It must attract them.
It was at this point @Microwave said “Is the pub up there? Oh shit.”
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Only something like a diesel Lupo could make it up that road
Tell you what man, what a coincidence, did some usual K series work today on a car that looked exactly like this!
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Some fuck parked all these Toyotas near me
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One of these things isn’t like the other…
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Day 4: They’ve noticed me! Time to run! 
(Special thanks to @adamd for doing the work on this car that I couldn’t do. Absolute life saver and I don’t know where I’d be without him lmao)
So… it’s still going!
(I think these photos are from the day after I got the wheels, so quite a while ago)
It’s nearly on 57,000 miles now which means I’ve done nearly 2k miles in it (and I’m limited to 6k per year, fuc).
While these miles have been trouble free, it did at some point develop a misfire at cold start. Suspecting that it was misfiring because of coolant getting into the cylinders, I ordered an OEM intake manifold gasket, seeing as this is a common thing to go on these engines.
I figured that whilst I was getting that job done, I might as well replace the plugs & plug leads… which led to me also figuring that I might as well replace the restricted throttle & throttle cable with the respective unrestricted parts, which unlocks the engine’s full 103PS potential. The 1.4 in this model is restricted as such:
It’s as simple as it looks really, no need to mess with the ECU or anything. The butterfly valve isn’t able to open all of the way before being stopped, so when you put your foot to the floor on an 84PS model, the throttle is only opening by that much.
Anyway, I organised for a mobile mechanic to come to my house and fit these parts for me, a mechanic that I had previously used a few times who seemed like a genuinely nice bloke. However, he decided to basically try avoiding me for 2 weeks, for whatever reason, and when he finally came to do the job he tried his hardest to tell me the head gasket was gone… even though it shows absolutely no signs of head gasket failure whatsoever.
It was somewhere around then where I remembered that I knew this guy with a 2CV and a very yellow GT86, so I set off on a 3 hour trip to some shit, truly northern town full of bad drivers.
A few hours later…
one saltboi
Manifold definitely seemed like a bit of a pain to get off (even tho I did none of the work), but once it was off we were presented with what you can see in the above photos. It seemed that the intake manifold gasket was not as bad as first thought, though it definitely wasn’t sealing perfectly. So, with that investigated, new gasket was fitted and it was bolted back up.
After doing the plugs & plug leads, we tried to fit the new throttle & throttle cable. The throttle body itself fit fine, but the cable seemed to be incorrect as it would not provide a tight enough fit no matter how it was setup or adjusted. After about an hour of fannying around, Adam came up with a genius solution to bodge the old & new throttle cables together… which actually ended up working perfectly!
So, fast forward to the current day (about 2 weeks later). While it no longer misfires on the move (likely due to the fact it was still running on its original plugs after 56k miles), it still misfires in the morning like it did, and it still seems to be losing coolant somewhere. Fortunately, there’s absolutely nothing to suggest either are related to head gasket failure, and there’s nothing to really suggest either of those two symptoms are related. I bought a cheap bluetooth OBD reader that I’ve used to narrow down the misfire to cylinder 2, so I’m going to try swapping the coils around to see if I can get the fault code to move to different cylinders. I’ve also bought a new coolant temperature sensor, as it is currently a prime suspect for the misfiring, so I’m going to fit that this week too.
For what it’s worth though, besides these things, the car’s been absolutely flawless so far, with me only needing to spend like £2 on a new expansion tank cap (as the old one wasn’t retaining pressure properly). I will update this thread sometime later this week after I’ve fitted the new bits and done some more diagnosing.
Until then, enjoy this crap resolution photo of my car in a puddle whilst I wear a coat that cost twice as much as what my car is worth (that I stole from someone right before the photo)
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i uh
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So the question is how fucked is the stuff behind the hood, or ‘bonnet’ as you say and if it’s fixable or not and if it’s worth it
rip the Rover tho
I feel ya. I also wrecked a car this way.
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It’s British man, it’ll live again.
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This picture is physically painful for me to look at as a fellow Rover owner
F
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I’m genuinely gutted for you mate, +F
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I know exactly what you’re going through man, I have empathy
F
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Aaaand now for my 2nd car this year:
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You starting a minicab business? 
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Nah, I’ll do that maybe when I inevitably buy a Prius at some point in my life.
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Aww and Avensis! I just learned about those recently, we didn’t get them in the US. There’s an Avensis mod for City Car Driving and I love it even if it’s just a videogame haha!