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Maestro, please.


vulgalour

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Amazingly, I didn't even get any splashback on my specs.  Still not sure how I managed that tbqh, I'm just thankful for small miracles.

What I did manage to do is cock up the valve adjustment by reading the wrong bit of the manual because my goodness I'm so tired and I just need a holiday and can't take one... so I have to go back in and redo it all again to the correct gaps.  At least it'll be a lot less grimy and stuck this time around.

The new rocker cover gasket appears to have cured the miasma of burning oil that wafts into the cabin too, so that's nice.

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2 minutes ago, grogee said:

Mine is now stainless too. I wonder if they're the same system? Mine has a tailpipe that seems to stick out a bit too far, I've been thinking I might trim it a bit.

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Mine's not fully stainless it turns out.   Tailpipe and backbox are, the rest looks to be mild steel.  Your exhaust does stick out a long way, at least in that shot, perhaps it's originally for a van?  Nothing an angle grinder can't fix.

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  • vulgalour changed the title to Maestro, please. - Cornflakes

Let's have a go at some video write ups, see how we get.  Pat is now testing negative for Covid and is almost entirely well again, which is super.  I've been testing negative since he contract it, but I've also spent the last few days having all the Covid symptoms on speedrun so that's been pretty appaling.  Today I'm sore, my sinuses are blocked, and my temperature is very up and down.  Still, gives me time to try and get caught up on this since I can take breaks as I write if I need to.

 

The old lower front grille on the Maestro is bust and repaired and needs replacing.  The fixings holding it on aren't original.
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The repair works, so I can't fault the creator of it on that front, I can just do better.  First up is removing the four fixings that hold it in place, one at each end of the grille and two in the middle.
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The passenger side one proved more challenging because the head had turned to rust.  The stack of improvised parts was curious too.
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I'm not entirely sure what the wrinkle paint coated aluminium was off originally that was used to repair the old grille, perhaps some old electrical device?  They'd gone to a lot of trouble with shaping and cutting out holes for air flow, pretty commendable stuff really, just like that front wing.  Just seems a bit strange this much effort was undertaken rather than just buying a replacement.
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Apparently, the original fixings are plastic with a push pin that spreads the legs on the back of the fixing to hold it all in place.  I didn't have anything like that so I reused the plastic squares from the old fixings, some grommet things scavenged from the inside of Princess doors, and some suitable screws.  These worked pretty well.
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For a belt and braces approach I also used a couple of cable ties on the outer corners until I can get proper fixings to hold this in place, I didn't entirely trust the ancient plastic of the grommets I'd used and thought it sensible.  You can't tell I fixed anything, so this is definitely something I could have left alone.
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • vulgalour changed the title to Maestro, please. - The Most Time Of The Year
  • 4 weeks later...
  • vulgalour changed the title to Maestro, please. - Support Socks

Hats off @vulgalour  that's good going and far, far better than I managed inside my Saab (which wasn't as holey). Loving the masking tape tip, wish I'd known that instead of pissing about with cereal packets.

Where are you at with it now, is it any more built up or are you still waiting for some non-brass monkey weather?

Mine is going to A Man at end of Feb for sills, arches and a roof repair. I managed to find sills but there is a wait time of about 12 weeks or something stupid like that.

By the way there are 2x arches for sale on the Bay as well as a RH rear quarter panel (both steel bumper cars I think). Both Megabucks of course but may be open to negotiation, who knows.

The bit I'm really interested in is the inner and outer arches and how you fabricate then weld them.

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@Noel Tidybeard I guess someone replaced the original then?  Doesn't look like it's off another car and definitely seems to be plastic rather than steel.

 

@grogee In real time it's all welded up both sides, and in daily use again and has been for some time.  The rear arches both sides ended up giving me a lot more work than I anticipated, drivers side was definitely the worst of the two.  When I did it the only repair panels I could get were for Montego (which is technically the same) for one side of the car and not great pressings at that. I would have loved to have got a proper pair of metal arch quarter panels when I was doing the repair, sods law that they'd be available now like.  The arch I built out of front wings actually looks more correct than the new panel I used, which is annoying until I remember you can't see both sides of the car at the same time.  Next Maestro vid is probably the 31st Jan, it was either going to be more Lanchester wiring that week or rebuilding the Maestro arch from scrap.  Ended up being a big job so it took rather more videos to document than I expected.

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Oh... speaking of where the car's at now, friend of mine just made me aware I've been spotted by a Facebooker.

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What do we think, better or worse than when it was spotted back in December of 2020?

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I don't feel like I've had it much more than a few months, never mind two years.  What even is time any more?

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59 minutes ago, vulgalour said:

@Noel Tidybeard When I did it the only repair panels I could get were for Montego (which is technically the same) for one side of the car and not great pressings at that. I would have loved to have got a proper pair of metal arch quarter panels when I was doing the repair, sods law that they'd be available now like.  

£200/pair mind. Although the time you spent making the arches from the Montego panel... possibly good value, possibly not.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/295478621944?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=M0aSXOlSTUq&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=2Z40wC2iSsq&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Don't Montego ones have more 'boot' behind them? I suppose it doesn't matter for the actual arch bit.

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1 hour ago, grogee said:

£200/pair mind. Although the time you spent making the arches from the Montego panel... possibly good value, possibly not.

Don't Montego ones have more 'boot' behind them? I suppose it doesn't matter for the actual arch bit.

I would have paid £200 a pair since they include all the awkward bits on the corners, would have saved me a load of time if the fit is good, that's really not a bad price for the work involved otherwise.  If you've the cash to and you're in need of them, they're probably worth grabbing to be honest.  A full metal bumper rear quarter did pop up after I'd finished doing mine, the whole thing from roof to valance, I think that was something like £80 so somebody got a bargain.

As for Montego arch repair panels,  they're usually the same as plastic bumper Maestro panels since they usually don't include the lower metal valance section.  Fortunately that didn't cause me too much grief as mine was salvagable due to historic repairs done to a reasonable standard, but it would have been nice to just chop it all off and blend one of those panels you linked in instead for the time saving if nothing else.  The panels I got just seemed over-stretched, and too soft on the details, as if they'd used a slightly too large/worn out stamp.  Which they probably had.  They were cheap though, £30 each I think?  Get what you pay for sometimes.

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  • vulgalour changed the title to Maestro, please. - Fabricobbling
6 hours ago, Christine said:

Charity shop find ,do you want it ?  Someones been inside it already , and nicked the bulbs ,  so a red repaint  would be easy after filing down the spoiler ..

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You should pass it on to @grogee if they want it since it's basically their car already.  I'd be happy to rehome it if they don't want it though and thank you for thinking of me and my ridiculous Maestro meddling.

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41 minutes ago, vulgalour said:

You should pass it on to @grogee if they want it since it's basically their car already.  I'd be happy to rehome it if they don't want it though and thank you for thinking of me and my ridiculous Maestro meddling.

Nothing wrong with cooking Maestros. Proper cars.

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I have been blessed with some time to get some write ups done so here we go, let's see how far we get.

A common Maestro problem is that the captive nuts inside the bumper corners become un-captive after a while and fall out, then the bumper corners sag or worse, fall off.  To solve this, the first owner of this car had put a bolt right through all four corners and it wasn't what I wanted.  Got hold of some reasonable condition replacements and set to putting those on.  Here you can see the 10mm bolt and where it goes into the captive nut on the back of a bumper corner.

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Normally you reach up into the inner wing from underneath and slot your socket/spanner onto the bolt blind and undo it that way.  Because of the way mine had been done I had to employ a screwdriver on the outside for the bolt head too.  No need to remove the inner arch or wing for this job, happily.  To refit, line up the moulded-in stand off on the back of the wing with the hole, put the bolt in loose to hold it all in place, and then push it on to the metal part of the bumper.  As you tighten the bolt everything will line up and you won't have to fight getting the bumper corner onto the steel bumper section.
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It's exactly the same procedure at the back.  Now lets move on to headlights.  I already knew my driver's side one was broken and had been repaired pretty extensively.  There isn't really any aftermarket offerings for Maestro headlights but there are still a lot of NOS and second hand ones floating about and they're not too expensive.  Picked up a non-matched pair, both with proper Unipart glass lenses, though I have some questions about where exactly the driver's side one was originally from since it had an odd issue.
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Long term viewers will know that this car has had a bump on the front drivers corner long in the past that's been repaired with an impressive dedication to not spending any money and a lot of effort which I can very much applaud.  Amongst the damage caused was the plastic of the driver's side headlight got smashed up, there's a substantial steel bracket bolted on to the remains and some further repairs I'll show you in a moment.
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The passenger side is untouched and works fine, it's just a bit grubby and dim so since I have a new one I might as well fit it.  Asbestos warning on a car from 1988 seems a bit anachronistic, but that's BMCBLARG for you.
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When removing the headlights you might be tempted to undo this bolt.  Don't, it's not for the headlights.
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Weirdly, while there are these tabs on the headlights that look like they should locate on something, they don't locate on anything.  I did learn recently the same lights were used on the Leyland Roadrunner so perhaps they get made use of there.
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To remove the headlights it's just the two screws in the top that go into the slam panel. Once those are out you can wiggle the headlight out of its hole and unplug the sidelight and headlights.
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And now for a better look at the repair work on the drivers side headlight.  It's clearly been this way for a long time and I do admire the dedication to put that much effort into a repairing a part that's never really been difficult to acquire.
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It was when I got the old and new headlights side by side that I realised I had a problem.  The passenger side, which has OEM hologram stickers on, is an exact match.  This side, which doesn't have those stickers, has no hole for the sidelight to go into at all.  The ring is stamped into the plastic, it's just not been cut out.
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I found one of these types of cutting drill bit thingies in a size 16 did the job.  Never used one before.  It made a nice tidy job of cutting a hole just the right size in the plastic so I could plug the sidelights in properly.
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To refit the headlights, plug in the lights first and be sure to locate the little legs into the rubber grommets (which are normally black, these have been overpainted when the corner was repaired) on the valance.  Then wiggle it all into place and screw it down with the two screws that go into the slam panel.
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Almost finished.  As is usual, the headlights have stickers on from their time in stock.  These stickers are really old and really stuck on there, if they were on the plastic I would have left them.  Since they're on the glass lenses, I have to get them off.  Thankfully, this is easy to do.
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Using a scraper (ideally a hard plastic one, I only had a small metal one to hand) and some WD40, squirt the sticker and surrounding surface quite liberally and allow the WD40 to soak in a bit.  Then get to work with the scraper.  You'll find it wants to scrape the paper off first and not really touch the adhesive until you've worked over it a bit.  Once the adhesive starts to come off, the whole thing cleans off very fast.  This is also a great way to get sticker remnants off glass and can sometimes even remove the ghosting you get afterwards.
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Not only do I now have more broken bits eliminated, light output was much improved.  Sometimes the passenger one looks more 'crystal' than the drivers one, seems to be a viewing angle thing.  All in all, an easy pair of jobs that and ones that made the car just a bit nicer to live with.
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