Microwave's Tat Corner

[Microwave]

Gonna start chucking all me car related shenanigans into one thread here

After banging on about wanting a smol Fiat for the past few weeks, and after going to view a metallic pink Cinquecento the other day, some part of me was apparently not satisfied and so I've ended up with THIS

Doing well for colourful cars here like

[HillmanImp]

Chicken saag, @eggfried rice and plain naan please. Also 2 poppadoms with dips. 

Fresh, not microwaved. 

[bunglebus]

Purple people eater

[Fumbler]

Nice. I like purple.

[Kowalski]

Never mind that, WTF has happened to that poor Trabant behind it!!!

[Microwave]

1 hour ago, Kowalski said:

 

Never mind that, WTF has happened to that poor Trabant behind it!!!

 

Right, I won’t show you the fuck off Monster logo on the boot then

[2MB]

I for one would love to see more of both these machines

[Cavcraft]

That purple Micra is class.

[jcr]

More photos please... that looks class

[chaseracer]

Found a set of K11 headlight protectors (clip-on type) in the garage.  Anyone?

[Microwave]

1 hour ago, chaseracer said:

Found a set of K11 headlight protectors (clip-on type) in the garage.  Anyone?

You got a photo out of curiosity? Not sure what they look like

[Isaac Hunt]

20 hours ago, Kowalski said:

Never mind that, WTF has happened to that poor Trabant behind it!!!

Shark Fin Soup

[jcr]

2 hours ago, chaseracer said:

Found a set of K11 headlight protectors (clip-on type) in the garage.  Anyone?

Facelift or not?

[chaseracer]

Off a K-reg, so pre-facelift.

[Microwave]

On 2/21/2020 at 5:08 PM, 2MB said:

I for one would love to see more of both these machines

Ask and ye shall receive

First you can have some more photos of the arguably more interesting car. Unfortunately it's currently sold to a friend pending payment & collection, so it won't be taking up space at the back of the drive for too much longer. I listed my 820 Vitesse on Facebook Marketplace back in November for sale or swopz, and after a few tempting offers someone asked me "would you swap it for a Trabant?" and I nearly fell out of my metaphorical chair. What kind of a fucking stupid question is that? Of course I want your dodgy East German car. Due to insurance woes stemming partly from my age and because no insurers know what a Trabant is ("sorry it's a what? Did you say Trapant?"), I'm having to get shot of it. For the month and a bit that I had it insured though, it was an absolute blast and I seriously recommend them for cheap laughs. Not actually as bad a car as people make out, but not too far off the mark like.

If that last photo isn't foreshadowing...

Right, Micra (affectionately named "Hannah", as per the reg. Didn't think I'd get to a point in life where I name cars). After looking at a couple of Fiats and realising I'm going to fucking struggle to find a decent one near me, I browsed all the usual sites for smol shite and happened across this Micra. Two things stood out about it to me:

1) It's a P reg, so it's still one of the shapes that appeals to me

2) it is PURPLE 

Went for a drive to Marsden in Huddersfield the next day or so. The woman who was selling it had owned it for the past couple of years and had apparently put about 20k miles on it. She had it MOTd last September, her dad unfortunately died in November and she ended up deciding to daily drive his VW van instead of the Micra, so it had sat untouched since then... and it shows. Paid shy of 400 quid for it, which is a good price for a K11 that isn't total Swiss cheese in my humble opinion. The fact that people often want a grand or so for these cars that have been firmly in banger territory for a decade proper rustles my jimmies.

Anyway, the hour and a half drive back home to Preston was flawless, as you'd expect from one of these. This, however, does not mean that the car is flawless. My to-do list currently looks like this:

CLEAN

Door sag

Heater resistor

Dash bulbs

Radio

Sunroof drains

Reseat driver's window

Rear washer

Handbrake

Strange engine noise, possibly water pump

Rear anti-roll bar links

Front CV joint

Already crossed off a few other items that don't appear here. It's obvious that it's really not been that well looked after, and I'm it's 9th owner. It has original Nissan branded drive belts ffs.

Car

 

Car but dark

 

Dirty interior. I'm serious, it is/was fucking filthy. The amount of dog hair still in this thing is unreal. If you're a smoker, this car is like a dream come true. Smells like shit and comes with a lifetime supply of filters! I swear to god I will never forget the smell of the ashtray...

Soz 4 neck snapping

 

Anyone got an original brochure for the 1996 Micra GX? Just want to see how much the water feature option was before inflation.

 

[Microwave]

General question here. I always use what I consider to be good quality oil in my cars, minimum standard being the Comma stuff I get for cheap at work. I also have access to even cheaper Technolube stuff. This car needs an oil change soon, and I don’t really feel like spending the extra money on the good oil this time around as I’m a bit cash strapped. I don’t think the engine’s had a very good life as it is so should I feel bad about potentially using cheap oil or not? Am I doing a bad thing?

[2MB]

Not heard of technolube but would assume it conforms to pretty modern standards which will make it better than what the engine was designed for, and clean oil is better than dirty regardless of what brand it is

[timolloyd]

A change of oil has to be better than the old stuff. And I always think it’s frequency rather than quality.

[DavidB]

Home Bargain semi synthetic 5l is £11.99, always use this.

[Microwave]

2 hours ago, 2MB said:

Not heard of technolube

Made by Tetrosyl far as I know

Anyway, thanks chaps. I feel less bad about putting shite in it now ? I've not a clue when the oil was last changed but I suspect more than two years ago.

[Fumbler]

8 minutes ago, Microwave said:

Made by Tetrosyl far as I know

Anyway, thanks chaps. I feel less bad about putting shite in it now ? I've not a clue when the oil was last changed but I suspect more than two years ago.

Anything will be better than what was in there, especially if it's that old!

[Microwave]

Yesterday was the first time in a while that I had free time while it wasn't pissing it down, so I got to work on cleaning the Micra.

It wasn't hugely dirty before, but it had seriously caked on shite in all the wheel arches and had moss in places from where it had been sat in a damp area for a few months. I also wanted to wash it so I could get certain panels, like the front wing you see there, ready for paint if need be. Bought some waxless Turtlewax shampoo at Halfords the other day for this job (probably the third time I've ever bought something at Halfords? I feel like I lose IQ every time I go into that shop and ask a member of staff a question). Did an alright job of cleaning it.

Here's what I mean about the caked on dirt. Seriously people, if you have a jet washer get your wheel arches cleaned out every time you wash the car. Probably stops it rotting years early (bit late for this one though).

I didn't even know that bung existed beforehand ffs

It's not all good news though, as I also discovered this mid wash. I had to do a double take when I saw it and just kinda went "ah shit".

Hopefully I can figure something out to fix that before it writes the poor old thing off. 

After it was washed, I did the next thing that I'd been wanting to do for a while which was remove the tatty old pinstripe. At one point in time when it wasn't quite so worn, it might have actually looked alright... but it was time for it to go. It put up a bloody good fight though, and I hope to god I never have to remove pinstriping from a car again as long as I live, spent about two hours doing this.

From this...

To this!

Like I said earlier, I was fully prepared to have to spray this panel (wouldn't have been the end of the world mind), but I remembered I had this Autoglym stuff that my sister gave me for free a couple years back.

She worked at a packing facility and it was rejected off the line for whatever reason. Don't know why though, because I was well chuffed with this!

Unfortunately I had to leave in a hurry to take the missus to a hospital appointment right after I took this photo, but I plan on doing this to the rest of the car whenever time and weather permits. Passenger door and both bumpers are equally as desperate for it.

Detailer init me m8

[Fumbler]

7 hours ago, Microwave said:

 "ah shit".

Hopefully I can figure something out to fix that before it writes the poor old thing off.

Hey! You might be lucky with this one. Computer Science Teacher had one exactly the same as yours. The difference only being he had to take it to the bean can remodelling clinic after it apparently catastrophically failed its MoT in July. Reason why I say you might be lucky is because the area around the sunroof goes first before the sills do.

It's good that you're washing the wheelarches. Surprised how clean they came up! Seatbelt mounts are a little pesky on these cars because they're directly exposed to the air. I suppose its better than having an arch liner that lets water in but not out.

[Microwave]

Not much has been happening in the world of purple Micras. Lots of shit to do but no motivation to really do any of it. It's developed a horrible grinding noise from the front right at low speed that starts when I press the brake but doesn't stop necessarily when I let off. Not sure if it's a warped disc, sticking caliper or what. Thankfully, that's the only real major issue with the car, the rest are just niggling faults. I've ordered a set of discs, pads and a new caliper to prepare for the worst case scenario, all nice and cheap too thankfully.

Decided randomly today that I thought it might look good with painted horns (proper jdm wrx mod init), so that's what I spent a couple hours doing.

 

Dirty and quite rotten, surprised the bolts didn't snap.

 

Clean-ish. Spent ages scraping loose paint off with a metal gasket scraper.

Looks good I think  

 

Only other remotely interesting thing going on is that I went for a drive the other day with someone who also owns a pre-facelift K11, an R reg base. Always nice to find an excuse to use the DSLR, please do give the photos a look:

https://imgur.com/a/d6U3PGp

Personal favourite:

[ETCHY]

K11's really are fantastic little cars. They are a whole lot more entertaining & likeable than they have any right to be.

They really do get under your skin. Eager willing little things that are just fun to drive. if a touch wobbly in the corners.

I also rather like them in purple !

[Fumbler]

Yesssss the red one is a Shape just like mine!

[Microwave]

2 hours ago, Fumbler said:

Yesssss the red one is a Shape just like mine!

He was rather jealous of my highly luxurious GX, with its manual sunroof and central locking ?

I do find it quite funny just how much standard equipment even on the cheapest of cars has changed in just two decades. More and more cheap cars these days are getting touchscreens with sat nav, reverse sensors/cameras etc. But I really don't see why we couldn't have more shitspec cars with no PAS and no central locking. Even the Sandero Access has both of those AFAIK?

[Fumbler]

3 minutes ago, Microwave said:

He was rather jealous of my highly luxurious GX, with its manual sunroof and central locking ?

I do find it quite funny just how much standard equipment even on the cheapest of cars has changed in just two decades. More and more cheap cars these days are getting touchscreens with sat nav, reverse sensors/cameras etc. But I really don't see why we couldn't have more shitspec cars with no PAS and no central locking. Even the Sandero Access has both of those AFAIK?

Indeed, I wish cars had more shit spec levels, however I'm fairly certain the reason why they don't is because there's unfeasible market demand for them. I, myself, am pleased with my black bumpers, paid for radio, rear wiper and heated rear screen, velour doorcards and adjustable steering column!

[Microwave]

Gave the Trabi a run this morning. Always seems to fire first crank, flood itself and then take forever to restart. It always did this but it wasn’t nearly as bad when it was being driven daily. Hasn’t had a run out since December and it’s only been run once since, and in its defence it’s got sod all fuel in and it’s probably down on oil, ratio wise.

I do miss driving it, used to get some proper looks in it, as you might expect.

 

[Microwave]

Right, smol update for smol car

I'm gonna put this here at the top so there's less chance of it being missed: Does anyone want to buy this car? I'm more than likely gonna put it up for sale very soon, if anyone fancies it let me know, it's near Preston.

Just before lockdown started, I had to move this thing into storage at my work because there was some decorating going on at my parents' house, and it would've been in the way of the guy's van. Unfortunately, lockdown then started and the car ended up being stuck hidden away at work. Didn't see the car for a good 6/7 weeks, so I ended up SORNing it and taking insurance off. Regardless, it's been sat needing brakes, the offside front had been making an absolute racket that had been getting worse and worse, to the point that I deemed it unsafe to drive.

Yesterday, I finally started work on it. I didn't have the brakes so I decided to tackle the alternator instead, which had also been making an annoying fucking noise for ages. Someone identified it as the bearing, so I whipped it off and took it to a local place that does car electric bits or whatever.

Look, no alternator.

First job of the day was to start the brakes. Now, I should add that the last time I touched brakes on a car I was 15 or 16 and I was trying to do the rear brake pads on my 1998 Hyundai Coupe, which is a car that is extremely notorious for shit rear brakes that constantly stick. I made an awful job of that then (because they were stuck), and to be honest I've been scared to do mechanical work on cars since. I almost always pay the mechanic next to my work to do stuff for me, but for once in my life I thought I should just have a pop at it and see what happens. Worst case, I can push the car 30ft to the right and it'll be with the mechanic on a 2 post lift.

Rotten.

THANKFULLY, this job went as smooth as I could ask it to. The caliper, which I had suspected to be sticking, was not. The pads however were so unevenly worn down that the brake disc was free to move in place, which is what I imagine was causing the awful grinding noise it was making (which only really happened at car park speeds, but was still sort of there are higher speeds). Here, have a look:

Got me money's worth I suppose. Highly suspect these might actually be original, though I think at 76k ish miles I might be pushing that. Anyhow, got the new pads and discs on in a pretty ok amount of time. Mid way through that, I got a call to say the alternator was ready so went and picked that up.

I never want to install an alternator ever again.

What an absolute arse of a job, simple in theory but the bottom two ears on the alternator made it fit very tightly, to the point that to adjust its position I had to use a socket extension and a hammer to twat it into place. Simply lining up the bolt holes took about an hour, so by the time I had it all sorted it was about half 2, and my access to the car ends at about 3. However, the engine is absolutely dead silent now, no more annoying whining. Anyway, reversed the car out, hit the brakes and the pedal went straight to the floor which nearly resulted in me twatting a rotten Transit. Rookie error I suppose, but yeah, the brakes ended up working fine. I didn't have time to do both sides today, so the passenger side is gonna be tomorrow's job. After that, I'm gonna take it out on the road proper, drive it home, give it a proper tarting up, take some decent photos then stick it up for sale I think. It's not that I don't like the car, it's more the fact that I've had too much time during lockdown to perv over other shitboxes that I'd rather have, so I've kinda become disinterested in this thing. Regardless, it might not mean a lot to people who work on their cars all the time but I'm quite pleased with myself for actually tackling car jobs on my own for once. It's definitely given me a bit more of the confidence I've been needing.

This is how she currently sits, full of dust from ground down chassis paint off that old wagon next to it.

Sorry if this is hard to read, already had a few ?