Shauns story

We bought shaun back in October from an advert in the local rag, the guy was obviously short of cash and desperate to get anything he could. Apart from not being able to find reverse (my fault) and the drums having seized there didn't seem to be any problems. There wasn't any smoke from the engine and there wasn't any oil on the ground anywhere.

The bloke warned us that it would cost an awful lot to get shaun road legal after its dramatic MOT failure two months before. We saw the failure certificate and virtually every box had a comment in it bar the engine and gearbox, exactly the parts that we cared about so that was just fine with us.

It had been sitting there since its failure so somewhere between 1 and 2 months without being touched so we were pretty surprised when it started second time. The engine was most definately cold before we started and the guy was so paranoid about not starting, moving it illegally that we were inclined to believe that it really was a couple of months since it was started.

I duly offered the guy a piffling £ 75 which I expected him to haggle up but which he accepted. Not only that but he threw in a load on anti-freeze, de-icer, oil and a krook lock. We arranged to pick it up the following evening.

Picking Shaun (he wasn't shaun then, just a sierra) was a little nerve-wracking, I'd had a wibbly moment and felt guilty about the guy being so broke and gave him £ 85. All I had to do now was get the car back to my driveway. "Just driving it to where we can do repairs for its mot, honest officer". Driving an unfamiliar, and mechanically slightly dubious car on a dark wet evening isn't good but we managed to get it back without incident.

Moving to the garage

Tried to move shaun to the garage, discovered the battery was flat. Hmm... Tried bump starting, with only 2 people, one of which was in the car, a cold engine that hadn't started for at least a month and the choke held open with a bit of string. Exhausted we retired to wait for the battery to charge.

With a part charged battery shaun started straight away like the ever beaver we hoped he would be. Unfortunately he kept stalling, we later discovered this was because the piece of string fell off the choke. Drove cautiosly to the garage, again without incident. Phew. Shauns last jouney complete. Ahhhhh..

Wrecking

8/12/97

Bumper off, gives us a bit more space. Front grill off as well.

9/12/97

Took the wing mirrors off so we could get past the car. Took the bonnet off and plonked it unceremoniously on Shauns roof.

Decided to have a look under the bonnet, removed the air filter - in a very bad way, have to replace it. Bits of tubing selotaped in place - hmm not good. Carb seems to be held together with a jubilee clip where its got a huge crack down the side. Will have to replace that as well, weber 40s methinks. Removed the washer bottle, that at least is in a good state.

Tried to get a look at the spark plugs, HT leads all snapped trying to remove them, well they probably could have done with being replaced in any case. Spark plugs are unhelpfully none of the sizes that we happen to have spark plug removers for. Need to buy a suitable socket and get them out sometime. Ford seem to have been particularly unhelpful by randomly mixing imperial and metric bit all over the place.

Took the rocker cover off to get a look at the camshaft, seems in very good nick, gasket is in a bad way though. Think we'll fit a new camshaft in there regardless.

10/12/97

Drained the coolant and oil, didn't make too much of a mess. Swarfega and surgical gloves help loads.

Disconnecting 90% of the heating/cooling system and removed the radiator to give us some more breathing space. Put the seats down and removed the parcel shelf to create a nice little rubbish dump. Bumper and bonnet go straight in, tidied up most of the junk lying around and chucked that in there as well.

Ian thoughtfully lost the retaining bolt that hold the hacksaw in place before we even got a chance to use it. He can go and grovel to B&Q for a new one. That rather scuppered us removing the front end of the car for the moment.

Started on the exhaust manifold, got that off and started on where it joins to the exhaust. Can hardly budge the nuts, light starts fading so quickly pack up. Ian can have another go at that with the aid of some WD40 tommorrow on his day off.

11/12/97

Got the manifold off and freed up most of the engine. D'Oh we really wanted to leave the manifold there to support the lifting points, have to fit it back on.

12/12/97

Disconnected everything left holding the engine in place, loosened its mounting points and pondered how to remove everything else. Couldn't really see anything non-major left and was freezing, gave up and went home with thoughts of maybe getting everything else off before the weekend was up.

13/12/97

Started on the gearbox, managed to get it all freed up eventually. Most of the bolts were as per the rest of the car, either missing, only finger tight or near impossible to budge. Access to he gearbox limited because you don't really want it wafting around on axle stands and the trolley jack is supporting the weight of the gearbox.

We came to the conclusion that the car was do-able over the weekend so went off to hire an engine hoist. Just about fitted the thing in my car and got it back together once at the garage. HINT: make sure the car is in the right position before you start removing the engine, the hoist arm goes up and if it hasn't got enough height then its not going to be easy to get the car together enough to move it elsewhere. Engine came out incredibly easily, the most difficult bit was shuffling the hoist around to find somewhere to put it down.

With the engine preventing the car from living in the garage and all its fluids drained we left it parked outside overnight.

14/12/97

Sunday lunchtime, must be the best time to move whats left of the car the short distance across a busy road and onto my driveway. Normally we wouldn't dream of pushing a shell of a car with a steering wheel held on with one bolt but Shaun couldn't really sit on outside a load of lockups, especially not once his suspension was out.

Shaun now safely located on my driveway we worked through till well after dark with the aid of a table lamp and a battery powered flourescent tube. Got the suspension dropped, ripped the bumper off to give us some extra clearance and wheeled the suspension out. The hardest bit was actually removing the handbrake cable which was attached somewhere under an inch of grease and muck. Had we realised there was a circlip there we probably could have had it off in a couple of minutes rather than an half an hour.

With all the parts off Shaun we cleared up, wheeled the suspension units back to the garage for cleaning up and left Shaun there.

15/12/97

Managed to find a breakers that would take Shaun away and all the princely sum of £ 10. Unfortunately they also took away the handbrake lever that we had mistakenly left in the car...