Thursday, September 03, 2009

SHE LIVES!!!!!!!!!!

Becky is back in the land of the living. I fitted the charged battery, the fuel pump, the carbs, put in £5 worth of petrol, squirted some Easystart into the carb intakes and Becky started up without any problems. She was ticking over at about 2000 rpm but other than that she was running fine. I drove her round the block and all was well. The brakes still work (the fluid will need changing) but the handbrake was as bad as ever. I think the battery is past it's best (it was on the car when I bought her 4 years ago) but once started I'll be able to drive her across to my garage where I can work on getting her ready for the MoT. The biggest hurdle will be getting the welding done. The offside outer sill needs replacing but the Guru has some sills so I'll need to get one from him. The other jobs I can see that need doing are to adjust the brake shoes, change the engine oil, change the oil filter, change the air filter, sort out the blowing exhaust manifold/downpipe joint and to fit the exhaust brakcet to prevent this reocurring. The rust I'd ground off a few months ago has started to come back but I can deal with that easily enough.

Blue has had an oil and filter change. I had a couple of oil filters in stock so that saved me a few quid. The cheap oil I'd put in when I did the head gasket had only done less than 1000 miles but it looked like it had done 6000 so it has done the job of flushing out the engine as I'd intended. I'm now back on decent oil. Instead of Duckhams I used Miller's 15W/40 from Champion. (paid for by the refund on the head gasket set) It is the right oil for the Acclaim and at just shy of £12 I know it is decent quailty. I've also ordered an air filter. The old one doesn't look too bad so I'll put it on Becky now she's running again.

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