EightMegs' Terrible Toyotas - One now running!

[Wibble]

22 minutes ago, EightMegs said:

Took the Carina on its first long journey since I swapped the engine in August, went to The Gower on a camping holiday and ended up heading over and back to Port Talbot twice to meet up with a group of friends who were there on a separate holiday.

The Carina made a decent anchor point for a washing line.

There's quite a lot of drift wood around Aberafan beach and we ended up collecting a pile of it for a fire and I lit it with a butane blow torch and a can of Holts Easy Start, someone shouted "Ray Mears would be proud" from the promenade as I was spraying a jet of flame out of the can. The gear change felt very vague in both directions, with second gear feeling like it was to the left and back from first, and I decided it warranted a look when I got back to Bournemouth. I averaged 42mpg over the course of the trip, despite hitting 60mph in second more than once on the M4. This £450 engine from Bradford is a good 'un.

It turned out to be down to one of the gear linkage retaining clips falling off, which turned out to be three pounds at the local stealers. 

Then, last week, I headed off to visit the family back in Ireland. While driving through the ticket barrier at Fishguard, which inexplicably has the kiosk on the left side of the car, even though neither Ireland nor Wales drives on the right, the Gorilla Glue I used to stick the passenger window into the window regulator let go almost a year to the day after I slathered it on. I'll use something more flexible next time.

The crossing was rough enough, they ended up having to chock the car in front of me as it was rolling back and forward, not a great performance from a modern. I unfortunately had to cross with a coach tour of hysterical yanks, one of whom started screaming when a wave rattled the bottles in the bar, but the traffic was light on the other side and I made it to Carlow before it got dark, 13 hours after leaving Bournemouth.

After visiting family in Carlow and Kilkenny, I continued my southward pilgrimage to the city where I was born where I shockingly saw two dolphins in the River Suir while stuck in traffic next to the Thomas Francis Meagher statue on The Mall, I never realised they came that far inland, or to places as grim as Waterford for that matter. I left for Rosslare from South Kilkenny at 5PM yesterday and made it as far as Cardiff West Services just before two in the morning, where I stopped for 15 minutes at the Costa.

I got back to Bournemouth via Bath, Warminster, Salisbury, and Ringwood at 5 o'clock this morning and was then rudely awakened at 10 by hedge cutting. The journey was relatively uneventful other than a blown dash illumination bulb, the slipped window regulator, and a slow leak from a clutch union. I think given the amount of time I had it laid up and the amount of work I did, that's a result.

What an amazing trip and respect for the Toyota. I haven’t done Fishguard to Rosslare since I was a kid. Normally go via Holyhead or Cairnryan. I have cousins in Carlow and I’m delighted you had a successful journey.

[EightMegs]

The slide on my sunroof hadn't worked since around Shitefest '23 but it decided to start leaking a few months ago, and it turns out the runners and drains were just full of congealed leaf goo. A good cleaning and some 3 in 1 oil and it tilts, slides, and keeps the interior dry again.

Then, today, I turned my attention to getting the dash illumination and odometer working again, as that's been stuck on 146,499 for years. I swapped it over to the spare instrument cluster that came with the car when I bought it, but although the illumination and odometer worked perfectly, the speedometer wouldn't return to zero and instead got stuck between 10 and 20 MPH when I was at a dead stop. It could be coaxed into dropping to zero by smacking the dash, but after driving around for half an hour to see if it would free up with use, I threw in the towel and put the old cluster back in, albeit with the bulbs (which are actually blue!) from the spare cluster and all was well again, though I still have no odometer.

The cluster is actually quite modular and the instruments are only held in with four screws at the back, so I took the speedometer out of the spare cluster to try to free it up but I'm not sure what lubricants are safe to use on an old school speedometer, any advice would be appreciated.