shit, that's just a given when I sell a car. 

The Lexus cracked springs have been painful. They're north of 40cm and a couple of attempts with spring compressors hasn't cut the mustard. I took the springs and shocks to a local garage and offered cash to seat them, they said no way...cheers lads. 

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Because of the Alfa shitting it's crankshaft I've been using a borrowed car to ferry my kid around. It has no reverse and a screaming wheel bearing so has been stressful to commute into the city.

Decided I needed some wheels so bought a Rexton from @Supernaut. Gave her a bit of a scrub and I'm impressed. Totally fucking bizarre car. Throwing between 1st and 5th gear requires a change in postcode.

I'll be using this for some towing in the near future

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3 minutes ago, somewhatfoolish said:

Are lexus springs notably awkward to fit? Or are you on the "don't take money from these miscreants" list?

It's an odd one. After it failed the MOT I called 3 garages asking for the springs and wheel bearing to be done. I got messed around by 1 garage, the other 2 refused the work. I guess old Japanese shit in Scotland isn't high up on their wish list. Seating springs though...fuck me, the shocks are already off the car. It's free money guys

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well fuck me that turned out to be exactly what I expected.

- leave Glasgow at 11pm

- Newcastle at 3am

- Rotherham at 845am.

Looking at the trailer on the lad's drive and it's shonky as fuck. Looks like I did the wiring myself in primary school.

There are zero functional brakes. 

No trailer bed/boards.

Tyres are ancient.

Lights don't work.

He buys it anyway. 

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We tentatively drive to Halfords where we spend an hour attempting to fix the lights before the shop opens and we can buy a £30 lightboard. We have a penknife and that's it. 15mins and we've got one side working. A further 45mins and we get both sides working. Pop into the shop and buy some connectors. This disgusting rat's nest was an improvement on the previous artisanal, hand-rolled connections.

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It's at this point where we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and spot a gap in the frame.

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Fuck sake. 

Zero chance we can slap anything on the back of the trailer like this. Collection #2 is off the cards. 

 

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7 minutes ago, sdkrc said:

To add insult to injury, it turns out I'd ordered the wrong number plates. Here's what I did with electrical tape. Masterful.

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Sorry for the laughs. Brilliant though, fair play as well for the work arounds. Proper day/night out 👍

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Looks like it’s a transit or similar recovery bed mounted on to a caravan chassis, I reckon that crack is from the load put on the chassis when something drives up the ramps onto the bed and all the weight is on the arse end. Might be worth getting some legs to fit on the rear corners to bear some of that weight and reduce the risk of the chassis getting damaged again.

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On 21/05/2023 at 07:56, Split_Pin said:

Seemingly some garages do not like money.  The one down the road from me is definitely shite friendly.

I once kept asking this place to let me know how much I owed, as I was moving house 120 miles away. I gave him my new address too.  Never got a bill. Went past 6 months later to try and pay the bill.  He was gone. Wonder why. 

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On 06/06/2021 at 20:37, sdkrc said:

my flat has been ruined by a burst pipe under the floor that's been going for 6+ months, possibly even years and there's potentially no insurance. By ruined I mean the bathroom, hallway, bedroom and kitchen all need new walls, floors and fixtures. There was 2 inches of water over several hundred square feet. 4+ weeks worth of work and £20k+.

Bathroom needed to be ripped out and taken to the tip ASAP.

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An unsolicited update on the flood damage at my flat from 2021.

We ended up having to move into an AirBnB for almost a year. The insurance paid £180 a day...

Turns out next door had a leak and the landlord never addressed it so that had contributed.

Total cost was north of £100k. Think I ended up ~£4k out of pocket and several hundred hours too. If I saw the claims handler, I'd punch her in the face. 

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Been a long time since the LS400 failed it's MOT on broken springs. Trying to put the shocks back on and 1 of them is being an absolute cunt. Can't tell if it was twisted when I hit that pothole or if I'm missing something. 

Other shock goes on both sides no problem. This one fits on neither

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Does the top mount need to shimmy round a bit to align the bottom of the damper? 

Sometimes I found that aftermarket springs don't quite line up with the stop tab thingy-ma-bob on the top mount or bottom seat on the damper.

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  • 1 month later...

Fucking hell, some sketchy moments today. 

Left Glasgow at 6am, I'm still 70miles from home.

Picked this fake Ferrari up with my dad on the world's sketchiest trailer. 

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We went to a secret* location to pick the trailer up where a derv XJ is stored. The hitch had been removed for extra security, took over an hour to reattach with some extremely brutal hammering with a wrench. 

Made it to Yeadon without too much hassle. Had to roll this onto the trailer by hand through busy traffic on the high street. It was tied down using the finest artisanal methods using ancient ratchet straps which appear to have been recovered from the Titanic.

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Got parts of a triumph gearbox and a 2.0litre 6 cylinder triumph engine thrown into the mix. 

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The trip was run entirely on veg and this proved to be a bad choice. The Rexton started to grumble and lose power, almost certainly a blocked fuel filter. I brought a spare but not the fucking tools to change it. We were struggling to hit 40mph on some hills. One of the straps came loose on the journey too

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Managed to drop the trailer and the fake Ferrari off and fill up with premium diesel and now it's back to full power which was fuck all to begin with. 

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1 hour ago, Rod/b said:

We used to have a trailer made out of a caravan chassis to tow around a small hovercraft made out of plywood and fibreglass. It was barely up to that job so hauling cars about on that thing is brass bollocks stuff. 

Smol car'd be OK on the bigger twin axles like that - I have the tiniest caravan possible and I'd guess if you stripped all the gubbins off that then added a decent floor like that one has then you'd get a 200 - 300kg payload on its 750kg MAM. Something bigger then you could scale up the payload to, I dunno, 750 - 1000kg.
Still the stuff of metallic bollocks tho' 
 

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