Car DIY Thread.
- Thread starter Suffolk Tony
- Start date
If you were like teen me, a complete novice, the Haynes manual was an exercise in complete head***ery!
Like you wondered if the section on replacing drum brake pads was about a different car.
Or that all manuals had the same text with a different cover picture and the sketches randomly inserted.
YMMV!
To be fair drum brakes can be hard work. It's often awkward to get the shoes snapped into place against the springs. Far harder than discs. That's before you start wrestling with seized adjustors and all the rest.
cobbers
pfm Member
15 years with a Jensen Healey working out where all the bits came from (including the Avenger (door handles)) - 2 years with an Imp Sport much of the time trying to work out where the coolant was going not realising it was blowing forwards against the flow of air from the water pump - 4 years with an MGB with a permanently seized fuel pump because it was in the offside rear wheel arch picking up all the road muck.
Every weekend doing something to keep them running- oh joy.
I think the last maintenance i did was a wheel bearing on a Metro GTI 16V (it was good fun to drive)
Every weekend doing something to keep them running
- oh joy.I think the last maintenance i did was a wheel bearing on a Metro GTI 16V
(it was good fun to drive)
JensenHealey
pfm Member
I know. I think it was it 3 head gaskets and a short head in about 14 months for me!
Mind you, the exhaust manifold gasket on my Spitfire 1500 was even worse, until the chap on the counter at Unipart recognised me on about my 3rd visit in a month and sold me a tube of Holts Fire Gum. That fixed it. I remember the one of three bolts was a complete pain to get at - and I had bought a universal joint for the socket set to make it feasible, even better than a 10mm. No metric sockets on a Spitfire that I can remember.
Seeker_UK
Feelin' nearly faded as my jeans
Good God! No! Imperial for that. 3/8".
No, all UNF. The only saving grace of the Spit is that you only need 3 spanners, 7/16, 1/2 and 9/16.
Graham B
pfm Member
I did lots of roadside diy on my Strada Abarth in the early 90’s - I got pulled over by a comedic copper who asked if I had a licence for my mobile disco - turned out that braking and indicating caused all the rear lights to flash. Cue a happy afternoon with some sandpaper for the pcb tracks and new spade terminals in the light clusters. Unfortunately the lenses were held in place with plastic headed screws that matched the colours of the brake and indicator lights, which went hopelessly brittle about 10 seconds after they were fitted, causing yet another cycle ride to the main dealer. The same main dealers also wanted £175 for a pair of front discs, but luckily tarox were better and cheaper. It paid off in other ways though - with the twin Weber 40’s, k&n filter, fast road cams and a janspeed exhaust it was an absolute hoot to drive on a good day, and could whip any golf, Renault 5 turbo or Peugeot 205 gti in the traffic light gp.
Mullardman
Moderately extreme...
Aaahh the joys!! I started with pushbikes. Next up a Royal Enfield Crusader Sport.. finally cars.. or more accurately 'sheds'. Head gaskets and water pumps and brake shoes on HB Vivas. Brake pipes, pads etc on Simcas. Cylinder head rebuilds on several... sometimes on the kitchen table. Random bodywork.. rubbing.. patching and using all sorts of bollox products only to see the rust back 20 minutes later...
Subframes on Fiat Unos. Almost everything.. full engine.. fuel tank..all brakes.. instruments..wheel bearings.. clutch.. etc., etc on a Polo.
Power steering, Cam Belts etc... on a couple of Puntos. And that's only the half of it. Let's not forget wipers, headlights, door handles, window mechs (manual and elec)..and any other damned thing that can and will go wrong.
I may get around to changing the oil on my Civic in the spring. I skipped it this year as mileage barely exceeded 2000. Impossible to see the filter from above or below and all done by 'feel' but otherwise not difficult. Fifty quid for the oil and filter is quite enough.. without paying some bloke to do it and wondering what oil he actually used and whether he really changed the filter...
Subframes on Fiat Unos. Almost everything.. full engine.. fuel tank..all brakes.. instruments..wheel bearings.. clutch.. etc., etc on a Polo.
Power steering, Cam Belts etc... on a couple of Puntos. And that's only the half of it. Let's not forget wipers, headlights, door handles, window mechs (manual and elec)..and any other damned thing that can and will go wrong.
I may get around to changing the oil on my Civic in the spring. I skipped it this year as mileage barely exceeded 2000. Impossible to see the filter from above or below and all done by 'feel' but otherwise not difficult. Fifty quid for the oil and filter is quite enough.. without paying some bloke to do it and wondering what oil he actually used and whether he really changed the filter...
wow&flutter
pfm Member
A mate is still running an Uno, the Scottish weather is taking it’s toll but he does have almost every part in his spares lock up!
cubastreet
Espresso Fiend
If you've ever wondered whether that trick of putting an egg in your radiator to fix a hole works, I drove my '71 transit from Manchester to Glastonbury and back like that. I just left the radiator cap off so it didn't build up any pressure.
The only problem I had was on the way back when the right rear tire detreaded at 3AM.
The only problem I had was on the way back when the right rear tire detreaded at 3AM.
Suffolk Tony
Aim low, achieve your goals, avoid disappointment.
Banana skins in your gearbox were supposed to quieten worn gears, well, at least until you could flog the car to some other sucker. Never worked for me. I did try using STP in the gearbox of my 1955 MGA, there was a dipstick & you pulled this out to give a small filling hole. Outside in the road, I tipped the can up, and the sticky gloop gradually flowed out into the hole, but I didn't realise it had missed the dipstick hole, run down the outside of the gearbox, and deposited itself on the road. I remember trying to scoop it up in my hands and was about to smear it into the gearbox when fortunately I realised it'd picked up grit and muck from the road.
Then there was the occasion, one Christmas Eve, when a couple of us from the caving club were servicing our 12-seater Land Rover Safari. I felt increasingly ill as the flu I'd caught took hold, and in the freezing cold spent what seemed an eternity lying on the ground trying to get the thread on the oil filter housing to start. (We had the radio on, and it was playing The Onion Song. I've hated that song ever since). Eventually, I managed to do the blessed thing up, only to see the new oil p*ssing out when we started the engine - the sealing ring wasn't seated properly. Talk about despair...
Oh, how I miss those days!
Then there was the occasion, one Christmas Eve, when a couple of us from the caving club were servicing our 12-seater Land Rover Safari. I felt increasingly ill as the flu I'd caught took hold, and in the freezing cold spent what seemed an eternity lying on the ground trying to get the thread on the oil filter housing to start. (We had the radio on, and it was playing The Onion Song. I've hated that song ever since). Eventually, I managed to do the blessed thing up, only to see the new oil p*ssing out when we started the engine - the sealing ring wasn't seated properly. Talk about despair...
Oh, how I miss those days!
I sympathise. I still do a bit but oil and filter less so. National Tyres do a deal, vouchers online etc, far better than a wakeup price, you can wander around (yeah I know, against safety policy but they don't want to have to tell me) and see they take the oil from the right 200K drum and actually change the filter. Especially if you mark it before you take it in. This is cheaper than buying the bits at retail.
martin clark
pinko bodger
+1 for that - I've used National for Oil& filter changes for years; the local one (and staff) is excellent in terms of service, the supplied oil/filters is reputable stuff (Castrol, last time for me), and as Steve says - the whole lot is cheaper than buying the same yourself, saves a grubby hour grubbing- around jacking the car up etc & you know the oil will be recycled properly/no mess to dispose of afterwards.
TalYWaun
pfm Member
You have obviously never known the fun of changing the pads on in-board discs where access is through letter boxes under the rear seat (Alfa Romeo Alfetta). This thread brings back memories of changing the head gasket of my Alfa’s head gasket on New Years Day, on the side of the road, with a hangover, in the snow and it just had to be working by daytime on the 2nd.
My favorite hack was to my old Ford Maverick. The Airbag Warning light came on and stayed on (an MOT fail). At the time I was testing a very small subsystem of ridiculously expensive architectural lighting equipment. E.g. what happens when you put 1000A, two phase mains, though one of its 3A relays? Is there a fire risk? Do the interfaces keep working? The test units had a test mode where a relay switched every second and one that switched about 5 seconds after reset, and I had a bin full of tested ones. In my car I knew there was a delay between the ignition on and the airbag light going out so I guessed an MOT inspector would know too (no shorting it to one of the other lamps). So a badly burned PCB worth more than the car (and a bit of wire located under the center console) got the job of interrupting a hacked supply to the dash board airbag light a few seconds after power on. Saw me through 3 MOT’s until rust finally finished the car which brings me back to the Alfa…
I rather like that!
Not had the joy of an Alfetta with inboard discs, but I'll see you that and raise you a Citroen 2CV's inboard front drums, where the 2 shoes are independently adjusted via 2 snail cams and a 14mm spanner on the backplate. If you adjust them wrongly, ie if the front and rear shoes are not equally adjusted, you get ineffective or grabby brakes and handbrake. You need a special tool to set them up, or you develop a frig where you set one to "just rubbing" and back it off by *precisely* 1/8 turn. Then you set the other one to "just rubbing" before reinstating the first. After a good number of goes, you get it close enough that a 2CV doesn't head for the kerb under hard braking, which is good enough for a car that takes all day to get to 60mph.
MJS
Technical Tinkerer
Family holidays to South Devon from the not-very-far reaches of South Wiltshire used to involve a blown exhaust by the time we got back on the A30 at Exeter. It ended up being a running joke and would often involve my dad looking for somewhere selling Jubilee clips so he could wrap a baked bean can round the offending hole. I remember as a kid always watching my dad fix the latest problem with whatever car was on the drive. For some reason I keep thinking of starter motors and anything made by Ford in the '70s.
When I became a motorist in the late 80's I used to pride myself on wanting to attempt any job with the cars I had. A day off work in the middle of winter in 1996 while I tried to pull a Mk2 Golf dashboard apart to change a heater matrix soon stopped that. It took all day and shredded my hands to pieces. I decided from then on that it wasn't worth my time and that people do this for a living.
There's a part of me that fancies having an old LR Defender that could be patched by the likes of HRH by the roadside, but then I realise how far we've come and creature comforts in modern cars are so much nicer. I haven't had a breakdown in years. The last issue was an open-circuit battery that needed jump starting so I could get to Halfords before they shut.
When I became a motorist in the late 80's I used to pride myself on wanting to attempt any job with the cars I had. A day off work in the middle of winter in 1996 while I tried to pull a Mk2 Golf dashboard apart to change a heater matrix soon stopped that. It took all day and shredded my hands to pieces. I decided from then on that it wasn't worth my time and that people do this for a living.
There's a part of me that fancies having an old LR Defender that could be patched by the likes of HRH by the roadside, but then I realise how far we've come and creature comforts in modern cars are so much nicer. I haven't had a breakdown in years. The last issue was an open-circuit battery that needed jump starting so I could get to Halfords before they shut.
Lucky you. I have recently stepped up the food chain a little to avoid this. My recentish breakdown history goes:
2014 - Saab 9-5, blown coil pack, recovered and then replaced by me in 10 minutes for (cough) £200.
Replaced with a Mondeo, just afterwards, flawless service for 4 years/60k miles. Getting ratty after 150k miles, traded in 2018 against a Jag X type diesel, ran well for a year then at ~120k miles the diff bearings went bang and it came home on a truck. Undeterred I bought a Jag S type diesel with 190k miles, in a year that needed 2 brake calipers and a belt tensioner. No breakdowns as such but the tensioner had it out for 3 days waiting for parts and one caliper had seized enough to be smoking, so I cancelled the journey. I've recently junked that and bought an Audi A5 coupe, 160k miles, which is running flawlessly. It did hand in a heater fan motor and control board at (ouch) £300 fitted, but the mechanicals are all perfect. So I've had 2 transporter experiences in 6 years.
That Subaru video is horribly reminiscent of a friend's Triumph GT6, he and I spent a day trying to get a similarly long bolt out from the diff. That too goes through bushings and seizes, it was a horrible job even with 2 of us taking turns. I can't understand the guy's approach though, in light of your comments re using oxy acet, why the guy running a commercial garage is messing around for an hour trying to save 2 suspension bushes that have been on from new and are mostly knackered anyway. I'd just tell the customer "If it's all corroded in place, like this one appears to be, I'll probably need to burn out the bushes, it will cost X. If I'm lucky, happy days, you won't need them. OK?" Surely to God an hour's labour isn't worth a couple of bushes. In the UK plenty of mechanics reach for the gas axe before the spanners.
Snufkin
pfm Member
I have done that job and it’s not nice. I had an almost worthless mk2 Golf which decided to start leaking from its heater matrix. I popped down to our local reliable back street garage and the chap looked it up and said it would be about five hours work plus parts. I went away to have a think about it, found out how much the heater matrix cost, about £30 from memory and then decided to have a go myself. I did it in two three and half hour stints after work and it was a hideous job which involved lying on your back in the passenger foot well with your hands disappearing up behind the dashboard which was partly hanging off the car. I was so proud of myself that I managed that job in seven hours whilst the garages manual suggested five. The only other options I could see was to bypass the heater (not nice in the UK) or throw the car away – it was a 1600 three speed auto so wasn’t worth much. Anyway, that got us another six months out of that car.
That job is still up there with me setting up the Desmo heads on my Ducati, swapping VW Beetle engines between cars single headedly with the aid of a trolley jack/bottom of a supermarket trolley and using old logs to support the back end of my Reliant van whilst I swapped the rear axle for another one having never worked on a car in my life.