Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[CitroJim]

Very sorry to hear of Tesla's passing Zel

[Hell Razor5543]

Goodbye Tesla. Your antics brought smiles to our faces whenever they were recounted on the Forum. You will be missed here as well.

[Michel]

I feel for you Zel. I took one of my cats to the vet a couple of Thursdays ago - the day before we went to France, as she was off colour. I was expecting some pills and medicine.

I came home with an empty cat box. Cancer. I was distraught. I stayed with her until the end and she didn't suffer.

Much love to you and yours. It's a tough time.

[CitroJim]

I feel for you Zel.

As do I, over the years I've lost a few cats (and too many human friends) to cancer and it always hits hard, very hard so I know the level of grief only too well...

My thoughts are very much with you and all those close to you at this time Zel...

Much love to you and yours. It's a tough time.

Couldn't have put it better myself...

[daviemck2006]

Losing a pet unexpectedly is as taxing as losing a friend or family member. A loved pet is actually a friend and family so it is understandable. Take time and grieve for your loss properly.

[Zelandeth]

Here's a little insight into his character.

I randomly decided to toss him the bit of cardboard from under a frozen pizza to lick any fragments of food off and/or enjoy himself shredding. He would never destroy anything unless you specifically told him he could - if you threw it to him though, fair game!



Anything and everything can be a game.

You can very clearly see the battle between the German Shepherd bit trying to calmly work it out and the husky "if in doubt bat madly at it" going on.

[CitroJim]

[Zelandeth]

Trying to remember where I'd got to with the pinball table now. I think the glass has just arrived.

I got this installed as quickly as I really could. Simply because by far the safest place for it to live is actually in the machine.



Looks a lot more finished with the glazing all in place.

The giant empty space on the apron was quite conspicuous though. Ideally I'd get this painted up to be closer to the original colour, but for the time being I just made up a graphic with some instructions on that was based on the original apron design. I was aiming for it to look like the original instruction cards, but it just looks like I left white boxes for the text! Eh, it was only a version 1.0 and took me all of about half an hour to make. Most of that was spent finding a photo of high enough resolution to use as a reference.



For reference, here's a photo of the apron from Eight Ball Deluxe.

Or at least the early version...I totally forgot that they used a different colour scheme for the LE version, with black, red and silver rather than cream and gold...not sure why given I SAW ONE in person a few weeks ago.



So I'll probably redo this based on the later colour scheme - random photo from an ancient Reddit thread.



Which I think will blend in better. Nevertheless having *something* in that space makes it look more finished.



Using the black/red colour scheme though will open up more options for me though as I've already got a black base there.

Today's attention was turned to the backglass. The fact that you could see all the edges made it look far too obvious it was just a computer monitor. Hiding those edges needed to happen. Not complicated to do though.

Glass out and the centre area we wanted to use was masked off.



Then the glass was painted with some black paint.



Which results in a nice clear black border around the edges, hiding the monitor surround from view.





I will probably add some foam or similar behind those masked areas just so that you can't look into the cabinet if you're viewing it from a really oblique angle.



This should help keep a bit of tension on the glass too to help stop it from rattling.

Nice to start getting the little details like this ticked off as they do add up and it's starting to feel more polished and less thrown together now.

Next time you're over this way and have some time to kill, you'll need to have a nosey and a shot of it Jim.

[CitroJim]

Onwards and upwards with the pinball machine Zel, it's looking better every time you do work on it

[Zelandeth]

Finally kicked myself into doing a bit of work on the bits of Rover.

Whoever last had the inlet manifold off, I hate you. Apparently rather than replacing the gasket they just slathered it in what looks like several tubes worth of blue Hylomar and smooshed the lot back together.



Which explains why I reckon I could have lifted the engine out by the thing given how well it was stuck to the head.

I didn't take note of exactly when I started, but this took a substantial chunk of this afternoon.



It still needs going over once more but the worst of the gunk is off now at least.



A side effect of the overused sealant was two of the smaller coolant passages having been totally covered. I'm sure that wasn't helping anything.

Now need to remove the partner to this lot from the head...oh, and the underside of the head. Though at least that's just normal carbon and oily gunk which isn't anywhere near as difficult to shift as this was.

[Zelandeth]

How many drops targets would you like, Sir?



For all it's pretty simple in terms of the rule set and game progression, this is a good fun table. It also plays considerably faster than most old EM tables.

[Zelandeth]

I think this lot is now about as clean as it's going to get.



From when I was in the process of scrubbing the head.



Head seems perfectly straight as best I can tell with the equipment I have.

All of the coolant passages in both the head and manifold were blasted out with the pressure washer as the manifold in particular was quite full of crap.

There's still some staining around the edges of the combustion chambers but it feels perfectly smooth and uniform, so I think will be fine.

The block was a disgusting, slimy mess.



Not going to win any prizes, but it looked a lot better after I unloaded a few cans of degreaser at it and then attacked it with the pressure washer.



I will hose out the block as well - but I'm going to do that right before reassembly as I don't want to leave the inevitable water that gets into the combustion chambers etc just sitting there. So I'd rather be as close to ready to get the engine started up, warmed up and dried out when I do that.

I have a feeling it might not actually be horrible in there - the head (and the manifold in particular) looked far worse than anything I can see of the block. Not impossible they're from a completely different engine of course!

[bobins]

Where is this parallel universe that you're living in ? I'd expect at least one seized or snapped bolt just for the hell of it, or perhaps a nasty score on a bore. It surely can't be going this well ??

[mickthemaverick]

I think the problem is bobins, that the seventh cylinder on the right has shrunk!!

[Zelandeth]

Where is this parallel universe that you're living in ? I'd expect at least one seized or snapped bolt just for the hell of it, or perhaps a nasty score on a bore. It surely can't be going this well ??

Well I dodged at least 75% of the misery that would usually be involved by not having to touch the exhaust.

Also I'm not really looking for trouble. We had pretty clear issues with the head gasket, and indeed found clear signs of age related failure there. Given that the engine was running pretty well even then and wasn't burning excessive amounts of oil I'm not too worried about problems with the bores.

As for the remainder of the good fortune...these cars are just that well engineered and overbuilt.