Once again, long time no see. The only thing of any note going on here at Rust HQ is a long slow slide into financial ruin, which could easily be true for most segments of my adult life, but it’s particularly acute at the moment. Ah, well. Let’s stick our head back in the sand about that and check the status of various wheeled liabilities.

You can see Mr. Grumpy Dog lounging in the cab of the F250, which continues to soldier on, needing a bunch of minor things but none of them rise to the level of getting my lazy arse to do anything about them. It could use an oil change, tune-up, change of the rear ABS sensor (I have one just sitting on a shelf!), maybe a wash? It’s very close to 250,000 miles now and for all that, it’s a good old truck. The only thing which went sideways and took it out of service for a bit was the shift mechanism in the steering column breaking, but it did that at the bottom of the driveway, so at least Grumps and I didn’t have to walk home.

The E-Type Jaguar I was working on left here almost a year ago. It turned out well in many ways, but I did eventually wash my hands of the project whilst struggling with what I felt was an inferior interior kit which I wasn’t getting paid enough to put right, if that was even a possibility given my abilities. Glad for the work, but also glad to see it drive away!

The Land Rover Discovery 2, shown here after its annual wash, is still chugging along, though I have done a lot of work on it over the last couple of years (after five or six years of it not needing anything at all. It’s approaching 25 years old and just passed 100,000 miles, so it’s not too surprising. I had to do the cylinder heads and gaskets, at the same time it got a new radiator and has had many new sensors, a new front half of the exhaust, new coils…nothing horribly dramatic but still a lot of work which laid the car up for many months, in all. It’s a decent car for errands and ferrying around Mr. Dog, but it does get absolutely abysmal fuel economy, maybe 14MPG on its best days and 13MPG more typically. When I bought this machine I was trying to remember why I had ditched the previous Disco, and now I remember. But we don’t have money for a newer replacement, so it remains as our daily.

Funds have been so tight I put the BSA up for sale end of last year, but it was not bid to enough money to make it worth my while to sell, which I’m just as happy about. As part of that process, though, I needed a video of it running, and I just could not get it started. While working on the Austin 7 at that same time, I read a line in an article about ignition timing which said something akin to “the engine will run well, even with the timing very far advanced…if you can even get it started in that state”.

That set off faint alarms in my brain cell vis a vis the BSA. Had I ever properly timed it? I read the procedure in the manual and no, I had not. When the engine was rebuilt the machinist gave me a mark he said was pretty close to TDC on the primary side of the crank, probably good enough to get it to run. I used that to set the magneto and never revisited it. So I made a tool for measuring the piston position out of an old spark plug and some drill rod and discovered the engine had been about 20 degrees too far advanced since day one! Perfectly in keeping with the Rusty Heaps ethos, I guess. Anyway, I set the timing properly and the bike now starts readily:

(This was the vid for the auction. Excuse my ugly old man cameo!) Anyway, the BSA is now undergoing Yet Another tank relining, and I’m hoping to swap out the fuel taps, and to finally get the air cleaner plumbed into the system. She’s looking sad for herself at the moment:

(You can just spot the Triumph Bonneville and the 1963 MGB lurking in the background, nothing has happened with either of those machines.)

Speaking of the Austin 7, I have sold it, though the new owner has not yet taken delivery. I did a fair few jobs on the old pig to get it into better shape and just couldn’t let it go without rewiring the car, as the “wiring” was awful and there are only a few, so how long could it take? I thought a weekend, and that turned into a month of evenings. Nothing was any good, really, and I even had to repair the ammeter, among other tasks. But it’s done now and I’m proud of all that work. The new owner wanted a car which could be used right away and I think that’s now the case, though the dynamo is suspect. But that’s for them to sort out.

A peek into the mighty engine bay. I pulled the motor a couple of times to fiddle with the clutch and finally got that working. These cars were originally wired negative earth, but someone in the past had turned it into a positive earth machine, so I put it back to how it should be.

The 7 finding a new home means I can move the Morgan back to the project side of the shop and get working on it again…I have not done a thing to it in more than 6 years! Shame! Shame! (Above, I’m shuffling the two machines, the 7 will disappear into the “cavern of shame” side of the shop until the new owner picks it up.)

Which also means the bikes can be arranged in such a way that they can be used without an elaborate half hour of moving things out of the way. The yellow and white machines are a good friend’s and the red Sprint and black Buell are mine. All are doing ok, I broke a rear indicator on the sprint by brushing against it and it needs replacing but otherwise they mostly work.

And that’s enough for now. I have a million images from the Land Rover head job and maybe I’ll do a post on that one year soon. If I can remember what all I did!