New Car.

Done the noisy rear near side wheel bearing. A short test drive now reveals the noise from the offside rear wheel bearing........

MrsP wants to go out on Sunday for the day, so it'll have to be done tomorrow afternoon.

Fortunately, the bits are pretty cheap - wheel bearing set is under £11.

Chris.

It's a little horror, but MrsP likes it. What can I do? I suspect that it hasn't really had much love in its life. I think (I hope!) that we're coming to an end of the work required to keep it going for a year or two.

To be fair, for a modernish car, it's all pretty simple (if a little lightweight when compared to a 'Crab), so, with a downloaded workshop manual I can manage. And I've learnt some stuff as well - first cambelt and tensioner change was really pretty straightforward; changing the valves allowed me to buy a new tool (ALWAYS good........ ) and learn how to use it. You're never to old to learn new stuff.

Chris.

It hates me. Definitely. MrsP set off for Reeth yesterday with a car full of teenagers. Got one mile and it looked like the (Brand New!) headgasket failed. Smoke, steam, water everywhere.

Pulled it all apart again today to find no obvious problem. It was a trifle odd in as much as the head locating dowels were in the head rather than the block. Pulling them out and tapping them into the block made locating the gasket rather easier. Head was rather reluctant to sit down fully and needed the help of the mallet to drop home. Torqued it all up, went for a ten mile blat and it seems to be fine. I can only assume that either the gasket didn't quite locate properly or the head didn't drop home fully, despite being fully torqued up.

I'll change the oil and filter tomorrow on the belt, braces and safety pins principle.

Chris.

Best part of a week has gone by and not much has happened....... Shhhh - it might be listening. I did fit a new flexi joint on the exhaust on Saturday and MrsP drove it to Burton on Trent and back on Sunday without incident.

Just for the record, when I did the oil change, it came out like water, not oil. Which is why there is now a large black stain outside my garage seeing as I managed to put the catch can in the wrong place and the stream overshot by miles.

Maybe, just maybe....

Chris.

If things carry on like this, I'm going to be quite good at ignition. It didn't start this morning for Julia, so she went off in Eugenie and left me to ponder the idiosyncrasies of Korean engineering. Fuel AND spark. Spark was pretty pathetic though - a dull orange. NGK plugs fitted; a bit of research suggested that the Bosch ones were a better bet. Gapped and fitted them and got a few coughs and splutters. Pulling off the dizzy cap revealed rusty marks, despite the cap, a dust seal, a rubber seal and a tin cover inside. Cleaned everything off, fitted a new rotor arm and away she went.

MrsP is happy once again.

Chris.

"Funny noise" reported at the front. Went for a spin. No funny noise, but rubbish brakes. Stripped o/s hub. Cover piece reduced to wafer thin piece of rusty metal, which touched the disc all too easily. Removed remains.... Thought I'd better change the pads seeing as I was in there. Single pot sliding caliper - one slider not sliding. Applied loads of heat and eventually freed it off. Stripped it properly, cleaned and lubricated both pins and re-assembled. Elapsed time - 2 hours.

You can't fit one pair of pads, so did the other side. Or tried to..... Both sliding pins seized and wouldn't free off. Having removed the caliper, time to remove the carrier. Just two bolts, one of which immediately sheared. Carrier wouldn't clear the disc, so that was the hub removed in order to get the disc out of the way. That's when I found the hub bearing dripping water. So, off to see my mate Ady for some serious oxy-acetylene action (and a cup of tea). Ady struggled, even with the extreme heat available.

So, finally, this afternoon after a wheelbearing kit and a set of pads, it was off again. The brakes are now extraordinarily effective.

At some point soon, I'm going to have to take the rear bumper off and weld the back panel up. Looks like the entire bottom seam into the spare wheel well has rotted out.

Maybe next week I can get on with the Austin. Rolling Eyes

P45.

There has been minimum progress on the Austin due to my trying to plough through a mountain of on-line assessments in order to complete the Restoration Course. Having hit a brick wall with 5 still left to do and the Matiz MoT coming up fairly soon, I decided that today college could wait and the welder was coming out.

11am - start trying to remove rear bumper. Every screw had a head made of cheese.... 12.30 - bumper off. Minor scene of carnage revealed. The bottom seam of the spare wheel well had rotted across it's length, but there was an outer box section attached to the vertical section, and that had rotted to. I suspect that this serves as a very basic crumple zone, as the centre of the bumper is screwed directly to it.

Angle grinder time!



Chop off the bottom half of the impact box.



Looking down. Oh dear.



Chop it all out.

Some time later...........



Nice big bit of angle welded across the wheel well, and more angle sections used to restore the impact box. There was a bit more to it, as sections of the back panel had to be repaired as well.



Looking dowan again.

Anyway: primer, seam sealer, Simoniz VTP, stone chip and a goodly dollop of underseal followed; as well as quick squirt of Cobalt Blue in the wheel well to tidy that up. Re-assembled it all with stainless steel screws, so next time I want the bumper off it'll be easy.

Nine hours of my life I won't see again, but I did rather enjoy it, really.

Chris.