Thought this might be a fun thing for a non-model-specific, general interest thread.

Inspired by yesterday's events, and probably today's too. 😁

Idea being to show the gap between the plan and the reality, because in my experience they rarely correlate exactly.

Obviously, it will be more entertaining and instructive when things don't go to plan. Not intended to be a post for just bragging about how fast and efficient you are, but if you want to feed back preventive or problem solving tips in response to others' problems, that's obviously going to be good.

Example - yesterday I planned a few jobs on a mk1 Fabia that I recently acquired, wasn't sure how far I'd get through it, but there was always today as well, to finish off overspill.

• Remove front bumper, to fix a little front-end collision (hedge) damage

• Change coolant (flush too) and expansion tank

• Check right side rear drum handbrake, which was seizing on, and had a bodged fixing from last visit (see The Daily Bodge 30th Aug)

• Change rocker cover gasket to fix oil leak

• Change rear bumpstops if delivered

And what really happened yesterday...

Coolant and exp tank change went well.

Rocker gasket change went well (just two fasteners, M6 nuts, on this AWQ-code 1.4 MPI engine from 2002, 3Nm torque. I'd bought the gasket from ebay, and the little 'grommety bits the studs come through' from Skoda parts,.com, for a hell of a lot less than I could find elsewhere.

Bumper came off very easily, and I kinda made progress on gluing various bits, but haven't yet refitted.

Bumpstops arrived with the postie, late morning, so that job became doable. 🙂

Lubed, wire-brushed and loosened the lower shock bolts both sides before lunch, including a brief 'oops that's the tightening direction, that won't work' moment on one side. 😆

Bumpstop changes went well, apart form forgetting to refit the little plastic cap that goes on the topmount on the side that goes up into the body. Couldn't live with knowing I'd left that off, so the topmount had to come back down again.

Then I thought, while the wheel's off I may as well investigate this drum brake...

And that's where it all went to crap.

Drum wouldn't even turn by hand with handbrake fully off, despite having moved the car a few yards mid morning, so definitely seizing well. Decided that the shoe set and handbrake cable were getting changed (both bought ahead of time), so thought I'd carry on and disassemble some stuff, despite running low on energy.

Realised that the hub/bearing would need to come off to make the changes much easier, as the shoe set I'd bought was preassembled.

It didn't.

Hub nut took much more force (2ft breaker bar and my full weight) to undo, and even when removed completely the bearing wasn't 'just pulling off freely like they do on youtube'.

Turned out the inner race was seized to the stubaxle, and the bearing was destroyed by the time I'd removed it in multiple pieces. No spare on hand.

Heat and chiselling required to de-stick the inner race.

Amazon delivering a dodgy-sounding-brand one sometime this morning.

So the plan for today, remove old handbrake cable, hopefully not seized at the exit point out of the body like they generally are: https://youtube.com/shorts/xzMXu85LUjU?si=6T-_FLKP7GnSQ2VT

Then fit new handbrake cable, shoe set, hub/bearing and adjust it all up.

Then refit front bumper.

🤞

The morning session has gone well.

The challenges were:

Despite being a Classic spec car, it has plastic undertrays that have to drop at least partly to get to the places that handbrake cables emerge.

And of course most of those steel clips that hold it onto studs on the underbody were 'crumble to dust' status 24 years on from build.

These clips that attach the cable to the underside of the rear beam are pure evil.

The handbrake cable rubber grommet was well stuck in there, as per hatboy's video posted above.

(Rotary) Wire brushed clear of loads of white aluminum oxide before fitting new cable into it (tried without and it was about 8mm shy of full insertion).

For those who didn't watch the vid, it's these alloy tubes that the rubber bits stick fast into

That's a spare I kept from last time I did this job, and used new tubes.

The bearing showed up and the rear end is now all done.

Just front bumper to do.