Xbolx tat blog, Jan 2016 'FLEET UPDATE'

Thanks for the updates Mr B!

Love your work!

Indeed is it definite good to see you back, have been missing the updates.

When you do the head gaskets on the rovers, do you remove the ball bearing from the inlet manifold stub? It's the single biggest 'trade secret' K series lifesaver I've found yet. All the ball bearing does is trap air in the cylinder head while the engine is running, removing it causes it to run a teensy bit cooler but allows a constant circulation of the head preventing airlock. They are also pretty much self bleeding cooling systems with it removed as well! Thought I'd share it with you seeing as you've ended up with a few K-powered-krappers recently.

Keep up the good work man!

Good choice with the GT. I ran one for a year (though I paid a whopping £681 (plus a trip to york) for mine. It is probably the best car I have owned.

Lets give you a bit on the Argenta then

So last time owt happened with this, it was spring LAST YEAR when I offered it up for long-term loan on the brown forum. A lad stepped up to the plate with the right kind of outlook and off it went to live in Coventry:



To my surprise I didnt get a single phone call saying X had fallen off or Y had stopped working. Our man used it every day with no problems whatsoever. The only thing that needed tweaking was the middle box of the exhaust started to blow. I found a new one for sale on eBay for £20, which I bought and had delivered to the 'renter', he got it fitted and it was all good. Even made an appearance in Classic Car Weekly once!

Came back to base in about october last year all running great and with a few bottles of Peroni on the passenger seat - Result!!



I had no use for it so it just sat outside all winter (not great) then this spring I decided to get the MOT sorted and give it the once over.

To my surprise it passed the MOT first time with no repairs needed!!! But I knew there were a few jobs needed doing.

1) new timing belt & oil leak problems. I had replaced the timing belt when i first got this car, but not the tensioner. Thought I'd better do it properly this time. Got a belt off ebay for a tenner and a new tensioner off Amazon for £25 or so.



I could not get the crank pulley nut undone. fannied on for ages but I could not do it! Eventually I realised that you could get the belt off without removing the pulley, which reminded me that thats what i did last time. Good memory skills

There was also an oil leak from the RH cam box. to fix that I bought a head gasket set off ebay for £15.





Quite a lot of dismantling to get that lot to bits. cleaned everything up and fited the new gaskets which was fairly straightforward.



Shiny new bits!!

The other problem was a load of racket from the exhaust. I'd fixed this once before by welding the downpipe, but it had obviously fractured again where the pipe is welded into the flange of the front pipe. Took it off:



Welded it up properly and refitted everything.

With that lot done it fired up and ran an absolute treat, sounded as well as it has ever done in my custodianship. Needed doing as the tensioner was very grumbly. Great!!!

Next issue was those grey trims again, they had gone back to white despite my previous efforts. I tracked down a tube of this supposed 'dogs bo11ox' Wuerth bumper dye through a friend who lives in germany.



Took a while but eventually i found that a combination of sanding the trims with wet 240 grit W&D (which removed a white chalky layer off the top pf the plastic) then a treatment with this stuff worked as well as anything else i'd tried. I think really it would need several applications of this stuff to get the colour back into them, they're really bad.







With that lot done it was running really well and looking smart, althoguh it has (unsurprisingly) visbly deteriorated since i got it back from France a few years back.

Since then its sat about a lot and I have done nowt with it, so the other day I gave it a wash and once-over:







And slightly reluctantly put it up for sale!!!! I really could do with rehoming it as it should not sit outside for another winter.

www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C538195

I'm not gasping to sell it, but hopefully a sympathetic new custodian can be found.

Ask and thee shall receive....

I think we've witnessed a minor miracle here. A 30yr old Fiat that didnt dissolve in a single winter! I'm guessing the God of waxoyl has smiled on you?!

In one way its a great daily. Its actually pretty fast, fun to drive with an excellent driving position and good visibility. Fuel consumption is not crippling - upper 20's, might get 30 on a long journey. And it eventually became mega reliable after a lot of faffing with the fuel system, I drove it 80 miles/day to work without any trouble. But its just so fragile on the body and trim, you just know that any parts which get knackered, switchgear, lights, trim etc will be right carry-on to replace and might put it off the road for a while while you scour Pastabay etc for replacements. But if you are in the right frame of mind thats not necessarily a problem.

It was the top of the range Fiat, but I think even fiat at the time was well aware of what a half-arsed 'refresh' it was of an old design!!! don't think they were terribly proud of it.

Excuse my ignorance mr boll, but what is the brown forum? cheers steve.

my garage marra had a Puma, but he's weighed it in now!!! Mainly due to it being rusty and $hite.