Grumblespeed - Who said breeding Pandas was hard?

[Grumblespeed]

Just now, loserone said:

Oh, yeah.  Sid's been living there a couple of years now.

When you say "living"???

[loserone]

2 minutes ago, Grumblespeed said:

When you say "living"???

DON'T TELL ME YOU'VE KILLED HIM ALREADY!?

[Grumblespeed]

4 minutes ago, loserone said:

DON'T TELL ME YOU'VE KILLED HIM ALREADY!?

What? No!

still preparing the garlic butter.

[New POD]

Self cooking if he moves to the exhaust.

[Grumblespeed]

158k miles on what looks to be a well looked after car has generated a ridiculous amount of bits of paper which @loseronehad kindly left in the boot when I picked this up. Spent a morning going through it all putting it in order and working out what has been done when as far as possible:

[Grumblespeed]

Little thing, but it makes me happy. Technically a 207 badge but they are surprisingly difficult to find:

[loserone]

That looks so wrong.  I'll have a look for the right one

[Grumblespeed]

26 minutes ago, loserone said:

That looks so wrong.  I'll have a look for the right one

Thanks. I thought there would be nothing more to do than order up a replacement and whack it on, but no apparently not. The only way you seem to be able to find the right badge is to buy a 180 badge and chuck away the 180 section. But they are about £40 - more pressing things to spend that on.

Font was the closest I could find, what I didn't get from the listing is it's quite a bit bigger than the 206 version. If I'm sticking with this one I might peel it off and move it down so it sits diagonally below the 206 badge. Just that where it is it covers the leftover glue from where the original used to be - and I haven't bothered to clean that off yet.

[loserone]

[Grumblespeed]

Pug looked rather good today after a wash, light filtering down through the tree:

Of course the reason it got a wash is after a couple of days parked under said tree it looked dreadful, particularly as it appeared an Ostrich had climbed the tree just to poo on the car a few times😠 Shifted round the back now.

[Grumblespeed]

Thought it might be a good time to do a quick stocktake and state of affairs for the record. So currently cluttering up the church car park there's this trio:

Pug is the runner, with a rusty hole underneath at the OSF jacking point that's going to need attention, plus a wee snagging list before it's really going to be ready to re-MOT in December. Useable as is in the meantime though and pretty pokey when the mood takes👍

Panda ran out of MOT in April. Runs and drives the nicest of anything really - obviously not as swift or B road hustly as the Pug but feels pretty fresh and well screwed together with no old age creaks and rattles going on. However, shortly before the MOT was due it decided the ABS wasn't going to work any more and put a light on, then some of the other lights got jealous and joined in so now the dash looks like this (no the brake light doesn't go off with the handbrake🙁😞

New battery has not put anything out (Pandas are prone to random errors with a weak battery). Now I'm a bit stuck. Not going to MOT like that.

The Silver Seicento is now relegated to spares car - the lowest mileage of the lot but too much brown crispy round the edge of the floorpan to be a long term prospect. Currently up on 3 wheels as I've scavenged the OSF hub and caliper for this one:

Which has north of 100k on instead of the 60k or so of the silver one, but is just a better shell to put the work into. Just had front lower arms which I'm going to have to break the balljoint on on the OSF to change the hub as the bearing is away. Got rear arms to go on with nice new bushes and brakes on but I've been putting it off due to having to break the crusty brake pipe unions and thus potentially opening a can of worms I don't really fancy.

Then there's Grumbleweed peeking forlornly out of the garage there... One day...

Need to reduce the numbers a bit really - ideally it's going to have to be Yellow Sei Plus either Pug or Panda, and Grumbleweed lurking in the long term project slot. Running the Pug at the minute just to get a feel for it before I make the decision on those 2, need to get the jobs out the way on the yellow Sei so I can scrap the silver one once I'm happy I don't need to scavenge anything more major off it. Then either spend the money on the Pug or the Panda for a fresh ticket and move on the other one.

 

[Grumblespeed]

Seicento's been getting some attention. Last time out I noticed the O/S/F wheel getting warm after a short drive and I know the bearing is suspect, also know from the recent visits to that corner that the brake flexi was looking hard up - rubber outer was cracked all round the curves and the ferules were pretty crusty so clearly a) need changing, and b) gonna be fun undoing the things🙁 After a bit of ebay shopping I had determined that since I will need to change all 4 flexis it was actually cheaper to buy a full set of shiny shiny braided hoses with nice stainless ends than it was to just buy standard ones.

Started by pulling the caliper off the spares car to make sure I had one ready with bleed nipple and hose safely cracked off and free before I started rendering the one on the car potentially unusable. Thus equipped and with the (slightly) fresher caliper tarted up with 3 coats of yellow Hammerite (which for some reason is appalling stuff, thin and with minimal coverage compared to the other half dozen colours I've got kicking about) I set about the car.

Hub carrier off no bother (well I had only just had it apart anyway when I did the bottom arm) and mercifully split the balljoints without trashing any rubber boots.

This crusty union, just visible in the background past the beautifully photographed tie wrap, not so easy. (tie wrap was left over from last time I had the corner apart and I hung the caliper off it) all rusted solid and seized so in the end I had to admit defeat and cut the hard line🙁 Fortunately someone had obviously had a similar problem before and spliced a section in from the inner wing so I cracked it there instead of having to replace the whole line back to the master cylinder. Some You Tubing later to remind myself how my flaring tool worked (it's been a while) I managed to knock up a replacement section:

Reassembly is the reverse.. only with a bit less swearing and despair:

At this point it was getting distinctly grey overhead so whacked the wheel back on, cleared up and retreated indoors. The unions are tight-ish and it's all still full of fresh air so have to get back in, bleed and make it all leak free later. Oh, and repeat the brake pipe pain the other side.

Meanwhile the Pug's got this waiting. Old back box is rotted out all along the side seam. I do however have to (shock horror) actually go somewhere by means of an car tomorrow so decided not to render them both undriveable at the same time just now.

[wesacosa]

I thought for a horrible minute that zip tie was your spring compressor 😳

[Grumblespeed]

5 hours ago, wesacosa said:

I thought for a horrible minute that zip tie was your spring compressor 😳

Don't be daft! Safety first, you'd need one each side.

[Grumblespeed]

Bored of trying to undo brake lines so went for the easy win with the Pug back box and a few bits and bobs:

Old box had definitely lost that brand new feel 

easiest exhaust part swap ever later:

Also spent long enough under there to establish that, yes, the stupid "who thought that was a good idea" Peugeot underbody spare wheel cage was definitely rusted solid round the removal bolt so no way was it coming off easily, let alone at the roadside if I'd ever needed the spare. (obviously the 20 year old original spare tyre would probably be a pretty dodgy proposition anyway) Drenched the rusty remains with oil and decided to ignore it a bit longer.

On that subject, I was standing glaring at the bolt head in the boot and thinking why on earth did they decide to go with that stupid slot head to be undone with the back end of the the wheel wrench when they could just have put a 19mm hex head on to be undone with the 19mm wrench you have in your hand anyway? - or another 19mm socket on something more useful when it's getting a bit rusty and stiff.

 

[loserone]

Aye, I had another 206 off here where someone had cut through the boot floor with a grinder to release the spare.  Madness!

[Grumblespeed]

2 minutes ago, loserone said:

Aye, I had another 206 off here where someone had cut through the boot floor with a grinder to release the spare.  Madness!

Have to admit I hadn't really considered that as a solution, there must be a slightly less destructive way. Sounds like a bit of a Basil Fawlty moment that one.

[Grumblespeed]

On another note entirely the Pug had it's first longish run since I brought it home the other day. Went down to visit the folks in Leicester (90ish miles each way). Great motorway car, enough oomph when needed, but crucially returned about 45 to the gallon which was a pleasant surprise. Better than the wife's 1.8 C30 can manage!

 

[Grumblespeed]

1999, Max Power in full swing, Fast and the Furious just around the corner, I'm claiming this as a period mod:

Genuine Ripspeed carbon fibre👍

Original was looking pretty scuffed up, and when I did take it off it disintegrated in a manner which suggested it had already been apart once and glued back together. The original style is still available so might revert if I get bored of reliving my youth.

[Grumblespeed]

Some catastrophic lacquer peel going on on the Pug's roof so I decided to lovingly restore the paintwork.... sort of

Before:

After

....although from the opposite angle, this

Have to do for now..

 

[Grumblespeed]

So, after a run out to a car show at the end of August I discovered (as I watched the temp gauge creep ever higher in the queue at the gate) that the cooling fan wasn't working. To be fair to @loserone he did flag that up in the roffle listing but said he'd cleaned up all the contacts which was usually the issue. Well, apparently not. So having put it off long enough after having enough of a look to establish I'd need to rake the bumper off to get access I decided to tackle it today.

So, offending area exposed:

Relays apparently a regular source of issues:

Definitely a live feed to the top relay, discovered this for definite by popping the fuse 🤦‍♂️ However shorting to the correct pin still gives no fan action. Culprit no. 1 identified:

Resistor appears to be knackered. Bypass this and the fan springs into life at full tilt. However with this gone the fan should still come in on high speed via the second relay when the engine temp goes up..

Aha - green dust does not make a great conductor for getting power to stuff does it. Cables trimmed back to something resembling metal and spade connectors grafted on and the relay now functions as it should. So the car now has a functioning fan for engine over - temp, but still sitting with the bumper off while I wait for a replacement resistor to show up. More progress, more ignoring the rusty hole in the sill I know I'm going to have to deal with eventually.

[loserone]

Good work!

[Matts_Rusty_Bus]

Thought it might be a good time to do a quick stocktake and state of affairs for the record. So currently cluttering up the church car park there's this trio:

Pug is the runner, with a rusty hole underneath at the OSF jacking point that's going to need attention, plus a wee snagging list before it's really going to be ready to re-MOT in December. Useable as is in the meantime though and pretty pokey when the mood takes
Panda ran out of MOT in April. Runs and drives the nicest of anything really - obviously not as swift or B road hustly as the Pug but feels pretty fresh and well screwed together with no old age creaks and rattles going on. However, shortly before the MOT was due it decided the ABS wasn't going to work any more and put a light on, then some of the other lights got jealous and joined in so now the dash looks like this (no the brake light doesn't go off with the handbrake



New battery has not put anything out (Pandas are prone to random errors with a weak battery). Now I'm a bit stuck. Not going to MOT like that.
The Silver Seicento is now relegated to spares car - the lowest mileage of the lot but too much brown crispy round the edge of the floorpan to be a long term prospect. Currently up on 3 wheels as I've scavenged the OSF hub and caliper for this one:

Which has north of 100k on instead of the 60k or so of the silver one, but is just a better shell to put the work into. Just had front lower arms which I'm going to have to break the balljoint on on the OSF to change the hub as the bearing is away. Got rear arms to go on with nice new bushes and brakes on but I've been putting it off due to having to break the crusty brake pipe unions and thus potentially opening a can of worms I don't really fancy.
Then there's Grumbleweed peeking forlornly out of the garage there... One day...

Need to reduce the numbers a bit really - ideally it's going to have to be Yellow Sei Plus either Pug or Panda, and Grumbleweed lurking in the long term project slot. Running the Pug at the minute just to get a feel for it before I make the decision on those 2, need to get the jobs out the way on the yellow Sei so I can scrap the silver one once I'm happy I don't need to scavenge anything more major off it. Then either spend the money on the Pug or the Panda for a fresh ticket and move on the other one.
 

Is that a Sergio Tacchini Panda? I remember my mum having an H reg one that she px'd a Skoda 120 lux in for.



Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

[Grumblespeed]

On 9/20/2021 at 8:19 PM, Matts_Rusty_Bus said:

Is that a Sergio Tacchini Panda? I remember my mum having an H reg one that she px'd a Skoda 120 lux in for.



Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk
 

That is indeed. My second. when I got the first one iirc the wife was driving a 120 actually.

[Grumblespeed]

Nothing terribly exciting but the resistor's arrived and gone on, now the Pug has the full twin speed fan, all functioning as it should 👍 Bumper's back on and I've sprayed some lanolin stuff round underneath to try and keep the brown stuff at bay for a bit.

[Grumblespeed]

Well, I've known since I got this Pug home and swapped the wheels that the brakes were looking hard up so ordered up a full set and made a start today. Fronts only done so far because I obviously had to wait until all the Moto GP coverage had finished before I made a start.

State of play at the start, quite a lip on the disc and the pads were well down, new pad for comparison:

Always a nice feeling seeing nice new brakes in place:

Then repeat for the passenger side. Now I'd been getting quite a bit of judder through the pedal and it's safe to say when I got the passenger side apart I think I've found out why:

In a horrendous state. Anyway, both sides done so I'll see what that does on the commute toorrow.

 

[wesacosa]

yikes they look pretty grim. 😨

[Grumblespeed]

34 minutes ago, wesacosa said:

yikes they look pretty grim. 😨

Just a bit! That was on the back of the disc, the front just looked tired and having earmarked it as a job that needed doing anyway I hadn't stuck my head that far in to have a look.

[Stanky]

Nice work, I had similar (though not as bad!) on the inner edge of one disc on my old Saab 9-3. Replacing both the pads and discs and lubricating the sliders made an amazing difference! 

[Grumblespeed]

Well, judgement day for the Pug.. could have been worse. Sill rotted out behind where some numpty had mangled the O/S front jacking point which I was expecting to fail it. Guy at my local garage didn't fancy tackling the welding because of setting fire to the carpet/loom but he knows a guy that will do it so hopefully all legal and ready to roll again again by Thursday. Far too cold/ wet/ dark and generally Decembery for me to try and develop welding skills for it. Still, nothing more than some tired shocks on the advisory list and even the rear beam which was advised for play last year seems not to be bad enough to mention this time.

Date tested14 December 2021

FAIL

View test certificate

Mileage160,451 miles

MOT test number6477 3942 3384

Test location

View test location

Repair immediately (major defects):

• Offside Front Inner Seat belt anchorage prescribed area strength or continuity significantly reduced sill (7.1.1 (a) (i))

Monitor and repair if necessary (advisories):

• Nearside Front Shock absorbers has light misting of oil (5.3.2 (b))
• Offside Front Shock absorbers has light misting of oil (5.3.2 (b))

What are defects and advisories?

 

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