A while ago I discovered the rubber on my anti-freeze tester had perished causing the tube to fall out, and the end to degrade round the edges. Figured it was good for nothing but with the lockdowns it never got further than the box I left it in.
So, in trying to find a new gasket for the battery vent pipe I couldn’t find any oval rubber gaskets/grommets/o-rings of the right size, so decided to make my own. Hunting all over for suitable rubber I came across the anti-freeze tester and its’ nice big rubber bulb.
So, using a knife, small swiss army knife scissors and emery cloth I cut, snipped and sanded (the rubber was about 2/3rds too thick) the top portion of the bulb down to size to create a new gasket:
Once this was done I discovered my boot area was full of some strange white dust, so had to wipe it down before proceeding to putting everything back together again after the whole de-rusting and respraying of the battery area, and dealing with all the sheared bolts:
New battery vent gasket looking good (shame the photo still shows orange patches of rust - ah well):
The (almost) finished job:
(really could do with a new battery tray at some point, the one that came with the car is a massacred wreck).
I say almost finished because the boot carpet has ended up dusty and needs vacuuming, but once that’s done I can finally put the battery carpet back on and get all the stuff back in the car.
Still don’t know if the key works after its’ unfortunate trip through the washing machine mind…
And for those interested, here’s what the new battery clamp area looks like on the underside with my (previously mentioned in this thread) custom made bracket:
(Have to admit, it looked alot neater without having the flash enabled on the camera). But as mentioned before, it was all done with the car unable to be jacked up so it’s not too bad considering all the squirming.
And here’s what the old underside bracket that the above replaced looks like:
