Marm's Motors: Entering My Prime Era

[sharley17194]

Any chance i could have the usb item back, it fits my keyboard 🤣

19 minutes ago, Marm Toastsmith said:

Junior Toastsmith noticed the lovely rubber floor mats were fitted the wrong way round and then insisted on removing these gifferic reflective door protectors. Not sure how the AS fold feel but I kind of agree with him. More importantly it’s great if he wants to help with little jobs on the car.

Then while swapping the mats round I found these bits.

 

[Marm Toastsmith]

1 minute ago, sharley17194 said:

Any chance i could have the usb item back, it fits my keyboard 🤣

 

No problem! Send me a PM with your address…

Is it your pound too?

I’m not posting the bag of postcrete that was in the boot.

[grogee]

3 hours ago, Marm Toastsmith said:

Compact disc storage

Saw Gong & Orb in Brizzle last year. 

[ProgRocker]

16 hours ago, Marm Toastsmith said:

Compact disc storage

I have been planning to buy a few Gong CDs. 

[sharley17194]

Thank you Sir, I've messaged

[Marm Toastsmith]

Been playing with radios. The original wiring has been spliced into an ISO harness (original connector still attached) - seems to have been soldered but a bit of a mess of electrical tape...

First thing I did was to check another DAB radio. No signal. Oh well. Played with a few units and settled on this Sony that I bought from @AnnoyingPentium ages ago. It sounds pretty decent and looks just right for the car IMO,

Earlier I took Mrs T's Volvo to the garage as it had developed an oil leak. I hadn't bothered to have a look - she pays and the guy is an old-school Volvo specialist so I leave it all to him - turns out it was a dodgy sump washer following the last service he did. He sorted it free of charge, fitting an aluminium washer. Good guy.

While I was there we had a look under the bonnet of the Primera - lots of signs of new bits and recent TLC, but he also pointed out some very dodgy battery wiring which I need to remedy. Note unsecured, uninsulated, live cable to loosely mounted fuse box, and also damage near clamp. Would be good to know what this looked like originally!

Overall, Dave the mechanic was quite impressed and encouraged me to clean the engine bay and bring it to the next local meet/show at Trago Mills... I need to be a bit careful as I'm not really a believer in being too precious about old cars, but the Primera is so nice that I almost feel guilty using it.

Took the opportunity to get a shot of the Volvo and the Primera in the wild together. Quite proud of our 2 low mileage 1998 motors... the Toyota is from 97 so not far off either... We've got an N, a P, and an R reg in the family!

[AnnoyingPentium]

3 minutes ago, Marm Toastsmith said:

Played with a few units and settled on this Sony that I bought from @AnnoyingPentium ages ago. It sounds pretty decent and looks just right for the car IMO,

This was a good unit! Especially with a CD changer on it as well. Period to 97/98 anyway IIRC. Glad it's seeing use.

[MrGTI6]

They go really well together!

[Marm Toastsmith]

22 minutes ago, AnnoyingPentium said:

This was a good unit! Especially with a CD changer on it as well. Period to 97/98 anyway IIRC. Glad it's seeing use.

Unfortunately the Unilink connector for CD changer is broken - I actually have a suitable CD changer to go with it.

I also have these 2 internally similar units, tested them earlier... the silver one has a tape loading issue, and the XR-C33R has a strange issue where it briefly loads the tape when you connect it to power, but other than that it doesn't seem to want to power up. I wonder if I'm missing something here.

This is the changer that I've got, but I don't think I have a cable for it...

I like the idea that one day I might swap the Unilink connector out of one of the non-working decks. Realistically I'll probably never get round to it!

[AnnoyingPentium]

9 hours ago, Marm Toastsmith said:

Unfortunately the Unilink connector for CD changer is broken - I actually have a suitable CD changer to go with it.

I forgot about that. Somewhere here is a CD changer cable with most of that connector still in it... 🤣

[Marm Toastsmith]

Had a go at tidying up the battery positive wiring today.

Before (cable loose/frayed near the clamp, and completely un insulated on its way to the fuse box, also much longer than it needed to be)

 

During (removed the nasty frayed section, and joined the two remaining sections with a shorter nut and bolt so that I could properly insulate it with heat shrink wrap):

 

After (as far as I got, the light was fading. Added an extra layer of slightly-too-wide shrink wrap for good measure. It's still a bit of a bodge at the clamp but I cut the end off the bolt so at least there's a bit less chance of it shorting out somewhere. I think better):

 

[Marm Toastsmith]

Wiring done. Seems a bit keener to turn over in the morning now! Note also there's a second earth wire from the battery which I presume has been added at a later date...

Buoyed by that success I decided to hoover leaves up.

Before:

After:

[Marm Toastsmith]

Have taken the Datsun for a run. It drives great on the open road, very easy to pilot at speed, nice weight to the steering and feels solid and composed.

1.6 engine feels a little gutless but it’s adequate.

Made it to Southampton with ease, managed to beat the Google maps estimate.

The instrumentation is perfect.

 

[grogee]

1 hour ago, Marm Toastsmith said:

The instrumentation is perfect.

Can't argue with that. 

The weird thing is, that's a bASe shopping car, more or less. It's totally anonymous and nobody (except us) would get excited about it. 

But it hides its light under a bushel - that is a 6,500rpm red line and it'll do that all day if you've got the ear defenders on. 

In other words it's impeccably engineered in ways almost nobody will notice. 

I haven't forgotten about your tapes by the way Marm - I'm just being incredibly inefficient about sending them. 

[Marm Toastsmith]

Fantastic round trip to the Isle of Wight and back in the P11. It really is a confident cruiser, and dare I say it better than Audis, Mercs and BMWs I've owned of a similar age. It's growing on me like my Micra did - both seemed dull to start with but as a mode of transport you can't beat their lack of vices and flaws. The Micra was surprisingly quick and comfortable over distances but the Primera is unsurprisingly much better still  - would be more than happy to cruise at 90 all day I think, and the boot is huge.

On 23/09/2025 at 21:50, grogee said:

a 6,500rpm red line and it'll do that all day if you've got the ear defenders on. 

In other words it's impeccably engineered in ways almost nobody will notice. 

I haven't forgotten about your tapes by the way Marm - I'm just being incredibly inefficient about sending them. 

No worries re the tapes - no rush at all.

Agree re the engineering quality. Weirdly although it is very happy to rev it also seems to have a slight flat spot around 4000rpm - and doesn't particularly reward being thrashed. I wonder if it's not quite running as it should. I have put some super unleaded in it to see if that makes any difference. Conversely on the motorway you do have to use the gearbox to some extent but more because the gearing is so long, less because it is begging to be thrashed.

[MrGTI6]

So happy that you're beginning to enjoy the Primera! It's never going to be an exciting car, but I think the the appeal is to be found in its unwavering dependability.

When I drove it from Kent to Devon, I did the whole journey in one go and - aside from the lack of cruise control - I might as well have been driving a brand new car.

The journey was predictable and uneventful, and I got the impression the Primera would happily do it a hundred times over without complaint.

Peak "an car" from the golden era.

[Noel Tidybeard]

iirc the primevil was one of those cars where there is an earth cable from tunnel to gearbag that likes to get thin and break thus giving associated problems

[EyesWeldedShut]

On 03/09/2025 at 22:54, Marm Toastsmith said:

Trago Mills...

If only for the cheap petrol? (I'm kind of assuming they still do that as we were last at the Newton Abbot Trago around 2010)

I've had a 1.6 Stanza, 1.6 Bluebird and a 1.6 Primera - they were all what I would call a decent RepMobile. They'd lull around some part of London for weeks then get booted up the M6 to Jockland for a visit. The Stanza was a bit shit at holding fifth gear at any sort of legal motorway speed on any sort of incline but, otherwise, they were a decent car. I don't think I spent a penny on any of them over and above consumable items/MOTs. 

[Marm Toastsmith]

3 minutes ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

If only for the cheap petrol? (I'm kind of assuming they still do that as we were last at the Newton Abbot Trago around 2010)

Yep, still the cheapest fuel around.

[EyesWeldedShut]

I had to look - that's 9p a litre on E10 than here and 12p a litre on diesel:

[Marm Toastsmith]

Not driven the Primera much recently, but with the Lucida awaiting an MOT it's been pressed back into regular use. It keeps growing on me. 

Conversely I enjoyed the Sony head unit less the longer I used it as it got quirkier and quirkier about loading cassettes.

Going CD for a bit. I wonder if I'll get round to doing anything cleverer/neater with that USB port...