Lockdown tasks
For some readers, it’s business as usual. For others, it might mean we have a bit more spare time on our hands during this virus pandemic period.
A therapeutic task (for me) is to tinker with one or two of my car fleet. First, though, the lawn needed its first cut. The Hyundai petrol mower was dragged from the shed and the rechargeable electric-start battery put on charge for a few hours. With the fuel tank topped, the fuel primer operated by hand a few times, it failed to start. More hand priming and it still wouldn’t fire. So I fetched Sarah to operate the start-key while I pushed on the primer – it worked! It’s a 173cc OHV four-stroke engine and self-propelled. However, the rear-wheel belt has come off – and even though I’ve put it back on, it has come off again. Further investigation is required. Grass cutting didn’t take that long, mainly because most of the grass is now covered in cars!
I sold a Nissan Qashqai to my neighbour – we serviced it in CM in the January 2020 issue. However, after a week of ownership, the tailgate handle fell-off in her hand. Not a problem I said, leave it with me. This is a common Qashqai quirk and a fix from X8R (x8r.co.uk) was bought for £18.99 delivered. I received this product back in November 2019, so with the Qashqai now sat idle on her driveway it was time to execute a repair. There’s an excellent video on the X8R website giving full fitment details. With the exterior of this Qashqai in a hue of Nightshade (a dark aubergine, although the logbook says black), I’d applied black tape to keep the boot handle in place. Some six months on, I was a tad worried the tape would be permanently stuck – it wasn’t, the tape I had used was low-tack and did a good job of staying in place what with all that rain we had.
The fixing repair consists of two new plastic patch repairs that the locating bolts sit in. The kit comes with a small Acetone bottle. You use a paint brush to apply the Acetone over the area that the new patch sits and also the base of new plastic repair, then clamp together and wait a couple of hours.
The job didn’t go exactly as planned – I poured the Acetone into the bag supplied and that had a small hole in the bottom – I had to run back into the kitchen to fetch a bowl and lost half of it. I managed to attach one patch repair with three clamps. When it came to do the other side, the remaining Acetone had dried-out! ebay came to the rescue – £2.99 for 30ml delivered. With the second patch repair fixed on and the clamps in place I took it into the sun to get some photos – a little tip here – don’t leave it in the sun too long otherwise the repair patches start to distort/melt!
If you have a lockdown repair report to tell us about, please email me…