Zel's Motoring Adventures...Volvo, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & A Sinclair C5 - Updated 13/11.

[Zelandeth]

Not much to report today.  Had to take my husband to a hospital appointment this morning, so have confirmed that cold starting doesn't seem to be an issue for the Caddy, even at -4C that we had today.  Despite the rather old looking Lion battery, which I'd generally trust about as far as I can throw it.

Think 18 months is the best I've ever got out of one of them before.  

This temperature also meant I was surprised to find that for the first time since I think 2009, I have a car with a full compliment of working rear window defroster elements!

Luxury!

Something which *did* become apparent during that trip though was that the wiper blades were past it.  Cleared the screen okay, but unless it was absolutely saturated wanted to jump, skip, judder and generally make a nuisance of themselves.  I did clean them as they didn't look all that old, did help but not by much.  So a new set went on.

Glad to report for our Mr. Wobbler that while he may not approve of the rear wiper setup, the front ones pass the Triangle of Doom Test, with decent overlap.

Also the new blades have restored calm to the cabin when driving in the persistent drizzle we've had all afternoon.

[Zelandeth]

Cleaning time!  Interior only as I'm currently without a pressure washer - and they've literally just driven past our house and dumped about five tonnes of salt on each of the roads in our neighborhood so it would be pretty pointless.

Looking forward to dealing with the likes of this though...

Plus there's about three quarters of a forest worth of leaves in the windscreen scuttle.

Interior looks a bit better for a bit of a scrub though.  

The seats really want to come out so I can give the carpets a proper scrub, and the seats would really benefit from a wet clean themselves too.

I did note that both front footwells are a bit damp - I'm not reading too far into that though until I've cleared out the scuttle drains as given the amount of organic matter under there they're almost definitely clogged up.  The headlining would also benefit from a deep clean - that will need to come out to deal with the rust at the base of the window over the cab anyway so those things will probably happen at the same time.

Only other item of note done today was getting the fuel filter and the feed lines attached to it replaced.

Think I'm going to go back and do the ones on the return too, just didn't have enough hose clamps to go round today (I despise those spring type ones with a passion - especially the ones VW use as they have really tiny tabs on so are nigh on impossible to get hold of if you don't have the proper tool).  Given I was able to pull the one on the feed side straight off, the hose had obviously been squashed enough under the hose clip that it was no longer doing anything.

One of the O-rings on the return line stub was cracked, so definitely think this was due changing.

Hopefully this will put a stop to air being pulled into the fuel system.  Time will tell I guess.

 

[Zelandeth]

Having run out of daylight yesterday today's quick task was oil & filter change.

Set the oil draining, then realised something...the Caddy is modern enough to have one of these strange plastic caps over the oil filter.

...Which I've never had to deal with before.  After wasting half an hour trying to get it unscrewed without the right tools I gave up and went round to Halfords and grabbed one of these.

Holy hell that was tight.  I wound up basically hanging my bodyweight off the thing before it eventually started to very slowly come loose.

I then made a horrible mess and spilled oil everywhere when lifting the old filter out.  

New one in - which helpfully has the top marked as I didn't realise they weren't symmetrical until after I'd put the old one down and lost track of the rotation.

New filter also comes with new O-rings for both the cap itself and the feed tube assembly which drops down through the middle of the filter.  I made a definite point of lubricating the outer seal with fresh engine oil before reassembling.  Tightening it precisely as much as necessary to snug the seal up and a smidge more.  Hopefully I won't have such a fight to get the cap off next time round.

The old oil smelled quite strongly of diesel and seemed quite watery (it is 5W40 though so not all that thick anyway), which isn't a huge surprise given the van was chucking clouds of unburned fuel out the back on the overrun because of that vacuum leak I found a couple of days back.  By no means the worst I've seen, but it was definitely ready for a change.

New set of floor mats have also been thrown into the cabin to tidy the floors up a bit.  

I may get a set of properly shaped ones ordered at some point, but these at least seem to stay put.  The rubber ones that were in there before had virtually no grip on the carpet and I'd nearly died getting into the driver's seat about half a dozen times because of that, so these are an improvement in that department.

Hard to believe I've done just over 500 miles in this thing already!  Still thoroughly enjoying driving it too.  

[Daviemck2006]

It's quite amazing that a vw caddy is a surprisingly decent drive. I've never driven one of your age Zel, but I've owned a 2006 2.0tdi which was a rust bucket but a lovely drive, and my current 2014 1.6 TDI maxi, which although being really comfortable and an easy drive could be doing with a few more horses. Its adequate for just myself in it, but I would think fully loaded or towing would show up its lack of horses. My bosses 2012 1.6tdi seems far more responsive than mine, they have the exact same engine code and power, so I do wonder sometimes if his has been remapped.

Sent from my SM-T585 using Tapatalk

[Zelandeth]

On 1/10/2022 at 5:41 PM, Daviemck2006 said:

It's quite amazing that a vw caddy is a surprisingly decent drive. I've never driven one of your age Zel, but I've owned a 2006 2.0tdi which was a rust bucket but a lovely drive, and my current 2014 1.6 TDI maxi, which although being really comfortable and an easy drive could be doing with a few more horses. Its adequate for just myself in it, but I would think fully loaded or towing would show up its lack of horses. My bosses 2012 1.6tdi seems far more responsive than mine, they have the exact same engine code and power, so I do wonder sometimes if his has been remapped.

Sent from my SM-T585 using Tapatalk
 

This one really isn't fast, but the way it delivers the power it does have always makes it feel eager, if that makes any sort of sense.  A lot is how it just feels on the road, the steering is nicely weighted and has decent road feel, and it's just far more chuckable than you'd expect.

-- -- --

This afternoon I decided to have a look at the key to see if I could do anything to tidy it up.  I also wanted to get into it to confirm if it had an immobiliser chip in or not so I knew which type of spare to order.  Currently I only have the one key and that's always a recipe for stress in my mind.

The key looked like this...which is why I was determined to try to tidy it up a bit.

The fact that the tape was decomposing and sticking to every bit of pocket lint (or in this house, the omnipresent dog hair) was also rendering this high on my to do list.

Like a complete and utter idiot I didn't wear gloves while pulling this to bits...and of course the mixture of electrical tape and duct tape had both well and truly started to decompose into the stickiest goo known to human kind.  Said goo is now all over my hands, desk, keyboard, mouse, phone, probably in my hair - and all over everything within about a 500 metre radius.  Rookie mistake.

Oddly when I pulled it apart I couldn't see anything wrong...all three bits of the assembly click together firmly, and the flexible membrane on the side with the remote buttons on isn't split.

Testing the two CR2016 cells showed they were both fine, so I just reassembled everything after a good clean.  Oh, and yes it appears the van does have an immobiliser.

Sure enough, the light on the key did flash when buttons were pressed...so I went out and walked through the key synchronisation routine, resulting in...

I'll take that as a win!

Though I did notice this mess in the engine bay when doing a check for oil leaks following the change yesterday...

Which is moderately concerning.  I know this van did at one point have an aftermarket alarm (which doesn't appear to function), so I wonder if this was a result of a refusal to shut up one time to often - the loom tape does make it look different to the main vehicle loom, which is why my first thought was alarm.  I will definitely be checking to ensure there's not power there shortly.

 

[Zelandeth]

A closer look at that wiring mess reveals the tail is attached to the aftermarket alarm sounder...so that's definitely thoroughly dead then.  Good thing I erred on the side of "I don't think so" when asked by the insurance company if it had an alarm.  I'll pull that out then and see if I can find the other end of this to at least confirm that there's no power going to it.

Yay, I get to stand on my head under a dashboard again!

On the running theme of seeing if I can get vehicle systems back up and running I made a run over to Formula 1 in Newport Pagnell so this could happen.

While the AC system was totally flat when I got the van, I had noted that both service caps were loose, plus the condenser looks way newer than 20 years and 100K miles...have to wonder if a new one was fitted at some point and they just never bothered gassing it up?  I still have a bottle with some dregs of dry nitrogen from goodness only knows how many years ago, which in its last gasp shoved around 40psi into this system a few days ago.  Checking this morning showed the pressure hadn't visibly dropped.  Having something in there had also allowed me to check that the compressor clutch worked and the compressor ran - albeit only for a couple of seconds as I had no idea if there was any oil left in the system.

It was a tense 30 minutes while the system ran the vacuum decay test (which basically is a leak check to see whether any air leaks back into it) was carried out - zero decay reported.  Which says the system should hopefully be gas tight.  It also shows it's reasonably dry (as water boiling off from the drier core etc would result in a *small* bit of vacuum decay).

Machine was happy with all of the tests and charged properly.  Real test was going to be starting up, pushing the button and seeing what happened.

I should really have had a camera pointing at the service gauges to video it, but suffice to say they behaved exactly as expected.  It's a bit hard to tell you'd think when it's all of 6C outside, but the system was definitely working.  Suction line definitely got cold and there was heat quickly apparent on the liquid line.  Definitely colder than ambient air coming out the vents too... exactly what we were after.  No nasty noises from the compressor (that I can hear over the rattle of an SDi idling next to it anyway... though I'd by lying if I didn't admit it's a lot more refined than an XUD).

Having working AC should really help me deal with the bit of damp in the cabin.  Basically we'll run the heater at "as warm as I can deal with" on recirc with the AC on for a while and see if that helps.  As the air con dehumidifies the air passing through it, that will help actively pull water out of the cabin.

Next significant jobs in mind:

[] Exterior clean.

[] Dismantle and clean EGR system as it sure it's thoroughly sooted up.  Especially given I've no idea how long that vacuum leak had been playing havoc with things.  Can't see any obvious signs of it having been apart before, so it and the intake pipework will be well due a clean if that's the case.

[] Paint front bumper so it looks slightly less scruffy.

Longer term I have an idea in mind regarding the paintwork as a whole...open to inspiration that others might have too though.  I'm already finding myself really quite attached to this little van so I'm going to try to make a reasonably tidy job of things.  The rust around the window over the cab will be getting sorted and we'll see what we can do for the offside rear quarter too before the aforementioned larger scale paint job too.

What colour do *you* think she should be painted?

[PhilA]

Hopefully the aircon dumps condensate into an area that's not all blocked with leaves...

[Zelandeth]

7 hours ago, PhilA said:

Hopefully the aircon dumps condensate into an area that's not all blocked with leaves...

It *should* do, the heater box is on the opposite side of a pollen filter at least.

[Zelandeth]

Ten minute job for this evening between running around like a headless chicken all afternoon and starting to prep dinner.  Also had my booster jab earlier today and am already starting to feel rough.  Main plan for this weekend is to actually clean the Mercedes so it can be dropped off with the new owner.  Had really wanted to do that during the week, but time and weather kept getting in the way.  Will really be happy once we get back to having daylight in the evenings again.

Today I fixed...

The backlighting for the heater controls on the Caddy.  Mainly because it was bugging the hell out of my OCD.  Just the one lamp for all that lot and a bunch of light pipes.

(Some of which are on the faceplate).

This also allowed me to get a look at what's broken regarding the temperature control cable.

Pretty simple actually.

There should be a metal clip where I've circled to grip the cable sheath (like on the red and white cables around 4 o'clock in the above photo), however the bit of plastic the clip should attach to has cracked.

Basically everything to the right of the red line in this photo has broken off.

This is apparently a well known weak point in this setup.  A quick scan around online shows replacement units pretty readily available for less than £50, so I'm not going to invest too much time into trying to repair this one, especially as the tabs which are meant to secure it to the dash are also broken on 3/4 corners.  The question will be whether I go for a used OEM one (which we know has a design weakness) or an aftermarket one which may be made of cheese. 

My instinct is to get an original one which isn't yet broken and to add a bit of reinforcement to the bit that always breaks off.

The *tricky* bit is going to be figuring out whether I can transfer the AC specific bits to a non-AC baseplate (the facia just clips on/off so that's not a problem) as the vast majority of them are from non-AC cars.  Hmm...some more research may be needed.

Anyhow...meant I could finally get a proper dash at night photo (which I'll stick up in the relevant thread too in a sec).

Camera makes it look far brighter and less green as usual. 

Only lit thing not currently working is the cigarette lighter - which of course I noticed approximately ten minutes *after* packing up for the day.  

One oversight on the part of the company who did the wheelchair conversion I feel is that they didn't provide a handle with which to close the rear door from inside.  In the normal van configuration this would be pretty irrelevant, but I think getting into the rear seats is far easier from the back than trying to contort yourself through the front doors (having to climb UP into the back as well as around the seats is tricky).  So it would be nice to be able to shut the rear door from inside without having to pull it shut by the edge and try to get your hand out the way quick enough to not shut it in the door.  Will need to have a rummage through my stash of random crap and see if I can find a handle which wouldn't look horribly out of place.

[mat_the_cat]

This must be the only occasion when "Just needs a regas" actually turned out to be true!

Enjoying the work you're doing to this.

[Zelandeth]

Absolutely bugger all to show for today as the vaccine booster is kicking my ass.  Which sucks as there are a LOT of things I need to get done this weekend both car related and otherwise...and I've already lost a day already.

Quite a few folks have suggested that if I were looking at doing a respray on the Caddy to stick with the original colour.  It is a nice clean looking colour, but let's face it... I'm really not a "resale silver" sort of person.  There is far too much grey in the world and I'm a fan of colour.

A few of you may already have figured out where I'm going with this given there's quite a bit of 6N Polo in the Caddy.  I reckon that one of the best - and most unexpected from a generally very restrained company like VW - ideas that came out of Wolfsburg in the mid 1990s was the Polo Harlequin.

A few thousand Polos and a handful of Golfs got the treatment, but it never (officially) saw use on any other models.  Not one to be deterred, I'd like to make a Caddy Harlequin.

This does require a little bit of thought though...as all the Polos and Golfs this was done to at the factory were 5-door cars...and my van doesn't have a cargo door on either side.  

I reckon having the base colour used on the whole rear quarter would be too much of one colour.  So the rear door colour would be used for the rear quarter in my case.  This then presents a new problem...on the Polo the rear doors and rear bumper were the same colour.  Not a problem there as there's a strip of metal running from the rear of the sill, up around the wheel arch then up to the roof line providing a contrasting colour to separate them.  That strip essentially doesn't exist here so I'd end up with the rear bumper blending into the rear quarter.  

My proposed solution is to swap the colour of the rear bumper.  Switching the green out for blue.  Pondered yellow too, but that would then match the front...and matching is precisely what this is NOT about.  It is supposed to be a glorious mess.

I threw this together as a really, really quick proof of concept to get my thoughts down on paper so to speak.

Obviously as this is just a quick and dirty photo edit of a silver van, the actual colours would be WAY more vibrant in reality.

Hard to see there, but the rear doors will be yellow.  Wheels would obviously be tidied up at the same time.

For those who aren't familiar with the Harlequin, here's a factory example - so these are what the colours would actually be, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Precisely how we'd do this will remain to be seen...hoping to find a bonnet the right colour as this one has a couple of dents in, doors may be easier to find than paint.  The sills, roof and sides though it may make more sense to have wrapped than to respray it... though I'll probably look for input from someone who actually does this stuff professionally before anything actually happens.  I'm going to try to do as good a job of this as I reasonably can.

Welcome thoughts, alternative colour placements etc.  Sadly getting hold of the correct seat material and blue steering wheel/gear lever of the Harlequin models are not likely to happen.

Only other achievement for the day was gambling on a £12 used heater control panel on eBay - it LOOKS like the AC/recirc button assembly just screws on the bottom, so I'm hoping I can swap that bit over...if not I'm not going to lose sleep over £12.

[3VOM]

The colour of the car goes off the sill IIRC, so don't change that and DVLA stay happy.

[Zelandeth]

35 minutes ago, 3VOM said:

The colour of the car goes off the sill IIRC, so don't change that and DVLA stay happy.

Don't really have an issue with changing that, I did query it with my insurer when I was setting things up as the idea was in my head since before I'd even collected the van and they didn't have any issue with it.  Given they're a van specialist they're used to companies switching things like that, applying wraps etc.  The only thing they said they would want more detail on would be if we were getting involved in fancy, very expensive finishes like flip paint, holographic wraps or matt paintwork.  

[mk2_craig]

I think it’s a great idea. 
 

[dave j]

I saw this one a few years ago and loved it!

[Marm Toastsmith]

I wanted to paint it green in my ownership. But not enough to actually do it.

I like the harlequin idea but I'm inclined to think that the most interesting thing to do to any old VW is leave it standard - Modified Caddys are probably more common than unmessedaboutwith ones these days, and this one is even of a rarity with the windows and etc.

Good work on the under-bonnet improvements. Glad it found a good home!

[Zelandeth]

Didn't have a huge amount of energy available today as I'm still feeling like death, nevertheless I was determined to get a few things done.

First up was getting the interior of the S123 back into a presentable state.  Calling it clean would be overselling it, but it's a hell of a lot better and I'm not embarrassed by it any more.  Sadly attempts to find a working jetwash to do something about the outside were fruitless.

It's no longer 87% dog hair by volume at least.

 

Moving onto the Caddy it was time to have a look at the EGR valve to get an idea of how funked up the system was.

My the standards of most modern cars it's thankfully pretty easy to get to.

Wasn't actually nearly as bad as I expected to be honest.  Yes it's pretty disgusting, but I'm not unused to seeing these choked solid.

Probably about 0.5mm worth of caked on gunk the whole way round.

The other side of the valve is more disgusting as it's sticky, tarry crap as the PCV system feeds into the EGR circuit right next to the valve.  I did dig an appreciable amount of gunge out of the valve body, but it definitely wasn't totally choked nor seemed to be sticky.

Reassembled everything...and absolutely no difference.  Very slightly surging engine speed still there (it does exactly the same at any engine speed I found, regularly once a second), along with excessive smoke on light throttle.

Definitely have vacuum at the EGR valve, and you can hear it physically snap shut if you pull the vacuum line off.  It however doesn't have any noticeable effect on the running of the engine either way.

Something I did notice is that when this behaviour is present, the rev counter also behaves slightly erratically, randomly twitching upwards from the actual engine speed - and it seems to do it more when on the throttle than off.

Then out of nowhere, the engine completely smooths out.  The note deepens (because the flap on the intake, which I assume works in partnership with the EGR valve is now fully open), and the diesel clatter becomes a little sharper, so something has obviously changed - I'm guessing with the injection timing.  Checking the EGR at that point shows there's no vacuum present, so the ECU isn't calling for the EGR system to be in operation.  It's also noteworthy that after this point when things decide to behave that the rev counter twitching also stops.

So I don't think the EGR valve is the cause of this issue...bit it's definitely *involved* in it.  Think the next step really will be to find someone locally with VCDS and get a look at some real-time data.  Everything being fly-by-wire here makes guessing pretty pointless... imagine on a newer car we'd have a check engine light illuminated - but this car doesn't have one!

The rev counter misbehaving being clearly tied into it is making me think camshaft/crankshaft position sensors?  Or however else the ECU gets the engine speed/position data...makes sense though if there's a disparity between the requested and reported engine speed, it would throw the fuelling all to hell.

Think it's likely been like this for a while so I'm not worried about it really, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to try to get to the bottom of it.  Especially as the van drives so much nicer when this fault is staying out of the way.

We got any SDi experts on here?

Oh...and I've ordered a replacement engine cover.  Looks quick and easy to fit/remove unlike many, so I'm not adverse to its being there.  

Something which may well be getting changed in the not too distant future - which is a shame as they're only a year old - is the tyres.  I had to brake moderately hard to avoid a suicidal pigeon this afternoon and discovered that these tyres really aren't great on a cold, damp road.  Also the front ones have way more grip than the rears...great, aside from when all four wheels lock up, then the front regains grip well before the rear - which by then has started to try to overtake the front.  It was a moderately firm braking manoeuvre, but I didn't expect quite *that* degree of upset.  Even the big van would have been okay.  

Methinks some Uniroyal rubber may be in the future.  I will get the tracking checked in the meantime though - not least because the steering wheel is slightly off straight and means I can't see about 2/3rds of the warning lights on the dash when driving straight ahead.  Bit of a daft design there from VW.  Likewise the switchgear most of which is hidden behind the steering wheel.

[MorrisItalSLX]

6 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Methinks some Uniroyal rubber may be in the future.

Sounds like a good excuse to reinstate the alloys it once had.

[Zelandeth]

This surging behaviour seriously has me intrigued.  Managed to catch it doing it again today and got a better video properly catching it.

Which clearly shows how it's essentially a regular "blip" that happens irrespective of the engine speed - and that during this behaviour she chucks out a shedload of smoke.  

You can always *smell* that something is off when it's doing this, the smell from the exhaust lingers for ages.  If you're in a car following it, it makes your eyes water apparently.

Physically disabling the EGR valve by removing and plugging the vacuum line to the actuator has no effect.  I know the valve is moving as you can clearly hear it snap open or closed - and it sealed well enough that carb cleaner wasn't even seeping through the orifice while I was cleaning it yesterday.  So I think the valve itself is innocent.

However if I unplug the electrical connection to the solenoid valve which controls said valve, the problem completely goes away.  Idle immediately smooths out perfectly (it sounds to me like the injection timing or duration also changes as the engine note itself does change too), you hear the throttle valve in the intake snap fully open, and the throttle response becomes perfectly smooth through the whole rev range - and we see absolutely zero smoke aside from the expected tiny bit of black if you absolutely boot it, and that's not enough to be visible in the headlights of a following car.   Also notable that any noticeable smell completely vanishes too...

Now I'm sure unplugging that would trigger an engine management light if I had one and I'm sure will have logged a fault code, and disabling an emission control device like this is illegal, so it's not a permanent fix...however it provides me with useful data to add to my diagnostic process and *definitely* puts the van in a less polluting state while I get to the bottom of the root cause.  You've see the cloud if you've watched the video above!

I need to make my evening reading today working out exactly what the sequence of operation is for the various bits of the emission control system on this engine and how the various parts interact with each other.  I get the impression that understanding how that lot works will shed some light on what might be happening.  

Decided that the Caddy could have a day off as errand running workhorse.

Which went absolutely fine until I heard a suspicious "ding" at one point and saw something disappearing into oblivion behind me.

Ah.  That's sub optimal.  The air filter element was still present, wedged between the chassis and suspension arm thankfully (as they're surprisingly expensive), however the cover plate and wing nut are long gone.  Even if I could spot it, as with so much of MK there's nowhere safe to pull over to retrieve it safely as it's on a 70mph dual carriageway with no pedestrian provision even vaguely nearby.  So I'll need to find a replacement.  Thankfully it's a bit of standard Steyr-Puch engine rather than a bespoke bit of Invacar so shouldn't be difficult to track one down, even if it may mean getting a whole new air cleaner assembly.

Guess we need to add "check air filter element retaining wing nut is tight" to the weekly checklist!

[LightBulbFun]

47 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Decided that the Caddy could have a day off as errand running workhorse.

Which went absolutely fine until I heard a suspicious "ding" at one point and saw something disappearing into oblivion behind me.

Ah.  That's sub optimal.  The air filter element was still present, wedged between the chassis and suspension arm thankfully (as they're surprisingly expensive), however the cover plate and wing nut are long gone.  Even if I could spot it, as with so much of MK there's nowhere safe to pull over to retrieve it safely as it's on a 70mph dual carriageway with no pedestrian provision even vaguely nearby.  So I'll need to find a replacement.  Thankfully it's a bit of standard Steyr-Puch engine rather than a bespoke bit of Invacar so shouldn't be difficult to track one down, even if it may mean getting a whole new air cleaner assembly.

Guess we need to add "check air filter element retaining wing nut is tight" to the weekly checklist!

nice to see TPA out and about  

its a shame bout the air filter assembly disassembling itself! 

that air filter housing/assembly still a curiosity for me, as you probably notice yours is much shorter then any other, I do wonder did someone cut an existing one down for some reason or did it come from the factory like that and if so whats the deal with it being so short? is it a later replacement part? I wonder

but I have never seen one like yours, every other Steyr puch engined vehicle I have seen has had a full length one like on REV  

[mercedade]

17 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

 

Now I'm sure unplugging that would trigger an engine management light if I had one and I'm sure will have logged a fault code, and disabling an emission control device like this is illegal, so it's not a permanent fix...however it provides me with useful data to add to my diagnostic process and *definitely* puts the van in a less polluting state while I get to the bottom of the root cause.  You've see the cloud if you've watched the video above!

 

My first thought when watching the video was "is that going to stop?", which brought me on to my second thought, which was that if the jumps in revs weren't so definitively stepped, I'd be wondering if my diesel van was suddenly drinking all the oil in my sump and about to embark on a death-spiral of runaway. And then I saw how blue the smoke looked in the video.

So are you sure it's not eating oil?

Obviously that does nothing to explain the stepping behaviour, which definitely sounds electrically controlled, but in case that's food for thought.

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, mercedade said:

My first thought when watching the video was "is that going to stop?", which brought me on to my second thought, which was that if the jumps in revs weren't so definitively stepped, I'd be wondering if my diesel van was suddenly drinking all the oil in my sump and about to embark on a death-spiral of runaway. And then I saw how blue the smoke looked in the video.

So are you sure it's not eating oil?

Obviously that does nothing to explain the stepping behaviour, which definitely sounds electrically controlled, but in case that's food for thought.

Doesn't seem to be, level certainly hasn't moved visibly since I changed it, which is admittedly only a few hundred miles ago.  Thing is when it's not doing that there's absolutely zip in the way of smoke, irrespective of engine speed.  Also it smells much more of fuel than burned engine oil.

Think the video makes it look more blue than it really is too, was nearly dark when I recorded that.

[Zelandeth]

Today's automotive task: 

Get rid of this bodgery.

This is a close up of the broken bit of plastic on the back of the heater control assembly.

Which SHOULD look like this.

Thankfully as I expected the base units are identical, just mine has a few extra bits on being from an AC equipped car.

Mine:

New (used) one:

Underneath:

These (plus the white plastic lamp cover I later realised) are what need to be transferred over - and the faceplate obviously.

The greenish plastic thing in the middle is the light pipe which illuminates the indicators in the AC/Recirc buttons green when the headlights are on and the controls are off.

It needs to sit in front of the main light pipe assembly, but thankfully that unclips easily enough.

The one on the right illuminates the legends on the aforementioned buttons...and getting that sucker into position here is a royal faff, especially as you're acutely aware of what a tiny, fragile bit of plastic it is.

Really glad I had the sense to photograph the order these sat in before pulling anything apart.

This is what the top of the switch assembly looks like.

Whole new unit back together now with my AC specific bits added.

I initially didn't realise that the white lamp housing is slightly different, as the AC specific one is slightly shorter to allow it to fit over the additional light pipes.

The part numbers are different, confirming I wasn't just being daft.

AC one:

Non-AC one:

Though if you're doing this job you've likely got a complete but broken assembly in front of you anyway, so really not an issue. If robbing bits for an AC conversion though worth knowing you do need it.

After a small amount of swearing at cables (they are *precisely* as long as they *need* to be).  I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's a large part of how that bit got snapped in the first place.  Wouldn't be hard to put a load of strain on there when installing a stereo or routing any wiring behind the dash.

While I was in there I pulled the cigarette lighter out to replace the failed lamp in that.

That has to be one of the most frustratingly difficult to access lamp holders I have ever come across.  I did eventually though manage to extract and replace the lamp.  Result being (finally) all of the dash illumination working.

Albeit with a moderately annoying amount of light leakage from the vicinity of the cigarette lighter.  It really needs some assistance in the light-tightness department.

Next interior target will be the offside outer heater vent which is missing a large chunk of itself.

Which I have a suspicion will end up coming from the same breakers I just got the heater control panel from.  I'll probably do the headlight control panel too as it's not securely fitted, I'm assuming because a mounting tab has broken or something like that behind it.  The little storage cubby for documents under the dash being screwed shut with self-tappers may make it onto the list too as I can't unsee that now!

Small steps, but nice to have fully working heater controls again without needing a cable sticking out under the dash.  For the sake of £12 of parts and maybe an hour of time, hard to say no really.

[Crackers]

21 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

they are *precisely* as long as they *need* to be

Something that's been doing the rounds at work recently, as it happens.

The cable for one of our components is exactly the length for its fully-seated position, but makes assembly a pain in the backside for the guys on the line. On the flipside, when you add length to a cable in a confined space, you've got to make sure the slack has somewhere to go without getting trapped or fouling other parts.

[Zelandeth]

Today was frustrating.  I wanted to give the outside of the Merc a bit of a scrub up before it's off to a new home on Friday.  At the end of last week I picked up another secondhand pressure washer to replace the one which went "pop" just before Christmas.  Having not used this stuff for a while it took me forever to find all the associated bits and pieces. 

Then my hosepipe burst...there went another 3/4 of an hour while I picked up a replacement and put the reel together.

At this point it became immediately apparent we had a problem.

That water should be inside the pressure washer.

This is not a small leak.

It literally was spraying out of the casing in several places.  A bit of investigation showed we have a cracked pump housing on the output stub.

I reckon given there was a chunk missing out of the end of the threads that it had been dropped/chucked (bearing in mind it was destined for the bin when the lance got broken) and landed on that outlet.

Game over.

I've run out of patience with this problem and cheap plastic domestic washers packing in after a year or two.  Not the cheapest one I could find by a long shot, but a relatively cheap petrol one has now been ordered.  Reviews all seem to suggest that provided that you are aware that you're buying a budget machine and accept that you are going to have to deal with some foibles now and then it's a decent bet.  We'll see when it gets here I guess.  Had nearly £100 of gift vouchers in my Amazon account, some of which had been there for quite a while so that made it quite a bit cheaper too.  All other things aside, having 30 metres of hose to work with and an onboard hose reel will be a huge hassle saver at the very least.

Sadly does mean I'm either going to need to find a working jetwash tomorrow or hand the car over filthy.  Again.  Not ideal, but that's just how things go sometimes.

In other news, this happened on the way to a hospital appointment this morning.  On the M1 at the time so you'll have to make do with a photo taken by my other half at my request.

Here's to many more miles hopefully.

[Zelandeth]

Finally managed to find one working jet wash.  It's the most horribly rushed, patchy job in the history of self-service car washes, but the car looks a lot better.  At least I've got most of the moss out of the gutters and window seals...

Car rewarded me for this by blowing one of the rear indicator bulbs.  Of course the last of which I fitted last week...so I nicked one from the offside repeater on the van as it won't be going anywhere further than across the street until the salt is gone.

Quite a bit of it out there just now.  This roof corner was silver this morning!

TPA obviously won't be doing much until after this cold snap has moved on.  Hasn't stopped me from finally getting a replacement key ring for the one I somehow lost back around the start of the pandemic.

Also great fun for messing with people's heads at classic car shows.

I really need to ask a few folks if they have spare air cleaner bits floating around.  In the meantime a solution has been found to keep the intake clean using random bits and pieces that were floating around the garage.

That doesn't look *at all* ridiculous, does it...

It'll only be there until I source a replacement filter retaining plate for the proper housing.   Good for at least an extra 5bhp...

...Or maybe not, given I could neither hear nor feel any difference to normal with the filter open.  Not really surprising given what a small engine it is.

With a bit of luck the Mercedes will be off to a new home tomorrow afternoon.

[LightBulbFun]

16 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

I really need to ask a few folks if they have spare air cleaner bits floating around.  In the meantime a solution has been found to keep the intake clean using random bits and pieces that were floating around the garage.

That doesn't look *at all* ridiculous, does it...

It'll only be there until I source a replacement filter retaining plate for the proper housing.   Good for at least an extra 5bhp...

...Or maybe not, given I could neither hear nor feel any difference to normal with the filter open.  Not really surprising given what a small engine it is.

With a bit of luck the Mercedes will be off to a new home tomorrow afternoon.

LOL! somewhere theres a table lamp missing its lamp shade now!

about as incongruous as the clad in bright metallic red plastic horn currently fitted to REV  

 

curiously AC did change about the positioning of the air filter with regards to the standard steyr puch engine layout 

Prototype Model 70's and every other Steyr puch engined vehicle out there has the air filter pointing to the right, as seen here on AC Model 70 Prototype number 9

but all production Model 70's I have seen have the air filter pointing to the left, I have not seen any other Steyr puch engined vehicle that is configured like that AFAIK

have to wonder why they did it, was there a technical reason behind it, or was it just done to make accessing the air filter element a bit easier?

 

BTW excuse me if I have missed if you have mentioned it already, but is the Merc staying in the fold or is it onto pastures new like the jag?  

[Zelandeth]

56 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

LOL! somewhere theres a table lamp missing its lamp shade now!

about as incongruous as the clad in bright metallic red plastic horn currently fitted to REV  

 

curiously AC did change about the positioning of the air filter with regards to the standard steyr puch engine layout 

Prototype Model 70's and every other Steyr puch engined vehicle out there has the air filter pointing to the right, as seen here on AC Model 70 Prototype number 9

but all production Model 70's I have seen have the air filter pointing to the left, I have not seen any other Steyr puch engined vehicle that is configured like that AFAIK

have to wonder why they did it, was there a technical reason behind it, or was it just done to make accessing the air filter element a bit easier?

 

BTW excuse me if I have missed if you have mentioned it already, but is the Merc staying in the fold or is it onto pastures new like the jag?  

Carb choice possibly?  The mounting point for the throttle return spring pretty much needs the housing to be this way round.  Wonder if other carbs were used in other applications, or if the long throttle cable run necessitated a helper spring on the Invacar, so they just flipped it round as it was a convenient mounting point for it.

Do other Steyr-Puch air cleaners have the spring mounting tab?

Other thought - I'm assuming when they were built that the completed engine assembly was plonked in as one assembly.  Given it's already shifted slightly towards the offside because of the layout, wonder if flipping that around through 180 degrees would help make it a slightly more compact and easily managed unit.

[LightBulbFun]

On 20/01/2022 at 18:12, Zelandeth said:

Carb choice possibly?  The mounting point for the throttle return spring pretty much needs the housing to be this way round.  Wonder if other carbs were used in other applications, or if the long throttle cable run necessitated a helper spring on the Invacar, so they just flipped it round as it was a convenient mounting point for it.

Do other Steyr-Puch air cleaners have the spring mounting tab?

Other thought - I'm assuming when they were built that the completed engine assembly was plonked in as one assembly.  Given it's already shifted slightly towards the offside because of the layout, wonder if flipping that around through 180 degrees would help make it a slightly more compact and easily managed unit.

I dont think its a carb choice thing, the earlier Model 70's used the Weber 32ICS3 carb same as other 493cc Steyr puch vehicles of the time (later Model 70's had the Model 70 specific Weber 32ICS10T, but that used the same physical body as the 32ICS3)

other Steyr puch vehicles indeed had a return spring same as the Model 70 does, so I dont think thats the reason for the flipped assembly

I do wonder if it was for clearance reasons as you say, as you say the engine is mounted with a right side bias so getting to the air filter would of been pretty tricky  (but flipping the air filter assemble around will have also entailed adding on a bolt to the other side of the manifold as well I think for the little support bar that runs down from the air filter chamber)

im also wondering it could be that perhaps by 1971 when Model 70 Production got under way that Steyr puch had flipped the assembly themselves for some reason, and I have just not found a 1971+ Steyr puch vehicle thats not been messed with!

its quite hard to find pictures of 1970+ Steyr Puch 493cc engines, all the ones i have been able are either Model 70 engines and or have been extensively tuned and modified like most Steyr puch 500's are!

I mean you put Steyr puch engine into google and most have after market lamp shade air filters like TPA has now LOL

(PS I put 2 and 2 together and I think I just figured out who is getting the Merc ) 

[Zelandeth]

Hmm, intriguing.  There must be a reason for it. 

Your mentioning different carb types has reminded me that I really do need to have another bash at finding a service kit, or one that's at least close enough for mine.  While it works fine it weeps from several seals, which I'd really rather put a stop to.  Even just a genuine top cover gasket that's actually in decent shape would probably help.

Regarding the stubby filter on TPA - I've no idea.  Remembering how hacked about KPL was, anything is possible...and to be honest it's a bit of a surprise she even *had* an air filter.  No idea if it's an original one that was just cut down, though if they've done that they have also shortened the threaded rod things screw onto, which I'm assuming wasn't threaded all the way into the housing, so would have had to be replaced, so wasn't a ten second job.  

Pretty sure the reason for the larger filter body is to reduce noise.  The induction roar at higher speeds in TPA is really quite noticeable, which I reckon having a bit more volume in the filter housing may help muffle a bit.  Or given Steyr-Puch seem to know what they're doing it could even be tuned to help improve breathing using resonance effects to their advantage... it's all guesswork and speculation though.  Plus I've no idea why my filter is smaller!