I'll get round to it at some point - Trailer fixed, cars towed. Now wash, rinse and repeat 16 more times.

[EyesWeldedShut]

5 minutes ago, Christine said:

Ive just been to Tesco in the   clio  ..She's on 131,000 !  

Barely run in then?

[Christine]

R c  put another  engine in it .  I can't remember what miles were on it when i got it from kiltox...

[Rust Collector]

Probably time for a bit of an update! LONG POST ALERT - this one contains a mix of car and my family stuff, hopefully it’s not too dull but I thought you might enjoy a peek into the wider life that’s fighting to take over my shite fettling time. It’s all stuff I enjoyed and wanted to share/ramble about though.

The Land Rover has not exploded yet, and is still plugging through the miles - we’re getting closer to the moon:

We went on holiday to see family in August, and flew (boo!) - this was the first time my son was old enough to understand what was going on, so that did make it a bit more enjoyable.

The airport staff let him have a sit in this, which avoided a tantrum that I wouldn’t have been ready to deal with at 7am:

He was pretty mesmerised for a lot of the journey

Seeing as we didn’t have our car with us, I was pleased to be reunited with this glorious machine:

Seeing as it was a cheap way to entertain the kids we rode on some trains, and saw a lot more, plus a field full of what looked like Tatras:

There was of course lots of family stuff, food and drink, that sort of thing, but the trains were my favourite bit. With that all done, it was time to head home:

Once home, it was time to sort out some bits on the trailer. First up was a tyre valve that had split, which meant buying a new toy:

I was pleased with that - I had thought originally that I’d have to fuck around removing and refitting the tyre.

Seeing as this is a trailer, obviously all the lights were fucked despite being fixed last time. So let’s do it all over again.

 

Job done. So of course, the wind blew:

With that done, it was on to fixing the Clio, which had helpfully broken two days before we went on holiday. Anything more than a light pedal press would cause the fuelling to cut so hard it felt like you hit something. This was the culprit:

I couldn’t find anything obviously wrong, but cleaned it anyway:

I refitted the pedal with the help of my son and the problem has gone, so I’m calling that fixed.

Keeping on the theme of my son, last week the Disco got the privilege of delivering him to his first day of nursery: 

He was not a happy chap 🤣 although he does love the Land Rover, so he was happy on the ride there at least.

Next car problem was the Disco seeming a bit gutless and chucking out clag at full throttle. I thought I’d check the EGR, and look at blanking it. However:

Someone got there before me.

I wonder if they removed the butterfly valve?

Yeah, that won’t work.

Removing it took about 10 minutes, and the disco can now get out of its own way, which is good, because next I needed to do this:

The exodus has begun, and this was the first car to head to my new yard.

On the way there, a brake dragged and cooked a bearing. That caused a bit of a delay in getting the trailer home, whilst I found a suitable bearing and fitted it. I thought I took useful pictures, but apparently not, so just imagine a taper roller bearing and me drowning in grease, and swearing my tits off over the fact that despite owning 6 or 7 grease guns none of the fuckers ever seem to be ready to go.

On the way back after fixing the bearing, this happened:

So I got to re-wire my trailer for the millionth time. This bit hadn’t been redone before, but at least this gave me a chance to route the cable in a more protected/less stupid location.

With working electrickery again, I moved this:

The Pontiac came back to my house, as it’s something I want to work on in the near future.

I was going to bring the Lexus to my house afterwards, but I noticed the trailer brakes were piss weak after moving the Pontiac (I checked them at both ends, they were alright when I left). Turns out the shoes on the rear axle had all cracked, and when I took the drums off and touched the friction material it delaminated, not good. New shoes on order, and so I had to find something else to amuse myself with.

Anyone remember this thing?

It’s my dad’s old W211. I did the MOT work on it a while back, but he replaced it with mix of cars borrowed from me and then a much newer E class, so it sat unloved for ages. He’s said I can have it as he only got offered £75 scrap for it locally, so I threw a battery on it and fired it up.

Result. It did light up like a Christmas tree, but clearing the codes stored from the low battery voltage got it back to a point where it was happy.

Whilst test driving it on the farm I did start to hear a metallic dragging sound, and then this fucker fell out from under the car:

I think it’s a leftover that I replaced, but I’ll have to go back to where I was working last and check it’s not something that was loose from the suspension work.

I also killed another one of these. I don’t think I’ve ever had one that I haven’t immediately driven over.

All being well, I’ll get the trailer fixed this week and resume moving cars, and hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will get the E320 in for an MOT. My mrs has laid claim to the E Class, so fingers crossed it goes through a ticket ok.

[High Jetter]

Fuck me, you've been busy! Never knew you had a Bonnk! Shout if you need a hand (but not this week).

[Split_Pin]

Good news on the Disco pass! My trusted local garage has shut and most other places only want to work on 3 year old Focuses so I'm dreading getting my RR tested in November.

Looking forward to more Merc updates!

[Rust Collector]

1 hour ago, Split_Pin said:

Good news on the Disco pass! My trusted local garage has shut and most other places only want to work on 3 year old Focuses so I'm dreading getting my RR tested in November.

Looking forward to more Merc updates!

Thanks mate - I ended up using a ‘no pass no fee’ place as I wasn’t sure about a couple of bits on it and wasn’t in a position to throw bags of cash at it if it failed. This meant driving nearly 2 hours from home, but I don’t really have a trusted garage locally anymore so thought it was worth a shot! I suspect it’s where I’ll take the the merc, as my yard is on the route back so I can sling it there if it’s a bad fail.

Fingers crossed the RR goes through no bother!

[Rust Collector]

10 hours ago, High Jetter said:

Fuck me, you've been busy! Never knew you had a Bonnk! Shout if you need a hand (but not this week).

Not just a Bonk, the Bonk!

Thanks mate - I’m conscious that I still need to finish helping you out! 🤣 Hopefully once the Lexus and last two mercs are moved out my parents’ car park then things should ease off a bit for me. Did you get the Audi sorted in the end?

[High Jetter]

57 minutes ago, Rust Collector said:

Not just a Bonk, the Bonk!

Thanks mate - I’m conscious that I still need to finish helping you out! 🤣 Hopefully once the Lexus and last two mercs are moved out my parents’ car park then things should ease off a bit for me. Did you get the Audi sorted in the end?

I must have forgotten about you getting Bonk!

Yep, Audi back on the road after emptying my bank a/c, thanks. Am planning to get back to the van week after next. Glad you're getting the fleet shifted.

[Rust Collector]

Lately my efforts have been focused on my Big Shite Trailer.

The trailer is believed to be a Peak trailer from the 1980’s, but it’s hard to tell. It’s built in the style of the Brian James race trailers, but it’s not galvanised and it uses rod brakes rather than cables.

The brakes have always given me grief, they’re very needy and I was constantly having to tweak them. I had assumed they were 200mm x 40mm drum brakes, and I had no joy finding spares. I’m unsure how, but recently I was researching again and I had the revelation that the brakes were actually Lockheed 8” drums - very close to 200 x 40, but not the same.

You can buy new shoes for about £40 an axle, and seeing as all my rear shoes had failed recently I did just this.

On Wednesday I went up to fit them, and one side went together no bother.

The other side just wouldn’t retract enough to fit the drum. It looked right, but the expander was refusing to budge in any further.

Today I decided to take a brave pill and start pulling the brake system apart.

It turns out you can completely strip the expander without any tools, although a drift helps.

I cleaned and greased this one (plus one sticky one on the front axle). It was handy to see how the rods join on the the expander, as it may give me options to replace the slightly bent rods at a later date.

With the rod off, I noticed the pivot arm that balances the brakes on that axle was seized. I didn’t feel great about taking it apart as I reckoned something would break, but the impact gun did remove it without issue. Picture taken before fighting the big bolts/nuts:

I cleaned and greased the pivots and the pins, and put that back together too.

It made quite a difference to the geometry of the rods, and it moves freely now.

I then put the shoes back on the back plate that I had been fighting with before. This time, I had a retracted set of shoes that now took a drum…  result!

Whilst the trailer was up in the air, I adjusted the brakes and the balance is now much improved and the brakes lock up evenly when applied and release smoothly afterwards.

Whilst the fronts still have some meat on them, one shoe is unevenly worn on the offside and so I expect I’ll be buying and fitting a set of shoes for the front axle this week.

All being well, I should be ready to start moving more cars and hopefully having less downtime - I’ve spent far more time fucking around with this trailer than I have moving anything 🤣

 

[High Jetter]

Brakes look like typical 70's or 80's drums.

[Rust Collector]

On 13/09/2025 at 21:38, Rust Collector said:

Whilst the fronts still have some meat on them, one shoe is unevenly worn on the offside and so I expect I’ll be buying and fitting a set of shoes for the front axle this week.

I was correct! I did end up buying new brake shoes. Also, a shout out to the sleuthing that @Mr_Bo11ox did on his trailer thread, where he was also faced with the same Lockheed 8” shoes - he spotted that they were also used on some Morris Minors, and it turns out that ESM are near to where my mrs work and could supply an axle set of shoes for £18, which makes the £40 I spent on the last set feel a bit salty.

On Friday afternoon I needed to pick my one year old daughter up from the childminder at lunch, so I pre-ordered the shoes from ESM and went to pick them up on the way back. They had some beautiful cars as well some other lovely projects there, although my daughter was most enamoured by the digger* (forklift) which she couldn’t stop talking about after we saw it. 14/10, would use ESM again for brake parts on my shite trailer.

This is the new shoes shown against the ‘best’ shoes from the trailer:

The second best are even worse:

Note the uneven wear - I’m hoping I’ve sorted this now I’ve rebuilt the expander in this drum and adjusted the rods.

Speaking of the brake rods, with new shoes in all four drums it became apparent that the main rod (which shows evidence is past bodgery) was too short to adjust out for the extra friction material. I bodged it some more with some M8 threaded rod and joiner nuts, and I now have brakes that apply evenly, don’t drag, and the handbrake provides full application at a sensible spot.

Best drag something away from the farm then!

Ive taken this back to my house; my mrs is keen on it and I reckon it isn’t far off being ready for an MOT. I checked the suspension and confirmed that the nut I found previously was one that I replaced and then lost, all the suspension is securely attached which is the preferred way to have it. The hub is fucked though, the last of the thread for one of the wheel bolts has let go, so it needs replacing - will look for a good secondhand one when I have a moment. I was actually quite keen to roffle this out once it’s got an MOT, as it’s thirstier than the Clio, but I know better than say no to my partner over it when I’m given so much rope on all the other shite I keep around 😅

Taking this home meant something from my house had to go to my yard:

I felt a bit guilty taking this up there, as I spent a lot of time on it this year and it’s quite far along to being a decent car, but with all the moving going on I just don’t have time to work on it at all currently so there’s no point it being sat there. And yeah, let’s not expand on that and think about the Pontiac, Lada and BX that were lined up behind it… they can stay here, for now!

The run from my parents’ house to mine was uneventful, but also only a mile or two. The run to my yard was an hour and a half, so the first proper test of the trailer with the new brakes. The result is that the difference is night and day, the braking is spread evenly between the drums (judging by their temperature) and there have been no more bearing grease fires. Stopping the combination feels a lot better, it’ll sound stupid but the harder you brake the more evident the trailer braking is, and it feels much more stable this way. I’m pleased that I was able to get this setup working with the original rod setup, as it would’ve been a major ball ache to retrofit cables in my application.

Anyway, I suspect that’s all I’ll be getting up to until Saturday, when I plan to move the Lexus LS 430 and the Merc E430 up to my yard. The Merc will be a ball ache to unload as it doesn’t run, but that’s a problem for future me. At any rate, with those two gone that will be the car park at my parent’s house emptied… we won’t talk about all the rammel that’s up behind the stables, as I’m properly not looking forward to dragging all of that back out from the nature that wants to reclaim it.