So it's probably about time that my car got a thread in here given that I've finally got off my lazy backside and created an account here and all that.
I first actually picked the car up back in 2014 from an eBay classified ad that was local to me. Probably paid a bit over the odds for it, but the car being localish (I was based in Aberdeen back then) rather than at the other end of the country I figured was worth a bit extra and with them getting rarer, decided just to grin and bear it and pay for it.
The initial impression was of a car that had spent a long while sitting and had never really been properly recommissioned. The suspension was creaky, a heap of bushes could really do with changing, the brake discs looked like something dredged off the Titanic, miles of that horrible green fabric hose were still present, the exhaust was blowing, it wouldn't idle for love nor money, and most terrifyingly it was still wearing the original tyres. It also had the look underside of a car that had been stored for a long time, the front suspension in particular features lots of that "fluffy" looking surface rust, everything seemed solid though, you just had to attack it with a wire brush first.
It also decided to dump all of its coolant halfway home from buying it, with an intermittent overheating problem which was pretty quickly diagnosed as being due to a dodgy expansion tank pressure cap. It never got that hot while I was in the car as I'm paranoid about such things and shut the engine down pretty much the moment I spotted the gauge heading north of its normal range, but I can't say what happened before I had it. Sure enough the head gasket announced its failure by letting water into cylinders two and three if you didn't take the cap off when you shut the engine off. It didn't actually cause any real problems, though I won't be surprised if that turns out to be somewhat responsible for the lumpy power delivery.
The tyres were the first item on the list though once I got it home, the originals were truly terrifying. Going around a roundabout at anything more than 10mph resulted in tyre squeal that you would expect from a 70s US action film, and power slides were entirely possible (and at times unavoidable) even with 54bhp less however many had escaped on tap. Ended up having to get them shipped over from Germany as nowhere in Aberdeen could track any 155SR13 tyres in the UK...not that surprising these days I guess. Still, new rubber on there and both the ride and handling returned to about where they should be - and the wonderful steering feel I remembered from my first Estelle was restored. It also meant that I could stop in less than half a mile which was a plus.
The next order of business really was just a decent service - the oil looked like something that you'd put in a fountain pen rather than engine oil, the coolant was brown rather than green, and the points were so far out of adjustment that I'm shocked the engine was even running. The plugs were the original PAL branded ones and actually were still in fine shape, just needing the gap brought in a fraction. Carb also got a clean, and that in conjunction with adjusting the idle speed meant that I could actually drive it in town without needing three feet to keep the engine going. Made things a bit less stressful! I also discovered about then that I needed new HT leads after I got an almighty belt off one of them one evening.
That's basically how things progressed for the next year - The head gasket remained predictable and stable and due to a house move and an Excess Of Real Life as I put it getting in the way, it just never made it to the top of the to do list. In fact, I ended up spending several months at the far end of the country to the car due to how things worked out. Still, eventually retrieved it and got it to a few shows here, when right at the end of the show season, literally a few hundred yards from home the head gasket finally decided that enough was enough and the temperature started to rise. I coasted into the drive well before it headed anywhere dangerous, and decided that she could be put away under the cover until the Spring as I wasn't going to use the car in the Winter anyway.
...Fast forward nine months until last weekend when I finally convinced myself to get off my lazy tail and sort the Skoda before there's no show season left this year - especially as I really want to get it along to The Festival of The Unexceptional which is on the 23rd July.
Having been living with a classic Saab (which has no right to be difficult to be work on, but somehow always seems to manage - I love that car, but I hate working on it with a passion - not least because components which need to be held in place by no more than an 8mm nut tightened to 10Nm will instead be held in place by a 19mm one which was tightened by Thor himself), and a 90s Citroen (lovely car to drive, but goodness it's complicated, and very much suffers from the "this car would be easy to work on if the entire car wasn't in the way" syndrome), working on the Skoda for a change was a breath of fresh air!
Head was off in less than an hour with one sheared exhaust manifold to silencer stud being the total drama other than me nearly knocking myself out on the corner of the engine cover at one point. Conveniently the old gasket decided to come out in one piece entirely stuck to the head, which made cleaning the engine side of things massively easier!
Aside from having a right old time getting the broken stud out of the exhaust manifold, the rest of the cleanup process and readying things for reassembly went pretty much to plan. I decided not to disturb the valves as I'd had no problems with low compression, and the engine only has 18K on the clock. Plus I didn't have the tools to hand to disassemble the head any further.
Was really curious to know if this mark in the combusion chamber of cylinder number two has a story behind it though...
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There is evidence of the head having been off before (the cooling pipe clip has obviously been disturbed for one), so I wonder if this was somehow related to that. There's no sign of damage to the piston or bore there...just this little mark. Manufacturing defect maybe?
Reassembly was as they so enjoy saying in the manuals, the reverse of disassembly save for the additional step at the end of adjusting the valve clearances. Finally got to actually use the torque wrench that I bought about five years ago for something useful! Manual didn't state what stages to do things up in, so I went for 10Nm steps for the main head bolts and equivalently spaced steps (can't remember the math!) for the nuts on the plug side to keep the pressure even.
Oil, filter and coolant were then changed (during which I managed to make a terrible mess all over the driveway - completely forgot how big the drain hole in the sump was and it completely overwhelmed my poor drain pan), a new set of plugs went in and I had to take a brave pill and see if it would start (well, after cranking over for a while to build up oil pressure anyway).
Somewhat to my surprise she did start, first turn after I connected the coil back up and immediately settled into by far the most even idle I've ever heard from the car - if a little smoky, but having just deliberately poured oil into the cylinders as part of the reassembly process that was expected and soon cleared. Cooling system was then bled and I looked around for any problems.
It turned out that the rocker cover was completely incontinent, but that was the most serious problem we found, and was one that could easily be resolved with a tiny smear of instant gasket - and I've got a proper new seal on the way anyway.
Now I haven't driven the car yet, but it sounds massively more responsive than before, so it may well be that I was missing quite a few horsepower due to the issues with the head gasket. I have noted that the odd whistling/hissing noise from the front of the engine that I never managed to track down before is conspiciously absent now...so maybe it was actually leaking that badly...
Then set about tidying up my engine bay which actually looked like an engine bay again.
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(ten points if you can spot the thing I forgot to reattach because I'm stupid)
So without further ado, I got her booked in for an MOT and then started tidying things up...as the car had been sitting in a corner (albeit under a cover) for nine months, she was a mess. Externally dull paint, dry plastic and more cobwebs than you could shake a stick at were dragging the tone down, and the interior was equally full of spiders, pine needles, and the seats were disintegrating as is so common to Estelles. On that note, does anyone know a source of fabric that looks close to the original? I'm planning to get my seats retrimmed at some point.
Firstly...those seats. They look horrendous, are the first thing you notice when you open the door (or sooner) and really offend my OCD.
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I can't justify the cost of a few hundred quid to retrim them just yet, so covers were the order of the day. This was the point at which I discovered to the cost of my sanity that old car seats are emphatically not the shame shape as new car seats...and as a result the exercise of attempting to make modern generic seat covers fit old car seats is an exercise in frustration that will leave you with several bleeding knuckles, several years taken off your life, and leave you having learned (or invented) several new swear words. I did eventually manage to make them "mostly fit" as I put it. Far from perfect, and yes it looks like the seats have cheap covers on them, but at least they are relatively inoffensive now and don't immediately leap out at you - even if the "airbag" tags on the bolsters have got to go...
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While doing the final checks today for the really stupid stuff that everyone forgets to check before they leave I discovered that the windscreen washers weren't working (that's why we do these checks!) which was resolved by wiggling the contacts on the pump and that one number plate bulb was out - because I'd nicked it for one of the Saab's running lights and forgotten to replace it...oops.
Annoyingly, I also poked a hole in the offside sill, so there will be welding on the cards. There are a few areas on the underside of this sill that don't look too clever either. Will get it sorted no worries, just annoying. Not that surprising really that some is needed given that I can't find any evidence of this car having been welded before and we all know their tendency to dissolve on contact with water.
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At least compared to doing the job on a modern car with tinfoil thick metal and complex compound curves it should be a (relatively) easy job on the Skoda. Garage will be doing the work as my welding is (at best) poor, and the welder is currently in bits in need of a new line and torch assembly as it's been bodged once too many times (well, it was free) and literally fell apart last time I tried to use it.
Still, I went ahead with the prep anyway and finally slapped a couple of coats of wax on and gave all the plastics some attention. Always forget how much of a difference to how tidy a car looks (or not) that just dressing the plastics can make.
Don't think she's looking too bad to be honest! I always try to turn up to the MOT with as presentable car as possible.
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Really need to get some white paint and touch in the lettering on the mudflaps, that's really bugging me now I've noticed it!
MOT is at 10 tomorrow morning, so let's see how big a shopping list I come away with. Expecting:
[] At least two or three welding repairs needed on the offside sill.
[] Brake hoses don't look too clever - even if they pass, they're getting changed ASAP anyway.
[] Front discs? They look horrendous, but the brakes work very well (easily locks the front wheels on a dry road with weight in the front) and the car stops perfectly straight, so we'll see.
[] Rear suspension bushes? They went through the last test (at a different garage) without mention so we'll see (though so did the offside sill...and I don't see it having got that much worse in a year). It'll be getting booked in to get those changed shortly anyhow though as I know the semi trailing arm bushes are shot which is throwing the camber out and are they cause of my creaky rear suspension.
Just have to see I guess!
