Gooner II V6 - Reliable motoring at its finest*

[Barry Cade]

Peugeot Citroen have them in stock usually as they are on the ducato/boxer things.i carry spare ones on the van for the ambulances. Common fault.

[Kiltox]

The negative clamps are god awful - the one on my Trafic is fucked and the one on the Scenic needed replacing too.

[SiC]

The other Renault dealer in Bristol had no stock either. Ended up going to the scrapyard to find all 4 Laguna's they had were missing theirs!

 

Found 2 Espaces with a different arrangement of clamps, but 2 fuses. I chose the 2.2dci Espace as if the fuses are large enough to start a 2.2 diesel, they should be good enough for a v6 petrol. These had the ratings on (175A and 235A) which mine didn't. Paid £3 for 2 which is a bit on the steep side, but needs must.

 

Popped them in and started right up. I'm now getting an annoying squeal when idling with high electrical load now!

[SiC]

Min voltage when starting:

 

Idling with full fan, rear+front+wing mirror heaters and electric seat warms on:

 

Much better! I reckon giving the clamps and power feeds a good scrub with sandpaper has helped massively here too.

[cobblers]

Those battery terminal mount fuse holders look quite handy actually, I'll remeber them for next time I wire up a camper van. Hope you catch the bastard who robbed half of yer multimeter

[SiC]

So the time is nigh. Tomorrow morning is the start of its big day with one of the Ministry's finest men for an hour.

 

I've also asked for them to spend an hour or two investigate the shaking steering wheel. I very much suspect its a buckled alloy, but while its with trained professionals I thought I'd get them to find it.

 

Things that it may be tripped up on:

• Headlights. The stupid auto-height adjusting HID system has decided to aim itself at minimum. No fault warning up though, so hopefully if it does fail being too low, it can just be manually adjusted on the height adjustment.
• Emissions. Last years emissions was done as a diesel engine?!
• Suspension. It's a Laguna...

As a side note, the gearbag is being silly again. Driving it a bit more than gentle, it has a habit of being very un-smooth. Also, accelerating from a stand-still, it does a weird almost double-clutching type thing. Google suggests that the line-pressure could a bit low. I've checked the oil level (at the correct temp) and its pretty much bang on. Fluid still is a decent-ish colour too.

 

I'm being to get a fear of AW55 automatic gearboxes...

 

Fingers-crossed on the MOT though! Max budget for repairs is probably £200-£300. Because of the gearbox silliness (and headlights), this has had its unlimited repair budget status removed...

[Pete-M]

HID aim will be down to broken or unattached level sensor(s). Normally on one front and one rear suspension arm going to the chassis.

[Kiltox]

Good luck!

 

You can have my gearbag when the DCI engine shits itself in mine

[SiC]

HID aim will be down to broken or unattached level sensor(s). Normally on one front and one rear suspension arm going to the chassis.

Good call. Would be plausible as the system isn't throwing any errors. I passed this onto the garage to look at if it fails...

[SiC]

Test Result: Fail

 

 

 

Reason(s) for failure

nearside rear Direction indicator incorrect colour (1.4.A.2f)

offside rear Direction indicator incorrect colour (1.4.A.2f)

offside Registration plate lamp not working (1.1.C.1d)

offside Front position lamp(s) not working (1.1.A.3b)

 

 

 

Test Result: Pass

[Kiltox]

Poorly maintained French bag of shit

[The Moog]

That looks an easy pass... Well done !

[SiC]

Must have been, they haven't even contacted me to tell me its passed yet.

 

They usually do bulbs for the cost of the bulbs and don't charge for fitting.

 

Hopefully now they're currently now test driving it to find the source of the vibration.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Excellent work!

[SiC]

Just spoke to them. They've had a good look for a source of vibration and they can't see anything obvious. No obviously buckled wheels, suspension parts all in generally good nick and no real play in anything. The tyres are low on tread anyway and suggested to replace them first before going any further, as they suspect it is them.

 

Actually as I typed that, I've just remembered that it was sat on the dealers forecourt for 6 months before I bought it. So it is very possible that they may have a flat spot from sitting around too long?

[SiC]

That looks an easy pass... Well done !

Not that easy going by this on the hydrocarbons!

 

Admittedly going by the time of the test, it'd been sitting around for a couple of hours. Or that it needs some new plugs.

[Kiltox]

Plugs, air filter, cataclean and a good shoeing down the bypass

[kirton]

It's similar to what the Megane/Scenic has, just a single fuse instead of 2. Google doesn't find picture of Laguna, but here is the Megane...

s-l3001.jpg

 

Essentially just the black middle one on the Laguna and a wire that is directly connected to the battery to the main fusebox.

 

I could connect the feed directly into the battery, but a bit dodgy running it unfused (on a French car).

 

I wondered what the circuit board and gubbins is on top of the positive terminal on our boxer camper is, now I know .

 

Still seems bloody silly tucked up under the bulkhead with a terminal clamp that slowly slides up and loses contact.  Fortunately it has only happened when I've gone to restart the van but it is worrying to say the least.  Hopefully the fuse will never blow

[SiC]

Plugs, air filter, cataclean and a good shoeing down the bypass

I do the last all the time.

 

Filter is either pretty new or was new when I checked (can't remember which!).

 

The back bank of plugs require the inlet manifold to be removed. Often advised to replace the gasket too. Basically a hour job and £50 of plugs + ~£25 gasket. I might treat it as it didn't cost me much to get it through its MOT.

 

I do wonder if the last garage put it as a Diesel to get it through. MOT guys on here - doesn't that like flag up a thing on the MOT system? Or is it manually inputted as a pass/fail on emissions (rather than being linked)?

[scaryoldcortina]

Manual entry of the emission result. You can pick anything you like, the system relies on the tester knowing what he's doing. If it's a pass printout then someone used the wrong machine to test it and the system wouldn't even know.

 

If you pick the wrong fuel type when starting the test it will flag up "FUEL TYPE CHANGED SINCE LAST TEST" and give you a chance to change your entry.

[twosmoke300]

Lambda says it's rich so maybe it wasn't fully warmed up

[scaryoldcortina]

That would be my guess too - it passed a BET (quick pass) so they didn't have to go as far as measuring oil temp and warming it up properly.

[SiC]

I dropped the car off at 9am, so by the looks of the time on that it had been sitting around for 2hrs. It's been pretty cold today too.

 

I assume that lambda reading is a lambda sensor in the tail pipe probe (Rather than the cars lambda read out over OBD or similar)?

[scaryoldcortina]

Lambda as measured at the tailpipe. That's why small exhaust leaks mess up your emission test.

[beko1987]

That's what I'm most worried about on my mot, my exhaust is quite religious. Sweet nothing I can do at the moment though, they do free retests so if it does fail on that I'll buy halfords stock of exhaust wrap and fix* it

[scaryoldcortina]

Your car is a diesel though, so it won't get the lambda tested. Diesel test is just smoke opacity, and probably always will be for a 1997 car.

[SiC]

As I've done over 5000 miles in this now, the tyres are due for a replacement. They've worn quite heavily on the edges, I suspect probably because tyres on a big heavy FWD V6 has to do a whole lot of work when going round corners.

 

For most cars getting new tyres is easy, but for Laguna II owners its not. They need to obtain something else before they show up at their local depot. Otherwise they'll just get even more warnings on the dashboard than before they went in.

 

 

Tyre Pressure Sensors! 3 because it's missing one on the rear and the warning on the screen annoys me.

 

Please don't tell the wife that I spent more on these than I did for her Xmas present (!)

[406V6]

As I've done over 5000 miles in this now, the tyres are due for a replacement. They've worn quite heavily on the edges, I suspect probably because tyres on a big heavy FWD V6 has to do a whole lot of work when going round corners.

Front tyres on mine with the same engine last 20000+miles. When the outsides wore heavily it was due to bad alignment

[SiC]

Admittedly these weren't brand new when I bought the car. The fronts (that need changing) are date coded 2014, the rears are date coded 2015. I'm going to get the alignment done when they're fitted to make sure that's all straight and true too. Hopefully this will also solve the wheel shimmy for good too.

 

Next thing, which do I go for? Goodyear Efficient Grip Performance or Dunlop Sport BluResponse. Both have the same tyre label ratings and are the quietest tyres I can see on F1 Autocentres.

 

 

I hate these sort of decisions.

[Parky]

I has the Dunlops and rate them. Can't compare to the Goodyears but a definite thumbs up for the Blueresponse from me. Made my daily a lot quieter and more sure footed in the wet.