Fumbler

What about Frank Sinatra's own woodie wagon?

Nearly there.
Block didn't look too pleased about being left out in the open, but that was sorted with an abrasive pad. Also drained the oil and coolant.

Gasket.

Heed on and torqued then angle tightened.

I seem to have lost one of the exhaust gaskets, and I need to try and compress then timing belt tensioner to refit it, so I did everything else I could then called it a day.

Can't feel my toes now.

I'll bear that in mind next time I'm in Rochdale, thanks.
 
 
 
 
Which is never.

Update time: yesterday and today I’ve been tinkering with the Pontiac.
My UNC/UNF tap and die set finally arrived, and by arrived I mean wasn’t left in my safe place two days in a row and then I had to wait until Saturday morning to collect as the office is only open 2 hours a day… Cheers Royal Mail. It meant I could at least clean up the shitey threads.

I also bought some long bolts as the 5/16 threads were deep in the block - this was a good shout as the taps were too short so I made this beauty* using the angry grinder.

You can’t see the threads so this pic is pointless, you’ll have to take my word for it that they’re all sorted:

Next up, it all went back together:



I did as the shop manual instructed and used a smear of RTV on the mating surfaces, and torqued everything up.
The coolant system was pretty grim:

So I treated it to a delicious dishwasher tablet.

Then I left it running on the driveway with the funnel attached. It’s getting tap water for now, as I’ll dump the coolant and put fresh stuff in after it’s been run for a bit.


It got up to temp, the thermostat opened, the bubbles slowed to a stop, no leaks were observed. It still doesn’t show as very warm on the dash, but with a new pump and thermostat I can only assume that either this is how it is normally or the sender is crap.
Either way, I chucked the coolant left in the funnel into the header tank and I’m calling it done for now, hopefully closing the lid on this for a while:

It’ll be interesting to see how it performs in service now that it actually has coolant in it.

The reason for the header tank being ratchet strapped to the shelf:  These containers are not designed for pressure, and if you put even a couple of psi in them, they do this:

The strap stops that from happening, keeping the dip tube pointing at the bottom of the tank and not the opposite corner!

Once the oil has come from that stainless mesh, it gets to sit in 25L drums to settle, and to let all the air that has been entrained to bubble out.  I find a week is more than plenty, and any longer doesn't seem to make any difference.

Next comes the multi-stage filter system.  Each 25L gets lifted up onto a high-level shelf, and then by using a dip-tube through a lid and a little bit of air pressure in the top of the barrel, 15 L is pushed over into the "header" tank:



This requires very little pressure.  The gauge I have is only 0-1 bar, but even just bringing it off it's stop is enough:

Quite hard to get a regulator to work at that pressure.
Once I have 15L in the header tank (the one that is ratchet strapped down), that then gets a 3psi over-pressure with a similar dip-tube that stops about 30mm up from the bottom, and the 15 litres is blown through three water filter housings:

It's not running in the photo (hence the reduced oil levels) but going left-to-right, that's a 50um, then a 5um and finally a 1um filter.  The oil pushes through these, and then ends up in the "footer tank", which is a 20L black container:

These are used as I don't need to see how much sediment there is in the bottom, as there isn't any.  Also, with 15L in a 20L drum, it makes pouring them into the car about 534 times easier.  Using a different colour for clean oil means I can't get the wrong container.
The stages of filtration down to 1um mean that the filter in the car never blocks.  Most paper filters in a car are around 10um, so I'm an order of magnitude better with this setup.  I prefer doing it this way, as the filters for the standard 10" filter bodies above are about £14 for 10 filters, rather than a tenner each for the car, which is about 1/3 the size.
Things I have learned about this setup:
the 50um filter takes the absolute brunt of the solids, and has to be changed about 10 times more regularly than the smaller ones. If the weather gets colder between doing the 125um filter and the 50um filter, I get grease build-up on the filter face as it coalesces out more fats.  Whilst a complete ball-ache, as it blocks the filter solid, it can be scraped off and the filter re-used. Blowing the filters backwards with compressed air is remarkably effective for cleaning. Oil gets absolutely everywhere.  You just have to accept that and do your best to keep everything clean. I use compressed air over the tanks rather than pumps as it means you can run a compressor for 2 mins and then when filtering the entire system is silent.  It also means that there's nothing to go wrong/overheat/explode, as once the header tank is empty, the compressed air just bubbles through the filters (hence the oil levels being low in the photo above) and once the compressed air reservoir is empty, nothing more happens.  No switches, no sensors, nothing.
Thus far, I think I've "processed" about 1000 litres of oil.  Other than the oil, the costs have been:
initial setup of the filter housings and 3x10 packs of filters:  approx £100 Various fittings that I didn't already have:  £20 15 black barrels and about 30 25L barrels: £25 and a couple of units of electricity for the compressor. Pretty much everything else I already had, but even if you started from nothing, it wouldn't be prohibitively expensive.
Next (but not tonight) the issues with burning Veg of any sort in a diesel engine.

I've been running a bit of Veg in various diesel cars/vans for a fair number of years, but have never done it quite as comprehensively as I do now.  It's very well known that a lot of IDI engines are very suitable for this, and I know a fair number of people on the forum either run Veg or have dabbled with it in the past.  I've tried describing my setup a few times, but never quite manage it properly.
The car:  Is the Merc E300 in my sig.  It's ideal for Veg for a great number of reasons and is the main reason I am now on my 3rd OM606 engine.  The reasons are:
Combustion swirl chamber (IDI) is designed to operate on low Centane fuel, ensuring massive amounts of turbulence, along with a glowing ignition point that the atomised fuel has to pass by, meaning incomplete combustion is hugely reduced (Note, this is NOT the same as an XUD with it's ricardo pre-combusion chamber.. it's IMO a better arrangement for Veg) Bosch inline injection pump, which is lubricated with an oil feed from the engine, meaning it doesn't rely on the lubricity of the fuel.  These will pump grease if asked to. Higher-than-usual compression ratio of 22:1, which is high for a turbocharged diesel.  This creates higher adiabatic compression temperatures, leading to better ignition. Big, poweful and smooth.  Inline 6-cylinders, 3.0 litres and 130kw (on diesel) means this is not an underpowered vehicle. I have not made any changes to the car other than swapping seals out for Viton when they start leaking.  I may do a twin-tank conversion in the future, but right now I'm focussing on the oil used.  Which in my case has been used oil.  There is a lot of things to consider with used oil, and I'm hoping I'm covering most of the issues.
New oil can, in most cases, be simply lobbed into the tank and run, either at 100% in summer, or thinned with diesel in winter, mainly for cold-starting.  Once the engine is running, you could use 100% without issue, but without a twin-tank conversion, you're forced to start the cold engine on whatever is in the only tank, so consideration has to be given to low temperature starting.
Used oil is a bit different, and you have to be aware of what it's been used for.  It has three main contaminants:  Water, sediment (solids) and sludge (grease)
Water has never been too much of an issue for the oil I've had.  After all, if the fryers have been running at their usual temperature of around 260c, all water will boil off to steam in normal service.  It's only really an issue if water has gotten into the oil while it's been cold.
Solids have to be removed.  What level you remove them to is important.  More below.
Sludge and grease is generally due to the oil having been used for cooking meats.  The animal fats come out of the meats being cooked and end up in the oil.  These are an issue, as they always have higher solidification temperatures than the vegetable oil.  Leave these in the oil, and you'll be back to the same cold-starting issues mentioned above.
How I do it:
The oil I have been getting recently (thanks to @Lacquer Peel, @juular and @MrsJuular in various ways for this) is really not bad oil at all.  However, it does have a fair bit of solids and animal fats in it, which I need to remove.  I go for a 5-stage filtration system, which thus far appears to be protecting the car quite well.
Step 1:  Coarse filtration.
I managed to get hold of a load of 125um stainless steel mesh from a company I used to work for a while back.  This can be bought online for not-as-much-as-I-expected, but this is what I have, so I thought I'd use it.  125um is open enough that clean oil blats through it fast enough, but it does catch a LOT.

This is a 25L barrel with the top cut off and some of the 125um mesh made into a place to pour the dirty oil straight into.  This comes in 20L "cubies" from various places, as it's what the oil came in new.  It comes complete with bits of chips, scampi, batter, and whatever else has been cooked in it.  It can be really very lumpy in places.
The blue barrel has an outlet about 50mm up from the bottom to allow filtered oil to then be directed into another container, either to one side, or possibly directly underneath:

When you lob a load of oil into the catch filter, it looks like this:

And then very slowly (as the outlet is only 6mm diameter) drops down.  As mentioned, the 125um catches a LOT, and gives you a good indication of how dirty the oil is.  As the mesh is fairly fine, it tends to coalesce the globules of animal fats.  This is both good and bad news, as once it's coalesced enough of it, it tends to block the mesh.  If left long enough, the oil will eventually pass through, but quite often I have to have a gentle scrape at the mesh to move the grease to one side, allowing the oil to pass through.  Once it's filtered a bit, it's pretty grim.  This one had a lot of grot and grease in it:

This one is less bad, but you can still clearly see the grease building up on the mesh:

To clean this out, I use a "sacrificial" wet vacuum cleaner, which does a remarkably good job of clearing the filter.  The machine has been used to vacuum up engine oil, veg oil, greases and all sorts of other stuff and absolutely honks.  Once it's full I might just lob it in the skip and get another:

Anyway.  Once the oil has passed through that filter, it has a brief opportunity for smaller solids to fall out, and then it comes out the bottom looking a lot cleaner:

CleanER.  I wouldn't cook my dinner in it, but it's a lot better already.
Next:  The finer filter stages.

I think a password might be appropriate.  Known autoshiter could ask suspected autoshiter, 'Shiter?' To which the correct response would be,  'Fuck off'.

A friend of mine in Utah had a rather unhappy ending to 2023. He pranged a deer while driving back home in the small hours this morning

I guess this is what happens to a 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix when you hit a grown deer at 65MPH. Fortunately he wasn't hurt and the car still drove. What stings is that he had only just put new head gaskets on, replaced the water pump and replaced the starter motor after the solenoid failed.
I feel sorry for the fella, he put a lot of work into keeping the car alive only for this to happen. Life is a real bitch sometimes.

Ope, had to re-upload the image.

A friend of mine in Utah had a rather unhappy ending to 2023. He pranged a deer while driving back home in the small hours this morning

I guess this is what happens to a 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix when you hit a grown deer at 65MPH. Fortunately he wasn't hurt and the car still drove. What stings is that he had only just put new head gaskets on, replaced the water pump and replaced the starter motor after the solenoid failed.
I feel sorry for the fella, he put a lot of work into keeping the car alive only for this to happen. Life is a real bitch sometimes.

Pic not showing for me.

Were these the owners?
 

https://www.facebook.com/share/FpBJu6kpeq6hP7dA/?mibextid=79PoIi

Yep, I've found page loading to be quite slow over the last few days.

RIP MULTI MEATER U R WIV DA ANGLES N PRICNESS DI NOW XXX

All I have been able to glean from these "clues" is that Fowler's and Juular's accounts have evidently been hacked by hairnet and tooSavvy. 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/296125804762?hash=item44f27930da:g:PbcAAOSwLjxliFYY

By the 1980s sadly for Francis Albert the woodies were all simulated. 

What about Frank Sinatra's own woodie wagon?

Yesterday we made the decision to close down a day earlier at work for Christmas this year. That meant today was a free day - result!
Today this turned up:

Even more of a result! That’s the replacement abs sensor for the front of the XM - that was the one that was open circuit.
Best get it swapped out then.
First though, I noticed a pool of green as I jacked up that corner.

I found that the clip holding the return line onto the strut had somehow come undone:

It’s held on by a clip that’s like a CV boot clamp but worse, so it’s got the default treatment for now:

On to the sensor then.
The old one was grotty:

But came out no bother. It’s a replacement part itself, which probably helped.
for anyone doing this who use replacing the original green connector sensors with blue ones, note that you have to shave off one tab from the plug. I didn’t see this mentioned online and initially I thought I’d bought the wrong thing.


I tested the resistance and read the codes from the ECU before swapping the whole thing:

plugging the new sensor in cleared the code for that corner immediately, so I carried on and fitted it properly.

The air gap isn’t right, but I can sort that later with an angle grinder.

The rear sensor looks like a fucker to replace, so I wanted to get the car stripped down ready for the replacement. This is the corner that has continuity but the resistance is out by about a thousand ohms.
I don’t like stripped down cars sat out the front of the house, so I needed to swap the XM with this

luckily it only took 5 minutes to throw the proton back together, and it fired into life no problem.
Then, after reversing the XM into its place, I noticed something odd:

The ABS light has cleared.
Ive tested it on a few ignition cycles and currently it clears without fail.
No idea why, as I’ve not don’t anything else apart from clean the rear sensor connector the other day, but I’ll take it.
Whilst I was fucking around I read the Hydractive ECU codes. The light is definitely blown as it was throwing a code but no light on the dash. This was the code:

The resistance I read on the component was 9ohms, which I also read the same for the front valve which isn’t throwing a code.
Giving either valve 12v with the power probe causes them to actuate, so no idea what’s going on there. That’s a job for after the MOT.
I was really pleased that the car is 99% of the way to being ready for putting in for MOT, so of course the nut immediately dropped off the linkage between the wiper motor and linkage as I tried to video it to show a mate the progress.
That’s tomorrow’s job then.
After that it’ll need a couple of tyres on the front, and I’ll chuck it in for a ticket after Christmas.

range rover p38 2.5 diesel spares or repair | eBay
'Prior to the head failing it was a good runner, always passed MOT'
'Date tested 8 October 2020: FAIL'

'Prior to the head failing it was a good runner, always passed MOT'
'Date tested 8 April 2017 :FAIL'

'Prior to the head failing it was a good runner, always passed MOT'
'Date tested  7 April 2013: FAIL'

'Prior to the head failing it was a good runner, always passed MOT'
'Date tested  6 April 2012: FAIL'

'Prior to the head failing it was a good runner, always passed MOT'
'Date tested  6 April 2012: FAIL'

'Prior to the head failing it was a good runner, always passed MOT'
'Date tested  13 April 2011: FAIL'
'Date tested  21 April 2010: FAIL'

Who needs an airbag when you have BUTTONZ!