Project Bentley

Good going :) I've been following this for a while and I'm glad you're getting somewhere now.

I hope to see pics of a passed MOT soon :D
 
TehBluebear said:
You sorted everything out with the garage then? What was his reason for the lack of progress?
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Still don't know why. Guess I'll never understand it.

taske said:
Good going :) I've been following this for a while and I'm glad you're getting somewhere now.

I hope to see pics of a passed MOT soon :D
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Cheers taske. Did you and your Dad make any more progress on that Interceptor you were working on?
 
JRS said:
Cheers taske. Did you and your Dad make any more progress on that Interceptor you were working on?
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Nothing worth updating yet, lots of cleaning etc, work has been focussed on other cars/jobs.

He's started buying parts though so shouldn't be long now till there's a worthwhile update :D

I might also end up with another Range Rover project, we'll see how it pans out.
 
taske said:
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Look forward to it :)

So, Project Bentley is home. At last. MOT'd, road legal (aside from being SORN'd at the moment, since the road tax ran out while she was in the middle of the last ~7 months of nonsense :rolleyes:) and sounding great according to the owner. I nipped over to Gary's place a few hours ago to drop off one of his other cars - she's a beauty, no doubt about it!

I'm heading round in the morning to size up the remaining jobs and corral all the bits together. But that light at the end of the tunnel is getting bigger all the time :)
 
How long d'you suppose petrol lasts before it goes stale? It's just that I don't think we've actually put any in since the back end of 2010 :D
 
Should be OK, modern fuels have a lot of additives in them.

I didn't realise you were quite so close, Burton isn't far from me :)
 
Yeah, we're not all that far from each other.

I did fire the car up earlier. No histrionics, no stumbling, no nonsense. She just fired up, like a car should. Amazingly, the seat memory is still set as well so we haven't had to recommission that. It would have been easy enough to sort, but I'm still glad I didn't have to!
 
JRS said:
Yeah, we're not all that far from each other.

I did fire the car up earlier. No histrionics, no stumbling, no nonsense. She just fired up, like a car should. Amazingly, the seat memory is still set as well so we haven't had to recommission that. It would have been easy enough to sort, but I'm still glad I didn't have to!
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I'd love that. When anyone else drives my 8, it takes me days to get the seat and mirrors just right again.
 
Some progress to report.

I never did get the B-pillar plate and remaining side trim on before the car went for it's epic little saga in the repair shop. So I spent a delightful couple of hours doing one side this morning.

Attaching rubber finisher to stainless door frame trim, slowly but surely:



Starting to attach trim to car:



It's a swine of a job is this:



After some creative swearing, and even more creative manipulation of trim and rubber seal, we get....*drumroll*....








And now I get to do the other side of the car tomorrow. At least it looks better now....

Few more notes:


  1. That paint job isn't even finished yet. Car hasn't been properly cut back or polished since getting paint. First trim, then road tax, then attend to paint.
  2. See that petrol can to the right-front of the car in the last photo? Currently it's getting a gallon every time Gary goes near a petrol station (which isn't all that often so it hasn't had much yet). This is because the car is juuuuuuuuuust about empty :o And the tank holds 24 gallons :eek:
  3. Certainly by the end of next week the car will be back on the road. Happy days.
 
Of that last batch of 5 photographs, I quite like No. 2 :)

Going to sort out the trim on the other side tomorrow morning. That will leave the car in a drivable state (if you don't put the trim on, you get wind noise and expose the body to weather where you really don't want it exposing!). Then it can be taxed at the start of the month.

And then it can be driven.

For the first time in for-*******-ever.


.



..







...

















Woohooo!!!!!

:D:D
 
And the rest of the trim is done:





So, that's the good news. The bad news is, the drivers seat leather and part of the trim around the door frame now look like this thanks to the mechanic:










What a prat....

:rolleyes:
 
God knows. All I know is that we now are probably going to have to refresh the front seats again.

This is what the drivers seat used to look like, after some nice refurb work:

dsc01337x.jpg


Hopefully we can get it looking like that again without serious outlay.
 
Cheers for the tip garak. We'll see what happens.

Hopefully going to spend a little time on Sunday morning doing a few jobs. One of them is putting eyes on the damned cruise control ECU - this is shown in different places on different drawings, but I think I now have a definitive location for it. I say 'think' - wouldn't be the first time I went looking for a component and found it in a different location to where it should be....

Oh, by the way - we had a small disaster the other day. Rear end wouldn't come up properly and brakes weren't really there. Guess the bleeding of the hydraulics after the rear strut change wasn't exactly exhaustive, eh? Seems to be sorted now, though there's probably still some air in the system somewhere (these cars have three million bleed points, it's like you're trying to bleed the central heating on a house the size of Buckingham Palace). Then the passenger seat electrics appeared to pack in, but a reset of the system sorted that - you tap 'MEM' five times, then the sequence 4 - 3 - 3 - 4 on the memory selection buttons. Not sure why it quit - I had the power off to the car the other day when I had the doors open a long time to re-fit the trim, but the drivers seat didn't pack in - but at least it was a free fix. Gary has had the new front tyres fitted as well, so at least we aren't trying to steer using ancient Goodyears with all the lateral grip of teflon-on-teflon. Tracking was sorted again at the same time (wasn't that far out, but these tyres are too bloody expensive to have it anything other than perfect). She's driving really well apparently. Engine is perfect, ride is good, brakes stop you on a sixpence....she's a Bentley again.

As fun as it's been for the most part, I can't wait for Project Bentley to end and get to merely maintaining the car rather than fixing it :)
 
I've driven a number of Bentley Turbos and I never ever managed to get the cruise control to work on any of them, I'm know how to work it as I managed it on a Continental R but never a Turbo.

The seats were also quite temperamental on some of the cars but perfect on others, the heaters were lovely!
 
The car sounds like a disaster if I'm quite honest.

Seems like you've sunk hundreds of hours into an old, inefficient ugly car that seems determined to just keep breaking.


Just my 0.02 naturally. :p
 
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