And then the afternoon was on the Blagna.
Changed the oil in the engine and the gearbox, but they’re boring so no photos. Did discover that the gearbox fill bolt was loose and missing any sort of sealing washer, so fixed that when it went back together.
The previous owner had hit a roo late last year. I originally met him because he bought some replacement panels from me… but he’d never fitted them. Instead, he bashed out the guard and carried on.
I chose to not fit them too, but did spend some time making the panels fit together again and generally look a lot less crappy.
First up was to bend the back edge of the guard so it lined up better with the door. Pretty straightforward job using a tyre lever wrapped in a rag.
Then went to replace the side indicator with the broken tab, but as I was clipping the replacement light into place, it broke too…
Sikaflex to the rescue on the one!
I pulled the little bump strip off the spare white guard and painted it with the nearest colour I had in stock. It’s definitely not right, but looks better IRL than in the photo.
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Useless photo trying to show that I spaced up the back of the guard to get the panel gap to the bonnet/A-pillar better.
A few tweaks to the alignment at the front and replacing a couple of missing bolts, and it looks a heap better than it did.
Those last few sentences gloss over the part where I spent a couple of solid hours getting it right-ish.
Swapped the broken dipstick with the one from Narry’s original engine.
The reason the previous owner wanted this car gone was because he thought the clutch was dying. Apparently the clutch would start slipping badly after an hour of driving.
This seemed odd, because it has plenty of bite when it is cold and warm - it’s like there was a heat soak issue.
The clutch pedal didn’t have enough freeplay, which fits with the symptoms - if the fluid can’t bleed back up into the reservoir, it effectively holds the clutch slightly disengaged. I loosened off the pushrod a bit, which was better but it still had a odd feel.
Mitsubishi had this weird obsession with putting dampeners in the clutch lines. I’m pretty sure the one in the old CB/CC Lancer is why it’s original clutch died.
Thinking about it, the more complex dampener in the Magna was behaving a lot like it was the source of the problem.
Opening it up revealed a bunch of gunk, but no obvious problems.
So I made up a new line to bypass the dampener (it should be mounted on the same bolts as the master cylinder).
For the people who like to get upset about such things: The line is copper coated steel, not copper.
Even if it doesn’t fix the problem, it’s a worthwhile upgrade: the pedal is a lot more direct and has a lot more feel, making the car easier to drive smoothly. It’s sort of like the difference between a worn out dual mass flywheel and a good single mass.
I also replaced the missing front interior door handle surrounds. These are “always” broken for some reason - the rear ones were cracked but in place - but the fronts were missing entirely.
Finally, I discovered the original, correct colour bump strip for the front guard in the glovebox…
