The new news 24 thread

[Asimo]

Just learned that one of my driving heroes is gone; Hannu Mikkola.

I was lucky enough to see him drive the Sport Quattro at Shelsley Walsh in 1986, just after the group B rally cars were outlawed. With the boost up to the max Mikkola absolutely monstered that hill, an astonishing drive in a spectacular car. And then he did it again, but faster.

 

[Tetleysmooth]

Little victories are great ain't they.

Since I've had this CR-V - about last October or thereabouts - the rear screen wash wouldn't work. The wiper was ok. I've be battling with it ever since. I really needed it during the cold snap when there was salt on the roads.

Well, I finally rolled my sleeves up t'other day and had another go at it. Sucked on the line - no sniggering at the back please - and pulled the water right up. Foul tasting stuff, and just kept pulling more and more through the pipe. It now works every time. Must have had air in the line or summat. I was so pleased with my little victory, I polished the whole car with Autoglym.

[beko1987]

14 minutes ago, Tetleysmooth said:

Little victories are great ain't they.

Since I've had this CR-V - about last October or thereabouts - the rear screen wash wouldn't work. The wiper was ok. I've be battling with it ever since. I really needed it during the cold snap when there was salt on the roads.

Well, I finally rolled my sleeves up t'other day and had another go at it. Sucked on the line - no sniggering at the back please - and pulled the water right up. Foul tasting stuff, and just kept pulling more and more through the pipe. It now works every time. Must have had air in the line or summat. I was so pleased with my little victory, I polished the whole car with Autoglym.

Big car like a crv is going to have alot of line run between each point. Little one way valve somewhere near the boot in the line to keep the main run full and under pressure*? 

My xsara takes a few seconds to send water to the back, bet that'll be the first to fail when the pump starts going 

[Zelandeth]

Now we're getting somewhere...

Polishing cars is time consuming, but ain't half satisfying when they're in serious need of it.

[bunglebus]

House currently looks like a shiters wet dream/worst nightmare. 

FIL's A-class is here to have the dash cam and stereo removed before being hauled away for scrap. Belt tensioner sounds like it's about to explode and there are odd noises coming from the front suspension.  Electric windows have packed up and the final straw was not being able to disable the alarm, so I've disconnected the siren and removed the fuse for the indicators.

Despite all three cars hailing from the fatherland, it does look rather like they're not on speaking terms today

 

[Cavcraft]

Whoop-de-fucking-do, this 'best cars in the world' shit house wank mobile Poxwagen Touran doesn't start now.  It's probably karma for daring to start cleaning the inside, or perhaps that the boot deciding to start opening again yesterday spooked the car into refusing to fire up this afternoon. It starts for about 1-2 seconds, then dies again and won't be revved, so it must be fuel related imho. 

 

It's a horrible, rusty shitty twat of a thing. Aside from (grudgingly admitted) driving ok and pulling well, it is spectacularly  fucking awful and the ungrateful bastard couldn't even wait until there was just a few weeks MOT left before it shit itself. I'll try and get it fixed if it's cheap then run the wanker into the ground.

[Slowsilver]

When the sun finally came out I realised what a state my garage doors were in. When I fitted them exactly 10 years ago they were a lovely dark brown mahogany colour and nice and shiny. Now they looked more of a teak colour and really dull. Didn't fancy trying to paint them as they are self-coloured uPVC and don't know of any type of primer which would stop the paint flaking off after a short while. Tried some T-Cut style colour restorer but didn't help much and was very hard work so, after great success with boiled linseed oil on plastic and rubber car parts (as previously recommended by me on here), I decided to try it on these doors. Judge the results for yourself.

Before: 

First one half done:

First one completed:

Both done:

Very quick and easy to do. Just wiped on with a cloth. It took about an hour to do both. Seems to work best if you use as little as possible, just enough to get full coverage, which also means you need very little. I reckon I probably used about 20ml per door. Still looks more teak than mahogany but I didn't expect it to reverse the fading and at least they are now nice and shiny again.  It will be interesting to see how long it lasts, but it is quick and cheap to redo as and when needed.
 

[SiC]

1 hour ago, Cavcraft said:

It starts for about 1-2 seconds, then dies again and won't be revved, so it must be fuel related imho. 

That sounds more like immobiliser is enabled. VAG will run the car for a second and then cut out if it doesn't get a valid code from the immobiliser chip. 

Tried the spare key?

[Asimo]

1 hour ago, Cavcraft said:

 Poxwagen Touran 

It's a horrible, rusty shitty twat of a thing. Aside from (grudgingly admitted) driving ok and pulling well, it is spectacularly  fucking awful and the ungrateful bastard couldn't even wait until there was just a few weeks MOT left before it shit itself. I'll try and get it fixed if it's cheap then run the wanker into the ground.

Yup, a sort of down-market Zafira with profit margin for service and sales.

[BorniteIdentity]

Fitted the free cycle carrier to the Caravelle today because wtf not - and now I’m lifestyle AF yo. 🍍 

I suppose I’ll need a light board when we go on holidays, but the LED ones look good and are £cheap. 

[HillmanImp]

Well, that was an interesting day. 

Got up this morning to do some work on the Visa as I've spotted a grotty bit on the floor. 

Before that though, I took Imp Jr to the BMX park in Yeadon for a quick blast around. 

On the way there, the exhast blew on the Legacy.  It answered the question as to whether you could tell on this noisy fecker or not.

I pulled over, checked it wasn't hanging off or owt and carried on. 

Did a few laps of the bike park, got screamed at and offered loads of personal insults from a fishwife because I said her son was riding his bike the wrong way round and might get hurt, then 'BLARPED' my way home slightly more loudly than usual. 

Ran my hand along the exhaust from the front, quickly found the blow in front of the cat. 

Dug an exhaust bandage out of the garage. Instructions were in German but it wasn't a gungum that needed wetting and I managed to decipher 'putty, bandage, putty, 15 minute idle whilst listening to David Hasselhoff singles' and it was done, well sort of but more of that later. 

I'd opened the bonnet to give myself more light when doing the bandage but now the bonnet wouldn't shut. Fucksticks. 

I couldn't figure out how the mech worked, you can see where it comes apart but that didn't do anything so figured out that it must've snapped where its circled in the photo below, so welded it 'back up'. 

Yeah, that wasnt it. Totally solid now. Fucking idiot. 

Thankfully, I managed to contact a lad locally who breaks these and he said to pop over and get another one. 

Mrs Imp suddenly decided to go out so that I couldn't use her car and I was left with the Porsche or the Visa. Decided on the Porsche. It hadn't been used since December but fired up fine and off I went. 

It drove faultlessly over to Keighley, I got the part and headed home, opening it up a bit for a light Italian tune up to blow away the cobwebs. 

Get home and go to put the new bonnet release on yhe Subaru and realise I'd been using the spoiler for the Porsche for all the nuts bolts and clips etc for the Legacy. Massive DOH! moment but amazingly I'd only lost 1 of them on the journey. Get in. 

Bonnet now closes and its all groovy. 

Now to just swap all the cars back over.

When I was putting the Porsche back on the drive, it smelt a bit of petrol.

I parked it up and, yeah there was a little fuel coming out the back:

Quick look behind:

And the road outside:

Yeah, thats bad. Just letting it all run out now, will have to look tomorrow and not smoke or light fireworks near it etc. 

Think I was quite lucky there. 

Anyhow, back to the Legacy. The blow I 'repaired' is fine now. However, that must've already been there as there is clearly a much bigger blow further back that is fucking terrible so its still borked. 

FFS. 

Starting count: 3 working cars, plan to repair the Citroën. 

End count: 1 working car, no work carried out on the Citroën. 

[Cavcraft]

1 hour ago, SiC said:

That sounds more like immobiliser is enabled. VAG will run the car for a second and then cut out if it doesn't get a valid code from the immobiliser chip. 

Tried the spare key?

I don't have one, but thanks for the suggestion as that's worth a try. It did flash up something about oil pressure once or twice, oil level is ok though. If there's an oil sensor switch, could that be the problem?

 

1 hour ago, Asimo said:

Yup, a sort of down-market Zafira with profit margin for service and sales.

 

 Definitely, I'd honestly say a 2.0DTi Zafira would be better in every department.

[SiC]

17 minutes ago, Cavcraft said:

Definitely, I'd honestly say a 2.0DTi Zafira would be better in every department.

I'm no VAG lover, but give a choice, I'd rather have a Scenic II. 

[stuboy]

Think of putting these in frames for the wall...

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

3 hours ago, Cavcraft said:

Whoop-de-fucking-do, this 'best cars in the world' shit house wank mobile Poxwagen Touran doesn't start now.  It's probably karma for daring to start cleaning the inside, or perhaps that the boot deciding to start opening again yesterday spooked the car into refusing to fire up this afternoon. It starts for about 1-2 seconds, then dies again and won't be revved, so it must be fuel related imho. 

I literally watched a tubeyou on the same issue last night and I'll be fecked if I can remember what vid it was. Blocked fuel pickup, sock thing, injectors... I'll check me history.

I did encounter this once myself though and then it went to no start at all. I found a length of hosepipe in the dry tank which was holding the float up!

I am totally getting the karma thing too, I've polished  the Jaag, sorted the front suspension, the satnav has mystically started to work again and I thought, this car is not the sort that will break because I've fixed it... and it hasn't. No, last night I watched from a window, a smoll child lift a hand full of 20mm shingle, launch it into the air and watch it all hit on the bonnet of the car. Great. Your not alone.

[cort16]

My Granada has this annoying tick verging on knock that comes in just after you start it. I tried a few thing but before Christmas decided to adjust the valves. You have to take all the aux belts off, crack your knuckles trying to turn the engine etc.  I did it, fitted new rocker cover gaskets and it sounded like the old skeleton having a wank in biscuit tin. I was pissed off so left it tucked up for the winter and looked at it again this week.
Turns out I'm not very good at following instructions as some of the pistons are exhaust then intake and others are intake then exhaust. I'd set them all as intake exhaust hence the clacking. I put it back together today and it it sound much better and tick seems to have gone. MOT time next I guess. It ran out in August but got Boris'd but it's well and truly out now.

 

[wuvvum]

I've had a variably productive weekend.

Got a fair bit done yesterday.  The Trafic now has lighting in the back, all properly wired up to a domestic-type light switch screwed to the side below the window.  I even hid the wires to make it look proper.  It also now has working number plate lights - I'm ashamed to say that this involved the use of Scotchloks, but that really was the only feasible way to get a feed off the live to the tail light without wire stripping and soldering, which wasn't an option at that point.  It was a fiddly fecker of a job and took rather longer than I'd anticipated, due to the difficulties in threading the wire through the dark recesses of the van body.

Today I had been hoping to get the diesel heater fitted, but on my first attempt my drill ran out of battery after a couple of minutes (I must have been using it more than I thought) and on the second attempt the guide bit in the middle proved not to be up to the job of drilling through the floorpan and just blunted off.  So I need to go out and buy a decent 7mm drill bit to drill the guide hole, then hope the teeth on the hole saw itself are up to the job. 

I did figure out the wiring though, and that looks to be fairly straightforward - I've already sorted the earth (to one of the bolts holding in the driver's seat) and I can pick up the live from the previously mentioned light switch.  There's plenty of length in the loom to the thermostat so that can be fitted wherever.  I also got the outlet nozzle installed in the fuel tank and screwed the fuel tank in place, so once the hole saw has done its job it should be a fairly quick operation to finish the installation.

I went to fire the Rover up and the battery was completely dead.  Popping the bonnet soon revealed why.  Because I am an absent-minded cretin I have managed to destroy the shiny new battery I bought for it.  It came with two plastic plugs blocking the vent holes - I tried levering them out with a screwdriver and pulling them out with pliers but they weren't having it.  So I thought I'd stick the battery on the car just to check everything was working OK, then come back later with the thin-nosed mole grips and have another go at the plugs.  Except I forgot the last bit, so I've been running the car with the battery vents blocked, which has caused it to blow up like a balloon.  So that was a waste of money.  Fortunately I found that the mahoosive 95AH battery I've been using as a jump starter actually fits in the Trafic - the terminals are the "wrong" way round which has hitherto limited its usefulness as a vehicle battery, but the Trafic has long enough leads that they can reach around.  So that battery is now on the Trafic and the Trafic's battery is on the Rover - it's an 075 rather than an 096 but it starts the car OK.

After a Tesco trip and my Sunday bike ride, the next job was to give the lawn its first mow of the year.  Except the mower wouldn't start.  It fired up briefly a couple of times but then died.  My usual trick of whipping the plug out, giving it a clean and squirting a sniff of Easystart into the bore didn't work.  Then the string for the pull start snapped.  I pulled the broken bit out and rethreaded the string through the handle to try again, but the pull start mechanism then jammed solid.  I drilled through the rivets and removed the pull start, thinking I could use a socket on a drill to spin the engine over on the nut on top of the flywheel.  Except I couldn't find my 1/2" socket adaptor.  After a lengthy search I finally tracked it down in a box of random tat in the garage.  Got the socket mounted on the drill but the drill isn't man enough to spin the engine over properly.  So I went into the shed and dug out the mains drill, except I then couldn't find the chuck key.  By then all the shops were shut so the lawn is going to have to wait until next week.  I may just say sod it and go out and buy another mower - it's going to be a PITA having to run an extension lead out and plug the drill in every time I want to start the mower anyway.

[somewhatfoolish]

Why not just service the mower? plug>carb blockage>stale fuel in order of declining likelihood.

[Stanky]

@wuvvum - what brand of engine is it? If it's a Briggs and Stratton then I have several spare top housings including pull cords here, I can parcel one up for you gratis?

Does the priming bulb for the carb work ok? Sounds like it might be old and perished and not holding vacuum to draw up new fuel.

[bunglebus]

Going to look at this little beastie today, Suzuki Ignis 4x4. Anyone got any experience/know of common problems to look for?

[cort1977]

11 hours ago, wuvvum said:

  So I went into the shed and dug out the mains drill, except I then couldn't find the chuck key.  

I'm not a handy person (far from it) but one trick I was shown many years ago was taping the chuck key to the cord on a mains drill.  

As Terry Pratchett once said 'Nature, in fact, abhors a lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the Marie Celeste, and the chuck keys from electric drills.'

[anonymous user]

16 hours ago, SiC said:

That sounds more like immobiliser is enabled. VAG will run the car for a second and then cut out if it doesn't get a valid code from the immobiliser chip. 

Tried the spare key?

My Polo used to do this, it used to blow a fuse which dealt with part of the engine management system, have you checked the fuses?

[plasticvandan]

Handed my notice in last Tuesday,last day to be this Wednesday.got called in lunchtime today," I've had a word with the company and you can go at 12.30 and we will pay you til weds" to be honest I'm surprised they kept me there the rest of last week lol

[wuvvum]

5 hours ago, cort1977 said:

I'm not a handy person (far from it) but one trick I was shown many years ago was taping the chuck key to the cord on a mains drill. 

There is actually a rubber dooberyfirkin on the drill cord which is designed to hold the chuck key.  Evidently it doesn't hold it quite firmly enough though.

6 hours ago, Stanky said:

@wuvvum - what brand of engine is it? If it's a Briggs and Stratton then I have several spare top housings including pull cords here, I can parcel one up for you gratis?

Does the priming bulb for the carb work ok? Sounds like it might be old and perished and not holding vacuum to draw up new fuel.

It is indeed a Briggs & Stratton - XC35 to be exact.  That's a very kind offer re the pull start.  The primer bulb seems to be working fine - in fact I think I may have initially flooded the thing by pumping it too many times (it's quite sensitive to the number of pumps - get it right and it goes first pull, overdo it and it's a pain in the arse).  It's also burning a bit of oil which isn't helping as the plug was quite badly oiled up when I took it out.

13 hours ago, somewhatfoolish said:

Why not just service the mower? plug>carb blockage>stale fuel in order of declining likelihood.

It's probably due a new plug to be fair, although it doesn't look too badly worn.  Fuel was fresh from the pump yesterday though so shouldn't be an issue.

[barefoot]

20 hours ago, HillmanImp said:

 

And the road outside:

Yeah, thats bad. Just letting it all run out now, will have to look tomorrow and not smoke or light fireworks near it etc. 

Mine did exactly the same thing. I'm pretty sure that its done it twice now. The last time I wrote E10 resistant fuel pipe on a pice of paper & gave it to the bloke at the Porsche specialist, but I don't think he understood...

[bunglebus]

7 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Going to look at this little beastie today, Suzuki Ignis 4x4. Anyone got any experience/know of common problems to look for?

Well the FIL bought it. I was a little disappointed to be honest, it has general giffer damage to both sill trims and the whole interior was scuffed from carrying toot to the tip (probably). Still, ran nicely enough and apparently drives well too. Very odd seeing a live axle and diff under the back!

One previous owner from new although it was a dealer sale, wound me up a bit that it had clearly been run prior to us turning up,

I might pinch it off him one day and test out its four wheel drive capabilities

[wuvvum]

I'll be curious to see how he gets on with it.  Those have been on my radar as a potential winter beater for a while.  I'd imagine with a decent set of winter tyres they'd be pretty much unstoppable.

[Stanky]

1 hour ago, wuvvum said:

It is indeed a Briggs & Stratton - XC35 to be exact.  That's a very kind offer re the pull start.  The primer bulb seems to be working fine - in fact I think I may have initially flooded the thing by pumping it too many times (it's quite sensitive to the number of pumps - get it right and it goes first pull, overdo it and it's a pain in the arse).  It's also burning a bit of oil which isn't helping as the plug was quite badly oiled up when I took it out.

Just tied to PM but I think you're inbox is full. You are welcome to the bits if you want them? Give it an oil change and it should help the consumption quite a bit, they don't like old manky oil as much as people think they do!

[wuvvum]

5 minutes ago, Stanky said:

Just tied to PM but I think you're inbox is full. You are welcome to the bits if you want them? Give it an oil change and it should help the consumption quite a bit, they don't like old manky oil as much as people think they do!

Sorry, space now cleared.  It could probably do with an oil change - what grade do they prefer?

[Zelandeth]

Halfway back home after dropping off medication for a friend, throttle cable either has snapped or detached itself from the mechanism (again, this seems to be a recurring theme).  At least the last two times it happened it did it on the drive immediately after fitting rather than waiting several months.

Didn't have the tools I'd need to sort it properly with me... calling breakdown recovery for something so trivial would be ridiculous.

Time to improvise.

It's not a breakdown of you drive home under your own power.

Guess that's a job for tomorrow again!