Announcing Project Rosie!
That doesn't sound half as awesome of Project Panther, but there you go. Lee has bullied me in to letting him fix Rosie for me, or at least that's the story I'm going with. Definitely no tears, or grovelling involved at all - either from myself or Lee!!
Part One - Exhaust fixings.
We discovered while working on Project Panther that it's a good idea to get the exhaust bolts checked before getting the car up on the axle stands.
@zedonist had already found that the bolts were badly corroded on my exhaust where the back section bolts to the first set of cats. Today I went on a tour of local exhaust centres to try and find someone willing to remove them, and replace with new fixings we could easily remove in Lee's garage.
The first exhaust centre got it up on the ramp and found the source of an annoying rattle I've had for a month or so. The exhaust hanger which is bolted to the bottom of the gearbox has split. The split is above the exhaust on the right side of the picture so I can't show you the exact fault. Hopefully a simple and cheap replacement for once.
Sadly they weren't keen on removing the bolts, and I had to head off to the next one. The next centre were busy, but showed some moderate interest in having a look but not today. Back in the car again, and this time I stopped at ATS in Thatcham. Again they were busy, but said if I could wait an hour they would see what they could do.
Eventually after much free coffee in the waiting room, Rosie went up on the ramp. Actually she went up a bit later because I got talking the the two fitters about their cars. One had a E36 coupe and the other and E36 vert with hard top.
When the car was finally in the air, I explained what I needed and they tried to figure out the best way of approaching it. There was nothing really to grab on due to the corrosion, so out with the gas cutter and hammer! I retreated to the waiting room while the guy battled for nearly 90 minutes to remove the four bolts. Now that seems a little excessive, but he had to be careful with what he was doing as you will see from the next picture.
Corrosion on the flange fitting has almost gone through the bolt hole. This was the worst of the four holes.
One of the "better" holes.
He then bolted them back as best he could (didn't get chance for another picture afterwards), and then tested to make sure there were no leaks. Job done and now we should be able to remove the exhaust in Lees garage.
The manager then approached me while I was mentally working out exactly how much 1.5 hours of an ATS technician would cost me. This is what he said to me...
"Your car is sorted sir, but being honest I can't charge you for the work. We aren't allowed to do "cash jobs", and I can't process the work through our system because we don't do this kind of work. However if you are happy with what we have done, would you buy us some tea/coffee/sugar and drop them in at some stage. We have to buy our own stuff, so that would help us out."
Wow! I jumped in the car and went to the nearest supermarket and then dropped this off with them. Hopefully will keep them going for a wek or so. Cost me £22 in total for their time. How awesome is that?
