Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

The bars I have are sprung, so there's a range of adjustment available - I input the details of the vehicle into the checker and Thule says what is needed, so for example the C-Class needs the same setup as a Golf, one small and one medium, whereas the E-Class needs one medium and one large.

I'd try to use the checker on the site of the manufacturer, but saying that I'm not sure that I actually did.

One thing that does make life a lot easier is to either buy everything at once specifying the same key, or find out what lock number your existing stuff has and order from a place that allows you to specify that the new locks are the same key pattern as the existing ones. Having a single key for everything really does make a big difference to convenience.

Taped everything up and got the primer on. At which point I realise the irritating noise is coming from a petrol leaf blower. They’re sweeping our street today apparently. What are the f@cking odds!? The guy was nice though, said he’d start at the other end of the area instead. Very sympathetic when I brought up rust treatment of old cars.

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I replaced my wing mirror recently so had to paint a panel on it. A gnat flew into the gloss coat three different times while applying. Three times of sanding, priming, painting. Probably wasn't worth it - I wouldn't say I did an excellent job anyway.

Probably wasn't worth it

Sums up everything about an old car. Or any car really...

Do you have plastic wheel well liners? Usually they simply use the same attachment points.

Yeah but they’re only held in by a single screw quite far into the well. It’s not for the Nissan, I sold it on due to more rust than I could handle. This is a Fiat panda, see last page.

For the mudguards, if you can't re-use existing mounting holes then the way I'd do it (warning - I'm not a mudguard expert by any stretch of the imagination) would be to mark out where the mounting holes needed to be, drill holes large enough to put in rivet-nuts, paint any bare metal surfaces that drilling the holes resulted in, insert the riv-nuts and then screw the mud-flaps on.

Or just drive some tech-screws into the body of the car and sell it before the wings rust off.

factory option

I then saw it again a few mins after that being reversed into a delivery van on the petrol station forecourt.

JFC!!!

Lovely Olds Cutlass 442 - '69 or '70. Rare, rare, rare as fuck and never seen one outside of the US. Beefier than my '68 Olds Cutlass convertible so I think that looks more like the redesign that they did in '69.

442 - 400ci engine, 4 barrel carb and 2 exhausts

The pinnacle of these were the even rarer Hurst Olds 442 seen here in the '72 Indy Pace Car Edition.

/csb alert

I had one of these park next to my Cutlass at the auto parts store and I spent a really lovely 20 minutes chatting to the guy. This was '98-'99 and his had 67k original miles on it. It was immaculate.

/csb

I'm not a mudguard expert

This is something to think about if you’re feeling gloomy. At least you’re not a car mudguard expert!

Good idea about rivnuts though, I’ll look into it. There must surely be a plastic variant that’ll do for some flaps? Proper rivnuts seem like overkill.

Csb indeed. Awesome car.

You could use these things?

Looks like a good option! I’ve also found plastic covered pop rivets which may work and use smaller holes.

Nice looking pace car, and Cutlass is a cool name for a car, though Oldsmobile sounds like a car for pensioners.

I saw this Sheikh chariot today, not seen a Roller styled like this before. It looks good from the back, more like an old Aston Martin than a Rolls.....

...but the front is pretty gopping in my view, those angled lights just look too Dame Edna. Interior was amazing but looked like many trees and cows were sacrificed to make it.

looked like many trees and cows were sacrificed to make it

Matches the very politically incorrect nickname for that model of Rolls though.

Oldsmobile sounds like a car for pensioners.

Yeah. They were really nice family sedans in the 40s/50s with good racing heritage from the 30s that they cashed in with the Rocket 88 engines in 1949 - some consider those as the first muscle cars. GM visionless ownership didn't help and they got lumped into the morass of the 70s and 80s era and that's when they became, like Buick and Pontiac, the car for old people. GM killed the brand in the 90s. They were the oldest American car brand for a long time.

I had to look that up, 'Chinese eye', bloody hell.....

The Bentley version looks much better..

Better to have used cold galvanising spray, as it is a high zinc content paint keeps the rust at bay for longer than normal paint.

Try these for the mudflaps

@Dammit. https://collectingcars.com/for-sale/1999-volvo-v70-r-awd-phase-3

Probably a repost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QksqWRqEfy0

1.55m garage, 1.49m wide car.

Superb.

Yes please. That is FIT.

Fantastic! Made my evening.

Probably wasn't worth it

Sums up everything about an old car. Or any car really...

the older I get the closer this comes to summing up almost every off-kilter endeavor