DieselMonte

Small but important update here, Got the chassis straight finally. All of the panel beaters around me either didn't want the work or kept pushing me off so got sick of it. Some heat, some hammering, a very large pole and a very thick chain got it straight enough to have all the holes line up. Leg itself isnt perfect but i cant be too picky. Much better than what it was and its not like i intend on selling this on ever. Radiator in it started leaking today too, hardly matters now as I've got plenty spare. Now the real work can begin it seems.

So not much done to this, but I'm updating other projects so why not update all of them. Not long after the last Post another short cropped up for the boost solenoid. Then the egr **** itself. So that fixed, another map on to map the egr off. Not entirely loving this new map, lot more midrange but robbed me of most of the top end that I had previous. Has a soft cut on it same as standard now too. I presume it's for smoke control for test. I've not noticed any smoke driving it hard however. Got some genuine arb bushes and swapped the poly ones out. Needed greasing far too often. Bit of trouble going back in as one of the bolts we're bent somehow. Borrowed one off another fabia for now. Not stopped driving it though even though its not been cheap to fix the wiring, and the cost of another map. Set the other fabia and the justy back for a while.

Just mk1 ford mondeo drop links. Motorfactors,ebay, autodoc, any of them will stock them. Pretty cheap too. Wouldn't bother with some spendy adjustable ones. No point when you can buy something off the shelf for much less.

Highly depends on how much of a drop you're going for. On my sdi this height required shorter droplinks as the arb fouled the driveshaft on full lock. My vRS has shorter droplinks as it is much lower. Both are on the same ****e coilovers too.

Rear axle bushes are a pita to do. I did them on an axle sitting on a bench and it was a siege trying to get the old bushes out, without the proper tool. Can't imagine doing them on the car. As above best leave it until you really need to do them.

Smartarse! Definitely not an Irish registration. Looks to be a Spanish reg judging from the "E".

New Thermostat is on. Its a Gates one so hopefully it will be OK. Put it in. Got it running and out of the garage for once. New accessory belt is not the proper one, made a lot of noise first start up and no matter how tight I got it. Kept wrangling itself off the pullies. So it has the old one on it again, for the time being. Tried bleeding the cooling system. Bit of seepage around the thermostat now. Came with new gaskets and I made sure to put it in the same way as the original one. Bit of sealant should take care of it. Aside from that. It seems the thermostat itself works fine. "Sealant around the edge of the carb" job seems to have done the trick for now. Don't mind the high idle. 20221230_164533.mp4

Had a bit of a panic moment coming back through Dingle. All of a sudden I heard a very loud, rattly noise coming from the front left. Thought it was a bad balljoint or track rod end. But fortunately, or maybe unfortunately it turned out the noise was the new undertray that I put on about a week ago, had broken in several places. It pulled out a metal clip on the subframe that the undertray screws into, causing this noise. I didn't figure this out until I got home. In spite of this, I managed to crack 60mpg, driving more or less normally. Did make a quick pitstop to put some fuel in. Judging from the Range and MPG readouts. I could have done this on one tank.

Not much for me to do this time of year. So, for no reason at all. I got in my car this morning and drove to Dunmore head, the westernmost point of Ireland and back, in one day. I say nonstop, but once I got close I kept hopping out to see the sights. Intended on going down to Kerry for the weekend this summer. Obviously that did not happen. Really wanted to do the ring of kerry too, that didn't happen either but I came across something just as memorable. Thank you Waze. Conor Pass: This Pass goes right up and over the hills from Tralee to Dingle. Absolutely amazing road and I could not have picked a better time to go up it. Hard to show just how high this road goes. At the peak. Further on, Dunmore head. The westernmost point of Ireland. Picked a good time of year to do this trip. These roads must become hectic during summer. Did have to cross a very small, very bumpy ford. Really like the Spyders, more than the standard wheels if I'm honest. The tyres are as crap as ever but, they did really well navigating a lot of standing water on a certain stretch of motorway.

I've been needing more shelving here for ages. But if you think that garage is bad then you'd need to see the shed where the other fabias reside. Everything's just sort of laid out on the floor. That garage it wasn't much of a problem until I got the justy. All I used that garage for previously was storing a car after a wash, or for polishing. Think it'd be a good job for summer to take all out. Paint the walls and put up some racks. The attic is a mess too but I know as soon as I touch it someone will come along and mess it up again. Best of luck with the renovations.

Not really anything progress related but I'll post anyway. I have since tried (carefully) putting gasket sealant stuff onto the mating surfaces for the cork gasket, as a way to secure it properly and stop it slipping. It needs to cure so can't do any more there. Did take out the thermostat too to have a look, seems stuck solid. Dumped it into some boiling water and nothing happened. Will have to track down another it seems. With that out of the way, someone was up looking at the justy the other day and pointed out to me that if I moved some ****e about, I might be able to stuff it into the back of the garage and fit another car in. Wasn't doing too much so decided to try that out. Did create a fair mess moving stuff around. But it did seem possible. It's really jammed in though. The freezer isn't being used but I had to keep it in the garage. So I shove some bits of the Monte into it and pushed it deep under the stairs. Next problem is this old table top, I can't move it myself so it couldn't go anywhere either. With it out of the way I could get another few inches. Left myself some space on this side. Just in case. Slowly taking shape. Final test to see if all this hassle was worth it. It fits, just. Have about 6 inches from the front of the Monte to the garage door. I can't fit anything bigger than a fabia, but considering that's all I have, it doesn't matter. An hour or so spent but happy with the result. Can't complain about turning a 1 car garage into a 2 car garage for free.

I probably could clean up the alternator with a wire brush. It's really not too bad though. For a car that was built to be disposable, it was really well built. It's a stout engine aside from a weak oil pump design. Think a lot of the reason this engine looks so healthy is because it would have never been neglected maintenence wise. I wonder if my work would have any records of it, considering they sold it new. It still has the original dealer sticker on the back, and a keytag with works name on it. Really debating putting a weber on now. Sort one thing on the hitachi and another problem crops up. For the little while it was going right. It drove absolutely fantastic. I did add another fuel filter just before the carb, to help stop the carb getting gunked up again.

Carburetors still being a ****. If its not filling with crap from the tank its the cork gasket not wanting to seat. On the brightside though I finally have a logbook in my name for it. Anyway. Set about checking the valve lash so popped the valve cover off. Turns out it's the 1.2l Justys that are 3 valve. Even though its the same Engine ""prefix"" for the 2, the 1l is 2 valve. For some reason. All of them were set exactly to the specs shown on the bonnet, so I left them be. Then I started on the timing belt. I took off the alternator belt. Obviously well past due, have a new Meyle one for it. There's an access port you can get to by removing a plug in the drivers side wheel well. Didn't bother removing the wheel, locked it hard and that gave me plenty of access. Pic of the old subaru belt on it. Looked okay. Didn't look like it was going to fail any time soon anyway. Old Belt vs the new Gates one. Didn't bother replacing the idler pulley as it was fine. Really not in bad shape for how long it must have been on there. New Belt on. And done. Only took about an hour. Didn't start it as the top of the carb is off again. One last thing is I was gifted a Cassette to aux adaptor for this. Bit pointless considering. But proved that the cassette player works flawlessly.

Pic of the winter wheels. Also fitted the new undertray, this time with an aluminium strip instead of wood. Fit pretty well for a spurious part.

Mk1 vrs will work also, it's what I used. If you're gonna go to the effort I'd suggest Having it all stripped back and freshened up before throwing it in. Lick of paint. New bushes etc..

There was an ocean mist one hanging in it when I got it. Couldn't find one of those but new car scents close enough.

It's back after having the electrics fixed, mechanic got the car going and then the drivers window (apparantly) Went ape****. So bought a brand new loom for the door too. Then the (original mind) battery finally gave up after being sat for so long, so it got a new battery. Finally got a full service when it was away, as it was due soon anyway. Got it back midday yesterday and racked up 350 miles on it since. Nice to be back in it. Put the rarb back on it and put my winters on after that photo was taken. Going to put it back on the shortlist for nct and get it in ASAP. Probably be another months wait though.

Doable and been done quite a few times before. 32ks car had discs on the back standard iirc, because of the spec. No montes have discs on the back but it's relatively straightforward to do. My monte has had a disc conversion over summer, and AMD on here has one too. He has a very interesting thread on his car and I also have a thread for mine. Both his and mine have 256mm vented rear brakes off an octavia. Normal rear discs on these cars would be 232mm solid rear brakes. The montes rear beam doesn't have the provisions for mounting calipers so you need one off a vrs,ibiza,polo etc. Off the top of my head you need: -Rear axle off a donor, complete ideally. -Handbrake cables (different cable ends for both) -I'd recommend getting new rear brake lines for the disc axle, your donor one should come with ones but if they're like mine, they'll be rather rough. Not too expensive to get genuine from a dealers iirc.

Sorry autocorrect.

Should note that I can hear the in-tank pump priming. So far as I can tell I have power to the injectors now too.

Progress! Found the wire that ran from the fusebox, traced it to a point and as a test ran my own wire around to see if that fixed it. It did, and that fuse no longer blows. However, It still won't fire. Pulled codes again, found one for the high pressure fuel pump. Pulled the fuse for it and it is blown too. Replaced fuse, twisted ignition and it popped. Hoping it's ""just"" shorted itself out too.

Well, that was a mistake. Fuel bowls filled with crap.

It's a small metal pipe going from the tank to the filter with a rubber hose connecting the 2. Do have a suspicion about it being blocked. Fairly confident this filter did its job and caught any debris. Tried to blow through it and it was blocked almost solid. Will order yet another filter tomorrow. And get some small jubilee clips somewhere so I can mount a secondary filter just before the carb.

Well that didn't last long Hopped in it today, got to the bottom of my hill and it ran like absolute ****. Bad enough that I couldn't take it to work as planned. Dropped the fuel filter on advise from someone and... Already clogged. Thankfully I have a spare on hand and it is an easy job. This is what came out of the filter. Plenty of fresh fuel in it. May need to drop the tank sooner rather than later. Seems otherwise fine happily. My guess is that a chunk of gunk got into it this morning and caused it to run like ****. It ran beautiful just last night.

Had the carb off this evening for hopefully the final time. Found the High idle problem, one of the springs that holds it closed wasn't seated right. Also checked the idle screw and set it to what was recommended on old forum posts. 5 and 5/8 turns from lightly seated. Had it out driving and it's finally running decent. NCT next Saturday. Since the Monte is temporarily out of action and I couldn't get the vrs sorted it seems like I'll be relying on this to get into work and back this week.