The new news 24 thread

[Zelandeth]

11 hours ago, stuboy said:

Previous owner removed the 12v  socket and so I need to plug few incar electrical in, so I've bought this, but worried it'll blow the fuse and the USB is saying 5v and sometimes I need to use my tyre compressor.... 

Afraid that's never going to handle anything as heavy duty as a tyre compressor.  It's intended for chargers for phones, sat navs, dash cams etc.

[Saabnut]

Apparently, after all the shenanigans in the USA this week, Mexico has agreed to finance the wall and Canada has asked if they can have one too!

[clayts450]

Shite audit, and it ain't good. The only running vehicle is the non-shite, tool of the trade

Streetwise - alternator is fucked.  Will source replacement and fit, some time.

620 - ignition switch is fucked. Will only fire up once in every 20 or so attempts. Replacement sourced off eBay for £15.  Driver's  interior door release handle has broken. Again. Unreliable wafter.

420 - needs MoT - have sorted the seat, but need to check last year's advisories before sticking in.  Not enough hours in the day. Parked on road. Bite me.

Coupe - needs MoT, and will need rear wheel arches welding. Mojo well and truly lost on this one. Parked on road. Bite me again...

214 - MoT expires today, it's stuck in a garage 5 miles away. Last time I checked it (about three months ago) it was turning mouldy inside. Fuck it.

So basically the van is it right now.

[Floatylight]

1 hour ago, clayts450 said:

Shite audit, and it ain't good. The only running vehicle is the non-shite, tool of the trade

Streetwise - alternator is fucked.  Will source replacement and fit, some time.

620 - ignition switch is fucked. Will only fire up once in every 20 or so attempts. Replacement sourced off eBay for £15.  Driver's  interior door release handle has broken. Again. Unreliable wafter.

420 - needs MoT - have sorted the seat, but need to check last year's advisories before sticking in.  Not enough hours in the day. Parked on road. Bite me.

Coupe - needs MoT, and will need rear wheel arches welding. Mojo well and truly lost on this one. Parked on road. Bite me again...

214 - MoT expires today, it's stuck in a garage 5 miles away. Last time I checked it (about three months ago) it was turning mouldy inside. Fuck it.

So basically the van is it right now.

Maybe some fleet rationalisation needed before it gets too out of hand!

[richardmorris]

4 hours ago, Tim_E said:

Boys latest AS garage plan

I’ve got a yellow corgi dyane like that.

[wuvvum]

Well that's looking a bit healthier. 

[wuvvum]

With headlights on 

That'll do. 

[clayts450]

3 hours ago, Floatylight said:

Maybe some fleet rationalisation needed before it gets too out of hand!

You're not wrong. Coupe and 214 will go off-fleet for sure during 2021.

Coupe has a lot of issues to sort out, so may well cash in on the cat as that's worth more than my fleet put together, I reckon.

214, I'm wondering whether I should donate it to Rover Revival, as Craig who runs it is doing some exceptional work. Mind you, he may not want it....

The other three are solid gold Clayts cars and won't be going anywhere.

[SiC]

Nearly! I better not bloody miss it when it does.

Cambelt booked in for next month too. 

[Craig the Princess]

Started the Saab work by removing all the mouse droppings that the little buggers had left at the front of the engine.

[Cord Fourteener]

6 hours ago, richardmorris said:

I’ve got a yellow corgi dyane like that.

I remember buying one in a cardboard box as a kid. This one was supplied by @Datsuncog recently.

[stuboy]

21 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Afraid that's never going to handle anything as heavy duty as a tyre compressor.  It's intended for chargers for phones, sat navs, dash cams etc.

exactly what thinking

[Mike D]

The ongoing mini fettling continues, the inner cavities and all the upper surfaces of the subframe have been drenched in Dynax S50 and UB, i made the rear end of the front to back brake pipe up as it runs behind the subframe, and it's now bolted back in place 😀 theres a bit more stuff to reconnect and the bottom of the subframe to coat before it drops back on its wheels so I can turn it round and undergo the same wallet draining from the front end when I yank the mill out 🤦‍♂️🤣

[tommotech]

I was going to do a quick bit of welding today, on a Citroen C2. However, it was worse than I anticipated, deciding whether it’s worth the work now. 

 

 

[wuvvum]

As alluded to earlier, I finished fitting the replacement alternator to the diesel C2 today.  It was pretty much as awkward as I was expecting, but everything went back together in the end - the exception being that the tensioner is only held in by two out of three bolts as the third is literally impossible to get into place for anyone with normally sized hands.  (If Trump is looking for a new career when he gets out of prison, he could make a few bob fitting alternators to 1.4 HDIs.)

I had one squeaky bum moment when trying to undo the cable retaining nut on the replacement alternator - it was so tight that whilst heaving on it there was a crack and the plastic on the back of the alternator started to come away - but I don't appear to have damaged anything vital.  It's now charging as it should, and the electrics seem to have survived being unplugged for a couple of weeks - initially the PAS wasn't working (it packed up when I last drove the car due to low battery voltage) but the second time I started the engine the PAS kicked back in.  The HRW appears to have come back to life as well, which is good.

There's still a fair bit of work to do on it - the passenger door still won't open, the central locking is dodgy and I still need to refit the arch liner that I removed to get at the alternator bottom bolts - but at least it's usable now.  I'm also going to have to do something about the stereo - it works but beeps constantly as if it's lost its code - but it was already doing this before I took the battery off.  I might see if I can reset it with Lexia once I get that installed, if not I'll probably just stick an aftermarket stereo in.

The Rover is still playing silly buggers.  The battery was flat again today - once again I jump started it and left it running to charge the battery whilst I buggered about with the C2.  Once again it locked itself soon after I took the key out of the ignition, but this time as I walked up the road I spotted that the hazards were flashing randomly.  So that'll be what's flattening the battery then.  I still have no idea what's causing it though - it did something similar once before, a couple of years ago, when one of the door latch microswitches gave up in the cold weather and so it kept thinking the door was being opened (I disconnected the alarm sounder at that time), but when it did that I was getting intermittent "door open" warnings when driving the car, which it isn't doing this time.  It didn't lock itself before either. 

I'm going to try plugging the Delphi in to see if that can make any sense of it, but due to the age of the car I think there's a limit to which systems the software will talk to, so I might not have a lot of luck there.  For now I've disconnected the battery earth so at least I can start it next time I need to move it.  I'm not using it at the moment anyway so it's not a huge hardship.

[Zelandeth]

Spent the entire afternoon but fixing on my website.  Put the update live about 22:00...and within 30 minutes had two sides of A4 covered in snagging items I need to tidy up tomorrow. 

Uuuurrgh.  Worst part?  About 98% of what I've been doing for the last two days isn't anything anybody will even actually notice in the real world.  Have also broken a few pages because when I didn't have access to my workstation I somehow wound up with no less than four copies of the site archived on different backups which had become desynchronized...so a couple of pages have lost content today.  No Biggie as I wasn't daft enough to delete anything, I just need to copy things back over.  Just annoying!

Given I've been seeing less than 20 visitors a week since 2015 I do sometimes wonder why I bother running it at all, though will be curious to see if numbers pick up at all once I start getting some new content up on something like a regular basis.  Though one of the bugs I was fixing was missing hit counter code so that won't have been helping the stats!

At least once I've finished this job - hopefully tomorrow - I can get back to actually writing new content for it.  Which having some slightly less creaky templates available for should help with.

[BorniteIdentity]

My 16 year old son has been nagging me about getting the Avensis back on the road again.  It failed the MOT in October on

 

Well, not much really.  

The potential show stopper was the catalytic converter which the garage guessed was blocked.  To be honest, it was getting progressively smellier over the 12 months - so it came as no great surprise.  It's also no coincidence that the problem arose as soon as I stopped doing 100 miles a day, largely at motorway speeds.

With nothing to lose, and the motor factors open on a Sunday, I bought a bottle of "Cataclean" for a good price of £13 and came home to gift it to my son.  I was quite clear "NO PROMISES" - and explained that £600 on a new cat would have to wait a couple of months.  (And - no, I'm not buying a cheap one every year!)

We jump started the car off the mains - put 10 litres of Shell V-Power in - stuck the "Potion" in and went for a spank.

Neither of us are mechanics, but something has definitely - definitely happened.  Before, even at idle, there was enough smoke coming out of the car to signify a new pope.  Now?  Almost nothing.  

I'm going to try it again this morning but IF it looks positive, I'm going it to the garage and ask them to stick it on the analyser.  If we're in - then they can stick ANOTHER windscreen pump in (2nd in 2 years) and replace that pipe and off we go!

 

[Stanky]

Thanks to the tip-off from @Jerzy Woking and several others on here, my order of 6 wardrobe dehumidifiers arrived here this morning.

One duly unpacked and hung up in the mercedes. I'll see how its looking at 5pm today and report back. I need to put one in the Daewoo too actually.

I got 6 for £8 from ebay and they are quite a bit bigger than I expected - they'll hold probably half a litre of water in the colostomy bag bit at the bottom I reckon. 

[egg]

Look forward to the scientific* results @Stanky, haven't bought any yet, because I have no real justification to travel to my SORN'd Mondeo which is about 1.5 miles from home, but if they work for you I'll co-ordinate an essential trip and put some in.

[Tenmil Socket]

On 1/8/2021 at 9:29 AM, Tenmil Socket said:

The MX5 is booked in for an MOT on Monday. Fingers crossed as it's been laid up for a few weeks now. I'll give it the once over at the weekend.

MX5 passed its MOT👍🏻
It only needed a bulb which I’d missed!

[Tenmil Socket]

3 hours ago, Stanky said:

Thanks to the tip-off from @Jerzy Woking and several others on here, my order of 6 wardrobe dehumidifiers arrived here this morning.

One duly unpacked and hung up in the mercedes. I'll see how its looking at 5pm today and report back. I need to put one in the Daewoo too actually.

I got 6 for £8 from ebay and they are quite a bit bigger than I expected - they'll hold probably half a litre of water in the colostomy bag bit at the bottom I reckon. 

I normally see them start to work after a couple of days and tend to leave until about 75% of the spheres have dissolved. I have had a couple leak over the years! 

[N19]

I have chucked one in the Mondeo and Bluebird. Neither leaks or anything, but hopefully will take the edge off any dampness in the cold weather. 

[Tenmil Socket]

2 hours ago, egg said:

Look forward to the scientific* results @Stanky, haven't bought any yet, because I have no real justification to travel to my SORN'd Mondeo which is about 1.5 miles from home, but if they work for you I'll co-ordinate an essential trip and put some in.

They definitely work. I’ve been through loads of them! 

[Stanky]

11 minutes ago, Tenmil Socket said:

I have had a couple leak over the years! 

thats the bit that slightly concerns me! I might put a washing up tub underneath just in case!

[Tenmil Socket]

10 minutes ago, N19 said:

I have chucked one in the Mondeo and Bluebird. Neither leaks or anything, but hopefully will take the edge off any dampness in the cold weather. 

Sorry I meant the damp trap themselves have leaked. 

[wuvvum]

I ordered a 3 pack off eBay as a trial - they arrived this morning.  I'm going to hang them in the chosen vehicles tonight and see how they get on. 

[Tenmil Socket]

1 minute ago, Stanky said:

thats the bit that slightly concerns me! I might put a washing up tub underneath just in case!

Yeah they dripped slightly on the dash and head unit. The residue they leave feels slightly sticky but cleaned up ok. You could always try the other version which is like a plastic tub? 

[wuvvum]

The plastic tub ones are shite - that's why I'm giving the bags a go...

[crad]

the mighty clio lives to fight another day, after a hazard light switch. now to sort those advisories at some point, and the leaking bloody sunroof.

[richardmorris]

7 hours ago, Stanky said:

Thanks to the tip-off from @Jerzy Woking and several others on here, my order of 6 wardrobe dehumidifiers arrived here this morning.

One duly unpacked and hung up in the mercedes. I'll see how its looking at 5pm today and report back. I need to put one in the Daewoo too actually.

I got 6 for £8 from ebay and they are quite a bit bigger than I expected - they'll hold probably half a litre of water in the colostomy bag bit at the bottom I reckon. 

What are the chemicals listed? I’m curious as to how it claims to work.