Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - ICE electrical troubleshooting 11/5

[lisbon_road]

Should think you could cut the section out, just say three inches and weld each end.  I don't think that will stop you for long.

 

[Stanky]

Mixed fortunes this weekend, but lots of work undertaken.

My brother came down to see me and brought his welder, we fabricated* a new hanger for the exhaust and he welded it on, then welded up the cracked pipe so its now gastight. I'll take it back for a retest on Monday and hopefully it'll get through ok. The droplink was done and dusted in 10 minutes. I also replaced the occasionally iffy thermostat on the merc for a brand new Mercedes one

We then changed the oil and filters in his passat, and attempted to change the engine mounts which ended up having to be aborted as we couldn't lift the engine clear of the mounts. Its a crazy arrangement with awful access, despite the assurances of various VW Forum members that 'its easy if you do XYZ' it really wasn't. We did manage to replace the oil level sensor though so not all bad.

We also had a go at swapping the driveshaft on the daihatsu in an effort to cure the 70mph wheel wobble, which we accomplished, but only because the vibration was so bad with the replacement driveshaft we couldn't go above 30mph for fear of the wheel falling off. So we swapped back to the original one which at least works. I was quite pleased that swapping the driveshaft back to the original took us all of 15 minutes the second time. I do need to top up the gearbox oil a bit, but the oil I have is virtually solid in the current temps so I'll need to bring it inside for a while so it flows better before tipping it in.

Bit of a mixed bag, hopefully the mercedes will be back in action tomorrow and the pressure will be off until Thursday when the Skoda is in for its MOT test.

Assuming the mercedes gets a fresh ticket it may well be up for sale soon, I fancy a change. Anyone who wants a cosmetically challenged but pretty solid manual 2001 C-Class estate, please make yourselves known!

[mitsisigma01]

4 hours ago, Stanky said:

Anyone who wants a cosmetically challenged but pretty solid manual 2001 C-Class estate,

Pictures 🤔

[Stanky]

Back in the game!

Exhaust welding passed muster, droplink was fine and I've got ticket to ride for another year. Advisories aren't major concerns yet.

I phoned up Mercedes re the exhaust and they can get the part from Germany for £470 which is less than I expected. I'll have a think because having browsed Autotrader, Gumtree and FB Marketplace for cars <£5k within 50 miles there it literally fuck all thats worth having or is materially better than what I currently have. So While £500 for a new OEM exhaust isn't ideal, by the time I've bought someone else's 15 year old car, fitted 4 half decent tyres, serviced it and fixed the niggles I'll have spent £6k. so shelling out 10% of that to fix the only bits I know need doing on my car seems almost rational doesn't it?

 

[lisbon_road]

If the old exhaust is substantially ok, why don't you live with it?  Or as before, if you can get it off in one piece, weld a bit in.  Seems a shame to spend that much on it.

You could spend that on paint  

[Stanky]

1 minute ago, lisbon_road said:

You could spend that on paint  

hahaha, I could spend that much on paint, but it'd only fix about 20% of what needs doing!

I'll see how I get on, its reassuring that Merc can get hold of the part if this one falls to bits but will try and save up my pocket money for a month or two before buying a new one if it comes to that. 

I've got the Skoda in for an MOT on thursday so we'll have to see how that gets on before I spend any more money!

[Talbot]

That advisory of "engine covers and undertrays fitted" really does get right on my norks.  Yes, they're fitted AS PER FACTORY!  An MOT tester putting in an advisory that there's something fitted to the car that the manufacturer put there really is just them being a bellend.  What next?  "Radio fitted" or maybe "tinted glass fitted" or "Vehicle has a rear wiper"  None of them have any bearing on MOTable items.

@Stanky what's actually wrong with the hexhaust?  Something that can be welded/repaired or a generic part fitted?

[Stanky]

26 minutes ago, Talbot said:

That advisory of "engine covers and undertrays fitted" really does get right on my norks.  Yes, they're fitted AS PER FACTORY!  An MOT tester putting in an advisory that there's something fitted to the car that the manufacturer put there really is just them being a bellend.  What next?  "Radio fitted" or maybe "tinted glass fitted" or "Vehicle has a rear wiper"  None of them have any bearing on MOTable items.

@Stanky what's actually wrong with the hexhaust?  Something that can be welded/repaired or a generic part fitted?

Yes, for whatever reason they always put that advisory, I assumed it was to cover them in case it had a biblical oil leak (which in itself could be a fail now) but that was being caught by the undertray or at least obscuring it from being able to be seen from underneath. I may be wrong and they're just being pedants though.

the issue with the exhaust was that two of the hangers had rusted off, meaning it was supported at the front by the manifold, and right at the back by the last surviving hanger on the rear silencer, but that the mid section was unsupported. Because its quite heavy, and the roads so potholed, the exhaust was able to move parallel to the road surface enough that it developed a stress crack on a bend. This meant exhaust gas was able to leak out and constituted a fail. TBF it was a fair cop.

To fix it, we made a new hanger up from from 8mm steel rebar and my brother welded it on to support the exhaust better, and then closed up the crack and welded it up again so it was gastight. So we're legal again, and it should be OK for a while yet.

The difficulty I have is that the car is a bit of an oddity. Its an early S203 so has the carried over 2.0 NASP M111 engine from the W202/201/200 and is an estate. Surprisingly few of these were made in this spec so getting an aftermarket exhaust for it is very difficult. SES and the usual suspects don't have stock, and the manufacturers they get them from have them marked as NLA. The bigger engined ones are more freely available, as are saloon model exhausts (e.g. yours, with the M271 engine), but not estates with weedy engines.

I can get the part from Merc direct for ~£470, which isn't awful, and will be OEM quality, not the tinfoil joke that a Klarius one would be. Or get something fabricated but probably not substantially cheaper. Where it has failed is on a bend so sleeving it isn't easy, and I'd really rather not drop the exhaust unless I'm replacing it.

For now, its OK but I suspect now its weakened, even with the new support bracket it may well fracture again. However, this is basically the only real issue with the car (paintwork aside!), and its not really cost me much in unexpected/non-routine maintenance so I should probably stop being a mingebag and just buy a new exhaust section for it and fit it myself. Its a big lump, being basically everything from the B-pillar backwards on the car. The one fitted is stamped with merc logos so is likely original and therefore 22 years old so its done pretty well! Plus I can't actually get anything thats even nearly as capable and reliable for less than £3k right now which somewhat justifies spending some money on this car. As I said to you before though, the fact it cost me £19 to buy the car means I'd be spending approx 2500% the purchase price on one part! Had I bought it for the market rate of about £2500 today for a similar car then £470 would be a bit less crazy though.

 

[Talbot]

... and yet it still has an advisory for "front hangar defective" .. 

TBH, (and from experience) I would say that any exhaust that can tolerate being welded up still has many years of life left in it.  Hangars aren't hard to make, and for £470, there's an awful lot of bodging/welding/etc. that can be done.  It would be quite possible/easy to drop the exhaust from all it's hangars (but remain attached to the engine) to gain access to all of it and fit whatever parts are needed.

Either that, or if the larger engine'd exhausts are available cheaply, you could always buy one of those, (which will undoubtedly fit the vast majority of the underbody of the car) and then weld on the unique bit to attach to the M111 engine.  A part I might even be able to find amongst the general chaos at the Merc specialist down the road... who I must also speak to about another hand/foot brake lever for you..

[Talbot]

22 minutes ago, Stanky said:

As I said to you before though, the fact it cost me £19 to buy the car means I'd be spending approx 2500% the purchase price on one part! Had I bought it for the market rate of about £2500 today for a similar car then £470 would be a bit less crazy though.

Or you can look at it as "I saved £2481 on the purchase of this car, so don't mind spending other money on it"

Maybe. 😁

[Stanky]

2 minutes ago, Talbot said:

... and yet it still has an advisory for "front hangar defective" .. 

TBH, (and from experience) I would say that any exhaust that can tolerate being welded up still has many years of life left in it.  Hangars aren't hard to make, and for £470, there's an awful lot of bodging/welding/etc. that can be done.  It would be quite possible/easy to drop the exhaust from all it's hangars (but remain attached to the engine) to gain access to all of it and fit whatever parts are needed.

Either that, or if the larger engine'd exhausts are available cheaply, you could always buy one of those, (which will undoubtedly fit the vast majority of the underbody of the car) and then weld on the unique bit to attach to the M111 engine.  A part I might even be able to find amongst the general chaos at the Merc specialist down the road... who I must also speak to about another hand/foot brake lever for you..

Yeah, I need to look at the front one too, it wasn't hard to bend a bit of rebar into shape for the rear one and it might not even need welding if I'm lucky - it could be clamped on instead. Something for a warmer day though!

On the subject of the hand foot and mouth lever, if you do pop down there can you enquire about a front passenger side door card too as I had a disagreement with mine and then a bit of speaker grille fell off which is a little bit unsightly! If he has an exhaust for this too, then I'd be very interested in that as well.

[Talbot]

I'm going to be down there *a lot* over the next howeverlong, as I need to tear one of his W210's apart for it's wiring loom and other parts.  I'll see what 203 gubbins he's got in.

[Stanky]

Another day, another MOT test. This time,  the ex- @SiC Skoda Fabia in for its first test in my tenure. it passed cleanly last year, and has only done ~3k miles since so all digits crossed we get a 1st time pass this year too. 

Having 2 cars with MOTs due in the first week in february is a stupid idea. 

[Stanky]

And we have a pass, with just one advisory, so a 50% success rate. TFFT!

[SiC]

Wahoo! A good little car that one. 

Don't remember the exhaust being that bad a condition though. Another to add to your list of exhausts to sort 🤣

Tbh exhaust in poor condition should not be an advisory, not least it's manual entry which DVSA are trying to stop testers using. 

[SiC]

Don't forget to put the fake (factory fitted) exhaust tip back on if you replace the backbox. 😁


In finding that photo, I found these photos from what the exhaust looked like last year. I think I was admiring how clean and rust free underneath was after being under rusty BL stuff for too long!

[Stanky]

Thanks! They do seem to have a 'thing' about exhausts and undertrays, and I've had a bit of a challenging* time with exhausts so far this year! I'll have a chat to them, I suspect what they mean is 'exhaust has some surface rust' or possibly 'shiny tailpipe must be adding at least 20bhp' but not really a major headache. Glad they couldn't find anything else of any concern, while I appreciate their diligence, I think its fair to say that they do like to cover their arses advisory-wise at that MOT station.

 

[SiC]

Looking at that picture there is a clamp in the middle. Would the factory do that? I'd thought they'd have done one piece exhaust.

So maybe the cat back is aftermarket put on sometime in its life? If so then from experience then can vary in quality a fair bit. I imagine the exhaust system on it is cheap as chips mind. 

[Stanky]

it does look to me like it might not be entirely original. When I spoke to the tester they said it was an ACE as the system had surface rust (imagine that!) but was entirely gastight and solid, so basically a clean pass.

It may be up for sale soon as wife_Stanky wants a Dacia Duster. Want it back @SiC?

The mercedes is going to stay, I like it too much and with a little bit spent on some odds and ends it'll be as good as it needs to be for my requirements.

[SiC]

44 minutes ago, Stanky said:

It may be up for sale soon as wife_Stanky wants a Dacia Duster. Want it back @SiC?

It was a good little run around but I don't think I could go from 180bhp to 75bhp without it feeling a little frustrating 🤣

If the TT was an almighty MOT fail on last Tuesday, it probably would be a little different!

[mintwth]

2 hours ago, Stanky said:

Thanks! They do seem to have a 'thing' about exhausts and undertrays, and I've had a bit of a challenging* time with exhausts so far this year! I'll have a chat to them, I suspect what they mean is 'exhaust has some surface rust' or possibly 'shiny tailpipe must be adding at least 20bhp' but not really a major headache. Glad they couldn't find anything else of any concern, while I appreciate their diligence, I think its fair to say that they do like to cover their arses advisory-wise at that MOT station.

 

That's not the one close to the Volvo place on the old Newgate Lane is it? 

[Stanky]

Just now, mintwth said:

That's not the one close to the Volvo place on the old Newgate Lane is it? 

Yeah, they're local and seem to be fair, even if they do like an advisory or two. None of the fails they've dished out to me have ever been remotely unjustified.

Have you used them before?

[mintwth]

Yep. Seemed fair to me too and are by reputation. Come to think of it, gave me an advisory on the last MOT too but it was a fair one. They didn't mention the undertrays 😀

Seems like the kind of place that only seems to get business through recommendation. It's well off the beaten path now. I was put on to them by an ex-navy colleague. Think the owner is also ex-navy. 

[Stanky]

3 minutes ago, mintwth said:

Yep. Seemed fair to me too and are by reputation. Come to think of it, gave me an advisory on the last MOT too but it was a fair one. They didn't mention the undertrays 😀

Seems like the kind of place that only seems to get business through recommendation. It's well off the beaten path now. I was put on to them by an ex-navy colleague. Think the owner is also ex-navy. 

Yeah, now they've been bypassed by the new newgate lane they're not as prominent any more, but still always seem busy when I go there. I like to think I have decent rapport with them now, and they know I do my own fixing (unless its a shit job like the rear axle beam bushes, in which case I give it to them!). Owner seems a decent chap and they've got more staff there now too, so must be doing pretty well still - which is nice to see.

Goes to show that a reputation to reliability and fairness does still go a long way. There are several closer MOT garages which I won't use for the the inverse reason.

[Stanky]

After trying to feed the daihatsu gearbox fresh oil from above using a funnel and some pipe, and failing hard - because gearbox oil stored in a garage in February has similar fluid dynamics to treacle - I spent some of my birthday money on a gigantic syringe. I got a 550cc clear syringe and 10mm hose from ebay for £10 delivered and it duly arrove today. In anticipation I'd stored an unopened litre of GL4 gear oil inside the house on a radiator, so it was as runny as it was going to become.

Gearbox oil is now up to the right level again, I think I put about 800ml in? anyway, another job ticked off the list.

its back to the exhaust place for them to fit the resonator I originally asked for on thursday so it'll be all sorted to how I want then. Hopefully the salt can bugger off the roads soon too, so i can take it out for a bit of a run and see what difference the exhaust makes to how free-flowing the exhaust is. And without deafening half of Hampshire while I'm at it!

The exhaust remains attached to the mercedes which is good, and the skoda seems to be behaving itself too so we're nearly at 3/3 cars drivable, if not fully functional! Next task is probabaly to have a look at why the front electric windows don't go down in the skoda, which i think is due to the drivers door motor conking out and just needs the application of £50 to a nice man to send me a refurbished one.

[AnnoyingPentium]

13 minutes ago, Stanky said:

and the skoda seems to be behaving itself too so we're nearly at 3/3 cars drivable, if not fully functional! Next task is probabaly to have a look at why the front electric windows don't go down in the skoda, which i think is due to the drivers door motor conking out and just needs the application of £50 to a nice man to send me a refurbished one.

Glad to hear it's behaving. Happy to help with talking you through fitting (at least via some virtual means) if you need a hand with it, but it's not too bad to do.

[Stanky]

Spent this weekend rolling around under cars.

A few tasks were on the to-do list, the mercedes needed some paint putting on the top of the rear passenger side door frame, I'd ground it back and zinc primered it several months ago, but it needed top coating. Its weird that its gone where it has - sort of the centre of the top of the door frame, under the rubber weather strip. The other 3 doors are absolutely fine, so its a bit of a mystery. While it was cold today, the sun was out and it was windy so as good an opportunity as any to get it painted. I had loads of aerosol magmarot left over so sprayed some into the lid of the aerosol can and painted it on with a small brush. Gave it 4 thick coats, its all but invisible but wants sealing properly.

Next task was to replace the door car clips. I had about 4 clips between the front two doors so they got removed and new clips fitted all round. The repro clips were ok, but didn't fit the cutouts in the back of the door card very well, they were looser than I'd have liked, but got sorted anyway.

Final job was to oil the hand/footbrake mechanism to see if I can free it up. When its cold the foot operated parking brake pedal can jam down, necessitating you having to hook your foot under the pedal and pull it up, as you pull on the release lever and its all a bit shit. sometimes its OK, sometimes its really grumpy. Anyway, I sprayed some bike chain oil in/around/near the pivot and put it on and off lots of times and it seems a bit better.

Worryingly, thats now ticked off every item on the 'to do' list for the Mercedes, so it'll probabaly throw a rod, or blow the head gasket or something tomorrow...

Next up was the main event though. My brother wanted to replace the engine mounts on the ex- @95 quid Peugeot VW Passat TDi. We had attempted this several weeks ago and were confounded, but he returned today with different tools and we set to. The engine mounts on two spherical things, one either side of the engine - plus a 'nose' mount on the front. We started with the nose mount. Internet people reckon you can swap the mount without needing to pull the  front of the car into the service position, but they are all full of shit. The mount is a sort of cone shaped foam thing which goes on a metal extrusion facing rearwards, off the front crash bar. Its held in place by a cup-shaped bracket  on the front of the engine block which you simply cannot get off without sliding the front forward about 2". This is where the fun began. The nose of a B5 Passat is held on with 7 (?) big female torx head bolts, we took a side each and used a t45 torx bit in a 1/2" socket with a breaker bar. My side was fine, all 3 came out without any drama, the drivers side though was another story. 2 came free quite easily, the top two were having none of it. We snapped 2 T45 torx bits, then went to halfords and bought two more. We then snapped one of these too, and chewed the torx head o the bolt up a treat.

We then used pretty much every tool I had to hand to try and get the bastard things out. lots of plusgas, hammering bigger bits into the bolt head, drilling the head off the bolt - all failed. In the end, as a last ditch attempt my brother welded a pair of 14mm nuts to the sad remains of the bolt heads and using MIGHTY STRENGTH the bolts eventually undid. Christ knows what was keeping them attached, there didn't seem to be any threadlock and the threads weren't particularly rusty on these two. Curiously, the front end was unbolted within the last 2 years when the cambelt got done so not sure whats going on there. Anyway, this took about 6 hours all in and is something I never want to repeat. With the front slid forward, we could pull the sad remnants of the old mount off the extruded bit, put the new one in place and the bolt up the cup bracket to the engine. task 1 - complete.

The passenger side engine mount was a piece of cake, loads of access at the top to undo the top nut, then support the engine underneath with a jack and bit of wood on the sump, undo the ARB and drop it down then unbolt the bracket that the mount sits on. With this off, the mount and bracket drop out the bottom and fitting the new mount is easy. Sit it in the bracket and loosely bolt it in place then lift it into place, bolt up the bracket to the subframe and then do up the top mount nut from the top of the engine bay.

The drivers side one is less easy - its the same setup as the passenger side one, but access to the top nut holding the mount to the engine is a bastard - the turbo sits right on top of it and its hemmed in by the inner wing. you have to blindly get a 1/4" ratchet on it and undo the bolt one pawl click at a time. eventually we got it sorted and the mount on this side replaced too but what a carry on! The mounts fitted as likely original so are 20 years and 250k miles old. I don't really want to have to replace them again, even in 20 years time.

the rest was putting things back together. The car has hit something in the past, the grille supports are all smashed and the rad is concave with a big dent in it. My guess is it hit a pheasant at speed. The grille is non-original and the support bracket is in about 5 bits. I think bro is going to look to get a replacement from a scrapper at some point.

anyway, lots of tooling and jobs were completed but took way longer than expected. We cried off replacing the door lock module that we replaced 9 months ago, that can wait for a warmer day.

[Stanky]

21 hours ago, Stanky said:

Worryingly, thats now ticked off every item on the 'to do' list for the Mercedes, so it'll probabaly throw a rod, or blow the head gasket or something tomorrow...

/\ /\ /\ Yeah, you know this? Well today we got this \/ \/ \/

could have been worse I suppose!

 

[Stanky]

So, the exhaust on the Daihatsu...

The car went back to the exhaust specialist and they fitted a resonator in the middle of the system, its only small and while it has quietened it down a bit, its still quite noisy.

For now, I’ve gone back to the original intake to see if I can quieten down the intake noise a bit because its just a bit too obnoxiously loud. I’ve got a new 'modified car' policy with a specialist insurer now so I aim to get out on the roads more to get things bedded in, I have another 4 months until the MOT is due, and might go and tap up my local MOT station for a ‘will this pass?’ question or two. They’re fair, and I have good rapport with them so they’ll tell me if they’re not happy.

I have enacted plan B - its possible to buy inserts for the tailpipe that quieten down the noise, they’re aimed at track cars which exceed the noise limits on some circuits and seem to get OK reviews. I bit BIN on one from Demon Tweeks for about £12. The insert arrived today and I had a bit of time so went out to see whats was what. Its quite a simple thing, being basically a stepped bit of mild steel pipe

The idea is you fit this thin-end first into the exhaust and it narrows the pipe diameter as well as absorbing some of the sound at the same time. It was cheap and seemed to have OK reviews. I went to fit it and was slightly vexed because while the exhaust tip is square with the back of the car, the stainless pipe that the tip is welded to goes off at a slight angle

which meant the insert wouldn’t go in straight and jammed when it was about 80% in. I could have hammered it in, but I wasn’t sure what effect it would have and if I’d hammered it in then there would be absolutely zero chance of it coming out again without major surgery, so this called for some lateral thinking.

I had downloaded a decibel level app on my phone and when I started the car up and let it idle. From cold, idling at about 1500rpm it was recording 87dB on the app. Once the car had warmed up and the idle dropped to normal closed loop it was recording 76dB which was definitely better, but too noisy under load still.

My lateral thinking was to put the pipe in the wrong way, sure it’d look stupid with a bit of tatty mild steel pipe poking out the back, but the sound difference would be able to be checked to see if it was effective or not. Poking it in the tailpipe did indeed look silly

However when starting the car, the cold idle noise was indeed reduced dramatically, registering 80dB on the app, with the engine warmed through at idling at ~800rpm the reading was now at 72dB so the reducer definitely did work.

However, I still wasn’t sold on hammering it in so have had a think and decided to spend some more money, on one of these:

 

They’re designed for motobikes but work fine in cars. It will fit inside the exhaust tip (3" outer diameter, 2.5" inner) and is held in with a grub screw. This will reduce the bore of the exhaust exit and based on what I have learned, should quieten the exhaust note considerably. I will need to drill a small hole for the grub screw in the underside of the exhaust tip, but this will be all but invisible.

I’m not entirely happy with it still, and I'm a bit annoyed with myself for not being clearer with the fabricator, perhaps telling them that it HAD to pass scrutineering or something... anyway, we're here now, so I need to work out how best to handle this going forward.

If this muffler baffle works then I will look at getting a different tip which should act as less of a megaphone. The noise on the motorway is too droning, I’ve put a bit of old carpet under the spare wheel cover in the boot to try and quieten things down too

[Dave_Q]

Its just one of those things man, 99.97% of people getting a custom system made want a straight through pipe for the sick noise bro, I don't think they would even have the parts to make anything much different to what you have.

The motorbike type baffle is a good shout but TBH you might need to get a back box of some sort welded in to really drop the noise significantly.