Ghostly Goings On - over the moon

[Ghosty]

The red Aerodeck has appeared on eBay with a description copied from the Facebook ads. 

 

Price has dropped to a slightly more reasonable £2800. 😂

[vaughant]

19 hours ago, Ghosty said:

Home. It's lovely. Few jobs need doing but nothing major. It needed a jump start in Sheffield after it refused to start, but the car came with two batteries and there was some doubt as to which of them if either was any good, so hopefully that's not much. However after the jump it's been starting just fine again... the car supposedly has a hot starting issue but it was acting like a low battery, so more investigation required. 

Drivers door lock, misfire (arcing HT lead), little things like that. 

 

Nice to see the junkman's 405 still fully functional. 

I had an estate and a salon version of the e34 520i and must admit.... 

 

 

I didn't like either of them sorry 😬😬😬. 

 

But, we're all different, I just felt they were really slow and thirsty, but they both felt super solid, absolute quality, I just couldn't get on with either of them at all. 

As for that prelude, it looked lovely I must admit. My mums mate had the version before that with the long headlights and digi dash. I thought it went really well when I had* to move it around the block I didn't* rev it out to max using the box as a manual. But being a Honda it was unlikely to break. 

[Ghosty]

The business. 

 

Fuel filler flap hinge broke thanks to a random helpful* passer by. 

Replacements are cheap though. 

[Ghosty]

OK, list of jobs to do. 

- MOT
- investigate oil leak (sump gasket if not more), determine viability (may require engine crane) 
- Driver's door doesn't lock - remove door card 
- HT leads - replace (arcing)
- investigate rotor arm and dizzy cap condition, possibly replace (not recorded)
- OSF wing needs replacing/rust covering/ bodging in some manner to MoT standard - trailing edge is shot 
- set tracking
- clean
- reaffix petrol filler flap
- treat rust around filler flap - passes magnet test so no imminent need for bodywork 
- treat rust osr arch lip
-cover rust hole nsf door - poss seek replacement door 
 

[brownnova]

That’s a little bit to be getting on with at least! 

[Dave_Q]

If it's the upper sump gasket (sump:block) rather than the lower (upper sump: lower sump) I would recommend trying to do it by lifting the engine rather than dropping the subframe.

It's a sad job either way but the last time I did one (on an E30 but assuming its the same) one of the subframe bolts snapped, they are in a captive nut in a blind box section so fixing it means you most likely have to take the engine out to cut a flap in the box section to weld in a nut etc. Bad times.

[3VOM]

9 hours ago, Ghosty said:

- Driver's door doesn't lock - remove door card

Mine is having a "driver's door doesn't open" event. I have been inside the door that many times I have lost count and it still isn't fixed. Next attempt soon when I see if I need to get a new part. Give me a shout if you want to compare notes.

[Ghosty]

4 hours ago, Dave_Q said:

I would recommend trying to do it by lifting the engine

yes, the venerable Reverend Bluejeans echoed this, hence the engine crane comment. 

[Ghosty]

Right, made a start on the MOT to-do list. 

First: handbrake. Looking through the service history, the rear discs were of indeterminate age, and the pads were 12 years old. The handbrake on these is the shoe behind the disc type. Yay asbestos. 

 

That's the handbrake surface. No wonder it's a bit shit. New rear discs and pads for £veryfair from Brakes International were acquired. 

The other one was worse than this one I've pictured. 95% done on that, gave up as it was going dark - adjusting the handbrake is a bit trial and error as bolting the wheel on makes it bite too hard and lock up. 
The new pads didn't come with wear sensors, but the ones that came off the car had the wires taped together and the pad wear light doesn't come on the dash so I'm not arsed about that. Rear pads should last forever anyway - the ones fitted 12 years ago still had a significant proportion of the friction material remaining. 

In other news, I removed the faded, UV-ruined GB sticker:

 

and investigated the rust on the osr quarter: 

 

having pulled all the flaking paint and filler off, this is solid, magnet-friendly, surface rusty metal. With a bit of a Kurust and a buzz back (when the new dremel I ordered arrives, thanks Extinction Rebellends) this will clean up and fill out hopefully. Same story with the arch lip, save for one or two small cornflakes from the outer skin it's solid and just needs treating. There's no serious rust on the car at all. 

I tried to fit the new fuel filler hinge but it's made of the cheapest plastic I've ever seen, it's far too flexible and had several bits of moulding flash/sprue still attached that a fingernail could cut through they were that soft. It was a pain to fit to the filler flap, and when it did fit (which required a hammer) and I put it on the car, it wouldn't stay open, couldn't support the weight of the (steel?) filler door, and wobbled around more than the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Two prongs that looked to brace against the filler flap snapped off too as they were just too weak. Utter waste of money and in no way worth £15 - other options were £30/40 including OEM, so I'll head over to BMW and order one from them.

 

With a dash of contact cleaner and a rifle through a box of bulbs, I managed to get the courtesy lights working, and after replacing two of the bulbs I now have a full complement of interior lights. The one touch up/down on the driver's window is taking a little more convincing to work reliably, but it's getting there. 

Tomorrow, more brake fettling and rust treatment for the MOT, and maybe some interior stuff too - I have a pair of Pioneer 10cm speakers knocking about that will do well to replace the slightly flatulent lower front speakers (even if they're a slightly larger 5.5"), and I need to see if the radio has an RCA jack on the back - mercifully it's a Kenwood so if it doesn't, I have a different, slightly more period Kenwood that does, so I can see if I can pop an RCA to 3.5mm lead into it for my phone so I'm not stuck listening to CDs.

[fatharris]

Looks like a productive days' work there, you'll be driving round making big business deals and wearing a suit in no time.

[Ghosty]

To-do list is getting shorter.

Handbrake is now working - the new discs are too shallow to fit over the handbrake shoes, and it turns out the handbrake shoes were starting to split, so with new pads and handbrake shoes on the old discs the brakes and handbrakes are acceptable now. 

A replacement driver's seatbelt stalk has arrived - it's slightly shorter than the existing one but it's the right non-pretensioner type so that's good enough. 

The driver's door lock randomly started working by itself when I turned the key in the lock last night to turn the courtesy lights off - big grin not having to take the door card off. 

Sump gasket is fitted and seems to have stopped the oil leak - had a go at that but it was a cunt of a job so farmed it out to my dad. Sump was pretty clean inside. 

I bought a new fuel filler hinge off eBay but it turned out to be a terrible quality part, little bits were breaking off while I was fitting it as it was so flimsy, and it can't actually support the weight of the filler flap - I messaged the eBay seller expressing my disappointment but didn't ask for a refund seeing as it was damaged. They didn't reply to my message for 10 days so they got negative feedback. 
I'll fit it for the MOT in case the exposed non-locking filler flap fails the test, but I'll be going to BMW to see if they have a genuine part. 

Just need to do something with the front wing and it should be ready for MOT (which expired yesterday), and it can go in for a test. 

Also, it's not MOT related but the tracking needs doing too. 

[jamescarruthers]

Fantastic to hear, we’ll done on the progress.
 

I saw Brian today and updated him with your progress before this update.  He is still very pleased it got a good home with you. I will pop around with the laptop And show him the pics some time too— got any more? 

[Ghosty]

6 hours ago, jamescarruthers said:

got any more? 

Not as yet - partly given the season and that I only work on it on weekends. I'll hopefully have some more in the coming days.  

[Ghosty]

Went to BMW this morning to pick up my new, genuine fuel filler hinge. Feels massively better quality than the eBay shit. 

Scrolling through Facebook this evening and I spotted an ideal air conditioning donor for my mum's Civic. I've been thinking of getting a cheap car to mess about with/trackday - and what's better than an extremely cheap, non-rotten manual Civic with 10 months' MOT? I'm buying it and selling the air conditioning parts off it to the folks - which means the Civic will cost about £600. Bargain! It'll be good to have an E10 friendly car too as both of mine only run on E5.

So tomorrow I'm off to Hastings. Thankfully I'm getting a lift from London off my mate with the silver Civic saloon seen upthread. 

[Ghosty]

I'm glad I'm not in work tomorrow.  

[Ghosty]

Start as you mean to go on. 

[Ghosty]

Surprising amount of people about for Sunday morning. None in this picture though. 

[Ghosty]

Sign of things to come. 

[Ghosty]

Trains full of pissheads for some reason. Oh well, not on it long. One of those new Transpennince loco hauled ones. Seats are rubbish, bumpy ride. 

[stuboy]

16 minutes ago, Ghosty said:

Trains full of pissheads for some reason. 

they all off to buy corsa 1.2 on the tick

[Ghosty]

Leeds. Train to London is delayed by an indeterminate amount. 

[Ghosty]

Had a nose on Realtime Trains and the unit that forms the train to London never left the depot. Huh. 

[Ghosty]

Further digging reveals its a class 91 and not one of those shitey Hitachi ironing board boxes. 

In other words, shite train FTPd? RELIABLE INTERCITY ENGINE etc. 

[Ghosty]

Yep, exactly that, according to the nice Twitter man. Get on the next one he says. Then again he also claimed there have been announcements at Leeds station - have there fuck, it's dead silent here. 

Ok, 25 minutes late, can deal with that. 

Get on, an announcement says if you're on for the 9:40 get back off, it's behind this one. 

Pisstake much? I'll get my seat though. 

[Ghosty]

You are fucking kidding me. 

 

[chodweaver]

Replacement bus service?

Sent from my BV9900Pro using Tapatalk

[3VOM]

Is it like Harry Potter and you just have to believe there is a coach E?

[Ghosty]

Nope, the carriage really isn't there, they told us to sit in an almost empty C instead - unreserved carriage on a mandatory reservation train! Mercifully the train is ultra quiet as they told all the passengers for other services to get back off. Much better than a Shitachi, and I should get a healthy refund too. 

[Ghosty]

[Ghosty]