Jag! The Ghostly fleet thread

[Junkman]

Most people don't notice how borked their manual boxes are because they wouldn't even notice if they were hit on the head with a hammer. Yes, borked manual boxes tend to be less detrimental to forward propulsion than borked auto boxes, but they are borked nonetheless.

[ghosty]

Front wheel bearings repacked. No change; suspect rear bearings, to investigate soon. Everything else on it is perfect.

The Civic is gone.

Replacing the droplink on the Volvo eliminated the knocking noise for 150 miles before it came back. Fucked ARB? further investigation required as the droplink almost recentred the steering wheel, however tracking is off and a tyre is starting to shoulder.
I'm suspicious the rear springs have collapsed - the rear suspension is not a coilover design. The struts have been replaced, likely due to them having collapsed, but not the springs. £30 a spring isn't too bad, and they'll be easy to change. I've also ordered a polybushed gearbox mount (big clunk when coming off the power) and a top engine mount as it's perished. And to top it off, a wastegate diaphragm (leaking), new HT leads and plugs. With all this done the Volvo should be in tip top condition for quite some time to come.

[ghosty]

Engine mounts changed - power delivery is a bit smoother now.

[ghosty]

The Volvo is fully sorted for the time being, with the new rear springs the car's handling is transformed, it's a lot smoother. It's also idling and sounding more like it should with new ignition components. Old Man tried to tell me there was nothing wrong with a cap and rotor with a millimetre of material worn away on all the contacts, of course he was wrong. New plugs and leads too.
Now it just needs a bit of welding to one sill, and the driver's seat seems to need new foam in the base.

Something actually needs doing to the Mazda now, which has been behaving flawlessly since I got it with the exception of the knocking noise.



One of the headlight motors has FTPd, and isn't making any noise whatsoever. Having asked around I suspect there's a dead relay somewhere as the linkages seem to be intact.
Thankfully the lights can be manually raised and lowered individually, and it hasn't seized or anything so the problem light is now permanently up until I can fix it. The other light still raises and lowers as it should, and the car has a switch to raise the lights without turning them on, so I've just left the switch on so both are up. An amusing side effect of this is that I can make the car 'wink' at people...

[Hooli]

They built that in to replicate the Lotus Elan running out of vacuum (which lifted the lights) to give the proper British sports car experience.

[SiC]

Those headlight motors are usually pretty durable and don't often fail. If it is the motor, most second hand units are likely to be good.

[ghosty]

Been to U-Pull-It as they had some mk2 MX-5s in. For £12 I got, amongst other things, untarnished side repeaters, a new scuttle panel and an undamaged auto shift gate (the gear position label on mine has disintegrated) - the mk1 and mk2 use a lot of the same parts (they're the same chassis with mostly new panels, and an interior that only differs visually), but with the advent of the mk2 autos were available in the UK. Aside from font choices they're the same functionally, and easy to fit. So that'll look a bit nicer and not leak light. Scuttle panels again are identical and a piece of piss to change, mine is held together with household sellotape and the screw caps are the wrong colour, so another improvement there.
Rest of the trip was sundries such as Volvo header caps, I found four uncracked examples, and all I could salvage from the few ph2 V70s, not much alas as they're totally different cars. No 850s or ph1 V70s to raid this time though, sadly. No chod to speak of there either, aside from a 190D. Slim pickings, it's usually better.

[ghosty]

This was fucking daft though. Same both sides, switches ostensibly bypassed, can anyone ID the handle?

[ghosty]

Oh, and also:

The girl left me.
The job never got back to me.

I suppose life is still a mess, but it is back to business as usual.

[Junkman]

I'd leave you too if you had cars like these.