The new news 24 thread

[N19]

Went over to Enfield to pick up a cassette player for the Mondeo this morning. The one in there is absolutely fine, but this is the same unit and working and cheap, so I thought definitely worth picking up for the day when the belt snaps (as they are wont to).

Then returned for a bit of mooching around the garage. I'm still quite impressed with these tiles, they're essentially foam-based, someone was getting rid of them on Freecycle.

 

Bluebird reverse light switch investigated, I'm wondering if it could be the connector that's faulty. That would be nice, if I could avoid having to swap the switch out... also on the agenda is re-fitting the heat shroud on the exhaust manifold that goes to the carb - which needs two snapped off bolts drilling out first, which needs the radiator removing realistically. 

Also, to make things a bit easier when working under bonnet, I decided to up the illumination. A little heath robinson, but a bit of wood lying around, plus some LED strip light, all attached to the car batteries I have kicking around...

  

4 hours ago, barefoot said:

The 75 is back with a new battery, a new exhaust and new paint. I don't know exactly what the difference is between the original silent exhaust and this new example. It's certainly not as quiet, but that's not such a bad thing on a V6 and the car pulls much better & the auto box is far more responsive. He only wanted to charge me for the battery which was frankly ludicrous, so in addition I brimmed his courtesy car with petrol, re-filled its screen wash and forced a couple of hundred pounds cash into his hand. The chap advertises 'outstanding service' and I have to agree with him. The garage is also well within dog walking distance and there's a pub at the mid point. I'll be taking the Scirocco down to him for a service in the next couple of weeks & I think that I'll probably have a new cam belt while it's there.

I have a similar good relationship with a garage which is conveniently at the end of my street. I think he enjoys having something unusual to work on, but never gives me a bill. I've taken to giving him what I think roughly I owe him, primarily out of embarrassment.

[Zelandeth]

4 hours ago, barefoot said:

The 75 is back with a new battery, a new exhaust and new paint. I don't know exactly what the difference is between the original silent exhaust and this new example. It's certainly not as quiet, but that's not such a bad thing on a V6 and the car pulls much better & the auto box is far more responsive. He only wanted to charge me for the battery which was frankly ludicrous, so in addition I brimmed his courtesy car with petrol, re-filled its screen wash and forced a couple of hundred pounds cash into his hand. The chap advertises 'outstanding service' and I have to agree with him. The garage is also well within dog walking distance and there's a pub at the mid point. I'll be taking the Scirocco down to him for a service in the next couple of weeks & I think that I'll probably have a new cam belt while it's there.

Sounds like the last time I had work done at my usual garage on the Xantia. Changing a ball joint - simple enough job but turned into an absolute swine because the old one wouldn't come off.  Wound up with the whole suspension arm off to be sorted on the bench - car was on the lift for a couple of days, especially as they tore the CV boot getting the hub apart so had to wait for a replacement to come in.

They tried to charge me something daft like £40 and apologised for it taking so long.

Speaking of the Xantia, it gave me a mild heart attack today when a random orange light started flickering at me out the blue.

Oh.  Yeah, still haven't got used to the whole concept of having a car that's new enough to tell me about things like that.  It's also a very pessimistic light that comes on when the reservoir is about half full.  Will top if off at the weekend.

[wuvvum]

19 hours ago, High Jetter said:

That's not something you hear every day!

He likes his smoll vans.  He's had a succession of Piaggio Porter pickups as runarounds.

[High Jetter]

33 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

He's had a succession of Piaggio Porter pickups as runarounds.

Good man! (My daily is a Porter van - well until OMGHGF rears it's ugly head)

[stuboy]

Talking of nibblers we have this bin raider at work.. look at the damage he done to the bin..

[Yoss]

In hire van news, I had the misfortune of a fake (PSA) Vivaro yesterday. 69 plate. You can tell it's really a Peugeot because of the wipers. We have this with our old Partners where the wipers don't come back on when you get back in the van. You leave the stalk in position 1 (or whatever) and when you get back in the wipers stay resolutely parked despite the stalk being where you left it. You have to move the stalk up or down a position and back again to get them to restart. This can get annoying when you're getting in and out fifty odd times a day and it's raining constantly. Our Partners are 11 and 12 reg but the thing I had yesterday is nearly new so they've had nearly a decade to sort this out and haven't so we can only assume they deliberately designed this in and actually think it's a good idea. We'll done Peugeot. 

But then when I flicked the stalk the wrong way I found this. 

Brilliant, I can just leave this on. Ha. Believe it or not every time you get out the van the automatic wipers deactivate and you have to switch them back on again when you get back in. Now, to me automatic wipers that you have to reactivate every time you get in are not automatic wipers, they're just wipers and we've all got those. We'll done again Peugeot. 

I didn't take a picture of the van itself as it was too depressing but I did this morning as they gave me this. 

Much better but not perfect. All I'm marking it down for is the rear door handles. The first one is hidden under the black plastic trim over the number plate in the small space between the R and the lock. 

It really is that tiny. 

And the other door has an equally small handle that is flush with the contours of the door. 

What I want is a big chunky handle I can grab in a hurry. The side and passenger doors have these so they do have them, this is just style over substance. Apart from that it's a good van. Very flat in the corners, though I didn't push it too hard or else all the packets I had carefully placed in different piles for different areas wouldn't be in those piles next time I opened the door. 

So I think I've driven all the mid sized vans in our hire fleet now and have decided to rank them in the following order. 

1. Real Vivaro (still available in Renault/Nissan flavour). It still is the best overall. Just feels nice. Handles well, everything works as it should, controls are nice and intuitive. Stitched pleather steering wheel feels nice. 

2. VW Tranporter. It is probably as good as good for long journeys but for frequent drops but the rear handles let it down. Also has stitched pleather steering wheel. 

3. Turkish Transit. It's OK. That's all. Transits used to be the benchmark by which all others were judged. Not any more. 

4. Peugeot Expert/Fake Vivaro/Citroën Whatever. Last by a long shot. Not just the wipers. The seat is flat and slippery. Steering wheel is hard plastic. The dashboard is too high, if you raise the seat enough to see over it, getting in and out becomes awkward, you have to duck as you get in. Avoid. 

 

In other delivery van news I snapped this from the seat of my incognito white van. 

DPD have at least one Nissan Env 200, though how recharging in a Lidl car park fits in with the duty I don't know. This is what we should be driving. As you know from some of my previous posts diesel is hopeless for start stop work ( I do about six miles in four and a half hours). I want to try one of these next. 

 

 

EDIT :

Just noticed bonus RX8 action in the background. 

[beko1987]

4 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Sounds like the last time I had work done at my usual garage on the Xantia. Changing a ball joint - simple enough job but turned into an absolute swine because the old one wouldn't come off.  Wound up with the whole suspension arm off to be sorted on the bench - car was on the lift for a couple of days, especially as they tore the CV boot getting the hub apart so had to wait for a replacement to come in.

They tried to charge me something daft like £40 and apologised for it taking so long.

Speaking of the Xantia, it gave me a mild heart attack today when a random orange light started flickering at me out the blue.

Oh.  Yeah, still haven't got used to the whole concept of having a car that's new enough to tell me about things like that.  It's also a very pessimistic light that comes on when the reservoir is about half full.  Will top if off at the weekend.

Was trying to replace those very ball joints on my 406 on the weekend before the test with zero other transport that saw it sadly bridged, evil swine of a job! It was enough to make me actively avoid that style from now on, at least with the 3 bolts style ones you can smack them out of the wishbone. 

We failed on the first side (and wrote alot of the other end of life suspension stuff off as we went) and still had the side with the fucked boot still to go (change in pairs etc) 

Still makes me cross and sad thinking about it

[stuboy]

After 6 months I found out this actually is wired into the kenwood headunit

[Yoss]

43 minutes ago, R114 said:

Isn't this so that is doesn't activate if the screen is frosted up, therefore a good idea in my view as it stops damage.

I always have to remember to turn my auto wipers off before I start the car when frosty, as if I forget and don't pull the arms free first, a spray of de-icer near the sensor and the wipers try to activate and expensive sounding noises happen!

 

Hadn't thought of that, but I don't think the one time it might be useful makes up for the hundreds of times it isn't. Seeing as this all goes through some sort of ecu it wouldn't be that hard to make it do it once when you first start up but never again. No other vans do it. 

[beko1987]

1 hour ago, R114 said:

Isn't this so that is doesn't activate if the screen is frosted up, therefore a good idea in my view as it stops damage.

I always have to remember to turn my auto wipers off before I start the car when frosty, as if I forget and don't pull the arms free first, a spray of de-icer near the sensor and the wipers try to activate and expensive sounding noises happen!

 

My old (pre plex) 206 hard blew the wiper and lighting shared fuse if I wiped with a frozen screen... I always lift the wipers now (I quite like scraping, it's nice to clean the screen properly during winter) 

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Every year once the temp had dropped we awaited the express train of C3's to come in and have their wiper fuses replaced.

[Split_Pin]

On 2/4/2021 at 10:31 PM, RobT said:

Covid-compliant Clio collection caper.  2 miles away so it was a caper in miniature.  Forecast was wrong so I got soaked walking there too.  Fake pez shot as tank was half full.

RN spec so keep fit everything, and it'll do hopefully.  1.6 automatic for added peril.  Must admit, although the Morris has been performing main car duties well, it's nice to have something with a heater and de-misting properties.

It's also been five months since my last purchase.  It feels gooood...like having a drink after denying yourself all month or something!

That is an incredibly handsome  wee motor. Renaults of this era are brilliant. 

[brownnova]

After liberating the 900 from its mousey overlords I drove it to work yesterday, no problems.

But on the way home I decided to put the roof down because it wasn’t raining... but the lid wouldn’t go up, and then it wouldn’t secure down properly. Meaning I drove home with the rear of the roof not secured properly... and I got home and it started absolutely pissing it down! Gah! So I’ve covered it with a plastic sheet for now until the rain stops.

Something else to add to the to do list! 

[beko1987]

17 minutes ago, brownnova said:

After liberating the 900 from its mousey overlords I drove it to work yesterday, no problems.

But on the way home I decided to put the roof down because it wasn’t raining... but the lid wouldn’t go up, and then it wouldn’t secure down properly. Meaning I drove home with the rear of the roof not secured properly... and I got home and it started absolutely pissing it down! Gah! So I’ve covered it with a plastic sheet for now until the rain stops.

Something else to add to the to do list! 

Isn't this a rite of passage for soft top owners though? 

Reminds me of being mid way through investigating the leaky sunroof on my xm, had many things dismantled and many windows and roof open... Black clouds rolled in and it went from quite nice to fucking oh shit rain in 5 minutes... That involved a few bits of wood and a tarp quickly

[Angrydicky]

Just seen this on the MoT tester group on FB.

I thought this sort of thing was a thing of the past, apparently not it seems. Transit, apparently.

 

[DVee8]

14 hours ago, Yoss said:

In hire van news, I had the misfortune of a fake (PSA) Vivaro yesterday. 69 plate. You can tell it's really a Peugeot because of the wipers. We have this with our old Partners where the wipers don't come back on when you get back in the van. You leave the stalk in position 1 (or whatever) and when you get back in the wipers stay resolutely parked despite the stalk being where you left it. You have to move the stalk up or down a position and back again to get them to restart. This can get annoying when you're getting in and out fifty odd times a day and it's raining constantly. Our Partners are 11 and 12 reg but the thing I had yesterday is nearly new so they've had nearly a decade to sort this out and haven't so we can only assume they deliberately designed this in and actually think it's a good idea. We'll done Peugeot. 

But then when I flicked the stalk the wrong way I found this. 

Brilliant, I can just leave this on. Ha. Believe it or not every time you get out the van the automatic wipers deactivate and you have to switch them back on again when you get back in. Now, to me automatic wipers that you have to reactivate every time you get in are not automatic wipers, they're just wipers and we've all got those. We'll done again Peugeot. 

I didn't take a picture of the van itself as it was too depressing but I did this morning as they gave me this. 

Much better but not perfect. All I'm marking it down for is the rear door handles. The first one is hidden under the black plastic trim over the number plate in the small space between the R and the lock. 

It really is that tiny. 

And the other door has an equally small handle that is flush with the contours of the door. 

What I want is a big chunky handle I can grab in a hurry. The side and passenger doors have these so they do have them, this is just style over substance. Apart from that it's a good van. Very flat in the corners, though I didn't push it too hard or else all the packets I had carefully placed in different piles for different areas wouldn't be in those piles next time I opened the door. 

So I think I've driven all the mid sized vans in our hire fleet now and have decided to rank them in the following order. 

1. Real Vivaro (still available in Renault/Nissan flavour). It still is the best overall. Just feels nice. Handles well, everything works as it should, controls are nice and intuitive. Stitched pleather steering wheel feels nice. 

2. VW Tranporter. It is probably as good as good for long journeys but for frequent drops but the rear handles let it down. Also has stitched pleather steering wheel. 

3. Turkish Transit. It's OK. That's all. Transits used to be the benchmark by which all others were judged. Not any more. 

4. Peugeot Expert/Fake Vivaro/Citroën Whatever. Last by a long shot. Not just the wipers. The seat is flat and slippery. Steering wheel is hard plastic. The dashboard is too high, if you raise the seat enough to see over it, getting in and out becomes awkward, you have to duck as you get in. Avoid. 

 

In other delivery van news I snapped this from the seat of my incognito white van. 

DPD have at least one Nissan Env 200, though how recharging in a Lidl car park fits in with the duty I don't know. This is what we should be driving. As you know from some of my previous posts diesel is hopeless for start stop work ( I do about six miles in four and a half hours). I want to try one of these next. 

There is a couple of electric DPD Nissan vans doing the rounds, here in Chester le Street.

[Yoss]

I'm sure we'll get some eventually but probably after everybody else, things change at a glacial rate at Royal Mail. Whether we get them before I retire in about 12 years remains to be seen. You would think we would have to and you'd also think our bulk buying power would make it a lot more viable.  I can't see my current Pug Partner lasting that long, it's already nine years old. When I started we only kept vans three years, but then they were LDVs. You don't see ex postie vans as much as you used to, that's because we keep them longer now. 

[New POD]

1 hour ago, DVee8 said:

There is a couple of electric DPD Nissan vans doing the rounds, here in Chester le Street.

There's definately one local to me.  See it most days. 

[crad]

bought a new rear wiper blade today, and some tape to tape up my air intake pipe thingy. student car maintanence

a truly professional job

[MikeR]

Its that time of year , daughter in laws 2012 battery just bit the dust ... Being a 063 .. i just happened to have a spare which got it to the car parts shop for a new one ..... As you can see gods waiting  room for old lead cells is getting full 

[Broadsword]

Took a brave pill yesterday and rocked up to my trusted MoT station in a 650 bhp convoy of supercharged Jags, which both need an MoT. Both failed, but on on nothing bad. The turquoise one will get the welding done when the garage has time and I can take care of the the exhaust leak on the manual car. Despite going home with two fail sheets, I was happy. Also initial drive of the manual XJR on the road, my word is it an animal. What a machine!

[Chris2cv]

It turns out that it was a bit more than a few years since I  last changed the battery!

[OM646]

Popped a new battery in the Aldi today. And used the 10€ coupon to finish my choonage and put a set of Pioneers in the front. 

 

Audi Logic: let's make a mounting spot so weird that you'll need to cut two tabs off the speaker to install it, and put it in a place so cramped that you'll actually run your fingers through the cut tabs.

[doobietoo]

And finally the Pug is back and a quick run out revealed it is now quieter and a bit quicker. My mechanic did look at the 'oil leak' on the other side/ front of the engine and traced it to the intercooler inlet. further inspection revealed a completely blocked ERG pipe... it was literally full of clog. he dug out what he could but when it goes back for the sump a proper clean will be in order or may be a EGR delete. Any Pug experts advice on solutions or which way to go welcome...

[loserone]

Fixing that would probably make it faster again.  Have you figured out the wobble?

[doobietoo]

Yes, swapped front and rear tyres and with the new pulley it is wobble free 😀

[Lankytim]

Had a pair LANDSAIL tyres fitted to the rear of the V70 at the local Halfords Autocentres recently.  I should feel a bit guilty about it all but I quite like Landsail tyres and the experience at Halfords was pretty good, they even torqued up the wheel nuts correctly. I was expecting a good 10 seconds worth of UGGA DUGGAS on each wheel bolt. Nice facilities, courteous staff and they didn't try to upsell me a thing, which I think is a first. The paperwork they gave to me had a vehicle checklist on with nothing highlighted- I'm more used to someone trying to hard sell me an alternator for no reason or something.

[beko1987]

22 minutes ago, doobietoo said:

And finally the Pug is back and a quick run out revealed it is now quieter and a bit quicker. My mechanic did look at the 'oil leak' on the other side/ front of the engine and traced it to the intercooler inlet. further inspection revealed a completely blocked ERG pipe... it was literally full of clog. he dug out what he could but when it goes back for the sump a proper clean will be in order or may be a EGR delete. Any Pug experts advice on solutions or which way to go welcome...

I dug/scraped clean the egr on an old laguna once and christ it picked up after that! 

I'd like to do it to the xsara but it's all buried under and behind the engine iirc so that's not a job for winter/at all... 

There's lots and lots of people who say a delete is the best, but you may have to map a warning light out... Personally I'd get it all cleaned and working first then see what you think

 

[RayMK]

The Tipo was uncharacteristically slow to start yesterday when I headed out for a walk in the local lanes.  The first attempt just caused it to turn over without a trace of firing for about 15 seconds. After pressing the accelerator a couple of times and trying again, it burst in to life after a further 10 seconds on the starter. Perhaps the very infrequent use and recent prolonged heavy rain had caused general dampness and sulking.  Soon after setting off the rain started again and the walk was postponed but at least the Tipo had a short run to warm it up.  Today's weather is bright, sunny and warm. The Tipo started instantly and a local deserted lane was achieved. I walked for a couple of hundred metres, feeling rustier than a '94 Tipo, before heading back to the car and driving home. My last walk in the countryside/outside was in early January.  Car and driver desperately need to get out more often.  Today's rather bleak scene attached below. 

[Stanky]

fixed the clip that secures the end of the bowden cable for the heater temperature adjuster knob in the Daewoo again, its an absurdly fiddly job and it will probably pop off again before long. The clip that holds it to the back of the adjuster knob is useless and after a while of the temp being adjusted it just pops off again.

At least i know what I'm doing now, it only took me about 20 minutes to get all the fascia stuff off, radio out and disconnected, cable popped back on and then reassemble everything. I didn't even cut myself this time round.

Also, changed the dehumidifier in the mercedes earlier, it had collected quite a bit of water over the last 3-4 weeks

That was it about 10 days ago, the collected water had about doubled in volume and I was worried it'd fall off the RVM and go everywhere. I've put a new one in now and this one in the bin.

to be brutally honest, the cars doesn't seem to be any less damp. the windows still mist up on the inside when its parked facing away from the sun. I'll keep using them up, but probably won't buy more.