Car D.I.Y.

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D

Deleted member 26715

Guest
The car or the drum ^_^
You joke but have you seen the price of Lada's recently especially the Niva!
 
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Drago

Drago

Legendary Member
Today I whipped the rear wiper motor out of the XC90. The motor is a neat bit of design and comes right apart with a torx key. A good strip, clean and relube of the little gearbox and crank and the rear wiper is as good as new. The old grease had simply gone hard, like the stuff inside Shimano brifters does with age.

Not a difficult job, but messy. 45 mins from start to finish. So if id paid a dealer that would have been a ton for a new motor, and probably 50 labour, plus the value added tragedy. So not only did I save nearly 200 portraits, I did it in less time than it would have taken to drive to the dealer and back.
 

Electric_Andy

Heavy Metal Fan
Location
Plymouth
Today I fitted a new alternator to my Fiesta. But I can't get the belt back on (long story short; no flat surface, no lift or jack, bad back and bad knee). My nearest garage is 1.2 miles away (5 mins): do you think I can drive to the garage with no auxillary belt without overheating?

The battery is new and fully charged
 

DRM

Guru
Location
West Yorks
My 1960s Ford tractor has that and no self-adjusting mechanism.

Tighten it up until it starts to bind and then back off half a turn.
Fork lifts are the same, but with self adjusters, only difference being to get the drum off, you have to remove the half shaft ,the wheel bearings then back the shoes off then pull the drum off, to save time you leave the wheels on, I wonder why my joints are knackered :sad: we would make an adjuster by using a length of thin steel bar, bend the end up about 45 degrees and cut a V notch in it :okay:
 
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Drago

Drago

Legendary Member
Fork lifts are drum braked? You know, I never thought about it.
 

DRM

Guru
Location
West Yorks
Fork lifts are drum braked? You know, I never thought about it.
Some smaller electric ones have discs, hydrostatic drive ones don't have any they just lock the hydraulic drive motors, but one brand have a hydrostatic drive with drum brakes as well :wacko:, weird as the idea is to do away with brakes in the traditional sense so it's one less thing to maintain, reach trucks and electric powered pallet trucks have electromagnetic brakes, which is just a parking brake, the AC motor does the braking.
 
D

Deleted member 26715

Guest
Yesterday I spent a frustrating couple of hours out in the cold on the kitcar, this one has a windscreen so need to have wipers, there is no real build manual just a few pictures. It uses the MX5 wiper motor & the wiper pivots that take the rotary movement of the motor & make them into the arc movement needed by the wipers. First nerve wracking is drilling the holes for the pivots, it only says 45mm down from the screen but not where so you have to work it out. You then that to cut/shut the drive arm from motor to pivot, sorted the drivers side so that it sweeps nice & then parks at the bottom, the passenger one is then driven from the drivers. Worked it all out, cut/shut the arms, bend them so they cleared each other, switched the power on only to find I had one going one way & the other going the other & clashing in the middle, a total WTF moment :laugh: Another hour later they were working right
 

tyred

Legendary Member
Location
Ireland
My job for this morning involved freeing out the self-adjusting mechanism on the 205's drum brakes. Simple, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, there was a slight dampness when I pulled back the dust covers on the cylinders when I was working on the passenger side. The very beginnings of a leak. Caught just in time I thought, before it contaminated the liners. I sorted out the brake adjust mechanism anyway and was congratulating myself on policy of checking on these things occasionally before they develop into more serious issues. I put it all back together with the intention of ordering a new cylinder during the week and fitting it next weekend.

I then moved on the driver's side, yes it had started to leak fluid too, only in this case enough to contaminate the liners so I will need two cylinders and a set of brake shoes and have to strip it all down again next weekend:evil:

The brake fluid level was down when I checked but not by much, it was still just above the minimum and hadn't triggered the low level warning light yet so the leaks must have been very slight and pretty recent.

I does show that it's worthwhile to give a car a check over on a relatively regular basis, even if it doesn't do very many miles like mine (I actually think that's my problem as the braking system keeps seizing up over time).

I'll try the local motorfactor tomorrow to see what they can do for me. The Peugeot specialist that knows 205s inside out and usually still has most things in stock and where I usually get bits and pieces is out of reach due to the Covid travel restrictions.

Just to round the day of nicely I tried to start my Fabia and the recent frosty spell seems to have killed the battery:sad:

My plan for the year had been to drive the 205 over the summer and then take it off the road for sill reconstruction over the winter and use the Skoda but I am in some ways tempted to just put the Skoda on the road now and sort the brakes at a later date.

The only good thing is that I don't actually need either car as I am only allowed to travel 5km which I can do on foot. The only thing I actually use the car for at the moment is to collect and deliver my parent's shopping.

Maintaining old cars is so much fun:whistle:
 
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