General bits of maintenance...

 Poppy needed some general maintenance done a couple of weeks back. Spark plugs were changed with very little effort (although one of Tom's leads split - whole different, rather long story!) and then it was on to a full oil and filter change. These are meant to be done every three months or something but, due to not actually being made of money, I can't really afford to spend £30 on a fresh flush of oil and a new oil filter, plus about another £15 for the spark plugs, quite that often - once a year will suffice as long as she's running well, for now, I think!

She had to be put on ramps, which was utterly terrifying to drive her up to, not least due to how low she is. Then it was on to taking the filler cap off, undoing the plug on the sump and letting the oil drain out into a waiting bowl. As you can probably see, I missed somewhat as wasn't expecting the oil to spurt quite that far! The socket required for the sump plug was a surprisingly large one - 19, and it took a bit of doing to get it undone.



Once that was, eventually, completed and the oil was draining out slowly, it was on to getting the oil filter extractor thingy round the oil filter, attaching an extender bar and cracking it off. As I have the smaller  hands of Tom and I, that one was my job - once the engine had cooled down a little, it wasn't awful. Admittedly, you can't see anything at all when your hand's underneath the engine trying to twist the oil filter off! Once the extractor was wrapped round and the bar was attached, it took a bit of effort to push against it but the filter cracked off without too much trouble.

The difficult bit then is to remove the extractor and bar and to twist the filter off by hand. It requires a quick, deft flick of the wrist to stop the filter from draining out oil all over the engine and then some manoeuvring to get it out in total but, after all that, it was absolutely worth it: it had far too much metal in it for my liking!

Nonetheless, replacing the new filter was easy, just with a little manoeuvring in around the pipes and lines, but it took far less time than getting it out did! The sump plug's washer was replaced and the plug put back in, and tightened to the required  level, and, after wiping up and getting rid of the used oil, the oil and filter change was complete!

Apparently, I did it so well that Tom got me to do his a couple of days ago! Just as straightforward although his oil was a damn sight hotter - ouch!

Shift Boot Changes

We bought three sets of shift boots and oil after noticing that the shift boots on Bluey were utterly worn and leaking smoke into the car. Changing Blue's boots took a fair bit of trial and error but made such a difference. When fiddling about with Poppy, I took the gearstick leather cover off and noted that the top boot was pretty worn through; odd, as no smoke had been coming in at all but there we go. See below!




Tom's girl, Lucy, was up for helping me so we got stuck in with the spanners and screwdrivers. Taking the gearstick and boot out was no problem, and the turret was full of oil, reassuringly, but it took a *lot* of pushing and pulling to get the boot off the stick.






Putting the gearstick back together was pretty straightforward though 'lubricating the shaft' was essential in getting the boot back over it to the point it needed to be: the upper requires a lot of manoeuvring to get the ring down low enough. After that, it was just a case of screwing the centre console and other bits back on and twisting the knob back on.


Poppy drives just as beautifully now, although the shift changes did have a little resistance in them for a few days afterwards, and it didn't take more than half an hour in total to do the change of both boots and the oil - I can't recommend the Haynes manual highly enough, as ever!