Project Bentley

sigma said:
What kinda sums are we talking? :)
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Cruising, you'll get close to 20mpg especially if you add a bit of pressure to the tyres. Hit traffic, and you'll get low teens. Those tyres are about £220 each if you pay full whack (Avon 'Turbosteel 70' 235/70/R15 103V with whitewalls are the original equipment, we have those on the front with Goodyear Hydragrip equivalents on the rear). You'd need to carry a couple of half litre bottles of Castrol HSMO in the boot - there's a special cubby hole provided for it - for driving serious distance because the rear suspension hydraulics leaked even when these cars were new, never mind after 25 years and several replaced spheres!
 
She looks stunning Jez. Credit to the both of you to get it into that state. Especially considering how it started out !
 
I hadn't realised Jez was working on it ;) Though he's more than welcome to! I've got a real ball-ache of a job to do straight away as well, with re-mounting the interior panel on the drivers door :)

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It's actually a job that I've been meaning to do for ages, last time I was in the door was a while back when the window motor decided to stop working. The door card never did go back on right, because the clips had been on and off so many times that they no longer had enough tension in them. We have new clips, I've just not had the patience to go strip the door down again. It doesn't help that sometime before Gary bought the car there was obviously a problem with the contents of that door - a ruddy great section of the door panel itself was chopped out. You can see it in one of the earlier threads on here, when I was getting the central locking working in the pouring rain (:rolleyes: hey ho). I wouldn't mind, but I've been inside these doors and done fairly complicated work - the hole that this rock ape cut didn't make the job any easier. It's just a chunk of missing door.
 
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Eh

Gary here, What could possibly go wrong. There is nothing left of the original car (well not much)
 
Gonna go ahead and get the car topped up tonight so we can measure the fuel consumption. Hoping to see better than single figures now!

On Sunday I'll hopefully get the drivers side dipped beam re-earthed to see if it cures it (it's not even remotely bright enough right now). Another job that I'd been meaning to do for months and never quite gotten around to.
 
Went after the headlight this morning. What an inglorious ****-up that was....

I've got the dipped beam circuit working fine by cutting into the live 12V feed to the passenger side outboard light and wiring it over to the drivers side. When you switch to high beam though, we end up back where we were with only 6.7V getting to the drivers outboard light. None of the original loom is even colour-coded correctly OR consistently so tracing it is a complete cluster-****. And even if it was consistent or correctly coloured, it would still have no doubt been made by Lucas and therefore be crap.

I am extremely bored by Crewe's idea of 'good enough' :rolleyes:

I think we're on the right track though. If we'd had enough high-quality wire handy and I'd taken the other two connections across from the passenger side outboard light to the drivers side, I suspect it would be working fine right now. Until the inevitable fire, anyway! :p
 
Lights now all work, fresh ticket has been gotten. Some advisories, nothing major. The mechanic ended up bridging two connections from passenger side to drivers side (keeping a years-old bodge of mine and the one we did the other day), and jacking into the 12V supply from the loom to inboard drivers side lamp and sending it to the outboard.

Immediate job following a test drive today is to fix my jury-rigged connection to the cruise control ECU, which appears to be ailing somewhat (CC has gone intermittent). That's my Saturday morning sorted!
 
WOW that certainly is a car and a half in more ways than one. Great looking car mate and looks in great condition as well. What year is it, as with the Northern Irish plate I can't tell.
 
Built in March 1989, so originally an 'F' reg car. It's a late example of the '20,000' series cars - cars with a VIN ending in 2xxxx.
 
JRS said:
Built in March 1989, so originally an 'F' reg car. It's a late example of the '20,000' series cars - cars with a VIN ending in 2xxxx.
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89 and it looks that good, it's clearly has been well maintained. I would never have guessed that was an 89, the chrome work and everything is in such good condition. The only thing I'd change is to remove those badges from the grill, I think they spoil the clean lines of the front of the car.
 
DJ_Bucho said:
snip
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I kinda like the badges. I will say though that if I ever get chance, I'll get a clamp for the AA badge and move it off the radiator slats and onto the badge bar. I've never been 100% happy with where it's attached.

Thanks for your kind words about her condition as well, I'll make sure the owner sees them. He appreciates things that feed his ego :cool: And we both appreciate nice things being said about the work that we've put in!
 
Howard said:
That looks like an exceedingly comfortable way of driving across an entire town, before complete catastrophic failure of everything and the sudden loss of comfort as your wallet catches fire.
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Fixed!

It must feel good to be able to just saunter off to the pub in a Bentley. :cool:
 
Ryan-3 said:
It must feel good to be able to just saunter off to the pub in a Bentley. :cool:
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Exactly what I did last night. And I had to saunter, because I stuck £78.01 of petrol in it despite the gauge reading just under the halfway mark (:eek:) and didn't want to use it all up in one go....
 
Ryan-3 said:
HOLY HELL! :eek:

If you fancy something more economical, run a burning oil field. ;)
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Meh, it's got a 6¾l V8. It's going to use fuel. It did deliver 18mpg on a run from Burton to Brum Airport a few years ago, with what we now know to be a knackered gearbox. To be fair, urban mileage is pretty much always going to be low. And at the end of the day, the car doesn't do that many miles so the consumption is not nearly as frightening as if this was a daily driver.

I reckon we can drag the 'pottering around' figure up into the low-to-mid teens. With a bit of luck!
 
Re-did my lash up of the cruise control wiring - I say "re-did", I just took the wire all the way out and then shoved it as far into the connector as I could. Hopefully that's got it!
 
18mpg on a run doesnt sound too bad does it? My RR only manages low to mid 20's and thats a much smaller (capacity) far more modern car.
 
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