there's a hole in my (rust) bucket

Got to get worse before it gets better, following the mantra of cutting out ALL the rust leaves a pretty big hole in the floor, simple to replace though so not a big deal.

The are at the floor where it joins the sill is going to be much more of a challenge though.

Going to need to come up with some 2mm steel for the chassis repair too the sheet steel i have isn't thick enough, might have to hunt throught the scrap steel shelf at the workshop to find some suitable box section or similar.

No Go II

Two 'no go' episodes (OK breakdowns if you must) in the space of two months already makes 2011 the worst year for the Pasta Wagon by a good margin. This time outside nursery, drove down from work all fine and dandy, came out, and nothing. Dead battery. The man in the yellow van came to the rescue and got it started with the jumper pack but the battery wouldn't hold charge. I managed to get it to the workshop and rob the Austin of its battery which although not anywhere near the same shape or having the poles the correct way round was persuaded to fit in the space vacated by the lifeless original.
So with that squeezed in i was anble to get home again. Early rise this morning to be at the battery shop for 7, then up to the workshop to put it in and then back home to take the girls to nursery before 8..... phew.


No exciting pictures here, a snug fit even after i removed the battery tray, did the job in an emergency though.

January, the problem month

As i would have hoped the Pasta wagon has been pretty un-newsworthy during my ownership really. It will be 10 years old in March though so the problems are going to come, and this always appears to happen in January.
The last bit of maintenance i did was topping up the oil and changing a headlight bulb. The manual helpfully states that i should contact a trained technician at a VW garage to change a said bulb, erm yeah right. Having a puny 1.6 engine probably helps me a bit as it doesn't take up much room in the engine bay but it really wasn't more than a 5 minute job.

One problem is that it has always run slightly cold but when the really cold -20 weather came the car just wasn't getting hot at all, this is not good for the engine for a number of reasons so i needed to change the likely culprit - the thermostat, which was probably stuck open.
Now being a newer car this was obviously a real pig of a job.

The Pasta Wagon sneaks in beside the Austin.

 

See that, right way down there, one bolt of the thermostat housing removed, it took a lot of swearing to get it out too. The other bolt undone and the contents of the cooling system deposited on the workshop floor i could whip out the old thermostat.

 

 

the nice shiny new one and all important gasket ready for service.

 

So a 1.5. hour job done and the temperature gauge shows a perfect 90 degrees. Result.

Anyway that was job no.1 in January 2011 next up it's time to get the MOT done. Book an early 7:30 appointment and 30 mins later no bother, sails straight through. Whizz back home to collect the nutsters and take them to nursery and waddaya know - 100 meters from nursery it starts firing on 3 cylinders. Pah, bumhats. So my immediate thoughts are that the MOT man has done something but after limping it to work and home again i connect the computer to read the fault code, which gave me an unhelpful (but confirming) misfire on no 1 cylinder.

So to cut a long story short i eventually diagnose a duff coil unit, a simple job you may think but alas no, the inlet manifold and 10 hundred zillion other things need to be removed to change it so not having time to faff around with that i book it into the garage, something i really hate doing but i had no choice. As it was it took them 2 days to finish so that means it probably would have taken me a week with no guarantee either. thankfully i had diagnosed correctly and all is well again apart from the 700 quid bill. :-(

slow progress

January was a bit of a no show down the workshop due to other comittments but it took the (big) decision to remove the left front wing to repair the rust on the inner wing. They are welded on and big and heavy so not so much of a fun job really but i think it is going to be worth it.

10 gazillion spot welds needed drilling out.

hmmm 40 year old mud and stuff.

This is the bit that is going to be the big part of the job a bit of the floor and most of the outrigger is rusty so going to be some hefty metal choppage here.

bodywork continues

The smallest rust spot always turns out to be larger than you first fear, and when you also find filler there is plenty of work to be done, no point in trying to 'cure' the rust with chemicals either, just one way to go as always, cut it out.

So with the offending pieces are displayed..

Leaving me with a big hole and plenty of repair pieces to make.

Haven't taken any photos of this recently but it is coming together nicely.