$7.60 worth of cans and bottles from Fragna.
Magnate went to a new home today. 
A pretty solid profit in percentage terms, but much less impressive in dollar terms!
Anyway, I have a bit more space now, and the money will go towards registration on the green Mirage.
I have a problem don’t I? 
The kids have renamed Fragna to Stinky, which I think is perfectly reasonable. Used Stinky to flat tow Gus (the dark green one) up to the shed to see if I can get Gus running.
While Stinky was there, I dropped the filthy black engine oil and replaced it with the used oil out of Blagna. 
Onto Gus… the fuel pump was definitely dead but I wasn’t keen on wading through the piles of mouse and rat poop, so The Boy and I donned the hazmat suits and cleaned the junk and pooh out of the interior.
It actually came up pretty well - FAR better than I expected. 
Onto the fuel pump, which is under the back seat. The inside of the tank was clean, with a small amount of stale fuel in it, so I just topped it up with fresh petrol.
Then I forgot to take photos but it now has a new ebay fuel pump in it.
Onto the engine… 
This car was originally an automatic, and has been converted to manual… poorly. First checks were for fuel pressure and spark, which is passed on both.
It kind of fired half heartedly, indicating that it didn’t have anything seriously wrong, but wasn’t going to start.
Swapped the front bank of injectors with some spares, and it sounded more promising, but still didn’t start.
Swapped the rear bank of injectors, with requires the top half of the intake manifold to be removed.
Discovered some more low quality work, including a stripped thread in the lower part of the intake manifold… felt a bit silly putting a helicoil into an engine that might be dead in a car that is probably going to be scrapped, but I couldn’t ignore it either… 
…and it’s not any more silly than the time we spent cleaning the interior…
With six replacement injectors, it fires but won’t run. Occasionally does a weird thing where it runs VERY slowly - like firing once a second for four or five seconds…
So yeah, then I ran out of enthusiasm and decided to look at it later.
Cam timing checks out (and appears to have a brand new timing belt).
Injectors are firing nicely.
Still won’t run.
Kind of feels like the ignition timing jumps around - sometimes behaves like it is too advanced, other times like it isn’t.
Swapped the distributor with a spare, and no difference. I am now wondering about the crank angle sensor - the wiring has been poorly routed, and it is fairly likely that it got messed up when the timing belt was changed.
Also wondering if it is possible for the crank pulley to be installed incorrectly.
Maybe tomorrow if I have time/motivation.
When you say brand new timing belt, not suspiciously new indicating it may have been an attempted repair after it broke and valves/pistons smashed?
I said that I would only spend the morning on it, because I have so many other things to do.
Swapped the CAS: no change.
Drained the fuel from the tank, replaced with new 95 in case the old fuel in the tank was more stale than I thought: no change (and the Falcon is running perfectly).
Took all the plugs out, cleaned, dried and regapped the: no change.
Swapped AFMs with Candi: No change to either car.
Plugged the code reader in: no faults reported.
Triple checked cam timing, plug order and distributor rotation: no fault found.
Reseated every connector I could find: No change.
Discovered the ECU wasn’t bolted in and consequently the body wasn’t earthed. Fixed that: No change.
Eventually, out of frustration, I swapped to another dizzy … and it immediately started up and ran nicely!
When I say “ran nicely”, the engine was happy but the water pump howled and there’s a loud tick from the thrust bearing.
But it runs and drives quite well, so that’s nice.
I am still going to wreck the car, but now I know that the motor is fundamentally healthy… and is earmarked for a Mirage.
Was a hard fought win, but got there in the end! As you may have guessed, this took more than just the morning!
Because the Magnate is sold, we needed a car for the offspring to drive in Sunday’s khanacross.
The Girl and I “prepped” Candi - literally just fitting the fire extinguisher and swapping the lowered Bilsteins for the black Magna-fied Blisteins.
Side note:
Pulled the CAS out of Batman to try in Gus. Removing the front pulley ended up turning the engine over… which revealled an intact little end playing peek-a-boo through the hole in the sump… 
There goes any hope that I might be able to reuse the pistons from this engine!
VolvoHordz I hadn’t thought of it, but absolutely yes…
Started pulling Gus apart.
Amongst other delights, the gearbox had no oil in it, a bunch of bolts were loose, and the firewall had been hacked for the clutch master cylinder… (photo is flattering)
Pretty unmotivated with wind, hayfever and anxiety, so I didn’t get all that much done. 
Still, progress is progress. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish stripping it on Friday and take it to the scrapper early next week.
Another low motivation day. I need to get off the merry go round that is my employment situation.
Did get a reasonable amount done in stripping Gus.
Side quest was to partially repair the rear bumper, mostly to see if it was going to be a viable option for Batman. 
Answer is “probably”.
I decided to pull the seats out of Stinky and plonk them in Gus, just because scraping Gus is a good opportunity to ditch the gross interior that is in Stinky.
Side quest #2 was to try the grey fabric paint on Gus’ sun faded seats.
First coat.
A few coats later… 
Interestingly, the colour comes out with a green tinge and is too light, but gets better as it dries.
I am part of a shit-talk Messenger group with a few non-Volvo mates. This comment was the highlight of my day.
I should have been pulling the last few parts off the wreck ahead of scrapping it.
I sort of got sidetracked with removing the interior from Stinky so I could put it in Gus when it is scrapped … and then decided to put the carpet from Hans and the seats from Gus into Stinky, partly because it keeps Stinky drivable but mostly because it is a safe place to store the interior parts…
Of course this all burns up a bunch of time, including cleaning the dash and door trims.
But now being inside it doesn’t feel like you’re trying to get hepatitis.
So I got a bit motivated and washed it.
Came up alright, considering how neglected it has been.
No shortage of crap to clean off, but there was a bunch of stuff on the sides of the car that didn’t want to come off… 
Took me a little while, but I worked out that it is rusty swarf from completely trashed brakes - plenty of it on the wheels, but it must have been pretty special to end up all down the sides of the car…
Hopefully it will polish off.
If it's rusty, would iron remover/paint decontaminator dissolve it? Twould be easier than polishing it out
Chris
This was good advice, thanks!
I bought the Autoglym stuff purely because it was on special: $27 from Ripco rather than the usual $36.
Seemed to do what it promised on the box.
First go:
After the third go…
Obviously still needs more, but the bottle was running a bit low, and I want to see what it can do with the grinder sparks in the Lancer’s side window.
This is a lousy photo, but is intended to be compared to the photo from yesterday. One application of the iron remover, that I didn’t let work for long enough before I washed it off :
The stuff only goes purple when it is reacting, apparently. This shows how much contamination there was on the paint… 
Looks like you're onto something there 
The Aussie brand one may be cheaper , its high power vinegar i believe but when its reacting on iron it is toxic , im highly sensitive to chemicals that are toxic these days so cant spray any shizz on anything without a P3 .
*must be a industrial version available for $60 a bloody gallon or summat!
Sometime over the weekend, I cleaned up the spare grille and painted it.
The Mitsubishi logo was quite faded, so I tried sanding it back, looking for shiny plastic under the sun damaged surface… but didn’t find it.
I ended up spraying the diamons with clear coat.
It all worked out ok - definitely not show worthy, but a big improvement over what it looked like.
I made a bit of a mess with the sikaflex that I used to hold the badge in, which is probably the biggest defect, but it was a useful learning experience.
The tint is peeling.
I ran a sharp blade just inside the peeling section, removed the peeling bit and it actually seems a lot better.
And yes… I bought another Magna today…
3.0 TF wagon with a couple of months rego, and a dead clutch. 
Yes, it’s a manual wagon!
I actually looked at this car at the end of last year, but it was all too hard just before the Alpine Rally. He was asking the same price as the scrappers were offering, so I kind of assumed that it had been scrapped.
Turns out that I was wrong: it went to some people who loved it and did a bunch of work to it, and only sold it when they bought a Ralliart Magna.
The next owner was happy with it until the clutch died. He advertised it for scrap value plus rego value which I was happy to pay.
It’s a reasonably tidy car. The LHR door is damaged and there’s some scrapes on the LHR quarter panel, but the red paint looks like it will polish up quite nicely.
Interior is very tidy, but does have just a whiff of old ciggy smell that I will have to get on top of.
I will get it fixed and transferred into my name, and then sell Blagna.
Ozone machine cheap from AliEX?
Got up earlyish this morning and started pulling it apart to see what had happened with the clutch.
It was early enough that I didn’t want to annoy the neighbours with the rattle gun, so was a bit slower than normal, but it all went well except for two dramas:
breaking one of the 10mm bolts that hold the longitudinal gearbox support to the aluminium front subframe. 
releasing the bloody pull clutch. There’s a knack to releasing them, but the shredded clutch fibre material was in the way. What’s supposed to be a five minute task took half an hour and needed The Boy’s help. 
Finding the clutch plate had ejected the fibre material was not a surprise (looked exactly the same as the shredded 2.4 Lancer clutch in the blue Mirage).
What was a surprise was that the flywheel had a huge crack in it - ran from the centre to the outside edge, and was about 2mm wide!
Not sure how it happened, but it’s pretty wild.
Then I spent ages degreasing the box, the engine bay and the back of the engine.
Into my pile of old Magna/380 clutches and flywheels.
I eventually concluded that the flywheels are all the same (3.0 vs 3.5 vs 3.8) and the Magna pressure plates are the same despite the difference in plate diameter.
I also concluded that only one of my used clutches is still serviceable…
I started pricing a new clutch and quickly found that the nearest Repco in Canberra had one in stock and it was also a good price.
It was still only 11:20am at this point, so I went and bought it.
It all went back together fine, although drilling out the broken bolt was a turd of a job. The helicoil went in fine, so that was good.
Yeah, it was a solid day’s work but I took it for a drive before dinner. Initial thoughts are that it is more pleasant to be in than the blue sedan.
The gearing suits the 3.0 engine better than the 3.5 - the 3.0 has less torque and is happier to rev, so where the gearing is low for the 3.5 and it constantly feels like it is a dog pulling on the leash.
The front struts rattle, so they will be replaced soon.
Good old Towgna
Took it to the coast to visit mum/attend a high school reunion. Went great, used a bit less than 8.5l/100km.
It doesn’t rev any less than the blue sedan, but the 3.0 with the standard exhaust doesn’t feel like it would hugely benefit from another gear.
Put a little bit of time into cleaning up the replacement LHR door that came with it. It has been resprayed and isn’t quite the right colour, but it did polish up well.
I am now being indecisive about whether the damaged original door or the NQR replacement will annoy me more…
Because I got sick of sanding and polishing the paint on the Mirage, I decided to spend some time file-finishing and sanding one of the wheels I bought for the red wagon. 
Of course, I began with the most rashed one, so it looks like I did bugger all…
These are 17x8 ET40 (or 41?) which should tuck them into the guards just that bit more nicely than the other sets of 17x8s that I own.
I bought some metallic grey paint that is almost exactly the colour I want, but I didn’t realise that it is hammer-tone until I got it home… so the search goes on.
Wheel progress.
Turns out that stock BMW centre caps fit, so that’s nice.
Colour onto the wheels. 
Clear coat. I doubt that the single pack clear will hold up well, but it is worth a try. 
Looking pretty good… just need to do it all three more times.
