Is there anyone left alive who knows how to set tappets and gap a spark plug? Let alone use a fag paper to set the contact points. Who would recognise a feeler gauge nowadays? The pleasures of dismantling a Holley 4 barrel carb only to find that spring washers are so named for a reason....now where did the hell did it go?. Hermatite red gasket paste.
I suppose Top Dead Centre is no longer a GCSE subject? You know, take all the plugs out, stick a screwdriver through the hole, fiddle with the fan and get the piston where it should be? More or less.
Just such a pleasure to fiddle with my V-8 today Sunday, then fire her up right on the button. She runs sweet as a nut and you know that's because you set her up right. Satisfaction. Grease under the fingernails, the pleasure of handling that dying species -- a 7/16" wrench. 2 of them actually
That sensual feeling when you drag 12 thou through the gap and you know it feels just right......
Then wiping your hands on your jeans and sitting on the sofa, not a good idea if you have a very beautiful but also very houseproud partner like mine. Swarfega is JOB # 1 --(due deference to the Ford Motor Co) if you want to stay in her good books......
I look underneath the hood of both our Lynxes and I wouldn't know where to start. Plastic covers over everything......... I guess some guy (or girl, must stay PC) in an immaculate white coat has to plug it into a computer to work out what's going on............a bit like my cardiologist when he tells me, after some deliberation and examination of charts and print-outs, he is pleased to advise me I'm still alive, then presents me with a bill for this information.
I guess the only thing from them days I don't miss is the oil drip. But just a pleasure to root around in my chaotic toolbox for tools which are always conspicuous by their absence, exercise my vocabulary of bad language, forget where I put my beer, and skin my knuckles. (you know how it is when you can't find the open-ender you want and use the adjustable -- shock horror! No it wasn't me who rounded off those nuts honest). Dammit where did I put the oil filter wrench, oh s*d it use a Philips and a hammer.............
Come on you lot, you enjoy it too....own up!!!
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Can't agree with you more Growler. How I miss those Sunday Mornings tuning the motor to the peak of perfection, or at least trying to.
A fairly extensive tool kit was always an essential item to be kept in the boot but nowadays, I just don't bother. My Father-in-Law expressed his surprise at this recently and I had to ask him if he had looked under the bonnet of his car lately. Where would he start if he had a problem? there is hardly anything recognisable to my generation in the engine compartment of modern motors.
I pin my hopes on the expertise of the rescue organisations and the relative reliability of modern cars, (despite the impressions that could be gained by readers of this site.)
The old "Get you home" roadside repairs are mostly a thing of the past, depriving many of the self satisfaction that was to be gained by diagnosing and overcoming those little problems that were so common.
Once I've checked fluid levels and belt tensions, that's it! and you don'e even get your hands dirty.
When I can afford it, I will look for a restoration project which will at least keep me from under SWMBO's feet on Sunday Mornings.
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No - sorry, Growler - there is no physical activity which goes under the heading "WORK" which I would not pay someone else to do (IF, a big IF, I had the money!
Roger in Spain
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Further - I would never have done a days work in my life, had I not needed to work to eat!
Roger in Spain
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Sorry Malteser, I hope I speak for many who would say that you cannot consider tinkering under a bonnet as work, it is shear pleasure, sometimes frustrating, but satisfying in the extreme when a good job has been done.
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There is a big difference between;
a sunny day with the bonnet up doing the timing because you think its a good idea, relaxing for a beer or a chat from time to time.
and
lying on your back in the snow, wearing about 4 jackets, working from a 60w bulb on an extension lead for light, with bleeding knuckles and frozen fingers, trying to get the clutch changed before you need your car again in the morning knowing that at least one bolt will be rounded and there will be at least one tool you don't have.
And whilst I remember both, the second made a far greater impression on me.
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There are times when I miss the pleasures of the Wanner grease gun, the smell of Swarfega, and the 'rule of nine' when adjusting tappets in a cold, asbestos garage.
Nowadays, I spend more time tinkering with my computer, trying to get it to perform correctly, then I do with the car.
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I've got a massive tool kit built up over the years, torque wrenches, impact drivers, three socket sets, every combination of open ended and ring spanner you could care to mention. All bought at one time or another because they were needed for a particular job.
And apart from the odd simple job on the bike, I don't think I have used any of them for at least ten years. Even changing a headlight bulb on a modern car is a "remove the battery, figure out how to detatch some plastic cover designed for one of the safes on Fort Knox and permanantly disfigure your knuckles trying to unclip some little spring clip you can't even see", type of job which takes the best part of a morning.
Oh for my old Capri. New camshaft every month, but but still quicker than trying to get the fuel filter off on a modern diesel. (If you can even find the poxy thing, that is)
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Godamn it Mark, you always beat me to the pertinant comment. I still have visible scars on my hands, some of them still a nice shade of blue from the oil and grease trapped there.
Yes its great to tinker with your classic bike or car and revel in all those skills you learnt years ago, but when push comes to shove and you need a wagon available at 6:00am on a cold frosty monring to earn the money that bought your toy in the first place, then thats a different ball game.
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I started my motiring life in India with an old Hindustan Ambassador - (old Morris Oxford). Each weekend, I used to dismantle some part and learn how to put it back with a 80% certainty. If I goofed up, it would at least limp to the nearerst mechanic. Moved on to a VW Scirocco (carb) so could tune the old fashioned way. After the Pug 309 SRi, it was hands off ! My Honda only has a jack and wheel brace as the tool kit - implicit message from the manufacturer here !
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I changed the oil on my Xsara this morning and it went like a dream - I didn't even need an oil filter wrench to remove the filter. However, thanks to Citroen, the filter is mounted pointing upwards, so when you unscrew it used oil flows out and pours all over the engine. Bless 'em.
Also, refilling the engine is far easier if you remember to put the sump plug back in.... ;-)
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Much to my lasting shame, the oil changes on some of my earlier cars were performed over a drain conveniently located outside my house.
Good quality oil, mind you. No rubbish.
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"the oil changes on some of my earlier cars were performed over a drain conveniently located outside my house."
Away from my house, at night, in the case of the Lagonda. Two gallons of new oil with me and the third added back home.
The drain was conveniently operated by lifting a plug thing under the bonnet after loosening a locking ring; it just looked as if I were suffering a breakdown of my old car.
There was quite a lot to do on that bus, but one never had to get below, even to grease.
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Mark, your comments about lying in the snow on your back bring back memories of my misspent youth. I remember changing the engine on a Vauxhall cavalier with 3 of my mates during the Scottish winter! Outside. The A frame we were using had some problems so i had to stand on the suspension turretswith a screwdriver jammed in the pulley while they winched it. Hands were so numb that my fingers stopped working and we would chain smoke just to provide some warmth to the fingertips! Then it starts to get dark and you realise those "extra bits" that you left out 50 steps earlier are really required for the thing to work properly! Suddenly sitting in the house watching omnibus Eastenders doesnt seem like such a depressing thought anymore and you wonder why you agreed to help in the first place!
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Yes I do enjoy it, even though I should have grown out of it by now. Since performing a monumentally stupid manoeuvre with my old lawn mower last week, I trashed the engine, so I've been spannering Briggs & Stratton stuff this week.
I used to enjoy setting the tappets on my Citroen DS with the engine running; seemed more professional somehow. And, the clutch change on the same car where Mr Haynes advises, "remove the engine". Rubbish, you just jack up the engine until the mountings plead for mercy. I could go on ... Nowadays I would be nervous of doing the same level of work on our modern cars although if I do many more miles on my bike, I'll have the undoubted pleasure of shimming the 16 valve clearances.
However, I noticed the track rod ball joint clicking as I fought the Synergie into the yard a day or two ago, so that'll get replaced before MoT time next month (the track rod end, not the Synergie). Oh, and I don't do this wiping oily hands on the jeans stuff, it's overalls and green nitrile gloves for me.
Hawkeye
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Stranger in a strange land
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What we used to do!
Once, when I was in Zambia, I stopped to help a young lady in an old Beetle with a parted throttle cable. The inner of the Bowden cable had slipped out of the clamp on the throttle lever. She was impressively resourceful, trying to put it back together with a can opener. The cable had been worked on so often that the inner was broken off just too short to clamp. I lengthened it with a piece of stripped 2.5 mmsq electrical cable and a chocolate block terminal. To do that I had to remove the return spring. To get the return action I borrowed a flip flop from a dumb but pretty girl passenger, rolled it up and wedged it under the throttle pedal. The lady driver was duly impressed when it all worked. We then followed her from Mufulira to Kitwe to make sure she made it back to base.
Anybody who went on a journey without having a boot full of tools and seemingly worthless junk wasn't a serious motorist.
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For tha last five years I've had two cars, a regular runabout and a toy.
I've always done most of the work on the toy myself and enjoyed doing it. I've only done the occaisional bit of work on the regular runabouts when its something I knew I could comfortably finish in time, when it wasn't raining and it wasn't cold. The rest of the time I've just paid soemone else to fix it.
I still enjoy working on the toys, lots of fun keeping them workign "just right."
Anyone care to recommend a 1930's to 1950's roadster for about 10k (ish) that would be suitable for my next toy?
--
I read often, only post occasionally
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When I got my first car, a £150 Allegro in terible state, I did some reading and thought I should be good and get the oil changed. I decided to try to prove a point and do it myself -- if it was complicated, the blokes couldn't manage it anyway, I thought :)
Bought a big can of oil, borrowed a spanner, donned old clothes and gloves, laid out some sacks to soften the ground, climbed underneath car. Undid sump plug, and was v pleased with myself as I lay on my back with oil pouring out into old basin.
Unfortunately, it kept on pouring. The basin overflowed, and the oil flowed downhill.
Even more unfortunately, the car was parked facing downhill ... so by the time I escaped, I was covered in oil. It felt even worse when I realised that I would have to slide back in through the gunk to reattach the sump plug ... and then climb out in full view of the neighbours to try to clean the street.
As my gardening clothes went into the bin and I washed my hair in some hastily-borrowed swarfega, I swore that was the last time I was going under a car.
The boys teased me mercilessly for a week, and they all seemed to think that anybody everybody born knew that an Allegro had a ginormous oil sump, to feed the gearbox as well as the engine.
The final straw was when they pointed out that it was remarkably cheap to get the oil changed at a KwikFit ...
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this thread possibly explains why old land rovers sell so easily as they are so good to work on,I recently advertised an old landie as chassis rotten, body really rough,and the phone rang steady for 2 weeks,I dont have time now but theres great satisfaction knowing you have done the job yourself.
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For those of us who won't go near anything too technical on our cars in case we seriously affect their ability to stay on the road/in one piece/not on fire, there's an alternative these days - computer modding :) Rather than fiddling with feeler gauges and getting eyefuls of oil, we just tweak the bejesus out of these little beige (and nowawdays not so beige) boxes, always going for the tiny little mods that take it from pretty good to just right. Granted, testrunning a freshly built and tweaked PC for speed isn't exactly a substitute for tearing up a south pacific airfield in a classic 'stang, but you take what you can get.. ;)
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Kuang, still laughing, not been tearing up any SEPAC air bases lately, but that will come. I still have to get those wretched parts for the tranny from Lou-Anne or someone in OKC before I can get back to despoiling the environment.
Hillman, splendid tale. Life in the colonies etc. I once towed an elderly couple in a Morris 1100 (sorry, what I meant to say was I once towed a Morris 1100 with an elderly couple in it from Norseman to Ceduna on the Nullarbor before that sector was paved, I think it was over 300 miles) with a busted fan belt.
Alas none of us had had any panty-hose readily to hand to bodge up a temporary repair.
I'm surprised no one had pointed out why am I adjusted valve clearances on a '69 Mustang which everyone ought to know has hydraulic lifters. Well, she's got a hot cam from Messrs Crane and solid lifters drag racing. So there.
But my original point was that the pleasue of DIY is increasingly being denied us by the inscrutability of modern auto engineering. Soon my car will be like my fridge, just something I plug in and turn on.
Gosh my knuckles are sore.
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"hydraulic lifters"
It's always amused me that the favourite mods for big V-8's were ordinary tappets and manual gearboxes. What we would have given for nice quiet hydraulic tappets and a smooth slush-box...
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Yeah I remember what it was. it was that bit of asbestos string stuff that went in the back of the sump where it fits round the back main bearing. That was the pink fluffy dice that always leaked.
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I spent a couple of hours on Friday evening fruitlessly pushing at the union nut to try to drain the auto 'box.
I might have to give up... and pay somebody to do it.
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And the Lord alone knows how I would go about gapping the 3-electrode plugs that my car seems to prefer. Ermmmm... your starter for 10, chaps.
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