Harrison's Garage - XM RAC MOT FTW

[High Jetter]

Ooh, this sounds good...

[Bren]

9 hours ago, rob88h said:

I don't want to say it too loudly, but the daily cars (mostly the XM) are behaving nicely. That's usually my cue to scroll through Facebook Marketplace for some additional tat to spoil my free time, but in an unprecedented move I've turned my attention to one of my pre-existing projects - the Granada!!!
I have a few cars that have just perpetually sat around, so much so I don't really see them as projects anymore, let alone cars. They sort of just exist as part of the furniture.
Well, the time has come for the Granada! It's going to get some* attention, at least, until something else no doubt takes over. The plan is to get it running and driving and on the road, nothing fancy, I'm not intending on completely restoring it or anything. I just want to drive it.

As a reminder; I don't think it's seen the road since the early 90's. The rear brakes were completely stripped out (I presume they were seized solid when it was discovered), it leaks fuel, there's no exhaust and I've not had it running* for a few years now. So, I think the best place to start is the brakes…
A few years ago I'd started to replace the rear flexi lines and a bracket that held the rear brake line t-piece fell off the body. That was the moment my mojo died. 

It should be spot welded on, but the weld mustn't've been any good from the factory as it's come off cleanly and there's no corrosion to blame it on. Given it's only carrying the weight of the Tee (which is also held in place by the hard lines clipped to the body) and force from movement of the flexis I decided JB weld was sufficient - and it sets the tone for the level of professionalism in the recommission work.

Huzzah! The next problem at the back was that the LHS brake line had no union at where the wheel cylinder should be, and the RHS union was fused to the brake line and not able to spin for fitting it to a new wheel cylinder. Using some borrowed tools and a precisely radiused thumb I made up a couple of new brake lines using the old ones as a pattern and I was pretty pleased with the result.

 

The new lines allowed for fitment of new wheel cylinders. A satisfying moment given they've been sitting in a box in the boot for maybe 5 years. Fluid was fed to the rear circuit and all seems well.

I then had to guess my way through assembling the rear brake components from some grainy workshop images and my "bag of bits" that came with the car. I think I got the self-adjusters on the wrong sides initially, so had to take the bastard things apart again and re-assemble them a second time to get them in the opposite sides. I'm still not convinced I've got the adjuster right, applying the handbrake didn't seem to rotate the adjusters.

Having checked again… I think they're wrong now… and they were right the first time. FML.

(Pictures to come, so do check back.  The uploader is being a pillock. EDIT: uploader un-pillocked). 

What  a honey 😍

[rob88h]

Not wanting to disassemble and reassemble the drum brakes again I have filed that particular job under “L” for Later and moved on to the fronts. 
Flexis first, and during which I found another brake line that wasn’t too clever looking. I was just about to ignore it when I came over all productive and decided I’d flex my new brake line mending skills once more. 

The suspect bit is in that photo above somewhere. It’s part of quite a long run across the subframe. Annoyingly once off it actually looked alright. 

Nevertheless, I’ve come this far; I am Bender, please insert girder brake line.

Once reinstalled to the car it was looking much better. 

This yoga mat has now seen more action than it did for its intended purpose I think. Poses like the Calliper-bolt-removal-optimist and there’s Brake-fluid-tracking-up-my-arm. 

The next game was piston wind back. Effective, but additional leverage required. FORESHADOWING.

Followed by 90% of a brake pad kit (the anti rattle springs were wrong so I’m using the old ones). …That’s just reminded me, the pads were wrong too, so I’d had to buy another set.

 Everything bled nicely with the loner kit.

The was a brief celebration that followed as even though the drums still need rebuilding again, this should be the end of my evenings soaking in DOT4. I pressed the brake pedal full of hope. The callipers grab the discs and refuse to let go. Damn. 

[Noel Tidybeard]

[rob88h]

Don’t worry to those who sad face reacted to my previous post! I’ve cancelled my TV licence recently and I’m too stubborn to give up on the Granada just yet. Instead the callipers are coming off for rebuilds. I bought these neat little plugs as I didn’t want to crimp my brand new brake flexis. Also, the flexis are braided so I don’t think that would have been a good idea anyway.

With a calliper off I MacGyvered an air line fitting out of an old flexi, a football inflating needle valve and a bike pump. Then I shat myself exploding the old pistons out and dramatically shortened my life with the atomised brake fluid.

£34 for a rebuild kit covering both sides seemed pretty reasonable and wasn’t too hard to do. 

The old pistons weren’t obviously that bad to be honest, but the seals were pretty hard.

One side now brakes and releases. 
It’s a big relief as I was wondering about Master Cylinder shenanigans with the fact that both sides wound back ok-ish but stuck on and didn’t release. 
In the immortal words of Ed China; “Now I’ve just got to do it all again.. on the other side”

[rob88h]

The remainder of the Granada’s brakes rebuilt/went together with no problems. Now they engage and release and the handbrake works too. Since that milestone, I’ve been mostly distracted on other things:

 

The XM sprung a leak (some time ago by the look of it).

Having taken the wheel off it didn’t take long to find it coming from the strut return. I guess it was pooping out a little bit of LHM every night it sank.

I cleaned things up to make it nicer to work on and bought a new return hose. I don’t think there was actually any problem with the hose, it was more the zip-tie I think. Anyway, I fitted the new hose and proper clamp to hold it on more securely.

Having not checked on it since, I declare that fixed!

 

While fixing the XM and waiting for parts I called the Volvo into service. It became quickly apparent that a front calliper was sticking after having not used the car for a few months. 

It wound back ok, but I found that the pads were catching on the corroded body of the calliper and carrier, so I cleaned all that up with a chisel and everything seemed pretty free to move again.

 

The Mondeo exploded. During a really hot spell in May. The thermostat housing literally split in two!

As this is our “dependable” family transport I had to quite quickly sort this, which took longer and cost more than I’d hoped. Being a “Modern” the thermostat is quite complicated, read expensive, and buried quite deep in engine bay.

But it was just a case of undo stuff, remove stuff, get stuff out of the way.

The cylinder head looks a bit pitted, so I tried to clean it up with some wet and dry emery and in the end I used a bit of Hylomar Blue on the new seal. The photo makes the pitting look worse than it feels by hand.

With regards to why it exploded; Best not to think about it. But, when dismantling, the lower of the two electrical connectors was undone, so that or age or that and age could have been why it did it. For now though, everything seems to work. Here is the barge dwarfing an admittedly large XM.

 

 

I also recently sold VeloSolex for oil ☹️ 

[rob88h]

#67 - Nissan Leaf, 2019
 
Meanwhile, in April, I spent £650 on fuel... I didn’t like this. This got me Man Maths-ing. I bought myself a knackered EV - I’ll hand my AS gun and badge in on my way out.

It’s a “40”kWh Leaf with about 60 miles of usable range and a steering twitch that is somewhere between entertaining and terrifying. It’s honestly a horrible car, I hate it. I hate it so much I quite like it. I’m sure some here relate to this form car masochism from which I seem to suffer. On the bright side, it costs so little to run that hopefully pretty soon it’ll have paid for its own death.

[rob88h]

I may have defected to team electric recently, but I still have a compelling compendium of shite littering the drive. One car with a particular sense of humour is the XM. It had an MOT today, so naturally, having been quite dependable lately it decided to have a complete hissy fit on Saturday morning, MOT minus 2 days. I needed to take it out on a run as I was planning to go further than the wilted Leaf allows. It started up and rose up just fine. I gave the screen a cursory wipe to clear the overnight rain and the wipers jerkily obliged in one direction and then just stopped there, halfway up the screen. You get used to quirks with the XM so I left anyway and just hoped* that it wouldn't rain. Not far down the road I stopped for pastry - not diesel thanks to it's colossal 800 mile range!, and to my abject disappointment it didn't restart and the power from the battery swiftly fell off a cliff.

Due to having no friends I had to wait for RAC help, which was a fun wait with two dogs and a 3 year old and a 2 year old. Every button got pressed. 

So Sunday, a new battery was fitted (an unrelated but completely loose alternator was secured) and I set to trying to wake up the wipers. 

The motor would go with some help, but was really sluggish and usually popped a fuse, so I cleaned up the brushes and did some general light refurbishments.

What a pain in the arse extracting this was and I didn’t get the timing quite right on the motor park position on reassembly, but  at least got me to an MOT in a vaguely presentable manner. As people who’ve followed this car in its past life know that getting to the MOT is no trivial detail.

And it then only went and bloody passed!!!

As Bournite would say… 274,000, not out. 

[beko1987]

The 2nd most annoying ftp I've ever had was when the plastic stat housing split on my Ford Puma at asda when the ex was heavily pregnant. 

Drove there fine. We went shopping, came back and the coolant was noticeable from several rows away as it ran down the car park, and when we followed it it led to the Puma. Seems they all do that sir

Got it recovered to mums driveway eventually and got a new stat housing a few days later. Fitting it was a right twat involving removing the drivers headlight for the most access. It was rhe job that made me buy the fancy locking hose clamp pliers I've used maybe 4 times since. 

[RoverFolkUs]

The "Green Fluid Leak" ™️ advisory again 😂 it cracks me up because I'm guessing it's a lesser experienced tester who doesn't know what it is 😂

[rob88h]

8 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

The "Green Fluid Leak" ™️ advisory

Actual footage of my Citroën and me. 

[High Jetter]

1 hour ago, rob88h said:

I may have defected to team electric recently, but I still have a compelling compendium of shite littering the drive. One car with a particular sense of humour is the XM. It had an MOT today, so naturally, having been quite dependable lately it decided to have a complete hissy fit on Saturday morning, MOT minus 2 days. I needed to take it out on a run as I was planning to go further than the wilted Leaf allows. It started up and rose up just fine. I gave the screen a cursory wipe to clear the overnight rain and the wipers jerkily obliged in one direction and then just stopped there, halfway up the screen. You get used to quirks with the XM so I left anyway and just hoped* that it wouldn't rain. Not far down the road I stopped for pastry - not diesel thanks to it's colossal 800 mile range!, and to my abject disappointment it didn't restart and the power from the battery swiftly fell off a cliff.

Due to having no friends I had to wait for RAC help, which was a fun wait with two dogs and a 3 year old and a 2 year old. Every button got pressed. 

So Sunday, a new battery was fitted (an unrelated but completely loose alternator was secured) and I set to trying to wake up the wipers. 

The motor would go with some help, but was really sluggish and usually popped a fuse, so I cleaned up the brushes and did some general light refurbishments.

What a pain in the arse extracting this was and I didn’t get the timing quite right on the motor park position on reassembly, but  at least got me to an MOT in a vaguely presentable manner. As people who’ve followed this car in its past life know that getting to the MOT is no trivial detail.

And it then only went and bloody passed!!!

As Bournite would say… 274,000, not out. 

Superb! @Rust Collector