Two entries in one today as I ran out of time and energy halfway through yesterday's one...
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Currently I have five cars on the drive. That's two too many.
Current status of them...
[] Jag: Intermittent charging fault. Reeks of fuel when the tank is more than 3/4 full. Sold anyway, waiting for the new owner to complete their house move so they've got space to take it on. I intend to stick a fresh MOT on before it's handed over (and obviously sort the alternator).
[] Van: Working...though being 2.6 metres tall means it's not the most practical daily driver as so many places around here have height barriers.
[] Merc S123: Currently half way to having the cylinder head removed.
[] BX: Hasn't been on the road in at least 11 years, we're making progress but still a ways from being a working car.
[] Invacar: Working, though the brakes need adjusting.
So yeah...two out of five. Not a great average.
Absolutely the last thing I need is another project...so why the heck was I looking at one yesterday? Honestly I think the answer is because I'm an idiot.
I went to look at it with heavily tempered expectations, though was really quite pleasantly surprised at what I found.
So what did I find?
Looking a little bit sorry for herself from being in storage for several years and sporting a few dents and dings which have occurred during that time, but here she is.
Here's the real surprise though given this is an unrestored 70s Vauxhall...
Incredibly little rust for one of these. I did find a couple of crunchy bits though, would have been downright miraculous if there weren't a couple. One is a hole just in front of the rear offside wheel. Which is probably the most difficult one to sort as it'll be an awkward pig to get to with welding spatter going in my ear.
Oddly the nearside...which is where I'm used to there being the most rust...seems perfectly solid here.
The crispy looking bit at frame left is the wheel arch lip rather than anything more sinister, poor framing on my part.
The other bit of note is on the nearside front chassis rail. A patch was done for the last MOT this car was back in 2010, however rust has got into the seam and blown it out.
This initially looked quite alarming and had me thinking it was going to be a sigh and walk away situation when the whole surrounding area went "scrunch" when I poked it...but it didn't. It all feels solid and does look to be a case of cutting out that old patch and letting in new metal. It's one of those hugely rare instances where welding is concerned that it's both easy to get to and doesn't require half the car to be dismantled. Wheel off and one plastic fuel line to be tucked out the way should be all that's needed.
While we're under the bonnet already, look at those inner wings and shock towers...
We only had about a pint of petrol in the tank today so only managed a few minutes of running before running out, but she fired straight up and ran incredibly smoothly, albeit a bit tappety. Though from what I remember these engines did tend to rattle a bit.
This was about ten seconds after she was started up, so still on the choke.
https://youtu.be/lQuMSIKQChc
This was originally an automatic but suffered a gearbox failure somewhere in the distant past - why the car spent its first stint in storage for a while. Back in 2007 it was rescued and converted to a 5-speed manual using a gearbox from a Manta. I know for a while the previous previous keeper had been chasing an odd running issue which seemed to point at a timing problem, however we don't know for certain whether this was resolved or not...we haven't been able to replicate it though so I think there's a bit of crossing fingers and hoping there.
There will be a bit of repair needed under the battery as the panel there is a bit thin and there are a couple of pin holes. Access is fine though and I'm classifying that about a 0.2 out of 10 on the worry scale.
Being a GL this has stainless steel sill covers fitted...which is always a bit of a potential can of worms.
However from what I can see this is pretty much the story most of the way around.
I gave them a decent thump along the full length both sides and the only bit I could detect any give in was the last couple of inches at the rear on the nearside where I'm absolutely sure there's a hole.
Bottom and inner sides of the sill are still there though, so not panicking too much. Wouldn't be the worst repair ever.
While the exterior has survived the last 43 years extraordinarily well it's nothing compared to the interior.
The 80s Manta gearknob and gaiter have to go and be replaced with something more period appropriate. The console (which is also Manta I think) will need to stay as there's a gap in the carpet due to the gearbox change having required modification of the tunnel as the Cavalier one would normally be further forward.
This may have something to do with why there's so little wear there.
Always a sucker for a dash with funky warning lights that aren't just square or round, even if my camera couldn't make heads or tails of the colour.
The door card for the nearside rear is present, it was removed a couple of weeks ago when folks were looking at whether the dent in that door could be pushed out by hand. Needs a bit more strength than that, but I reckon both of these could be sorted to an acceptable standard without too much drama.
I have always had a soft spot for these. An almost identical car was actually the first car I ever drove at about age 12, so there's a lot of nostalgia there. Memory is a funny old thing, first thing I noticed was that I remembered the smell of the interior. Never actually driven one on the road though!
It's a car I've always liked, for all the front end styling is divisive. Just never come across one for sale that was for sale that wasn't rotten, heavily performance modified, too expensive for me or any combination of the above. I wasn't looking for this...and in fact deliberately avoided looking at it too closely when I was last over there a few weeks ago because I knew I'd wind up asking "how much?" if I did. Then it popped up for sale...so here we are.
This is pretty much spot on for what I'd like...tidy enough that it could clean up well with a bit of elbow grease, not having comfort destroyed in favour of track lap times, and a pretty simple car to work on.
Something will have to go to make way for it though!
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Having finally picked up the brake pipe for the BX I really had no excuse not to get cracking on sorting it.
Somewhat to my surprise both ends unbolted from the unions with relatively little effort. Rounding those off was high on my worry list.
All of the lines look crustier than I would like...so I can see them all being changed before the car is pushed into use.
While the clamps holding the pipe were really fiddly to undo it wasn't really that difficult.
Putting the new one in was equally fiddly but without drama. All in was about two hours, though at least half an hour of that was fiddling around trying to figure out where half the tools were.
Oh.
Yeah...about my diagnosis of that pipe being at fault... totally wrong. It must be the main brake supply line to the rear axle. Really hard to tell as I can't see the actual location of the leak, but it's not suspension related as the leak only happens when the brake pedal is pressed.
That will be fun to change. I know the official way to do this involves dropping the subframe...which is a road I really would rather have avoided at this stage when I don't even know for certain how far from an MOT we are.
Bit frustrating to be honest having spent that amount of time on something which probably didn't need doing!