DIY guides to keeping end of life vehicles running on a shoestring budget. A window onto the world of home mechanic'ing of cars everyone else would have given up on a long time ago
5 Mar 2025 2 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
The front tyres on the Dacia had worn on the outer edges, which I assumed was because the tracking was off. This had bugged me a bit, but on a recent long journey (its usually doing local trips) it did understeer quite a bit on a wet and greasy round...
5 Dec 2024 1 minute read 1 comment Lawnmower
Having replaced the main battery on the Dacia a little while back, frustratingly the 'Warning, check SOS' error keeps coming back. I had hoped this would go away, but clearly not. Some more investigation was required, though being relatively new th...
4 Nov 2024 3 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
One of the cars on the fleet that I seldom write about is the newest member - a 2021 Dacia Sander Stepway which I've owned for about 2 years. To be fair, over that time its not really put a foot wrong - since it was bought with 8000 miles on the cloc...
30 Sep 2024 4 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
Bit of a fleet update since I've now accumulated enough jobs to make it worthwhile typing them out. It being the school holidays I've been busy out and about with the kids to keep them amused. We went down to a theme park with the kids, it was a good...
2 Sep 2024 1 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
I would like to sincerely apologise to the residents of my local town for what happened on Thursday evening As I left my Tai Chi class, feeling very relaxed and at one with the universe, the exhaust on the Daihatsu sort of disassembled itself a bit....
19 Aug 2024 2 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
I knew the tyres on the Lexus were a bit iffy, they were 5 years old and nearly worn to the tread markers on the back. The fronts had some tread left but were budget brands. The front tyres were Sunny 'Sport Macro' and the rears were Jinyu Gallopro....
6 Aug 2024 1 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
Bit of a challenge with the Sirion which might become a major challenge. Driving back from meeting friends earlier this year and a stone flicked up and cracked the windscreen which was mildly annoying. I held off bothering to get it replaced, waiting...
29 Jul 2024 1 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
The exhaust bits arrived in the week, and today the assembly paste showed up so I decided to crack on. There was an element of 'hope for the best' with all of this, with the silencer I ordered being a lot bigger I had to make an educated* guess on di...
22 Jul 2024 2 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
I had a day off work today so made use of some tinkering time. First job was replacing the rear inner light lens. One of the previous owners has reversed into something I think, there is some scuffing on the bumper, a very small ding in the metal qua...
15 Jul 2024 4 minute read 4 comments Lawnmower
The last documented service on the Lexus was in January 2023, mileage unknown but probably about 5k miles ago. As usual for me, I want to get a few things done on the car to get it up to my standards* - so since its been a nice couple of days I set t...
