83C's Shite-esque Fleet: Oh Ship!

[83C]

…but it pours.

After the shenanigans with the RAC being utterly incompetent last week with Mrs. 83C’s Mini (it’s still in Cornwall, supposed to be landing here in Shropshire tomorrow), the L322 decided to join the party with worn out rear brake pads. The first indication of this was the grinding noise as I slowed down off the M5 North into Gloucester Services. I would have expected the wear sensor to trigger but for whatever reason it hasn’t. It’s the n/s that’s down to the metal and I think the sensor is on the o/s. That suggests some uneven pad wear, but not long after I bought it the car needed the rear prop replacing and while it was at the garage that dealt with that one of the rear calipers seized. Both were replaced but it appears the old pads were reused which is probably why one set were lower than the other. 

On the upside the ZT had its first proper usage this evening and apart from a numberplate light bulb showing it seems to be going well.

Tuesday a new machine gets added to the fleet. There may be a short term addition too if the Mini is going to be out of action for a while.

[83C]

As a distraction from the RAC's continuing fuckwitticism, I'm off for a bit of retail therapy. 

Stage one of the collection mission:

Any guesses?

[83C]

Getting close. The Dyfi Estuary.

[Bren]

Aberdovey in the distance?

[Stinkwheel]

1 hour ago, 83C said:

Getting close. The Dyfi Estuary.

Nice part of the world (im biased) and should also provide some excellent roads to spiritedly drive the new purchase, win win situation

[Bren]

19 minutes ago, Stinkwheel said:

Nice part of the world (im biased) and should also provide some excellent roads to spiritedly drive the new purchase, win win situation

I concur. It is beautiful there.

[83C]

Collection achieved. Thank you very much to @dollywobbler

[RichardK]

45 minutes ago, Bren said:

Aberdovey in the distance?

I've been planning on going there!

[dollywobbler]

5 hours ago, 83C said:

Collection achieved. Thank you very much to @dollywobbler

A pleasure. Thanks for a hassle-free sale! Autoshite wins again. 

[83C]

Alternator from the Arnage. BFO Delco 140A job. Feels like the bearings are a bit rough, a few thou of play fore/aft on the shaft too. Also:

The fan is breaking up. Again, not the end of the world but certainly won’t help it. 

Do like the ease of removal - 10 minutes. A few pipes in the way but nothing that can’t just be slid to one side for access.

Hopefully off tomorrow to have it tested and repaired.

[83C]

Rear brake pads replaced today on the L322. Wondered why one set had worn faster than the other side, got the answer when I took the pads out and found the caliper sliders… didn’t.

Carrier off, slider pins out, cleaned with some emery cloth, regreased and refitted. Range Rover has working brakes again.

[83C]

While you were away, there have been developments in the 83C fleet. 

The garage that the Mini was recovered to have told me they can’t fix it, it needs to go to a specialist. There is a BMW & Mini specialist in Shrewsbury, but he can’t take the car for at least two weeks. More details in a specific thread on this.

So with Mrs. 83C sans car for the foreseeable, what to do? 

Yup, buy another car. This C5 1.8 16v came up for a fairly reasonable price locally, it’s low mileage, fairly tidy and only needs a few little jobs like a tyre replacing. Today’s job is getting it ready for service. 

[83C]

Yesterday was something of a learning curve. French cars have never really featured much on my list of cars owned, I can count 5 that I remember out of 150+ vehicles. I’ve also never had to replace pads or discs before on a French car. 

The C5 has a bit of a wobble under braking. The pads and discs have been very recently replaced, but for whatever reason the pads were replaced, then the discs. I don’t mind reusing a good disc with fresh pads, but pads that have started to bed in to an old set of discs? Nope, chuck and fit new. The front wheels had to come off anyway for new tyres, so £30 for a set of pads wasn’t a major spend or much extra hassle. 

Or so I thought…

First thing I tried to do was rotate the disc and measure any run out with a dial gauge, but the disc was jammed solid with the pads firmly engaged on the disc. The car had driven perfectly well with no brake binding, why had this suddenly seized? Then I looked at the back of the caliper and clocked the extra pipe and the spring mechanism on the back of the piston. 

(AS Upside-Downism Syndrome Strikes Again) 

This then, was my first encounter with handbrakes actuating the front caliper. Mad buggers, the French. It also necessitated a trip to Halfords for a set of big impact torx bits as my set only went up to T50 and the caliper carriers are held on with a pair of T55 (no, not the tank) fasteners. After finding a pair of chocks and also attaching the tow rope from the front of the C5 to the back of the Range Rover as a final safety against rolling away (my driveway slopes a bit) I gently released the handbrake. No more ‘seized’ disc. Dial gauge reckoned there was around 0.15mm run out, and it was an even rise and fall around the disc rather than any particular high spot. So off with the discs and clean the hub and disc mounting surface. Got both sides down to about 0.05mm which is fairly acceptable. 

New pads went in, along with all 4 wear sensors - yes, a wear sensor for each pad. French overkill.

There is still a bit of vibration under braking so definitely something else to look at, maybe a bush or two. A job for another day, as is the slightly raspy exhaust.

[Matty]

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jun/19/an-rac-call-out-ended-up-with-me-losing-my-beloved-rolls-royce

Pretty much standard fayre then 😬

[83C]

As Turkish mentioned in Snatch, for every action, there is an equal, and opposite reaction. Unlike Turkish, it’s not a mob of gun-toting pikeys that I have to deal with, it’s a French car being very French.

This morning the Mondeo had an almost clean MoT pass and has finally gone back to my sister.

This afternoon I collected a set of rear pads and discs to fit on the C5. 

Jack rear of car up, start to remove the caliper bolts, swear profusely:

Yes, that’s a sheared caliper bolt and the slot for the pad retaining pin has corroded away. I swept the pad anti-rattle shims and the pad cover up in a dustpan. I now need a new caliper, and I’d best order two in case the other side is equally fucked.

Fuck sakes.

[Zelandeth]

Handbrake on the front axle is due to the braking system at least on the Xantia was due to the braking system being dependent on engine power, so had to be able to operate in a way to safely stop the car from speed in the event of an engine or hydraulic system failure.  Not sure if the C5 uses a similar setup for the same reason - or if they just used the same calipers as they were already on the shelf.  That sounds like something PSA would do.  Heck, I found several random Xantia spares I had rolling around in the garage fitted a Mk I BX...I know the hydraulics for the suspension on a C5 are electrically powered, but I have to admit I've no idea on if there's a conventional master cylinder based braking system or not.

Sadly rear caliper bolts shearing on removal is a common issue.  The issue is dissimilar metal corrosion between the caliper and mounting point causing the caliper to be pushed outwards at an angle.  The bolts being loctited to hell and back doesn't help either.  You absolutely want to get some heat on them to get that to release though before trying to remove them.

[83C]

Unfortunately I don’t have access to heat in the concentrated quantities required. I do however have a very fine selection of pry bars, mole grips, cutting discs, grinders and hammers, and a will to use them. The offside caliper is scrap already, no point being delicate with it. Near side doesn’t look anywhere near as bad, but I’ve ordered a replacement anyway. Tomorrow’s job will be to get it ready for surgery, including soaking everything in diesel. 

[83C]

Near side caliper off, thankfully without any seized bolts. Offside top bolt out, bottom bolt will be meeting the angle grinder very soon. 

And this happened:

Fuck sakes. Best go and learn how to make brake pipes then.

Got both discs off, near side one was almost new, offside looks like this:

Reckon that might have been the cause of the brake juddering.

[artdjones]

19 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Handbrake on the front axle is due to the braking system at least on the Xantia was due to the braking system being dependent on engine power, so had to be able to operate in a way to safely stop the car from speed in the event of an engine or hydraulic system failure.  Not sure if the C5 uses a similar setup for the same reason - or if they just used the same calipers as they were already on the shelf.  That sounds like something PSA would do.  Heck, I found several random Xantia spares I had rolling around in the garage fitted a Mk I BX...I know the hydraulics for the suspension on a C5 are electrically powered, but I have to admit I've no idea on if there's a conventional master cylinder based braking system or not.

Sadly rear caliper bolts shearing on removal is a common issue.  The issue is dissimilar metal corrosion between the caliper and mounting point causing the caliper to be pushed outwards at an angle.  The bolts being loctited to hell and back doesn't help either.  You absolutely want to get some heat on them to get that to release though before trying to remove them.

They used the same calipers for convenience. The C5 has a conventional braking system using glycol fluid, with absolutely no connection to the suspension.

[83C]

PSA’s choice of rear caliper for the C5 is monumentally shit. Having to split the caliper to remove the disc is just nonsense, especially as they use a perfectly good sliding single pot caliper (handbrake weirdness aside) that allows the front discs and pads to be done in well under an hour without having to faff around bleeding the system. As it stands I’m now in for the rear brakes to the tune of a pair of calipers, a set of pads, discs, some 3/16th copper brake pipe and a bag of fittings, plus the usual consumables of brake cleaner/penetrating fluid/lubricants/brake fluid etc, not to mention the 3 hours of time that right now has the car with one caliper off, the other nearly off, both knackered brake pipes needing removal and everything in the wheel arch area still needing a damn good clean before reassembly begins. Not even looked at the total cost yet.

[dollywobbler]

I loved our C5 but it was an utter pig to work on. No easy jobs! So French.

[83C]

If it’s on, it’s gone:

Borrowed a friend’s trailer to go and move Mrs. 83C’s car from where the RAC took the car to, onwards to the garage that will hopefully sort it out. Can confirm L322s make great tow vehicles.

In C5 news the n/s is almost finished:

New brake pipe made, caliper mounting cleared of all the encrusted bits of corroded caliper (the other side is worse!) and all the new bits fitted. Just needs bleeding. Oh, and the whole o/s doing before that.

[83C]

Progress:

O/S hub after the remaining bolt holding the caliper on sheared rather than unwind or anything sensible like that. That white crusty stuff on the caliper mounting flange is a layer of corroded aluminium courtesy of the caliper. 

A session with the wire wheel in a drill made things better, if a little dusty:

*AS random picture orientation ‘feature’ strikes again…

It then took the best part of an hour to drill the remaining bit of bolt out, I ended up going in steps from 4.2mm to 4.5, 4.8, 5.0, 5.5, 6, 6.5 (sheared off), 7, 7.5, 8 and finally an 8.5 before running an M10 tap up the thread to clear any remnants. 

Assembly is far easier than disassembly so:

Just the brake pipe to make and fit, and the fun* of bleeding the brakes.

[83C]

Success, the C5 now has working brakes again courtesy of an old laptop with Lexia loaded on. Bleeding process is a bit long-winded but the fluid is pretty much all renewed, new discs and pads all round, new rear calipers and hard lines. 

The £600 car now stands me in at £1250 including the brakes, laptop and consumables, so clearly good* value for money. 

Watch out for the sale post in the next few weeks once Mrs. 83C’s Mini returns with a repair bill that dwarfs the C5’s total costs so far.

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, 83C said:

Success, the C5 now has working brakes again courtesy of an old laptop with Lexia loaded on. Bleeding process is a bit long-winded but the fluid is pretty much all renewed, new discs and pads all round, new rear calipers and hard lines. 

The £600 car now stands me in at £1250 including the brakes, laptop and consumables, so clearly good* value for money. 

Watch out for the sale post in the next few weeks once Mrs. 83C’s Mini returns with a repair bill that dwarfs the C5’s total costs so far.

Still decent value given what seems to be on the market these days!

Congratulations on getting Lexia working... getting that set up had to be one of the most long winded and counterintuitive bits of messing around with software I've done in the last 20 years.

[dollywobbler]

Oh great. I've just bought a cheap old laptop to chuck Lexia on myself, so I can actually speak to my Berlingo. Sounds like I'm in for fun.

 

 

[Zelandeth]

20 minutes ago, dollywobbler said:

Oh great. I've just bought a cheap old laptop to chuck Lexia on myself, so I can actually speak to my Berlingo. Sounds like I'm in for fun.

 

 

Keep in mind, this was about five years ago, so folks might have put together a less obnoxious way into it by now.

[busmansholiday]

On 06/06/2023 at 10:34, 83C said:

As a distraction from the RAC's continuing fuckwitticism

My renewal came through from them last week (mine includes the motorhome). Increase from £202 to £295 !!, so I rang them today and enquired why;

a, such a vast increase,

b, if I joined as a new member it was £181 for the same cover,

c, why it hadn't dropped below the latter after the 10 hours it took to get my Mrs home 100 miles back in February.

 

Off they went and came back...

Valued customer etc, how about £180 if you renew?

Yes I'll take that, but fuck me, what a piss take.

[83C]

3 hours ago, dollywobbler said:

Oh great. I've just bought a cheap old laptop to chuck Lexia on myself, so I can actually speak to my Berlingo. Sounds like I'm in for fun.

 

 

I took the easy option and bought a machine with DiagBox/Lexia all loaded and the cables bundled in ready to go - took a few minutes to work out how to use it but once plugged in it was fairly straightforward, helped along by watching a few of @richykitchy's videos. 

[83C]

Today I took the Arnage and the ZT to a local car show. Loads of cool and different cars there, it was good to talk to plenty of people pleased to see the ZT there as well. Photo dump: