The front bumper wasn’t the cheapest, but it’s in damn good condition and sets the front off nicely. It’s kind of turning into a Mk2.5 as the side rubbing strips “fell” off the other night – once I gave them a bit of assistance. The holes in the front/rear wings have been filled in and the mounting lugs on the door skin ground down, so they’re all getting a dab…
Now I know why my grandad used to say “I’m off to reset the points” every time he popped outside to light his pipe, (imagining, somehow, that my grandma wouldn’t notice the smell when he came back in ) … I’m having to fiddle with ’em as much as me old grandad Rummaging around in the “big box of things I bought when I couldn’t work on the car”, I found…
Everything always takes longer than you planned, doesn’t it? I gave the tailgate frame a couple of coats of Corsican Blue, sorted for me by Wigan Car Paints. There’s a distinct edge between the old and new, but the tailgate’s probably the most faded panel on what is after all a near thirty year old car Apparently I should be able to blend it in once I attack the rest of…
It’s all practice, practice, practice as far as bodywork goes I guess Generally speaking, a bolt either fits a nut or it doesn’t – whereas there’s a million and one things that can affect a weld Even if I totally bodge it up, I can still pick up another tailgate and call this a test piece On with the show… Having put the new metal into the bottom of the screen frame,…
Spent an afternoon laboriously hand-fabricating some pieces to fill the holes in the frame, and to be brutally honest, they looked like my five year old neice could have done better I’ll not even show you them, you’ll laugh too much Popped out to Machine Mart and got one of their vice-mounted metal folders, together with a nice shiny new vice to fix onto the new workbench (when I finish building it ) For the…
Chopped out the rust on the inside of the screen frame last night and even managed to find some good metal to leave in the middle as a reference A small amount of the outside of the frame will need chopping out too, but I’m planning to get the inside done first so I can then use that as a new datum. As a reminder to me, (as much as…
Concensus on the oil leak seems to be that they pretty much all do that anyway and I should just keep an eye on it until I either replace the head gasket or it gets worse – I can live with that This weekend I spent most of Sunday mixing filler, applying it really carefully, sanding back down (with 80 then 180 grit paper) then giving it a squirt of…
Now that the car’s safely back home and I’ve had a bit of a break from the garage, I popped out tonight to take a look at the plugs following their first few hundred miles. They were all pretty sooty, more so on the rear ones than the front – I’m sure that means something More importantly though, the oil level was at the top mark on the dipstick when…
Right, catch-up time Started off with some glass fibre compound to fill in the gaps and take out the crease from the old bump, then ran some filler over the top. Unfortunately, I forgot I didn’t have the air sander I’d used at college and probably got a bit carried away and put too much on A little bit of sanding later, I’d worked through 80, 180 and 320 grit…
Doesn’t time fly when you’re out in the garage – one minute I’m happily grinding away thinking what I’m going to have for lunch, then a couple of moments pass and I’m running late for getting to an evening course at college I’ve been poking at stuff with the screwdriver, and the bit that’s annoyed me the most for the longest is the holes on the passenger side of the…
Part of the problem (with being isolated in the garage) is that I can’t bring myself to traipse through my nice new house in grubby overalls (to scour the interwebs for help), and even if I could, I’d never be able to bear the sight of oily fingerprints on the keyboard Logical answer then, I guess, is to rig up a PC in the garage – which would also give me…
The new calipers went on nice and easy, and whilst I was doing the job, I thought I might as well also fit the braided hoses I picked up at the NEC Classic Motorshow a few months ago. The new hoses all went on fairly easily, once I’d worked out which nut of the brake unions I was meant to be undoing It’s obvious once you’ve done it, but up till…
After lots of to-ing and fro-ing the pistons on the passenger side caliper showed no signs of shifting With the memory of a rather unamusing Renault 5 crash in the back of my mind, I decided not to bother with cleaning up the old calipers and getting a service kit, so one call to the local factors and a few quid later I’ve got a pair of reconditioned ones. I…
Well, I finally got the front end re-assembled tonight but the bumper’s going to have to come off again for some “adjustment” – it seems like one of the bumper irons I got is slightly bent, as the whole bumper is slightly skewiff and tight up against the bodywork on one side. Never mind, I think it looks alright for now OK, so the indicators are held in with cable ties, but…
Just a quick little update today. Finally got some time yesterday to see why the engine wasn’t firing, having had both the battery and jumper pack on charge over the weekend. I worked my way down the checklists in the Haynes and Autodata books (told you this was all new to me) and after making sure that everything was plugged in securely, then cleaning the earthing points and the plugs…