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

[BenC5HDi]

Or fishtank sealant, it's great stuff.

[daviemck2006]

Or fishtank sealant, it's great stuff.

Yes, or that. It would prove a point Mr Ben!

[BenC5HDi]

I'll tell you how good it is in a few days.. my 65 litre tank sprung a leak last week, when I got home after a night shift , the water was gone - into my carpet, and all my fish were dead. I wasn't best pleased. I bought a new tank today but I've sealed the old one and filled it up to see what happens - it's outside though this time!

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

[Zelandeth]

Eigh, sorry to hear that Ben.

I'm hoping that in this case the crack is tiny enough that clearcoat will do the job (the start of this line ironically is what I used as the border when I re-coated the roof...had I picked the other side of it I might not be having this problem!), failing that another type of sealant will be tried.

Got the bigger version of this sort of problem to deal with on the house shortly as well...that's getting attacked with Tigerseal though. It's a horrible bodge, but we can't seem to get anyone interested in actually sorting it properly (already been ripped off to the tune of £1600 by one cowboy), and we're looking to get the whole atrium reglazed in a few year's time so it doesn't have to last forever. Does mean me teetering at the top of a 20 foot or so high ladder which sounds totally like my idea of fun...

[Zelandeth]

Sealed up the cracks in the roof with several coats of clearcoat, we'll see if it's worked next time it rains I guess.

Also started the Skoda up and gave it a move around the drive. Now the weather's getting a bit better hope soon to get the head gasket sorted out, throw it at Two Wrestlers to get the semi-trailing arm bushes sorted and slap a fresh MOT on it. Then decide what to do with it...planning to sell it, though my take on that idea changes as often as the weather!

You've got to love old cars like that without even a clock in - hadn't been started in at least four or five months or been near a battery charger, and fired straight up.

[CitroJim]

What's the difficulty with the trailing arms that you feel the Two Wrestlers need to do Zel? If it's the need of a press or anything like that then remember I have all that kind of stuff...

[Zelandeth]

First challenge is to get the bits, which is always an interesting challenge with that car.

Primarily it's just one of those jobs where everything tends to be ridiculously tight, plus has been under the car for 29 years so is utterly uninterested in shifting. Can't remember off the top of my head if you need a press or not.

Big suspension type jobs like this I tend to just trust a professional to do. Shouldn't take massively long and I know they won't rip me off. Probably the biggest issue I have is confidence really. ...same reason I've put off doing the head gasket longer than I should. Still really hoping I don't need to get it skimmed as I really don't want to have to take all the valve gear apart.

Will be interesting to see if the brakes need work this year...still on the original discs and pads!

[Zelandeth]

Well had planned to get the Saab polished today, but given that it hasn't rained in a few days I decided that I really needed to attack the garden as it hadn't been touched this year yet.

Firstly raked up everything in the back garden and gave the grass the first cut of the year. Then attacked the path out the front which had been in dire, dire need of cleaning for about two years before we even moved in.



Looking a bit better. Need to do some repairs, but for after 32 years that's to be expected really. Now just need to sort out all the beds as well which are in a terrible state...and I'm really no gardener! Oh...and sort the roof, the window sills, unearth the garage, get off my backside and change the head gasket on the Skoda and a million and one other things. Seriously, there need to be more hours in the day...

[CitroJim]

Looking good Zel

I must admit I've been doing much the same, taking advantage of the very decent weather...

I'm completely blitzing my garden this year...

[Zelandeth]

Took advantage of the decent weather today and took the Sinclair C5 out for a run, wandered up towards the canal then followed that down to Willen and around the lake. Of course that area was a complete obstacle course today because of the bank holiday meaning that everyone in the entire area had descended on the place! Can safely say though having indicators is a heck of a lot easier than dealing with hand signals - and as an added bonus people actually seem to understand them to at least some extent.

My electrical gremlin has resurfaced though. Pretty sure the problem is with the battery connector, so have picked up some quick connect terminals, an isolator and some nice beefy cables to re-wire it with. Considering adding a 12V socket as well both in case I do actually want to run anything 12V in there, but I could also use that as a charging socket then save having to take the battery out (well, once I get power into the shed anyway) every time I want to charge it.

Other than that though having given is a bit of a going over seems to have helped a lot, never realised how much play there had been in the one wheel bearing!

[CitroJim]

Willen Lake is definitely a place to avoid on sunny bank Holidays Zel, and in fact any sunny weekend I find... It gets rammed with folk. It is, after all, the nearest thing to a seaside in Milton Keynes!!!

I have caused much upset in the past riding a bike around the lake in busy times and now I don't. One can skirt around it...

Shame, you ought to have carried on to visit me yesterday.. I'm not that far by C5 from the lake and no need to negotiate busy roads either - The Redway reaches nearly to my house...

[Zelandeth]

Yeah, was one of those things we didn't really think about until it was too late! Never really investigated the redways up your way, should have a look at the map sometime and have a shot at getting over there. Ideally without a dog and three other people in convoy maybe.

[CitroJim]

You're always welcome Zel Dog and all...

[Zelandeth]

So this evening I have established that water is *still* getting in somewhere around the top driver's side of the tailgate on the Xantia. Excuse me while I go find a wall to bash my head against a few times. Still reckon it's that same join and that I just need to apply a few more coats to seal it. I may actually just go the silicone sealant route at this point - as much as to prove that that IS where the water is coming from than as a final solution (as it will look horrible).

Then proceeded to lose a large portion of my evening beating Windows 7 into actually working on my desktop machine so I had a proper Windows system to run Sculptris on - only to have said software immediately crash when trying to start it. Lost interest in that project at that point, vowing to return to it tomorrow with a fresher head.

While I was waiting for it to do anything though, I did power up my PC from around the 1998-2002 era that I still have, and discovered two things: 1. That it's really interesting rummaging through the hard drives of machines that have been dormant that long, kind of like finding a virtual time capsule. Also, 2. I miss Windows 2000. It's running on a 300MHz (ish...can't remember!) AMD K6-2, has 128Mb of RAM, and absolutely flies along. That's not a fresh install either, that has a good few years under it's belt. That PC still sounds like the starship Enterprise starting up as well, and the full height 5.25" hard drive with a portion of my documents on (Micropolis 1598MD if I remember the model number rightly - 1.2Gb circa 1991) still makes the floor shake. Annoyingly the floppy drive appears to have died while in storage and I don't think I actually have a spare. Always wanted to get a 5.25" one for it as well as I've got some discs that I've always wanted to explore...never got around to it though. Yet.

...Then went and created a Win2K VM on this laptop just out of curiousity and because I could, and because that gives me a good base to run Office XP on for the few things that Libreoffice doesn't handle well (the graphing features in the spreadsheet program are nowhere near as advanced for one, and there's not a real answer to Access). I do have an XP VM for the same reasons - but found that it tends to chug a bit when you're dealing with large documents...2K seems to handle it far better though, I'm guessing because there are less OS overheads.

[CitroJim]

Isn't it amazing how Windows (and Linux) has expanded to use all the resources of the most powerful PCs without any discernible improvement in functionality

It's another demonstration that nature abhors a vacuum

I remember when Windows NT would happily run in 8MB memory on a Pentium 90!!! And it would run Office 97 very well too...

I once had Windows NT running on a 486DX 66 quite happily...