Fixing all of the things!

Hello. If it's not broken, fix it till it is. {°¿°}

Very true !!
Sadly these days modern 'stuff' ain't designed to be easily repairable or in some cases they are repairable but designed with a very limited lifespan to keep inital costs down, but then hook you in to pricey parts etc...

At 3 years old my Skoda Superb required a full new clutch/slave cylinder and before that the pump that controls the 4x4 system burnt out....all while being fully serviced by the dealer......sh#te !!!

Bit more on the indicator switch. I decided that cleaning out the base of the switch probably wasn't going to cure a problem that was definitely linked to twiddling the rotating knob at the end of the indicator stalk. So a trip to the local car shop led to the suggestion to drill out a little pin holding the knob on and also turned-up a promising new pin that might go in its place later. Here's an attempt to drill out the pin. Sorry the drilling is a bit ratty as it damaged the surrounding plastic a bit. Anyhow, subsequent use of a needle file in the drill allowed the pin to be removed (well, to be more accurate, it flew off and got lost in the garden).




OK, so the rotating switch cover then came off and this allowed the innards to be cleaned-up after removing a yellow clip (swear, slight breakage occurred with this, but its not too bad at all, thankfully).





The copper contacts were cleaned-up. Knees up Mother Brown.




Everything re-greased with Rectorseal and clicked back together! The new hinge-pin (shown below) was sawn to size and slotted into place with a touch of Captain Tolley's added to hold it firmly, hopefully. Then with a cheapie glue-gun a bit of molten black placky was blobbed into place and given a textured finish with a thumbnail!





Almost alright ;-? And it works!




Back to 340's tomorrow.

Going Hyundai mental but having a Superb time of it. A fine-tipped brush of black gloss and the mend is hardly showing at all!!





Adjusted the handbrake on Deep Blue.

Now, a jump backwards in time from '99 to '72. Tidying the brakes on an old Rover.






One of the linings had fallen off. Need to test the cylinders somehow. Pretty sure the handbrake mechanism is OK, but will copper-grease it up.

More dismantling of the rover brakes. Lots of little seized-up bits'n'bobs in the handbrake mechanism which need to have the rust scraped off them.





Grease them all up and back together again and test, if not working, go back to start (brakes and ladders) ;-0







Then shock horror, a spare couple of hours suddenly materialises and so we can whack on a new pair of shoes each side.







Must join cursaholics anonymous.

Back to driving Deep Blue as the everyday car and doing some smithy work on the 360 exhaust to try to stop it banging so much!



Now for a proper shock horror. Someone where I volunteer has been making a giant spider. All for a good cause.

Time for another how not to guide. This time it's repairing the hazard light switch. When removing or refitting, remember to press down on the surrounding plastic frame as hard as possible or the spring clip on top of the switch will break the surround. Done that and heard it's very common. Lucky this time, though



When it's off the leads you can pop it open with a finger nail and all the little springs and contacts inside go sproing everywhere, so be quick to catch them all



There was plenty of greasy verdigris to be seen.



Scrape it all of, well carefully, like. There's a little spring-loaded ball bearing under the white plastic tab and 3 springs on the other side which support two contacts (2 springs for the biggest contact, one for the smaller one).



Then regrease it all with plumber's grease (e.g. Rectorseal, my favourite word these days) or some other non-conducting metal-free (dielectric) grease, partly because it helps to keep the springs and contacts in place in readiness for the great click and leap of faith when you snap it all back together again.



Yo! It works.

Great work Jon, its good to see 'how to' guides like this. Not heard of Rectorseal, tried to google it but came up with different numbers of the stuff.... Is it like silicone grease ?
You are right about the switch frame, mine was broken before I got the car but I have a replacement to try and swap over.
I also have a spare ash tray which I am going to butcher up a bit to make into a magnetic mount for my phone !
Not going to butcher up the original so that will always be there if needed.... (not that I need to be flicking ash around !)
Cheers Dave

Hello Dave, thank you for your kind words. Sorry, Rectorseal seems to be the manufacturer and it's just a non-toxic plumber's grease that they make. I couldn't get dielectric grease in the shops here, but it's on ebay, etc.

https://www.toolstation.com/plumbers-g ... full-desc

The rectorseal grease is non-metallic and more heat resistant than vaseline!

On Red Ness I've been trying to cure the wind-noise issue of her big heavy doors, in spite of them having new seals and the window frames being bent back a bit by hand ;-0

A bit of black draft excluder certainly works but it comes off a bit too easily really with general handling of the doors, but it's not too bad actually. I might leave it on unless anyone knows of a more permanently sticking draft excluder material.



The new door seals of standard thickness which I got didn't allow the doors to close, so I had to go for thinner seals, hence the wind noise at speed!

Just catching up, dunno where the time goes !!
Thanks for the tip on Rectorseal, will check that out.
Door seals - The previous owner of my 360 had fitted new door seals, not sure where from (maybe Classic Swede?) anyway they seem to work well. Requires a good positive push to close the door, and a similar pull when inside. Did you have to tweak the frames due to the door not closing right with the new seals ? I wonder if there is any adjustment at the latch to allow the standard seals to fit by moving the door closing position slightly.
Only tip I have for the draught excluder would be to wipe the frame down with meths before fixing the seals to get the best possible fixing.
Cheers Dave

Now onto the blue 1.7 with a broken strut which I am part-way through removing.




I found that the spring was also broken, too.

Hope it all goes to plan. The state of the roads these days no wonder cars are breaking springs etc.
My Skoda is away this morning to get the front suspension checked out after a nasty pothole strike. It was making some clanging / banging noises on sharp braking and going up my driveway..... Bracing myself for a ££££ bill......