On 05/01/2025 at 21:24, Paws4Thot said:

😞 You mean this one (colon then open bracket then spacebar)?

Which ever you like best. 

On 05/01/2025 at 21:51, Gaz said:

 

Give it chance - could it just be condensation?

 

Gaz

Lets hope. The temperature has been mad swinging. Small amounts of water will boil off when hot, yeh?

Winter is trash, I hope a truck still remains when it stops weathering and the sun stays visible for more than 15 mins a day. I’ve not seen the Skoda for weeks!!

7 hours ago, skoda_cat said:

the sun stays visible for more than 15 mins a day.

You live in Scotland man!!!  

Been a minute, sorry.

Did a bit of tidying so i can actually physically get inside the garage.

My neighbour and I booted up the car and let it run till it got hot. it runs fine and temp climbs smoothly the whole way, but it's still getting hot and the fan doesn't come on. the sensor in the radiator doesn't seem to be closing the circuit and we suspect the thermostat as well. I'm going to pull both out and stick em in boiling water to see how they react. Probably going to replace both anyway just because i suspect them.

No progress on the welding, but I'm off this week so I'll see what I can motivate myself to get done.

P.s. still no windscreen, we still know where one is, sitting in a rotted out car but we're still struggling to get a deal made :/

Cut up a bit of angle and drilled it for bolts so I can get the shrinker and stretcher into the vice and start learning how to re-manufacture windscreen frames and scuttles.

bodyshop vibes intensify:

My vise is a bit wimpy, it struggles to hold on to the thing because you have to fairly sit on it to make it do anything.

It DOES gradually make curves:

But I will need a bit more bend than that and it also needs to be an S shaped section which this isn't because working out how to fold that without a metal break might be beyond me :P

I dropped the coolant again, and fiddled with the thermostat and broke it. I've ordered a replacement housing which should be able to take standard thermostats rather than the built in rubbish skoda built in. The plastic had got all sad and let the spring go.

I got the engine drain out which was a fight, very galled up threads. when the plug CAME out no coolant followed and refused to till a screwdriver went in the hole and came out a horrible colour. Then we got a trickle. so I flushed it every which way till the water ran clear.

started doing an oil change, but I didn't realise i'd need a new drain plug so we can't refill that till I've been to the shops.

Mean time I've cleaned both disgusting furred up juice bottles:

And for your delectation, 12+ year old oil:

boke.

made a bit of progress on the headlight adjusters. Finally understood which pin is which and lashed up this as a test:

I failed to see the TINY writing labelling the pins on the servo so I'd popped the end cap off to try and work out which pin was which and whilst i was in there I saw the driver post was hollow most of the way through and just about right for the original bolt out of the hydraulic adjusters, so I lopped off the end and tapped it M5 0.8 for the bolt. I'm not sure if it's got QUITE enough bight to not vibrate and 'self adjust' so possibly a locking nut might be needed but this is looking good.

There's a small mod needed to the headlight back unit to let the servo 'seat' which is scaring me to death, but if i get it wrong, new lights can still be got for reasonable money.

I'm obviously avoiding attempting any welding on the windscreen area aren't I, but all these jobs DO need doing so it's good to get them on the way to done.

This electrical fun will need some small amount of loom building for it but that's not hard, just need to find the power to splice into up at the lights and the signal wire running from the dash.

Annoyingly the 'light' on the switch seems to be failed which sucks but maybe down the line i can get another driver unit which does light up. I can't figure out how to disassemble it enough to get at the light and replace it.

In everything is completely normal news, the sump plug sold to me by eurocar parts for the car via the reg plate is too small, they've sold me an M14 plug

The plug that came OUT of the car has a major diameter of about 15.67mm which isn't even 0.6 inches exactly.

The washer that came off it has a strange shape to it, it's kind of got lips round the edge and there were the remnants of some rubber which I had to rip off the plug with a pick.

There was evidently some clever washer on it which is long gone.

I'm now stuck in a place where i don't know what my sump plug even IS to order a replacement.

Any of you kids know what I need to ask for? All the online places demand I put my reg in and they come back with the same stuff that doesn't fit rather than offering me an actual choice. Thanks helpful web ☠️

ooooh, maybe THIS https://www.autodoc.co.uk/planet-tech/22381098

Edited 24 March24 Mar by skoda_cat
add product

This is the future I'm staring directly into, isn't it?

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007920185061.html

Oil changed, we'll see how that goes.

New thermostat housing arrived with no gasket. Had to sneak into a trade place to get a thermostat. checked it opened in a nice boiling pan of water.

we tried using o-rings to seal it in but it leaked, so we used rtv!!!! hahahah maximum effort.

That stuff is setting up for the next 24 hours and then we'll pop fluid back in and see if it can do engine things without breaking.

I really am going to weld the windscreen soon. This WILL go back on the road.

3 hours ago, skoda_cat said:

New thermostat housing arrived with no gasket.

For similar age engines I've made thermostat gaskets from breakfast cereal packets.

Antifreeze-coolant topped up and we started the car, ran the heating to check it was warm; no leaks.

Came up to temp smoothly, we felt the upper and lower radiator hose get hot as the thermostat opened. Revved it a bit and shut off the heating to let it soak and the fan came on…

Then went off…

Then came back on…

Oil isn’t milky, I think the engine is done!

I’ve ordered some pin ejection tools as the iso wiring in the car is bull****. I’m going to re pin the connectors car side to suit modern radios. The switches and permanent live seem to be jumped together though which is a bit special so I think I’ll need to relocate the permanent live to the correct pin for modernity and locate a switched live elsewhere and bring it into the connector.

Otherwise I just carried on getting more stench out of interior plastics with spendy degreaser and gloves.

A good day all round.

Well I was wrong, I’m used to the audio wiring being in same colour pairs, everything is already in the right places.

Weirdly the original stereo connects and plays fine but my alpine unit powers up perfectly but struggles to get a connection to the speakers. I wonder if it has slimmer pins or if there’s muck in a pattern that aligns with the original radio in a way that blocks the alpine connector. I’ve sprayed it liberally with contact cleaner to no avail.

I’m loath to cut and re terminate the connector but I may need to go a bit more extreme with deoxit or very very small files.

I am confused.

Such a good day. Sunny, warm.

At lunch I wired up an ISO adaptor to bridge the audio connectors, the radio and car will not connect but just using a male and female loom connector in the middle makes all the connections happy and I get music out of the door speakers. That’s a win.

Yesterday I messaged just about every breaker in the UK about windscreens and I might have a line on both a windscreen and some of the metal that surrounds it. I’ll know more soon, and hopefully will be renting a van to go collect it.

I also blagged some auto glym interior shampoo which is doing an amazing job on the door cards.

Things seem on the up for this truck!!

deal made, just waiting for when I can collect but we got a windscreen! MOT failure this summer!

New main light switch arrived, plugged in and everything instantly works perfectly! Awesome.

The cap on it is kind of grey where the original is more black so I might see if I can swap them over.

Got an ozone generator to try and knock down some of the stink I can’t reach which I’ll have a go with on the weekend. I’ve got some dust sheet plastic stuff I can use to cover the windscreen hole and run the ozone with the blower on for ten mins and see how it gets on.

I’m so excited for this summer I can’t even.

This kind of epic abuse, even though this was previously a work truck for a professional gardener, was making me quite despondent and wondering how to make the interior tolerable.

If you'd TOLD me to squirt it with a heat gun CAREFULLY I would probably have laughed at you, but:

With just a few mins work it's almost LIVABLE! I can probably get a bit more improvement from here even. Gosh.

it continues, although slowly because today is SO COLD.

this is what we're getting out of the door cards.

My question for the forum is: what would you use to get THIS off the back wall?

Adventures in wd40 get much of the stuff off, but still leaves a tacky residue which isn't for wiping away. I wonder what else I can try :/

It's quite crumbly under that lower edge, I don't know if that's where the bed gets joined in or something. how is water getting to that bit to rust it? hmmm.

In other labour intensive rubbish after that vacuum full of brown I've been experimenting with 'being a door' in which I have no idea how to get the top rubber correctly situated and whether it goes on the door before or after the card.

This is where we start to need to find bolts for things, most of which have been lost over the decade it was standing in a hoarder's pit.

I experimented a little with dashboards, because that will need to be sorted out and boxed off before the windscreen is installed getting that lot done with glass in isn't something i really want to try. Again... no bolts, sigh.

In the main, I'm glad I have this thread to convince myself I've actually achieved ANYTHING since this piece of junk is still so far from being either drivable or enjoyable to be around :D

Oh p.s. apparently the tonneau cover does still exist and we may get hold of it in the next few days, that would be super fun to see.

This sticky disgusting what even IS that down in the mouldings

is not a bunch cleaner. I dismantled it as far as I dared and cleaned it as deeply as fear would allow me. I didn't want to get and wetness down in the fuse or relay holes. I have not rebooted the car since it went in, 1) to stop it going on fire in case of wet 2) just having a think about if I plugged it back in right.

The answer was Zep sticky stuff remover. This needs another go over or two but it kind of turns the full panel glue into a kind of gel which just scrapes off with a bit of elbow application. The other side still needs doing in earnest and it will all need redoing to get CLEAN CLEAN.

Otherwise for a giggle I got an after-market head-unit wired in, and I terminated and hooked up the sub and amp. It sounds like complete trash, glorious trash, 90's kind of car audio bump. Nothing as good as a modern car but it's sure got a vibe. Should be even more bass when the windscreen is in, but I'm happy enough.

So much to do, but it's getting done, gradually.

Just curious, does anyone read this thread, or is it just for me?

I read it and am impressed with your dedication to resurrecting such a heap...

1 hour ago, skomaz said:

I read it and am impressed with your dedication to resurrecting such a heap...

It being crappy makes me less scared to work on than a pristine expensive car. Being in pieces lets me learn loads about it and how it’s built and how to do stuff.

I bought a very cheap motorbike at the start of the pandemic lockdown that was easily as broken as this and although I sold it today I did get it to pass an mot and it taught me so much about engines, welding, brakes, forks and all sorts and being cheap **** and disposable was what gave me the courage to just do the things.

If it takes a polish, it’s probably not a turd.

Anyway, this heap has a strong heart as it’s a low mileage engine and I’m only the second idiot to own it.

Thanks for letting me know I’m not just writing a private diary anyway ;D

Hauled it off the ramps because the service is done and I was starting to feel like it was a lifted truck so I need to get used to how low down it really is.

made massive progress cleaning all the glue goop off the back wall, it's not quite as perfect as I want, but WOW it's 99.9% done. the sense of 'smellyness' is really hard to sense any more which is kind of mind-blowing. It doesn't yet smell 'good' but it doesn't smell bad hardly at all!

Started checking the lights and we found the rear passenger side cluster was full of water. yay. so the connections very need cleaning up and I need to figure out how water is getting in. This involves working out how to undo the mental connector on the bottom of the lighting unit so I can liberate it and do leak tests on it.

I found the plastic scuttle panel so I tested the washer jets work and they do.. so I mean basically I'm doing MOT checks already. Hahahaha I am not mad.

Best news yet, the breaker got in touch to day the windscreen will be out and the body of the donor car cut early next week. I'll need to get a day off work and a van rented to go pick it all up. Woooooo.