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Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - New Car Update 16/3


Stanky

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One of the ongoing bugbears with the Daihatsu is the slight warping of the drivers side caliper carrier. With it all fitted it works OK, but getting the top slider bolt out for greasing/tinkering is a difficult task - it'll unwind on the threads, but once its fully unwound its a real challenge to remove. On the passenger side, it just pulls out easily with finger pressure, but the drivers side requires levering out with an open-ended spanner which is not how its intended to work. Getting it back in is a bit of a faff too, so its been at the back of my mind for a while now about getting hold of a replacement. Toyota sell them, but only as a complete unit with the caliper and bolts for a cool £470 + VAT which is too salty for me, so I've been trying to get one from a breaker. Luckily, both sides are interchangeable, unluckily, there aren't as many of these cars about as there once was so breakers aren't exactly abundant. 

The front calipers are shared throughout the whole range, from the lowly 989cc with 59bhp all the way up to the mental 713cc 4WD 118bhp monster. My car sits at second place in the performance tree, with 110bhp on tap and the braking is a bit marginal frankly! What this meant though was that theoretically any carrier from any M100/M101 Sirion would work. I spotted a guy breaking a 989cc car on facebook the week before last and messaged to enquire about the carrier, asking if he'd sell me one or both, he replied in the positive and electric money changed hands. A couple of days later, a parcel arrived

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The guy had sent me some pics, and advised the carriers were a bit corroded, he wasn't kidding. I opened up the unexpectedly heavy parcel to be greeted with these lumps of rust

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Erk. Thats pretty grotty. However, in addition to being grotty, it was two sets of pads, complete calipers and carriers, not JUST the carriers I was expecting, so there is some bonus content here which is good. However, these are is a bad way. I tried to see if they were totally seized. One actually moved really well, vomiting out some ancient brake fluid from the cut-off flexi when I pressed the piston back in. The other was a bit more stubborn, but I don't think its toast. Anyway, thats not the important bit! I clamped the calipers in my bench vice and hammered on a 14mm socket to the slider bolts, which had pretty badly corroded heads and heaved on a ratchet and amazingly all 4 came out without a fuss. The sliders hadn't seen much lubrication so were a bit difficult to extract, but even dry, came out easier than a well-greased slider from my carrier. With the carriers off, I could have a closer look

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Thats pretty grim. Less grim than the calipers themselves, but pretty grim nonetheless. I put them into my bench vice and gave them a good scrub with a wire brush

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which took some rust off, but wasn't touching some of the really encrusted stuff. I put them both on the bench to see how we were doing

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in anticipation of needing to do some derusting I had bought myself some citric acid crystals, so it was time for some CHEMISTRY. I put 100g of citric acid crystals and 2 litres of boiling water in a bucket and them dropped the two carriers, the carrier > hub bolts and the slider bolts in for a bath

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It started fizzing quite alarmingly, I gave it all a stir up and left it for 30 mins or so, then lifted the carriers out - without gloves because I'm an idiot, and now know EXACTLY where all the cuts on my hands are now - and scrubbed them with an old toothbrush to agitate the surface rust. This was after about an hour and two soaks/scrubs

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I repeated this at ~30 minute intervals for about 4 hours when the bubbling was much slower, as the acid solution would have been loads cooler, and had mostly reacted by this point so out it all came

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As you can see, there now a lot of clean metal, but plenty of rusty crud stuck on. The parts were still covered with acidy solution, so next up was another bath, this time in hot water and soda crystals to neutralise the acid

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I rapidly vacated the kitchen before my long-suffering wife saw what I was doing! After about 20 minutes I removed the calipers and bolts from the alkaline solution and washed them in clean hot water. this was the result

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now THAT is a lot better. Next up was to clean up the bores that the slider bolts fit into. I used my dremel with a mini felt polishing cylinder and some autosol polish to clean them up to a nice shiny surface finish, then  used a cotton earbud to clean the polish reside out with meths. After this, I left the carrier on the radiator in the house overnight to dry out thoroughly. The next morning I set to with the dremel and a drill, using brass wire wheels to take as much of the encrusted rusty off as I could

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I'm not displeased with that! About 90% of the rust is gone, especially from the flanged buts round the bores that the sliders go into (which helps locate the tiny rubber boots) and the square cutouts that the pads fit into. The threaded holes had the threads cleaned up and lightly lubricated with some GT85 spray.

I removed the front drivers side wheel, and removed the caliper and carrier (struggling with the top slider as usual) and then fitted up the regreased sliders to the carrier on the bench before fitting it carefully to the hub o the car. The slider bolts were reused, because they're only about 6 months old and have been barely used. They got re-greased and I'll check it all carefully after a few miles. It all gone done up and the wheel refitted, but I couldn't take it out to play because it was boxed into the garage by one of the other cars so hopefully I'll take it for a run tomorrow.

I think the remaining rusty mess might be beyond saving but I have a sneaky plan involving a pair of brand new calipers and returning two lumps of solid ferrous oxide for a rebate, but that will have to wait for a little while!

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  • Stanky changed the title to Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - Derusting brake parts 11/3

On a bit of a roll, today I managed to get fully upside down in the footwell and was able to get some RP90 oil onto the parking brake release spring in the Mercedes. I definitely got the right bit, because it now springs back with never-before-seen vigour when you pull the release handle.

Thats a huge improvement - its never been great in my ownership, and was considerably worse in cold weather. I watched a youtube video on removing and replacing the ludicrously complicated mechanism, but the vid said basically 95% of the issues are due to the grease on the spring drying up and re-oiling it fixed it most of the time. It went on to show removal, but its a right old ball ache to do, so i tried oiling first.

Anyway, its loads better now and thats another thing ticked off the to-do list.

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In an effort to quieten down the exhaust pipe on the Daihatsu I bought a thing. Various internet sources reckoned that muffler inserts would work wonders to quieten down the tailpipe noise, and at £12 it seemed a cheap option. The insert arrived earlier in the week while I was away with work, but its been a slow day today so I got out and had a go at fitting it. 

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it sits inside the exhaust tip and you need to drill a hole through to secure it with an M6 bolt. The idea is that it makes the exit smaller bore and therefore quieter (I think?)

Anyway, I started the car and used a phone app to get a noise reading at idle

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Thats from cold, so sitting at ~1200rpm and its a bit noisy. Actually, its not a lot more noisy than my neighbours BMW M135i is from cold, but still noisier than the MOT tester would appreciate I suspect.

I drilled a hole in the underside of the tailpipe - I really need to get a new set of cobalt drill bits, almost all the small ones have snapped and the ones that haven't have lost their sharpness/coating and are shit. Eventually I drilled a suitable hole and was able to fit the insert. I started the car up again and

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Hmmm, thats not bad. Its taken 9dB off the noise. I let it idle for a bit to warm up and it seems a lot quieter, I need to take it for a run really but ran out of time (and need to move another one of the cars) but it seems a lot better. Hopefully the MOT tester agrees in a couple of month's time!

Incidentally, are any of the tame MOT testers on here able to comment on exhaust noise. The actual guidelines are pretty vague, and seem to leave a lot to individual tester's interpretation of what 'excessively loud' means. when is the noise element of the test conducted? From cold, or with the engine warm? 

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  • Stanky changed the title to Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - Stick that in your pipe... 16/3

Free bit of science - it's not exactly the smaller hole as such, it's that more of the energy of the gas will be lost in the extra portion of gas that is reflected back by the smaller hole.

Basically all exhaust systems just work by bouncing the gas round corners, back/forth in boxes etc to make it lose energy. Hence why if you slice a standard silencer open it looks like a low difficulty rat maze. 

The MOT is completely open to interpretation. I would say from the dB levels you've posted it should be fine and not loud enough to be classed as "unreasonably louder than a similar car in similar condition", but that could mean anything to anyone FFS so it's still a bit dependant on the tester.

Quote

You must use your judgement to assess exhaust noise:

  • during the emissions test for the vehicle
  • rev the engine to around 2,500rpm or half the maximum engine speed if this is lower on vehicles not subject to an emissions test

Exhaust noise from the vehicle must not be unreasonably above the noise level you’d expect from a similar vehicle with a standard silencer in average condition.

 

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Took the Daihatsu out for a 45 minute drive and its ALL THE BETTERS. warmed through at idle it bounces between 68 and 72dB, its a bit gruffer than with the original exhaust but not 'arsehole loud' any more. It revs freely through to 6000 rpm, so the insert doesn't appear to be causing too much back pressure in the system and it tones down the noise through the rev range. 

I think I might have it just about perfect now, it rides well with the suspension changes - polybushed all round and a 19mm rear ARB; free flowing but not crazy loud stainless steel exhaust; factory stiffer springs and a cone filter on the intake. Its got a new clutch and all gear linkage bushes replaced so the gearchange is as good as its going to get. 

The derusted front caliper carrier is working fine too, so there is no binding from that.

I just need to get out and use it more! I'd got a bit disheartened with it over the winter but going for a fun drive out has reminded me just how much fun the little car is, and how involved you feel in driving it. The Mercedes is a good car, capacious and feels safe, but its a bit numb to drive. Thats a good thing on a long motorway journey but its nice to have the antithesis to that as an option when the mood takes me.

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I'm not a tester myself but the criteria they're getting at is whether it's loud because someone's chopped the exhaust up deliberately

"Deleted back box" loud is an advisory in my experience, "stolen catalytic converter" loud is a fail under the criteria Dave Q mentions a few posts up

They're also looking for noise at a continuous steady speed.

Noise at idle, when revving or decelerating is not tested. Some exhausts are naturally a bit farty or boomy under those conditions but not when you're holding them at steady revs

I've never come across a tester that's anal enough to fail a car because the baffles are not in the finest condition causing a little extra noise. And nor have I ever seen a standard car fail on exhaust noise alone. Only a major leak

TLDR; stop worrying :)

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  • 1 month later...

The front arches on the mercedes are beginning to look scruffy again, about 4 years after I last had a go at taking the paint off, vactan'ing them, zinc primering, painting and lacquering. I did do this in November last time, so the environment wasn't exactly ideal. Anyway, it looked ok from 10 feet

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(obvs ignore the bird poo and rampaging lacquer peel...) but MAGNIFY and you'll see its not looking great

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Lots of tiny bubbles coming through and staining with rust. Excellent.

I used a wire wheel in the angry grinder to take the paint off again all round this arch, then repeated the process with Vactan, Zinc primer, base coat and lacquer to try and improve matters. The weather was warmer this time, and I was able to do the painting in the garage so it didn't get rained on. The job has taken all weekend, but only in short 5 minute bursts, then leaving it alone for a couple of hours in between. Anyway, its looking a lot better now

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and zoomed in

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Up super-close, there is some bumpiness which the paint hasn't flattened out as much as I'd have liked,  but its a lot better than before and should keep the wings intact for another 4 or so years I hope. As before, flat colour is quite forgiving for rattle can paintwork fixing, its blended in pretty well and should be OK once its had a week to fully dry out and I can wax it. In certain lights you can see its been redone by a cack-handed amateur, but most of the time it looks fine (or at least you dont notice because you're so gobsmacked by the state of the lacquer sloughing off the bonnet, roof and wing mirrors)

I need to do the other side soon, but I need to re-organise the garage to let me get at the other side properly so will be next weekend at the earliest. Its in a similar state to be honest so does need some attention this year.

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  • Stanky changed the title to Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - Mercedes paintwork rectification pt2 23/04
  • 2 weeks later...

Had a productive long weekend, cleared/reorganised half the garage and was able to repaint the drivers side wing on the Mercedes, so they're both done now. TBH the job I did taking the paint off the drivers side was quite a lot worse than the passenger side and it does show if you're up close. However, it treated all the rusty blebs so it should be good for a while yet. I also sorted out the weird rusty bubbles on the bootlid too, which turned out to be just the paint lifting - structurally its pretty good underneath. It got the same vactan/zinc/colour/lacquer treatment.

I've booked the Dacia in for a 'B' service next month too, it turned out it had a (transferrable) 2 year servicing plan on it, so a call to Dacia to confirm, and then a call to the supplying dealer has it booked in FOC. A 'B' service is basically oil + oil filter and would be £200 with the dealer direct, or £145 if booked through Dacia's website. I'll do that next year, as the servicing plan will have expired by then, and we'll need it to have service history with all the correct parts and oil and whatnot to maintain the warranty. 

Otherwise, little to report. The cars seem to just be doing car things which is nice for my wallet!

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  • 1 month later...

After a last minute panic when the EML came on last night as I went to drop it off for an MOT - I'd forgotten to reconnect the air intake temp sensor after fiddling with it the other day, fixed for free thanks to my Delphi code reader! - The Daihatsu is legal for another year

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I'm pleased with that!

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  • Stanky changed the title to Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - Daihatsu MOT Day
  • 3 weeks later...

"Yo Stanky, whats up? Fixing more broken shit on your shit car again LOLOLOLOL?"

"Yes, now fuck off"

My day today was darkened slightly by my youngest not really wanting to go home from the park, and refusing to get in her car seat. The sun was shining and I had nowhere I needed to be, so rather than wrestling her into the seat like a mental, I took it in my stride and let her climb about in the car. Usually when she does this she clambers about, moves the gearstick, pretends to drive, moves the air vents and other things which are a minor annoyance, but not the end of the world so I let her get on with it while I tried to do my best laid-back cool DILF act for the yummy mummies at the park. 

However, today I came rather unstuck. While I was gazing into the middle distance I hadn't realised she'd discovered the coin tray that I keep a collection of small change in for parking ticket machines which in 2023 STILL DON'T FUCKING ACCEPT CARD PAYMENTS. As all children do, she immediately set about filling the CD slot of the head unit with the fucking things.

Mercifully, on starting the car (with her wrangled into her seat eventually) I was able to eject the CD and then turn the head unit off without it making coffee grinder noises however now I had to extract a load of 20p's from the effing thing.

Fast forward to 8pm and having removed a billion screws and hidden clips I finally got the head unit out of the dash

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what a carry on! I liberated 70p in silver coins plus a trolley token from the cd tray. Most of them came out with lots of shaking, but the trolley token was having none of it and required the casing to be partially dismantled before it fell out (and went down the side of the seat, predictably...)

Anyway, its all back together now. I lost one torx trim screw in the process, and also found that the ashtray illumination bulb had blown so I'll get a new one of those at some point. 

Otherwise, its all going swimmingly. The C-Class really is a capable old beast. Sometimes things fall off but it just keeps on motoring. Its cost me really very little over the last 4 years and just does everything I need of it. I took out the plugs the other day to check them over as apparently the M111.951 engine is hard on its plugs. I replaced the iridiums that were in there for some Denso Platinums about 3 years / 25k miles ago so pulled one out to check it over. The gap hasn't really grown, I think I gapped them to 0.8mm when I fitted them but this had grown to about 1mm over that time. I gently pressed the electrodes down to re-gap them to 0.8mm again and I'm proud to say its made bugger all difference. It wasn't bad before, but seemed to have a slightly lumpy idle one day last week. This seems to have gone now, maybe it was just hot? Anyway, they're now back to the correct spec and I don't need to buy new ones so thats that sorted.

Oh, I've ordered a new speaker grille for the passenger door to finally replace the one that broke when I was replacing the anti-bounce spring in the passenger door look about 3 years ago.

 

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  • Stanky changed the title to Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - Dad, a 20p is stuck...

Commiserations on the not required disassembly and reassembly, well done for It ………. However, the point I’m surprised at most is the parking machines that don’t take cards or app payment, I haven’t seen one that takes coins round here in ages, do you live in a particularly backwards area? 

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3 hours ago, Stinkwheel said:

do you live in a particularly backwards area? 

Fareham, where the council are far more interested in lining their own pockets than providing any kind of public services. Some of the parking machines do take card payments but the card bit is perma-fucked on any of the seafront ones because (does best surprised face) seawater and fragile electronics don't mix very well. Who'd have thought? So often they have to be fed with gold dubloons instead.

2 hours ago, beko1987 said:

At least she didn't drop 20p down the side of the handbrake... 

this is literally the only positive to the ludicrous handbrake/footbrake arrangement the W203 has (Like your XM IIRC?) is that its so hidden away its all but impossible to get coins stuck in it! Still a stupid design though.

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Speaker grille arrove tonight so since it was sunny I set to replacing it. On the W203 the grille is sort of heat-moulded to the doorcard so its a bit of a kerfuffle to replace. This is what we have to begin with, I pushed the doorcard on with my hand on the grille about 3 years ago and cracked it, most of the crackes were carefully pushed back flat, but there was a bit that snapped right off and wasn;t going back together, so its looked like this ever since

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Hardly befitting of such an executive* motor, I think you'll agree?

First things first it was time to remove the doorcard. Its held on with a few torx screws and some plastic poppers which came off without a fuss, exposing the inner door

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Note terrifying airbag/facebomb... I unhooked the door release cable and electric window switch. With the doorcard off I could see what was what

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You can sort of see the melted-on 'legs' of the speaker grille section here. They poke through the doorcard then were sort of melted and squashed into mushroom shapes to keep it in situ. I have zero clue why they didn't just use half a dozen dome-head screws. But there.

I took the doorcard into the garage and laid it on some old carpet. I used a drill to drill off the mushroomed heads and a stanley knife to trim the leftovers off then pushed the speaker bit through

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so far so good. Next I trial-fitted the new grille by poking the 'legs' through the doorcard holes to make sure it all lined up, which happily it did. The new grille was £25, less than half the price of every other seller on ebay so I was quite keen not to damage it. For those with good memories, the car cost me £19 in roffle tickets, so this represents a significant investment!

Since I know better* than the DaimlerChrysler corporation I had decided that I'd use some dome-headed screws to hold the grille on, at least partially. I used my knock-off dremel to cut down three of the 'legs' so they were more of less flat with the inner door card stuff

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and then screwed the stubby dome-head screws into the hollow legs of the grille

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You can see /\ /\ /\ here that the legs stick through quite far normally, hence needing to cut them down a bit.

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I did this with three of the legs around the perimeter to hold it in place before phase 2. I only had 3 suitable screws or I'd have done it with all 9 legs TBH. It worked well.

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Next it was onto stage 2 - melty melty

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I used my crappy silverline soldering iron to melt down the legs one at a time, then used a dome-ended bit of metal to squash the melted plastic flat, like the original mouldings, only worse

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This was #1 which was definitely could be better material, but it worked. I slowly made my way around the remaining 7 legs, melting them then mushrooming out the ends. Having the grille held in place with the screws was a godsend at this point

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My handiwork improved as I went, some of the later ones were almost tidy

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with them all melted and mushroomed I flipped the door card over and was pretty pleased with my handiwork

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Thats not a bad job is it? The fit isn't perfect but isn't bad, and looks miles better than the cracked original. I fitted the poppers back onto the inside of the door card and held them in place by wrapping a small amount of butyl tape round them to stop them falling out as I fitted the door card up to the door. I refitted the bowden cable to the interior handle, refitted the electric window switch, hooked the tweeter out of the door and hung the door card from the top rail of the door frame, then pushed the popper on one at a time. The attached the tiny grille that the tweeter lives behind on the other side of the glass to the wing mirror and...

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Thats a bit better isn't it?

But thats not all. Because I'm me, I decided I'd roll the car forward into its usual parking spot. I'd left it hanging out a bit because I needed the door wide open to do this. So I merrily jumped in the drivers seat and released the handbrake, reasoning it was silly to start the car to move 6 feet forwards...

Oh what a silly billy I am.

The car did indeed roll, but because the W203 doesn't have a conventional handbrake, instead using a 4th pedal to the left of the clutch, you need to be on the ball with things like this. I rolled forward and stood on the handbrake pedal, which rewarded me by detaching the rubber pedal cover from the pedal and my foot slipped off. I desperately shoved at the footbrake, but it did nothing because the engine was off, so I rolled straight into the garage door pillar

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHH! For fucks sake.

I cleaned the brick dust out with a wire brush and squirted some of the last of the magmarot paint on and its come out ok. The bumper took it and is solid plastic so its only a scrape but jesus wept. This is exactly why I can't have nice things. The wing and the bumper are a bit misaligned now but there we go. 

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Invisible* repair I think you'll all agree. I'll slap some more red on tomorrow and then some lacquer and it'll blend in with the other scuffs and lacquer peel.

Thanks for tuning in as ever.

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  • Stanky changed the title to Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - Stanky's Bar and Grille 19/7
4 minutes ago, stuboy said:

bugger

I think what this is telling me is that I have basically reached Wabi-Sabi equilibrium with the car. I've been fixing things as I go, and improved the car. However its now at that very specific tipping point where it must NOT be improved further. Its peak 'shabby chic' if you will, and now if I fix something, something else must immediately break to maintain the fundamental 'zen' of the car.

Car, you have spoken, and I have listened.

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Errr nerrr! Brerrrrken!

Lost all power on the m275 and managed to get off at a junction. ESP warning flashing on the dash, accelerator non functional, idle hunting between 1000 and 2000 rpm

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Now waiting for big yellow taxi ride home. Google isn't helping with possible causes and car not responding to esp reset or ignition cycling which is all I can do currently.

Sedness...

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  • Stanky changed the title to Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - LIVE BREAKDOWN 25/7

Ouch, good luck. Vac pipe somewhere? When the rubber pipe to some sucky thing on the ex's 1.8 zafira split it became undriveable unless she really floored it and then it was just generally unhappy was fixed with lots of tape everything was fixed*... 

Being a modern it might need a battery pull/code clear to proceed though 🤞 Aa man might be able to tell you exactly what hopefully

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A torx! A torx! My kingdom for a torx!

Trying to get at the connector for the esp button, I was fiddling with it in the course of removing the radio and I wonder if it's come loose and shat itself? 

Just need a T20 torx to get the trim off!

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ESP fault will likely be because the engine ECU is upset (engine warning light is on too) and not talking to other modules after a big error code it's very upset about. 

I don't know about Merc but on Renault, critical throttle body faults (iirc pedal faults too) make the engine rev between 2k and 3k. The idea being it can't regulate the engine rpm as it doesn't know where the throttle position is. So it opens/closes it rapidly to at least give some power where you can get to safety. 

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