Rough 1-2 and a very early 4th lockup means i'll probably have to drop the valvebody and clean the shit out of it..

Like i did on my D2...

Grrr....

Apart from that she runs alright...

Found some coolant leaks!

This piece leaks when hot!!

Oh and a nice coating of OAT on the sump!!

Grrr!!

Oh and the outside temp has gone from "toasty" to freezing!!!

I was out in a T shirt yesterday!!

Now in a full coat!!

Hate weather.

Snow Foamed it. I started off jetwashing an outdoor table so we could bring it indoors and got a bit sidetracked into doing all three cars. It started dropping hail half way through.
This must be what Sunday is like for people who aren't on call 24/7. Bliss!

Started a major service on the car. It didn't go well.
Parked the car on the front grass. Put it on high and left the engine running to warm up.
Crawled underneath with a B&Q bucket and undid the sump plug. Got hot oil all down my arm and all over the grass, or what's left of my front lawn. Then lost the sump plug in the grass somewhere. Had to unscrew another from an old sump I have. While I was underneath, I noticed a slight leak from the rear crankshft oil seal.
Tried to fit a new oil filter but it wouldn't seat right down into the filter housing. The way it was manufactured, a slight excess of filter fabric was restricting the central tube. I had to trim it with a Stanley knife.
Came to change the fuel filter. Forgot to fill it with diesel before fitting it. It then took an age for the fuel to get pumped through. Cranked the car for several minutes and eventually it coughed and spluttered into life. Noticed the engine mounts look shot. Added them to the list.
Found I had no pollen filters. Went online and placed an order with Island4x4 including a few other bits. Online order didn't seem to go through. No confirmatory email. Nobody answering the phones.
Brake fluid change next.

Wow Dave! I didn't know so many things could go wrong at the same time. Hopefully the rest of your job goes better.

It is common for the input shaft seal on the ZF box to wear, your leak could be ATF..

Fuelled it.

My delivery from Island4x4 arrived today. Can't praise the guys enough.
Shop and garage are shut down but one guy still sending out orders.
Says he does not confirm the order unless he takes a walk into the warehouse to see if they physically have the bits first.
Changed pollen filters, now that I have them. New batteries in my key fob. Nothing went wrong.
Brake fluid change tomorrow if it does't rain.

I've been busy too, well let's face it, there's nothing else I can do. I officially retired on Tuesday and the original plan was that this week would be spent getting ready for a trip to France but that's not going to happen for a while now, so I needed something else to do. The Ascot has been sitting next to a hedge so the nearside had started to turn a bit green and the rest of it was pretty dirty too so it was looking a bit sorry for itself. Fired it up to move it to make it easier to get around and instead of firing up on petrol and immediately switching to gas, it fired up on petrol then immediately died. Knowing it had at least half a tank of LPG put that on the to do list and ran it on petrol instead. Let it idle for a while and the idle started to get a bit lumpy and it smelled really rich. Next one for the to do list.

Out with the pressure washer and stepladder so I could even do the roof. Wet it, squirt it with some foamy stuff I bought when I first got the pressure washer, then went over it with the rotating brush before blasting everything off. Damn me, It isn't green it's silver! Remove the well worn Champion spark plugs and treat it to a set of NGKs and fire it up. Still smells rich. Plug the Nano in and find a reported airflow from the MAF of 0.0 kg/hr. That might have something to do with it. Dig a secondhand spare MAF out from the garage and try that, just the same. Try them both on my car and they are both dead. So have a poke about on the LPG system, find a broken earth wire, fix that, fire it up, switch to LPG and it carries on running. Result, no need for a MAF in that case, that can wait until later.

So that was yesterday, it's running fine and looks almost respectable so what next? It's always had a bit of an oily underside so maybe I could find the oil leak? It's mostly around the front of the engine so I'm thinking front crank seal, oil cooler hose, sump, oil pressure relief valve O ring or similar. Blasted the oil off so it was clean, fired it up and ran it for the best part of half an hour and it was still clean. I did remember nipping up the oil cooler hose union once before so maybe I've already fixed it without realising?

One thing that has annoyed me since I got it was the offside rear door trim not fitting right. The pegs along the top weren't doing anything so it had a gap of almost an inch between the top of the trim and the window. Off with the trim, refit it properly and that's that job done. Notice that the back seat had developed a bit of mildew on it over the winter. Find my bottle of leather cleaner and in doing so knock over a bottle of Autoglym bumper and trim gel knocking the corner off the bottle. Put that to one side and attack the rear seat with leather cleaner. That makes the fronts look grubby so do them too. Then decide to see if this bumper gel really works and have a go at the black trim along the top of the doors and round the windows. Blimey, they're black again rather than a sort of greyish colour. It's actually starting to look quite tidy!

If my MoT station is still working I'll get it in there (as the ticket on it ran out last September) for test and then I'll have a spare I can use legally in case I get a sudden urge to start finding things to do on my everyday one. I've only had two days but I'm starting to like this retirement lark.....

Sounds like you had some fun!!

Retirement sounds nice, only 40'ish years left for me!!!

LOL

Assembled a "just in case" supplies box in the boot..
Box matches the colour of the car too!

Dremel in there too!! fits like a glove..

While mucking around in the boot, found the RRC habits die hard.

Not today but over the last couple of days I continued on the Ascot. Replaced the core plugs as two were leaking (the two that were easiest to get to, the ones that are a right pain were fine - doh!) so it now keeps all the coolant where it's supposed to be. Then decided that if I was going to keep it as a standby, it should really be legal. Phoned my usual MoT tester to find they were shut so tried my second choice. He was open and yes, could do it. Took it down there via the local LPG filling station as I had no idea how much gas it had left in it. He was impressed and it passed with only a couple of advisories. The boot on one of the lower ball joints was split and from the way it drives I suspect both upper and lower ball joints need changing anyway, and about the only metal brake pipe on the whole car that hasn't been changed for copper nickel is a bit rusty. That's it. We did find a few amusing relics from the bodgers who looked after it for the previous owner. I'd already noticed that a couple of brake pipes coming off the ABS modulator had been replaced but the original steel ones still left in place just disconnected. The same was found underneath where the old ones are still there, just chopped off and not doing anything.

Today I got really desperate and used some vinyl cleaner on the dash and plastic interior bits on mine. This cleaning lark will never catch on......

After 2 years my sun shade got re-covered in cream faux leather, a vast improvement on the sticky black piece of Abs there previously. I'll post a daylight photo tomorrow

Strangerover - where did you get that box! I'd love one :)
The Bassets investigate anything that lives in the boot for taste and mouth feel....

SR, other than a dremel (?) what do you have in the kit? I have: tow rope. Jump leads, coolant, engine oil, serp belt, funnel and nano in the glove box. Although I don't always have it in the RR my maplins charge pack gets alot of use recovering vehicles with dodgy batteries and integrated pump - less useful for diesels tho

Today, I have mostly ignored it.
But I have gone nuts on my wife's Golf with wash, clay bar, polish and wax.
I'm not quite sure why I bothered because it's only a Mk4 Golf with 180k on the clock but it does look a lot better.
My neighbour took pity and let me his machine polisher which has made me contemplate treating The Duchess to the same regime. I'm not sure it'll be this week, P38s have a LOT of paint!

Morat wrote:

Strangerover - where did you get that box! I'd love one :)
The Bassets investigate anything that lives in the boot for taste and mouth feel....

Umm..

From memory there is...

Tyre pump
3/8 socket set
pliers
spare coolant pipe
Dremel
1/4 socket set
various screwdrivers
RTV silicone
Tow rope
Jump leads.
Tyre slime
tyre plug kit..

And some hose clamps!! ;)

I have a bottle of coolant just behind too!!

Henry..

Changed the oil again today!!

The "old" stuff was 15w40 Mobil 1000 with a Wynns lifter treatment..

Before the Mobil 1000 was Mobil 3000 5w40 which was also a flush..

And before that was 10w40 Shell helix HX7..

I decided on a 10w60 fully syn this time around..

The old stuff was pretty clean..

And fill 'er up!!

that should last around 5k !!

H

I'm curious about the reason for carrying a Dremel. (It's possible that in the UK it means something different than it does here, to me it's a tiny grinding tool and I can't imagine a use for it on the trail.)

Replaced all four shock absorbers with shiny new Monroes after the MoT man failed one for leaking and gave an advisory for two for leaking. Not convinced the four I took off were duff but new ones fitted now.

Tomorrow I get to replace a flexible brake hose, attempt to loosen the radius arm bolts as they need new bushes (but I had a bit missing from the parts order) and possibly dismantle the front of the vehicle to get to the leaking front crank seal.