The Continuous Car Thread of S_S - Dream Car #1 Achieved '23

I had exactly the same problem for my Suzuki GsxF 750. I don't spanner on my bikes myself,but the Suzuki dealer rather didn't touch it! Mind you,it is a 1991 bike,very good condition,some 40000 miles on it. But it has been sitting for a long time now,and i want t recomission it. Dealer said: nah man,too old. These youngster mechanics don't like spannering on old stuff!?! F...you then a&&holes. Was cruising the Corvette the other day,then a few miles from here i see a house with a Ducati behind the front window!!! Stopped,rang the bell,turned out t be a real bike guru,a proper mechanic with Ducati store,and at home he spannered on his old bikes and for customers,only ikd stuff at home! My guy!!!

My bikes are going to him from now on. Suzuki will go in in Januari.

Btw,always great read,your thread👍

I couldn't just keep driving the work van indefinitely but there was no immediate solution.

A couple of texts at the weekend from a mechanic nearby who I'd dealt with before saw another X5 arrive on Monday morning.
This one was registered in ROI but half the paperwork and NOVA had been done and it was already MOT'd in the North... well, that's legal in my eyes. No wheels though but conveniently enough I'd just parked up that other black X5 which had excellent tyres on it...
I'll tell you what else, heated seats are for winners. And, as if that wasn't perfect enough, it started snowing the same evening. Yesh! I bought a half-priced 4WD on the very day the snow started, and long term readers will know that this is a repeat feat from last year as well! (Forester).
All this went swimmingly until I was driving along a country road enjoying my heated seats and quiet, dry interior...

And "check injector system" flashed up and it coasted to a complete halt. And would not restart.

Ended up towing it back to the yard. Well, that scuppered my plans! I was quite enjoying it too, even more so because it came with a quarter tank of diesel so was basically costing me nothing to run!

But other works were also underway and in a short space where there was nothing on the lift in work and no parts or cars blocking access, I fired up the blue monster and snuck it in.


Again if you're a long term fan (ha!) you'll remember the 540i was bought with a few issues, one of which was the rear beam bushes, which got worse until I stopped driving the car and self-imposed a ban on driving it until they were done.
Richard I bought it from had given me a box of spares, which has since been mixed in with other E34 spares I've had or found in other cars.
So, Meyle or ECP bushes?


The old bushes were cut out...


Pressing in beam bushes did not appeal to the guys in work so they cried a lot and insisted we use the polybushes that were bought for the 740i (same beam). Until after plenty of searching one of my buddies popped in and then revealed that he had "borrowed" them for his car! and had told me he would replace them... which he hasn't as yet.
So his penance? Well, you can fit the rubber ones then!

I've only photos of them empty hole, you will have to use your imagination, that is if you want to bother imagining what new rubber bushes look like.


And last job, as per usual the cold has sapped the life out of the battery, which in this case was a monstrous Bosch unit. I hoiked it out - difficult due to the bulk of it - and stuck a charged up Varta in, keeping it in the family, and immediately pressed it into service, so the 540i is my daily again as of right now!


At some point I'll have a proper sort-out of all the extra cars lying around, like the Range Rover, two black X5s, there's a Mitsubishi MPV and a Fiesta and a couple of BMWs are knocking around that need to go bye-bye, but right now there's too much going on, but soon maybe we will have some order restored!

...for about four days!

I had a lot going on this week, unpleasant circumstances which don't need discussed right now. So I was taking the Disco home in the middle of the night earlier this week and noticed the fuel was low - really low - but it made it home fine, as there was nowhere open since the local 24hr petrol station is now only an 18hr.
Next morning it started fine - and conked out, literally, after 4 metres of movement. Yeah, it moved roughly one car-length.
That had the added boon of being enough to block any possibility of getting another car out of the drive past it. So I had to call in reinforcements.

A can of diesel and a fat battery didn't get it, so I got a lift to work and took the 540i home.
Such were the circumstances of this week I ignored the LR blocking my drive and just used the other car.

Today I set into it again. Twice I went and got a drum of diesel so it ended up with nearly half a tank in it. I followed the bleed procedure for a TD5 engine about fifty times, hooking up first one big battery and then another as they got all used up.


Bleed procedure requires a few ignition on, accelerator pumps, resets, etc. Or you can just jump the relay to prime it...


Which still wasn't getting the system loaded up. I read on a LR forum about cracking off the return line to help air escape, although it's a self bleeding system and shouldn't need it, but it is a Land Rover and it is nigh on 2 decades old.
That is way easier written than done though. It's not exactly easy access.

Lean over, look down the side...hmm.


Using a spanner to undo the QR connection


I also managed to get the water trap off the bottom of the fuel filter and there was diesel in there too, and plenty poured out when fuel pump was running so it was feeding the system OK.

After all that, back to the pump relay and get it to send up some diesel. It was actually bleeding up alright. The problem was now what it was bleeding!


That's, well, I'm not going to get done for running red, that's for sure!

I stopped and started it pumping for a bit until it seemed to be running clear(er). Then tried it again and it was even more milky! Waited until it seemed clear... one more go... nope, white again! Ach. eventually it was constantly semi-clear, so I just stuck it back together and cranked it over, foot to the floor as start-up procedure after bleeding requires.
It was still a no go and LR actually recommend cranking for 30 seconds, then re-prime, then do it again - well, the battery was flagging towards the end of 30 seconds cranking!

So, the mighty MG came to the rescue again! Started it up, apologised to it for not using it over winter, then asked if it was OK if it would kindly jump start the LR which takes more than twice the CCA that the MG does...or has in it's puny battery.

So it did
Good MG!
And the LR chugged into life, and now we're back, almost, to a fully working driveway!
Oh, the window regulator that was replaced a few days ago...erm, that's not working again! But at least it's stuck fully up, not halfway down, so it's dry. I'll just leave it alone for now...

Here comes the last couple of months, all at once.


Last post was early in February. There I alluded to certain circumstances that weren't to be mentioned, simply because I still didn't want to talk about it, but what happened that two of my friends were killed in a car accident. Both were only in their 20's and one in particular was definitely one of my best car buddies, and searching back over the last page or two of this thread will find stories with him in them.

Personally it was a huge blow and shook me badly, and as far as even this thread goes, it's stymied much of my car plans given that he would have been often helping me with bits and pieces - especially anything Skoda related as he had a little bit of interest in them as well.


Now that was enough to stop me doing anything, or wanting to make any posts for a while. Coupled with that, I was in the process of moving house and ended up in the grey in-between area which is sometimes also known as sleeping on yer mates sofa. That also meant cramming cars in everywhere and with a lot of project cars at my house, I ended up engaging a lot of ropey moves to find them homes. One mechanic I know ended up working on about 6 different cars for me, meaning I could leave one off every time I picked up the fixed one thus effectively getting free parking for a month. Anyway I made it work and it's somewhat sorted now - more on that later.


Let's start at the start. Thankfully Samsung phones save pictures using the date and time so I have a timeline of sorts to work with.


February:





This was my old garage. It was a great garage but truthfully a bit small. Perfect for Austins though. These were a pain to move but a couple of guys came and added strength and we just bulled them into the back of one of my vans, where they stayed while I moved. A friend drove the MG over for me while I took the van, and no longer decries the MG but understands the appeal now. A small victory! The Fiat was taken via recovery lorry to work where it stayed for three weeks with my TV inside it, seeing as it was the driest car inside as mentioned previously.


March:



This is the part of Land Rover ownership I had hoped to avoid! 25 miles or so from home and it suddenly lost power, temperature gauge reached for the sky and steam billowed out the bonnet edges. When I pulled off the M1 it conked out, and after a moment, trying to restart it span over much too enthusiastically - just the way you would expect a motor with low or no compression to do.

I was heading down to meet someone - refer back to the last post where a selection of Skoda wheels are pictured. So I rang him and apologised, rang my buddies who were meant to be coming down later, and sat forlornly for about ten minutes.

Then I threw in the contents of a jug of water - it had lost coolant from the expansion tank once before so I was carrying a small bottle's worth - slammed the bonnet down and turned it over. For what? I think I just hoped I could get it to run enough to drive a mile and get it off the motorway. Rescuing from a service station is much more workable than the side of an increasingly busy stretch of fast carriageway.


So things actually improved from there - it started up just fine, and tippled off merrily, with no issues presenting. So, it's fine now?

I was collected from there by a man who does not suit a purple Micra. Nevertheless we left the old bus parked up and embarked on a bit of a mission round the doors.

First he took me to see a car that he had left a deposit on but wasn't going to get round to.

That would be this one:



I spoke to the owner and agreed to complete the sale and collect soon.


Next I was ferried through the bustling traffic and darkening rain, to another remote location, to be presented with the subjects of another uncompleted sale:




I felt like this was a terrible time to be buying projects. Bear in mind at this point I was, for the second time, technically homeless, and had less than zero storage capability for clunky old cars. But at least I had put the deals off for a bit, so I didn't need to worry right now? Well no, because the buddies who were meant to be following 20 minutes behind me down the M1, were about two hours late, but that sort of panned out anyway as I'd been being driven round County Down by this strange (but also strangely likeable) man for about two hours as well, so we convened back at his workshop.

Which - wait, what..! - was at an old farm which I had just been at with the same buddies only 6 days earlier, agreeing to buy an old car from another one of the workshops!


So anyway, it was now utterly pitch black, he had no outside lighting, it was miserable with rain, and eventually, with many many lateness, an E61 diesel arrived with my trailer attached, with two young men more interested in the old motorbikes and Cadillac limo in the unit than helping me get out my new purchase.

The futility of trying to move a car out of a stuffed unit that was meant to be already cleared out, a week later than first planned, a month later than first actually agreed, three hours later than agreed on the day, with two hours of stuff to move before trying to release seized brakes (not too bad thankfully)... was lost to all but me. But we persevered and eventually it was released, loaded, and careened back to my work yard to live upon the trailer for there was no other space for it.


Another one!






Not totally rotten either, but missing a drivetrain. No matter...

That exhausting Saturday over, the next day, I was pottering about on my tod, and decided playing with the spacers and wheels I've had waiting for the S110R for 6 months would be a good, and long overdue, plan.


First up was getting the 15" Revolutions off:



Easier said than done as the car is pretty tightly squeezed in.


And then, an issue:



The centre bore in the spacer doesn't fit over the large Skoda centre. That's when I recalled differences in the hub sizes of various old Skodas. All that information was locked away a decade ago and I'd forgot.


But what was also recalled is that the rear is smaller. So:



Yep! The adapter fits there. So, 4x130 now ready for a 4x100 wheel. Grab that ATS!


Sling on that low offset 7j rim.




Which, well, erm...

​​​​

This may not work!


Here's a top shot.



That's a full inch and a half sticking out. Which is a little bit more than the width of the adapter.


So that hasn't progressed from there. I dropped the wheel onto a piece of timber and left it while my cranial cogs try to figure it out. I need to run 7j wheels for reasons of dishiness. 6j don't have the dished look and are hard to get anyway. The spacer is because 7jx13 are very hard to get in the right PCD, and any of these wheels in the right PCD, no matter what size, are a fortune now. Like, £800+ fortunes. That's not a huge shout off Image prices and the point of choosing ATS Classics was to avoid having to splurge a grand on wheels and tyres for the next couple of years. After that, sure, when I paint the car, but for now I just want it looking period correct but also cool, so I can use it.



Right, continuing some of the unwiser moments. The Iveco, known alternately as "The travellerWagon" or "Rico the Veco" or "The Truck" or "The Pickup" was doing a sterling job, but was devoid of a towbar, or of covered transport. I had been continually on the alert for a suitably priced interim van and had spied a Sevel production a while back, but communication had stalled while a private plate was removed from it. Once the V5 came back the seller's missus contacted me to see if the interest still existed.

Then a situation was presented to me which was that of the two never-punctual cronies had to go rescue one of their brothers' car some 60 miles away where it had ceased to run. Their plan? What plan??! Borrowing a car with a towbar from one of their dads was a good start... but they didn't have a trailer. It was also after 6pm and the hire place was closed. Of all the idiotic... wait, where is the car? Oh, that works out well, that's ten miles from where this van I want is! So I presented them with a FAR better plan, one that involved taking the Skoda off my trailer, towing that there with their dad's car (which I then found out was not only devoid of towbar electrics, but ALSO not even there! Another son had borrowed it for the day!) and... oh this is terrible.

So I took number one son to his brothers work to argue then retrieve car, set him to wiring up the electrics, then delegated the trailer emptying process to the other accomplice who was supposed to be doing the driving, then rang the van vendor, made arrangements, and had us all on our way a mere hour later than planned. My plans generally operate on a 1-2 minute margin of error. I can play by those timescales and I leave when I need to and arrive when i say I will. These guys, they like to leave ten minutes after they should have arrived there, no matter where "there" is.

So an hour after that, we drive down a very bouncy road, four up, looking out for a bungalow with a van outside it, which we find, and we go in to poke around. We reverse the car in with a transporter trailer and get it lined up exactly in line with the van. The man selling it looks extremely apprehensive but one of the others ruins it by telling him we're not going to load the van on the trailer. Shame.

I take a look around it, clambering through the back and lying on the concrete drive to poke at the sills - except I am not lying on the drive, I'm lying in a pool of rainwater and now I'm soaked! At least the sills were OK. In fact the whole van is rather sound, so without the time or desire for a test drive, it's wait 10 minutes while three young'uns talk nonsense to the seller, then barter, haggle and get 10% off the price, or maybe not even that much, and go inside to do the paperwork.


Five minutes later we walk back out and the van is gone. As are the three, very funny, young men. As we walk round the house we spot them, up the road, in a wider drive, unhitching the trailer from one BMW car and attaching it to the new van. It's cheerio to the seller, and then go to make sure my new purchase actually has working electronics and a stable towbar. All those things that you would think would be better verified before this kind of undertaking.


And we're off.



Half an hour later, one Ibiza bottomed out on air-ride is pushed on to the trailer - four of us plus a couple of university hipster-students who felt very macho then having helped push a whole car by themselves.

At this point I asked the three others if they had, in all their great plan making, remembered to bring straps? The blank stares were - well, embarrassing. But, I do it to help them remember, so they don't keep making the same mistake. Then I tell them to check the boot of the BMW, where I put some.

And that is thankfully the end of the shenanigans, because the new addition to the fleet drove just fine, if rather underpowered because it's just a Citroen HDi engine, not a proper 2.3jtd 16v, and I drove the BMW back and everything was fine. Almost everything - my trailer was doing an awful lot of shaking and skipping when empty. It's been doing that a while now. But we replaced the tyre that had been causing an issue on that side. Hmm.


A couple of days later in the Citroen...




Followed, just a mile later, by




That's not bad miles at all for a 14 year old commercial. It has a wooden floor and a workbench in the rear though.


And to round off this post, the next Sunday, I gathered up a few bits and jumped into an E46 330i to take a run down to see my dad, as he was sans car at the time having returned his year old Yaris Hybrid piece of nonsense scrap. I turned round for one second and the Collie pup from next door, who had been following me around all morning, decided he wanted to go too!

For a moment I thought those two were two of the brothers and was impressed that they were clambering through windows.
And if they ARE the 'youngsters', I AM impressed!


Just reread that bit, and looks like one of them did end up fed through the window. Nice effort!

Finally we were into April and now I was fully installed in the new house - a good job, as I haven't quite got the knack of camping just yet...




Now at least I could crack on with some of those jobs that were just dragging out.

First the Alfa. The 156 that is. It's sat around all winter avoiding the salt and of course that has resulted in a dead battery.



I dislike changing it because it means removing the intake, and the positive terminal is very fiddly, and the strap over the top has no slack in it so only the exact right height battery will fit.

But enough being enough, that was changed over so it can be moved around, although I'm still not driving it any more.




With that moving, it could be backed away from the doors of the old barn at the new house, the barn being 88.2% of the reason I moved here, giving me clear access so I could fill it up. But first, I needed to tackle the not-so-sliding door.

As you can see, this was not ideal.




I got it lined up but it kept jamming and bucking off the rail again.



A bit of sweeping revealed the real problem, a mis-aligned rail in the ground. I cleaned at it, tried a few things then resorted to thumping it with a hammer until it had a bit of a curve in the leading edge, and thus the door could just about get over it.

Seeking to make the whole thing easier, I decided to raise the door a bit on it's hangers.

I was hampered by inadequate tooling inventory at home, not having got all my usual kit over yet.



What I did have was in the boot of the Regata and between a great many adapters I managed to find a socket the right size, and scampered back up the ladder to adjust the door hangers.



A 6ft ladder, and 6ft me tip-toeing on the top of it trying to wrench on a rusted solid bolt a foot higher than my head didn't go well at all - no catastrophe, just no result.


So I took the big spanner, and a brush shaft, and with a bit of grunting and shoving I got the door to lift up onto the rail where it belonged.



It was tight, but at least it was on. I went to puch it along and it jammed solid. Like, SOLID. It wasn't even in the right position, and annoyingly, both doors need to be slid open to get proper access in.


Straight then to plan J. There were probably plans for all the other letters after A&B as well but they were too sensible or took too long.

The previous day when driving along I had spotted a strap off a lorry lying on the main road and had lifted it before it smashed a windscreen or ruptured a tyre.

So I got that out of the car...



and together with some other bits of rope and such, I managed to use the ratchet to form a solid strapping around the bottom of the door, through that rotten hole in it, around the frame, and pulled with all my might and got it freed off. Not only that, once I had it pulled back into the right position, where the pieces of C channel on the bottom of the door, the guides if you will, where they don't need to go near that hump or any of the other spots in the guide rail where they were sticking - well, I tied off the strapping to an inner frame post of the barn and now the door cannot be over-opened, and will never be able to jam again.

That, I am sure, is a legit and well engineered fix.


Moving on!


Land Rover. We've been here before. This buried me, I'll be quite honest. Suggestions have been made about why I have bought unreliable car after unreliable car, and persisted rather than just sacking them all off and buying one decent thing - well, actually, I thought the Discovery was sort of decent. No longer...




The thermostat change hadn't actually changed anything. It was still pumping out cold air, threatening to overheat and using up coolant.

So, a full flush (after checking, it was only water in it) and out came some rust-coloured water from deep in the engine recesses.



But it was very thorough, blocking off each pipe one after the other, making sure to get every avenue cleansed.


Diagnosis had revealed a coolant related problem to the drivers side of the engine.

Around here:



You can see the evidence.


What there is no picture of is the £40 bottle of Steel Seal that was then mixed and pumped in to the system. It's fully, independently guaranteed to resolve head gasket failure, or your money back, but my issue was not a HGF.

It was this leak right here:




To be fair it wasn't the worst drippy drippy ever seen, and it was only a bit of coolant being used. It doesn't drain or boil the lot, just uses a little bit and has done since purchase, making me think it's just been a leak the whole time. The radiator has always stayed full except that once, twice that it overheated due to running out of refreshing liquid.


So I had high hopes that the Steel Seal would cure my sort-of minor leak.

While lying under the big bus, I also spotted a worryingly oily bit




and another oily bit




Maybe that's just normal? No, didn't think so.


Still, that should be it fixed now...

Alright then, that was all a bit of fun. But really, both of these vehicles had a lot of stuff from my house in them which I actually needed, and leaving them buried down the field until it dries out in summer wasn't a practical solution.
So that's when things became a bit more serious - and stupider.
I'm not sure whose incredibly dopey idea it was, but a few minutes later, Matthew's Navara was also driving into the field,


Hooked up to the RR and low box engaged...


And it moved!


Downwards!


So now the Nissan was also bogged in. It was unstrapped, unladen and much rocking was attempted but it just wasn't going.

The light was going. There was a metal bar and shackle that could be used as an anchor, way down the field. Quite far away, but we got all of the straps, all of them, and just managed to reach it, and I started ratcheting on them while Matthew tried to drive forward.


To say that nothing changed would be incorrect, because, the Navara was definitely getting deeper.


Alright, we were now getting a little bit less giddy about this whole thing.
We realised that we were only getting out with the help of a tractor. We didn't have one - well I don't, his family does, but 30 miles away.
So we went on the scrounge. Thankfully we still had my Citroen Relay sitting there to drive or we'd have been walking. Could I think of anyone along the road where I grew up that had a tractor? Not a hope! Everyone I knew was dead. There is my grandad's "home place" but it was sold a few years ago by my uncle, and the Massey 135 in the shed probably wouldn't be the answer anyway! Oh, then I remembered, sure they sell tractors from my Aunt's house, I'll go up and see her. Except they were on holiday for three days, as I'd been told that morning, so that was really quite inconvenient! I went to see a guy I know up the road, who might know someone. "He's dead, he's away, he sold his, and that guy, he would have lent it to you for sure, but I used it yesterday and I broke it"
Well that's just typical! Between us there wasn't a tractor or tractor owner available within a five mile radius and at 10:15 at night now there wasn't going to be anytime soon.

We drove back down the road towards the house, and nipped down a long lane looking for someone I met, once, who might have had one, but the house was in darkness and I had to reverse the van all the way back up the lane. We were almost back when I spotted the back of a blue cab and hit the brakes. "There's a tractor!" I exclaimed / "There's a New Holland 600 with double attachment forks!" Matthew exclaimed; at the same time. Umm, yeah, did I mention he's a total culchie? That's probably not exactly what he said, but it was something overly specific like that for only having seen the top rear of the cab.
So we drove in and there were lights on, and we knocked, explained ourselves, pleaded a bit, and got a positive response that meant rescue was coming soon!

So we raced back down to the house to make space for a big tractor, and in a few moments it was there and driving into the field complete with bucket on the front and lots of lights.


First off we got the Navara towed out and onto some less muddy field, and it drove out then.


Then it was the RR.

It was in deep. This is the door not being able to open fully. Remember this RR is jacked up too.

So, lets tow it out.


Hmm. That looks an awful lot like a tractor spinning it's wheels, doesn't it? Well, that's because, that is what happened! The tractor sunk in, and started to get bogged down too! He then took to reversing up to the bonnet, then racing forward, jerking a heavy chain shackled to the front of the RR, while I kept it planted, in Low 2nd, and after several dozen attempts, it started to creep up and out of it's dug-in emplacement. Except we had a bigger problem now, literally. The tractor was stuck!

But, that bucket was suddenly very useful, because it provided ample leverage for a skilled tractor driver to lift his axle and drag himself free of the mire, and my noisy RR with it.

Bearing in mind that this was now nearing 11pm, and my Range Rover is an almost unsilenced V8, we figured that was enough, and stopped to recover after thanking our noble rescuer and trying to clear the clods of mud he dragged out on to the road, and up the road, all the way up the road....



Two mucky pups! We tidied up, grabbed our stuff, put the trailer in the drive and scarpered!

Erm, yeah, we just left the people carrier stuck in the field.

I genuinely needed the stuff in it though.

I woke up the next day and had a good laugh at the RR.


Went round to inspect the damage:


Where the Tractor had been


The pathway out


Where the Navara had been:


Where the RR had been


I had some jobs to do during the day. The Iveco had started being hard to start and not charging up - I had to get jump started one morning, and I don't like that much. Took the battery covers off and was presented with some horrible past "fixes", so I set to ripping those all out. Fiat Group vehicles tend to (all the ones I have anyway) have this distribution panel atop the positive terminal of the battery. The terminal had been broken off the Iveco one so there was a cable bolted to it that ran under to a new clamp. It did not sit right and the dist. plate and connectors were very rusty and gunky.
I delegated the removal of the one from a 2004 2.8 Ducato long since retired from work duties, and also the cleaning up with emery paper of every single bolt, connection and the plate itself.
Afterwards it was ready to be bolted together with a freshly charged battery, placed on top of a cleaned up battery tray, and it was bolted into place and everything works beatifully now.


Jumping into the Citroen van next, I went off to pick up the latest project.
The Citroen has a 'reversing' camera installed in it, very trick, but also active all the time, not just during reversing!


Exceedingly handy for reversing into work though, which is narrow enough and also requires some weaving, so it's particularly gratifying when you get it right in one go rather than pulling forward to correct a few times.


A low owner 325i Sport in probably the most desirable red/black leather combo, recently painted to a good standard but over repairs that need re-done. Now tucked away safely, will look at that circa 2021!

Oh yeah, remember that thing you saw me carrying out of the cinema?

A cool piece of garage art, if nothing else.