Yay! *bounces*

[Dr. Z]

First up is/was getting it through an MOT. It had failed on rear ARB droplinks, inefficient rear handbrake, front brake imbalance (37%), headlight aim too high, nearside repeater not functioning and was advised that the brake pipes were inadequately clipped.

Thankfully, the previous owner had bought the droplinks (I wouldnt have bought the car if these werent sorted) because as the mk1 ran out for the start of the mk2 production run, they had started to fit rear ARBs (something that was dropped after 1986 at the end of the mk1a). This means that a handful of very late mk1bs have ARBs (mine is one of those) but they are completely undocumented and in any case, only Toyota stock the parts and they aren't cheap!

So with that out of the way, my attention turned to the brakes. No pictures of this but basically the rear caliper is a bastard to sort. The self-adjusting mechanism is built into the piston, meaning that its difficult to reset and get just right. Thankfully, the guy that last changed the pads probably went through this and merely forgot to tighten up the adjustor under the middle of the car. 5 minutes later and I once again had a handbrake (within MOT spec at least) - sorted.

Front brakes were shagged. The calipers need looking after on these cars and these ones had seen better days. Refurb calipers are £70+vat per side but you can get rebuild kits yourself for £20ish per side - this is what I chose to do.

As you can see here, the problems were down to the rubber boots perishing and allowing dust into the sliders. I had to put the calipers into a vice and hit them with a hammer to get them to come out...

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Once this was done I put it all back together and waited to get the pads in. The old pads here vs the new ones:

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Once we'd got the brakes back together and verified all was well it was time to move onto the lights. The repeater was a simple fix - the contacts were corroded! I cleaned them up and straight away there was light. Good start!

The headlight bulbs were dim to start with and could have been contributing to the beam pattern issue so I took the opportunity to change the bulbs. As I was working to a time budget I headed down to the local Halfords and bought some Super Brilliance bulbs. Not as bright as possible (I really want brighter) but I am scared of melting the reflectors, so for now these will have to do.

Getting them in is done in one of two ways - removing the black plastic surround and then removing the lid or removing the chrome trim and then removing the whole headlight. I went for the former option because that way, I wouldn't have to tackle so many rusty screws! The offside went fine and I got that done in about 15 minutes but the other side proved to be more tricky.

This was the last, most stubborn bolt:

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It was too rusted for a screwdriver and too rounded by the rust for a socket to do the job. First up, mole grips:

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No dice.

Right, out with the only tool known to work on every job, no matter how small - the angle grinder!

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Ground off the head and drilled out the rest. Sorted!

Tomorrow morning she goes back for a (free) retest. Hopefully she will pass