If you strike me down...I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
...maybe!
Hello RetroRides!
This will be my first post on RetroRides, it seems such an interesting site, I guess all my doodlings will be at the shallow end of things technically!
I wanted to start with my mint 1989 VW Polo C squareback (formerly a G plate but now on Irish plates) but really annoyingly it was nicked!
In better days...
Although it was found quite soon afterwards after a fingertip search by the Police here in Dublin - score one for miserly empty tank vagabonds like meself - not too far away, it was far enough for the g1ts to smash into a parked car and lump it over a high kerb and smash the sump in. "Uneconomical to repair" was what the assesor said, what is technically known as borked!
Heartless as it may sound it was just 6 short hours before I had been introduced to another to fill the Polo shaped void left behind. Thanks to a tip-off through a post on VAGdrivers! Its the website that just keeps giving! It was one still lurking in the cars for sale section here listed by StevenT for his father Liam which was verging on being broken for parts.
She takes a good picture huh? I was sure I wanted to stay with a breadvan I just loved the old one so I guess lashing out and buying one so soon took the stink out of having it thieved. Although she needs some work I feel good about this, in a funny way this might be MORE fun than the old one simply because she needs more to get her up and running.
When I bought her she had 72,355 miles on the clock since 1985 but since 2004 she has only done around 500 miles according to the sticker left on the bonnet by the mechanic after the last service, when the oil and plugs were changed, apparently. Although I wonder if the guy changed all 4 plugs as there were 3 different plugs for the 4 cylinders!! The owner to drive it on the road was quite an old boy and has left a firm stamp on the car. He used it to just for driving to church and back and to go to the shops, which although it sounds like one of those stories ..."oh look! He's left his bible in the glove box!" I can believe it this case as there are a fair few things to point to that, Padre Pio sticker on the windshield, Virgin Mary super-glued to the dashboard, icon hanging from the rear-view and more besides!
Eight years off the road have taken a toll though and SHEDvan isn't A1 when I bought her there was a nasty misfire and despite my ... erm... iffy mechanical prowess I fancied it strongly. I was full of that magical adrenalin buzz you get when blagging lifts from someone (thanks auntie - what a legend!) and trying to keep them enthusiastic rather than slowly realising that their Saturday afternoon plans (bottle of cava and a stack of dvds apparently) has been ruined. Which would explain why I looked straight through it's moss, dried out tyres, rust and sounding like a poorly flat-twin...
I drove it into Allenwood in Kildare and had that chilling sensation that I had bitten off more than I could chew, naively I hoped that a blat into the local village would be enough to shrug off the dust and cobwebs of the best part of a decade, but I was wrong.
When you're worried that you've made a mug out of yourself its best to have someone around that know even less than you do and as I pumped up the tyres and filled the rad I was humoured by hearing encouraging noises like "well it didn't stop yet thats good" hahaha
It farted and popped up the N7 back to Dublin and did do the speed limit but wasn't pulling well, and I thought about a plan of action.
It had been standing for such a while that for sure it needed a decent service and I reckoned I could do that, the Red breadvan had similar issues when I brought it from England, - lapsing onto a few cylinders and so on but this might be more hardcore, difficult to say, it needed a decent blow through the pipes and warming up too.
A proper look under the bonnet yielded a few clues because the HT leads showed signs of good old-fashioned country cobbling together
two VW leads and two from an Austin-Rover and all four were pretty old! ROFL! Just the way I like it hahaha!
So there was a suspect, which was encouraging and quick trip (walking - GRRR!) to the motor factors in Clondalkin later I brought back 4 new plugs, an oil filter and jug of fresh oil, which was, as Mike Skinner says, 'All the shrapnel in my pocket could afford'... BTW top bloke in there, highly recommended and I always feel good about avoiding Halfrauds
Happily the new plugs made a definite improvement although - it was now firing weakly on all 4 cylinders.
A look at the old plugs told a story of their own, for a start there were three different brands of plug, NGK, 2 Bosch and another, and one of them was also a triple pronged plug, a suitable fit but I'd heard that it can be a bit high-powered for the old Polo and the battery is old and feeble so that can't have helped!
Besides that I had a look through the old Haynes manual, and this one is pretty old, if you've got an old oily one of your own (manual, not the car!) you'll know one of the few colour pages it a spark-plug diagnostic one. The plug from cylinder 1 which was the one that wasn't firing at all was pretty oily and the other three were very sooty. The 1985 Polo 1.05 has a Solex Pic7 carb with a manual choke and with the engine running so poorly and stalling I think the choke has had some heavy duty use and the plugs look like it, - I definitely did to keep it from stalling left, right and centre FTW
New plugs didn't really cure the problem fully but with this age of car and with it standing for so long a lot of bit were pretty second-hand TBH
So I made up a little shopping list of parts for a decent service:
HT leads - Mis-matched and crumbly, poor sparks from all, a missing plug on the AR lead which was bodged into the dizzy.
CB point - gummy and old.
Dizzy Cap - cracked, grotty, the internals corroding and worn to a frisp.
Rotor Arm - corroded and worn.
Coil - really really old, very corroded and actually rusty at the HT point.
Fuel Filter - pretty worn, very fuel of drek and grot.
Air Filter - needs a change.
And hopefully that will go some way to curing it. I'm hoping that the petrol tank which is in good shape (on the outside) is okay inside and not going flaky - a new filter should show up whether its sucking gas or shrapnel..
I found a decent website for parts called Mr Auto which seems pretty cheap and crucially has the old bits and bobs that aren't stocked by a lot of places, the prices seem pretty good and as much as I'd like to buy local I just don't have the wad to afford all the stuff, so I've resolved to try and buy stuff like batteries, oil and fluids from the local and one offs from t'internet.
Anywho when I totted up the order on the site it was something ridiculous like a quarter the price of the local guys ho-hum
When I ordered it turns out the company is based in France near Lyon so I was thinking that there might be so lose in translation so we shall see, only €8ish for the delivery which is good but they haven't managed the 48hour delivery but you can't win 'em all
Hmmm better stop here as its a bit of a monster first post, more to come though!
Goodies!!
...maybe!
Hello RetroRides!
This will be my first post on RetroRides, it seems such an interesting site, I guess all my doodlings will be at the shallow end of things technically!
I wanted to start with my mint 1989 VW Polo C squareback (formerly a G plate but now on Irish plates) but really annoyingly it was nicked!
In better days...
Although it was found quite soon afterwards after a fingertip search by the Police here in Dublin - score one for miserly empty tank vagabonds like meself - not too far away, it was far enough for the g1ts to smash into a parked car and lump it over a high kerb and smash the sump in. "Uneconomical to repair" was what the assesor said, what is technically known as borked!
Heartless as it may sound it was just 6 short hours before I had been introduced to another to fill the Polo shaped void left behind. Thanks to a tip-off through a post on VAGdrivers! Its the website that just keeps giving! It was one still lurking in the cars for sale section here listed by StevenT for his father Liam which was verging on being broken for parts.
She takes a good picture huh? I was sure I wanted to stay with a breadvan I just loved the old one so I guess lashing out and buying one so soon took the stink out of having it thieved. Although she needs some work I feel good about this, in a funny way this might be MORE fun than the old one simply because she needs more to get her up and running.
When I bought her she had 72,355 miles on the clock since 1985 but since 2004 she has only done around 500 miles according to the sticker left on the bonnet by the mechanic after the last service, when the oil and plugs were changed, apparently. Although I wonder if the guy changed all 4 plugs as there were 3 different plugs for the 4 cylinders!! The owner to drive it on the road was quite an old boy and has left a firm stamp on the car. He used it to just for driving to church and back and to go to the shops, which although it sounds like one of those stories ..."oh look! He's left his bible in the glove box!" I can believe it this case as there are a fair few things to point to that, Padre Pio sticker on the windshield, Virgin Mary super-glued to the dashboard, icon hanging from the rear-view and more besides!
Eight years off the road have taken a toll though and SHEDvan isn't A1 when I bought her there was a nasty misfire and despite my ... erm... iffy mechanical prowess I fancied it strongly. I was full of that magical adrenalin buzz you get when blagging lifts from someone (thanks auntie - what a legend!) and trying to keep them enthusiastic rather than slowly realising that their Saturday afternoon plans (bottle of cava and a stack of dvds apparently) has been ruined. Which would explain why I looked straight through it's moss, dried out tyres, rust and sounding like a poorly flat-twin...
I drove it into Allenwood in Kildare and had that chilling sensation that I had bitten off more than I could chew, naively I hoped that a blat into the local village would be enough to shrug off the dust and cobwebs of the best part of a decade, but I was wrong.
When you're worried that you've made a mug out of yourself its best to have someone around that know even less than you do and as I pumped up the tyres and filled the rad I was humoured by hearing encouraging noises like "well it didn't stop yet thats good" hahaha
It farted and popped up the N7 back to Dublin and did do the speed limit but wasn't pulling well, and I thought about a plan of action.
It had been standing for such a while that for sure it needed a decent service and I reckoned I could do that, the Red breadvan had similar issues when I brought it from England, - lapsing onto a few cylinders and so on but this might be more hardcore, difficult to say, it needed a decent blow through the pipes and warming up too.
A proper look under the bonnet yielded a few clues because the HT leads showed signs of good old-fashioned country cobbling together
two VW leads and two from an Austin-Rover and all four were pretty old! ROFL! Just the way I like it hahaha!So there was a suspect, which was encouraging and quick trip (walking - GRRR!) to the motor factors in Clondalkin later I brought back 4 new plugs, an oil filter and jug of fresh oil, which was, as Mike Skinner says, 'All the shrapnel in my pocket could afford'... BTW top bloke in there, highly recommended and I always feel good about avoiding Halfrauds
Happily the new plugs made a definite improvement although - it was now firing weakly on all 4 cylinders.
A look at the old plugs told a story of their own, for a start there were three different brands of plug, NGK, 2 Bosch and another, and one of them was also a triple pronged plug, a suitable fit but I'd heard that it can be a bit high-powered for the old Polo and the battery is old and feeble so that can't have helped!
Besides that I had a look through the old Haynes manual, and this one is pretty old, if you've got an old oily one of your own (manual, not the car!) you'll know one of the few colour pages it a spark-plug diagnostic one. The plug from cylinder 1 which was the one that wasn't firing at all was pretty oily and the other three were very sooty. The 1985 Polo 1.05 has a Solex Pic7 carb with a manual choke and with the engine running so poorly and stalling I think the choke has had some heavy duty use and the plugs look like it, - I definitely did to keep it from stalling left, right and centre FTW
New plugs didn't really cure the problem fully but with this age of car and with it standing for so long a lot of bit were pretty second-hand TBH
So I made up a little shopping list of parts for a decent service:
HT leads - Mis-matched and crumbly, poor sparks from all, a missing plug on the AR lead which was bodged into the dizzy.
CB point - gummy and old.
Dizzy Cap - cracked, grotty, the internals corroding and worn to a frisp.
Rotor Arm - corroded and worn.
Coil - really really old, very corroded and actually rusty at the HT point.
Fuel Filter - pretty worn, very fuel of drek and grot.
Air Filter - needs a change.
And hopefully that will go some way to curing it. I'm hoping that the petrol tank which is in good shape (on the outside) is okay inside and not going flaky - a new filter should show up whether its sucking gas or shrapnel..
I found a decent website for parts called Mr Auto which seems pretty cheap and crucially has the old bits and bobs that aren't stocked by a lot of places, the prices seem pretty good and as much as I'd like to buy local I just don't have the wad to afford all the stuff, so I've resolved to try and buy stuff like batteries, oil and fluids from the local and one offs from t'internet.
Anywho when I totted up the order on the site it was something ridiculous like a quarter the price of the local guys ho-hum
When I ordered it turns out the company is based in France near Lyon so I was thinking that there might be so lose in translation so we shall see, only €8ish for the delivery which is good but they haven't managed the 48hour delivery but you can't win 'em all
Hmmm better stop here as its a bit of a monster first post, more to come though!
Goodies!!
