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Conrad D. Conelrad

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  1. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Bazfr69 in Cars at Sunset   
    That's a beautiful photo! Vaporwave is BACK!
     
    Here's my current daily on the roof of a car park. 

  2. Haha
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Ghosty in 1987 Ford Sierra Sapphire 1.8L - Ready for inspection - see page 20   
    The decline of traditional media has caused so many problems. Last time I needed to mask up my car, I had to print out a load of Reddit posts. 
  3. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Nullzwei in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

  4. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from SiC in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

  5. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from mercedade in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

  6. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from MorrisItalSLX in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

  7. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Nyphur in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

  8. Haha
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Minimad5 in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    You have been summoned for jury duty, because it's
    MERCEDES ON TRIAL

    GUILTY of STALLING AGAIN!!
    GUILTY of stalling once at some lights and me pretending maybe that didn't happen! 
    GUILTY of stalling in the car park at The Trafford Centre, causing me to have to be at the Trafford Centre for several minutes longer than necessary!
    GUILTY of stalling while turning around in a cul-de-sac and then not starting again, ironically blocking a driveway containing a W124 300E! 

    (photo taken by passenger)
    Mercedes is hereby sentenced to SHIT CHINESE PIECE OF SHIT POTENTIOMETER THAT ONLY LASTED LIKE A FUCKING WEEK to be UNPLUGGED 
    (*gavel bangs*)
  9. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Minimad5 in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    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. 
  10. Haha
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Minimad5 in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    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?
     
  11. Haha
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Minimad5 in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    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. 
  12. Haha
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Minimad5 in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    This has KE-Jetronic, that’s good ol’ K-Jet with modern fripperies like an ECU but unencumbered by modern nonsense like fault codes. It’s really quite simple, if you look at the following diagram of how it works:

     
    …and from what I read, it’s super simple to figure out faults except for the fact that every one of the components appears to cause every conceivable symptom an engine can suffer from. 
  13. Haha
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Minimad5 in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Track your order >
    9/12/23 3pm: order placed with EXPRESS DELIVERY (+£1,000,000)
    9/12/23 4pm: being processed at our warehouse
    10/12/23 12pm: sorry, we thought we had no orders yesterday, turns out the zebra printer had no labels in it
    10/12/23 4pm: being processed at our warehouse
    10/12/23 6pm: courier's van is idling in our loading bay just waiting to speed your parcel to you
    10/12/23 6:05pm: but we didn't give it to him
    11/12/23 4pm: being processed at our warehouse
    11/12/23 5pm: your order is assigned and locked out on the pick gun Jim accidentally took home yesterday
    11/12/23 7pm: being processed at Jim's house
  14. Haha
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Minimad5 in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    My Mercedes Experience:
    W124 300D: Repeated breakdowns due to OVP, heater never worked properly, sunroof broke
    W124 280TE: SLS pipe ruinously expensive to fix, seized PAS pump
    R170 SLK: Supercharger broke on day 1 of ownership, gearbox went into limp mode, oiled up its MAF and lost power
    W201 190E: all good so far, except the stuff I mentioned above

     
     
  15. Haha
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Minimad5 in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Oh! It broke down!

    50 miles into a trip, mercifully within walking distance of home, it stumbled a bit and cut out. When it restarted, the idle was all over the place and any application of the throttle killed it stone dead. I limped it home idling in drive. 
    The forums came to help. "It's the OVP" they all said. 
    I have encountered the OVP before, in my 300D. It's a little relay designed to stop the delicate circuitry being damaged by voltage spikes, but they have a reputation for causing trouble, usually because of dry solder joints. Re-soldering the OVP in the 300D fixed it permanently, so it was time to do that again. 
    You just carefully slide it out of the case:

    Then check out the solder joints on the back:

    Resolder and slide it back into the case:

    (I have a new one in the post)
    With this installed, the car worked perfectly. Drove like a dream. Phew! Glad we got to the bottom of that once and for all. 
  16. Sad
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Minimad5 in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Oh! It broke down! 

    This was about 200 miles after purchase. Conked out in a queue of traffic and wouldn't restart. Huh, weird. You'll notice there is no traffic chaos in the above photo, that is because it was taken much later than the actual breakdown, where I can assure you there was traffic chaos. As I struggled to push it out of the way, catching the odd glimpse of the mouthbreathers in the other cars gawping at my misfortune and doing NOTHING, I pondered how wonderful it would be if one of the globe's current conflicts escalated into a full scale nuclear exchange and they really got to experience what the breakdown of society looks like. I'd break into their shelters and loot all their prawn cocktail crisps. I'd even smirk as the traffic warden executes me. Should've helped me push, motherfuckers. Just then a very nice minibus driver arrived and helped me push it clear of traffic "as no other fucker will". 
    As I was saying, it cut out. I walked home, scrolling Mercedes forums all the way. "Can you hear the fuel pump prime?" Fuck, man. The fuel pump is whisper quiet and there were cars and lorries thundering past. But yes, the fuel pump relay was the most likely culprit. I called my breakdown service (Junkman in his W210 full of straw) and we got it back to my place. I opened up the questionable relay and re-soldered the joints. Car seemed happy again. Phew. That's the end of that! 
  17. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Popsicle in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

  18. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from N Dentressangle in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

  19. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Jenson Velcro in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

  20. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from AndyW201 in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

  21. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from wesacosa in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

  22. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from R Lutz in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

  23. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Matty in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

  24. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from Fat_Pirate in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

  25. Like
    Conrad D. Conelrad got a reaction from djim in Benzin' (I want to get off Mr Benz Wild Ride)   
    Upthread I complained about my wheel trims and @AndyW201 mentioned that he had a set. Well, now I have a set. And what a difference they make!

    A side by side comparison with one of the old ones... they really were shamefully tatty. 

    I'm loving how it looks now. 

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