Jump to content

Stanky

Full Members
  • Posts

    7,079
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    2

Everything posted by Stanky

  1. I was pretty pleased to have spotted this in the 1970s/Lee-on-Solent earlier. The 'fastback' makes what would be a purposeful 3-box saloon look incredibly gawky IMHO. It looked great from ten feet but was a bit rust scabby up close. Still, it's been about a decade since I last saw one, so glad it's out and about and being used.
  2. You bastard, you told me you wouldn't tell everyone how I lived when you bought that mower from me!
  3. Had a slightly odd episode with the Mercedes last night, I'd been out & about in it doing a load of local errands, probably been driving for ~1h, covered ~20 miles and stopped and started 3 times during that period. It was dark so lights on, radio on, dashcam on. I was driving down a 40mph bit of road and the accelerator just stopped responding, the revs dropped to idle and it wouldn't rev at all (as in the pedal made zero difference to revs, like it was disconnected). I pulled into a bus stop and the revs then dropped until the car stalled. This was in neutral (car is a manual). No errors on the dash, no EML. Turned the key and it started back up instantly, and behaved perfectly. Revved, idled, carried on exactly as normal. I took the car over to portsmouth today, about 25 miles on a mix of B, A and M roads (albeit in daylight) and it ran fine, zero issues. I code scanned it and all it returned was a fault related to the rear SAM. Looking as the schematic there is nothing in the rear SAM that has anything to do with the engine? I took the SAM unit out of the boot and its visually perfect, no corrosion or damage at all? I sprayed some contact cleaner on the connectors and reassembled it all but I'm a bit stumped? I checked with it running and there is only 13.94v across the battery terminals, should I be concerned? I sort of expected 14.5+v with the engine running. Load was minimal though, lights off, radio off, interior lights off. All it was running was the engine and dashcam, but I'd still expect it to be recharging the battery lost on startup? its on trickle charge currently, and will stay on overnight - just for good measure. Battery was measuring 12.37v cold before startup, again, a little on the low side. Any suggestions? Its a 2001 W203 with the M111 engine, manual gearbox, ~130k miles. Have access to tools and code scanner.
  4. OOOF! thats top dollar, but the prices of these have been edging up. A Rally 2 on one of the owners groups sold mega quick for £1200 recently so £1900 probably isn't miles off the mark.
  5. Air filter arrived and fitted to the mercedes, and brake caliper sliders removed and greased so thats the service/routine maintenance work done for this year. The thicker oil has eliminated the brief chatter from the camchain on cold starts, I think the 5w30 may have been a bit too thin. The 10w40 is still MB 229.3 approved so should be fine. I also received the new spark plugs for the Daihatsu. @Slartibartfast borrowed it last weekend to do a trip that his Leaf had insufficient range for and on the way the Daihatsu threw an EML (though ran fine). Checking it with my Delphi on its return, it had errors for intermittent misfires on cylinders 1, 2 and 4. I pulled the plugs to see what was going on and found them all looking like they'd overheated The ground electrode was all white, with 'blisters' on it, and the insulation on the centre electrode was incredibly brittle, chipping off with a fingernail. I'm not sure whats going on here, the plugs are only about 4k miles old and are the recommended Denso KT20R-U11 ones. I've replaced them with some NGK BKUR6ETB-10 tri-electrode plugs which are a recommended 'upgrade' so we'll see how we get on. I'll run it for a few hundred miles then pull a plug and see how it looks.
  6. £10 and the problem goes away* https://www.toolstation.com/abracs-holesaw/p76920
  7. Better, but still not 100%, frustratingly. It'll stay engaged if you gently hold the lever in position, and stays engaged about 70% of the time without being held in, but sometimes it still won't fully engage and jumps out of reverse. All forward gears are fine, just reverse which is a problem. I think I'll just live with it, I'll be the last owner before CoD is issued on the v5 as usual with my car's...
  8. Gave the Mercedes an oil and filter change today. Mannol oil on eBay has come down significantly in price and I was able to get ten litres for £24 delivered. I've opted for 10w40 this time as the Merc is getting on a bit, and I want to see if the daihatsu burns less oil on 10w40 than it does on 5w30. Probably not, but worth a try. Anyway, the 12v oil pump earned its keep again, removing 6.5l of oil oil from the sump and I slopped the same amount back in, leaving enough for an oil change on the daihatsu tomorrow or next week. I also oiled the bonnet hinges and catches, and will replace the air filter when it arrives in the week too. I probably ought to replace the fuel filter too really, but otherwise normal service continues.
  9. Put your own details in, make sure its sent insured so when they lose it you can spend eternity claiming the money back you can have peace of mind and then offload it.
  10. I may be underestimating it, but can you not just smack the CV joint off the end of the driveshaft once its free from the hub? Then slide a new (not-split) boot onto the driveshaft, then wallop the CV joint back on the splines and fit the securing clips to the boot? Thats what I ended up doing with my Daihatsu. I'm not sure why you'd want to stretch a CV boot over the CV joint when you can just apply a few sharp whacks with a hammer and knock the CV joint clean off the end of the driveshaft?
  11. It looks like the ball joint and bushing are not available separately, and you need to replace the whole base and stick arrangement with part A203 260 44 09 - and this is a cool $700. I'll keep an eye on it, fingers crossed it was just the rubber concertina boot thing snagging up and preventing reverse being engaged fully.
  12. Looks a bit smeggy to me? Pic #1 - in 3rd gear Pic #2 - in Reverse Incidentally, with the gaiter, rubber concertina thing and foam sound deadening pad out, the gear selection is really good, far more positive than before. I put it all back together making sure to tuck the rubber concertina thing well out the way of where the gear lever goes when selecting reverse (left of 2nd gear) and it seems better - I wasn't able to make it jump out of gear moving the car about on the drive. Maybe the concertina thing had got snagged between the gearstick and the reverse lockout thing, preventing it from selecting properly? Concertina thing for reference: Thanks for the suggestion @Dave_Q, I've put it back together now and will monitor. Whats the consensus on the balljoint/bushing? looks pretty crusty? Would grease help or does it want replacing?
  13. No, but thats not a difficult thing to do - I'll try it shortly.
  14. Something that has been bugging me for a while on the Mercedes is reverse gear. I tend to reverse off my drive, having parked nose-in to the garage and quite frequently, while slipping the clutch the car will jump out of gear. When I got the car it did this in reverse and 1st sometimes. I changed the gearbox oil for some MTL Redline stuff a while back, and following advice on various MB forums, put in ~200ml less oil than came out as this was said to improve gear selection. It did indeed, with 1st having not jumped out of gear since, however reverse has been getting steadily worse to the point that it will jump out of gear roughly 50% of the time now unless I gently hold the gearstick in position. Googling the issue returns virtually nothing, because my Mercedes is a six-speed manual gearbox, not auto - which means its one of about 3% of the total production run! If it was a FWD I'd have a serious look at the gear linkages, but since its RWD I'm less sure on this - essentially the gearstick is mounted to the top of the gearbox so there are no external selector rods? The clutch seems fine, no slipping or anything - by is hydraulic so there is no (?) adjustment on that either I don't think? Living with this for a while, I've found that if it jumps out of gear, and I depress the clutch and put it back into reverse there is a much more 'positive' engagement - like the gear cog engages fully. I don't get the same when I'm selecting reverse from neutral. Its almost like there isn't enough throw on the gear lever to get the gear to fully engage first time round. I've tried selecting a forward gear first, then into reverse but this doesn't seem to help. When it jumps out, it tends to product a loud thump and usually a grinding noise - which I suspect isn't great for the longevity of the gearbox! Can anyone suggest any ideas of what might be wrong, and what needs to be adjusted/looked at to try and remedy it? If I am able to select reverse gear 'properly' its fine, it doesn't jump out; but half of the time its like I can't get the gear fully engaged in the gearbox so under load its jumping out.
  15. Sorry if this is a stupid question, but having seen several of these (or very similar?) around over the past 5+ years - why do they have such little wheels? I'm not a bike person so never knew what make/model they were to be able to Google it, but the wheels seem to be halfway between the 12" wheels you get on 50cc mopeds and 17"+ wheels on most 'regular' 125cc bikes? Sorry if I'm talking rubbish, in my world there are 50cc scooters, and 125cc+ 'motorbikes' and this seems to have the frame of a 'motorbike' and wheels of a moped and I don't know why.
  16. Thanks all, I'll get some dates put forward later on, sounds like a good plan to stop at the George and Falcon too for some food. I'll check the calendar and suggest some options
  17. Might be worth phoning SES - https://www.sesautoparts.co.uk/catalogue/ex-exhausts They list Klarius, but also GT Exhausts who might be a bit better?
  18. Inspired by @loserone's WD40 meetup, I wondered if there was any appetite for a Solent Shiters meetup and 'Curated Motor Tour' around the local environs one saturday afternoon before the weather turns? A favourite route of mine is: https://goo.gl/maps/B8xFjPAQTq5cXWD56 Starting at Micks Monster Burgers on Portsdown Hill, up through Wickham on the A32 to Corhampton, then the back roads over the Downs to the edge of Winchester, back on the A272 to West Meon hut, then back towards Fareham on the A32, finishing up at Southwick Brewhouse? Its about 50 miles/90 minutes driving. There is food and coffee available at the start, and the Brewhouse sells 200+ beers and ciders, including locally brewed 'Suthwyk' ales from casks. The pub next door (Golden lion, Southwick) is supposed to be good too, but I've not eaten there. Appeal to anyone?
  19. I suspect the pricetag isn't the same, but that looks an awful lot like a terrible kitcar based on a beetle floorpan to me! "Build your own Marsupial Motors "OMNITRON" today, just £399" (requires donor vehicle and 13 billion self-tapping woodscrews)
  20. As seen on the 'Ask a shiter' section, the Mercedes threw a bit of a wobbly last week, flashing up the ABS, ESP and BAS warnings on the instrument cluster on startup. While this wasn't terminal, it also wasn't ideal. However, I had a flight booked so YOLO'd it up to Heathrow & back for my pre-booked parking without totalling it into the back of a truck. The situation required some brain power though. Prior to my trip away, I'd got the trusty Delphi scanner on the car to see what the craic was. This highlighted code C1134 'Rear Right Wheel Speed Sensor; Implausible' (Intermittent) which gave me something to work from. In this case, rear right was the drivers side rear. Each side has an ABS sensor in the hub and through the power of MATHS they talk to the ECU and it detects meaningful imbalances and then moans about them basically. The Delphi proved its worth by visualising this. I got the real-time data thing for both speed sensors and readout in KPH and got this which shows the issue with what the ECU is seeing The top graph is the rear left sensor, you can see that the readings are nice and smooth showing acceleration, cruising and deceleration at whatever interval it is (possibly 2 per second?). The bottom trace is the rear right, which has random dropouts all the time. Not at any regular interval, suggesting that the issue lay with the sensor rather than the ABS ring being cracked - which my simple brain said would show up as being a regular anomaly as it rotated. Also replacing an ABS ring on a W203 merc looks like a right old carry-on and I was keen to eliminate other possibilities first! Just before I left, I ordered a replacement ABS sensor. Because I'm king of the mingebags I refused to buy a brand new one from Mercedes because it was £65 + VAT, Autodoc had a vast selection of options from about £10 upwards but my eye was caught by the whispered promises of an ebay seller who was selling a 'genuine mercedes' sensor (used) for £22 delivered. Guaranteed* working. I decided that the combination of low price and swift delivery was a winner and clicked 'buy it now'. Then went on holiday for a 5 days. The instrument cluster errors I got looked like this And then the ABS one once you got over 30mph. The ABS light stayed illuminated the whole time too. The codes could be 'clicked off' but came back on every restart. Having got back, and seen the sensor was delivered to my house in my absence, I had some time this morning to go and see about replacing it. First of all I wanted to check the fault code again to make sure things weren't getting worse. So thats the same code which is a good thing. I cleared the code then got the car up on the lift to commence work Popped the hubcap off the rear drivers side wheel This is hardly exciting stuff, but I will wander a bit OT here and say how pleased I am with how well the steel wheels I bought 3 years ago are holding up. They were pretty grotty but after a thorough clean-up and respray with toolstation enamel paint they're not showing any signs of rust coming through. Anyway, I digress. Wheels off too. The sensor lives behind the brake backing plate, roughly where the arrow is pointing. its held in with a E8 torx head bolt. I was able to get a 3/8" ratchet and e8 torx socket on it and to my surprise it undid quite easily. Its in a really exposed place but let go in that (rare) reassuring way that tells you its been done up properly, but hasn't seized. Not the 'finger-tight-someones-been-here-before' sort of tight, and not 'this-is-totally-seized-and-the-bolt-will-shear' tight. I've rattled on about it before, but every job I've needed to do on this car has played out the same - its actually well built. This is a terrible picture of the offending sensor sitting in the hub The idea is you undo the torx head bolt and carefully remove it, then wiggle the sensor out the hole in the hub. As you can see, it looks quite a lot like this is an original 22 year old part so its had a good innings. I carefully pulled the wire out of the various locating clips first, tracing it all the way back to the connector on the main body wiring loom Its the top/left one here. There is a metal tang that holds the connectors into the loom block thing which you need to ping out with a flat blade screwdriver then the sensor connector pulls out with this end off, I could return to the hub end. The sensor was jammed in quite tight so I had to resort to careful application of penetrating oil and gentle levering with a flat-head screwdriver, but eventually the sensor popped out the hub recess it lives in. Pull the sensor wiring through and TA-DAH I wanted to be careful removing the sensor in case that wasn't the issue after all and I'm pleased to say I managed not to break it. There was no muck or swarf on the end of the sensor and a closeup suggests this is MB-branded and likely original so its done well! Next I opened up the parcel to check the contents Part number looks right, visually looks good. OK a promising start. I checked the lengths of the 2 next to each other and they both had the same amount of cable, and the rubber protector boots in the same places so all looked good. I put the sensor into the hole in the hub and threaded the wiring through the various clips to keep it routed out of harms way, all the way up to the loom connector I gave the connector a blast with some electrical contact cleaner for good measure and then push the connector home, and then pressed the metal retaining tang thing back into position to keep it all seated. The 'New' sensor is the bottom on in this pic. This is some of the wiring routing to give an idea of how comprehensive it is. Before refitting, I put the little e8 torx bolt into my vice and cleaned up the threads with a wire brush, added a smear of copper grease to them and then did it back up to keep the sensor firmly attached to the hub. So now the moment of truth, lets start it up ooooooOOOOOOooooohhhhHHH! Look mum, no errors! This is a good start, but I wanted to be sure so put all my tools away, reattached the wheel and dropped the car down off the lift. I hook up the Delphi scanner, set up the live data readouts for both rear wheel sensors and went for a bit of a drive to see what happened That looks a LOT better. Both sensors track the same line, with no random dropouts any more. I'm fairly confident that the issue was indeed the aged sensor and that the reluctor ring in the hub is actually OK - which is a big relief! No fault codes appeared and the car seems happy once again. I got up to 55mph later in the day and no ABS warnings came up so I'm tentatively calling that fixed. If this sensor breaks I might bite the bullet and get a brand new, genuine MB one now I know that was definitely the issue, but for a leisurely hour of my life and twenty quid, I'm happy with that. The interesting* bit was using the live data readout capability on the Delphi scanner to understand what was upsetting it, diagnose more accurately, and then 'prove' it was fixed afterwards. Well worth the £30 I spent on the scanner about 5 years ago, I'd say! Its definitely saved me its purchase price ten times over during that period, vs having to take my cars to a garage to be plugged in for diagnostics. TL;DR - fat man replaces a sensor on his car with a used one. slow clap.
  21. Yesterday, on my way home from visiting family I was leaving Cobham services on the M25 and followed three Belgian-registered cars onto the motorway. So what? They were: A Mk3 Fiesta Si A Corsa A (Vauxhall Nova) SRI A Peugeot 205 All sporting mega Max Power bodykits, huge alloys, aftermarket rear lights, backflashes, lowered suspension, big exhausts - the works. The sort of thing that would have had teenage boys in 1998 spontaneously ejaculating into their trackie bottoms, and quite probably caused a significant section of the 14-25 female population to become pregnant just from being in the vicinity. The sort of cars I remember the cool lads who dropped out of school after their GCSEs getting, then driving round and round the school they'd just left in an effort to woo the more promiscuous girls from years 9 and 10. All funded by their wages from stacking shelves in Tesco. Incredible to see. Not sure where they were off too? They peeled off at J10 with me, I went south and they all headed north? Literally cars I've not seen for 20 years. Amazing to see people still looking after stuff like that, it's bad enough looking after standard ones, god knows what it must be like to have to keep on top of rust on a barried one all this time later.
  22. Sooooooo. Nearly a week on from the incident, the car is running fine. I've been tooling about and gradually extending my forays and its behaved impeccably. I've been running without the o-ring that got eaten by the throttle body and I have to say that there is zero difference. I did order a new one from Mercedes and will pick it up tomorrow when I'm back at work, but I'm reasonably sure that that was indeed the cause of the breakdown. I'm not sure why it managed to eat the o-ring at that point, since I've never actually had any of that intake gubbinz apart in the 4 years I've owned it, but there. Reflecting back, if we accept that a breakdown was going to happen, it occurred in a fairly easy place to get to safety, recovery was quick and painless and it basically fixed itself - the post breakdown dismantling was easy and pretty superficial in the grand scheme of things, and the cause was obvious once it was partially dismantled. Even the design of the TB with the 'catch basket' under the butterfly valve made sure that nothing was ingested into places it shouldn't be. No other car I've owned has had that basket arrangement but in this situation it was a very good thing to have. I've put about 100 miles onto the odometer which is a mix of local roads, A-roads and motorway and it seems fine so I'm calling it 90% fixed. Once I've fitted the new O-ring I'll be fully happy with it all again. I even took it for an 'Initial-D' drive round one of the local backroads where it behaved impeccably, and showed my kids the fun that could be had in a RWD car on a gravel carpark last weekend - to the dismay of some old biddies at the local garden centre! I keep having nagging thoughts about replacing it, but you know what? Even 22 years after it was registered, as a supposedly 'low point' in Mercedes build quality, its still enough. Fast enough, capacious enough, comfortable enough, frugal enough. It does nothing outstanding, but it does everything adequately. There really isn't anything under about £20k that I could buy that is materially better than my 2001 C-class, for what I use it for. Its great that people can buy nice things and enjoy them, but I have to keep reminding myself that actually I don't need a fancy car. What I have is perfect for me, I just need to keep looking after it and it should do another ten years service without complaint.
  23. Nice work, I have to ask though, were you not a tiny bit tempted to bring the numberplates from your manual one with you and have them 'fall' onto the auto to get you home? 😁😁😁
  24. ...Offered by traders who bought the shitboxes for 95% of the current asking price at the height of the bubble and are now stuck with the fucking things. Look at it slightly differently - they've already paid £3.2k for the tired out of heap, rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of selling it the following day, after a quick wipe over with a wet rag, except they've overdone it - no one wanted the shitty car then, and no-one wants it now - not now they can get hold of a brand new car on PCP with a lead time in weeks not decades. they've slowly dropped the price as its sat mouldering away, but they can't drop it any more or they'll be losing money on it. They've got the millstone round their neck already, you have the luxury of not needing to buy it from them. Sit it out, before much longer we're going to see a lot of these dealers who bought stock at vastly inflated prices go bust. They've got 20 cars on the forecourt worth* £4-20k each, except they're worth fuck all if no-one buys them. You can't eat them. You can't use them to pay your mortgage or gas bill. And you don't want to sell them for less than you paid for the thing 18 months ago. The market will adjust, because like fuck am I buying a 15 year old ford focus diesel with 198,000 miles, no service history, that I can't drive in most cities and which smells of childrens sick and vape fumes for £4k. And I bet I'm not the only one. Wait for 6-12 months and watch them go bust left right and centre, flooding the market with shitty fucking cars sold at auction by the liquidators for 10% of their 'asking price' to recoup some of the debts that bazzas bitchin' Autos has run up before the bank called time on it all and sent Bazza to prison for tax evasion. From what I've read, this is afflicting the big boys too, Cazoo share price is down 99.4% over 5 years. They have a fucktonne of stock bought for top dollar which they can't shift and which the market can't absorb. Supply of this fucking tat massively exceeds demand, especially when cost of living is skyrocketing. 5 years ago when your 15 year old focus blew its head gasket because you'd not fixed the leaky radiator, you fucked it off and bought a near-identical one for £500. Now, that same car is probably worse than your own one, and costs £4k. Shady Dave's garage charging £1500 for a head gasket job (old head not skimmed, head bolts reused, refilled with tap water) suddenly looks like a less shit option. So you walk on by Bazzas Bitchin' autos... Yeah its grim looking at what's on offer, but imagine having spent £100k of money that's not yours buying the stock and now its just sitting there, unsold, while you get increasingly threatening letters about your mortgage arrears and imminent disconnection of your gas supply. EDIT - info on Cazoo taken from https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/cazoo-share-price-tanks-to-record-low-valuing-used-car-dealer-at-just-79m/276540 & Google share price search for reference.
×
×
  • Create New...