Tales from the Two Poster.

[nacho man]

Whoa there cupcake. TPS on a Triumph Spring a few posts back. Eh? Eh?

I think twosmoke means the 3 pot bike not a dolomite.

[twosmoke300]

No shit Sherlock ! What was your first clue ! 😀

[scaryoldcortina]

Ask Jikovron about dolly sprint with TPS....

 

Against all odds the freelander did actually have new plugs! It's all back together again but on test driving is flashing the MIL, but only on petrol. Fine on LPG. Damnation. It's probably the horrid looking hack job the LPG fitter did to the injector wiring playing up because I had to move it, but I'll find out tomorrow. Bloody thing doesn't want to go home!

[twosmoke300]

You get cars that don't want to leave don't you ? I'm on holiday next week and I'm trying to clear the decks and have a big tidy before I go . My god some cars are fighting me all the way . I've got a w reg disco for mot today so wcpgw !

[sierraman]

If it's like most Discos at MOT time you'll be spending every waking hour welding the fucker up if it's only a week to go until your off.

[twosmoke300]

Fuck me it passed with just a few bulbs and unseizing the rear seat latches . Woo hoo .

So happy I took on some inner CV boots on a connect

[twosmoke300]

Workshop cleaned , cars put away 

In morro to tidy orifice and do paperwork and then holibobs

[cros]

Heres nice a summer job. Seddon tyres were solid as a rock but the walls were cracked so I finally bit the bullet and trawled around and found 4 new 8.25 x 20s for 600 quid all in. Sounds horrible, but the next cheapest were about £200 apiece plus vat so I coughed up and they arrived the next day.

The are made in Europe and the only thing I can find to explain their cheapness is this:

 Can anyone explain what it means and why?

Since the lorry was made in 1951 it qualifies so I clawed the old ones off and put the new ones on. I dont have a cage to put the tyres in to inflate them so I get them bolted back on before adding air so that if everything flies to pieces I'm not left wearing the rim. Doing the 4 in an afternoon made me grunt a bit.

 

[colino]

The date thing is a great cover all for manufacturers producing tyres so they don't have to have them tested and labeled for grip/wet and noise performance.  Could be great and the volume is so low they don't want to test, or a way of flying under the radar for ones they know that are made of cheese.

[scaryoldcortina]

I got a call out yesterday to a local garage, Renault Master van belonging to one of the mechanics had a FTP, flat battery but no charge warning. They had already put a fresh battery on but wanted it checked out. It had codes stored for low voltage and alternator output, there was 12v present at the alternator but the volts didn't rise when started, and quickly started to drop off instead. Dead alternator? That would be the usual situation, so I left them to it.

 

This morning I got a phone call while I was on a train to Sheffield to say they had put a new alt on but it still wasn't charging. I said I'd drop by when I got back.

 

It wasn't charging. It was exactly the same situation as before the alt change and a faulty new alt isn't actually that common. What was preventing it from charging?

 

That's when I looked at the belt... I'd discounted it before because you can see the top of it turning the PAS pump, but when I looked further down it was obvious, it hardly touched the alternator pulley instead of wrapping round it like it usually does. Told the head mechanic, he laughed and told me that it shed its belt last week and had a new one fitted.

 

Now, if they'd said that yesterday it wouldn't have cost them an alternator.

[michael1703]

Not a very knowledgable garage then?

[scaryoldcortina]

No, more of a tyres/brakes/exhaust sort of place.

[scaryoldcortina]

A little bit more on this one - today I found out that the mechanic fitting the belt had ordered one from Andrew Page using the registration number and the belt they sent was far too long so he measured around the pulleys with string and then asked for a belt that length.

[Guest Lord Sward]

I don't think you should be referring to the workshop operative in question as a 'mechanic'.

[scaryoldcortina]

I think you are right. While collecting a Transit that won't lock from them this afternoon I also found out that he fitted a new starter motor before the other lads persuaded him to get it checked properly!

[Kiltox]

Do any of you chaps have one of those new fangled digital battery testers rather than the old faithful drop load analogue ones?

[DaveAspley]

Never owned one myself, can get all I need from a multimeter. If the battery can't supply above 10 volts when cranking and after a good charge drops below 12 with no load then it's usually toast.

[DaveAspley]

Dealerships I've worked in have always had them for warranty, countless time they would spit out a "battery OK - recharge" ticket on an obviously shagged one that's pissing acid out and won't hold a charge for more than 5 minutes. That was a very expensive Midtronics one.

[surprisingskoda]

We have one that I had to hunt around for ages for to get the specific one I wanted. It might be a sealey one, I hate sealey stuff but this is good, used one years ago at halfords, had to special order this one from an agent once I found out the model number, and it gives information that always gives the right interpretation and has successfully helped us with battery sorting for a good few years now.

[SiC]

I have a proper US-made snap-on torque wrench (circa late 70s), that I long term loaned/acquired from my Dad. Excellent tool ... that has now broken. Seems to not want to "snap/bend" it's head when up to torque anymore.

 

As this is a quality piece of kit/has sentimental value/my dad may ask for it back and kill me, where on earth can I get it fixed?? I assume snap-on won't have parts, interested or be able to fix tools this old?

 

I thought I'd post this in here, as no doubt pro used tools get a proper battering and need TLC every so often, so you guys are the most likely to know about tool repair!

[Guest Hooli]

I thought snap-off had a lifetime warranty?

[scaryoldcortina]

They did, but everything I've asked them to fix recently has been N/A for parts so they won't.

[SiC]

According to their t&c torque wrenches are excluded too.

[twosmoke300]

They still offer a ( paid for ) repair service so if they can get the parts they usually fix them

[cobblers]

Dealerships I've worked in have always had them for warranty, countless time they would spit out a "battery OK - recharge" ticket on an obviously shagged one that's pissing acid out and won't hold a charge for more than 5 minutes. That was a very expensive Midtronics one.

 

Those midtronics testers are absolute crocks of shit, we get them in to repair at work all the time because they're poorly made and have ceramic resistors dangling off their leads inside which constantly snap off.

Battery retailers insist on them being used to weed out warranty stuff, I reckon half in the hope that nobody would cough up the £1k+ they cost.

There's nothing fancy inside them at all - what is essentially a flipping multimeter with a couple of transistors switching in some 10 ohm resistors and measuring the voltage drop.

 

They just put a slight load on the battery and then extrapolate that 10000X to simulate what a £45 durite drop tester would do.

[Kiltox]

How about some examples of the worst condition cars you’re presented with to work on / for MoT etc?

 

I just dropped this state off for service, apologised and feel sorry for them having to chisel it off before they start on it!!

 

[spike60]

I have a proper US-made snap-on torque wrench (circa late 70s), that I long term loaned/acquired from my Dad. Excellent tool ... that has now broken. Seems to not want to "snap/bend" it's head when up to torque anymore.

 

As this is a quality piece of kit/has sentimental value/my dad may ask for it back and kill me, where on earth can I get it fixed?? I assume snap-on won't have parts, interested or be able to fix tools this old?

 

I thought I'd post this in here, as no doubt pro used tools get a proper battering and need TLC every so often, so you guys are the most likely to know about tool repair!

If this hasn't been sorted yet I would say the best approach is if you can get someone with an account to take it on the van and see what they say. I've bought stuff off Ebay which turned out to be a crock and they've sorted it but I suspect it depends a bit on the dealers attitude toward the customer.

[somewhatfoolish]

There's not much to torque wrenches, just a big spring squeezing a pair of shaped wedges/cams together with a roller between; the click you get is your torqueage overcoming the preload. If it's broken it can't really be made more broken(although this does not prevent small parts being flung across your clinically clean* workspace and escaping through the gap in the skirting to another dimension).

[Talbot]

Torque wrenches are generally quite easy to recondition.  Dismantle, clean, reassemble.  As somewhatfoolish says above, there's not a lot to them.  Generally the older they are the more robust they are and easier to dismantle too.

[Talbot]

How about some examples of the worst condition cars you’re presented with to work on / for MoT etc?

I'm not an MOT tester, although I have been used as the MOT testers assistant many times.

 

One garage I was at getting an MOT for a friend, the bay next to us had just had a Transit flareside lifted in the air.  The tester took one look underneath and refused to test it.  It was absolutely solid with clay-mud, so much so that there was a shape in the mud to allow the propshaft to run.  I would guess there was more mud under the vehicle than would fit in the pick-up body, and it was severely over-weight even when "unladen".  The owner commented that he thought it was a bit slow at the moment....