"The estate" - the best car I've ever owned

[docchevron]

Doc: GR4 pilots are currently having to wait for the car to be re-scrambled (to the MOT station). We've got some Eurofighter guys who seem to keen to sharpen their skills in her too!


Jim: It was quite complex mate. First, I located a badge from a Xantia Activa. It came on a door moulding we only bought for the chrome strip. Then, I carefully removed the badge from the moulding and applied an (environmentally friendly bio-degradable duck kissing) adhesive to the rear of said badge.
Then, and this is the clever bit....I offered the badge to the tailgate of the BX, glue side first and left to try.

After that....nearly zero body-roll!

Nuff said!

[Kitch]

Too technical for me to be honest, lost me after the "carefully removed" bit...

Have you ever thought about doing a conversion kit? Could make your fortune on eBay!

I'm not selling out to the general public! I'm one in a million!

[19RD]

Time to resurect this topic.

Since the last post, the estate has remained sat in the barn until today. Kitch and I ventured to said barn, with the purpose of fitting the interior that Jay had kindly delivered.

We were greeted by this



Nevermind. Kitch had the task of climbing into the boot of the car with the aim of driving it out (I am clever you see, and wore shorts)



As he spent ages trying to kill a wasp inside the car I fitted the battery from the Alfa, topped up the water, and stood back. This was "The Estate" and it was bound to start first time......Kitch turned the key, and we were stunned by the sound of a sticky starter motor.....it did not start. Never fear, we tried again, and were overjoyed at the sound of her starting up. The suspension was set to high, and we drove the car out of the barn, weeds attached.



Once out of the barn we let it run for a bit, whilst adding more water, and taking a quick look at the bodywork. We then bolted in the drivers seat, and drove it down the field to the house to take a proper look.



Seems the barn had done a fair job in looking after "The Estate" and only a small amount of tin worm has been able to eat its bodywork. Currently it looks like after an initial inspection I need two wings, one quater panel and a slam panel.

We quickly brushed off the dust and other crap that had settled on the car, and fitted a very fetching and comfy tweed interior aquired from Jay.





After a quick tidy inside the car, it returned to the barn until I can find these parts, and somewhere to work on the car. Kitch had the pleasure of driving it back down to the barn





All in all a good day, and I am very please it started first time (almost) and it was a pleasure driving it. I had forgotten how spacious and smooth the BX is!

[19RD]

And a small clip for your viewing pleasure

[Philip Chidlow]

Fantastic. Please share it's (hopeful) resurrection with us!

[docchevron]

I should have a usable slam panel on a scrapper I could hack out for you mate.

[JayW]

I'm glat the tweed has gone to good use, Another one survives!

The pennies from the interior were reinvested into the octopus from David and so continues "The Circle of Life" we BX idiots enjoy so much...

[Tim Leech]

I should have a usable slam panel on a scrapper I could hack out for you mate.

Wouldnt a large block of wood and a hammer do the trick?

[docchevron]

Dunno, can't remember how bad the damage was.
It is made of cheese though so it should pull out faoirly well. Depends if it's been stretched really..

[Tim Leech]

Dunno, can't remember how bad the damage was.
It is made of cheese though so it should pull out faoirly well. Depends if it's been stretched really..

We managed to straighten the GT up ok after Adam lost the arguement with a Mondeo, as you say they are rather "soft".

[Kitch]

It's been an ordeal trying to log in on here! only my phone works! epic day on sunday, the sooner we crack on with the better imo!

[Kitch]

Something very odd happened recently.....money was spent on the Estate:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... _500wt_922

Bit of a bargain I thought, but theres always the worry that he\'s listed the part numbers wrong!


But what this means is the along with the purchase of a radiator, handbrake cable and an MOT, the estate is being prepped for a return to service after a 4ish year barn break. The bit I\'m most looking forward to (apart from the economy) is not washing it, but driving it around covered in dust, hay and moss! I\'m even planning to take it to the MOT like that, and if by some miracle it\'s ready for the CCC Stratford rally, I\'m going to enter it in the spit & shine, complete with the rusty hole and bashed in front bumper!

Watch this schpache.

[toddao]

That's a good price for the Valeo unit. It's a lovely job to do, well once it's finished! I encourage you to follow through and get it back on the road. It's a good family wagon.
The economy, as you mention, is incredible. I've been thinking the fuel gauge was broken on mine as it never seems to move.

[Kitch]

I offered £25 in the end and it was automatically accepted. Ideal, as it\'s not listed for a BX but having done some searching it\'s the right part number for the BE1 XUD lump.

It\'s not still not cast in stone all this....the missus isn\'t keen on the idea of bringing it home as she said it looks like a monstrosity. Even my reasoning that it\'ll cost half as much as the valver to run didn\'t seem to improve things.
I may be able to compromise however.....we need a bigger car as kiddie no.3 is on the way (final bloody kiddie!). She really wants an MG ZT-T CDTi (got that?!) but our budget only really stretches to Picasso HDi\'s, Scenic diesels and other dreary things of that nature (budget is limited as we\'ve decided to keep the TVR through the pregnancy and out the other side.....again!).
My reasoning may be I\'ll pull some more stops out to get her a nice MG ZT-T CDTi (and they are very nice I admit) as a family wagon, if she\'s happy to conceed that I don\'t want to keep lining the governments pocket with my fuel tax in the valver and the estate would be a better option, as I can line Lidl\'s pockets in exchange for veg oil instead.

From my point of view, the valver (which I\'m currently using as a daily) isn\'t great on fuel (around 25mpg) but it doesn\'t matter too much really, as it only does 30miles a week at most. Other downsides are however, that it\'s deteorating quite a bit quicker than it used to when I used it before. The paint\'s fading, theres tin worm starting to pop up all over the place, the heaters gone dicky and for the life of me I can\'t get rid of this bloody knock from the front suspension! I think it\'s got to that \"point\" that all old cars get to, where it\'s making the transistion from \"bring it on, I can still cut it!\" to \"can I have a garage please, I\'ve turned into a right queen!\" I\'m not into garage queens but to be fair, it\'s still plodding on happily. It just doesn\'t feel happy, if you get what I mean?

The estate, as we all know, is invincible! So no worries there. I like the idea of using the estate to soldier on while I tidy the 16v up a bit. I\'m completely kidding myself though, because I\'ve got a TVR to strip, respray and rebuild and a kit car to design and build (thats the plan anyway) so there won\'t be any BX time for a while yet!

[Kitch]

Check this out though, even managed some 16v related camera work today!









Not looking too clever in the pics, let alone up close. Still, it goes alright:



....though don't ask me how accurate that is. We ran some numbers at work based on the WHP and arrived at 161bhp, which is more like what I expected. The company I work for have just bought a rolling road and we'll be installing it soon, so I get a chance to check again!