However I then ended up wasting far nearer two hours than I should have trying to get this thing started.
Which actually turned out to be completely innocent. The fuel in the can I bought around the end of September had simply ceased to be in any way flammable. With fresh fuel (not from the run down Total garage that's just round the corner from us this time) added, it fired up first pull. I know that modern fuel tends to go off relatively quickly, and I know that the shed this can had been stored in does get quite toasty when it's sunny, but it was a surprise for this to have gone off to the point that it wouldn't even try to run an engine so quickly. Lesson learned I guess.
Before I went after the car with the pressure washer today I decided to (in the middle of a downpour or course) change the door seals first. Figured as I had these on hand I may as well at least do something to minimise the amount of water to end up in the cabin.
New seals in place on the car - not that you'd really spot any difference looking at them from a distance.
The only thing to really watch out for if you've not done this before is that there's a single rivet holding the original onto the frame.
That obviously needs to be removed before the old seal can be pulled off. Ideally the aluminium kick plates also want to be removed too - however the screws holding the driver's side one in are sufficiently rusted that the only tool that will be removing those is the grinder. The passenger side one has actually corroded away to next to nothing due to the carpets being so damp for so long. So I'll probably look to get a new pair ordered at some point and replace the originals using stainless steel fasteners. I want to get the floor etc thoroughly rust proofed at some point so they'll definitely need to come off for that.
The old seals were a lip type design rather than the tube type which went on today, and had all but turned to solid plastic by this point. There was virtually no give to them whatsoever and you could see daylight around both of them in several places, like here where there used to be about a 1/8" gap.
I do have all new window channels for in the door as well, those will be replaced in due course.
The seal is now snugly up against the door and is far more likely to be doing something useful. You can really feel the difference when you close the door now as they close with more of a thump rather than rattly click. Not expecting them to be exactly hermetically sealed or anything, but this will definitely have improved their performance over the very aged stock seals.
Took a total of about 30 minutes to do both sides, about as simple a job as it gets.
So back to it with the (now working) pressure washer. Target being the well and truly ingrained dirt and moss that was in basically every single nook and cranny on the car.
I hadn't realised quite how much was just adhering to the surfaces in general until I hit the first one with the spray from the lance.
As can be seen on about the lower 1/4 of the above photo, the car immediately became several shades lighter.
We did lose some paint in a few areas but I was fully expecting that and have already got doing some touch ups on the to do list - the paint on the car as a whole to be honest is really rough so it really wasn't a concern.
Here's the top of the passenger door now with a lot less moss present.
Being a little scruffy I don't mind so much. However looking neglected I'm not willing to put up with...and having it's own ecosystem forming tends to suggest the latter more than the former!
I literally just blasted the worst off of it, no detergent was used, and I didn't go as far as doing a wash as the heavens had opened again by this point.
Not clean by any stretch of the imagination, but a lot better.
You can't tell from the photos, but there was probably a couple of kilos or so of mud blasted out from each of the wheel arches as well.
I did encounter a problem when I went to set out to go on a little drive to dry the engine bay off - I was suddenly missing wipers and indicators. Turned out to be a blown fuse.
The cause once again turned out to be because of chopped live wires that had just been abandoned in place - from the fuel consumption monitor in this case. This is becoming something of a recurring theme on this car. Despite there being female, insulated connectors on the wires about an inch from where they'd been chopped, the wires had just been cut and left floating around on the inner wing. The tails were removed from the connectors and have now been tucked safely out of harm's way.
As far as the car actually caring that I'd gone over things in the engine bay with a pressure washer was concerned, it didn't care in the slightest. Which was exactly what I expected. If the ignition components are in good condition, there's no reason a car should care about this being done. Worst you're likely to need to do is to dry off the inside of the distributor cap (where applicable) if it's a design which can allow water ingress.
Obviously a bunch more water also found it's way into the car during this procedure so the carpets are even wetter again as there's definitely a lot of leakage around the windscreen. This really needed to be done though, and hopefully the rain might actually stop for more than 30 seconds somewhere in the next 5 months so I can get it properly dried out!
Hopefully if anyone is along to the New Year's Day Stoney Stratford classic car show tomorrow they might see this little thing on show for the first time (and I suspect far from the last time) in my ownership.
I like that car, it has just the right amount of issues to keep you well involved, occupied and interested.
