Practically Classics Forum

TerryG wrote:Ford did that with my focus as I have personal plates on it......

So that's why they do that? No, not having that, amusing though the notion is!
My Glof was (and still is pending the outcome of an auction I have on spotcher) on plates as issued in their natural order to the dealer. I did have XJR40 (owned since it was the original issue on my first car, a January 1963 Austin A40 that was just another old nail at the time - 1982) on the Smart for a short time as I'd been defrauded out of it and had a point to make - when I won back the right to use it - to the bloke who'd been driving about illegally with it on his Volvo 760, but that was a glued on one and the dealer fitted it by actually measuring things before applying the plate to the lower tailgate. Shame they made an arse feathers of the rest of the work they were called upon to do, but..

I bought my plates when I was 18 and they contain the sort of phrase you would expect to hear from a teenager. If I was offered enough money for them I would sell them. For the time being they are firmly attached (with the factory mountings) to the car in question.

If I could have any private plate on my Princess, it would probably be W3DGE. Last I checked it wasn't available.... just found out that's because it's on a Range Rover Sport, I guess they are using it for the other meaning of the word 'wedge'.

WED6E - BMW 330
WED63 - AVAILABLE
WED9E - TVR 450SE
WED93 - AVAILABLE
CHE35E - Land Rover Discovery

You have some options available

terry i want to see your plate now....

Rich you pervert!

W3DGE, even if it were available, wouldn't - unfortunately - be transferable to the Princess as the spoilsports won't let us use registration marks that are newer than the vehicle to which they're to be transferred.
Even if that weren't the case, you'd probably have to wrestle a TR7 owner for it.
And now, that famous scene with the late Oliver Reed and Alan Bates wrestling naked in front of a roaring fire has just entered my mind.

I'm worried about the inside of your mind...

Today, a small job got a bit out of hand.  I only meant to fit the new rear light clusters, but when I put them on I found that the tailgate light clusters looked really dingy so they had to come off too so I could clean them, and then I found I was dismantling the whole tailgate to get at everything properly.
 

 
While I was in the tailgate I determined to sort the membrane out which had been letting water in where the original seal had failed.  Easy enough to do with a bit of all-purpose glue which is all I had to hand.

 
Rebuilt all the lights and interior trim - after removing many dog hairs, more fool me for putting a shedding German Shepherd in the boot - and it looked a fair bit better... until I noticed the number plate now looked terrible.  So I carefully peeled back the vinyl that had bubbled and trapped dirt, cleaned it out as best I could and reglued it before putting the plate back on the car.  The central black trim isn't a separate piece as I'd expected, Heuliez/Citroen just masked that bit off and didn't paint it.

 
I didn't expect the new outer lenses to make much difference, but in person they really do and I'm really pleased I decided to do them.  Note also the roof rack is now fitted, it's missing a couple of small trim items that I'd like to source eventually but it's perfectly functional as a roof rack and has, amazingly, been complimented as looking a bit posh.

 
Now it's had chance to cure and harden a bit, the repair to the dent on the rear quarter is looking much more invisible.  It needs a bit of fine work to see if I just need more paint or the finest skim of filler known to man to make it look spot on.  The arch and bumper too look much better now the paint has 'settled' and I'm really pleased I decided to sort this out.

 

 

 
 
I've been considering taking the craft heat-gun to the rear corner of the bumper trim to see if a bit of heat will help it pop back into shape in the same way you can do it with metal damage.  Normally a material has a memory so I'd say there's a chance it'll work.
 
It's been very nice to actually get compliments on this car.  I'm doing nothing I haven't done on any of my other cars but this is a much better point to start from and it gives me the warm fuzzies to get nice comments on a car I wasn't even sure I was keeping at one point.

xantia is looking good, had a few of the 2.0 HDi ones in the past which were really good cars.

Kev

I think this one will be much nicer when the clutch is sorted, I reckon that's the one thing making it a bit annoying to drive at times.

In further anally retentive sorting, I had a bit more of a go at the rear of the Xantia, this time on the other arch. One of the scruffy plastic/vinyl stonechip things peeled off which helped me clean off the loose paint and small rust scab hiding underneath before giving it a fresh coat of rust treater, primer and top coat. As a result the sill now looks appalling so I really must get around to getting that cut back to clean paint.



Part of the reason the back of the sill is so discoloured is rust staining from the usual Xantia rot spot. After cleaning up the area it was found to be more solid than expected with a much smaller patch required to fix the issue. There's solid metal hiding under the hole in the outer skin which is promising, and no crunchy noises. For now it's been given the same treatment as the arch until such a time as I can get it welded. The welder I was kindly given has already proven its worth, but the Xantia is now in the queue until it is free to use again.


A few days ago we removed the fuel filler flap so I could try and find the drain hole. This was happily easily done and soon cleared out with a length of net curtain wire. You can just make it out the right of this image. It was all gunged up with road muck and veg oil but now drains properly.


Cleaned up the pocket as best as I could as well as the filler flap and that looks a lot better as well as being a bit nicer to handle. Here’s the before…


…and the after.