Datsuncog's Heaps: Sept 2023 - Another Year's T-Met Exemption Certificate...

[flat4alfa]

GOING TO REAR FLEXI

That sounds like a Sam Smith house party moment

[Rust Collector]

RE the EML, as it's not mission critical I would temporarily* splice the feed to it from the ABS light to kick the problem down the line you should immediately fix that properly before all the nuns and kittens die.

[Noel Tidybeard]

can you test the "new" sensor just in case it was nfg out-the-box?

[Datsuncog]

22 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Maybe put the expiry date in your various calendars -1 month for a next year?

Worth suggesting, of course - though that's kinda what I'd tried to do!

I'd marked the MOT date on the wall calendar, in the household diary (month overview and on the day in question), AND on the shared Gmail phone calendar with reminders set...  it just seems that even when I'm reminded of something continually (and I had been - MrsDC had spoken to me about the MOT only days before) it still takes a certain degree of urgency before it actually sinks in enough to make me to do something.

There'd been a whole heap of stress for weeks about getting hold of the plumber to come and replace heating pipes so that I could then board up the walls and get the plasterer in. That was preoccupying me a lot, and it was only at the point he arrived, did the job and left - at about 3pm on Tuesday - that a slot in my head apparently freed up to start worrying about the MOT.

So I had half an hour of ignorance being bliss, before I was nudged into the imminence of the MOT.

Hopefully next year there'll be less building work going on, and I'll have a bit more bandwidth to get my head round this stuff...

Quote

Does NI have the same thing of being able to test a month early?

The NI MOT system is completely broken at present - you can't book a test more than six weeks before the test's due, and in theory you can book one early but the backlog here's so bad that in reality, the test dates offered are usually months after the MOT's expired (hence all the fun with the Corolla last year - test due in mid-July, went to book one at the first opportunity at the start of June and the earliest slot I could get was the end of November).

MrsDC was lucky/ unlucky to find an end-of-the-day slot at the Mallusk centre the day before the test expired - the other slots offered were all in December.

But then again, how much more fun would yesterday's exploits have been in the middle of December? 

 

21 hours ago, Rust Collector said:

Have you done the bit yet where you give up on the idea of the rain stopping, go and lie in a puddle whilst doing the work, get soaked through but finish the job, then get out from under the car and the sun comes out?

Oh yes. It did that.

Just after I'd finished, the sun came out so strongly that it was quite difficult checking the lights. Typical!!

 

19 hours ago, beko1987 said:

You've just got to get soaking wet. The car will thank you for it! Got a garden parasol to keep the worst off? 

I'm still waiting for my thanks from this perfidious bugger!

No, don't have a parasol or anything like that - the idea behind getting a house with a garage was that I could at least poke the car's nose in for work like this, but the garage is completely full of all the stuff needed to fit the new bathroom...

At least working in the wheelarch kept my head mostly dry!

 

15 hours ago, SiC said:

On the P0117 error code, what is the reading given by Torque? Presumably it is correct?

Googling says these are the reasons it throws it on:

So either wiring shorting or the sensor is dodgy.

Yeah, this has been an ongoing issue for years now.

For a while, the EML would flick on briefly and the radiator fan would kick in, even if the engine was cold.

Then it wouldn't do it again for months.

Eventually I got it together to order up a new temperature sensor, but replacing it made no real difference to the problem.

For a while the EML would stay on consistently for a few weeks, with the hum of the cooling fan, then it'd go away for a few weeks.

Then it reached the point where it was mostly always on, and so I bought the eBay special dongle principally just to knock the light off before the MOT - though it was handy to see that fault code P0117 - 'Engine coolant temperature circuit low input' - corresponded with the issues being experienced, and there were no other fault codes.

Turning it off using Torque used to keep it at bay for a good few weeks before it returned, but it seems that's no longer the case.

My money's on a broken wire somewhere, OR that I replaced the wrong sensor - as there's apparently a temperature sensor which controls the fan, and then another, separate temperature sensor which sends information to the dash.

The Haynes manual is very vague about which is which, or where they're actually located. So I'm not sure exactly what I replaced.

Because this car is a French-built run-out model, there's a lot of parts variation for some reason, and getting the right bits for it has always been an absolute battle.

I don't really drive this car very often, so it's usually only when I'm shuffling the cars in the driveway that I remember the light's still on... a decision that's come back to bite me!

 

2 hours ago, Rust Collector said:

RE the EML, as it's not mission critical I would temporarily* splice the feed to it from the ABS light to kick the problem down the line you should immediately fix that properly before all the nuns and kittens die.

Heh, this time it'll be getting fixed - the ABS light on the Yaris is another pain in the hoop, and I'd sooner not provoke it!

Don't know why, but Toyota engineered the ABS light to come on when the car detects something is different - so if the car gets jacked up, the ABS light will come on. Change the tyres - ABS light comes on. Someone else drives it for a bit (like a mechanic doing a road test) - ABS light comes on.

Going through the owners manual indicates that the ECU has a 'learning' function - so when it feels that the car's being driven differently, or there's been some change in how the sensors all talk to one another, it indicates this by throwing up the ABS light for anything from a few minutes to a few days before switching itself off.

Most tiresome! At least it didn't do that this time round...

 

1 hour ago, Noel Tidybeard said:

can you test the "new" sensor just in case it was nfg out-the-box?

I don't have a testing rig or anything like that, and I probably wouldn't be able to work out how to use my multimeter to determine if it's faulty or not...

With so much else going on, I've farmed the brake work out to the Mechanic of Choice, who can look at it for me on Tuesday week - going back over the MOT history, he replaced the rear pipes and sorted the drums back in 2018 when the car failed its MOT for a similar reason, so hopefully that'll present him with no problems.

I could probably sort the dragging shoe issue out myself, but I'm not touching brake pipes ever again. So, if it's going up on the ramps for the pipes anyway, the drums can be looked at while it's there.

He says he can check out the EML/ sensor/ fan issue, so we'll see what's what.

Ultimately, it's MrsDC's car and she's well aware of its shortcomings, but recognises it's cheaper to fix it as and when than shell out for a new car on monthly payments.

Looking back over the old MOTs, I'm pretty sure the reason the brake parts keep seizing up and corroding is because the mileage it does is tiny. 1,300 miles since last year; 2,000 the year before.

[hairnet]

Is it cog 1 mot 0 yet

[egg]

3 hours ago, Datsuncog said:

My money's on a broken wire somewhere, OR that I replaced the wrong sensor - as there's apparently a temperature sensor which controls the fan, and then another, separate temperature sensor which sends information to the dash.

yes, the Mondeo is like this one sender for the temp gauge and another for the ECU. I think they solved this on later Zetecs/Duratecs and went to one sensor on the thermostat housing.

[Datsuncog]

34 minutes ago, hairnet said:

Is it cog 1 mot 0 yet

I wish!

It'll be a fortnight before the work's done - so maybe then...

[hairnet]

will ya get a kick in the hole for taking so long from the boss

[Datsuncog]

Weirdly, it was fairly quiet on Wednesday and no-one seemed to notice my general absence from noon onwards.

I did go back into the house every now and again to wake up the laptop screen and put my status back to 'active', but there were no angry "where tf are you?" messages from the higher-ups, soooo... I may have got away with it.

My ethically flexible excuse is that management saved quite a lot of salary costs from 2020 on when three staff at the same grade were promoted/ retired/ transferred out of the team but their posts were never backfilled, so I was covering their jobs and managing their staff in addition to my own work. With no additional pay, or recognition of the fact I was now carrying four workloads.

Looking back, I'm pretty sure that a year+ of early starts/ late finishes/ logging on over the weekend just to keep my head above water is what triggered a very quiet but still fairly devastating breakdown over the summer of 2021.

Everything's been changed now after a whole department-wide reorganization, and I'm not having to cover quite so much - but I kinda feel I'm owed some deferred time off, even if only informally...

[mk2_craig]

On 8/31/2023 at 7:02 PM, hairnet said:

a kick in the hole for taking so long from the boss

I read this as being from a female occupant of the house. 

[Datsuncog]

Ah right - yes, I can see that's probably more what was being suggested! 

(I can take things a bit over-literally...)

No, MrsDC's alright with it - as well she might, since she's simply taken over the Corolla and I'm the one with no transport now. There's no inconvenience at her end; I'm the one having to get up earlier to walk to the station in the rain for the next fortnight!

[hairnet]

On 8/31/2023 at 7:02 PM, hairnet said:

will ya get a kick in the hole for taking so long from the boss

well yes its her car innit (youve oreviously said)

4 hours ago, Datsuncog said:

Weirdly, it was fairly quiet on Wednesday and no-one seemed to notice my general absence from noon onwards.

I did go back into the house every now and again to wake up the laptop screen and put my status back to 'active'

wtf - working from home? what kind of progressive forwward thinkingis this - also being on here its a about shit cars right

2 hours ago, mk2_craig said:

I read this as being from a female occupant of the house. 

he cant kick himself cos its not his yes?

1 hour ago, Datsuncog said:

Ah right - yes, I can see that's probably more what was being suggested! 

(I can take things a bit over-literally...)

No, MrsDC's alright with it - as well she might, since she's simply taken over the Corolla and I'm the one with no transport now. There's no inconvenience at her end; I'm the one having to get up earlier to walk to the station in the rain for the next fortnight!

so...........gbh avoidded and keeping fit ftw?

cog youre nuts  - how can you not know what a kick in hole is (bai)

two weeks doh - dvsa in NI need one themselves i think

[Datsuncog]

By way of a very minor update, I've ordered up a fan temperature switch for the Yaris.

I might have a crack at swapping this round myself to see if it makes any difference to the EML/ fan constantly running, assuming it arrives on time.

I also went out to the garage and found the original temperature switch that I'd swapped years ago thinking it was the right part, but which I now believe to be the unrelated dashboard gauge sender switch.

Possibly having both original and replacement switches for the cooling circuitry might be of some assistance to the garage's fault-finding, if it comes to that...

[Split_Pin]

On 9/2/2023 at 2:40 PM, Datsuncog said:

did go back into the house every now and again to wake up the laptop screen and put my status back to 'active', but there were no angry "where tf are you?" messages from the higher-ups, soooo... I may have got away with it.

Genuinely glad it's not just me that does this 😂

Hopefully the new fan switch will resolve things but it sounds like whatever is supposed to talk to it has gone past its natural retirement date. I may have missed it if you've already covered it though. When I test a radiator fan I unplug the loom from the fan switch/sensor and then bridge the terminals on the back of it so the fan runs all the time. On Vauxhalls anyway, this does not trigger an EML.

[hairnet]

New Yaris PCP 225

[Datsuncog]

Even if I had the money, there's no way I'd be buying a new car.

Especially not on PCP!

[AnnoyingPentium]

A Yaris on finance could work, but I'd miss the storytelling of your agonising trials in older Yarising.

[Datsuncog]

Having witnessed no end of new-and-nearly-new cars being winched onto recovery flatbeds (with BMWs rather over-represented, interestingly), I really don't buy the notion that taking out a PCP deal = worry-free motoring.

If we had a spare £225 a month, it'd be going towards paying off the mortgage sooner, not financing a depreciating liability.

MrsDC and I have discussed what to do as and when the Yaris finally arrives at the end of the road, and the answer will be... to buy another Mk1 Yaris.

There's still loads of them running around locally, and mostly in better nick than ours...

[beko1987]

Once it passes the test and you have time on your hand you could buy a solid but tatty example and using your old one make one good* one out of 2!

I did it with my lagunas before the outgoing one went for scrap, was a nice few weekends fitting parts to the new one and loosely bolting the more fucked parts back on the 1st lag/chucking it in the boot of it wasn't anything that stopped it rolling

[egg]

Taking that to it's logical conclusion, make friends* with your new neighbours, leave the old one on the front lawn

[Datsuncog]

Well then, the radiator fan switch sensor was ordered last Tuesday morning and on Friday afternoon... I was mildly disappointed to receive an eBay notification saying 'your item has been dispatched and is now with the courier'.

I mean, I can appreciate that there's sometimes a bit of a delay, but I'd kinda hoped that it would be with me by the weekend.

Am I the asshole for thinking that four days is a bit of a slow turnaround just to throw it in a jiffy bag and get it in the post? It's from an online car parts business, as far as I can tell, not just someone having a garage clear-out.

Not that it mattered, because by the time it did finally touch down this Tuesday - mere minutes before taking the Yaris down to the garage to have the brakes looked at - it still didn't resemble anything else bolted onto the block with wires trailing from it.

Meh. Runout models, eh?

So I then got a call pretty late last night from the Mechanic Of Choice, who was still battling away on the workshop floor at 8pm.

I was in the midst of overboarding a ceiling with plasterboard sheets, so I could share his pain.

Rear brake pipes and flexis have now been replaced (they were, apparently, pretty bad) while both rear wheel cylinders have been replaced as they were seized.

Having been fully rebuilt with new drums and everything back in 2018, I can only assume this is a result of chronic lack of use - MrsDC is very keen on engine braking, and hardly ever needs to dab the middle pedal. Which is good in one way, but plainly less good in another way.

The temperature fan fault causing the seems to have been remedied somehow - I'm not entirely clear on what was causing it, or what the solution was, but the fan now only kicks in when it gets hot and the EML's staying off so... we'll see.

Retest is at 6.45 tonight.

We'll see.

[bunglebus]

Where's that "prace bets now" picture gone?

[Datsuncog]

I was waiting to see who might post that!!

[hairnet]

On 9/5/2023 at 5:22 PM, Datsuncog said:

 

MrsDC and I have discussed what to do as and when the Yaris finally arrives at the end of the road, and the answer will be... to buy another Mk1 Yaris.

 

100% shiter right Thur

you too cog

[beko1987]

Good luck, hopefully the EML will stay off until 7.30pm-ish

 

[Datsuncog]

That's all I need it to do! After that, it can glow away all it wants...

[Datsuncog]

Right then...

Car: COLLECTED.

Brakes: FIXD

Light Of Doom: OFF

Date with Destiny Pt 2: NIGH

I'm a-goin' in.

Again.

[Datsuncog]

Larne's equivalent to the Tunnel of Love beckons.

[hairnet]

'put doyn yer potato or ya dont come oan'

*runs

[Datsuncog]

Greenhouse of Shame: OPEN FOR BUSINESS

Been here five minutes and both returning cars in that time have been failed: a five year old Skoda Kodiaq thing on tyres, and a ten year old Audi A4 (running the Devil's fuel) on emissions.

Fear levels: HIGH