I’m a mechanic me… – Page 10

Desiring sleep

Now, we all know I like a good whine. but I’m bored of whining now. My hayfever’s been attrocious this year; bad enough that I’ve not slept. That’s pretty rare for me, to have hayfever bad enough that it wakes me or stops me sleeping. Traditionally night’s been the time when I could forget about my hayfever. But not this year; I’ve not had a solid night’s sleep for about a week. I wake at 4:30am-ish, sneezing, coughing, barely able to breathe. If I’m lucky (like last night) I can eventually get back to sleep – but it takes a long time. And then I’ll wake up at 5:30 or 6:30 to the same problem. I usually give up then, because by the time I get back to sleep it’ll be time for me to get up.

I am, therefore, clattering unhappily towards complete exhaustion. I note, looking at my account, that the money for my prescription payment certificate’s been debited, so I shall make an appointment to see my GP this week. Hopefully I can get the nasal spray and the referal to Guy’s in London, where I can get some kind of allergy treatment. I can’t go on like this; I’m so tired I’ll end up doing something dumb at work.

Yesterday I was so bad at half four in the morning that I gave in and got up.

Anyhow, despite the tired I need to commence doing my ‘Induction Workbook’ for the agency for whom I’m commencing my employ. I need to get that in the post ASAP so I can start working for them – and get some shed-loads of cash delievered to my ailing bank account. It only arrived yesterday, and after spending the first 4 hours of my day proper (after the first three hours of sitting around sniffling) fixing the DAF – and then riding after the truck taking the DAF to the welder so I could have a chat with him – and popping in to Tesco – I was so knackered I had to sleep. I very rarely sleep during the day but I was utterly exhausted.

But the *good* thing about my little journey was that I found some local abandonment…

It appears to be an entire abandoned industrial estate – Although I could only see about 1/3rd of the way down. Were I not so broke as to be worried about buying fuel for the bike midweek then I’d have gone back with my camera. But I am, so it’ll have to wait. Knowing me, and my failure to get around to such things I’ll probably not get around to it until it’s gone :-/

In other news – while looking at someone that Kathryn liked reading posts from on quiet_thrills (moshimoshi_13), I found her link to The Fugitives. I really like their stuff, and perhaps thankfully they don’t have an album – I’m torn, I’d love them to have an album so I could buy it, but I can’t buy it at the moment, and so it’s less things for me to desire). And then today on Boing boing there was Clara Belle, who also doesn’t have any released albums. So I’m still mainly just waiting to get the AM album. Unfortunately and deeply irritatingly Ubuntu’s audio just doesn’t seem to be working properly on here. What’s more bizzare is it works perfectly from within firefox, but VLC and the movie player that come with Ubuntu just produce either clicky-unpleasant noises over the music or don’t make any sound at all.

All in all, the Ubuntu experience (well kubuntu) isn’t going as well as I might have hoped.

All it does is reinforce my desire to pay off my debts and buy a mac laptop. Shiny.

Anyway, I should get on and do some work, so that I can go to work later :-/

21/6/2008

Painting the Titanic

That’s how I felt yesterday as I popped rust-killer on to the various bits of rust I thought were worthy of the effort. Or which might not get fixed ‘properly’. Or which are a bit more than surface but less than through-and-through so might (or in some cases, do) need filler.

Distressingly, it turned out that the filler fairy’d already popped around, leaving an unfortunate gift:

Rear window corner

I’m told that, ironically, rear and front windscreen pillars are no-longer failable points on the MOT due to a ‘failure to include it as a failable point in the MOT Computerisation Software’. Which means that technically we could apply filler to it. It’s not very widespread so I may consider that option, but I’ll talk to the welder first. I’d much prefer to have that corner welded up properly.
At any rate, I plodded through various jobs – I worked out why the poor benighted thing couldn’t get up on the ramps from a stand still – the back brakes are completely siezed on. Unfortunately, on the DAF they’re splined on to the drive-shaft (see, my problem is I compare everything to the Minor, and were an automatic / variomatic minor available, I’d so love Kathryn to have that, because the Minor is simply a delight to work on. And I’d not realised how much of a delight until I worked on other cars) unlike on the minor. This means that to extract them requires a hub-puller. I don’t have one of them.

I did, however, attempt the fairly traditional ‘beat the crap out of them with a rubber mallet’ – which achieved almost as little as you might expect it to achieve when they’re that siezed. I played with the adjusters, and attempted (unsuccessfully) to rotate the wheels. Eventually I gave this up as a bad job, but it’s lucky that I looked, because lurking underneath Jejy I found more MOT chalk. Not a lot more, but a bit that’s close to a suspension mount (I don’t think it actually does anything terribly exciting structurally, which is frustrating). It’s also close to the petrol tank and so is a bit of a pig, because it means that I’ll be asking the welder to do some more bits which I wasn’t intending to ask for.

A hole

It’s about a 2″x2″ square of metal which has rusted away – probably due to the hideous rear window leaks.

The rest of the car though (and I maintain this) seems surprisingly sound.

Unfortunately, post my fiddling I found that the hazard lights, which I’d worked so long to fix, only worked briefly because the entire electrical system then died. After a great deal of effort and an award winning battle to the death with this screw

A knackered screw

I managed to remove the regulator and complete my clean of all the open connectors on the vehicle. That leaves only the ones which are in the dash or contained within a plastic connector of some sort. I was incredibly good, even removing each and every wire from the fusebox, cleaning the connector and putting it back together.

This obviously didn’t actually fix the problem – oh no – the problem turned out to be that the +ve lead wasn’t connecting (somehow) – or more accurately, it was connecting well enough to give readings of 12V until the thing was loaded – then the resistance obviously broke down the votlage enough that it all just didn’t work.

It does now though, and the hazards work, and the hazard light tell-tale works, and the horn… the car started and ran, the sills are in and ready to be welded on when the old ones are cut off and I’m just waiting for ‘er to be collected.

Waiting is a struggle though, ‘cos I woke up at 420 am due to hayfever and haven’t slept since.

20/6/2008

Good News!

Well, I think it is. Jejy is off to have welding done in a week’s time, and my catalogue of jobs to do before she went consisted of:
– Service brakes and Engine
– Find and fit (at least one) exterior mirror
– Fit new indicator repeater to LH side
– Find fault with hazard warning light circuit

The last of which seemed likely to take a while (because the indicators work, but the hazard lights don’t), the second of which seemed likely to be potentially spendy (although I need to find a local scrappy, ‘cos they’ll be cheaper, one presumes), the third of which will take a while to do neatly, and the first of which will just take a while.

Fortunately through reading the MOT manual, it now looks like this:
– Service brakes and engine
– Remove Hazard warning light switch and tape wiring up.

Thus meaning all I have to actually do is service the brakes and engine, which I hope I can get done before I get the car trailered away. I am, however, slightly concerned by the slight rattle the car’s developed (went out for an hour today to pop ‘er up on ramps – Low hold or no Low Hold, she didnae want to go up the slope. Should my project with Nikki come together you’ll probably get to see that rather entertaining 5 minutes) for which which I couldn’t easily locate the source.

Anyhow, I should get back to my ATLS course.

13/6/2008

If my bank account had money in it, it’d be somewhat lighter

So, I went to pick up Cherry from Burwin’s – they weren’t sure that they’d fixed her problems, although she was running better… 245 quid that MOT ended up costing – new front wheel bearings (apparently they were completely shot), new fork seals, new brake MC/brake-light-switch and a free mirror (because they rock). They changed the oil, checked the timing and the mixture and found that Cherry’s been running very rich.

She does now rev much higher – but as soon as we hit 65 there was the familar sudden loss of power and back down to 50-something she went. She is now running better though, and seemed to do over 50 fairly reliably. However, 245 quid means I ain’t buyin’ no new jacket for a while. The bike also needs a new front tyre (tread’s fine, but it’s too old); so I need to order one of them and sort out fitting…

She does, however, look vastly more respectable – they replaced the fork gaiter which I’d been gaffa-taping back together for some-time, and with two chrome mirrors perking out from the bikini-faring she’s looking all the more like a motorcycle.

Hopefully she shouldn’t drink quite so much fuel now, either, which’d be nice. It would, of course, be nice to be able to travel at speeds over 60, but this I fear is not something that’s likely to happen while I’m riding Cherry.

Quote of the day, though, I feel was me as I transiently got lost in London:

“Who stole the A3220! I was bloody using that!”

I also (and I say this while hiding so that Kathryn can’t tell me off) touched the exhaust down on a corner. They really do lean over a long way, do ‘zeds, if pushed. I wasn’t even going particularly fast, I don’t think, but as I ducked around the corner I felt the familiar sensation and heard the light scrape which meant that the exhaust had touched the ground.

Oh, and London? Not so good traffic wise – had to filter almost all the way out, which was tedious. Also had to buy petrol, thankfully Burwin directed me to a 116.9p/litre ($8.55/US gallon) which was less painful than the next garage I saw (120.9p/litre)… Here’s praying that the bike running leaner puts her back up towards the 60mpg mark.

Whilst I’ve not bought a new jacket I do still have the new helmet, which is grand. I’ll break that one in on Saturday. Anyway, I should get on with my ATLS reading, I’ve cleaned the kitchen, taken the washing down from outside (where it got rained on many times) and hung it on the rack inside.

Oh, quick question: anyone read Vinyl Underground? Is it any good? I heard a recommendation for it (from cadhla’s journal) and it looks interesting…

At some point I’ll comment on the internment thing in the UK (42 days without charge; y’know it’s sad that we’re having to rely on the House of Lords saving our civil liberties because of the pathetic excuse for a government we have at the moment); but at the moment I’m rather too pissed off about the not-so gradual destruction of our liberties that I doubt I could say anything sensible. Incidentally, days you can be held without charge in Canada? 1.

12/6/2008

The good:
The MZ is done and MOT’d (yay! a year of road-worthy-ness, ish)
The DAF is booked for transport to the welder.
I plastered the curve and the wall under the window (or alternatively, as I originally wrote, the window under the wall) yesterday.
I have done much laundry and our laundry basket is no longer full.

The bad:
The ‘zed is still not doing any more than 6k rpm. She needs a full engine rebuild to work out *why* she’s not revving right.
The DAF is, at the moment 4 miles from the restoration place. It will cost 10 pounds a mile to get her there.
The flat bit of the wall under the window needs a lot of work to make it smooth. Conversely the curve looks ace.
It’s intermittently trying to rain on the clothes.

It’ll do…
Well, the ‘zed, really. It’s not worth the hundreds of pounds it’d cost to fix it, but the new brake MC and a mirror, (a mirror on the right hand side!) they make it much safer to ride. Well, the mirror does. The old MC was fine, but I was rather worried about the crack which had made the metalwork for the lever not really, well, attached very well in once place. It was all hodged back together with washers and the hand protector, but I wasn’t really very happy with it. Now I can brake with confidence. Poor old Cherry Red Zed, she’ll probably end up being a spares bike for Charlie. I may even pinch the new MC and such for Charlie… And keep the original MZ one as a back-up. I do need to get Charlie back here though, so I can reassemble her and get her MOT’d.

The DAF’ll have to do. I am peeved that it’s 10 quid a mile, or there abouts, for the journey to the welder. I have had these terrible thoughts of ‘well, technically it’s legal to drive to and from a place of repair’. Once the brakes are serviced ‘n all, the only person I’d be putting at risk, theoretically, is me. But if the police were to, say, stop me as a car with no MOT or Tax and ask questions it’d be hard to defend and difficult for them not to notice the huge-gaping-lack-of-sill on one side. I shall, instead, content myself with attempting to find time to do the brake-service in between now and then so that I can drive her directly from there to the MOT; thus saving at least the 40 quid for the return journey.

The wall? Well, the curve I’m really proud of. It’s not perfect and has a couple of small ridges on it that’ll need a little sanding to make right; but really? It’s pretty darn good for someone who’s plastering qualifications are ‘I’ve patched up a few walls now and then’. Me and the float though, we couldn’t get on when covering the scratch coat on the flat wall. To be fair to me I think the problem was I was trying to do a proper skim; not a full on coat of plaster. On the curve it’d more-or-less all come away so the curve was a proper thick layer of plaster that I could skim until it was right. On the wall, it was a skim on top of a very thin scratch coat on top of multiple patches and such – which I was just attempting to smooth out. And without making it so high as to make the skirting entirely disappear that’s pretty hard to do. It’ll look alright after a light (moderate in some places) sand, but it’s slighly disappointing – I really felt like I’d started to get the hang of plastering with the stuff in the kitchen. I’ve still got the big section by the light-switch / door to do. That still needs more stripping back though :-/

Anyhow, I’m off to nodnol in a bit, go and collect the ‘zed. ‘m just letting the phone charge and having a cup of tea first :)

12/6/2008

Death of another bit of DDR History

So, those of you who’ve read this journal for a while or who know me in person probably know I’m a little bit obsessed with the DDR and with the CCCP; while I’m sensible enough not to have any belief that communism worked in any of these places (and am, disappointingly, not communist) I am fascinated by them. I’m fascinated by the concepts, and by the products, and by the history.

I’m amazed by the inginuity of engineers who were given so little, yet produced some incredible solutions.

And so I’m saddened to see that MZ, the maker of my flakey rusty 2-stroke (and my bright pink 2-stroke), a part of the once important IFA group, has announced impending closure. MZ went through closure several times, becoming MuZ and then MZ again after the fall of communism removed their ability to sell phenominally cheap bikes abroad, and removed their captive market crippling them financially. But this time I suspect it’s for real. MZ once lead the world, incredibly. Had their racing team’s rider not defected to the west, and taken his bike to one of the Japanese bike manufacturers, possibly MZ’s history may have been different.

But sidelined and unloved, the writing’s probably been on the wall for a long time. Despite producing some really excellent bikes in the last few years (not the sort of bikes I ride, but nice ones none-the-less), it appears they’ve not been shifting enough stock to make them profitable. And so MZ shall pass in to history.

Oddly this doesn’t really affect my bikes. The equipment used to make them went to Turkey, to a company called Kanuni, long ago; although even they have stopped producing the smokey old Walter Kaaden 2 stroke engines of which I am so fond. MZ were one of the oldest motorcycle manufacturers in the world, and soon they’ll be gone. I am somewhat saddened by this news.

11/6/2008

So, today

So then – did we leap into action today – given the rain outside and the related inability to service the bike or work on the daf – did we instead leap into action and finish the bathroom?

Did we paint the wall in the study?

No, we did not. I had a headache this morning, and we only actually got going some time after 1. Possibly 2. But we’ve had really nice day; scrambled eggs and bagels for breakfast; a nice long shower; yesterday’s curry for lunch; I’ve sorted out the bike getting the bits needed to make it not only MOT worthy, but in a better condition than it’s been for ages – and organised a day to get it down to Burwin to see if they can figure out why it’ll only do 50mph. And maybe get that efficiency up a bit, because it’s down around 25-30mpg which is way-low for an MZ.

Kathryn used that opportunity of me ringing to head to the post office, and then we settled down reading websites and doing little of import for a while before embarking on a mammoth larder clearout. Rubbish and tools out; mould off the wall (but it really needs a coat of mould resistant paint), and then cleaned and tidied and labelled and reorganised. It’s actually a usable space now (although I can’t wait to clean it, rip out the old shelves and reorganise that).

Finally we cooked an awesome dinner.

Kathryn made gorgeous shortbread biscuits yesterday, which I may have to eat some more of, when I’m less full. The good thing about not being on holiday all the time is I suspect I’d weigh about 3 times more than I do if I was.

And now, potentially, trivial pursuit.

As an aside, the burn on my hand is peeling…

28/5/2008

Gardens, headaches and things of significance.

So, my head hurts.

I’ve no idea why, although possibly the 30 oddÂ hours with an hour or so of sleep in the middleÂ during which we gardened, shopped, I did a complete night shift at work, and so on, that might explain why every time I move my head it feels like I throw a large brick against the side of my head.

I did try going outside for a walk, and I’ve been drinking plenty of water, but it’s all not helped. Which is saddening.

Anyhow, I mentioned that we did gardening, we also went to the garden centre (to get plants to do gardening with) – this has resulted in our garden going from a huge pile of rubble (which sadly I have no photos of) to this:

We’ve got what we’re hoping will develop into a nice flower bed, and a also a nice veggie patch. The flowers already smell nice in the sun too; using a trick from Bristol, the path’ll be covered over with gravel (to hide the concrete), and we have plans for a small bog-garden, a raised bed (where the coal shed used to be, or possibly outhouse), and a bit of lawn. Decking is still part of the plan too.

Other than that; I’ve been around to the back-garden-adjoininger responsible for the slow collapse of the shed (the back wall’s giving up due to them undermining the foundations) and given them a letter saying I want a new shed. On the way back I was witness to a lot of high-speed driving by police and general bemusment of peoples because – I am unreliably informed – a youth was ‘waving a gun around’. I didn’t see any youths with guns, thankfully. But I did see a lot of people milling. Now, I’m sorry, but my plan on hearing ‘youth running around with gun’ wasn’t to stand there like some sort of startled dugong, but was instead to head to the house (not, I grant you with any particular urgency, but more because it was where I was going and I reckon being inside was better than being outside in such a situation). One imagines that lots of milling around people must annoy the police.

Of course, people do like to stare at things. On my last night, on my way to work there was an upside-down car and a lot of flashing lights on the opposite carriageway of the motorway; this, one imagines, was an accident. What this might require from someone travelling in the opposite direction is a quick glance (ideally nothing at all, but I’m human and my interest is piqued, especially ‘cos I like to know what might be at work waiting for me). What it doesn’t require is letting your foot off the throttle, dropping speed from 80->65, then actually braking to slow down more and get a better look, when you’re in the centre lane of the opposing carriageway. Doing this when I’m behind you leads to me hitting the horn, flashing the lights and also hurling abuse in your general direction. It’s dangerous and annoying…Â

In other news (I might post about work in a bit, given that I’ve done 3 loads of laundry and we’ve not got any newspapers kicking around), Brick’s for sale. He’ll do ’til the end of the week with just posters in the car, and then come thursday I intend to run him round to the jetwash, take lots of photos of the clean’d brick and pop him on e-bay. The DAF Welder is coming on Thursday, so hopefully the DAF’ll be returning to the road shortly. Of course, he may turn up and give me a quote that’s entirely insane, in which case I’ll be calling the other welder.

It’s weird, I find it so hard to take time off. Today is basically my only full day off in a run of 9 shifts, and it was only yesterday morning I came off nights. But to take the whole day off seems excessive somehow. I guess doing laundry and writing a letter’s hardly challenging, but hey. I’m going to stop there because this post’s taken hours to write and been completely rambly. In other news, my headache’s gone :)

6/5/2008

y’what?!

So, as I wait for my Viva’s exhaust to arrive I’ve been riding the ‘zed to and from work. Thankfully, given the extent of the rain yesterday, they let me come home early (to be fair we’d just had a faxed-through flash-flood warning) and the bair-hugger did a grand job of getting my boots dry enough for me to be able to ride (despite wearing my walking gear and my bike gear my arse still got wet though).

I’d hoped the exhaust would arrive today; not least because of the weather…

Anyhow, so I’ve been lurking around the internet today and I found this. Am I alone in being appauled that Mazda is crushing nearly 5000 new cars because there might be something wrong with them. Sure, if they looked and found that brakefluid’d leaked out all over the car, or that the engine bay was filled with oiley-watery-sludge then fine, okay, strip them for spares. But they’re destroying the *wheels*. Wheels? Do wheels mysteriously get damaged by tilting them at 60 degrees?

Interiors? Are they unsalvageable?

*le sigh*.

I also went on the hunt for the previously mentioned TCO report on older cars – which I’ve heard of – from the SMMT of all places, which still said that owning older cars was better than buying new ones. Unfortunately, I can’t find my reference to it (which I think was in Practical Classics) and can only find the ‘green car’ booklet whichÂ alledges 10% of pollution coming from manufacture and 5% from recycling (although this from my quick scan suggests around 20% from manufacture). I’d like to find a good and at least less biased reference on whether I’m right about driving an older car. It makes sense to me that keeping it on the road longer is better than recycling it and driving a new one. Of course, not driving at all is better still; but until I live somewhere were nurses are actually paid a reasonable sum of money then I’m not going to be able to live near where I work, and thus driving is a necessity (unless public transport suddenly manages to cater for people who need to get to and from work at late and early times of the day).

Anyhow, now that rant’s over and done with. I’ve called a welder and am going to have to arrange for him to come around on monday to look at the DAF. I’ve also written the ad for the Viva – but I’ll go and fork out a few quid for a jetwash before I photograph it – and shan’t do that until the DAF is decided upon. I also need to make a run to my mum’s to collect the ramps and the jacks and suchlike.

Anyhow, I should go shower….

30/4/2008

More Impressed

So, yesterday was spent doing some ‘preventative’ maintainance on the bike. If you can really call it preventative after riding it a week having left it sitting for 2 and a half months and having not done any maintainance for a while before that…

I adjusted the brakes, which took longer than might be expected due to the unfortunate fact that they were only just off, and only just moving to on; and when I adjusted them so they were only-just-off but could move to fully on they jammed. In fact, I don’t recall ever greasing them…

…So I spent some time unsiezing the brakes. They’re still ‘sticky’ but it’s a lot better than it was. It was slightly embarassing to go for my test circuit of our roundabout, put my foot on the brake and then not be able to start moving again.

I also spent some time doing the DAF. The rust is over quite a large area, but it’s also ‘a big flat panel’. Well, actually it’s got an L shape to it at the end, but I reckon it shouldn’t be too expensive. I need to ring round some welders… I don’t suppose anyone knows the actual rules on ‘to and from a place of repair’ for non-MOT’d cars. Can you take it ‘to and from’ one forÂ a quote? (I’m assuming not, though I can drive it *to* a place of repair when I’ve chosen someone).

meh.

Anyhow, the DAF runs – and starts easily – and is quite cute really. It also moves, it’s a bit odd to drive after the Viva and the Minor, but it trundled the 2 feet down the drive and back up the drive without too much trauma.

Kathryn spent the day sorting out the back garden. We’ve modified and simplified plans for the back garden; mostly to cut costs. I don’t think there are any shots of the back garden at the height of ‘stuff piled everywhereyness’; but she (and I helped a little bit with the bigger chunks of shite) moved all the rubbish into a heap where the dog-hut (which she took down) was. In the process of this, we noticed that when the people-building-a-house behind our house did their de-tree-and-fence work, they have undermined the foundations for the shed. There’s now a fracking-huge crackin the back wall, so I’m going to go and demand monies from them for the shed.

Aaanyway, so she cleared the ground, and having been defeated on the DAF brake service (because, well, I don’t actually appear to have ramps, jacks or axlestands here, something which I find a little surprising) helped dig it over. Then we went to b&q and spent 26 quid on compost/plants/seeds and a rake.

We were going to plant them this morning before heading to the zine symposium…but the grey sky are likely to make us leave it… that and it’s a bit late….

27/4/2008

Category: I’m a mechanic me…