The first call of the day was in Knutsford for work on Andy’s MGF 1.8 mpi in JRJ.
He’d noticed some overheating so asked us to come and investigate. We had replaced the head gasket back in 2016 and the car had been fine with runs over to Italy and Switzerland etc. Unfortunately, when the cambelt service was done in the last year or so via another garage, plus having the PRT replaced and the engine bay pipes replaced, plus fitting a random bolt into the bleed screw outlet on the radiator, the system hadn’t been bled properly, and there were a couple of leaks from the engine bay pipes and from the bleed screw on the rad, plus a lot of air in the system. So today we put right all leaks and airlocks, including fitting a new water-pump as it was suspected this had been leaking too. Not always a good idea fitting water-pumps with an evaporation chamber as it’s handy to know if the water pump is, in fact, leaking. On running up to temperature and bleeding the system all seemed well. Andy was to run the car report back, unfortunately it seems that one or all of these issues have caused the inevitable to happen. What a shame, but these things happen and are easily rectified. It was good to see Andy again after all this time, can’t believe it was that long ago! Well we will be seeing him again once we manage to find a date to return and replace the head gasket once more.
From there we went along to Northwich to carry out the annual service on Clare’s Steppy ‘Cilla’ (in paint code IAI).
Minor service carried out, with replacement of the HT leads as the ones on it had some heat damage. Couple of other things noted and reported back to Clare. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see her properly this time as she was otherwise engaged with her work.
The last call of the day was in Salford where it was lovely to meet Alan and to see this Vandem Plas, which was rescued from a shed, having been abandoned there for quite some time. Once up and running it was noticed that the suspension was a bit clumpy over potholes etc, although the car still had a lot of bounce in it, once we measured it we noticed that it was lower on one side so we pumped the hydragas up to the correct height and she’s now looking a bit more balanced. How great that this car has been saved, it’s so fantastic. We hope to see Alan and his fab car at next year’s Pride of Longbridge event.
A long haul this morning with so many hold ups due to the volume of traffic on the M62, not too bad a run home, it was time to get the admin done at least and now we’ve just got back home. – https://ift.tt/9JOGfkl
