So after splitting my cars up from one thread to save it getting messy, Here's the full story so far on the diesel as fingers cross this should be having the most done to it over the next year or so..
If ya into big power and BHP's.... look away now! If you are a tight a**e skinflit like me! This might be right up your street!
FIrsty the starting point! Was a thread on another forum that basicly said "Up for grabs is a 1990 Sierra TD with 2 months tax and test, messy car, cheap, come get it this weekend or it gets weighed in, Cheap!" He gave no price, so I dropped him a PM, Turns out he only wanted £50 for the car! That was it, sold on the spot! So that coming saturday I headed to get it! All I really knew other than the above was the full reg (so I could insure it) and it was red! While on the way there the seller texts me two pics of the car under the heading "i told u it was no oil painting"
Strange as it sounds. I thought it looked just the ticket! Loved it! Missing hubcap n all!
So I get there, Freezing morning! Call the guy to say i'd arived (was at his work place, Royal mail depo). So he drives it out! I check the oil, water, tyres and hand over the cash and do the whatnots on the logbook and off I drive! My god it was slow! I don't think he'd done over 30 in the thing! But the couple of hours on the motorway did it good... but the speedo was out! GPS was reading 76 at this point!
So anyway, Now it's mine, as with all new toys I get digging see what I can find....
NOTE the hose clip for later on!!!
Ya don't get that with a brand new motor!
Has just inder 300k miles on the clock (car used to minicab around Essex most of it's life). Guy says engine was rebuilt @ 248k miles (i'll come to that later). 2 brand new tyres and 2 very good tyres! Needed a new rad top hose and fan switch. Which I had to get from ford cause second hand Sierra TD's are thin on the ground! Rad cap and oil cap needed changing couldnt work out why it kept preasurising the cooling system (come to that later). Has some front end damage...
But i've already fitted a new bonnet I got from a breaker that's more or less same colour (see last pics). Next year I'm getting the n/s wing changed and whole front end sprayed as u can see on some of the pics the o/s wing has a bad paint match on the wing so i'll get that done too. Cossie grille I got off a mate painted and fitted too (just with rattle cans for now see last pics) get that done properly too. Other than that just general age damage u'd expect from a 300,000mile 18 year old ex minicab. Worse of all was the interior.... was in a real bad way!
Does run on Bio-diesel and Veggie oil if required!
So I cleaned it up (with lots of cutting paste). Stuck on some proper ford trims I had lying around and used it til the MOT!
Then came the DREADED mot! Well that wasnt to bad, Other than the cost of the MOT it cost me £33 to pass, Two brake hoses and a CV boot! He even commented on how good it was on the exhuast gasses (cause he didnt know what i'd got in the tank). He also missed a big wiring fault which i'll come to in a bit!
THEN, A problem started... diesel leaking around injector number 1, So I changed the return hose... not that, tightened the injector and the rail, not that! Baffeled! Til one day Karen spoted it bubbling up around the HEADBOLT! Always looked sus, u can see it stand out a mile in this pic....
So I pulled it out.....
BODGE TASTIC! So I ordered new bolts.... fitted one (had to buy a set). Then it was a waiting game to see if i'd managed to save the head gasket or not! Well it's been almost 6500 miles since then with no problems so I think i'm safe! This also stopped the cooling system preasurising that I mentioned above! WIN! At this point I also fixed the faulty rev counter (lose wire) and the temp gauge not working (temp sender) although it now has the wrong one in. At least I get a rough idea of what it's upto! Then the boostleak... this pipe, to the fuelpump, Broke away from inside the manifold so had that re-pressed at a local garage for free
THEN, First real issue! A dodgy batch of Bio-diesel caused my fuel tank to preasurise! No big deal, Exept it blew the pipe off for the diesel return from the pump! No big deal, Happened just as I pulled on the garage for some real diesel and only leaked with the engine running so only lost about 2L. I managed to do it at the side of the garage with a 50p hose clip, the same hoseclip that was in the car when I brought it! Ideal!! But wrecked my t-shirt the smell of diesel!
Then booked the car in with an auto elecy to sort out my headlights! Long winded and complex fault with fullbeam flash! Basicly, melted fuse board! Quick modification to that (inline fuses) and that was that!
Next job was a blown foglamp. U'd think changing a bulb would be easy... no! Torx screws.... into alloy.... right down low at the front of the car! Needless to say they were stuck solid! So off with those, Slap some silly spot lights on I had lying around I got for free :lol:
Pure genius. Never liked them from the moment I fitted them, So I tollerated them to cover the holes til I got more proper lights!
Next came the joke Pipercross! Free from a mate, WAY to big for the induction pipe but nothing ducktape and glue cant fix:
Weird sounding, nothing like on a petrol.... but I like it! Strange but summut about a snarling diesel that sounds good! Bit deeper with a lot more of the turbo noises escaping..... I liked, Shame it looked a mess!
Now this was the turning point! At first the idea was to keep the car on the road and running as cheap as poss only spending what I needed! But I couldnt keep it up! So on came the little extras! First in, Boost gauge cost me £10 plus a few quid for fitting bits:
Kept blowing the pipe off @ 18psi at first, soon fixed with some little cable ties.
Then for £35 was the full ghia interior from a 1992 car inc cleaner dash from a 1990.
Did the old FREE underseal with the old engine oil when I did the oil and filter change:
Had a mate do the timing belts £81 for the bloody kit! He fitted them for a drink. Thought it best I get them done!
Fitted some Chasseur Alloys I had in the garage too after getting two tyres swapped over:
Fitted CB radio (yeah I do like a CB radio in my cars). Got a new CD player to play USB MP3's and took the clarion out it came with.
Brought a "universal" airflter off ebay to do a better job and replace that dodgy pipercross, for some strange reason u cant buy an induction kit for them lol! Looks and works a lot better. Also fixed the hole in the induction pipe with proper filler instead of ducktape!
Boot badges were faded and naff so I replaced those for a laugh! And a new rear numberplate.
Hit a cat killed naff spotlamp!
Then a cheap Ghia Auto came up! I only really brought it for the diff cause I needed a 3:62 diff as mine is a little noisey, But has to come from a Auto petrol or Diesel car! So I snapped it up cheaply off ebay! Got it home nicked all the tidy body parts first Chrome window strips as my black ones and bubbled up and coroded with age (as a result I had to swap the mirrors over too), Both bumpers (with chrome instead of red strip and good fog lamps) headlights minus stone chips like my old ones, inducators, wheels and a few other parts!
Never did get the diff off it, Fitted all my old parts to it inc steel wheels I had lying around then swapped the car for a diff (the one I needed of course) and some other bits (inc that cossie grille) etc!
Ontop of that, a few weeks ago a chap with an identical car (his was 5 door) snapped his cambelt, So decided to break it! So I had:
Turbo
Inlet and outlet manifolds
Servo pump
Alternator
Theormostat housing inc top hose
clocks
Fuel pump
All injectors
Expansion tank
Loads of hoses and fittings
Fuelfilter hoising
Bonnet (now fitted as it's straighter than my old one)
Grille and grille strip
All for a reasonable price!
Chears for those Phil!
AAAAAAAAAAH and thats about where I am for now! These pics were taken today! I had to stick some silver tape over the red stripe on the door bump strips a few weeks ago so they matched bumpers and windows, Will get proper ghia ones if I can find good ones. As u can see it's turned into a bit of a Ghia rep! Purely by accident! Never intended it, I hate ghia's! lol
SO, next plans!
Fix/replace diff/half shafts clear those noises!
Do front end damage and paint!
Fit towbar... need my towbar!
I WANT A STRAIGHT THOUGH EXHAUST.... TD's sound the nuts with straigh though pipes!
Posibly lower it unsure if I want to do that yet.
Maybe fit my fox alloys off my hatchback and put different wheels on that, aint decided yet!
Well thats all for now folks! Sorry for boring the poop out of ya sorry for any typo's too I'm shattered!
If ya into big power and BHP's.... look away now! If you are a tight a**e skinflit like me! This might be right up your street!
FIrsty the starting point! Was a thread on another forum that basicly said "Up for grabs is a 1990 Sierra TD with 2 months tax and test, messy car, cheap, come get it this weekend or it gets weighed in, Cheap!" He gave no price, so I dropped him a PM, Turns out he only wanted £50 for the car! That was it, sold on the spot! So that coming saturday I headed to get it! All I really knew other than the above was the full reg (so I could insure it) and it was red! While on the way there the seller texts me two pics of the car under the heading "i told u it was no oil painting"
Strange as it sounds. I thought it looked just the ticket! Loved it! Missing hubcap n all!
So I get there, Freezing morning! Call the guy to say i'd arived (was at his work place, Royal mail depo). So he drives it out! I check the oil, water, tyres and hand over the cash and do the whatnots on the logbook and off I drive! My god it was slow! I don't think he'd done over 30 in the thing! But the couple of hours on the motorway did it good... but the speedo was out! GPS was reading 76 at this point!
So anyway, Now it's mine, as with all new toys I get digging see what I can find....
NOTE the hose clip for later on!!!
Ya don't get that with a brand new motor!
Has just inder 300k miles on the clock (car used to minicab around Essex most of it's life). Guy says engine was rebuilt @ 248k miles (i'll come to that later). 2 brand new tyres and 2 very good tyres! Needed a new rad top hose and fan switch. Which I had to get from ford cause second hand Sierra TD's are thin on the ground! Rad cap and oil cap needed changing couldnt work out why it kept preasurising the cooling system (come to that later). Has some front end damage...
But i've already fitted a new bonnet I got from a breaker that's more or less same colour (see last pics). Next year I'm getting the n/s wing changed and whole front end sprayed as u can see on some of the pics the o/s wing has a bad paint match on the wing so i'll get that done too. Cossie grille I got off a mate painted and fitted too (just with rattle cans for now see last pics) get that done properly too. Other than that just general age damage u'd expect from a 300,000mile 18 year old ex minicab. Worse of all was the interior.... was in a real bad way!
Does run on Bio-diesel and Veggie oil if required!
So I cleaned it up (with lots of cutting paste). Stuck on some proper ford trims I had lying around and used it til the MOT!
Then came the DREADED mot! Well that wasnt to bad, Other than the cost of the MOT it cost me £33 to pass, Two brake hoses and a CV boot! He even commented on how good it was on the exhuast gasses (cause he didnt know what i'd got in the tank). He also missed a big wiring fault which i'll come to in a bit!
THEN, A problem started... diesel leaking around injector number 1, So I changed the return hose... not that, tightened the injector and the rail, not that! Baffeled! Til one day Karen spoted it bubbling up around the HEADBOLT! Always looked sus, u can see it stand out a mile in this pic....
So I pulled it out.....
BODGE TASTIC! So I ordered new bolts.... fitted one (had to buy a set). Then it was a waiting game to see if i'd managed to save the head gasket or not! Well it's been almost 6500 miles since then with no problems so I think i'm safe! This also stopped the cooling system preasurising that I mentioned above! WIN! At this point I also fixed the faulty rev counter (lose wire) and the temp gauge not working (temp sender) although it now has the wrong one in. At least I get a rough idea of what it's upto! Then the boostleak... this pipe, to the fuelpump, Broke away from inside the manifold so had that re-pressed at a local garage for free
THEN, First real issue! A dodgy batch of Bio-diesel caused my fuel tank to preasurise! No big deal, Exept it blew the pipe off for the diesel return from the pump! No big deal, Happened just as I pulled on the garage for some real diesel and only leaked with the engine running so only lost about 2L. I managed to do it at the side of the garage with a 50p hose clip, the same hoseclip that was in the car when I brought it! Ideal!! But wrecked my t-shirt the smell of diesel!
Then booked the car in with an auto elecy to sort out my headlights! Long winded and complex fault with fullbeam flash! Basicly, melted fuse board! Quick modification to that (inline fuses) and that was that!
Next job was a blown foglamp. U'd think changing a bulb would be easy... no! Torx screws.... into alloy.... right down low at the front of the car! Needless to say they were stuck solid! So off with those, Slap some silly spot lights on I had lying around I got for free :lol:
Pure genius. Never liked them from the moment I fitted them, So I tollerated them to cover the holes til I got more proper lights!
Next came the joke Pipercross! Free from a mate, WAY to big for the induction pipe but nothing ducktape and glue cant fix:
Weird sounding, nothing like on a petrol.... but I like it! Strange but summut about a snarling diesel that sounds good! Bit deeper with a lot more of the turbo noises escaping..... I liked, Shame it looked a mess!
Now this was the turning point! At first the idea was to keep the car on the road and running as cheap as poss only spending what I needed! But I couldnt keep it up! So on came the little extras! First in, Boost gauge cost me £10 plus a few quid for fitting bits:
Kept blowing the pipe off @ 18psi at first, soon fixed with some little cable ties.
Then for £35 was the full ghia interior from a 1992 car inc cleaner dash from a 1990.
Did the old FREE underseal with the old engine oil when I did the oil and filter change:
Had a mate do the timing belts £81 for the bloody kit! He fitted them for a drink. Thought it best I get them done!
Fitted some Chasseur Alloys I had in the garage too after getting two tyres swapped over:
Fitted CB radio (yeah I do like a CB radio in my cars). Got a new CD player to play USB MP3's and took the clarion out it came with.
Brought a "universal" airflter off ebay to do a better job and replace that dodgy pipercross, for some strange reason u cant buy an induction kit for them lol! Looks and works a lot better. Also fixed the hole in the induction pipe with proper filler instead of ducktape!
Boot badges were faded and naff so I replaced those for a laugh! And a new rear numberplate.
Hit a cat killed naff spotlamp!
Then a cheap Ghia Auto came up! I only really brought it for the diff cause I needed a 3:62 diff as mine is a little noisey, But has to come from a Auto petrol or Diesel car! So I snapped it up cheaply off ebay! Got it home nicked all the tidy body parts first Chrome window strips as my black ones and bubbled up and coroded with age (as a result I had to swap the mirrors over too), Both bumpers (with chrome instead of red strip and good fog lamps) headlights minus stone chips like my old ones, inducators, wheels and a few other parts!
Never did get the diff off it, Fitted all my old parts to it inc steel wheels I had lying around then swapped the car for a diff (the one I needed of course) and some other bits (inc that cossie grille) etc!
Ontop of that, a few weeks ago a chap with an identical car (his was 5 door) snapped his cambelt, So decided to break it! So I had:
Turbo
Inlet and outlet manifolds
Servo pump
Alternator
Theormostat housing inc top hose
clocks
Fuel pump
All injectors
Expansion tank
Loads of hoses and fittings
Fuelfilter hoising
Bonnet (now fitted as it's straighter than my old one)
Grille and grille strip
All for a reasonable price!
Chears for those Phil!
AAAAAAAAAAH and thats about where I am for now! These pics were taken today! I had to stick some silver tape over the red stripe on the door bump strips a few weeks ago so they matched bumpers and windows, Will get proper ghia ones if I can find good ones. As u can see it's turned into a bit of a Ghia rep! Purely by accident! Never intended it, I hate ghia's! lol
SO, next plans!
Fix/replace diff/half shafts clear those noises!
Do front end damage and paint!
Fit towbar... need my towbar!
I WANT A STRAIGHT THOUGH EXHAUST.... TD's sound the nuts with straigh though pipes!
Posibly lower it unsure if I want to do that yet.
Maybe fit my fox alloys off my hatchback and put different wheels on that, aint decided yet!
Well thats all for now folks! Sorry for boring the poop out of ya sorry for any typo's too I'm shattered!
no coldstart timing advance on em 
