Fix one, create a load more.... PROBLEMS....

ARG...

I decided to find out why my rear speakers would not work, and to replace a blow front speaker..

After taking half the dash appart I found the speaker outputs from the amp and they were fine, so I checked at the rear speakers themsefls and found that the speakers were DUD....

Anyway, I replaced 2 faulty dash bulbs so that was that fixed...

Next I looked at the speaker, I had to Muller it to get it out, and none of my spare speakers was a direct fit... So that is wedged in at the moment.

I then discovered my CD and Stalk was nwo dead.... BUMMA... Dash will have to come appart again...

And then next day my indicators have packed up!! Marvelous as I was on a Scorpio meet 120 miles from home...

Dam thing...

Fixing problems...

The scorpio continues to keep me busy in my spare time...

I replaced the tailgate release motor last weekdn and happily that has cured that problem and I can open the car from the remote :D, I also strapped up a loose exhaust shield that was dragging.. And replaced a dodgy lambda sensor. ( that code has now cleared... )

This weekend I sold the horrid 15" wheels to another guy from the scorpio forum.. He got about £200 of tyres with them!!

www.fordscorpio.co.uk

so spent half the day dropping them off,

I then fitted a replacement wiper stalk so I now have
wash on front and back!

I also continue to investigate the cause of my rough idle, I did find a melted vacume hose which I have replaced. But there is still a problem and I still suspec a vacume leack on the EGR and EVAP systems...

Otherwise I am still relaly enjoying the car. with over 2K covered in 7 weeks.

Getting down to the volov dregs now.. I have sold over £2K worth of parts and recon I can squeeeeze anotehr £500 if I am lucky. Lots of auctions runnign now...

Rob

A busy week!

It's been a busy week.

I sold one of my 24V Granada engines on saturday in exchange for some new alloys for the Scorpio, it looks much better but the tyres make it sit 2cm lower and the exhuast is scraping...

I also finished taking the volvo to bits and today ( Wednesday ) it's off to the scrapper..

Lot's of parts now on auction and stuff is selling well.. On course for a reasonable return on investment.. Leather interior was collected :) and hopefully someone is up for the gearbox on sunday...

Went to Gateshead in the Scorpio and it was very well behaved. Going back across on saturday to pick up a spare 24V Scorpio engine!!

So the drive is now free :)

Rob

LPG Cheep Motoring.

Being the kind of person that likes to have power on tap, I try and go for the most powerful car in the range.

The volvo T5, Scorpio 24V, etc..

Needles to say power requires fule...

And the 24V uses this in abundance.

Hence I am looking at LPG conversions, modern systems use closed loop multipoint injection and work very well. A modes drop in MPG is usualy expected but with fule being half the price I would be looking at an effective 40MPG urban as a cost comparison.... COOL!

It would take me about 2 years to break even, but one would be more inclined to use the car knowing the costs were lower and every mile is a mile twords saving money.

Expected conversion cost is likly to be £1200.

I just need to get the car running corectly on petrol before even thinking seriously about letting the garage mess with it.

This is my local supplier.

http://www.autogascumbria.co.uk/

OBD-2

I have been playing with OBD2 ( on board Diagnostics 2 ) which is a standard that has been adopted by the majority of motor manafactureres for diagnosing faults in automotive engine/abs and asociated management systems.

I Purchased a lead and software from http://www.obd-2.com/ ( I got the three way lead )

First code read showed 4 DTC ( diagnostic Trouble codes ) which I cleared without paying much attention to them.

Next day I read the codes again and found the code for Bank1 Lambda 2 had a heater problem... Well I have yet to investigate this, or pull any further codes.. But at the very least I have saved £25-£50 already!!

COOL!!

Update as of today. 27/9/6

Ok so I am actualy giving updates!!!

Smoky 4x4: This has now gone to Nathan from the FSOC, he was going to just buy the old engine from the 2.0i Ghia but struggled to get up due to weather.. And that prompeted his short quest for running gear to convert his car to 4x4.... Hence 2 weeks later he cam up and drove her away to meet her maker.... Various parts will be returning to help finish the Sapphire project.

Volvo: Over £1100 worht of parts have now gone which is great. Maximum return would now be in he region of £2400 which would be wonderful but every penny is gr8 at the moment. Final stripping takes place this weekend with a view to the scrap man taking away the shell on monday....

Scorpio: Comming up to one month of ownership and I am fairly happy with the car, 1500K under the belt. One major annoyance is that it has a very poor idle. I have done a couple of things to sort this ( cleaned MAF, ISCV ) but it's still poor. Diagnostic codes don't show much so a bit more investigation will be needed.

Scorchhhpiooooooooo

I have done it,

Gone and bought the car I should have done when i bought the Volvo...

Ok, the volvo is in bits and selling nicely... Projections are in the region of £1500-£1700 return. Which is a Bangernomical loss of about £300 so not too bad.

Anyway, I started tentativly looking for a Scorpio 24V estate.

Imediatly I found an R-Reg one 40 miles away in auto trader, 1 owner, 90k, GR8!!!

SOLD :(

So onto ebay.. Nowt.

So I was already to save up for a few months to get a Good 24V l8 model.

Then it croppe dup on ebay. 1995 24V estate, and it was within walking distance ( literally!.. )

All the toys... More details to come!

Volvo update..

I fitted a turbo exhaust housing blanked off to test the engien without the turbo core, after 15minutes the car was smoking again... So with the turbo rulled out the only option was either worn rings or stems...

So now I have to HAUL the engine out and put the hopefully good one in...

Times runnign out though, the wife wants it for a trip at the end of september.

Rob

Update... Aug 10th...

Well I haev had the XR4x4 for nearly 3 months... and done something like 1700 miles to date.. 700 was done on a trip to Fort William and SKy.

It's driving OK, the THROB at 60MPH is getting annoying...

I had to replace the front outer CV boot last week, and ended up having to drill out the bottom hub pinch bolt.. Only to find I did nto need to undoo it!!!

I also replaced the lock set so 1 key now does everything appart form the boot ( I can't be botherd with that at the moment!! )

It's doing well in the Miles/£ stakes..

Still looks like crap though...

Almost all of the 2.0i Ghia has now gone. Something in the region of £400 was recouped from the sale of parts.. which means that it cost me something like £20 to do 3700 miles!!! BARGIN!

I am always on the lookout for another bargin though....

The volvo is needed back on the road, but trying to get her started the other day was fruitless... The fule rail is now in bits and the battery is on charge!

Rob

The Blue Ghia.... It's Fate...

Well today we began our trip back from holiday in Devon. so far we had covered about 700 miles during the holiday, mixed driving.....

Then 30 miles into the return leg, the propshaft rubber coupling started to break up....

At 7:40am we pulled into cullompton services and called the AA...

At 9:15 the AA arived. After about half an hour trying to obtain the part ( yeah some chance!! ) they called for recovery and said it would be about an hour.

At 11:40 the recovery truck arrived, had to unload, have a break and then load us up..

Approximatly 12:30 we were on our way. we were told that they would ring ahead to arange an onward transfer....

Appx 13:30 call comes in to collect another vehicle at the next services says it will only take five mins to hook up.. Screen shows Dewoo Musso... ( I query that it's a 4x4 and will need to go on the flat bed. ) Driver struggles to find car until I pint it out.

13:40 Unload Sierra, query the fact that
1) It shoud not be spec lifted by the front wheels as it's an RWD auto.
2) It should not be running on the rear whels as the prop may fail...

AA Mull this over, check the details and we decide to do a rear wheel suspended tow.

14:15... Finaly on our way again.

15:40.. Arive at Birmingham services expecting transfer. Told it should be there soon. Told again at 4pm within the hour.

4:30pm.. AA rig to say recovery will be with us by 5:20pm

5:07pm Recovery rig arrives.

5:18pm on our way again..

8:30pm Arive home at Carlisle... and Unload....


BLOOMIN NACKERED!


So she was up for sale, now not the case. I think it's going to be broken for spares.

Watch this space...

K202 FJN was another EBAY find....

I was not in any particular need for another car at the time, but this was on ebay and only 100 miles away. Couple of months tax and MOT to december.

I was not that attatched to the 2.0i Ghia Sierra, so this looked like a good alternative.

£126.02 won the auction.
£40 got me and Richard ( again ) over to York for the collection.

I was a bit dissapointed by the condition of the bodywork, it had been described as GOOD, yet the drivers door had been damaged by a break in, the boned had more ripples than the Atlantic and the car was devoide of ~40% of the laquer!!!

It drove nicely though, and is the best Twincam I have owned ( yes I know I have said twice before that I would never have another twincam!!! )

She's clocked up about 500 Miles so far.

2.0 Ghia Auto...

Well. Times were hard, the Volvo's MOT was just about up and there was not much chance of getting her fixed in the near future.

The capri was put up for sale to raise some funds. I was offered this in exchange for the capri.

1992 2.0 Auto Ghia, short MOT but a few month tax..

First impressions on arival were a bit so so... But after a week of driving I was fairly happy with the deal. It needed an exhaust and the brakes were supposedly in need of attention.

That was sorted for the MOT and it passed with no problems.. The car seems to be going quite well.

The bodywork has a number of large panel defects which is a shame, I unfortunatly added to them when I caught the drivers door on the gate post and bent the hinges..

Overall it's not bad.. It's solid underneath and the engine is smoke free and pulls ok. Autobox is a bit vauge sometimes though.

15 405 STDT

Why?

Why?

Well it was local, looked good, was cheep, and suposedly nneded very little for the MOT.

I had always liked the 405, ever since a motor show at the GMEX in manchester. Along with the new Vitara, Mini ERA turbo and other stuff there was a Peugot Mi16 4x4.. It looked fantastic..

So a smart looking 405 tempted me.

£94 bought this 1993 STDT in black, it's actualy quite a nice car overall. But the MOT was worse than I had been told. I have spent the time and money sorting most of the problems. It was intended that the car would fill the gap whislt the Volvo 850 was off the road, but then ( car 16 ) came up.. And that's that.. I jsut have to get rid of the car now!!

UPDATE!!!!
------------

YAY! the 405 is gone, I got £75 in the end which was a loss of £119 OUCH! but I still have the stereo and a wheel trim to flog from it.

Just glad it's gone.

The Mk3 Capri

The MK3 Crapi.

Bought in May 2005 for £50, it had no front wings, rot in the strut top mounts, no bumpers and would rather stall than rev.
Sourcing wings was more trouble than I had imagined. But they turned up in the end and after a few short weekends worth of work the car was looking solid. Then interest and bad wether got the better of us..

I gave it a new set of ignition componenets and set the timing up and it ran a lot better, the car was bolted back together... And then my mate decided he needed his garage back to put a MK1 golf in..

A few weeks later the car went to a new owner in exchange for another Sierra ( Car 15 ). And so my brief foray into Capri ownership was over, I had only driven it about 50 yards!

13 The 850 T5

At 3 months old Our baby boy was taking up a lot of space, cramped trips got me thinking about a large family estate. It had to be big enugh to swallow the load, powerfull enugh to be fun, and rearwheel drive.

Option 1) Ford Scorpio 24V Cosworth. Looks odd on the outside but was a great all round car.

Option 2) Vauxhall Omega 24V, Great cars but pricy and tales of cambelt issues..

Option 3) Audi A6 (100) Avant V6. Great cars but costly..


So we went away on holiday for a week crammed into the sierra, I looked at every passing garage trying to spot a Scorpio but to no avail...

We got back from holiday and I was imediatly on the NET ready to commit a couple of grand to a late Scorpio...

Then it happend.. I spotted a Volvo 850 T5 on ebay that was cheap...

Ok, it's front wheel drive, but it's a volvo so should fulfill the other catagories...

It was soon sitting on my drive...

12 The Black 2.0 4x4

The problems with the XR4i meant that I was on the lookout quickly for another family car. Ebay once again came to the rescue....

A 1993 Black XR4x4 2.0 ( Yes I had vowed never to own another 2.0 ) was on in the next town. I got outbid, but an email to the vendor resulted in the car being dropped off the next day ( baby toby was only 2 days old! )

It looked clean apart from the rear arches, had all the toys late cars had, drove nicely, etc... £190 well spent... I put my cosworth wheels on, and my nice cosworth leather steerng wheel to tart it up a little...

Well I spent £190........

Alarm bells started ringing when the water level kept dropping, my heart sank. This time i decided that a convertion was too much work, the car was needed. I bought the necessary parts from Fraud, and asked a freind if he colud help ( he likes his twinks ) , I set to work without him as he was commig down from glasgow ( 100m ) ... And was just about to start puttig it back together when Neil turned up, good job too! he took a look at the Cylinder head and spotted the tiny crack that was the cause of the problems.. We had a spare head, but still struggled to get it back together, tensioner was loose, thermo housing snapped, rocker cover leaked, PCV was lose... But in the end it all went back together...

The car ran better, used virtualy no water but smoked on startup still ( worn rings I guess ) but overall was useable.

Then I decided it was too small for the family and it had to go, fortunatly it had reached my theoretical Value For Money which is 10 Miles for every £1 spent... I had Spen ~£300 and covered 3000 miles..

Even more fortunatly, someone in the North East wanted it's diff for his Locost Kit car. And agreed to buy the whole car for £250.. I wanted some of the trim off the car so agreed on a price of £225 delivered.

I had no time to remove what I needed before setting off, It's amazing how much of a sierra interior can be removed whilst driving............

And it was gone!

11 The XR4i

Initialy I was going to purchase just the engine from this car.

But then, I said to the wife...

"I have bought another engine, it's comming with a few other spare parts too!" AHHEMMMM

This 1983 XR4i had been converted to 2.9 TwinTurbo ( I wanted just the engine realy ). Unfortunatly the standard XR4i Type 9 gearbox was not up to the task and had blown up.

The car looked great, the interior was super and the body looked fairly good and it sounded AWESOM... However Shortly before delivery, I had made up my mind to forget teh TwinTurbo route for my project and instead had a 24V engine winging it's way to me..

I found a buyer for the Turbo engine, hauled it out and sent it on it's merry way to Luke..

The 24V engine came with a cheap 12V too... That found it's way into the 4i and I had a running Driveable 4i :) cool...

The Blue twincam was sold, and the 4i was pressed into service, just a week or so before my Son was born.

One thing I forgot was the gearbox top cover, I had been told it would be an idea to inspect the box before fitting, but I forgot to do up the top cover bolts...... Fortunatly no damage was done.


Then on the way to visit the newborne the oil light started to flicker..... OH F....

The car was taken off the road, the new Black 4x4 bought....

I finaly sold the car to a M8 ( TAPS ) for £40 excluding the wheels... he's converting it to 24V THUNDER SALOON replica.

Unfortunatly the car appears to have hidden it's rot well, and Tpas is finding more than either of us envisaged! Still it's got a great interior, and is relativly solid.

So my 4i foray was over.

Blue TC2

Read Part 1


So.

It was all physicaly togehter.

Electricly I had to splcie together the 2.0 loom plugs and the 2.9 engine loom. This was made more difficult due to my official diagrams not covering the 1990 spec cars. A day sitting on the kitchen floor had it all done and bound with medical tape.

With that fitted up it was time to start it.... Nothing not a squeek. even directly trying the starter did not seem to work. My m8 from Glasgow turned up and after a few bluffs we had the starter turning with a jumper wire and the engine fired and ran great. But we still could not get it to start on the key. Then neil checked one of the loom plugs I had disgarded and it had an extra pin that I had not used. This turned out to be the starter inhibitor not present on the older cars.

So it now fired and ran, but only once per ECU power up?????? That was finaly traced to a power feed that need not have been there, no idea why but once gone it started evey time.

Then there was the road test, initialy it seemed good. The revcounter was still the 2.0 4pot one so was overreading. But otherwise the car flew! it was using the shorter ratio 2.0 diffs so was much quicker off the mark than the standard 2.9.

There was a noise from the front drive, I was going to have to fix the front cross shaft mentioned earlier.... That required the sump comming off and replaced. That was duley done ( a bit of a pig of a job ) but by now I was starting to loose interest in the old girl.

With the next car on the driveway an a question "Do you wana sell one m8" saw the days of the TerribleTwincam numbered. Within a week it was gone to a fellow round the corner, and he sold it on a couple of months later... Where is she now? Probably a baked been tin.

And that was that one. I lost ~£100ish on it.... I vowed never to have another twincam.

The Blue Twincam....

CAR 10

I won this one on ebay, after getting rid of my Black 2.9 4x4 (CAR 7) I had a couple of months off car ownership.. Then this cuaght my eye in Lancashire. 1990 2.0DOHC Xr4x4, Spax Suspension, rear RS valance etc... Looked nice.

£400 and a trip with my M8 ( listening to hitchhikers guide to the galaxy on tape... ) to Lancashire saw it purchased.. It looked good, it seemed to drive ok. It had a years MOT! So things looked promising. 180K+ on the clock did not overley worry me.

Troubles were on the horizon though...

First thing I noticed was a bit of smoke on start up, and then the water was dropping in the headder tank. Things were looking bleak for the head/head gasket. Then I noticed a large hole in the drivers side sill, and one behind the front wheel on the inner wing. How did it pass an MOT? A question I asked the vendor, and one that he was a little off hand about! And he denied knowing any problems with water loss and the acution not mentioning it.

I got nowhere trying to chase the vendor, so welded up the holes and started to draw up plans. New head gasket? or new engine?

Meanwhile, there was a chirping tapping comming from the front end.. Similar to on (Car 7)

The chirping was from the front propshaft, confirmed when the engine was pulled out. After many conversations and the mention of cracked heads, timing chains, ya ya ya ya ya... I decided the best course of action was to put in the 2.9V6 from ( CAR 6 )

After a bit of fetteling and a clean up the lump was ready.


As you can see there is a fair amount of space without a twincam engine in there. Plenty for the V6!

Physicaly the engine went in without a major hitch, I did shatter the transmission cross-shaft retaining ring, which would later come back to haunt me.

But everything else went to plan, the Ashley exhaust was crap fitting, and the prop was a nightmare but otherwise! :)

Next installment!

The Grey bitsa 2.9

F384 FRH

Noisy?

I should says so!

Originaly offered on Interford by one of the users for £200 with a nice stainless exhaust, I was tempted but had not realy got the space.

However, when he then said £0 but without the exhaust... I was on it like a dog on heat.

I had a spare exhaust so off Me and M8 Richard went to find the place in South Shiled.

We turned up and imediatly set about fixing up the exhaust, unfortunatly the downpipe studs on the passenger manifold had sheared... So that made it impossible to get that pipe to bolt up properly and eventualy was held in place by stainless steel ties.

We then put the dash back together as that had been partialy taken appart, refitted the wiper stalk but had not indicator stalk.

Then we tried to start it, which did not happen at first, actualy took about 30 minutes to get it going.. As i said LOUD! the leaxing exhuast was very loud.

I then had to drive it the 60 miles home without trying to draw too much attention ( the car was safe, just not quite how a Police man would want it to be though).

The noise was not to bad on the flat open roads, but going up hill was deffaning....

Made it home safe and sound though.

I put a replacement manifold on, sorted the exhaust reasonably and fitted the rest of the car back together.

It was free due to extensive rot in all the doors, but the shell was very good.

I was then in a selling mood and got £185 for it!

4 weeks of ownership payed off!!