Today I mostly .....

[GvidoR]

Changed the pollen filter which was hiding behind the glove box and a metal piece wouldn't allow me to pop it out without unbolting it first.

[Zelandeth]

Investigated an intermittent unpleasantly heavy sounding clunking coming from the back of the Saab over the last few days. Favourite originally as it seemed to be coming from the driver's side was a duff shock absorber bush (as I remembered them looking pretty crusty last time I was under there) thanks to the state of the roads and the blasted speed bumps down here...

Actually turned out to be naught but a broken exhaust mounting rubber which had made it shift slightly to the right, touching the boot floor.

Five minute rummage through the box of rubbish in the boot produced a replacement. Problem solved.

...Nice when things actually turn out to be simple!

[GvidoR]

Got front down pipe exhaust replaced with a brand new one.

Got exhaust manifold welded, but it's still cracked, so will probably need a replacement.

Got one of the bonnet supports welded.

[Zelandeth]

Oil and filter change on the Saab, tidied the boot up and topped up the coolant. Think I'll do a coolant flush and change next week at some point as it's past due a change.

It is so, so much happier now the oil has been changed. Really didn't like the stuff that was in it before, despite being compatible according to the documentation.

Checked the tyre pressures etc and just general housekeeping.

Going to need new front tyres soon.

[Zelandeth]

Spent nearly an hour on the phone to Admiral getting my car insurance details updated.

Now paying nearly £1800 a year for the Saab, Skoda and 107.

Time to be looking around for some classics policies for the Skoda and Saab methinks...

[GvidoR]

Timing must be out on my car. Turning the ignition lead distributor all the way to one side made it run fairly reasonably, but not perfectly.

It's weird, I had a dream where I stopped at some petrol station and in the place where's usually just tyre pump and water. There was also a timing gun and some other things.

[Zelandeth]

Today I mostly...

Finally shifted the last of the things out of my old flat.

Rediscovered how much of a handful a rear engined Skoda can be on a windy day without any weight in the boot. Downright unnerving at times...

Re-encountered my oddball intermittent overheating problem. Couple of minutes after a long hill climb at speed, suddenly heater goes stone cold and temperature gauge starts to climb very rapidly. Engine off, coast to a halt at the side of the road in a bus stop. Naturally right in front of a bus.

Opening the engine cover revealed a full header tank boiling like crazy. No notable pressure in the system though, and the nearside hose (think that's the return from the rad from memory) wasn't notably hot.

Restarting the engine temperature dived back to normal, bit of pressure appeared in the system and allowed me to bleed a bit of air (but not a massive amount) out of the rad and heater core. Car then behaved perfectly for the next 100 or so miles.

Theories:

Sticking thermostat. Doesn't explain why the heater went cold though. Will replace it anyway as it's probably never been done and is 27 odd years old now, the coolant in there before I got the car was pretty disgusting as well.

Leaky header tank cap. Seems to line up with it being willing to boil before it's out of the green on the gauge, and that the fault seems to be so random (this is only the second time it's shown up). I've given the thing a right pasting a couple of times driving locally in an attempt to track down the fault without success. They're cheap though, so methinks I'll order a replacement anyway just in case. Wish I'd kept the header tank out of my 130 as the cap felt a lot more convincing fit on that one.

Failing water pump. This was suggested by a friend who remembers their father having a very similar fault with an Estelle, and it turned out to be the water pump. The system on these doesn't run at a very high pressure (around 15psi max I believe), and what can happen is apparently that air can be sucked in around the pump spindle if the seal is starting to fail. Occasionally enough to air lock the pump, at which point of cause all hell will break loose. I have a spare pump and given that it's a ten minute job to change, may just swap it over in the interests of eliminating the suspect. Also one less greasing point for me to need to remember as the one on my spare engine is a sealed unit.

Head gasket failure: Compression test and "sniff" test both showed negative for this one. Also no oil/water mixing in either location.

I've never had an intermittent cooling fault before! It's also tricky that the problem only seems to surface under very specific circumstances - circumstances that I can't replicate locally to my home!

[GvidoR]

Replaced exhaust manifold... here's a pic with the old one taken off

[Zelandeth]

Changed the water pump on the Skoda for the one off the engine from my old 130. Pump looks perfect inside and out and there's no play in the shaft - but given that the symptoms perfectly match what another owner has said, figure it's worth a shot - anyhow, changing the pump on the Estelle is a 20 minute job, so no real loss giving it a try!

Interesting to see that the impeller on the pump from the 130 (which is a replacement) is quite a lot lower a profile, but at the same time has a different blade pitch, so probably does have the same pumping capacity at the end of the day - I never had any problems with overheating on that engine though, and the former owner was one of the top folks in the owner's club and knew their stuff...so I trust it. So far it's behaved anyway on a relatively short local run.

Will change the oil and filter after dinner (Edit: Now done, without any incident to report) and take it for another run tomorrow and see if it keeps behaving. Sadly it will then have to be parked up for another month or so while we get the house sorted out down south before I can retrieve it.

...Assuming we manage to find the oil seal kit for the rear wheel bearing by then so that I can get that changed as we're having a devil of a time tracking it down. Bearing itself is findable, but the hub nut and oil seals are apparently causing problems.

[Zelandeth]

Today I mostly...

Got rained on. Got a huge bruise on my right ankle when the wind blew the Saab's door shut when I was in the middle of getting out, and finally had the sense to retreat inside and watch the Winter Olympics.

This evening I mostly...Unboxed and tested the newest addition to my workbench. A thoroughly ancient Advance Instruments DMM2 digital multimeter. Still seems to be within spec, and most importantly, has a Nixie based display. Which in this case is actually going to remain in its original place. Far too much kit these days is getting gutted for the displays for people to make clocks. Particularly annoying as the tubes themselves and the sockets are readily available still from surplus stores like Sphere Research over in Canada where I've got my last few stocks from.

Not bad as a freebie, all I had to do was give it a decent clean and manufacture a mains cable (which comes under the heading of "do as I say, not as I do" as in the wrong hands it could be thoroughly lethal) and tweak the cal pot slightly. Now agrees with my Fluke 87 near as makes no odds. This one replaces my old Solartron 7045 which died a few years back and hasn't been possible to be repair so far as the fault appears to be down to a failed custom IC which handles most of the logic.

Looking forward to getting settled in a house properly so I can actually arrange my bench as I want it!

[GvidoR]

Painted the rocker cover.

[Zelandeth]

That's the old Magma engine isn't it? Looks identical to the one in my old G plate Proton 1.5GL, albeit with injection added to the equation. Solid old power units if that's the case as I recall. Mine was well over the 100K mark when I had it and ran sweet as you could ask for, only thing I needed to do to it when I got it was an oil change and change a coolant hose that was disintegrating. Didn't hang around either in 1.5 litre form, for all it looked about as exciting as a pencil sharpener.

Never realised they'd lasted until the 2000s though!

[GvidoR]

It's a Mitsubishi 4G13 engine. It came in Mirage's (which are JDM Colt's) and Lancer's too. As far as I know they lasted until 2003 or there abouts. It performs allright but you can't expect too much from a 1.3L engine. Mine needs the timing adjusted, will try to get that done this week and should see a little increase in performance. When I bought the car, it had been parked in a shed for a long time. It only has about 70,400 miles on it right now.

Since I got it (on 15th January) it has gotten all new spark plugs, new oil & filter, new front down exhaust pipe, exhaust manifold from the breakers, 2 ignition leads from the breakers (but will get all new ones - looking out for blue ones) and also it got a new pollen filter. I got the air filter cleaned but I'm not sure what to do... get a cheap filter for about 7 pound? Get a K&N panel filter? Get a cone filter? Put an open pipe from the fog light hole in the bumper for some serious cold air intake?

[GvidoR]

Went down to my closest breakers, they're pretty much in the middle of nowhere. They did have one Colt there but it was a 1.6 model so the exhaust manifold cover I wanted to get wouldn't fit. They had one exactly like mine there when I got ignition leads from them but that's gone now. That really sucks because there was no visible rust on it. I can't even put my old cover back on because the metal around the screw holes had rusted so much that it was so thin and broke off so easily. I would need huge washers or something to put it back on.

[Neil Chowney]

Had to rescue a prefectly servicable doughnut from the waste bin where the wife had, for doubtless perfectly reasonsable 'womanly' reasons, lobbed it.

Now I don't usually have to scavenge for food in this manner but theres only so much a chap can take..........

t'was a raspberry one as well.......