Conrad D. Conelrad

They'd call you mellow yellow (quite rightly)

I use 'em coz they're cool. They also make the road signs go yellow, and that's fun.

That is damned nice! The interior is 💯💯* * I think this means good

Put his details into cartakeback so the car he just spent ages insuring has been scrapped by the time he gets off the train.

That’s a beautiful example. Well bought. Buy them all while you can! Nothing newer is as comfortable! Sadly now sans 405. His green one shat its autobox and went to the great car park in the sky. Since he’d had some trouble getting parts for the Peugeot, he decided they were getting a bit old to daily and replaced it with a Nissan Cube, which he has had trouble getting parts for.

How fancy. My sun visor is in the door pocket.

That is a beautiful colour combination. If your wheel trims are 15", I'm very interested, please let me know.

I was also uneventfully Benzin’ on the A34 today. (High fives)

Late low spec W124, but I think they did use them on the W202 too. I'm waiting for a nice set of the correct ones to crop up but it's fairly low down the priority list!

With the potentiometer unplugged, the Baby Benz has done 50 miles in varied conditions without stalling. So here’s a £70 vote of confidence: don’t let me down now, hurensohn! How does it drive with a bit of the injection system unplugged? Beautifully! I’ve fallen back in love with the car. The only noticeable issue is that it doesn’t know what to do with itself for the first few seconds of a cold start but settles once the throttle has been blipped.

I haven't tried it yet. I'm currently experimenting with only disconnecting the potentiometer. Positive so far. I believe so. Not clear in my photo but my potentiometer is oriented the same as the diagram.

Mackem house, this.

It’s late on Boxing Day, so time to settle down with a cup of coffee. While doing laps of the neighbourhood. (The cup would be more at home in @R Lutz’s Micra) Here’s the plan. I’ve unplugged the potentiometer. The car drives without it, probably less efficiently, but perfectly smooth. If the car stalls, it’s not the potentiometer. If the car goes the next week without stalling, it’s time to order a new one. I drove around for half an hour without incident. But will it get me to work tomorrow? Like and subscribe.

Ha, that's awesome. What a great gift.

That's not a bad idea, actually - does it still cut out with the ECU removed? May find out.

That also cuts out?

I'm probably throwing in the towel on this. I need the car to get to work, and the car has been laid up more than I've used it, primarily waiting for parts to arrive. Every part I've ordered has taken an eternity to get here, and now I'm looking at another two weeks of no car while I wait for a potentiometer which may or may not fix it. I am also waiting on a crankshaft position sensor I ordered over a week ago which still hasn't even been dispatched. It's a lovely car, and when it works I love driving it. I also love looking at it. But I think K-Jet is simply not fit for purpose in a daily driver in 2024. It's too complicated, and too delicate. In addition, while a good number of parts are available, I've never had such trouble actually receiving parts! The only people who managed to actually shove a thing in a box and post it were AliExpress. Unfortunately my NCB is stuck on this thing so insuring something else might be a challenge. Selling it may be a bigger challenge, this time of year. Ah well, for the second time in my life I've learnt - do not buy a K-Jet car! Maybe a diesel next time?

Yes, I have a cat. I checked my EZE-KAT things straight away, wanted to make sure I wasn't wasting that E5!

Update. Things still not going very well - it played up both going to and from work yesterday. I dropped into my local motor factor - the proprietor also owns a broken 190E - and he loaned me a fancy multimeter which does duty cycle and can potentially help diagnose it. Well, it's certainly fancier than my multimeter, which I bought about ten years ago for £1.97 including first class post. His multimeter does this when you turn it on, which confirms it speaks the same language as the car: The next step was to drive the car around the backstreets until it stalled, and then hook this thing up and see what it had to say. I did loops of deserted suburban streets for 15 minutes with no issue, until I accidentally turned down a street terminating at a main road. With two cars behind, the second I pulled into traffic, it cut out. Awesome. I got it restarted and limped it out of the way. It was idling, but any touch of the throttle killed it. Multimeter time. I hooked it up and... a quick flash of 666... then nothing. When you looked at the photo above, did you notice the low battery warning? Because I sure as shit didn't. I put the dead multimeter back in the glovebox and waited for the car to regain composure, then drove home. But! When I got home my AutoDoc parcel had arrived! In only twelve days. This contained the second valve cover gasket. The first one I bought was wrong (no-one says there's two. But there's two). When I test drove the car it STANK of burning oil, but I wasn't too concerned as there was oil misted all over the engine bay. I thought it was the valve cover, but the first time I took the air filter housing off I found this broken pipe: So that was an easy fix. It did leak a little from the valve cover gasket, though, so a new one was a good idea. While I had such good access I was having a poke about looking for clues when I decided to test the potentiometer, which I'd forgotten to do last time. Here's the criteria: Nominal value between 3.6 to 4.4 Ω. What's mine? hmm, quite out of spec. Good work, cheap multimeter buddy! Friends 4 eva! whoops! I checked with the borrowed meter and it gave the same result. The values are correct when the air metering flap is pushed, but too low when it's closed. Could this be why it flakes out when I come off the throttle or apply the throttle from idle?

I put a new OVP in last night. Also replacing the black top with the red top. It was driving so well. Then stalled this morning.

🦷 THE TOOTH IS GONE! 🦷 Sitting here waiting for the anaesthetic to wear off. I thought it was hurting so much just from being pulled and pushed around the other day, turns out it was infected? Whatever, all that's left is for me to spend the next few hours repeatedly googling "how much bleeding is excessive bleeding". Speaking of bleeding, I dared to drive the Mercedes yesterday so it pissed coolant all over the place. One of the heater hoses had developed a little split: Due to the shape it wasn't possible to trim it, so while I wait for a new hose to arrive I effected a repair using a bit of bicycle inner tube. BUT : In the last two days it has stalled twice. Most recently 15 minutes ago on my way home from the dentist. The symptoms are the same - the engine revs will falter a little, but the car will keep driving. Then a few minutes later, stall. The last few times have all been while coming to a stop. It took a few attempts, but the car restarted. What the fuck is it?

I've gone off 190s a bit myself, but it's a lovely car. Quite jealous of the interior.

Check this shit out: I'm in a cool room sweating profusely because the pain is gnawing into my very soul but in only 12 days I have dropped enough weight to fall from Obese to Overweight on the BMI. Amazing!!

(Ah you can still see fuckin' lithium. I thought I got it all)

The morning after the first breakdown, I was tentatively driving to work when there was a huge bang from the rear of the car, followed by a loud hissing sound. I've had tyres blow out before, and this didn't feel like a tyre blew out. I pulled into a bus stop and sprung from the car to investigate. It didn't take long to get to the bottom of it. To jump the car the night before, I'd taken a spare battery and jump leads. I left the battery in the boot and immediately forgot about it. Then, that morning, for no apparent reason (I was driving down a straight road) the battery fell into one of the wells in the boot and pierced a can of lithium grease I had purchased 12 hours prior. The can exploded. So it was time to sort out the boot. However tatty my car is, the boot is always clean and clear. I hate cluttered boots, and I hate dirty boots even more. If the spare wheel is in there, it should be clean, too. I also hate a boot you can't leave a coat in, and this boot was damp and musty. Not tolerable. Water gets into the boot, and then condenses on the bootlid. This condensation then runs down the bootlid into the channel behind the latch, and then when you open the boot, it all suddenly empties into the boot. This video illustrates it very nicely at about 20 seconds: I found the source of the water ingress and plugged it. I also employed Kent's suggestion from the video of drilling two train holes in the bootlid, which immediately dribbled a load of water onto the taillights so that's definitely going to be a big help. I left the boot open all day, then when it started to get dark I stuck a fan heater in there for half an hour to completely dry it out. The carpet, miraculously unharmed by the burst-lubrication, was damp and musty. The hose will sort this out! My hose attachment was all fucked up by the frost a while ago, but I bought new a one. Although it was pretty frosty a couple of weeks ago... I hope it's okay... Oh dear. The carpet came up nice though. Smells of Woolite. I draped it over a radiator and put the heating on a little early (a move which likely cost more than ordering a new carpet) and I'm pleased to say the boot is now really quite pleasant, and up to my exacting standards.