Volvo 240 Resto, Modified Vauxhalls & Suzuki Jimny
Discussion
The Paseo
The Paseo finally got a minor upgrade today. One of my favourite little things to buy for any car is a decent set of mats. I don't like the cheapo needle-pile rubbish you get from Halfords, and I don't like rubber mats, because if anything they stain easier than carpet. So, after I found a site that supplies tailored mats for the Paseo, I went for some nice OEM-style velour-ish mats. I could finally replace the previous owner's mix of hand-me-down carpets from other cars, and door mats.
In other news, I still have the Yaris. The DVLA had a security issue regarding the previous owner's V5 that I sent off, but failed to send me a letter asking for details to resolve the issue (that or the postal service lost it). I contacted the DVLA 3 times asking where my V5 was, but only on the third attempt did they ask if I had filled in the letter they failed to send. Long story short, the government has screwed me out of 3 months of VED because I couldn't SORN the car or sell the car without the new V5. Either way, I got it this week, nearly 4 months late, so I gave the car a jolly good clean to get it ready to sell.
When I last saw it, it looked like this...
Naturally, the stickers had to go, so that was first on the list. I then polished up the headlights a little.
I then gave the engine a quick once-over.
I also removed the towbar to hopefully sell separate, but a saving of roughly 15kg was also more than welcome. Other than that, I attacked the car with the usual steps;
-Pressure wash arches and wash wheels
-Rinse car and agitate seams with brush to remove greenery
-Snowfoam and contact wash
-Treat with solvent for tar spots and clay bar
-Quick machine polish
That all took roughly 3 hours. Since it was washed by the previous owner, the difference isn't amazing, but here's the before and after either way.
I potentially have a buyer interested, hopefully will have the Yaris sold within a week or two.
The Paseo finally got a minor upgrade today. One of my favourite little things to buy for any car is a decent set of mats. I don't like the cheapo needle-pile rubbish you get from Halfords, and I don't like rubber mats, because if anything they stain easier than carpet. So, after I found a site that supplies tailored mats for the Paseo, I went for some nice OEM-style velour-ish mats. I could finally replace the previous owner's mix of hand-me-down carpets from other cars, and door mats.
In other news, I still have the Yaris. The DVLA had a security issue regarding the previous owner's V5 that I sent off, but failed to send me a letter asking for details to resolve the issue (that or the postal service lost it). I contacted the DVLA 3 times asking where my V5 was, but only on the third attempt did they ask if I had filled in the letter they failed to send. Long story short, the government has screwed me out of 3 months of VED because I couldn't SORN the car or sell the car without the new V5. Either way, I got it this week, nearly 4 months late, so I gave the car a jolly good clean to get it ready to sell.
When I last saw it, it looked like this...
Naturally, the stickers had to go, so that was first on the list. I then polished up the headlights a little.
I then gave the engine a quick once-over.
I also removed the towbar to hopefully sell separate, but a saving of roughly 15kg was also more than welcome. Other than that, I attacked the car with the usual steps;
-Pressure wash arches and wash wheels
-Rinse car and agitate seams with brush to remove greenery
-Snowfoam and contact wash
-Treat with solvent for tar spots and clay bar
-Quick machine polish
That all took roughly 3 hours. Since it was washed by the previous owner, the difference isn't amazing, but here's the before and after either way.
I potentially have a buyer interested, hopefully will have the Yaris sold within a week or two.
The Yaris
So, the Jimny's days seem to be numbered. There's oil in the spark plugs and the temperature gauge pretty much gets to the max. mark on a 15 minute trip. I'll make a scientific guess and say that the engine has eaten its own s***. The price of replacing the head gasket and whatever else the overheating issue has damaged (piston rings are likely) is too much to bother with, but replacing the engine is fairly reasonable. We've left the Jimny at the workshop while we decide what to do with it. Either we sell it as is, fix it and sell it, or fix it and keep it.
In the meantime, I still have the Yaris I bought at Christmas. The potential buyer went radio silent, and I've had no other inquiries since. So, we've decided to just use that since it's an automatic. I've removed a few bits, because it's literally just Katherine's commuter car, so I may as well try to make it as cheap-to-run as possible. As I mentioned before, the towbar was removed...
I also removed the spare wheel and jacking kit. My favourite part was removing the trick sliding rear seats, making the Yaris a 2-seater. Those seats were very heavy!
Another small change I made was the rear wiper. If you look at previous photos, you might notice the rear wiper arm is missing, but the motor and spindle are still there. I removed the motor and used a universal bung to plug the hole.
The weight-reduction was nothing to be sniffed at in the end. The rear seats weighed almost exactly 30kg! The towbar was about 15kg, and the space saver, jacking kit and wiper motor come to another 14kg or so, giving us a weight saving of just under 60kg!
Considering the Yaris and Jimny both have a 1.3 litre four-pot with 85bhp, the Yaris is a rocket compared to the 4x4.
Since the Yaris works so well and seems like it'll be fairly trouble-free, our dilemma will now be deciding which car to keep...
So, the Jimny's days seem to be numbered. There's oil in the spark plugs and the temperature gauge pretty much gets to the max. mark on a 15 minute trip. I'll make a scientific guess and say that the engine has eaten its own s***. The price of replacing the head gasket and whatever else the overheating issue has damaged (piston rings are likely) is too much to bother with, but replacing the engine is fairly reasonable. We've left the Jimny at the workshop while we decide what to do with it. Either we sell it as is, fix it and sell it, or fix it and keep it.
In the meantime, I still have the Yaris I bought at Christmas. The potential buyer went radio silent, and I've had no other inquiries since. So, we've decided to just use that since it's an automatic. I've removed a few bits, because it's literally just Katherine's commuter car, so I may as well try to make it as cheap-to-run as possible. As I mentioned before, the towbar was removed...
I also removed the spare wheel and jacking kit. My favourite part was removing the trick sliding rear seats, making the Yaris a 2-seater. Those seats were very heavy!
Another small change I made was the rear wiper. If you look at previous photos, you might notice the rear wiper arm is missing, but the motor and spindle are still there. I removed the motor and used a universal bung to plug the hole.
The weight-reduction was nothing to be sniffed at in the end. The rear seats weighed almost exactly 30kg! The towbar was about 15kg, and the space saver, jacking kit and wiper motor come to another 14kg or so, giving us a weight saving of just under 60kg!
Considering the Yaris and Jimny both have a 1.3 litre four-pot with 85bhp, the Yaris is a rocket compared to the 4x4.
Since the Yaris works so well and seems like it'll be fairly trouble-free, our dilemma will now be deciding which car to keep...
The Yaris
We've still not decided how to deal with the Jimny as of yet. Meanwhile, the Yaris is making a very good case for itself, other than how the steering feels. The Jimny has been struggling to do more than 240 miles to a tank since the head gasket issues came up, but the Yaris has barely used half a tank in the same distance.
Since I've been struggling with boredom and depression, I've decided to use up some time on the Yaris to make it looks as good as I can without spending any money. It'll give me some satisfaction to help with my mental state, and it'll help the resale value if we decide to be masochists and keep the Jimny. I did give the car a very half-hearted machine polish a month ago when it was ready to sell, but it definitely could benefit from some more effort.
As and when I have the time, I'm doing a slow and methodical polish of the car, a panel at a time. Since the car hasn't gotten too filthy in the few weeks we've used it, I've simply cleaned each panel with a bucket and a wash-mitt, no hose or pressure-washer, since it'll be polished anyway. The general process is, per panel;
-Wash
-Treat with Autosmart Tardis solvent tar remover
-Re-wash, and dry panel
-Clay bar, then dry again
-Machine polish panel
-Buff, and apply wax
-Leave wax to set, then buff with two clean microfibre cloths
My machine is still a fairly basic DAS-6 PRO which I've had fairly average results with, but the longer you spend, the better the results. The product I've found best so far is Scholl S20 polish. I spend roughly 5 minutes of straight polishing per 20cm squared area, so between re-applying polish, the bonnet, which is where I started, took about half an hour, not including the initial prep or the coat of Collinite 845 I applied after.
I was pretty happy with the results this time. The swirls were almost gone, and there was a really nice glassy finish.
I moved on to the front wing next, and achieved similarly good results.
That concluded my first session, which took about 2 hours.
The next day, I attacked the front bumper and passenger side door. I removed the broken number plate with its mismatched screws, to clean and polish underneath. At some point I'll probably replace both number plates.
The door was next. Given how many scratches the Yaris has picked up over its 22 years, results here weren't quite as good, though the pictures don't really show any scratches, there were a fair few that the polisher improved, but didn't remove completely.
On my third session, I changed things up for myself a little by cleaning out the door shutlines with some solvent to remove some tar spots that had found their way through the panel gap. I applied some Autosmart Platinum by hand with a small applicator sponge. Platinum is a fairly good all-rounder. It gives good gloss, hides and fills scratches to a limited degree, and offers some water-beading and protection too. In low-traffic areas, or garaged cars, it lasts quite a long time.
I then continued the usual polishing routine on the rear quarter...
My next job was removing the rear light cluster. Having removed a few here and there to change bulbs, I know all-too-well how much gunk gets behind. I'm glad I did this...
After removing the foliage and a few ants, I moved on to the bootlid and rear bumper. Since it was sign-written, the bootlid had been de-badged by a previous owner, making polishing easier, though I'd like to at least get a new Toyota badge for the centre.
The rear bumper has a metal bar at the bottom which is prone to rusting, and the plastic section had plenty of scuffs, which the machine polisher masked a little, though again, results were nowhere near perfect.
For its age, the Yaris is scrubbing up quite nicely. I won't be bothering with the roof, thanks to a large amount of lacquer peel. I may get a quote for respraying it in black at some point. That's where I'm up to currently. I'm not sure what to do next once I've polished the driver's side.
We've still not decided how to deal with the Jimny as of yet. Meanwhile, the Yaris is making a very good case for itself, other than how the steering feels. The Jimny has been struggling to do more than 240 miles to a tank since the head gasket issues came up, but the Yaris has barely used half a tank in the same distance.
Since I've been struggling with boredom and depression, I've decided to use up some time on the Yaris to make it looks as good as I can without spending any money. It'll give me some satisfaction to help with my mental state, and it'll help the resale value if we decide to be masochists and keep the Jimny. I did give the car a very half-hearted machine polish a month ago when it was ready to sell, but it definitely could benefit from some more effort.
As and when I have the time, I'm doing a slow and methodical polish of the car, a panel at a time. Since the car hasn't gotten too filthy in the few weeks we've used it, I've simply cleaned each panel with a bucket and a wash-mitt, no hose or pressure-washer, since it'll be polished anyway. The general process is, per panel;
-Wash
-Treat with Autosmart Tardis solvent tar remover
-Re-wash, and dry panel
-Clay bar, then dry again
-Machine polish panel
-Buff, and apply wax
-Leave wax to set, then buff with two clean microfibre cloths
My machine is still a fairly basic DAS-6 PRO which I've had fairly average results with, but the longer you spend, the better the results. The product I've found best so far is Scholl S20 polish. I spend roughly 5 minutes of straight polishing per 20cm squared area, so between re-applying polish, the bonnet, which is where I started, took about half an hour, not including the initial prep or the coat of Collinite 845 I applied after.
I was pretty happy with the results this time. The swirls were almost gone, and there was a really nice glassy finish.
I moved on to the front wing next, and achieved similarly good results.
That concluded my first session, which took about 2 hours.
The next day, I attacked the front bumper and passenger side door. I removed the broken number plate with its mismatched screws, to clean and polish underneath. At some point I'll probably replace both number plates.
The door was next. Given how many scratches the Yaris has picked up over its 22 years, results here weren't quite as good, though the pictures don't really show any scratches, there were a fair few that the polisher improved, but didn't remove completely.
On my third session, I changed things up for myself a little by cleaning out the door shutlines with some solvent to remove some tar spots that had found their way through the panel gap. I applied some Autosmart Platinum by hand with a small applicator sponge. Platinum is a fairly good all-rounder. It gives good gloss, hides and fills scratches to a limited degree, and offers some water-beading and protection too. In low-traffic areas, or garaged cars, it lasts quite a long time.
I then continued the usual polishing routine on the rear quarter...
My next job was removing the rear light cluster. Having removed a few here and there to change bulbs, I know all-too-well how much gunk gets behind. I'm glad I did this...
After removing the foliage and a few ants, I moved on to the bootlid and rear bumper. Since it was sign-written, the bootlid had been de-badged by a previous owner, making polishing easier, though I'd like to at least get a new Toyota badge for the centre.
The rear bumper has a metal bar at the bottom which is prone to rusting, and the plastic section had plenty of scuffs, which the machine polisher masked a little, though again, results were nowhere near perfect.
For its age, the Yaris is scrubbing up quite nicely. I won't be bothering with the roof, thanks to a large amount of lacquer peel. I may get a quote for respraying it in black at some point. That's where I'm up to currently. I'm not sure what to do next once I've polished the driver's side.
Edited by The Bearded Tit on Sunday 19th May 13:15
Edited by The Bearded Tit on Sunday 19th May 13:16
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