Road legal again!

[Tom Nas]

Hi all,

A minor triumph- although it was more than a month overdue, my 80 passed 
its annual inspection today! I'd replaced the front discs and pads when I 
bought the car last November, and after the exhaust was fixed I started 
hearing some scoring noises in the rear brakes- should've checked these 
when I got the car but working on your car in the apartment parking lot is 
no fun, especially in the monsoon season. The linings were somewhat glazed 
over and were replaced, but to my dismay I noticed that the slave cylinders 
were leaking- one pretty badly. Luckily, the new linings had not been 
contaminated when I finally got around to replacing them (naturally, I got 
the wrong parts and it took a while to get the right items, and work got in 
the way). So, yesterday we finally replaced the cylinders.
For the test, it failed on a rear wheel bearing (easily replaced) and a 
rubber steering arm cover (there must be a proper name for this part but my 
grasp of tech English falls short here) which also took no more than ten 
minutes to replace. Much to my amazement, everything else passed this 
rather strict test. I was keeping my fingers crossed for the cat and the 
bitsa exhaust system, apparently assembled by some jigsaw puzzle wizard, 
but my 'temporary' gun gum repairs have obviously held up for the past 
couple of months. Even the emissions were OK, which is really something on 
a car that has (my conservative estimate) not seen a workshop for the last 
five years. Shame on me, I've yet to do an oil change...

I've learnt a lot about the anatomy of my car's braking system from all 
this assembly/disassembly and I'm pretty sure now that everything's in fine 
shape. Now for a new set of tyres (they meet the legal limit but 2 mm isn't 
enough for me) and upgraded wiring/relays for the headlights... oh, and 
valve stem seals to cure the engine's smoking habit.

Tom
Zeist, The Netherlands
87 80 1.8, 258k km- ready for another year!
87 90q- in hibernation, waiting for repairs