Category: General

Option A: Replace minor exhaust – difficult seeing as no one has the 1.5" exhaust in stock. JLH have a 2" exhaust in stock, but it seems a bit…big. Thinking about it. Not a quick solution.
Option B: Wodge DAF back together, ignoring the will-be-very-quickly-trashed-100-quid’s-worth of clutch shoes.
Option C: Ride motorbike.
Option D: Repair Minor exhaust – difficult – apparently "We don’t do that sort of thing". I’m going to shower and take the minor to a couple of exhaust places and see if, with it in front of them, they can be a bit more helpful. I suspect not.

Of course, there is option E.

Option E is the one I’ve picked which enables me to sort out the front of the Minor. The worn out suspension, the ratty engine bay, the rattly dashboard, and to take her off the road for a bit to sort the transmission out. That way, she’ll truly be ready for Canada. Temptation: make her into a left hooker at the same time.

Option E only arises because of Rich, who is, it turns out, possibly the nicest man in the universe.

Option E will get more air time in the future, when the details of Option E have been successfully worked out.

In the mean time, I’m going to shower and work on Option D – because it’s bloody cold out there and while the bike did a stellar job carrying me to work and back yesterday, the idea of doing so for more than a one off in weather this cold doesn’t appeal. Not one bit.

In other news, wasn’t the first episode of BSG dark (spoilers lurketh).
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So, congratulations to the USA on having a really eloquent, intelligent president; a person who’s inaugural speech was refreshingly honest and challenging. I hope that his presidency marks the beginning of a greener, more tolerant, and generally better period in the history of the USA, and indeed, the world.

So, it’s cold, frequently wet and windy. What would be less than ideal?

Guess… go on… guess.

Yep; that’s right, the exhaust on the Minor (made by Falcon, incidentally, with a ‘lifetime warranty’ from Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre, in Bath) has snapped again. I think this is the 3rd centre section. It may be the fourth.

Either way, they stated before that they would not replace the centre section again despite it having a ‘lifetime warranty’. The Lifetime in question clearly, in this case, referring to that of the exhaust. I.E. the lifetime of the warranty is as long as the exhaust lasts. Which in this case is months. It lasted longer than the last one on the basis that, well, the car was off the road for nearly a year.

Unfortunately, since we spent the day having a very pleasant walk around the countryside around Newbury with work, and getting lunch at a pub*, we didn’t finish off the DAF today. Although, it’s going to wreck the new clutch shoes running it with drum as it is. But the DAF owner’s club has been awesome, for reasons I’ll explain later, when we’ve had a chance to mull over the incredibly kind offer.

But on the less good front, I’ll be riding the MZ to work tomorrow. For a long day. In the cold. The bitter, bitter cold.

Not that I’m a little unkeen.

I’ve found the inner liner for my bike trousers tho’ which is handy.

* Which annoyingly had only one main veggie course, which was curry, so for the third day in a row I’ve had curry :(

So, we spent another day working on the car, it took about 3 hours to get the single bolt off, and then the exhaust didn’t want to budge anyway. Technically we didn’t have to remove it, but it was enough of a nightmare getting the engine out without trying to loop things around the exhaust so I’m pleased we did take it off.

Unfortunately, when we finally got to the clutch things didn’t look good.

This is the whole clutch, you can see that the friction pads have all but disappeared entirely, and the metal shoe backs have been doing their job.

Here’s the worst offenders, it must have been worn out for thousands of miles. I can’t imagine that it’s ever been changed.

Unfortunately the drum is so badly worn that I don’t think you could just skim it. It’s got deep grooves cut into it (I wanted to take a picture but the camera batteries are now completely knackered; and all the other batteries in the house are ex-camera batteries which are also knackered).

We reassembled the engine and with a great deal of difficulty got the engine back in (it’s really been one of those days. The work lamp broke, the batteries that came with the Skil tool’s torch are the worst batteries I’ve ever encountered and died incredibly rapidly, the desk lamp I got from upstairs accidentally got shorted out (it’s one of those silly ones with exposed metal poles to carry the current)… however, thankfully it stayed working until I’d crushed my fingers with the prop-shaft, ironically after I’d stopped fiddling the engine unexpectedly settled in having finally aligned correctly with the shaft.

…’s just my fingers were in the way.

Anyhow, it’s just finishing putting it all back together.

Kathryn spent some time filling the inlet manifold cracks with plastic-metal, it’s rated to 150 degrees C… hopefully that’ll do. And Kathryn, again, rocks for helping so much; without her this job’d be impossible.

So, back when I followed computers and IT I knew which hard drive manufacturer was good, and which sucked. I had favourites, and brands I’d not touch. I was a consumate geek and cared not if the drive produced more or less decibels of noise, so long as it was quick, and had a low seek time.

Now I look at the drive comparison chart trying to balance 42dB/A against 35.9dB/A and power dissipation and usage figures against seek times and transfer rates, and find myself wanting to hide. Part of me wants the fastest drive I can lay my hands on (because eventually it’ll find it’s way into the work mac, I expect, when it gets too small for entertainment mac usage), and then I’ll want it to be quick, and less concerned about noise. But while it’s sat next to the TV I want it to be quiet and consume little power. Damn it, why’s it so complex.

So, it’s been a bit of a bits day. I was meant to be on a training course, but it got cancelled, and the message didn’t get to me (although I suspected it’d been cancelled). Being a goody-two-shoes as I am, and being as I was on-site I went in to the department and checked if they’d like me to work. They did want me to. So I did a ‘short shift’, and there was enough to keep me nicely busy for a few hours. A few sickies, a septic chap and a chap with heart failure.

I sometimes quite enjoy working in Resus.

Then I headed back to Slough and made a happy little lunch before heading to the Bank, Maplin and finally JetWashing the mogglet.

Maplin was it’s usual depressing self, each time I go there it seems that components are moved further into a small corner and the shop fills with more cheap plastic tat. They didn’t have the battery for one of my watches (the little grey and orange one I used to wear full time ’til I got the chunky, dykey Colombia one – but I like to have a ‘grubby’ watch for wearing working on things). They did though, thankfully, have the battery for my little cheap Fob Watch. I’ve been without it for months and have only just got around to spending the £1.25 required to get it going again. I’ve missed it at work :)

I also spent some time staring at fans. The DAF doesn’t have a fan on it’s heating system, instead relying entirely on the engine fan which, obviously, only runs when the engine is hot. Not such a problem in summer, but in winter… It *is* very effective when it’s running, as I discovered when I took the car out and was suddenly showered with dead leaf. But when it’s not the screen doth mist up something terrible.

So the plan is to build a little fan-insert to go inline with the pipework and with which one can force air through onto the screen. However, my initial thought (which was basically to slap a 60mm fan inline with each 60mm hose) was rethought as I stood with the fan in front of me. See, the problem is, the fan is, well, mostly solid plastic. I want as much air-transmitting-space as possible. I’m thinking that maybe getting a pair of 80mm ones might work better, and putting one inline on each side (there are two ducts), with a box around the fan (obviously) but – that might give enough space for the normal system to work, and then provide enough effectiveness when it’s cold and the engine fan isn’t running.

But I decided I wanted to have another look in the engine bay before I did such things. And look at the routing of the tubules. And so on.

This weekend we’re off for a wander and a food (my treat, I think, since it’s work) in a place which has turned out to be about 10 minutes from my mum’s house. This is slightly annoying, in that I assumed it was nearer where I work. But it ain’t. So we might pop in and see my mum (I shall ask Kathryn’s opinion on her arrival at home). I should also have asked for my workmate’s phone number ‘cos that way we could reconsider in light of the fact that the walk we’re going on is about an hour from our house. Still, it’s socialising, in’t it. :)

Look: A gasifier run ice.

It makes me miss living in Bristol where I had friends nearby who would probably have been entertained and helpful in the process of building such a thing. Clearly UK legislation would make building one of these in a car somewhat difficult (ironically since WWII shots show vehicles with gasifiers pootling around the UK). Clearly a van would be a better basis for producing one, although you’d have to isolate it from the passenger cab.

Anyhow, work calls.

Okay, so one of the Dremels is around 4,000 miles from the house, which is why we have another, second dremeloid*. This is for the sake of one bolt. But when it stops raining and I have some time, that bolt is mine! And once that’s done we can move on to swearing at the clutch.

Also, repairing the inlet manifold is another of the exciting tasks on the list (because it’s got a crack the size of the Grand Canyon in it**, and it’s only a small car). For the uninitiated (who care) the inlet manifold is where the evil petrol(gas) which has been mixed with air in a careful stoichiometric ratio in the carburetor is sucked through to get to the cylinders before being ignited into a raging and rapidly expanding fireball by the spark plugs. (Suck Squeeze Bang Blow). Except in Jejy that careful mix is screwed by the cunning process of sucking in vast quantites of air through a great huge gap in the manifold. This we shall initially fix using the highly technical approach of slopping some chemical metal on it. Apparently that should be sufficient. If it’s not then it’s off to the welder for some aluminium alloy welding.

At any rate, progress shall be being made shortly. As soon as it’s dry (because it’s been both wet and windy today). On the good news front (there’s always got to be something good) – we should hopefully have the garage, assuming the rentees of the house on the corner are happy to have someone else using the garage. It needs major structural reno’s and for the sake of six months it’d hardly be worth it, but it’s rent free garage space, so a couple (well at least 4) joists is definately worth it.

As a side point, how aweome is my beloved, she already owns a dremel. She is such a geek *grin*.

* A Skil 1415, I think, off the top of my head. Looks like a Dremel tho’
** I just watched the first episode of ‘The Wire’, having found it’s been wildly critically acclaimed and I’d never heard of it, I had to find out what it was. The result of this is that I had to resist writing something along the lines of ‘more crack than Baltimore’.