A long time ago in a Galaxie far, far away (running after 3yrs)

[Schaefft]

Looks like a rewarding* project*. Honestly though, this could be quite fun to clean up.

[loserone]

I was pretty disappointed to be moving it..

[sdkrc]

3 minutes ago, Schaefft said:

Looks like a rewarding* project*. Honestly though, this could be quite fun to clean up.

It's well beyond my current skills and knowledge but at the very least I'm not fucking up a mint car. I'm gonna take it 1 small job at a time

[sdkrc]

First interesting find, a Yugoslavian coin, sort of. I thought Yugoslavia ceased to exist in 1992 but this is the Federal republic and not the socialist republic. So Serbia and Montenegro and not the rest

 

[Supernaut]

I remember first hearing about this 405 a couple of years ago!

Wasn't it joint ownership for a bit, though? I assume you have bought the others out.

[sdkrc]

2 hours ago, Supernaut said:

I assume you have bought the others out.

Hostile take over.

It was @Jimbob McGregor who found it and sourced the funding with me and @loserone 2-3 yrs ago. I bought everyone out. It's had sportline wheels courtesy of @loserone and has been kept in a barn since then. 

It's Serbian and needs MOTing and importing, it's high mileage. It's got a bad head gasket runs a little rough. Will see to those eventually.

Progress today:

- Interior de-contaminated and mostly removed

- driver's seat slide mechanism freed after a 2hr battle

- Passenger window is up

- Battery has been revived with a dumb charger and then a smart charger

- French and Yugoslavian coins obtained 

[Scruffy Bodger]

Is it the proper all alloy Mi16?

[sdkrc]

16 minutes ago, Scruffy Bodger said:

Is it the proper all alloy Mi16?

I think so, not sure what versions of the engine there are

 

[Scruffy Bodger]

13 minutes ago, sdkrc said:

I think so, not sure what versions of the engine there are

 

That's the badger, brilliant engine that loves to rev to the 7.2K limiter, that's why so many made their way into 205's, 30bhp more and no weight penalty, a fantastic combo!

What's it like in front of the rear wheels?

[sdkrc]

I've not checked, is that the place for rust? It looks like this was a German car up until 2019ish and then it went to Serbia. Better than a lifetime in Scotland but not sure how much better.

I need to check if it's stolen actually.

Is £16 via car vertical the going rate now!? They seem to think the vin is for a 106

[Scruffy Bodger]

1 minute ago, sdkrc said:

I've not checked, is that the place for rust? It looks like this was a German car up until 2019ish and then it went to Serbia. Better than a lifetime in Scotland but not sure how much better.

I need to check if it's stolen actually.

Is £16 via car vertical the going rate now!? They seem to think the vin is for a 106

That's the main area, yes. They hide it really well under the thick underseal, have a really good poke about underneath and check it over properly so you don't get any nasty surprises later on. The facebook group is very helpful if you need bits, especially guru Gritton.

[Dyslexic Viking]

@IronStar is our Serbian member and can perhaps answer some questions if you have any related to when it was there.

[IronStar]

6 hours ago, sdkrc said:

First interesting find, a Yugoslavian coin, sort of. I thought Yugoslavia ceased to exist in 1992 but this is the Federal republic and not the socialist republic. So Serbia and Montenegro and not the rest

 

Jesus, these are out of circulation for ages! These stopped being legal tender in 2005 if I’m not mistaken. 
I can maybe try to tell you more based on the reg plate. We don’t have a centralized MOT history mechanism, but I can make an educated guess based on the Serbian plates. I see it has a sticker on the passenger side windscreen, so I can try to guess based on that.

What I can tell you, is that there’s no way it became Serbian car in 2019. Pre Euro 3 car import was banned in Serbia mid 2012, and that car is not Euro 3 compliant. Only way it could’ve entered after that date is if it’s ringed and I doubt you wouldn’t notice that.

Do you have plastic Serbian registration certificate? Is it down as Mi16 there?

[captain_70s]

43 minutes ago, sdkrc said:

 They seem to think the vin is for a 106

 

15 minutes ago, IronStar said:

What I can tell you, is that there’s no way it became Serbian car in 2019. Pre Euro 3 car import was banned in Serbia mid 2012, and that car is not Euro 3 compliant. Only way it could’ve entered after that date is if it’s ringed. 

Well, those facts could be related...

I'm sure getting this UK registered will be a fun* and painless** process.

[IronStar]

1 minute ago, captain_70s said:

 

Well, those facts could be related...

I'm sure getting this UK registered will be a fun* and painless** process.

That’s why I’m asking if there’s a plastic registration certificate and what it’s down as on it. Ringing Mi16 as 106 wouldn’t fly here. You might as well just stick the plates off another car on it. 

[sdkrc]

It's a 405 according to other vin checkers, just car vertical getting it wrong. 

It's been imported already, will see how registration goes. I imported a worse Merc 124 a few years back. 

I'm not definite of the date it was brought to Serbia, the documentation is limited. I'm going by the earliest thing I can see which is the 2019 registration sticker. No Serbian number plates unfortunately. Could have been pre-2012. 

I'm 50/50 on whether this is bent. Either way, I'm not massively concerned. 

[IronStar]

1 hour ago, sdkrc said:

It's a 405 according to other vin checkers, just car vertical getting it wrong. 

It's been imported already, will see how registration goes. I imported a worse Merc 124 a few years back. 

I'm not definite of the date it was brought to Serbia, the documentation is limited. I'm going by the earliest thing I can see which is the 2019 registration sticker. No Serbian number plates unfortunately. Could have been pre-2012. 

I'm 50/50 on whether this is bent. Either way, I'm not massively concerned. 

Ah okay, 2019 is registration expiry date. That’s when it was last on the road here. You get a new one every year it’s registered, and you take off the previous one. Based on that coin and 99 servicing sticker, it was probably brought here early 00’s.

Serbian plates are on that sticker, in the format XX 123XX.

BG 123 EC would be the plates on this sticker.

EDIT: If it’s VIN decoded as MI16, and it’s right KW on the registration certificate it’s 99% legit. If you have that plastic thing, I can give you resources to get more info off it. The chip holds much more data than what’s printed on it. 

[Jim Bell]

13 minutes ago, IronStar said:

You might as well just stick the plates off another car on it. 

Big agree

[sdkrc]

[IronStar]

2 minutes ago, sdkrc said:

Last on the road in 2020 here then. It was registered to a hometown of one of my best friends. Her dad is a huge car nut. I’ll ask him if he remembers seeing the car around. 

I also saw there’s a repair shop ad on the plates holder, as well. I can make a call on Monday if you want, and ask if they remember the car and have any history on it.

[sdkrc]

I can't find the Serbian registration card so don't think we'll be able to fish out more detail on this for the time being. I suspect the previous owner/importer guy has it. 

Vin numbers match across the import doc, chassis, documentation etc. but may have been tampered with. Not sure if they stamp the engine too but will have a gander in the future.

Driver's side in front of the rear wheel looks great. 

Passenger side is crusty but fixable. 

Brake lines need replacing. 

Costs are mounting but it's still firmly in cheap territory.

Bonnet catch came clean off too

[captain_70s]

Normal suburban scenes.

[Supernaut]

Calendar shot!

 

Man. As shit as my time was in the actual job I had in Stirling, I miss being in the central belt near all the Scotoshite shenanigans.

[sdkrc]

5hrs of spark plugs in and out. Lots of lessons learned. A great day though 

It's achingly close to running. Hopefully just timing

BONUS CONTENT: the 405 mi16 spare wheel appears to be an original Pirelli P600. Rock hard but only 3psi

[captain_70s]

So, in brief.

Previously it'd run for 30 seconds or so on some cylinders and then piss fuel out of all the carb seals.

A group tinkering sessions was arranged and we assembled to talk shit, eat sandwiches and fail to achieve much.

Going in we had a few things that were seemingly known. Firing order correct, spark at all the HT leads, over 100psi of compression in all cylinders (wet), carb rebuilt.

So a list was made, check valves weren't stuck, check all the plugs were firing, check ignition timing, make sure carb was doing carb stuff.

Rocked cover removed, valves all moving, hydraulic lifters with no obvious adjustment but they had a tiny bit of clearance at full lift, so not hanging up a valve. Plugs all tested fine, carb was having issues in that it was dumping fuel into the cylinders.

A bit of digging found a fiddly little spring clip on the float wasn't positioned correctly so the entire float assembly was lifting up allowing fuel to overfill the float bowl and force itself into the carb under pressure.

Ignition timing initially seemed to be 180 degrees out, so the dizzy came out and was flipped. Now it just kept backfiring through the carb. Hm.

Eventually we realised we had the firing order flipped, so we had the first plug on the right bank down as cylinder one, when it was actually the first plug on the left bank. FFS.

Everything swapped around to the correct setup, dizzy back out. Cleaned the crank pulley, revealing the factory timing marks to ascertain whether the Tipex mark was indicating TDC or was a timing mark.

Coughs splutters, still doesn't run...

It was now time to pack up and head home armed with new information. It seems everything is largely working as it should but the ignition timing is incorrect. When we dropped the dizzy onto the cam sprocket we did it the way that works for old British 4-pots. Set engine to TDC on no.1, have the rotor arm pointing at the correct HT lead for cylinder 1, fine tune by spinning the dizzy body.

In retrospect it seems obvious that the V8 has the same diameter dizzy cap but twice as many cylinders. So the spacing between cylinders will be much smaller and simply eyeballing the rotor arm probably isn't good enough and we were spinning the dizzy body far too far when moving the timing. It'd be very easy to end up firing the wrong cylinder on the intake stroke - Likely the cause of the backfiring through the carb.

So, close but no cigar. But we all know a bit more about V8s and Motorcraft carbs and fingers crossed it'll be running at the next session.

We did at least find where some of the fuel that was getting dumped had ignited...

[Matty]

I bet that caused a few dropped sandwiches. I'd defo have dropped mine.