Midweek musings...

So after a rather frantic month or two, chasing my tail and stressing about a car situation, i seem to have reached a place whereby i can relax a bit. As those who know me will testify, i was at 3 cars for a while. These were as follows:

MR2:

..running quite well, no issues here. Primarily a backup/fiances car, or "something for the weekend" if you prefer. There was also:

Camaro:

...which has been discussed in great detail previously, so we wont dwell on that. Lastly there was:

Mercedes C180

This was the "reliable" sensible daily plugger. Purchased as a rather unfortunate and if im being honest, misjudged eBay splurge, it needed a full respray, radiator, wings and a wealth of other stuff before it even reached a road. The £500 budet for a cheap car soon doubled, but it went well for a period of time and gave me little grief. At least, it felt that way. It was a hurried resto to get it running and i probably overlooked a few things i shouldnt have. As such, last month a front wheel bearing collapsed on me 100 miles from home. Not ideal, and to be honest put me right off the car. The solution was painful, arduous, and reminded me where my panic mechanic skills were honed from: Cars like these...

                   (yes that is the wheel bearing being changed at the roadside of the A9)

After i sorted that around a week later the NSF brake pad lining dislodged causing the brake pedal to hit the floor on a downhill stretch, and that was it for the car. Time for a better, more reliable model. Enter this:

Saab 9-3 turbo

It felt like the steal of the century. 50k, all the toys, FSH for a little over 2k. Everyone advised a Saab would be reliable. Long story short: It wasnt. In fact, i actually ended up getting my money back after 3 solid weeks of garage time with the car. I literally drove it home once in all that time, the day i bought it.

So in the 3 week downtime i was essentially down to one car. The Camaro is in no way near finished as my previous update testifies, and the Merc was still dodge after the brakes issue. The MR2 took a pounding, ferrying me to Aberdeen a good few times and performing duties it really wasnt bought for. Needless to say at breaking point i shrugged off my doubts, pulled the Merc in and assessed the brake issues. Once fixed with new pads, and a sticky caliper loosened (with the gentle persuader), it was safe for backup duties. To be fair, once i got the money back from the Saab it did much more than that, ferrying me from dodgy dealer to backstreet dump to view all manner of dross. Its safe to say that 3k is now a budget for a decent motor. I once managed to maintain the same rule for 1k. Sad times!

That said, i always rise to a challenge (eventually) so after 2 weeks of solid hunting, and thoroughly proving out the Merc in the process, i found the Saabs replacement:

BMW E46 318Ci

Located in Edinburgh, with 2 months ticket, no tax and dodgy tires and brakes, it wasnt my most confident purchase. However, unlike the Saab my gut feeling was positive with this one... and you always go with the gut feeling! If i look at the positives, it had FSH, 56k miles, full leather (unlike the Saab), cruise, AC and all the coupe toys. Everything worked, and it pulled well. I took the plunge, got it back to the garage and proceeded sort the negatives, which was to throw on new tires, a years tax and rip the offending worn brakes off...

Now when i say rip off, im not joking:

Thats the outer body of the disc after beating it off the hub. Sheared completely, with the centre section firmly welded to the hub. I would think that this set of brakes were well overdue a bloody good refurb. 

Nonetheless its all good now. BMW is so far (touch wood) performing well, and the MR2 is soon to get repaired from its stint of overuse (wheel bearing and handbrake cables have presented themselves as needing repaired... age related no doubt). This all has left me in a bit fo a quandary now. The BMW has taken the reliability reigns, the MR2 will be doing the weekend diddle rounds once again, and the Camaro is ticking along at its own pace. This sort of leaves the Merc as the third thumb... I have options on this front, such as swap it for something interesting and putting it on the back burner until the Camaro is done. I could weigh it in and sell off the nice bits to get some coin back on it, or i could keep the car itself as a back up. It has after all performed great this past few weeks, and seems to keep plugging on with the air of an indestructable squib. 

I guess i'm quite glad at the moment that i have the ability to sit back and ponder this pleasant situation, as opposed to my usual sitting back and frantically pondering how the hell to get out of my latest car nightmare. The Merc has 3 months of tax and lots of ticket still on it. Whatever happens i can see it plodding on in the background on garage duties for the rest of the year at least!

Tommy off.

Ugh...

So its been a while since there was an update on this. There is also a good reason.

Car-wise, its been tough the past few months. My daily drive Merc decided to throw all mannner of bearing and brake issues at me a while back causing me to lose all trust in it. Cue a 2.5k Saab purchase in a bid to remedy the unreliability woes. Not likely... the Saab did not once make it home without a sensor failure or engine warning light coming on in the entire 3 week period I had it. Needless to say after a long and arduous battle I got my money back on it. Now taking delivery of a BMW coupe on Monday, but as there is light at the end of the tunnel I decided to re-focus on the project that has been laid up for a while... the Camaro.

Took the box down to a gearbox specialist near Kilwinning to have them strip it and conclude once and for all how bad it is. On the plus side the fellas there commented on the utter brutality of the box - even reverse looks like it was out a truck!

The bad news though is that the gearing linking the input shaft to the layshaft is excessively worn, and was most likely the cause of the noise I have been hearing from the day I got it. Most likely this has been due to running on no oil at some point in its life. I have been told that it will run fine if re-assembled but the noise will remain. There are no spares or suppliers for spares of this box type anywhere. Worse than that the gears are integral to the input and layshaft, so both of these entire parts need to be changed to cure the problem.

As such I'm in a bit of a sticky wicket. I could persevere and put the getrag 290 back together, top up with thick oil and hope it lasts whilst enduring it sounding like a raped cat.... or source another one from the hens teeth factory down the road... or remorgage my house and source a T56 box which is frankly the only equal to what I have that will hold up to the abuse.

Not been my best month all in.

In the meantime I have been tinkering away with the engine itself:

...which is re-timed, cam installed and re-assembled. Would have been ready for a test fire too had I not bought Mr Gaskets finest sh1te intake gaskets which leave blatant vacuum gaps between the heads and the manifold...

Also, the cage I bought a while back has been test fitted:

So I reckon it needs some mild shoogling to get in as close as possible, but otherwise its s fairly good fit. Thats been about it for the moment. Waiting on a solution for the gearbox situation to fall from the sky and save my ass... but turning blue from holding my breath waiting for it to happen...

:(