Annoyingly, I went round my mum's to collect the car last night, and had a look at the MOT sheets. They mentioned a knocking noise from the front suspension going over speed bumps which 'needs investigating'. I told my mum that I'd never noticed it. Got in the car to drive it home, hit a speed bump, and bam, massive thud and the whole car juddered unnervingly.
But it definitely wasn't like that when I nipped down the shops after refitting the exhaust on Monday.
I hope it's a coincidence, and that a suspension bush or something has collapsed, but TBH it looks a bit poor that the car was delivered to the garage with perfectly working suspension and came back with it knackered. Gonna have to take the wheel off on Monday and see if I can spot the problem
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Originally Posted by TeePee 
Not meaning to be rude.. But did you use 150GBP of tools for the first and only time, to fix a 30GBP part? If so, nice job! A proper Man-task too!
Dunno. I assumed the part would be more like £60; in any case it'll need one for next year's MOT I guess (although if I've got any sense I'll get under there with a load of exhaust paint to try and prevent it rusting again). Just looked, and GSF seem to want about £40 inc vat for a silencer for a petrol model, but they don't specifically list one for the 1.9D- not sure if they're the same or not.
TBH, it would have been almost as much faff buying and fitting a new pipe, as the nearest GSF's in Brixton.
Originally Posted by wombar Practice makes perfect though, so keep going and you'll be everyones best friend at MOT time
I call shotgun for Raves welding services (after a little more practice
).
Yeah, I hope so; but even old bangers don't rust much any more it seems. The only rust on the Clio is on the front door frame where the paint split when a ferry crewman forced it wide in order to break in, me having locked the keys inside
. My brother crunched the NSF wing on a bollard 3 or 4 years ago, putting a dent in it and taking some of the paint off. It's had some bare metal there ever since and hasn't rusted at all. It's properly galvanised. I only wish my old MR2 had had the same, I'd probably still be driving it now
.
I need to get some scrap steel and practice I think. I might need to sort out a better power supply arrangement, as the manual is full of dire warnings about the higher power setting blowing 13 amp fuses, and the need to wire it in directly to a 20 amp feed. I used it on power setting 3, and plugged it in with an old and cheapo extension lead, and the plug didn't even get slightly hot that I could feel.
My only other plan for the welder it at the moment is to chop up the non-functioning Kawasaki ER-5 outside my house and turn it into a 'cafe racer'; I'd like to fit a single seat tailpiece and try and fabricate some sort of ride height adjuster to jack the rear up a bit. On this evidence I'd better do quite a bit of practice before I fit a cutting wheel to my ebuyer grinder
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Originally Posted by JPreston Aldi and Lidl often have welders (and associated gear) in for cheap, maybe £40, don't know whether mig or arc though.
Yeah? I've never seen one for £40, although you can buy an arc welder for not a great deal more than that from Machine Mart. I have a couple of arc welders in my shed, one of which is a massively heavy oil cooled one inherited from a dead relative whose job was welding up gas mains and the like. Arc welding doesn't really cut it for automotive work though so I never really got round to using them. I ought to have sold the biggun a couple of years ago for its copper content while commodity prices were sky high, would have got a bit I think.
Originally Posted by yamangman I came to this thread seriously expecting you to be building a Russian fighter jet. Dissapointed.
That would have been a M
iG welding thread though surely?
As in
Mikoyan
Gurevich. MIG welding aluminium is a fools errand as I understand it so my £140 Aldi welder would only be really useful on a MiG-25
.
Anyway thanks all, glad you enjoyed the thread
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