dropping an engine and gearbox and trimming a hedge with a chainsaw - what more could one ask for from Christmas?

Christmas 2007 has been very low-key and I've had a good time. We headed to the Diamond Hell for six days and were mostly immersed in family.

I managed to duck out on the Saturday and it took me about two hours to drop the engine and gearbox out of Simon's Poleizi VW bus. This vehicle is the reason for the GTI languishing on my drive. The bus has been blowing water out in the engine bay. Given that it's a waterboxer motor it could have been for a variety of reasons - sheared head stud, blown seals etc etc. As it turns out there was a filthy great crack in the head. As I'm not prepared to work on the street, or flap about trying to a) figure out what had happened and then b)resolve it on the street, after a cursory inspection I chose to drop the engine and gearbox out. This went fine up until the van made a bid for freedom off the jack, on to the axle stand, which then broke. Did I mention that it was on a bit of a slope?

The engine and 'box were half out at this point. It seems the starter solenoid took the brunt of the fall, so I've bought it up to Bristol to get that part replaced. Once I've MOTed the Golf it looks like I'll be selling that now. This makes me feel slightly guilty about taking it in, as it was due to go to a good home, now any home with a small quantity of cash will do.

The second 'project' over Christmas was my parent's Seat Leon, which rides like the dampers are sticking. This is sub-optimal on the IOW's roads, so after some mithering about whether the Leon wheels would fit (thanks to ChrisS for making my mind up!) I swapped the wheels on the Passat on to it, to see if the taller profile tyres would make any difference. They didn't, so I spent another hour swapping all of the wheels back. Unfortunately there are no suitable jacks at my parent's place, so I was working with a pair of widow-makers. Thankfully this was on level ground, so nothing untoward happened, but I wouldn't want to spend too much time with the jack out of the Leon!

The 16" wheels resolved the Passat's looks a lot better, but the ET50 vs ET37 offset made the car look quite 'pinched'. There are pics in the photos section on diamondhell.com.

without wanting to dampen this post too much with work stuff I now have Now is Gone and Wikinomics, which I'll be reading shortly. I'm hoping they're not just common sense with a dash of hyperbole as I'd like some pointers either to indicate that I'm working in the right direction in work, or to point me in the right direction!

Free GTI update

Did it pass the MOT? Did it heck.

Last night, before I posted the last entry I had removed the stupid pressure-reducing valves that had stopped the heater working (more for driver comfort than anything else - it IS very cold at the moment!) . I then extracted the leaking radiator and put in the nice new one out of the Syncro and sorted the non-working dip beam light by servisolling the connector and pushing it back on! Obviously the new screen went in this morning..... eventually.

I did try and get new plates at lunchtime, but there was some argey-bargey about documents, so I came away annoyed and empty-handed.

MOT fail this afternoon on the following:

numberplates
numberplate lights (same reason I took off the non-working rear wiper last night)
OS front brake hard line = corroded
OS CV boot split
Brake bias valve seized
welding required to shell near rear beam bolt-up point.

I guess about 15 miles being driven with a gentle foot on the brakes cleaned 'em up quite well - I was rather concerned about it failing on them!

Fanbelt also to be replaced as it was squealing like a stuck pig this evening.

Still up-beat about it though - it's dead easy to work on, too!

I've got 10 days to 'have Christmas' and then get this sucker MOTed with no re-test fee. The rear beam and bias valve are already off and I've got the CV boot that needs replacing. I'm also going to replace the flexi-hoses on the beam as the existing ones are pretty crusty.


Chop chop.

An unmanaged expectation is a dangerous thing.

I'm sitting in my kitchen. I'm not supposed to be sitting in my kitchen. I should be in work by now, really but thanks to the wonder of the interweb I can still work sitting here, Mini-Hell is trying to stop me though. Not ideal.

I'm here for two reasons - 1. Mrs Hell is unwell, so needed a slow start to the day 2. The free Golf GTI (more of which in a mo) needs a new windscreen before it goes for MOT later today. A windscreen fitter was booked for 9:30, so I'd be able to pick up the Golf at lunch and get it tested. We have no windscreen fitter here at this time (11:01). I am now annoyed. I couldn't get hold of the guy on the phone at 9:45, to try and find out where he was - his numbers all went to voicemail. Eventually Mrs Hell got him at 10:30, when he explained he had been 'tied up' or something. That's fair enough - I can deal with someone having issues, provided I know they're having issues. When I can't get hold of them I'm annoyed because I can't put a time on whether they're going to show or not maybe they've been in a shunt on the way here, maybe they're ill - I'm left hanging with no idea and totally unmanaged expectations and I bloody hate that!

So anyway, the free GTI. My mate Simon has an ex-German Poleizi Transporter T25, with a petrol engine, this has recently started doing a beautiful impression of a gurgling brook out of the head, so he needs a stand-in until he and I get his van sorted. Someone pinged me about a 1987 Golf GTI that was for sale for £100, no tax or test and it had been standing for a while, so I went along and had a look, after the vendor contacted me (secret squirrel stuff). I took a battery and some fuel.

When I got there it turned out that the car had been standing for over a year- bad - but it looked pretty solid (in the dark) - good. Sadly when I climbed into it and looked through the condensation on the screen I could see a dirty great crack on it. 'Oh dear, that won't pass an MOT' I said. 'Oh, I'd forgotten about that' he said. I climbed out and he said 'you could just take it?'. 'we'll see if it starts' I said.

So, I got a price for the screen, collected the car last night, spent some time driving with the brakes on, to try and bring the discs and pads back to life, while doing this I froze my ass off - the heater wasn't working. When we got back here I removed the pressure-reducer valves that were preventing the heater from working, then spotted a leak in the radiator, so that had to come out and be swapped for the one that was being used previously in the Syncro. There were a couple of other fiddly jobs and then I took it out to just make sure everything was OK - it kinda was, but the brakes still aren't all together right - it'll cope, hopefully, but I think it might need new numberplates.

Never mind cope - will it pass an MOT?! Tune in later to find out.