Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[mickthemaverick]

I believe Zel said the Rover was to be replaced in an earlier post. My stab in the dark is a Triumph Vitesse

[NewcastleFalcon]

Round trip of 300 miles, up the M1 from MK takes you into Yorkshire and back I would have thought. This isn't it I'm sure as rust not really a problem being fibre glass, but up in York on Car and Classic there is a Clan Crusader for sale

https://www.carandclassic.com/l/C1622698

Another guess but probably in too good condition to fit Zel's description would be this SAAB 96 from Goole

https://www.carandclassic.com/car/C1616844

https://assets.carandclassic.com/upload ... 17863b3773

Neil

[Zelandeth]

Ohh, this is nail-biting stuff Zel Looking forward with great anticipation as to what's joining your fleet...

I have absolutely no clue what it might be...

So, which one is going?

Hopefully it's just a bit of fun as intended rather than annoying!

Rover will be moving on as it's very much the "main project car" slot. Caddy is also sort of up for sale, though I'm waiting on a friend up north deciding if they're interested in it as they've got first refusal. If they decide they don't want it, that too will be available now the Peugeot is here.

Renault also is kinda in the main project car slot...but it's staying irrespective of common sense things like that as I'll never find another one.

I believe Zel said the Rover was to be replaced in an earlier post. My stab in the dark is a Triumph Vitesse

Not a bad shout, but no.

Round trip of 300 miles, up the M1 from MK takes you into Yorkshire and back I would have thought. This isn't it I'm sure as rust not really a problem being fibre glass, but up in York on Car and Classic there is a Clan Crusader for sale

https://www.carandclassic.com/l/C1622698

Another guess but probably in too good condition to fit Zel's description would be this SAAB 96 from Goole

https://www.carandclassic.com/car/C1616844



Neil

Now a Clan Crusader would be ace. I have actually driven one and it was epic amounts of fun. Felt quite well screwed together compared to similar cars of the type I'd been in too, though I don't know how much that varied from car to car even when new...Not what we're after in this case though.

Saab 96 is a good shout given my automotive history, and I would rather like one. Not the answer in this case though. A bit more of a heavyweight than either of those.

Just sorting out logistics of shipping at the moment, but looking like it will most likely be here in about a week.

[mickthemaverick]

Saab 96 is a good shout given my automotive history, and I would rather like one. Not the answer in this case though. A bit more of a heavyweight than either of those.

Just sorting out logistics of shipping at the moment, but looking like it will most likely be here in about a week.

Taking the heavyweight aspect on board how about a Jaguar XJ

[CitroJim]

Taking the heavyweight aspect on board how about a Jaguar XJ

That's got to be a good call My first thought was a Range Rover...

[NewcastleFalcon]

We had both the original and the facelifted Cherokee on the forecourt at the garage at the same point at one point - and being an enthusiast about the marque at the time I of course did some side-by-side comparisons! The main differences I found were that the facelifted car did handle a bit better, but at the cost of a slightly less refined ride, and that they seemed to have toned down the exhaust a lot...which I reckoned was a backward step...but that's probably a purely personal choice - I'd take being able to hear the howl of the straight six when you put your foot down any day. The gearbox also seemed to be set up slightly differently, though it was a bit hard to tell whether that was a real difference or just the usual variance between two cars.

Jim may well have hit the nail on the head, but maybe a Jeep Cherokee may sneak in for something a bit cheaper/different

Neil

[Zelandeth]

Several good guesses there!

Okay then. Now that money has changed hands and we've pretty much sorted collection arrangements I feel I can actually reveal what it was that I was willing to spend basically a whole day going to look at yesterday.

The answer is this:





Excuse the blurring. As the photos were taken in the seller's front garden I wanted to blank out the background as far as possible to remove any landmarks.

A P6 has been on my wishlist forever, but finding a viable one with a reasonable price tag was something I'd given up on a good few years back. I did look at a few about 15 years back, but all the ones I could afford then were complete basket cases.

A chance post appeared on another forum a couple of days ago from the seller of this car where they'd had issues with a buyer for this car having backed out making up non-existent issues when they had it delivered to them. I then figured it couldn't hurt to ping the seller a message, and the rest as they say is history.

From the look around the car I did it seems astonishingly solid. Bit of surface rust here and there and some historic repairs, but nothing worrisome. It hasn't been in use for Quite Some Time however, so will want to be properly recommissioned. It does however run, drive and apparently stop - so not a bad situation to be starting from.

Have to admit I'm really pleased it's not brown with a black interior. I mean they do look good in those colours, but it feels like virtually every one you see is brown/mustard or a very similar greeny grey to the P4 and with a black interior, and it's no secret that I like lighter or more colourful interiors. Exactly like this.





Odometer is showing 01034 - so that'll be 101K.



The handles for the doors are in there, reckon they were taken off when some paintwork was going on. I've not spotted anything that's actually missing yet.

Have always been curious to see what this panel looks like at night.



Nothing scary under here.



The previous buyer claimed that the oil was full of fuel and that a head gasket had gone because of the moisture on the oil filler. Yes, there's a bit of fuel in the oil but nothing you wouldn't expect from a car that's been out of use so probably hasn't been run off choke in years. Likewise there's a bit of condensation on the cap, but absolutely nothing you wouldn't expect. We're both kind of baffled over what the previous buyer was playing at.

Even the vinyl roof is in decent shape.



Exact date has to be confirmed, but hopefully it will be getting delivered next week at some point.

Pretty clear very basic plan of attack for when it arrives - plus anything else that I think of then.

[] Change all rubber fuel lines.

[] Chase any electrical gremlins.

[] Change tyres.

[] Change all fluids.

[] Sort any sticky brake issues - anything causing issues there will just be chucked at Bigg Red to be rebuilt, I'm not faffing about trying to wrestle sticky pistons and such into behaving myself, especially with how bloody awkward to get to the rears are.

[] Put back together the bits of the interior which are currently on the floor and give it a damned good clean.

[] Get it professionally rust proofed so it hopefully *stays* this solid.

I am extremely excited to be bringing this on fleet. As I've said before I'd long since really given up on ever owning one of these.

[MattBLancs]

Lovely!

[CitroJim]

Wow! That's magic Zel You have just got hold of my absolute top favourite British car of all time - after the MK1 Mini Wooden Traveller

That is utterly awesome and I can't wait to see it!

Well bought Made my day to see this

[NewcastleFalcon]

The important things...What are the exterior and interior colours ...the Rover P6 has some tremendous combinations. I would go for Lunar Grey and Mango and very nice too! Always been one of my most liked cars, and have had a few brushes with nearly getting one, and if I see one in the wild the camera always comes out.

Neil

[Zelandeth]

It should be interesting. Going to be a fair amount of learning going on as it's not a car I know a massive amount about. I've known a couple of folks with them and have helped out with a few jobs, but I'll be learning a lot as I go. On the plus side there's no shortage of documentation out there on how to do basically everything.

Looks like delivery will be on the 4th all being well.

Only had half an hour to devote to car things today so chose the non functional windscreen washers on the P4. This was bugging my OCD, especially as I could hear the motor run so knew there couldn't be much wrong with things.

The issue was that there was originally a rubber coupler between the motor output shaft and the impeller. This had long since turned to powder. A previous attempt to repair this had been done using heat shrink tubing, but this wasn't a tight enough fit to transmit torque to the impeller.

After scratching my head for a while I ended up fabricobbling a coupler together using a horribly mangled crimp terminal, some wire and a screw terminal block minus its outer plastic casing.

Pretty? No.



However it is effective.



Not exactly a huge torrent of water, but it does what it was designed to. Nice to have ticked it off the to do list.

I'm sure the coupler is available as a spare if you know what to search for, but my attempts to find one a few weeks ago turned up nothing, save for the whole pump/motor assembly for more than I wanted to spend when it was surely fixable.

[Hell Razor5543]

I wonder if using some heat sleeving with reinforcing wire would work?

[Zelandeth]

Probably the most elegant solution would just be a length of really stiff rubber hose of small enough diameter - I imagine that's all the original coupler was. Sadly I didn't have anything even close to small enough in stock. So improvised with what I had to hand.

I was originally going to use a slightly longer brass coupler, but the set screw stuck out too far at the lower edge and would foul on the frame unless I ground the screw down...and that sounded like a lot of work given it meant digging the grinder out which I know is at the far end of the garage and needs stuff moving to get to.

[xantia_v6]

I think that the original coupling was rubber to act as a flexible joint, as the impeller floats relative to the motor shaft.
Is that a 2 wire or 3 wire motor? The 3 wire version has a clever but unreliable "one-touch" function that is seldom understood.

[Zelandeth]

I think that the original coupling was rubber to act as a flexible joint, as the impeller floats relative to the motor shaft.
Is that a 2 wire or 3 wire motor? The 3 wire version has a clever but unreliable "one-touch" function that is seldom understood.

Two wire on this one.

-- -- --

Nothing really been going on car wise last few days. Looking to get the Partner booked in to have a new timing belt (and all the associated gubbins) fitted shortly as I've no documentation to show when it was last done. Well that's not strictly true, the service book shows it was last done in 2016, but I've been advised it has been done "fairly recently" by the previous owner. Given the lack of paperwork though I'd just rather have it done for peace of mind. Going to get them to investigate and sort whatever it is that's whining in the belt area and sort it as well. Hopefully it's just an idler/tensioner and not something annoying like the alternator or power steering pump. I don't think it's the AC compressor as the whine is completely unaffected by whether it's running or not.

This evening I attacked our old friend the Toshiba T1600 again.



Look at that!

This is now running on a Pico-ATX power supply attached to the underside of the original PSU board for everything aside from the -22V rail, which is currently being supplied by the bench top supply next to it.

I wanted to verify a couple of things before I got too involved in dealing with that. Firstly was that the system itself was still working. Secondly was that the display would actually work when I fixed the missing rail. Finally was to get an idea about how accurate the voltage needed to be on it. Annoyingly the answer is actually "quite accurate" in this case. It needs to be within 0.3V or plays havoc with the contrast. So I think I'll just be picking up a pre-built adjustable module for this as it's likely to be far less twitchy than anything I build. I doubt it will fit in the power supply area, but they're pretty tiny things so hopefully I can cram it into either the bay for the modem or expansion slot which won't ever be used for anything else.

It may be a bit of a pain to power (well, not compared to a plasma, +295V as one of the rails sound fun?), this display really does look nice.



Yes, it really *is* that deeply saturated a blue in person, the camera isn't exaggerating it. I've always liked the smaller version on the T1200, but having a larger, higher resolution version is rather nice. Plus this can do something that the T1200 can't: Greyscale.



Which means we can do things with graphics much more convincingly.



Next step for this is going to be to tidy up the installation of the power supply as it is, then reassemble the machine. I'm just going to leave two wires sticking out the back for an external -22V supply for now as I'd really like to get a bit of soak testing done sooner than later. Plus it will allow me to get some experimentation done, get some proper photos for the website and to get the software sorted out. Currently there's nothing on there of interest, just a broken Windows 3.1 install (actually looks like there are two!), Word Perfect and a backup utility. Based on my prior experience with these hard drives the most sensible thing I can probably do is to low level format it (from that perspective it's handled like an old MFM drive), as several somewhat twitchy examples have behaved perfectly after that. Then a fresh Toshiba OEM DOS install and some choice software will be chucked on there.

Actually getting it into a fully working state this evening though felt like a massive victory! Just hope it stays that way now...