Lol....
Thats some set of wheel spacers !!

Just failed on brake and emissions. Epic in the extreme. More sponging off the bank of mother.

Didn't have you down as a drifter, next you'll be welding the diff

He he. What do you think of the front camber?

Oh well, got it back for £200 so that's another year of road-worthiness. The report says they cleaned the brakes, so they have for sure removed all my lovely copper grease ;-(

Got her back into storage without incident but the side trim panels next to the back seat were cheesing me off since they rattle like snakes, and have done since the welder worked on her 3 years ago. So what is going on? Took the offending panels off and underneath is a black strip of bendy metal which the top of the trim panel should hook over.




However on one side the bendy strip was too close to the window for the panel to hook over and on the other side the strip was horribly deformed and bent miles away from the window so the trim panel wasn't catching.

None of this requires an 11+ to put right so just bend the strips so that they're about the right distance from the glass to hold the trim panels tightly and away you go.






By the way, decided to revert the wheels and exhaust to standard items ;-0

Good work, interesting to see how the trim is held on, simple stuff !
I reckon there must be huge variations on what would be deemed proper brake cleaning in the garage industry, ranging from a liberal spray of brake cleaner to a proper strip down and rust removal. Hopefully they did a good job. I think I used ceramic brake grease rather than copper grease when I did mine last year, with red rubber grease for all the rubber bits !

Coolio.

Back on Deep Blue again and trying, against another backdrop of Murder Most Foul, to fix cracks in the fascia.





Also, trying to clean out dust or grease or anything at all that's causing the speedo to jitter.











Now, in a trial run with a couple of spare items I am trying out a glue gun that uses those plastic rods and melts them at the tip, so you get drips of hot black gluey plastic. Thought I'd give it a bash as I always find that superglue and araldite don't really stand the test of time. So here we go pigeon pooing with a glue gun:




The more you can bulk it up, the stronger the mend (!) and it seems promising so lets try it on the steering column bracket for the indicator and wiper switches.









All of this is being done because the indicator switch on Deep Blue has a habit of not self-cancelling in hot weather when turning left (Mr Insurer) so I am trying to put this right and a couple of days reassembling everything will allow us to try everything out!!

Good work, not a bad idea to reinforce that bracket at all!! We know what they're like

Thank you. The bracket was broken in 2 places, so it's more a case of necessity than anything else ;-0 ;-0

I want to check if it would be possible to have a metal strip over the top, rather than just at the bottom. That will be mark II version, depending on how long this one lasts ;-0 ;-0

Going back together:

I reckon with the metal reinfoced strip along the bottom you should be fine for the forseeable!

I got the deep blue 340 back together and did a spot of respraying here and there.





Been tangling with the callipers on a Rover P5 which failed the MOT. Garage broke one of the brake pipes, too. They says its the callipers which need refurbishing but they can't do it themselves so I'll have to sort it. Better than have them leaving it on the street for weeks!











Anyway, the calipers have come off OK, between bouts of Montezuma's revenge. It doesn't help to have a colon being more productive than Niagara Falls ;-0 ;-0

Been trying to fix the indicator switch on an old Hyundai which, when the lights were switched on, caused them to flicker on and off. Cured it for now a second hand item.



But what was causing this problem? Had a bash at taking the original apart.





Seems to come apart ok and showed some blackening of the copper terminals which were cleaned up.



Needed to replace the dielectric grease and was going to use vaseline, but I found a plumbers grease at the new local Toolstation (Rectorseal or something) which has higher melting point and is insulating!