Hello RR!
I haven't had a car for three years but I was offered a summer internship out in the Cotswolds, and going by train/bicycle was becoming impractical. So, I bought a car: here's my idea of a cheap little summer runabout...
I bought this off of the forum but had a pretty curse word experience... despite a long test-drive, it broke down on the way home. It would barely reach 50mph, and on the M6 at rush hour, and faced with 150 miles home, I decided this was too scary and called my insurance... I fell out of love with the car and wanted to get rid of it! Thankfully my co-workers were very sympathetic (they're all motorbikers/car people/mechanically-inclined people) and have lent me the work van for as long as I need it - with their encouragement and help from RRers I've decided to keep it.
Anyway. It was delivered back to me yesterday:
Sans hubcaps but with a set of 'mexican hat' alloys in the boot. I'm going to find some hubcaps and paint them to match, though, as I prefer them.
The first thing to do is get it running properly again. Blocked fuel filter is what first came to mind, which corroborates with what fellow RRers (and my boss and a friendly passing mechanic) have advised. The seller mentioned that the primer pump was leaking and has been bypassed with a Peugeot bulb-style one:
I've bought a new set of fuel filters and a replacement OEM-spec primer pump, as well as some diesel hose. The red line is where the in-line fuel filter should be, the green line is where the primer pump should feed to the secondary cartridge filter. I'll put it all back to how it should be.
I've been contacted by the previous-previous owner who said that the car had been run on biodiesel and also was infested with 'diesel bug'. The previous owner mentioned that he had cleared out the fuel tank (which probably dislodged a lot of curse word and blocked the filter) so replacing the filter, and running some diesel-bug killer, should clear out the big particles and the bug-slime. I expect replacing the filters every few hundred miles until it's all clean will help.
At the moment it's parked on the road but tomorrow I'm moving into somewhere with a big undercover residential car park, which'll help massively with working on it. I'm charging the battery at the moment, and I'll fiddle with the glow plugs to get them going again, and it should make the two-mile drive over there tomorrow. If not, I'll get it towed - no big loss.
Some other issues are:
It won't turn off. The mechanism needs cleaning or possibly replacing. There is supposed to be a 'shut off' lever in the engine bay somewhere, but I can't find it - how else can I switch it off manually? The fuel pipes are too rigid to squeeze shut!
The oil pressure is high - I was worried that this was being caused by blow-by (and subsequent excessive crank-case pressure causing a high reading) but a) the previous-previous owner said he tested the compression and it was fine, and b) there's no oil curse word out of the engine from the gaskets. And another W123 owner told me that high oil pressure is a good thing! I've checked the oil level and it's filled up to the max.
Rust - I'm not scared of rust - the front wings have some rot, as do the door bottoms, but everything else is just surface rust. The chassis and underfloor is fine. I can weld up the doors and wings at work. The body is very straight (one tiny ding on the boot and that's it) and the paintwork is excellent - but as you can see, it doesn't quite match!
Phew. That's a long post.
I haven't had a car for three years but I was offered a summer internship out in the Cotswolds, and going by train/bicycle was becoming impractical. So, I bought a car: here's my idea of a cheap little summer runabout...
I bought this off of the forum but had a pretty curse word experience... despite a long test-drive, it broke down on the way home. It would barely reach 50mph, and on the M6 at rush hour, and faced with 150 miles home, I decided this was too scary and called my insurance... I fell out of love with the car and wanted to get rid of it! Thankfully my co-workers were very sympathetic (they're all motorbikers/car people/mechanically-inclined people) and have lent me the work van for as long as I need it - with their encouragement and help from RRers I've decided to keep it.
Anyway. It was delivered back to me yesterday:
Sans hubcaps but with a set of 'mexican hat' alloys in the boot. I'm going to find some hubcaps and paint them to match, though, as I prefer them.
The first thing to do is get it running properly again. Blocked fuel filter is what first came to mind, which corroborates with what fellow RRers (and my boss and a friendly passing mechanic) have advised. The seller mentioned that the primer pump was leaking and has been bypassed with a Peugeot bulb-style one:
I've bought a new set of fuel filters and a replacement OEM-spec primer pump, as well as some diesel hose. The red line is where the in-line fuel filter should be, the green line is where the primer pump should feed to the secondary cartridge filter. I'll put it all back to how it should be.
I've been contacted by the previous-previous owner who said that the car had been run on biodiesel and also was infested with 'diesel bug'. The previous owner mentioned that he had cleared out the fuel tank (which probably dislodged a lot of curse word and blocked the filter) so replacing the filter, and running some diesel-bug killer, should clear out the big particles and the bug-slime. I expect replacing the filters every few hundred miles until it's all clean will help.
At the moment it's parked on the road but tomorrow I'm moving into somewhere with a big undercover residential car park, which'll help massively with working on it. I'm charging the battery at the moment, and I'll fiddle with the glow plugs to get them going again, and it should make the two-mile drive over there tomorrow. If not, I'll get it towed - no big loss.
Some other issues are:
It won't turn off. The mechanism needs cleaning or possibly replacing. There is supposed to be a 'shut off' lever in the engine bay somewhere, but I can't find it - how else can I switch it off manually? The fuel pipes are too rigid to squeeze shut!
The oil pressure is high - I was worried that this was being caused by blow-by (and subsequent excessive crank-case pressure causing a high reading) but a) the previous-previous owner said he tested the compression and it was fine, and b) there's no oil curse word out of the engine from the gaskets. And another W123 owner told me that high oil pressure is a good thing! I've checked the oil level and it's filled up to the max.
Rust - I'm not scared of rust - the front wings have some rot, as do the door bottoms, but everything else is just surface rust. The chassis and underfloor is fine. I can weld up the doors and wings at work. The body is very straight (one tiny ding on the boot and that's it) and the paintwork is excellent - but as you can see, it doesn't quite match!
Phew. That's a long post.
It was only the later cars which had a fast-glow relay and key starter.