Well, it's been a while since I've done anything worth mentioning..
Just been driving about, reasonably well. Except for the slow death by exhaust.
Last couple of weeks my passenger door lock has beomce increasingly frustrating, to the point where last week it was relocking the doors every time I hit the remote, or pulled up the drivers or passenger side finger pulls. Or closed a door. Or went over a bump.
So on Friday, armed with a beer, the door card was removed and the locking mechanism investigated.
Simple fix, the clamp that holds all the wire rods together had come loose, probably made worse by the finger pull getting caught on the door card, and everything was out of adjustment.
So readjusted, everything done up nice and tight, finish the beer.
Had a look in to why my reverse lamp isn't working any more, too.
Need a test light, but looks like power isn't getting to the back. Which is entirely possible as some excess wiring was removed when we restraightened the front.
Anyway, no pics of any of that.
A couple of months ago I went to a 'Real Steel and Chrome' car meet, which was a bit of a let down. I didn't park my car in the showing area as although it met all the requirements, I still don't really feel like it's worth showing..
Oh. And last month? the real estate agent finally walked through the house semi-properly on his inspection, and finally noticed the spares Cressida killing the grass in the back yard..
So it was time to shift it up to my parents property to kill their grass instead.
I bolted the carby back on, charged the battery, failed to start it with the battery, pulled the battery out of Seedy and fitted that instead.
Started first go! Dumped the power steering fluid on the grass, but oh well. Rolled it outside on to the road ready to drive on to the trailer in the morning. Easy.
I had a rummage in it and made sure I hadn't left anything important inside.
Came across this in the passenger rear arch well.
Hmm, some spare leads.. What's in the bag then? A bonus air compressor?
No! Things! Many things! Of use!
Set that aside for later investigation and continued to rummage.
Underneath the spare wheel I found an air filter, some gasket goo and a bunch of bits and pieces.
Threw all that in the garage to sort through later, organised a hire trailer, went and bought some ratchet straps, went to bed early.
7am Saturday morning, we're at the servo to pick up the hire trailer. Bring it back home, drive the spares car up on to the trailer and....
The ratchet strap hooks are too damn small! They won't loop over and of the possible tie points on the trailer, and they don't have the loops so you can hook them on to themselves.
curse word!
Well, auto shops don't open for another hour... so off to Bunnings!
Turns out, I could get 4x heavy duty straps with bigger hooks and the metal loops of requirement for cheaper than I got my not so heavy duty straps from Supercheap.
So those were scheduled for return. I even was nice and repackaged it all, despite my frustration.
Anyway, an hour behind schedule, we set off, a strap on each wheel and one wrapped around the bent bonnet.
Pulled over to check the straps before we got on the highway, and then smooth sailing.
Nothing like a Turbo Barra to tow a car over a mountain range. People looked at us a bit funny as we overtook them. ;D
Not the most aerodynamic load.
Anyway, made it up, drove the car off the trailer, almost forgot to remove Seedy's battery, and back home we went!
Made it back with the trailer with an hour to spare!
So that's the spares car out of the way for a while.
In the last few weeks, I've noticed a bit more of a whine from I'm guessing the diff, at about 70. More so when it comes off load?
Not sure if it's something more severe, but I haven't changed the oil since I got the car, and that was 20,000 ago!
Who knows when it was done before that!
So today I decided to get that done and see if it fixed my problem.
So firstly, I took the skin off my finger by dragging it across the fuel tank while cracking the drain plug.
![]()
Threw the oil pan under it and watched oil come out that looked pretty thin...
Also found a.. filing..? of steel on the plug. It looked like a shaving from machine work..But only one. So.. we'll see how that goes.
I couldn't crack the filler plug, as there was only about 15cm of leverage room while on my back on the garage floor.
And I had no handy large poles to add to my breaker bar.
And then I remembered something I had read on here recent;y, so employed my trolley jack gently to the end of the breaker bar.
Success!
Without trashing the threads!
Then I had to work out how to get 1.2ish L of oil back in to it without a long hose and not enough space to get a bottle upside down in the diff..cavity in the floor pan.
Ended up squeezing half of one bottle in, and then half the other bottle, and then adding the remaining halves together and squeezing that in until it poured out the hole.
So hopefully that's enough! Looks like it was about 1.3L.
While I was oily, I dropped the engine oil as that was overdue as well, and topped up brake, steering and coolant fluids.
The auto is apparently due for a service, too.
So I will have to do some research in to what that entails for me to drop the oil and refill it.
I don't even know if I'm meant to check the level while its cold, hot or running!
Anyway, all that out of the way, I tripped over the bag of goodies from the spares car, so I figured I'd see what I'd won.
So, what had I scored?
One air filter - good
Some bulbs of various use and newness
One gasket grey goop - good
One metal epoxy - good
2x hose bendy Unicoil things. Haven't seen these before, and wish I had, as one would work a treat for my cooler lines where they sort of rub on my radiator. Will probably disconnect the hose and fit one of these at some point.
One set points - good
One set points - bad
One condenser - good
One condenser - unknown, assumed bad
One dizzy cap - good
One set of NGK leads - pretty dirty, but look to be new still. Might be better than my Bosch spare set.
Two Iridium plugs - good. Won't use these, though. No point.
One condenser in plugs box - bad
One set of points in plugs box - bad
Miscellaneous wires and some emery paper
A whole box of random sized clamps! Wish I'd found this earlier, too!
Two oil fitlers - good
Four fuel filters - good
One thermostat in fuel filter box - used
One wheel bearing kit - no idea what end of the car it's for at this point, but will come in handy when I do the bearings on Seedy in the near future.
One mostly empty bottle of trans/steering conditioner
One box of wheel studs and nuts
And lastly, a carb kit!
So.. quite the haul!
Just the fact that I have a carb kit, which I need for the rebuild of the spare head I have, is awesome! Because I'm cheap!
So far this rebuild consists of $80 worth of head, exhaust, intake and carb, $20 worth of VRS kit (will need to buy the other style rocker cover gasket I think), and free carb kit!
Anyway, that's where things are at, at the moment. I've been putting off getting the carb kit as it's not particularly cheap, and I'm trying to keep money aside for Japan in November, so this gives me another piece of the puzzle I can work on.
I have also received all of my brake bits that I ordered from Rockauto, so when Jono and I both have some spare time I will take Seedy down the shed and we will swap out all the brake hardware and flush the system.
They have just moved out of the shed they were in, in to another one, so there is no longer a hoist available, though.
#hardlife
Cheers,
Matt
Going to have to divorce the missus - can't keep up this rate of financial outlay!
