The new news 24 thread

[artdjones]

These Toyotas don't smoke much even if they are drinking oil. I think the original problem was due to the slots behind the piston rings not being big enough, and also blocking up. So they would burn oil at a constant rate, while not leaving a smokescreen.

Mk 2 Avensises are all 13-19 years old now, so if they've survived this long they should be ok. In any case, a lot got new short engines under warranty. I'd be a lot more worried about D4D models than petrol ones.

[stuboy]

On 10/14/2022 at 8:14 PM, stuboy said:

Booked the galaxy in for its meeting with the man with the ministry on Tuesday.

Clean sheet pass for the dadwagon

[Zelandeth]

For the first time in several years I remembered when doing the periodic "shove all the damned leaves back out the garage" exercise that I had compressed air on tap.

Yeah...that beats half an hour fighting with a broom.

Probably 30 seconds got the worst out.  Need to remember that in future.

We've got contractors on site at the moment working on the roof so I'm sort of stuck unable to get stuck into anything that takes more than about 15 minutes in case they need me for anything. 

Thus far I've had a 100% success rate of using my mind powers to summon them to the front door within about five minutes every time I *have* tried to start anything that's actually on my to do list.  

[wuvvum]

Still, at least the contractors are there and working - that has to be progress surely?

[HillmanImp]

I popped to the Jag main stealers today to get the oil separator for the XF. 

Not sure if I was just unlucky with my timing or not but they were really busy. There wasn't enough staff to cope with the amount of people wanting to buy cars.

It doesn't look like the cost of living crisis is affecting their business too much. 

[SRi05]

Advisory free MOT's, like wiping yer bum and leaving no trace on the lavvy paper. A fine victory 

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, wuvvum said:

Still, at least the contractors are there and working - that has to be progress surely?

Indeed!

About 80% done the lower level and 50% done to the left.  They need to finish the lower roof before they can complete the scaffolding to get to the inset bit in the middle.

That and the bit out of frame to the right (mirror image of left) is likely to be the part where most problems are uncovered as there's been major water ingress there for a *long* time.  

Which went largely undetected as we have zero line of sight on that side of the roof itself - and the problem is at the ridge tile side.

Expensive month...assuming no unexpected horrors found (the quote was cognisant of the long term water ingress), that's going to be a £25K bill.  Oh, and we've just had a bunch of fencing, tree removal and stump removal done, which came to another seven grand...though at least they turned up, more than could be said for the last company we hired to do that who buggered off into the sunset with our deposit never to be seen again.

Once the roofers are finished with the main house roofs, they're going to have a look at sorting this mess over the front door.

Which we discovered shortly after moving in was very nicely painted but consisted mainly of structural duct tape and newspaper dated shortly before we moved in.  The gutter design there is absolutely stupid as the hopper which drains the whole conservatory roof is about 1 1/2" in diameter and has no provision for shedding of bits of vegetation etc from the adjacent (Council owned) trees...so it clogs up generally within a week of being cleared.

Which I just fished this lot out of.  Was last cleared in the middle of July.

Daft design.

Probably wouldn't be quite so bad if the adjacent trees were kept cut back properly, but we've been trying to get movement on that since the day we moved in without any success.

Thankfully despite appearances, that isn't actually bearing the full weight of the roof - that's supported 6' or so further back inside the vestibule/cloakroom/porch, whatever you want to call it.

Then once this is all finished we need to move on to getting the landscapers in to get it back to "presentable, clean slate, low maintenance" condition.  

At least we're moving on some of it now!

I really do wish I'd left a gap between our trip to the US and this starting though - having work starting the day after we landed back in the UK wasn't the smartest idea I ever had.

[17-Coffees]

On 10/14/2022 at 6:49 PM, 17-Coffees said:

Officially on Holiday till the end of the Month, I bugger of back to Oregon on Monday! The fun part will be finding out what I get as a rental car, as I've booked 'wild card' essentially is getting a 'compact' for cheaper than if  I just picked 'compact', but there's a very slim chance I could be thrown the keys to something else! 

I'll probably end up with a Sentra again, but I'll try my luck and maybe see about an upgrade pending cost and what else is in stock.

I take back that comment about a Sentra...

A fucking Arazona plated Kia Sedona 🤣

Bonus points as can tell its been used as a taxi during 'rona times, due silicon residual left over from a screen behind the front row of seats...

[Asimo]

Flowers delivered this morning for birthday girl - by a courier driving an immaculate Mk1 Golf gti! When I complemented him on his motor, he said it had been his for “donkey’s years” .  (Tartan seat fabric needs to make a comeback.)

[PhilA]

My workshop door fell off. I think it was never really meant to be an exterior door. The insides fell to bits, with the consistency of weetabix.

The old exterior door now fits, albeit with the inside side out. 

I can even lock it now. As winter rolls on and the weather cools down I'll get back to teardown. For now though, it's my storage. 

[PhilA]

Rolled over 108,000 miles this morning.

[Zelandeth]

Roofing work has continued.  They're currently prioritising getting all the felt and batten work done so it's weatherproof as the weather is going downhill later in the week.  They seem to be a team who work together as a pretty well oiled, efficient machine.

They are continuing to build back up the side we were really worried about, which is a good thing as it shows they're happy enough with the core structure under it.  This is good, as that's what had the potential to multiply the cost of the job by a few times rather than just add bits to it.

We have found more things which need doing though - albeit stuff we were already aware of.  Basically all the gutters and soffit boards are totally knackered.  There was some hope originally that some sections could be salvaged, but it looks like maybe 10-15 metres worth (out of just under 90) are serviceable, so really not worth it.  Would be stupid not to get that done while the scaffolding is already there anyway.  So that's probably going to be somewhere in the region of another eight grand.  We're going to be seeing a slight uplift on the original quote price anyway as on the north facing roof we've had a lot of tile breakages because the battens had sagged so badly.  So the original estimate of 20% wastage has been exceeded.  In the grand scheme of things that's small fry though and I'm not worried about.

Will be really nice to just have it all done though and not have to worry about any of that for a while!  This is all nice attractive stuff to a potential buyer when we come to sell the place too.  While decorating and landscaping isn't maybe so big a factor as anyone moving in is likely to want to redo that to their own tastes, having basically everything above the gutters be newly installed and with 15 years worth of warranty on has surely got to work in our favour.

Isn't home ownership fun!

[PhilA]

8 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Roofing

We had the entire roof redone here after the storm. There were a couple sections of soft ply which were changed, all the old roofing removed, the south hip had inadequate bracing so a beam was installed for that; new ridge vent installed, all new flashing for the drain vent risers and an additional heat sealed (tar backed silver plasticky tinfoil stuff) ice and rain underlay before 135 mph Kevlar backed architectural shingle lain on top.

That all came to $17,600. Fun times indeed.

[andy18s]

20 hours ago, 17-Coffees said:

I take back that comment about a Sentra...

A fucking Arazona plated Kia Sedona 🤣

Bonus points as can tell its been used as a taxi during 'rona times, due silicon residual left over from a screen behind the front row of seats...

youtube kiaboys for even more good news,although that looks a bit old tbh

[reb]

Finally some good news.

My wee sister just gave birth.

Mother and baby doing well.

[horriblemercedes]

Just now, HarmonicCheeseburger said:

Any tips for removing a fuel injector that seems to prefer staying in place? don't desire to muller the plastic for the connector.  Going from a YT video the chap used some pliers and levered them out, mine seem quite stuck in place.

What's the car? Petrol or diesel? Direct or indirect injection? 

[horriblemercedes]

1 minute ago, HarmonicCheeseburger said:

Petrol.  Not sure on the injection, but here is a photo of one of the injectors.

Not direct injection then. Are you trying it on a stone cold engine? There's not too much there that should be able to properly jam it in 

[mitsisigma01]

4 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

but it looks like maybe 10-15 metres worth (out of just under 90)

I didn't know Milton Keynes had a castle 😲 

90 metres of guttering !!!

8k for fascias, soffit and guttering... Gold plated 🤔

[wuvvum]

Maxus passed its MOT today.  Total bill including fitting the TRE and ball joint came to £90 - I can live with that!  I actually got a call from the garage this morning - whoever booked the van in hadn't realised it'd need a full retest, and they didn't think they'd have time to do it today.  Went up there just before 6 (their advertised closing time) and the van was on the brake rollers, so I buggered off and came back a bit later and it was done.  I'll need to get the tracking done at some point but other than that it's ready for another happy year of LDVing...

[wuvvum]

Oh yeah, I also fitted the new silencer to the Mazda at lunchtime.  Bit pointless really as it's not now going to be going in for an MOT in the foreseeable, but I'd bought the thing so thought I might as well put it on.  Went OK apart from one of the mounting bolts being rather rusty (came undone OK but was a bit of an effort) and has quietened the car down a bit, although the exhaust is still blowing slightly from the front pipe.

While I was out there, many, many geese flew over. 

[reb]

Dropped a clanger.

Shit.

[alcyonecorporation]

https://blacktopmagazine.wordpress.com/2022/10/18/novelty-toyota-defiles-historic-japanese-toilet/?preview_id=391&preview_nonce=4450b204bf&preview=true&_thumbnail_id=446

Failing to code my WordPress site very well, so I wrote a story to test it. 

It's about a WiLL Vi smashing into Japan's oldest toilets. 

[alcyonecorporation]

Oh, and a new battery has been found for the SVX. The Lion it had was old, shit, and driving the gearbox ECU mad. £80 on the Halfords trade card really isn't bad. 

[RoverFolkUs]

3 hours ago, HarmonicCheeseburger said:

Any tips for removing a fuel injector that seems to prefer staying in place? don't desire to muller the plastic for the connector.  Going from a YT video the chap used some pliers and levered them out, mine seem quite stuck in place.

🤦‍♂️

Why are you removing injectors before doing a compression test and making damn sure the coil and appropriate lead are good? 

What year Micra is it? Later K11s had pencil coils, only the early ones had HT leads and a dizzy.

 

[Fumbler]

28 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

🤦‍♂️

Why are you removing injectors before doing a compression test and making damn sure the coil and appropriate lead are good? 

What year Micra is it? Later K11s had pencil coils, only the early ones had HT leads and a dizzy.

 

It's a very early one, most definitely HT leads and dizzy.

[RoverFolkUs]

9 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

It's a very early one, most definitely HT leads and dizzy.

Ah ok, wasn't sure how old it was. Could still swap leads around as there will be more than enough length. Hard to pinpoint the dizzy but they're far more prone to packing up than an injector 

[Alusilber]

So I took the day off today to do an oil change on my 924. Decided to treat it to a new sump plug and washer while I was at it. Drained oil, changed filter, fitted new sump plug, filled with new oil... then I found a sump plug washer on the ground under the car. Yes, it was the new one. Must have fallen off the new sump plug when I was fumbling about under the car trying to fit it 😡.

Then when I was backing the car back into the garage, the wind caught the plastic sheeting I had put down to catch the spills and now there's oil all over my monoblock driveway. Which I only got professionally cleaned last month 🤬. Just as well I found another bag of diatomaceous earth in the attic the other day...

[reb]

I've never lost a bet by accident. 

Hopefully I can keep this up.

[ruffgeezer]

I put a deposit on a new car today,  naturally it's pre-broken and I can't bring it home until something else leaves.  A slack ebay dispatch means that the new fuel filter housing for the van is going to be lost in the post for fucking ages.  I support the strike, but not ebay bumholes who say they've posted things on the 17th that don't actually make it into the Post Office for a further 2 days.

[RoverFolkUs]

3 minutes ago, HarmonicCheeseburger said:

1. We have checked spark the HT lead is sparking 100% fine.

2. We don't have a compression test unit handy and swapping injectors would rule out fuel since C1 fires just fine, running on the basics Spark, Fuel, Air as our diagnosis. 

3. With no spark plug in C4 when the engine was fired up while we checked for spark you could hear the air being pushed out of C4, now I know this is not as good as a compression test, but myself and my buddy are confident it has compression.

Either it's a dead/stuck injector, or a stuck valve that has not dropped.

1) you can't be 100% sure of that by pulling a plug out and earthing it against the block. Existence of a spark does not equal a good spark. 

2) buy one, literally £12.50 and anyone who fiddles with cars needs one. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/363846164185?

3) 20 psi would still be compression but it's inadequate. No way you can measure compression accurately by running the engine without a plug in. I'm not sure how you can even come to the conclusion that there's compression when there's nothing to compress! Air will be inducted and escape through the path of least resistance on the compression stroke which will be the spark plug hole. As soon as the plug is back in it'll escape somewhere else - i.e burned valve seat. 

As I've already said, you don't need to swap injectors around to rule out fuel. Spray some easy start or brake cleaner into the intake and see how it behaves. If it still runs like shit then you know it's definitely getting fuel to cyl 4 along with the air 

Don't forget you have valve overlap in valve timing. So the test you found on YouTube isn't entirely foolproof

Pulling injectors is a ridiculous diagnostic procedure, you have the risk of breaking 2 injectors if they don't come out in one piece, before knowing what your compression figures are

If I started pulling injectors before doing a sodding compression test I'd be out of a job. Not really, but you get the point. 

A burned valve is more likely than a stuck valve..