Yo! Going back together with radiator in and hoses reconnected. Just need to pop off the heater tap for a look as its letting hot water through when it's turned off.






I realised the fan mounting plate had been put on the pulley the wrong way round before. Tee hee, it wasn't me, even though it was. I like to think I must have been carefully replicating a mistake made by a previous mechanic.

Good progress Jon, another problem sorted...

Although, not good news on your 1.7 strut, assume its the spring cup that's cracked or rusted ? I am sure somewhere supplies replacements to weld in, or possibly even recon units.

I got the engine oil and filter done today, nothing too difficult. Had a think about doing the steering coupling but it looks a real pain to access when lying under the car. I think I will see if my MOT man will swap it out while its in the garage with ramps/pit available. Probably be done in a fraction of the time...!

Cheers Dave

Thanks for that. Nice work. I finished everthing on the 360 here today, I hope, and checked the heater valve. It was fine but I reconnected the cable with a hole in the lever which will give it greater deflection, I hope.




Lots of Poundland antifreeze in the system now, but some of Halfords' finest pink stuff, too.

;-0

Good you are back up and running.
The heater valve on mine started weeping not long after I got the car, replaced with a new/good one and its been ok since.
Hopefully some trouble free motoring ahead ?!!
Cheers Dave

Thank you. Nice one!

The pink stuff is OAT (organic acid technology) which is great for aluminium but it attacks cast iron so will be rotting your block. You will need to drain it all and flush it thoroughly then refill with either Comma G48 blue/green or comma super coldmaster.

Thats a fair point on the anti-freeze type. The proper blue stuff from Volvo isn't too expensive as an option. I had also looked at the Comma stuff but decided to stick with Volvo. Hopefully not be changing it out in a while ! Cheers D

360beast wrote: 26 Mar 2022 07:34 am The pink stuff is OAT (organic acid technology) which is great for aluminium but it attacks cast iron so will be rotting your block. You will need to drain it all and flush it thoroughly then refill with either Comma G48 blue/green or comma super coldmaster.

Oh dear, there's one born every minute. Thank you. I'll see if LIDL have any ;-0

You can get 5l concentrate G48 off of Amazon for £20 delivered.

Nice one! Thank you.

Being a bit of a squirt, I decided to chemistry it up (well, I did pass the S-level ;-0 but the first year of being sunk at uni pretty-much sank any interest I had . Anyway, I did a highly unadvanced experiment - I went onto ebay and bought some pH paper. The picture below shows that the hybrid Poundland-Halfords antifreeze has a pH around 9 'ish or higher ? ? I.e. its alkali not acid ? !



I did some simple controls e.g. tapwater comes out at the correct colour for pH 7. My 1.7 also has a pH of about 8 - 9 as does my Morris Minor. Of course, its too long ago to remember what antifreeze went into them!!

A look at the web shows that iron has good resistance to high pH but not aluminium. Quoting from corrosion-doctors.org: "The corrosion resistance of aluminum is dependent upon a protective oxide film. This film is stable in aqueous media when the pH is between about 4.0 and 8.5."

All very weird.

I tested the original cheappie blue antifreeze and it's more alkaline than the neat pink organic acid Halfords OAT stuff. The Poundland one is about pH9 or higher and Halfords is about 8, so they're both in the alkaline region. Hmmm.

Anyway, I got the strut off the blue 1.7.

We're making strut-tacular progress here. The mud has been cleaned off, bellows removed, strut opened and oil drained. Just need to pull out the shock-absorber paraphernalia inside and then it can go for repairs.

Yo! Just patching up under the wing with some rubbishy waxoyl type paint and cleaning a few parts.







Must find that strut cup repair panel in the roof ;-0

Been doing a few more jobs on Deep Blue while the strut is away being welded. The inner speedometer cable was removed and found to be coated in very thick sticky grease which was cleaned off.




The inside of the outer sleeve was flushed through with carbbie cleaner and compressed air.

A great debate began in my shiny little head about how best to lubricate it (the cable, that is). Some say grease, others graphite and bizarrely someone very recently gave me some graphite grease.

Having recently acquired some graphite I decided to mix this with some Toolstation plumber's grease (yes, it's my fave again) as it was much lighter than the graphite grease I was given.



All refitted and back together.