Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - New Battery Day 25/10

[Stanky]

A small update, taken from elsewhere.

The new cotter pins arrived and I tapped them in to replace the old ones which snapped when I removed them to tighten the lower suspension arm/balljoint castellated nuts. This was a piece of cake, just made sure the threaded extrusion holes were lined up with the crenulation (sp?) bits of the castellated nuts and tapped them in with a little hammer. Not very interesting.

It was suggested that a cause of the vibration/wheel wobble might be due to the front brake caliper sliders being dry and binding on, So I set to, full of optimism that this would be a quick and easy thing to check. The passenger side came apart fine, and I was able to withdraw the slider bolts and grease them with silicone grease after cleaning them up no problem. They were indeed a bit dry so was probably a good thing.

The passenger side was a different story. The top slider bolt came out with a bit of encouragement, for some reason something is a bit bent I think, the bolt would do to the end of the threaded section, but its a bit misaligned so I had to use a screwdriver to gently lever the inner edge of the caliper off the brake disc hub before it would slide out. This was dry too, so got greased and refitted. Then onto the bottom slider bolt. I have vague recollections that this was a bit of a 'problem child' previously, and sure enough the head of the slider bolt rounded off completely. I was using a 10" bar and a 6-point impact socket but it just utterly trashed it, the more I tried to hammer it on and get some purchase the worse it made the whole episode.

So I gave up. My brother is posting my some Irwin bolt remover sockets which should be here this week, if that fails I'll need to disc cutter the remains off - which I'd prefer not to have to do -  so currently hope rest with hammering a smaller bolt remover over it. I have ordered a set of slider bolts and associated rubber sleeves and things from Brakes International and will replace both sliders in case its them that are bent. I'll see how it goes together but have a suspicion there might be something up with the drivers side caliper. If the worst comes to the worst, BI have calipers for the Sirion for £60 each and no exchange surcharge so I might just replace both front calipers. To be honest, the current ones don't inspire much confidence, they stop the car, but there is a lot of pedal travel before anything actually happens...

I'd like to get it on the road again this week so I can enjoy a bit more use before the winter - seeing how alarmingly I rusted away last winter when it got pressed into service over the 'road salt' months I'd like to keep it away from the worst of it this year. It has been fairly comprehensively dynax waxed, but still...

if this doesn't cure the wheel wobble, then it might be the 2nd hand driveshaft is out of balance, if this is the case I can swap the old one back onto the car now I've sorted the CV joint boot, but that means draining the gearbox which I'd prefer not to have to do if I don't absolutely need to. 

[lisbon_road]

Can you jack it up at a crazy angle to avoid fluid loss when swapping the shaft?

Keeping the car out of the salt is a good plan.  I could not agree more.  Just remember, we're still in September so there's a bit of time yet!

[Stanky]

Our constipated postal delivery finally arrove tonight, including my new slider bolts and the Irwin bolt removers from brutha_Stanky, so having dispatched a few other tasks I went out to have a serious look at this rounded off slider bolt tonight.

I'd not used these before, but got the general idea, you bray the bolt gripper thing onto the sorry rounded off reminder of your failure as a mechanic, father and human being then ratchet it off, the harder you turn the more the teeth grip into the remains of the bolt and eventually it relents to my ULTIMATE POWER and comes out. Or something...

well, here is the sorry remains of the bolt head

not great, eh? so out with the irwin thing and a BFH

So far, so good. I walloped it on as far as I could and then fitted up the 3/8 > 1/2" adapter to get a ratchet on it and

BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL!

oh. ummm, that wasn't supposed to happen... Hmmm. Right, the slider bolt has sheared off midway down and left the stub in the carrier. Right, lets pull the little rubber caps off and see what we have left shall we?

I had a go at twisting the stub on the bottom out with mole grips but they just spun and chewed up the remains of the stub. Buggeration. Ok, well the best thing to do now is get the carrier off the car and see what we can do on the bench. 2x 17mm bolts and it was free of the car. I bungee'd the caliper itself out the way so it wouldn't fall off and dangle on the flexi while I wasn't watching.

I grabbed the stub in the bench vice and tried to twist it, but it just spun in the jaws of the vice so I had to escalate to DEFCON 4 and deploy some heat. A few years ago I got a brazing torch with oxygen and MAPP gas tanks, I've not had much success with brazing, but its a handy thing to have for applying targetted heat

Take that, you knave! I heated it up 'til it was cherry red then clamped the stub of the slider bolt in the vice and walloped the carrier to try and knock the carrier off the slider. This had limited success, so I gave it a few blasts of penetrating oil and hit it a bit more until

Ha, gotcha! it took a while to bray it off, but victory was mine. The carrier was still a bit hot so I had been holding it with some adjustable pliers so it didn't hit the floor when it eventually parted company. I put the carrier down on the bench to cool down a bit while I got some rag and a tent peg and used it to clean out the voids that the slider bolts go into as much as I could. I then used the old top slider bolt and lubed it up with silicone grease and worked it in and out to get it moving as much as possible. I'd also cleaned the carrier down with a wire brush for good measure.

Once it had cooled down, I refitted the carrier to the hub, refitted the disc, the pads and the caliper and bolted it to the carrier with the new slider bolts - well lubed with more silicone grease.

so here it is all back together

The car was still on the lift so i couldn;t drop it down and take it for a run to see if it was any better, but the slider was mega broken for sure, and is now a bit better.

Is the heating and percussive maintenence likely to have had a lasting detrimental effect on the carrier? Have I b0rked it/was it b0rked already and should I get a new carrier? The new slider bolts went into the caliper/carrier a lot more easily than the old ones came out and they have had plenty of greasing, but should I hold off driving this thing at 70mph on the queens kings highway or is it probabaly ok?

Massive thanks to @Barry Cade, I'd not have thought of this being a possible cause of the steering wheel wobble. It's not definitely fixed it, but this situation won't have been helping matters.

 

 

[Dave_Q]

Great work. I always feel pretty proud of myself when overcoming one of these seized fastener shitshows as not too long ago I would have had to phone a grown up or scrap the car. Irwins are great as is Mr Fire.

Provided the slider pin slides OK and isn't much more wobbly than the other side I can't see how re-using it would be a problem, they need a small amount of play in them to slide, they just need to keep the brake pad on the disc innit.

[Barry Cade]

Any news, I've been on the edge of my seat for days!

[Rust Collector]

Well done for getting the slider out. I've found two of my cars where the garage/previous owner has drilled a small hole in the other end of the slider tube to presumably drift out a bit of stuck/snapped slider, and then put a blob of silicone sealant back in the hole afterwards...

[Stanky]

41 minutes ago, Barry Cade said:

Any news, I've been on the edge of my seat for days!

So it's different but not better. Having put it all back together I took it for a drive locally then on the motorway once I was happy the wheels were probably not going to fall off.

It's still got the wobble at 65-75mph, but clears by 80mph. The wheels both rotate easily after a run (jacked up and rotated by hand) so neither caliper is binding.

Next step is to have all 4 wheels balanced and the rims checked for run out.

So not a lot better driving-wise, but glad I got that borked slider sorted

[Barry Cade]

13 minutes ago, Stanky said:

So it's different but not better. Having put it all back together I took it for a drive locally then on the motorway once I was happy the wheels were probably not going to fall off.

It's still got the wobble at 65-75mph, but clears by 80mph. The wheels both rotate easily after a run (jacked up and rotated by hand) so neither caliper is binding.

Next step is to have all 4 wheels balanced and the rims checked for run out.

So not a lot better driving-wise, but glad I got that borked slider sorted

Just swop the wheels front to back. Give the fronts a good pull and wiggle at 12/6 o clock, then 9/3.. I'm not convinced its wheel related...

[Stanky]

1 minute ago, Barry Cade said:

Just swop the wheels front to back. Give the fronts a good pull and wiggle at 12/6 o clock, then 9/3.. I'm not convinced its wheel related...

Thanks, I'll try swapping wheels back to front over the weekend and see how it behaves

[Barry Cade]

If theres no difference,  it's not the wheelz.. 

[Tubbo]

I don’t ever recall having any wobble at any speed when I had the car. The easiest option is to just sell it back to me 🤣

[Stanky]

5 hours ago, Barry Cade said:

If theres no difference,  it's not the wheelz.. 

At this stage I can only think of two things it could be - wheels or that driveshaft. I can swap wheels F <> R tomorrow and see how that is, then if needed I can swap the driveshaft back to the original one which is now fully reassembled, I;d need to get some more gearbox oil though.

We can do this!

@Tubbo - you're #1 in the queue when it done come back up for sale, but I suspected you'd want me to fix the speed wobble and fit the full stainless exhaust first? 😁😁😁

I forgot to add - while taking it for a test drive the handling seemed a bit wayward, and took me a good while to build up speed. It wasn't until I was almost home that I remembered that I'd left 2x 25KG bags of sand and a 20L drum of engine oil in the boot! I use it as ballast because the lift is a tilting one, and the car is about 90% nose weight, and very short wheelbase so to get the front end off the ground i have to ballast the back end as much as I can. Whoops! Glad its nothing more sinister though.

[Stanky]

Time for a report from a different car. The mercedes is still making The Noisetm which manifests after a >30m drive and is a sort of scraping/rubbing noise from the rear end while rolling. Its inaudible over about 20mph because of other general noises but fucking hell its annoying around town. Having replaced both rear brake flexis, one caliper, pads, sliders and stripped and cleaned everything up, it must be the handbrake shoes. Replacing them looks like a right old carry on, but needs must.

I changed the engine oil and filter yesterday and removed and greased the fron caliper sliders for good measure. The air filter and fuel filter have been changed relatively recently (and I've only done about 6k miles a year the last 2 years) so they got left alone. I checked the spark plugs were tightened up properly.

I keep thinking about replacing the Mercedes but can't come up with something else that is actually materially better for my requirements at a price I'm willing to spend. I need to redo the rust treatment on the bottom corners of the front doors and possibly the wheel arches which I'll do soon-ish, along with the handbrake shoes and then its basically mechanically sorted. Cosmetically it looks rough as old boots with the dent in the boot, rusty patches and horrific lacquer peel, but its actually enough. Its fast enough, frugal enough, capacious enough and reliable enough. I don't actually need any more than what it provides.

And this makes me happy.

[Stanky]

Massive thanks to @Talbot who cam over today to see about replacing the rear handbrake shoes to try and banish The Noise. The suspicion was that the friction material had parted company with the metal of the shoe and was rubbing the inside of the top hat bit of the disc.

I'd been sorting some rust by taking it back to clean metal with a wire cup, vactan, zinc primer and then colour anyway, so put the Mercedes on the lift and took the wheel off, unbolted the rear passenger side caliper, undid the retaining bolt and took the disc off in prep. This uncovered an unexpected scene

 

Each shoe should have one retaining spring, except mine had two jammed in the lower shoe, and none in the top shoe, allowing it to flop about.

Further dismantling by Talbot showed the top retaining spring had pulled out of the backing plate and fallen to the bottom, where it had become jammed in the bottom shoe. The pin was scraping the inside of the disc top hat, and the floppy top shoe was not retracting properly. No bloody wonder it was making a noise! 

Talbot disassembled and then reassembled it with the new shoes I'd bought, it's a fiddly old job on the w203 but all sorted on both sides in about 90 minutes. The driver's side was fine, incidentally, but replaced the shoes and springs for new since it was all apart.

We mounted the retaining spring the other way around into the backplate so it should stay put now. Replacing the backplates looks like a right old carry-on, involving removing the hub nut and probably necessitating a new wheel bearing so stuff that.

I have almost finished the repainting now, but it started raining so can't go for a road test yet. The paintwork should dry overnight and it's supposed to be dry tomorrow so will spray on some lacquer first thing, let it dry then go for a drive in the afternoon to see if it's sorted. Fingers crossed!

[Zelandeth]

Well that would definitely explain it!

Hopefully everything is still there and non mangled so you can just reassemble things and call it good.  Worst case, you need a new set of hardware.

[Mally]

Similar things happened on my 75.

The hole in my back plate rotted letting the spring fall out.

As you say, new back plate, sod that.

I had many mk 2 Escort axle parts at the time and used a spring retaining washer from them, but fitted behind the back plate.

Worked well.

[Stanky]

Pleased to say that The Noise seems to be sorted now, I've put about a hundred miles on it since the shoes were replaced and its silent now, even after a long run then into slow town driving which was always the problematic bit. The car also rolls much easier, previously, on an incline in neutral with the handbrake off it wouldn't roll, or would only roll very slowly - now it rolls as expected. This took a little bit of getting used to!

The handbrake pedal is still a bit notchy, but does seem to be self-healing a bit. I can always pull it up with my foot if necessary but it might want a bit of looking at before too much longer. Either dismantle and lubricate or just replace it with one from another W/S203.

The paint has taken well, I need to lacquer it but intermittent rain and strong winds have put paid to that for the time being. Oh, and I found more rusty patches so will need to address those too!

[Stanky]

♫ Shut yo' pretty mouth, got a window in ma' car - I can see it all, I 'on't trust muthafucker one bit tho ♫

When I bought the Sirion from @Tubbo, he was kind enough to include a pair of rear windows with the sale. The ones fitted had been savaged by some kind of monster and the inside of the glass had been scratched quite badly as a result. To my shame, its taken me until now to get around to replacing them. Here is a snap from late this morning of what I'm talking about

Some trial and error resulted in me freeing the old glass from the doors on both sides and fitment of the replacement glass - having cleaned them both sides thoroughly - without any tears or shattered fragments of glass and sanity along the way. The rear doors look a lot better now!

+10 internet points for anyone who can identify the song without Googling it.

[Stanky]

I’d not driven my Sirion much lately, with the cold weather arriving, the roads are being salted by the council and as we all know, Daihatsu’s really don’t need any help to rust, they do that all by themselves!

What’s been nagging at the back of my mind though is the drivers side front caliper sliders. When I disassembled the caliper and bolts last summer and the slider pin sheared off I replaced the pins with new ones, but I’m not entirely happy how well they release. The brakes have always been pretty vague, with loads of travel at the pedal before anything happens, though they will pull the car up evenly and adequately quickly if you really mash the pedal.

Anyway, I went out this evening to check them over and once again the top slider in that caliper really didn’t want to come out of the caliper bracket/carrier. I can unscrew it, but once it reaches the end of the threaded section it just spins and the only way to get it to come right out is to use a pair of open-ended spanners to basically lever it off the back of the caliper. I don’t think it should be like this? The other side isn’t, it can be withdrawn from the void in the carrier bracket by hand once unscrewed.

I re-greased the sliders with silicone brake grease, the bottom pin is fine and withdraws easily, the top one is much less cooperative.

I though the issue was the caliper, but now I’m less sure. I think that potentially the carrier is either slightly warped or just corroded inside the blind hole that the slider inserts into.

This being the case, what are my options? I had a look on Amayama for a new carrier, but they don’t list the part number. The page for brake caliper bits is here:

https://www.amayama.com/en/catalogs/toyota/duet/1-hatchback-right-m100-m110-1998-2883/transmission-and-chassis-2/front-disc-brake-caliper-dust-cover-142

But on the pic, they don’t list the part number for the illustrated carrier (in red circle)

Can anyone help get me a part number so I can call my local Toyota dealership and see how much they want for a new one. Or suggest what else the part might be shared with so I can look up the part number there?

Alternatively, can the void be reamed out or redrilled by a machine shop? I imagine that once it starts to go wonky like this then its probably knackered but thought I’d ask.

[mintwth]

1 hour ago, Stanky said:

Can anyone help get me a part number so I can call my local Toyota dealership

You can access the Toyota electronic parts catalogue here:

https://toyota.epc-data.com/

It covers the Duet (which Google suggests was what the 98-04 Sirion was sold as on the JDM) 

The Waterlooville branch of Snows had someone working in parts  back in 2018/2019 who was good at tracking down obscure parts. They might still be there. Back then Hedge End weren't as helpful on the parts front.

[Stanky]

10 hours ago, mintwth said:

You can access the Toyota electronic parts catalogue here:

https://toyota.epc-data.com/

It covers the Duet (which Google suggests was what the 98-04 Sirion was sold as on the JDM) 

The Waterlooville branch of Snows had someone working in parts  back in 2018/2019 who was good at tracking down obscure parts. They might still be there. Back then Hedge End weren't as helpful on the parts front.

Thanks, I'll give them a call in the week, looks like the exploded parts diagrams are shared with Amayama, it has all the part numbers in the same diagram for front brake calipers, but while the carrier is illustrated, its not got a part number annotated on the diagram

[Stanky]

Minor updates - the carrier is only available with the caliper itself from Toyota, costing a whopping £470 + VAT so thats a 'thanks, but no' - I might have a lead on a breaker which could yield a not-warped carrier though so fingers crossed on that. The Daihatsu is currently having a cat-back stainless exhaust fabricated, the existing exhaust is largely comprised of holes and things-which-will-very-soon-be-holes, and the only off the shelf replacement parts were Klarius which are a load of shite. Its also tricky because with the rear ARB fitted, the stock rear section doesn't fit and needs to be modified anyway, so it seemed prudent to spend the extra £200 or so on a custom stainless one that I don't need to fiddle around with myself, and has a lifetime warranty. I also upgraded from 1.75" to 2" pipe to help it breathe a bit better. 

Got to go and collect it later (and pay for it, gulp) but I'm looking forward to seeing how it sounds in the top third of the rev range!

The Mercedes has been behaving fine, though the fuel economy has been a bit poor of late. I get about 30mpg in mixed driving and 36mpg on a run which I put down to heavy car, little engine and it being winter, but driving home yesterday I clicked through the display to see how cold it was outside and noticed that the coolant was only getting to about 55c, coupled with not a lot of warmth from the heaters suggests the thermostat is broken. This was after a decent run on the motorway and driving about smaller roads for a good 30 minutes so had plenty of time to have warmed up by then.

aftermarket thermostats for the M111 seems to vary in price between £8 for a starline one to £110 for a Gates jobbie. I called up Mercedes who would do me an OEM one with gasket for £39 so pulled the trigger on that. It should be available for collection by thursday and I'll collect it at the weekend. Hopefully it'll pay for itself in improved MPG in short order!

Lastly the Skoda, its motoring on with the only known issue currently being the front electric window don't wind up or down. It was intermittent but is now fully non-operational so I need to get the door motor out and sent off for refurb. They fail and act as the master so the passenger one won't work if the driver side one doesn't behave. This does mean another episode with drilling out the rivets in the inner door panel so I will also bite the bullet and order a rivnut gun too so I can replace the 6.4mm rivets with rivnuts and m6 bolts.

 

[Stanky]

Just collected the Daihatsu from having its exhaust fitted, and its a bit loud. Got underneath when I got home and somewhere along the line my request for a resonator in the system got missed, and so its now a 2" straight-through system which isn't quite when I wanted.

Fair play to them, they've apologised and are getting a resonator in and will fit it ASAP.

 

[AnnoyingPentium]

9 hours ago, Stanky said:

Lastly the Skoda, its motoring on with the only known issue currently being the front electric window don't wind up or down. It was intermittent but is now fully non-operational so I need to get the door motor out and sent off for refurb. They fail and act as the master so the passenger one won't work if the driver side one doesn't behave. This does mean another episode with drilling out the rivets in the inner door panel so I will also bite the bullet and order a rivnut gun too so I can replace the 6.4mm rivets with rivnuts and m6 bolts

Removing the motor is just three bolts. No need to touch the carrier or regulator. No rivets hell to deal with, but buy replacement door card clips!

[Stanky]

7 minutes ago, AnnoyingPentium said:

Removing the motor is just three bolts. No need to touch the carrier or regulator. No rivets hell to deal with, but buy replacement door card clips!

Ah, interesting, its the 'good' side of the metal inner door plate thing? So just door card off (snapping all the clips) then the motor is able to be removed, correct?

[AnnoyingPentium]

1 minute ago, Stanky said:

Ah, interesting, its the 'good' side of the metal inner door plate thing? So just door card off (snapping all the clips) then the motor is able to be removed, correct?

Door card was the worst part of replacing mine! It's now held on with prayers and some crap screws.

I didn't take photos, but it's door card off, unplug connectors to motor, remove screws, and swap motors. Getting the gear lined up was fiddly but not too bad. Its on 'this' side of the plate, not the internal side.

[SiC]

Is it the motor or is it the regulator? I didn't think the motors were that likely to fail on these.

[Stanky]

A video is worth a thousand pictures or something? Anyway, here for your audio delight is a short video of what a straight-through exhaust sounds like on a K3-VE2 Daihatsu Sirion

The smoke is from the assembly paste and some muck burning off, its only been driven about 5 miles so far. Its going back soon for a resonator to be fitted but I wanted to document the noise for future generations.

 

[Tubbo]

7 hours ago, Stanky said:

A video is worth a thousand pictures or something? Anyway, here for your audio delight is a short video of what a straight-through exhaust sounds like on a K3-VE2 Daihatsu Sirion

The smoke is from the assembly paste and some muck burning off, its only been driven about 5 miles so far. Its going back soon for a resonator to be fitted but I wanted to document the noise for future generations.

 

Fuck the resonator that sounds mint 😆

[Stanky]

The Mercedes MOT didn't go entirely to plan, with a FAIL awarded on two items. The first was the other front droplink. Last year the nearside one was an advisory and got changed, this year the offside one was a fail because the boot was ripped. These are pretty cheap, and pretty easy to do so no major concern there. I picked up an 'Optimal' [sic] brand droplink from ECP today which took longer to collect than to fit. the old droplink came off with minimal struggle and the new one fitted perfectly which is handy.

What was less ideal was:

• Rear Exhaust has a major leak of exhaust gases (6.1.2 (a))

Hmmm, whats this then? Having had a chat with the MOT guy he said that what had happened was that one of the hangers has broken off, meaning the exhaust is only attached at the front and the rear, the centre section is a bit freer than it ought to be. Because the roads of Hampshire are so velvety* smooth* the vibration over potholes and things has caused the pipe to stress crack. Did I want them to sort the bits out or would I do it? I said I'd have a look at it, and could they see if they can get hold of the rear exhaust too?

I called up all the exhaust suppliers I knew of locally and was disappointed. Because my car is an early s203 with the old engine, it needs a specific exhaust rear section, which is out of stock. everywhere. balls. I called the garage today and asked if they'd had any luck getting one, to which they said the same - yeah we know what we need, but no, we can't get one. Here is what we're working with

you can just about see the weld remains where the hanger used to be, the rubber is intact but its unsupported. there is a crack running around 2/3rds of the pipe where its stressed. The exhaust is OEM and likely original, its MB stamped at least. I'm going to see if brother_stanky can weld it to get it gastight again. I think if we can get a bit of rebar welded on and hung on the rubber it can take the stress off the pipe, and actually close up the crack almost entirely, then run a bead of weld around it, possibly with some strips of steel plate to act like splints. the exhaust metal is surprisingly thick even after 20 years so fingers crossed.

Options B is a nasty exhaust bandage thing, its a bit tricky because its immediately before an elbow so will be hard to seat bandage, and almost impossible to sleeve.

updates to follow.