Well, I'm pretty sure that this thread isn't making any great waves amongst the readership, but I've got a bit of an update, so here goes!
"Schadenfreude and the Art of Attempting Car Maintenance"
The engine problems eventually necessitated my WUR going off for a rebuild, the car being completely set up from scratch using vacuum gauges, I think (it's been a while, I'm pretty sure that's what the guy called them) and the garage sonically cleaned my ISV. However, it seemed the ISV may be irretrievably dead as it's still cut out occasionally and regularly dipped below the 1000 rpm mark before recovering. It still didn't like to start when hot, so I thought the starter motor wass dying, too. PLUS there was a knocking over bumps that I could feel through the pedals (some bush, probably). However the engine did run properly for a while. Now, though, the cold start issues started coming back. I was getting pretty bloody peeved with fighting to keep alive a system that didn't want to keep breathing.
This was happening too often:
The poor, bedraggled figure under the umbrella is the girlfriend of "you've bought two replacement radios to replace one that was perfectly fine, you berk" fame. The car in her opinion has fallen in grace from "I love it!" to "I like it" to "Well, it makes you happy". Not a good sign. This had to stop for the sake of our continuing association with each other.
However, for some reason, the car only ever cut out when it was absolutely ****ing it down, usually at a busy junction. That made things hard to diagnose, but if I couldn't work out what on Earth was going on, it was going to be bike carbs, ABF management or a 20v transplant. As fun as the car is, it's got to be reliable enough to be a daily, at least for the moment. And then, just to twist the knife, the car started running out of electricity.
I had thought the alternator was letting go as it's quite possibly the original. So the terminals came off and there was corrosion everywhere, same on the battery terminals. Obviously I'd had the battery terminals off a few times before, but nobody had noticed the poor state of them. They got a bloody good cleaning up and suddenly the car started up!
As for the rest of the issues, a little while ago I bought another genuine ISV off eBay in case I wasn't able to get my original repaired. The original was cleaned out three or four times and seemed to be doing OK, but as time went on it started surging and dropping to well below 1k revs before recovering and sometimes not recovering at all (hence the unscheduled junction pit-stop, above). I figured I might as well bung on the replacement to see if it made any difference and it's F*CKING PERFECT.
Basically the car just needs a rolling road to get properly set up and the engine part of this car might finally be over. Very, VERY happy.
In other news, the knocking was coming from a pair of completely shagged-out top mounts. Got some new ones thrown on and no more knocking.
With any luck it's pure aesthetics from here on out.
Found this when washing it the other day:
Now, I don't know if Nurbuagria is a real place, but it's either got a shonky 90s sticker from there or the Nurburgring in its window. I like shonky, period stickers, so it's staying.
As I have now got the car into a semi-reliable state, I now have to start paying attention to gentrification. The suspension was *way* too low, to the extent that I rattled my sill covers off, bounced the front bumper off one of its clips and cracked a wheel arch plastic.
And finally, some up to date pictures:
So that's me signing off again for a bit. I appreciate this isn't the most ambitious project out there, but hopefully one or two of you are getting something out of it!