Practically Classics Forum

Time to do a bit more investigation into the EGR system issue we've been having with the Caddy.

A friend came over with a half decent diagnostic tool a while ago and we confirmed that there were two codes stored.

01283 - Motor for intake manifold flap (V157) - Sporadic - Open/short circuit to ground.

Also P1441 - EGR Valve (N18) Open circuit or short to ground...but that's because I have unplugged it as the system is plainly misbehaving at the moment. So that code is expected.

Not expecting it to make any difference but it seemed worth cleaning up the intake manifold throttle valve which I'm assuming is something to do with the EGR system as I can't see why else you would have a throttle on the intake path on a diesel. Well other than the flapper on the old Detroit 2-strokes - but that was an emergency stop feature rather than something used in normal day to day operation.

If anyone knows these SDI engines inside out I'd be curious to know what the theory of operation for this and the whole EGR etc is. I've virtually zero experience with diesels involving any real level of electronic control and even less with direct injection systems...so I'm interested to learn.

The one thing I do know though is that diesel EGR systems make a horrible mess...like this.



Intake manifold itself looks somewhat grim too compared to what I'm used to, but to be honest isn't that bad - I've seen cars where there's like a half inch thick crust on all sides.



I will probably pull this at some point and give it a thorough clean as I want to give the top of the engine a good clean and the inlet manifold is kind of in the way.

I noticed when pulling the throttle assembly that it rather conspicuously rattles which is rarely a good sign.

I wouldn't really call it clean but it's a whole lot better than it was.



Unsurprisingly absolutely no different. The once-per-second engine speed "twitch" is back, and huge clouds of unburned diesel out the back on light throttle.



Until I unplug the EGR solenoid, at which point it goes into whatever fallback mode it has, just leaves that intake throttle open and idles smoothly and stops smoking.

Given that we have a definite fault code stored for this assembly I think it's the first thing we need to try to sort. One other reason I pulled it out was to find a part number, helpfully stamped on the front...but I completely missed and thought it was underneath. Derp.



A quick look at the internet did turn up a few immediately matches.



Ouch.

A bit further digging turned up a (supposedly) good used one for £30. We'll try that first I think. If that doesn't at least change the behaviour a bit of further digging will be needed. This may end up being a "get a specialist involved" job at that point, though at least VWs are reasonably well catered for in that department.

For now the EGR solenoid has been unplugged again to eliminate the James Bond style smoke screen - though obviously that's not a long term solution and I'm not a fan of running like that anyway.

One of the very first thing that happens to virtually every car to arrive on my driveway is a decent clean...the poor Caddy was washed for the first time since I got it this afternoon, two and a half months and nearly 3000 miles in. I feel guilty!







Getting a bit of paint on the wheels and the front bumper will make a big difference I reckon.

I don't think areas like the door shuts had ever been cleaned since the day it left the factory. Still needs properly wiped down in there, but looks a lot better.







There's a lot of light scratches in the paint all over, but I'm not too bothered about that given my intention once the few rusty bits have been attended to I'd like to get it either wrapped or painted anyway. The Harlequin idea is still my favourite. I'm still really quite liking the little van too so that's still very much on the cards.

This was the first real test for the new pressure washer.



I really wish I'd bought this thing about 15 years sooner. So, so much better than the cheap electric ones. Aside from the power available from an 8hp petrol engine, just having 20 odd metres of hose to work with makes life so much easier. Also doesn't matter if the odd bit of spray goes towards it, I don't have to worry about extension cables getting wet and our overly twitchy RCD plunging half the house into darkness.

The onboard detergent tank is definitely on the list of things you don't need but is really nice to have too. Especially if cleaning something the size of the camper where just drowning the whole thing in snowfoam is basically step one after a rinse.

I'm glad to report that having blasted a substantial amount of moss and organic slime out of the seal between the windscreen pillar and driver's door closure that the annoying whistling noise at speed from that general area has vanished. Wish I'd done that *before* driving all the way to Glasgow and back...

A suggestion was made on another forum that the issue I was having with the Caddy could be down to that throttle unit having lost track of its home position so was closing too far, choking off too much of the air supply. That fit pretty well with the symptoms I was seeing. The tinge of blue to the smoke as well, as it's basically resulting in a shedload of vacuum being applied to both the EGR and PCV systems.

The suggestion to try in that case was to physically remove the throttle plate from the assembly...figured I'd nothing to lose really as it will be getting replaced anyway.

What do you know? It only went and worked. We now have a non-surging, non-smoking engine even with this connected back up.



Which is nice as it means the engine is running the correct timing curve again. It was really obvious that when it was disconnected that the injection timing was significantly altered, making the engine far more clattery at idle/light throttle. When the new throttle assembly arrives we'll see if it behaves as the designer intended.

As the weather was nice today I had TPA out again. Probably the most unusual thing to pop up on the ANPR camera used for charging in the Brunel Centre car park today.



It really does seem that having tweaked the mixture more towards the rich side of things has got rid of the occasional tendency for the car to spit back through the carb. That's two afternoons of use now without it happening once, and I'd usually have expected it to have done it at least once or twice in that time. Throttle response under very light load feels far more predictable too (though the CVT always makes it feel a bit "strange" compared to a car with a conventional drive setup). So I'm tentatively calling that a win I think.

Before I put the car back in the garage I decided to satisfy my curiosity and see what the timing is actually set to. For all the time this takes there's really no reason for me not to have checked this before.

Dab of paint marker to make the marks easier to see. Especially as there's a nick in the outer pulley from me having to cut off the old engine mount which does a good job of looking like a timing mark.



Then out with the timing light.

Our results show that at idle we have 15° advance.



By sheer fluke I managed to catch the marks aligned in that photo if you look closely.

Rising to a maximum of 43° at somewhere around 4000rpm. I didn't actually have the tach set up so that's based purely on Mark I Ear. That actual number is less critical anyway as I recalled the manual didn't actually give a total timing measurement anyway, but it was a good opportunity to make sure the centrifugal advance mechanism was working smoothly.



That 15° is rather a lot more advanced than the manual calls for...



Especially as the amendment there seems to suggest they were basically setting things up for zero advance...I know they were running on two star fuel, but even so...

15° sounds a reasonable number to me, though I've not a huge amount of experience messing with this sort of thing. Definitely sounds better than zero!

Not a lot I can do by way of adjustment anyway given the distributor housing is well seized into the crankcase, but nice to know the timing is in a sane looking ballpark. Given she seems to be running well I don't see much reason to worry about that bit of the system any further other than keeping tabs on maintaining it.

Can you spot what's different in this picture?



Probably not...I finally went and got the tracking reset so the steering wheel is now straight. This also means I'm not fighting continually with the indicator self cancelling mechanism every time I'm trying to turn right at a roundabout.

Thanks to VW's genius decision to position all the warning lights along the very bottom edge of the instrument panel that also meant I couldn't see any of them to the left of the brake warning light before when travelling straight ahead. Given that included things like the oil pressure and coolant temperature warnings I was somewhat enthusiastic to sort that. While I hope I never see those while driving, if they ever were to pop up I'd far rather see them than miss them.

This also gave me my first chance to get a proper look at the underside of the van. It's actually astonishingly fresh under there for the most part. The only area that's crusty unsurprisingly for a wheelchair conversion is the dropped floor section which needs some TLC.



Those rear axle brake hoses are looking quite crusty on the ferrules as well, kind of surprised they didn't get at least a mention on the last MOT.

Definitely need to get that rear area cleaned back and protected, but overall I'm quite happy with how she looked underneath.

The design of the modified exhaust is daft though. All of the hangers are just of the straight bar type rather than hooks, so there's nothing to stop it from sliding left to right - which is why it does clank against the floor sometimes, especially turning sharp left. Have to have a think about that somewhere down the line (as I'll probably want to drop the tailpipe at least to deal with the rust around it), just heating up and bending the hangers a little to put a bit of preload on it should do it I think.

Had the opportunity to have a very brief look over the Cavalier today. I'd not seen the car since the end of September if I remember rightly, so wanted to see how kind the winter hadn't been. I also hoped to get it running for a few minutes as I'd only had about 30 seconds run time before before we ran out of fuel.

Not too bad seemed to be the assessment. The interior I had expected to be mouldy and musty as I know there's a hole in the battery tray, but seemed absolutely fine.

The bulge in the nearside front tyre has evidently gone "pop" at some point over the winter so that wasn't holding air. Other three seem fine. Can't say I'm too surprised as it looked pretty nasty when I last saw it.

We dug the spare out for examination and it seems to be holding air just fine, so will get that swapped over shortly.

In retrieving the spare wheel I had to retract my comment about the interior having stayed surprisingly dry as the boot was a different story!



Well at least we know there aren't holes in the boot floor! It had been draining via the bung for the fuel line it looks like.

With bungs pushed out on both sides the water was convinced to vacate the premises.



Took an impressively long time to drain through two 1" holes.

With a bit of fresh fuel she started right up just fine, though we did find a fuel leak on the line from the tank to the plastic (nylon?) line under the car. Cutting back the end and stuffing it back on didn't sort it as the line has had it - attempting to do that resulted in me ending up wearing probably about a gallon of fuel. It tastes precisely as unpleasant as I remembered. Six hours, much scrubbing of hands, a hot shower and complete change of clothing and I still smell of petrol.

Will just need to replace that bit of flexible hose. All of it will want changing in due course anyway (including the plastic semi-rigid lines as I don't know what sort of plastic they are or whether they will play nicely with ethanol) so it's a good place to start.

Not properly checking for leaks after putting the first half a can of fuel in was a rookie mistake. Though in fairness I didn't realise the tank is tapped off the bottom until after I spotted the drip.

Didn't stop us being able to let the engine run for a bit though, just long enough for the thermostat to start opening - at which point I noted the (automatic) choke was still on a bit so blipped the throttle...and the engine cut out and refused to restart.

A little detective work quickly revealed that we had lost spark, apparently because the points were stuck open. Sadly I was out of time then so had to head for home. Right up till then though she seemed to be running happily, though quite tappety as I remembered from last time. Anyone remember if these have adjustable rockers, or do you need to faff about with shims?

I'll make a run over there in the next few days to get the wheel swapped over, replace that bit of dodgy fuel line and clean the points - that should be the car pretty much ready for transportation then I think.

I mean it could be moved now, but having four inflated tyres and being actually running always makes things easier.

Put together a bit of a to do/shopping list for the Cavalier. Very high level really at this point.

[] Sort brakes - unless they're hard to find figuring on just replacing both front calipers as at least one of them is thoroughly seized. Discs are shot too. I'll measure them, but there's a substantial lip so I'm guessing they're beyond refacing.

Rears I'll wait and see. Personally I've had pretty good luck so far with drums surviving disuse, but they'll need to come apart for inspection anyway.

All flexible lines will be changed, along with any rigid lines that look in any way suspect.

[] Replace all rubber and plastic fuel lines. No idea if the plastic section is ethanol safe, so it'll have to go.

[] Carb *at least* given a thorough clean.

[] Ignition system full service. We know the points are finicky as they caused headaches when it was being revived in the summer and have just dropped out on me again. It'll get an externally mounted polypropylene film condenser fitted like I did on the Invacar so I don't need to faff about with the modern automotive ones which last about five minutes.

[] Figure out where the ten gallons of so of water I just drained out of the boot got in and convince it to cut it out.

[] Try to come up with a more period correct looking solution for the centre console/gear lever as the bits of 80s Manta just look ridiculous.

[] Install a stereo. There's already been holes cut in the parcel shelf so I've no reason not to use them. Won't be anything daft don't worry.

[] Weld up the hole in the front chassis rail.

[] Replace missing exhaust tailpipe.

[] Try to get the worst dents out of the nearside doors. For the benefit of our neighbours that'll probably be one of the first things done.

[] Four new tyres (the spare actually looks fine, and having been stored in the boot hasn't been exposed to UV etc, so it will probably be left alone) as even though they generally look fine aside from the NSF they're 15 years old. Being probably the single most safety critical part of the car, just doesn't make sense to take chances.

[] Road test, see what that adds to the snagging list.

-- Borrow (or buy) a car roller so I can get at the underside better

[] Weld up the hole on the inner sill.

[] Thoroughly rust proof the underbody.

[] MOT.

... Hopefully enjoy driving it!


-- -- --

Got the new intake throttle body installed on the Caddy yesterday.



This is behaving very differently to the one I took off, so there was definitely something amiss with it. This sharply flips open/closed precisely in time with the EGR solenoid cycling - though you can only tell it's doing this if the intake hose is off. So the old one was definitely acting up. It used to close fully and then just twitch open very slightly (which was the surging you could hear). That's why it was smoking, as the air intake was basically being totally cut off.

With everything assembled as the factory intended we had a smooth idle and no smoke.

For reference, this part number looks to be used on a plethora of models in 1.9SDI, 1.9TDi and 2.0TDi versions.

Everything was then put back together properly and we went out for a longer test drive. Shown here just before I put the air intake hose back on for the second time as I got it misaligned the first time.



I did manage to launch the intake hose clip for the air filter end a good twenty or thirty feet straight up in the air while trying to compress it. I still hate those spring clips. Thankfully this one just went vertically up so I caught it. I did have a moment of panic where I thought it was going to land on the company car parked next to me.

That throttle plate sitting on the battery is definitely from the old throttle body, by the way...

Be interesting to see with it running the correct timing map without logging sporadic error codes etc if the economy changes at all, though it's managing mid 40s already which around here I consider to be pretty good anyway.

This arrived in the post this morning.



Given the state of the fasteners I opted to leave it soaking in penetrating oil for a few hours while I got on with other things.



After a few hours I returned to it. Took a lot of very careful backwards and forwards spinning of the nut to clean the threads, but it did come off without snapping or stripping anything.

What felt like an eternity huge of shaking and blowing through the housing with the air line then followed. There was a lot of crud floating around inside it and there's no way to dismantle it to really gain access. Eventually it stopped rattling or producing clouds of rust and was in a state I was happy enough to fit it.



Will want a bit of paint at some point but that's hardly a priority.

One last detail I needed to deal with was the support rod which should sit between a tab on the filter housing and an eye on the inlet manifold below it. My original filter didn't have this and it had rusted away to nothing on the replacement.

This doesn't need to be massively strong, it's mainly there I think to discourage the filter assembly from vibrating too much. After a bit of a rummage round the garage I opted for a bit of 10mm microbore copper pipe.



Couple of holes drilled to match the mounting points and that's a job done.







Engine bay looking a bit more like most people expect now.

Goes without saying that copper pipe isn't something to be used for anything structurally important, but for a small anti-vibration brace it'll be fine. The housing is clamped directly metal to metal on the carb, so it's not like there's any real degree of flex available anyway.

The support will get a coat of paint as well when I give the air cleaner housing a going over. I don't actually have any suitable paint in stock just now, so it'll just have to wait.

The end result though is the air cleaner assembly being robustly held in place, which is what we were after.

It was interesting to compare the original air cleaner to the "normal" Steyr Puch/Invacar one.

Well, *nearly* normal Steyr Puch one anyway. In pretty much all other applications the filter seems to face to the right rather than left. My guess as to why this was done is for packaging reasons. If it faced to the left it would make installation of the engine as a pre-assembled unit more difficult. The proximity of that brace I've got my fuel filter attached to would make changing the filter a real faff too.

The "stubby" filter I have does seem to be something of an anomaly though.



My gut feeling is that someone modified this housing sometime goodness only knows how many years ago. Possibly in the search for more power, given how much smaller the intake port on the original style housing is.





A lot of work to go to though...and if you're doing that why would you leave a ridge round the edge still shading half the filter element surface?

It's a lot of effort for someone to have gone to though. There is definitely at least one sign of differences to the standard filter assembly too, in the form of the filter retaining plate.

The original one I had (which made the successful break for freedom a few weeks ago) just sat in the centre of the air cleaner element, the outer edges were left exposed.



Whereas the one I just fitted completely covers the outer face of the filter element.



You can also see how much of the filter element was tucked away behind the housing before.

Would be really interesting to know if someone had altered the old filter housing, and if so to what end. We'll never know, but you have to wonder.

Suffice to say I *have* now fitted a jam-nut on the cleaner retaining bolt! Ensuring it isn't winding itself off will become part of the regular checks.

I will be curious to see if this makes any difference to behaviour when driving. Both in terms of power delivery and in helping calm the intake noise a bit as at speed that could be really quite obtrusive.

Time will tell I suppose!

As I've mentioned before something which had been bothering me on the Caddy for a while was that something in the vicinity of the aux belt was quite noisy. The belt while only a year old was also looking quite tired, with a lot of scuffing on the outer surface.



It actually looked quite a bit worse in person than the photo makes it look.

My main suspect was the tensioner, both because the pulley looked really badly rust pitted and because it seemed to get red hot when the engine was running.



There's also a very distinct groove worn where the belt runs. I'm pretty certain it was sitting cock eyed too and that's not just a trick of the camera. I could never quite decide looking at it in person.

A new tensioner assembly, idler pulley (I figured if you're pulling things apart and taking the belt off it just made sense to do both) and belt weren't expensive, and were available within an hour from my usual motor factor.



I did take a look at fitting it myself, but with how limited access is I could see it being the sort of job I'd run out of patience with in a hurry. Especially given how stupidly strong the spring is. So that was farmed out to a local garage that was recommended by a friend.

That was fitted earlier today, and that area looks a good deal more respectable now.



It's made things much quieter...I hadn't realised there was a distinct rattle coming from that area as well as the whiney hiss of an unhappy bearing. I forgot to grab the box from behind the passenger seat to actually take a look at the old parts to see how knackered they were, that'll have to wait until tomorrow.

This did present me with a slight logistical challenge though as my intended lift to get back from the garage became unavailable at quite short notice, and it's a place that's just a random industrial warehouse in the middle of a farm, so not exactly well connected to public transport.

Helpfully a friend had a car in there that was ready to pick up having just had some work done, and they suggested I just swap them over and we could figure out the automotive Tetris to get everyone and every car back in the right driveways at our leisure afterwards.

Some of you who've been reading my waffling for a while may remember this one.



It's the rules that you're not allowed to show a photo of this car without the interior too...





That dash is utterly bonkers but actually works really well in practice.

Despite being really rough in a few areas, I absolutely love this thing. It's that perfect blend of having a lovely wafty comfy ride and nice squidgy seats, yet somehow the moment you present it with a corner just seems to dig in and grip like hell. Really has a surprising turn of pace too if you call for it - even despite this one having lost the original twin carb setup during its long hibernation prior to being resurrected a couple of years ago.

This Lancia visited me a year or so back to try to address a running issue and to replace all the instrument panel illumination bulbs as only about 20% of them were working.

The illumination issue was easily sorted, but I never did fully get to the bottom of the running issue, which I had assumed to be carb related. I did get it running *better* but not right.

Turns out I had been a complete and utter idiot in fixating on the carb. For no particularly good reason my brain had just decided that someone must already have been through the ignition system, but the carb was known to have relatively recently been dragged out of a long hibernation in a box in a garage...yes, you guessed it...we had an ignition problem.

This was mostly fixed by someone working on the car after me. I noticed pretty much as soon as I set off from the garage today though that it still wasn't quite right. It would pull like a train if you gave it a decent press of the throttle, but was really lumpy on light throttle and was obviously still missing erratically at idle. Nevertheless, it was more than driveable...and I was quite enjoying wafting about for about an hour.

Right up until about 30 seconds away from home, at which point things went all Lancia.



The engine cut out. No stuttering, just off as though I'd turned the key. Conveniently I was heading downhill at the time so just rolled the last 30 seconds or so and slotted into the driveway under gravity.

My hunch based on how it felt was that we had lost spark. A quick check confirmed this hypothesis as correct. Absolutely nothing. The question of course then became *why* there wasn't any spark. Didn't take long for me to find a prime suspect as touching the ignition coil resulted in me just about losing my fingerprints as it was absolutely roasting hot (I hadn't left it sitting with the ignition on or anything). Time to grab a meter and see what it could tell us about the condition of the coil.

While it varies depending on the exact setup, as a rule the vast majority of 12V ignition coils will have a primary winding resistance of less than 5 ohms. For a basic go/no go test the exact number isn't important...just a number in that sort of ballpark.



Our suspect coil here had a primary resistance of 95K ohms...as in 95,000. That's rather a lot more than 5. Pretty conclusively dead.

It's no big secret that my garage is full of junk. As such I was pretty sure I still had a spare coil floating around from back from when I did the fuel injection conversion on the Lada (I mean, who doesn't?). Question was whether it would still be where I thought it was after three or four years...



Drumroll...



Yay!

No idea precisely how closely matched to the original it is, but they're both from cars with hall effect and amplifier based systems so should be close enough for testing purposes anyway. Given the shared Fiat DNA I'd be surprised if they're not pretty much a direct match anyway.

Cue a bit of improvisation to find a convenient bolt to secure it to (the secondary winding grounds through the case so that's important) for testing.



This had indeed restored spark, albeit not a very strong one. The car did now run, but very roughly. What was getting to the plugs seemed far worse than what we had from the coil though...so a bit more investigation was needed.

Few things were found to be an issue right off the bat.

Firstly, the distributor cap terminals aren't the right type for these HT leads.



Secondly there's clearly damage to one of the wiper contacts in the connector to the distributor pickup.



This doesn't actually seem to be affecting it, but if I can lay my hands on the bag of random scavenged connectors and wiring "misc" in the garage I'll replace this. While it's working now that sort of thing is just asking to be a liability longer term. Especially as it no longer securely clips together in addition to the damaged contact.

I very nearly wasted a lot of time then...but just caught myself and told myself to check the basics first...and actually pull the distributor cap off for a proper look. Just because it's nearly new doesn't mean it can't be faulty.

Anyone see something wrong with this picture?



Uuuh...



Well that won't be helping anything. There should be a spring loaded graphite contact post in the middle there, like the one in the original cap which helpfully was in the boot still.



Comparing the two caps side by side shows the new one to be a hair taller than the original (though it's possible that is just in the external moulding), and the new rotor arm was a good 1mm shorter from the contact point to tip.



The old cap also has the correct terminals to receive this type of HT lead.



Swapping these back over resulted in the car running the best I've seen so far, but still not right. Especially at lower engine speeds the spark is still slightly intermittent, and just generally seems weaker than I would expect from this type of system. I did try running without the coil ballast resistor in circuit and that actually made it worse if anything.

My suspicion now lays pretty evenly between the ignition amplifier module or the actual pickup in the distributor. HT leads are near new, I've verified we have solid power to the coil etc, so it's not something that simple.

We're going to try to track down a spare ignition module. Even if it's not guilty in this case it's a good thing to have a spare of.



Looks to be a Bosch 0 227 130 014 if I'm reading it right from the photo. Will have a look in better light tomorrow.



If it's not that it doesn't leave much but the distributor itself...which will be a barrel of laughs to change I'm sure as access to it is absolutely horrible.



So looks like it will be staying on for slightly longer than I'd originally planned. Just makes sense to get the parts sent here so I can try swapping out the ignition module at least.

If that and sorting that dodgy looking connector don't sort it, it'll likely be time for someone else or a garage to get involved...but that's a last resort. This car bested me once, there's a certain degree of pride (or stubbornness!) involved in being determined not to be beaten by it twice. Will update on how we get on as and when it happens.

Been a couple very little jobs done to make the Caddy a nicer place to be ticked off during the last few days.

The old floor mats were driving me mad as the driver's side one kept insistently ending up jammed under the accelerator.

Before:



Solution of course is to get some properly shaped ones made up.

After:





Could have gone with all sorts of lurid colours, but figured black and grey made most sense so it didn't clash with the rest of the interior.

Great service from Simply Car Mats, they really went out of their way to make sure I got the right parts - even down to getting in touch querying what type of retainers were needed as apparently it's unusual for a Caddy of this age not to have any. The grippy backing on the mats seems decent too, they've not shifted at all in the best part of a week.

Second on the list was sorting this.



Which has been making my teeth itch for months.



Much better. It's a very snug fit so I reckon will end up pulling itself off...for £5 though it was worth a shot.

While I had the gaiter off it made sense to grease up the gear selector linkage as it was a bit stiff. While doing that I did spot where the play in the linkage is...



I don't think there's meant to be daylight visible through the bush between the lever and selector rod. Will need to get one of those ordered in then.

Having greased the bushing where the selector rod goes through the bulkhead alone has made a massive difference to the gearchange, it's way, way lighter and smoother now. Doesn't creak going into reverse now either!

A replacement ignition amplifier has been ordered for the Trevi so I'll provide an update on that when that turns up - and hopefully a report of it being safely returned to the owner actually running properly for the first time since it was put back on the road a couple of years ago.

While on several occasions I've covered well over a hundred miles on a day in the Invacar, about 20 miles from home is about the furthest I've actually gone in one direction. That will finally change at the end of May when I'll be making a run over to Birmingham for another event which includes a sort of mini car show as part of the program. Will feel like quite a big achievement ticked off to get the first drive that's not just local errand running done. Good reason to give the car a decent once over first too given that whichever way I go will involve a decent amount of running on faster roads. Will most likely be up the A5, A45 then a few hundred yards of the M42 and I'm pretty much at the door. Wonder how deaf I'll be by the time I get there.

Had the opportunity to get a few things ticked off on the Cavalier today to bring it into a more user friendly state for transportation.

[] Replace the very flat nearside front wheel with the spare.

Old one off...



Good spare on. Job done.



Not including the walking the whole way back to the far end of the field and back because I forgot to pick the key up before walking up to the car, just over six minutes work.

The spare has highlighted that I appear to be missing chrome wheel rings from three other wheels. Sure they grow on trees these days...

[] Replace dissolved fuel line tail between the tank and the main nylon line to the front of the car. No photos of this as it was an awkward and messy job. Especially at the point where I made the discovery that a lot less of the fuel had leaked out of the tank since I left it a few weeks ago than I'd expected. Of course I found this out with my face as I pulled the line off under the car as I ended up wearing a significant amount of the contents of the tank. Again.

Congratulations to Vauxhall for having positioned that connection precisely so that the rear axle and exhaust are *precisely* in the way. Nevertheless, it only took a few minutes to do. Hardest part was getting the old hose tail off the tank as it had welded itself to the stub, though it did eventually release.

I thought I had a photo of the new line in place but my phone claims otherwise.

[] Non Running State. Last time I was at the car it seemed to be running quite well, right up to when I blipped the throttle at one point when it died. A quick bit of diagnosis revealed that we had no spark, and that the points were staying resolutely open circuit. However we were short on time and didn't have the screwdriver needed to get the distributor cap off, so just left it be.

I was initially quite worried as the screws on the distributor cap appeared to have been tightened up by the Incredible Hulk and one was threatening to round out on me. After no small amount of very careful perseverance I did get the cap off. Bit of a scrub of the points with some Emery cloth seemed to sort things out. Flicking the points to see if we got any sparkage proved two things. One, we did have spark. Two, that screwdriver was far less well insulated than I thought it was. That's the third time I've been belted by a HT system in the last 48 hours. The Trevi has got me twice so far!

That sorted she started first touch. Meant I was finally able to move the car (albeit very carefully as the only brakes I have are provided by a very poor handbrake on one wheel it seems). This has also highlighted that the clutch release bearing sounds distinctly unhappy. Guess I'll be doing or getting a clutch done in the not too distant future then.

This is assuming it's a sealed bearing and doesn't need to be periodically lubricated as per the old Skoda ones. Can't really see how you would access it for that though.

First time I've had a look at it not tucked into a corner.







That's very much the good side.



Standing back from the car it's more obvious that the damage to the doors is from the fork lift/loader that was used to move the car around when the previous storage location was being cleared. A shame as it is damage that could easily have been avoided, but on the flip side it's nothing too hard to fix. I'm just grateful it wasn't plucked out by a strap under the roof.

I also seem to be missing the "Vauxhall" text which should be between the tail lights. Hopefully that won't be too hard to track down. I imagine it should be easier than the more model-specific bits at least.

I let her run for a while to get up to temperature...top radiator hose started to get warm after a while...



The temperature gauge apparently thinks otherwise.

Now there are plenty of things I will happily do without in a car, but a working temperature gauge is not one of them. Thankfully 90 seconds of detective work under the bonnet found a stray wire with a spade terminal and a post for it to attach to on the thermostat housing. Result?



Much better!

I still love that dash design. I'm a sucker for anything which doesn't just have boring rectangular or square lights on the dash.



Very much looking forward to getting this home and starting to get properly stuck into recommissioning it.



Such a rarity these days despite being such a common sight in its day.

So stuff I'm missing, seems worth mentioning as I know these cars do have their fans and they're the sort of things someone might have floating around in a box in a shed in some cases.

[] Rear silencer.

[] NSR door rubbing strip.

[] 3 X Chrome wheel rings.

[] 4 X Wheel centre caps.

[] Vauxhall badging from rear panel.

Of course if I have the car in working order and the bugs shaken out by then the big question would be whether I took this or TPA to the FotU?

Probably still TPA really, as there's inevitably going to be at least a couple of other early Cavaliers there. Granted though there might be another couple of Invacars too given how they seem to have come out of the woodwork over the last couple of years!

TPA has been out quite a bit over the last week. Have a few photos...well just because I like documenting things.

A bunch of massive oversized nonsense, and one sensible little city car...











The replacement air cleaner has definitely reduced the induction noise a lot at speed. There's still quite a growl there, but it's nowhere near as boomy. I think any apparent performance increase is purely psychological as the car is quieter so it feels like you're maintaining the same speed with less effort just because of the improvement in refinement.

Oh, and I remembered to put the clock forward at long last.



I did have a bit of a wobble though, just as I was getting back home last time we were out it became obvious I was having a fuelling issue. Felt like she was generally running lean, and the accelerator pump definitely wasn't doing its job.

Followed some advice given by a few different folk and have ditched the glass and metal screen fuel filter. Several folks have expressed concern that it's likely to unscrew itself and I'll die in a blazing inferno at the side of the A5. Given all three components were fixed in place I don't see how it could unscrew itself, but a paper element one definitely will do a better job of filtration, so probably for the best. Looks less blingy too.



Have tried yet another provider, let's see if this one doesn't fall apart internally like the last two.

Place your bets...

Someone asked where it was that I'd got my emergency toolkit stashed these days. Answer is right here.





That bag contains a spare CVT belt, the tools needed to change it, and selection of basic tools. There's a really convenient little void down there that it sits securely in which isn't wasting any valuable actual storage in the car.

The same space on the nearside is where the heater booster fan I plan to fit one day will go.

I really do need to do something about the engine bay splash guards at some point.



Thankfully these aren't critical to the correct operation of the cooling system like one an air cooled VW at least, but they do want patching up. Actually replacing them is an engine out job so that ain't happening in the near future - plus good tinware is really hard to come by so I'd like need to make it from scratch.

I had opportunity to investigate the fuelling issue properly today, especially as I wanted to pull the air cleaner housing off for painting anyway. Didn't take long to figure out the issue...

Remember a couple of weeks ago I had the carb apart to change a couple of gaskets? Yeah... apparently I never properly screwed the top cover back onto the carb. Oops.

Pure dumb user error that one.

Oh well, at least it was a simple fix!

Air cleaner has had a splash of etch primer...



Then a couple of coats of hammered black topcoat.



Stuff in this engine bay gets dusty in a hurry because of the amount of airflow through it, so it'll dull down to being less in your face shiny pretty quickly.

Hopefully get it refitted tomorrow. Not sure if I'll have time to get a test run done to see if screwing the carb back together has sorted my fuelling issues or not. Sadly the school is back from the holiday now so it's back to being a nightmare to try to find enough room to get into or out of the garage.