I'll get round to it at some point - Bratislava and Back: Things not to do in a mk2 Clio

[Rust Collector]

It was absolutely heaving all the way from Rye to Camber on Sunday morning, I felt quite guilty as it must be a real pain in the arse for the locals having the access roads completely blocked by tourists. I know out our way in Seaford the A259 was bad on Sunday because people were dumping their cars on the verge of the clearway so they could walk down to Tidemills, and the bus service to Tidemills was cancelled as some inconsiderate wankers had parked in the bus stop as per usual.

But yes, it does make a nice change to fix something and then actually have it work for a bit!! 😁

[Rust Collector]

Back to the list of projects, another car that's easy to write about is the SLK320 the my brother and I picked up last year as a joint project - my brother is 6 years younger than me and just started spannering in the last couple of years, so I've duly taken him under my wing and I'm doing all I can to traumatise him with shite cars and the work involved with keeping them running.

Whilst shopping for a gearbox at the merc breaker's run by a friend of a friend for my E430 (and eventually buying an AMG V8 lump as well), my eye was caught by this scruffy old thing. You'll notice the nearside arch is on the piss, this is because the control arm had snapped on the last owner whilst the car was being driven and is why it ended up at the yard.

The monoblocks were what caught me initially, and then the V6 engine drew me in further. I hadn't visited for a car though, so I left it behind and tried not to think of it. But like an inappropriate pass from your partner's friend at a party, whilst you can try your best not to think about it or act on it, an inevitable course of disaster has been set. A few weeks later I stopped in whilst passing and asked if I could have a poke around inside. The engine was knackered and the gearbox was done for, and those with sense probably would have walked away. They had an E320 in for breaking though, and reassuring myself that the monoblocks would offset most of my spend I asked about them sorting me out with a spare engine and gearbox if I took the car. We shook on £600 for the car as it stood, plus the engine and box out of the E Class.

I got the car transported home, and nicked my Mum's pickup to grab the spare motor and gearbox. Random fact, I went with my Mum to view that truck with her, and when we arrived at the viewing it was Micheal Cooper (son of John Cooper) selling it as it was his truck that he used for gardening and didn't need it anymore 😅 I think it still only has about 45k miles on the clock, and my Mum has been running it for a few years now!

We didn't waste much time pulling the old motor out, here she is mid surgery. Not many photos taken I'm afraid, the original plan was to rattle through the work and use the car as it still had MOT...

Then things got a bit mad on the Covid front, and my brother being a manager for a food delivery company suddenly found himself with little time spare. I didn't want to have the fun/pain to myself and him to miss out, so it sat neglected on  my driveway for some time.  We did do some fettling to the engine on the odd occasion, as the E Class has the starter on the wrong side so we had to cut a hole for it to got the correct side, and had the starter flange machined down a bit to provide the right engagement (Inevitable pain in my arse later).  I seem to recall I had to swap the inlet plenum too, and a few other bits. The manifolds were different too, due to the space restrictions in the SLK engine bay, but again they were easy to swap.

On my week off work we spent 3 days fighting the new engine back in. I can't say I'd like to do it again, the engine bay is crazy tight and long and the engine and gearbox combined is probably on the limit for my cheapo chinesium crane at full extension. We got there though with the supervision of a responsible being

It's looking a bit more together in there now. We still need to repair the wing as it was badly damaged when the control arm snapped but a replacement is about £250!! New front arms are on the cards also. We have also swapped on some cheaper alloys for now as we will possibly sell the monoblocks.

One small problem is that I didn't get enough machined off the starter 😅 So I will sadly have to try and get that removed at some point. I feel like this car may get left to sit for a little bit as I'm really not looking forward to that job!!!

[wesacosa]

I was following your Favorit progress on the Facebook forum but didn't put 2 and 2 together and realise you were on here too until I recognised the traffic jam pictures

[Rust Collector]

14 minutes ago, wesacosa said:

I was following your Favorit progress on the Facebook forum but didn't put 2 and 2 together and realise you were on here too until I recognised the traffic jam pictures

I tend to post to the various owner’s groups as and when I do bits and pieces, but I find it a pain in the arse to document a project long term on Facebook as it isn’t very easy to go back through the content and find things. The Facebook groups are great for the combined model specific knowledge base though so it’s swings and roundabouts really 😅

[wesacosa]

yeah definitely. I tend to post small updates and request for help on the one make forum pages but agree searching is a bit of a pain versus  a forum

[High Jetter]

Wow, a very interesting read. Am not far from you either, will look out for your fleet on the road.

[stuboy]

On 6/11/2021 at 2:42 AM, Rust Collector said:

nice

[Rust Collector]

37 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

Wow, a very interesting read. Am not far from you either, will look out for your fleet on the road.

Thanks mate, I’m glad it’s of some interest 👍🏻 I use the Favorit and Insight as daily drivers so I’m fairly easy to spot if I’m out 😅 I only commute from seaford to newhaven though so it’s a very small window of opportunity to spot me 😂

[Grumblespeed]

On 6/8/2021 at 1:08 PM, Rust Collector said:

The story was that he had owned many BX's, using them for his work as a welder. This particular one let him down one winter when the heater matrix let go, and combined with some of the holes opening up in the arches it was put to one side and left to come back to.

Love the fact that a welder had parked it up and given up... because it needed welding.😄

[Rust Collector]

7 minutes ago, Grumblespeed said:

Love the fact that a welder had parked it up and given up... because it needed welding.😄

It's a worry, isn't it 😆 From what I understood, he worked mostly at harbours welding structures/boats and other things made of very thick metal. I seem to recall he said was paying someone else to weld the BX up when it needed the work as he didn't like welding the thin metal on cars. Having played around both arc and mig welding on thicker metal when knocking together bits and pieces with a mate who does fabricating, I can understand where he is coming from... I don't think there's anything worse than welding decades old sheet metal on scabby old cars 😅

[Rust Collector]

I guess we should go back to the Zastava now, and the work I was doing on it in January-ish

Like the overgrown child I am, the most important thing now was to get it to run... Apologies to anyone who harbours feelings of sympathy towards starter motors. I did at least jack one wheel up and turn the engine over by hand first.

Oh dear. Well, the fuel is from 1996... Best use old faithful

Well, at least we know the engine works now! Next it's time to strip the carb and clean it out and adjust it.

Spare wheel removed for easier working. Mouse food galore.

A proud achievement... brittle plastic fitting removed without breaking it. I should have bought a lottery ticket.

The carb is a model built under licence from Weber

Spoiler alert - my car doesn't have the right carb fitted. But that's a ball ache for a later post when I'm stood holding the distributor vacuum advance line and wondering where the hell it should go.

Carefully dismantling the float by ramming a screwdriver through the hinge

Gave it a shake and there's no fuel in there which is good.

There's some pretty disgusting fuel in the bowl though, and some nice jelly chunks

So I gave it all a good clean. All the jets were removed and cleaned one by one, plus the emulsifier tube and anything else I could get a screwdriver on

Time to check the diaphragm

Should probably replace it, will do at some time - there's always time to do it right the second time. More jelly hiding behind the diaphragm

Cleaned it all out, briefly lost the spring, found the spring and reassembled.

Adjustments next. The choke was fine (from memory), but this arm wasn't right

It needed a bit of help to get the full range of movement it should have. Luckily I found a carburettor rawl plug.

Don't worry, I cut the tabs down later 😉 I did try straightening the arm (it looks bent) but that didn't really help. I suspect I'll need to revisit this at some point, but for the sake of getting it running short term I'll live with it.

Good enough for me...

Although I did flush the green shit out the coolant passages before refitting.

Hmm... Still not quite right.

This might be why

The banjo union at the brake booster had snapped. I reckon some air might have been getting in through there 😅 Luckily I had a part in stock

I ordered a new length of hose, a non return valve and a new banjo bolt and fitting. This would do for now though.

Much better 😅

At least she idles now and doesn't run away/stall under throttle. We will deal with the noxious fumes later.

Next up, I work on the brakes whilst my lungs recover. More to come when I can be bothered to sift through more photos 😅

Edited July 24, 2021 by Rust Collector
I'm incapable of posting the right video links

[wesacosa]

brilliant work. I absolutely love this car

[brownnova]

What a fantastic collection, and a fantastic thread! I’ve seen a bit of what you’ve done with the 311 over on the Facebook group (as a fellow Zastava owner… a 45 for me) but glad to see more updates here! 

[brownnova]

On 04/06/2021 at 21:10, stuboy said:

what happened to that lot?

 

On 04/06/2021 at 21:14, wesacosa said:

I don't know. the bloke who runs the Yugo Facebook group was looking to find people to take them on but I never heard what happened to them all

There have been a couple of finds on the FB group of late, IIRC chatting to the guy who runs the Facebook group a couple of weeks back the two convertibles one ended up being exported to be restored and the other is being/going to be reatored. The 511 for resto went to Nigel Bickle I think and he’s in the process of sorting it. Apparently there are more back there with this particular Skoda collector too, but they are stuck behind vehicles with no keys… 

[Rust Collector]

12 hours ago, wesacosa said:

brilliant work. I absolutely love this car

Thanks mate, I'm quite taken with it too after buying it purely on impulse - it says something that I find more motivation to work on this than I do to replace the gearbox on my V8 merc!!

51 minutes ago, brownnova said:

What a fantastic collection, and a fantastic thread! I’ve seen a bit of what you’ve done with the 311 over on the Facebook group (as a fellow Zastava owner… a 45 for me) but glad to see more updates here! 

Thank you, I've fallen behind a bit with the Facebook post mainly because it's such a ball ache to add more pictures and text to it in the comment section. I have quite a soft spot for the 45, I think they're awesome little cars! This thread will probably be where my Zastava progress is recorded now, and then I will probably just post up on the Facebook group once the car is done.

[Rust Collector]

 For tonight I think we will have a bit more of the work that I did on the Zastava earlier this year...

So when I bought it, the brakes were all in the boot. Rear shoes, springs, refurbed front calipers, carriers, pads, hoses and clips. So I set about figuring out what went where and fitting it.

Whoever mothballed it had cable tied down the rear brake cylinders to help with reassembly. As you can imagine, they did not slide back out afterwards 😅 I didn't have replacements so started putting it together anyway as I'm impatient, but I did splash out £10 for a pair of replacements.

One side done... note the gap between the shoes and the pistons!

And the other side done in the dark for balance

The springs were utter bastards, and as punishment for my impatience I had to tackle them twice. The locking washers on the shoe retaining pins and springs were not fun either, they were a little bit flexible and I had to give them some delicate fettling with a hammer and drift in order to stop them pinging off repeatedly. Got it sorted and the new cylinders on though so all good.

With that we were on to the fronts. The threads on the carriers weren't looking too clever from where they'd been exposed to the atmosphere whilst removed, so they got a bit of love from the thread tap. I don't know why, but I find chasing threads very cathartic 😅

Good as new lol

Carrier, pads and pad retaining clips fitted

A metal wedge is tapped in at the top and bottom of the calliper, then some little sprung clips stop it wiggling out the sides and your brake calliper ejecting. Sounds safe enough for me!

The discs are a tad orange on the friction surface, but I reckon a few runs up and down the track at my parent's and it will come up fine. From what I can tell the discs were new, they have no lip whatsoever and the centres are still painted nicely.

As before, the opposite side was done in the dark just to check I was paying attention the first time around.

The front brake lines were in a pretty shitty state so I set about removing them whilst I was working on the front brakes. When removing them from the master cylinder, it was apparent that leaving the brakes removed whilst the car was stored had probably done more harm than good - it's very crusty in there. You can also see the poor state of the servo banjo union here too, which had just disentegrated.

New parts then I guess. First the new Banjo union, hose and check valve. Yes, I do regret not getting fabric wrapped hose... Yes I probably will replace it just because it doesn't look quite right 😅

More new parts

Oh how naïve I was to think that I'd get away with reusing the rear brake line. That's a story for a later post though.

That's one new line and an old hose fitted... the old hose has since been replaced in a later purge of old brake system components.

Happily, the o/s front line runs under the cabin fan and heater matrix. Out they come then!

That was a right pain in the arse. The cables for the various air flaps had no give in them, and I'm ham fisted at the best of times. Unbelievably, through the power of broken skin and swearing, the parts were removed and I had access to the brake line.

I needn't have gone as far as pulling the fan out to get access, however it wasn't working. My limited diagnostics skills had determined that there was power all the way to the fan on both speed settings, so it was the fan that had a problem. I put it in the bedroom for good measure, as this would ensure that my partner would repeatedly ask when I was going to put it out in the garage where it should be. Eventually I'd cave and fix it this way 😅

New brake line made up, another job which I quite enjoy to be fair.

New line in, and the heater matrix looped out until I sorted the fan.

Bled the brakes, and they were utter wank 😅 New brake hoses ordered all round as I suspected that they may be blocked, in the meantime at least the handbrake now worked and so I could remove the small log that was previously doing brake duty.

Whilst waiting for brake hoses, I started on the fuel system. The main issues were that the fuel lines were knackered, the fuel in the tank was ancient, and the fuel gauge didn't work. That's for the next post though!

 

Edited July 24, 2021 by Rust Collector
The usual - I cocked up inserting the images

[Fumbler]

Thanks, you've got me searching for Yugos for sale now! I rather like them. After all, why should I only have one quirky car when I can have two?

[Rust Collector]

So i had a couple of weeks off work to play with projects and in between the heavy rain I was having a serious case of everything I touched turning to shit. In the usual fashion I’ve shelved the things that are annoying me and sought a distraction... I’ve just bought this locally:

forgot to take photos whilst I was there so a low res pic from the ad will have to do... non turbo but manual box. Will get some more photos up once I drag it to the tool shed and have a poke around. It’s rough outside, but it’s probably going on to daily driver/tool & parts lugger duty quite quickly provided I sort out the small quirks it has.

My favorit may find itself for sale shortly as I need to keep the peace with my partner and I’m noticing that I have too many things kicking around which means that I definitely have far too many things kicking around 😅

[Rust Collector]

I picked up the Volvo after work this eve - I bought it with a no start fault, but it has an MOT, I've taxed it and insured it so I decided to drag it back with the mitsushitty and a stunt frame. Here she is attached and ready for action:

I do love the Mitsi, that Volvo isn't light by any measure and I was driving through undulating roads on the Sussex Downs; It pulled it up hills without missing a beat, we came back down hills and she braked like there was nothing on the back, and going round corners she was completely stable even though there was ridiculous changes in camber on most of the bends (if anyone is local, the twistiest part of the journey was through Ditchling and along the Plumpton Green road). It seems to tolerate a lot of hard work and all it ever wants for is basic servicing and an endless supply of cheap Chinese ball joints...

Once I got back it was too dark for any useful photos, but here's a pic of the shit in the boot

My mate was with me, and we checked the fuel pump relay which seems to work fine, cracked the fuel line and turned the ignition on and fuel pissed out as you would expect (tomorrow I will do it scientifically with my pressure gauge). We found that 2 ignition leads were completely snapped, I doubt they were the original cause though I suspect they were just the victims of heavy handedness by the previous owner... He says he checked for a spark, I can only assume he did this by chewing though the ends of them judging by the state they are in 😅 I'll try and get replacements tomorrow, and I'll check that the timing belt hasn't jumped any teeth as I get the impression this thing has been ragged hard for the few months the lad had it.

If we're lucky I might get some pics after work tomorrow so that we can all enjoy the beaten glory of this ancient brick.

[Rust Collector]

I spent some time with the Volvo yesterday afternoon.

I’ve temporarily repaired the damaged ignition leads, and checked for a spark at all 4 plugs. There’s a spark so I’m happy that it isn’t a fault with the crank sensor and also that the ignition equipment must be in some sort of functioning order, at least healthy enough to start the engine.

I had my timing gun on me, and I checked the ignition timing on cylinder 1 - the plug fires at 10 degrees before tdc which seems right to me.

Fuel pressure then. I was fairly sure this was ok as the plugs were wet with fuel when I pulled them, and my gauge confirmed I’m getting 80psi from the pump so I reckon we are ok there.

Whilst getting my mate to crank the car I noticed you could smell fuel at the engine bay but not at the exhaust. Using a highly calibrated piece of plastic bag, it would appear that air is being sucked in the exhaust and pumped out the inlet...

Engine timing inspection time then... I didn’t have time to pull the timing covers off properly, but the crank pulley has markings on it and I could get the top cover back far enough to view the cam.

Yeah, that doesn’t look right. I couldn’t see the intermediate shaft, but I’m assuming it’s timed up and this is where the ignition timing is taken from giving me a spark at the right time, and that my cam being out is screwing up the valve timing and causing weird shit to happen. The cam gear has a woodruff key from what I’ve seen online so I don’t think it’s just that the gear isn’t aligned.

I'm hoping to pull it apart this evening and get it back together, fingers crossed this sorts her out.

[Rust Collector]

So I managed to get some time in on the Volvo this evening.

The mission for today was to get into the timing belt and check what shenanigans have occurred in there under previous ownership. The glorious thing about the Volvo being that it has a longitudinal engine in a huge engine bay - it was a piece of piss to remove the fan, shroud, belts and covers. There’s no plastic dress up wankery in there to fight through, or notions of space efficiency trying to cram lots in a small area 😅

And we’re in;

Crank bolt next - forgot my impact gun so I had to use the pikey impact gun...

A length of tube and the starter motor, never fails to break something 😅 this time it broke the tension on the crank bolt as planned.

And the cam timing was out, but I was also surprised to find the intermediate pulley out too.

A little bit of tweaking and it looked a bit better.

I put the belt back on, turned it over by hand a couple of times and it all seemed right. Fired it up and the belt walked off some 😅 went back, corrected the belt, straightened the tensioner pulley and put the lower cover and crank pulley on. Second start and she ran fine. Happy days!

Took it for a test drive, it ran as alright as could be hoped for, warmed up to temp and sat there happily. Once warm it did start missing, so I took it back down the tool shed. On inspection, my temporarily repaired ignition leads came apart in my hand so that answers the question of ‘how good a crimp can you make with a tack hammer’...

I've got some new ignition lead at home, so I’ve taken them back to chop up and see if I can’t make something better on the workbench.

But the main takeaway is, it actually works!!!

Edited August 21, 2021 by Rust Collector
Speeeling & photos

[juular]

10 hours ago, Rust Collector said:

So I managed to get some time in on the Volvo this evening.

The mission for today was to get into the timing belt and check what shenanigans have occurred in there under previous ownership. The glorious thing about the Volvo being that it has a longitudinal engine in a huge engine bay - it was a piece of piss to remove the fan, shroud, belts and covers. There’s no plastic dress up wankery in there to fight through, or notions of space efficiency trying to cram lots in a small area 😅

And we’re in;

Crank bolt next - forgot my impact gun so I had to use the pikey impact gun...

A length of tube and the starter motor, never fails to break something 😅 this time it broke the tension on the crank bolt as planned.

And the cam timing was out, but I was also surprised to find the intermediate pulley out too.

A little bit of tweaking and it looked a bit better.

I put the belt back on, turned it over by hand a couple of times and it all seemed right. Fired it up and the belt walked off some 😅 went back, corrected the belt, straightened the tensioner pulley and put the lower cover and crank pulley on. Second start and she ran fine. Happy days!

Took it for a test drive, it ran as alright as could be hoped for, warmed up to temp and sat there happily. Once warm it did start missing, so I took it back down the tool shed. On inspection, my temporarily repaired ignition leads came apart in my hand so that answers the question of ‘how good a crimp can you make with a tack hammer’...

I've got some new ignition lead at home, so I’ve taken them back to chop up and see if I can’t make something better on the workbench.

But the main takeaway is, it actually works!!!

Good stuff, these B2xx engines are a complete breeze to work on aren't they.

[Rust Collector]

4 minutes ago, juular said:

Good stuff, these B2xx engines are a complete breeze to work on aren't they.

I would rather replace 20 of these timing belts than do the timing belt on my brother’s phase 2 Clio DCi again. That was one of the most unpleasant jobs I’ve done to date. The Volvo was a breeze, I’d say it’s one step above playing with Lego in terms of difficulty 😅

[Rust Collector]

So as I have probably mentioned previously, my partner is Slovakian. Due to the pandemic she hasn't been able to travel home to see her mother for some time - the last time they were together was October 2019, back in those halcyon days before the world did a shit.

Cue yesterday then, which was the scheduled arrival of mother in law for a visit to us in our 'new' house. Normally we fly between Gatwick and Vienna and vice-versa for convenience when travelling to and from Slovakia, as Vienna is about an hour from Bratislava and flights from Bratislava didn't land in Gatwick which is our 'local' airport. Seeing as crossing from Slovakia to Austria before flying to England would be a bastard in terms of filling out locator forms for mother in law and her partner, we opted to go a different route this time and fly them in direct from Bratislava to Stansted, which was the nearest airport with regular flights from Bratislava currently.

This posed an interesting situation: out of the cars we had running, which vehicle was best suited for driving myself, my partner and our Labrador to an airport 2-3 hours away before collecting mother in law and her partner plus luggage.

The contenders then:

• The Renault Clio - probably the safest option, it's a 2007 so practically futuristic by my standards and it's economical and so far has proven reliable since I fitted the 'new' engine. However, it is abysmal on the motorway, sitting at just shy of 4000rpm at 70mph in 5th gear. It's also tiny inside, judging by the size of it the boot is presumably for carrying your lunchbox or something, not 3 bags and a dog. I really did not want to take this car, despite it being the cheapest and potentially the most reliable, as 3 hours of sitting at 4k rpm would probably result in me just driving the car into a bridge pillar at 70mph just to get some peace and quiet.
• The Mitsubishi Shogun Sport - 3 litre V6, auto box with leaky transmission line that I still haven't fixed (I'll do it at some point! just not right now 😅), 20mpg and all terrain tyres for a nice bit of noise at motorway speed. I know just how pleasant she is to drive for long periods of time at high speed, as she was a last minute stand in when we drove to Zurich a couple of years back... Lots of space for family, luggage and dog... Would probably be hammering the last few nails in the coffin of the automagic box by doing that trip though, and there'd be no petrol left in the South East by the time I'd done that journey. That's a no then.
• The Honda Insight - Yeah, a 2 seater with no useable boot... turn up to the airport, wave at family, drive home. Spend about £1.37 in petrol overall, but achieve fuck all of use. Nope, nope, nope.
• The Skoda Favorit - Well, at least it would remind them of home. And I've no doubt it would do the miles, it's been very reliable of late. It's spacious enough inside, and not bad on fuel. However, it is by no means comfortable at 70-80mph (at 80 you feel like you are breaking up on re-entry) and it is gutless, which is no fun going uphill on a motorway. Plus my partner flatly refused to be seen in a 'villager' car by her family 😅
• The Volvo 940 - Bought from a chap who apparently cocked up the engine then wasn't quite honest about it. Fixed on a Friday night whilst having a burger with a mate, and half heartedly test driven on Saturday for a bit round Beachy Head, Polegate and Hailsham. Otherwise unproven in terms of reliability, and if it should fail then I would most certainly be banished for being an idiot and constantly trying to run ancient cars that I buy broken and dick around with in the hopes of having something useable. Mother in law and her partner would be stranded, and we would probably spend a small fortune getting a private hire car to run them down to us. On the plus side, it's pleasant to drive at motorway speed (it had been tested for all of 4 minutes on the A22 on Saturday after all), and it's like a small house inside.

Volvo it is then 😅 I chucked a good selection of my tools in the boot 'just in case', and we set off.

I'm pleased to report, that after a nearly 7 hour round trip due to multiple road closures, we all arrived home safely at just before 4am. Not a single problem with the Volvo, she performed admirably and is now at work with me sat proudly in the carpark in place of the Insight who previously held the top spot as daily driver.

I have to say, I am somewhat pleased with this one - I wish I hadn't waited so long to buy an ancient Volvo 😁

[Rust Collector]

The Volvo has continued to Volvo, and we did 400 miles over the bank holiday on a trip to the Isle of Wight without any incident. Other than the intensely loud noise the windscreen trim occasionally makes at random.

I was horrified when I filled it up prior to the trip mind

but it is getting close to the advertised range of 470 something miles per tank which is good.

It came in handy today at work, we had a job that ran over and we had 34 cartons to ship to a local client today. We thought we were going to have to take mine and another manager’s estate car when we saw the size of the pallet of goods. We were wrong.

At the distribution depot it drew a crowd as we unloaded it and built up a decent sized pallet. Despite having seen it before I loaded it in, I was still impressed once the pallet was built back up again. You honestly wouldn’t have thought it would’ve gone in.

Light duties for the drive home...

6 foot lighting unit for the garage reclaimed from another unit, no trouble at all for the Volvo.

Ive not got much done on anything else recently, but next week I should be working on my brother’s Celica so I may have an update on that as a small interlude from my own shite.

[Amishtat]

All the car you'll ever need. Nearly seven years with mine now and I honestly wouldn't be without it. 

[Rust Collector]

It's really proving to be quite a practical daily driver, and I think most of the people I know are probably now fed up with me raving about it 😅  I can see this being a car that we keep for a long time, as I'm not sure there's anything else I can get for the money that does everything as well as this. It's due for MOT late November, so it'll be interesting to see what she needs - I've noticed a couple of spots that I may weld prior to the test, but she's had a fairly clean history and the service file is impressive so I've got my fingers crossed that I don't have to do too much work in the cold for a ticket!

I was a bit blown away when I first read through all that, as the motors I usually buy tend to come with full service mystery!! Someone obviously loved her up until 2015.

[BaronRomero]

Just read from the beginning whilst hiding at work, great writing and great cars.

I've a soft spot for the Skoda having bought one identical many years ago - can't remember the reg of mine M647?? - it was a £150 auction buy from a Yorkshire dealer stock clearance. I didn't intend to buy it but no one else bid on it so I made a silly offer. Ran it for a year and sold it to some gypsies for £146.55 - they paid me in change, a bag full of pound coins and silver. 

[Rust Collector]

That’s not a bad return on your money! Sadly, despite my time and money spent fixing it, it still needs some body work and I’m probably not the person to do it, so I’m not sure I’ll have similar levels of success 😅

I actually drove the Skoda today after not having run it for a bit due to playing with other stuff. It’s chalk and cheese compared to the Volvo, but not in a bad way. It feels much more direct! I’ve got a few trivial bits to sort on it over the next month or so, it has some quirks I’ve been tolerating but it probably deserves some attention again. Gave it a bloody good clean today at least, so that’s something!

[Rust Collector]

**WARNING - massively long post ahead - skip to the end for summary 😅**

I've been away for a little bit, mix of the usual exciting things such as work and private life. I'm glad to say since Christmas and the New Year is out the way I've been pretty solidly picking away at the projects that are on the go.

For anyone curious as to what I've been up to, well there were some trade shows for work;

Then there were some trade shows for work;

Then there were also some trade shows for work;

Then work slowed down, and there was some question over reduced working hours and other such exciting things. Both my partner and I worked for the same company, and the thought of significantly reduced income was a bit of a worry. I wasn't very productive in my private time for a bit.

Luckily things turned a corner at work, and the future looked a bit better. My partner and I decided that we wanted to get away from things for a bit to relax and enjoy ourselves, as with the stresses outside we'd let the quality of time we spent together slip a little. Best load up the car and go see her family in Slovakia then!

Happily, I booked tickets just as Omicron became a thing. days before we travelled, the French government announced that holiday travel from the UK was not allowed. We filled out as many documents as we could preemptively, got our tests, and drove to the border expecting to be turned away... My partner is of course an EU national and still holds her Slovakian passport, but having read on the Eurotunnel Facebook page a mix of results for people trying to cross, we didn't let ourselves get our hopes up. One kind lady on the check in desk later, who corrected the document my vet filled out incorrectly, and manually approved our covid certificates (which the supplier hadn't timestamped, and had been rejected electronically on the drive there!!), I can't describe the elation felt as we drove onto the train.

We crossed at about 9:30pm, after I'd been at work all day... I drove until the early hours, and somewhere in Belgium I pulled over at a service station and we had a short sleep in the car. I can't sleep sitting up, so I elected to sleep folded in half in the boot next to the dog instead. My partner slept in the front with the luggage cases pushed in the footwell. I think I slept for about an hour, plus was lying with my eyes shut for 3 or 4 hours, so once the sun came up we stocked up on red bull and headed on our way. 

The Insight is not really the right motor for the Autobahn, but all three cylinders gave it their all on the de-restricted sections

An import part of travelling is sampling the local McDonalds food, as a while back I noticed that the fast food on the continent isn't quite as shit as the fast food at home. This is an offering from the German menu

One thing I do like on the main roads in Germany and Austria is how whenever the traffic slows to a crawl, you have to make a corridor down the centre of the road for the emergency services. Lots of the dual carriageways and motorway around me at home have no hard shoulder, and a lot of people seem to become very good at moving the completely wrong way when a vehicle is trying to navigate through traffic on blue lights.

Sadly it was dark when we got to the exciting bits, but descending through the alps on the Austrian motorway was pretty wild, the traffic didn't appear to slow down - if you did a measly 130km/h in an Insight then you were getting in the way 😳 We found our way to Slovakia safely nonetheless.

Familiar territory from this point on, as mother-in-law lives about 25 minutes away. A quick stop for a case of beer and we were safely there.

I'd have been pissed all day long at those prices if I hadn't of been designated driver.

Time has been fast forwarded to morning for the convenience of photo taking.

One niggle on the way over was that one of the fuses for the IMA system kept blowing, which would cause me to lose assist. 7 euros for a pack of fuses at the service station, and I'd get another 100-150km before the fuse went again and I had to spend another 7 euros as there was only one 7.5a in the pack... Fault diagnosed to be a bad LED driver in my mains charger setup, so an electronics store in Bratislava was visited, and 5 euros later I had the part I needed. Did somebody say cable ties and crimp connectors?

With that sorted, I was able to relax and enjoy myself. The local area had some quality shite;

If you're interested in the price of a fucked old 3 series in Poprad, it's this much;

We then took mother-in-law's Citroen for a trip to stay with family out in the East so that we could visit the Tatras. There was a bit of snow in the mountains.

There was also some nice chod lurking around;

We did also do a tiny bit of touristy stuff whilst we were out there, but it's not as interesting as chod spotting;

With the festivities over, chod spotted and sights seen, we packed up the Insight and headed home.

The whole holiday had been spent with family, so I booked a night in a hotel in Switzerland as a) I didn't fancy another night in the boot and b) I really fancied some time just for us, and the last time we went away was to visit Switzerland about a month before Covid became a thing. Plus, it meant that we got to drive home through the alps in the daylight this time;

I think this was possibly my favourite part of the trip, the scenery was stunning. Even stopping for petrol and a piss was beautiful.

Photo to illustrate arrival at hotel;

We spent the evening mooching around St Gallen, and in the morning drove to Basel as we like it there and knew a good place to get breakfast. After that, it was time to put the hammer down and head back across France. A few more spots from Switzerland and France then;

I went for a piss on a mountain outside Strasbourg, and reckoned it would be a good spot for some final photos;

Not quite as nice as the Alps admittedly...

France was a slog, dark most of the way and pissing with rain. Our train was booked for just after midnight, we got there early and crossed just after 11pm. Luckily it's about 2 hrs from the tunnel to home, so a quick McDonalds of the UK variety and the last leg of the route was tackled.

One final photo of the mighty Insight safely back on the driveway after a 2000+ mile round trip;

Since coming home I've not been able to sit still and most days I've been picking away at my projects. Here's hoping to a productive and happy 2022!

TL:DR - Work was a bit naff, I went off my hobbies briefly, work settled down, I went on holiday, I got back on with everything, more project related posts to follow.