Water treading.
Being a man of modest means operating a minor fleet of decrepit vehicles, it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that the 6 monthly Warrant of Fitness rolls around with alarming frequency, requiring a good advance self-inspection and remedy of whatever faults might make me transportless for Christmas.
The Mazda. Again.
Fuck it, same old sames, do a tidy up of the right top A pillar, and the left top B pillar, sand back, prime, fill, sand, paint, sand, paint...
....and this time also attend to the "for your attention" advisory from last time which was a vague "surface rust underneath".
No problem. This is a daily driver / utility / non-precious vehicle, a quick rotary brush of a few bits, and do the end-caps in Zinc primer. Everything else, meh.
In this case "meh" translates to "aerosol can of de-odorised fish oil". Spray it on everywhere, a couple of weeks in advance of the WOF check so as not to piss the guys off with the experience of inspecting a fish barrel, because "deodorised" is a pretty relative term, and would possibly mean something like "not at all gut wrenchingly stenchful, if you take rotting whale blubber as the benchmark". Yeah. There passes subsequently a few days where I can smell this wafting up from the driveway, and so on the first day I park the van somewhere else in the sun so that it is someone else's problem! After that it is not so bad. Until I drive it across town, because some of the spray got onto the manifold and exhaust pipe.
The rest of it solidifies into that nice impenetrable fish-oil sheath.
The semi-detached bumper, created when reversing out of the waterblaster shop yard. That's not going to be good.
The slidy bracket half has broken off.
Yeah whatever. Reach it in and slide it in place on the bumper frame half of the bracket. Couple of screws drilled through the bumper into the bracket on the other side....
Got the fucking wof, so that's fine.
That's Saturday basically done. Apart from getting under there and installing the steering box, and the power steering lines.
Brakes. A good afternoon project. If ever brakes are a good project, it would have to be a sunny mild afternoon.
I've got four calipers and they're all solid to the touch. The piston it will not move. Got two piston kits from repco: a full set of seals. Gotta take it apart. Brake fluids will corrode anything. If you get it on your clothes you can't wash it off, in fact each time you wash your clothes they deteriorate into holes and the holes get bigger. It eats paint, slowly: brush it on an enemy's bonnet and in two weeks "fuck you" appears in dead paint and rusty metal.
Dirty!
In the end I levered it out.
No wonder it was getting hard to stop.
Polished it up with 1000 grit wet'n'dry using pegasol for the liquid.
Buff the rest, wash liberally with Brakleen.
One fun thing is opening the brake bleed nipple, and holding it to the aerosol to blow cleaner through it all. I feel like I am operating a system.
The next just will not budge. A vice can press it further in, but I cannot lever it out. I tried penetrating lubrication, I tried heat.
What it needed was hydraulic pressure. In the end, I figured the clutch feed on the dead van was the best option. Hooked up a spare piece of brake line, as close to the master cylinder as possible.
Found that the clutch shared a reservoir with the brakes, luckily the lowest chamber was the clutch. Excellent work, Mitsubishi!
Filled it, pumped it, heard it squirting out onto the framework... got under and traced the lines from the clutch end all the way back, shifted the line OFF the secondary brake line and onto the clutch outlet, repeat. Process of pumping, and letting the air bubble out..
Takes time, uses half a bottle of fluid, pumps. Out.
Gross.
Then I realise I wanted the other one. Do it. Buff this shit out of everything, and call it a day because this has taken like 5 hours or some shit. Brakes: NEARLY SORTED!
Being able to stop is way more important than being able to go. I'll be seeking out the best brake pads front and rear that I can find. Also, handbrake skids!!
At the moment, this is still there. I ran out of Brakleen
The Mazda. Again.
Fuck it, same old sames, do a tidy up of the right top A pillar, and the left top B pillar, sand back, prime, fill, sand, paint, sand, paint...
....and this time also attend to the "for your attention" advisory from last time which was a vague "surface rust underneath".
No problem. This is a daily driver / utility / non-precious vehicle, a quick rotary brush of a few bits, and do the end-caps in Zinc primer. Everything else, meh.
In this case "meh" translates to "aerosol can of de-odorised fish oil". Spray it on everywhere, a couple of weeks in advance of the WOF check so as not to piss the guys off with the experience of inspecting a fish barrel, because "deodorised" is a pretty relative term, and would possibly mean something like "not at all gut wrenchingly stenchful, if you take rotting whale blubber as the benchmark". Yeah. There passes subsequently a few days where I can smell this wafting up from the driveway, and so on the first day I park the van somewhere else in the sun so that it is someone else's problem! After that it is not so bad. Until I drive it across town, because some of the spray got onto the manifold and exhaust pipe.
The rest of it solidifies into that nice impenetrable fish-oil sheath.
The semi-detached bumper, created when reversing out of the waterblaster shop yard. That's not going to be good.
The slidy bracket half has broken off.
Yeah whatever. Reach it in and slide it in place on the bumper frame half of the bracket. Couple of screws drilled through the bumper into the bracket on the other side....
Got the fucking wof, so that's fine.
That's Saturday basically done. Apart from getting under there and installing the steering box, and the power steering lines.
Brakes. A good afternoon project. If ever brakes are a good project, it would have to be a sunny mild afternoon.
I've got four calipers and they're all solid to the touch. The piston it will not move. Got two piston kits from repco: a full set of seals. Gotta take it apart. Brake fluids will corrode anything. If you get it on your clothes you can't wash it off, in fact each time you wash your clothes they deteriorate into holes and the holes get bigger. It eats paint, slowly: brush it on an enemy's bonnet and in two weeks "fuck you" appears in dead paint and rusty metal.
Dirty!
In the end I levered it out.
No wonder it was getting hard to stop.
Polished it up with 1000 grit wet'n'dry using pegasol for the liquid.
Buff the rest, wash liberally with Brakleen.
One fun thing is opening the brake bleed nipple, and holding it to the aerosol to blow cleaner through it all. I feel like I am operating a system.
The next just will not budge. A vice can press it further in, but I cannot lever it out. I tried penetrating lubrication, I tried heat.
What it needed was hydraulic pressure. In the end, I figured the clutch feed on the dead van was the best option. Hooked up a spare piece of brake line, as close to the master cylinder as possible.
Found that the clutch shared a reservoir with the brakes, luckily the lowest chamber was the clutch. Excellent work, Mitsubishi!
Filled it, pumped it, heard it squirting out onto the framework... got under and traced the lines from the clutch end all the way back, shifted the line OFF the secondary brake line and onto the clutch outlet, repeat. Process of pumping, and letting the air bubble out..
Takes time, uses half a bottle of fluid, pumps. Out.
Gross.
Then I realise I wanted the other one. Do it. Buff this shit out of everything, and call it a day because this has taken like 5 hours or some shit. Brakes: NEARLY SORTED!
Being able to stop is way more important than being able to go. I'll be seeking out the best brake pads front and rear that I can find. Also, handbrake skids!!
At the moment, this is still there. I ran out of Brakleen