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Rave's Motors - 12/4/19 ST170 Step 1: MOT Step 2: Profit


Rave

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stick a voltmeter across to check if the alt is working, the smart charge systems or the wiring to them seems to fail more offten then the battery or alt.

 

iirc if you disconnect the smart charge unit, start and hold the car about a certain rpm (2k i think) FOR 30 seconds

it returns it to a normal alternator system. 

 

you may want to do a bit off googling to check this tho.

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I run a smaller than recommended non calcium battery in my Ford Focus , 063 fitted in place of a  075 , and it works fine  , same happened to me the 075 went flat on me at work over its 3 day park up which I suspect was down to the boot light staying on  , so I slung in the new 063 from the Vauxshite I scrapped , which leaves me with a spare 063 and a 075 ..

 

the smart charge can be seen to be working on a dashboard voltmeter ..

 

I now have a set of jump leads ...........

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stick a voltmeter across to check if the alt is working, the smart charge systems or the wiring to them seems to fail more offten then the battery or alt.

 

iirc if you disconnect the smart charge unit, start and hold the car about a certain rpm (2k i think) FOR 30 seconds

it returns it to a normal alternator system. 

 

you may want to do a bit off googling to check this tho.

 

Cheers, the alternator's good though, I stuck a new regulator on it about two years ago when the old one died, and only done a few thousand miles since. This FTP was definitely due to the old battery being brown bread, I've had the voltmeter and drop tester on it and it's done for.

 

So TBH the only real point of my post other than to waffle on, which obviously I enjoy, was to see if a cheapo Lucas "Premium 3" is really a proper calcium battery, as it seems unlikely that I would have been sensible enough to acquire anything decent 10 years ago, though it cost about £70 IIRC, so it is possible.

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  • 6 months later...

Back to the ST170, then. It's been sat on my mate's drive untouched since I last prodded it shortly before breaking my arm last July. He had no fewer than three people in a week ring his doorbell offering to cart it away for scrap, as it was looking pretty sorry for itself, so he instructed me to get on with it. I've had the replacement water pump in a drawer for months. I needn't go into too much detail as the job is covered completely by this excellent youtube vid:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSSRR-0fdCI

 

post-20573-0-94591300-1554493886_thumb.jpg

 

Matey's driveway isn't ideal as it slopes so I used my ramps as chocks and shoved the wheel under the sill to catch it should it fall off the axle stand. I had to remove the mudflap to get the trolley jack onto the subframe, that's easy though, two screws.

 

post-20573-0-88574700-1554494104_thumb.jpg

 

The old pump was properly corroded in, had to twat it loose with a big spanner and a lump hammer, before hammering a screwdriver into the gap. It came off eventually though.

 

post-20573-0-54046600-1554494204_thumb.jpg

 

I'd expected a couple of pints of coolant at most to escape, but actually a good half a gallon came out.

 

post-20573-0-94688200-1554494294_thumb.jpg

 

This was my arrangement for dropping the engine once I'd undone the engine mount.

 

post-20573-0-86678800-1554494409_thumb.jpg

 

Only had to drop the engine this far to get the old pump out, though I had to drop it a smidge more to get the new one in.

 

post-20573-0-06583800-1554494542_thumb.jpg

 

Having gone to all that effort I was very relieved to find that the old water pump looked like that. The plastic impeller is just pressed over some knurling on the shaft, by the looks of things, and had come loose. Why on earth they didn't use splines I have no idea. I reckon it's the original judging by how well it was stuck in, so I suppose managing 100,000 miles isn't terrible. I thought I'd taken a pic of the new pump but it hasn't saved for some reason- it's got a solid metal impeller.

 

Anyway getting it back together was no harder than getting it apart, except for getting the belt back on, which was a bit of a pig with only a shortish 15mm spanner to move the tensioner.

 

Anyway, another pic that hasn't saved is one of the clocks with the temp gauge rock solid in the middle. Revving the engine didn't move it anywhere, so touch wood I've cured the overheating problem!  :-D Unfortunately the engine light has come on, it wasn't on before. I will have to stick my ELM327 on it to see what the score is there, I might have disturbed something. And while I was under the car I happened to notice that the radiator was wobbling about, it appears that the mounting bar that holds it in place underneath is just made of pressed steel tack welded together, and one of the welds has failed. Pretty annoying TBH. I guess I'll just try and weld it back together in situ, but that will mean carting all my welding gear over to my mate's place, which is not a trivial undertaking. But once that's done, and if I can get the EML off, it'll be MOT time.

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Good work! Was wondering what had become of this car just the other day.

 

Re the EML, if the car is pre July 2003 then it shouldn't fail the MOT for having the light on. Some garages don't seem aware of this change, which came in September 2018 iirc.

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Re the EML, if the car is pre July 2003 then it shouldn't fail the MOT for having the light on. Some garages don't seem aware of this change, which came in September 2018 iirc.

 

I checked and...registered July 31st 2003  :mad: . However the good news is that the ELM327 and Torque Lite revealed that the fault was P1518- inlet manifold runner error or something similar, and I now remember that it's thrown that one before. A quick google reveals that you can sometimes sort it out just by reattaching the return spring on the control unit, but clearing the error put the EML out and it didn't come back on, so I'll worry about that another time.

 

Anyway today was the day I finally dragged all my gear and my own lazy arse over to attempt the welding on the radiator support bar. I'd already decided to try and do it in situ as removing the entire bar looked like a pain in the arse, and removing the top section for slightly better access looked like a recipe for cocking up the alignment so it wouldn't bolt back up. So I stuck the car back on the axle stand as for the water pump job, and then used the jack to lever the bar into position, which is easier said than done, as you have to pop out from under the car to push a rubber grommet on top of the radiator into its locating hole before it'll go all the way up. Anyway that achieved, I spent 15 minutes getting my welder and big bottle of gas out of the car, unraveled and hooked up, which was a bit nerve wracking as I've not used the gas despite buying it 6 months ago. Luckily the regulator went on, didn't leak, showed 100 bar pressure, and shot gas out when I pulled the trigger- in fact I had to turn it down a bit. So under the car and, after having been bopped on the nose a few times by my helmet, discovered I couldn't strike the arc. I now realize that that was probably because I had the return wire clipped to the other piece of the bar from the one I was poking the wire into, but in any case I got wrench and long extension bar out and removed the top section so I could clean it up with a flap wheel. That revealed that there were originally 3 tack welds holding it together, so I guess I'm probably just unlucky that they all failed. Anyway cleaned up, back under the car, bolted the top bit back on, realigned the other piece with the jack, and this time I managed to get weld absolutely everywhere except in the gap between the two pieces. Giving it a good wobble when it had cooled a bit revealed that I had at least managed to tack them together, so I unbolted the top section a second time in order to get a little more space to work. I eventually succeeded in throwing enough metal all over the shop that I was reasonably confident that it would hold together. None of this was made any easier by the fact it was a dull day and you can't see much at all through the autodimming helmet even undimmed when under the car. Nor was I helped by that fact that the welding gauntlets I thought were with the rest of my gear are actually at my other mate's house where I've been wearing them while cutting up bits of angle steel, so I was using my leather apron wrapped around my hand and the torch. By the end my neck muscles had pretty much been worked to failure, I felt very odd when I finally stood up. They got a bit sore doing the water pump job, but the effort of holding up my oversized bonce and an autodimming helmet was clearly too much.

 

So this was the final result, anyway:

 

post-20573-0-54330500-1555103713_thumb.jpg

 

Sprayed some cold galv spray and protection wax on it as best I could, then bolted it back on. By that point I was way too cold and tired to give the car a wash or pump up the tyres, but I'll do that on Monday morning before I take it for its MOT  :-) .

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post-20573-0-90393900-1555346109_thumb.png

 

Wahey!

 

The rust referred to is just surface rust on the rear suspension arms and the front springs, the body's in good nick AFAIK. Tester reckoned I could probably get another year out of the CV boot by unclipping it, sticking some gaffer tape under the clip, and doing it back up. He also pointed out a nail in the rear tyre (a shit looking Wanli) which I will try and fix with one of the rubber worm kits (see Post #19 in this thread). I drove out of the MOT station, parked up, and taxed it for a mere £315 for the year.

 

So now of course I'm wondering what it's worth, as the plan was always to flip it for a profit, just in more like 18 days rather than 18 months...

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