The new news 24 thread

[wuvvum]

Just before Christmas I bought a folding bike off eBay.  I didn't particularly need it, I have two already, but it was massively reduced and seemed like a good buy.  Three weeks later it hadn't turned up and was still showing as awaiting dispatch on eBay, the seller didn't respond to my messages so I had to go via eBay to get a refund.  The money arrived back yesterday, and almost immediately the seller relisted the bike.  

Anyway, rather than squandering the refund money on another pointless purchase I did my first ever order from skandix.de and bought a few bits for the Volvo.  I bought a set of clip-on quarterlight latches (the originals were stick-on, the glue failed about 10 years ago and I've never managed to find anything that will hold them onto the glass for more than a couple of days) - Skandix seems to be the only place that does these.  I also bought a new window lift channel for the driver's door (the original is rotten which means that if I try to wind the window down the glass just falls into the door), a door scraper seal for the nearside rear door which has been missing its seal ever since I've owned the car, and a couple of rubber gaskets for the radiator cap.  That little lot came to 166€ including delivery - classic Volvo bits are not cheap.  There will probably be more expenditure in the spring, for now I've just bought the bits that were either only available from Skandix or where they were cheaper than Brookhouse.

I had a day off work today - it was a "free" day, we were given an extra day's leave as a Christmas present but it had to be taken in December or January.  I treated myself to a lie-in, then pottered about for a bit.  I finally poked my nose outside at about noon, and found that it wasn't actually that cold in the sun, although my hopes of going for a bike ride were dashed because the bits of road that hadn't been in direct sunlight were still covered in ice.  So I decided to jack the BMW up and see if my newly-acquired rattle gun would be able to undo the strut pinch bolt.  It wasn't.  It took a while as my compressor is a bit feeble so will only run the gun at full whack for a few seconds at a time before I have to stop and let it catch its breath, but I gave it enough ugga duggas that if it was going to come undone it would have done, and it didn't budge.  So I'm going to have to get the breaker bar on it, which is probably going to snap the bolt like it did the other side.  Great.  The shock is proper knackered though so needs doing.

I then jacked the other side of the car up and did some more dismantling, ready to hopefully fit the replacement hub and strut tomorrow.  Everything that needs to come undone has come undone - the only potential stumbling block will be recalcitrant ball joints, I didn't get as far as digging out the splitter today as the sun went behind the houses and it suddenly got very cold.  The only casualty was the bolt holding the ABS sensor into the hub knuckle, which snapped off as I assumed it would, but the sensor came out of the hub easily enough and I'm sure I have a bolt in my stash that'll fit the new hub.

Tomorrow is supposed to be slightly warmer so hopefully I'll be able to crack on.  Sunday should be milder still but windy enough to blow the car off the jacks so I might not get much done then.

 

[RoverFolkUs]

5 hours ago, Lankytim said:

MOAR FOX FETTLING.

Ive found there’s no audible tell tale for the indicators, hazards when you leave the lights on and open the door. Is this an MOT fail?

Google suggests it’s the speaker module in the dashboard. 

If the engine is off then that's normal. It's probably got a warning chime for the headlights being left on? Which may be defunct in itself but in any case it will override the indicator telltale. Same goes with the seatbelt chime, which will always override the indicator tell tail noise 

[EspenO]

6 hours ago, trigger said:

I've been offered a XR3i today, it's been of the road since before 2005, 1 owner from new who's passed away and his widow wants to move it on, still in excellent condition apparently but it has these wheels on it which are bugging me as I recognise them, anyone know what they are?

I’m getting strong MiM or Centra vibes, but can’t find a pic of that particular design 🤔

[lesapandre]

Cold weather impacting EV battery performance apparently.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/19/tesla-battery-dying-cold-weather-charging-winter

[juular]

11 minutes ago, lesapandre said:

Cold weather impacting EV battery performance apparently.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/19/tesla-battery-dying-cold-weather-charging-winter

 

 

[andyberg]

30 minutes ago, lesapandre said:

Cold weather impacting EV battery performance apparently.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/19/tesla-battery-dying-cold-weather-charging-winter

Hell yes it is. We have electric buses at the airport, they are going from full charge to 50% in a couple of hours then are taking over double the time to recharge. Yesterday the chargers wouldn't charge the buses because it was too cold 🙄(-7°C)

[Schaefft]

1 hour ago, lesapandre said:

Cold weather impacting EV battery performance apparently.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/19/tesla-battery-dying-cold-weather-charging-winter

Where's the news?

[cort16]

15 hours ago, trigger said:

I've been offered a XR3i today, it's been of the road since before 2005, 1 owner from new who's passed away and his widow wants to move it on, still in excellent condition apparently but it has these wheels on it which are bugging me as I recognise them, anyone know what they are?

That is cool, one of my mates has a tennis edition one a few years ago that looked good but it was bloody horrible to drive. 

[dozeydustman]

2 hours ago, lesapandre said:

Cold weather impacting EV battery performance apparently.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/19/tesla-battery-dying-cold-weather-charging-winter

Yep, can vouch for that. With lights and heater on the 2 electric trucks at work have a range drop from ~220km to 80km. If we’re lucky.

[trigger]

1 hour ago, cort16 said:

That is cool, one of my mates has a tennis edition one a few years ago that looked good but it was bloody horrible to drive. 

To be fair the MK1 Golf Cabriolet I had was crap to drive too, scuttle shake was awful so I can't imagine this being any better but whenyou get offered a old car you can't be fussy can you!

Hopefully viewing it next week with the view of getting it back on the road for this summer now that the ST200 has sold.

This is it's current state

[Lankytim]

18 hours ago, RoverFolkUs said:

If the engine is off then that's normal. It's probably got a warning chime for the headlights being left on? Which may be defunct in itself but in any case it will override the indicator telltale. Same goes with the seatbelt chime, which will always override the indicator tell tail noise 

 

I know the bong for the headlights and seatbelt deffo isn’t working. I’ll have to try the indicators with the engine running and see if anything happens. AFAIK they all use the same buzzer anyway so if the headlight bong isn’t working then the indicators probably aren’t either. 

[wuvvum]

Progress.

[Steviemillar]

On 19/01/2024 at 11:00, trigger said:

I've been offered a XR3i today, it's been of the road since before 2005, 1 owner from new who's passed away and his widow wants to move it on, still in excellent condition apparently but it has these wheels on it which are bugging me as I recognise them, anyone know what they are?

Zender or OZ? 

[trigger]

1 hour ago, Steviemillar said:

Zender? 

RS I think?

[egg]

This guy is good for French spots, love the original number plate on this clearly daily R11.

https://www.instagram.com/guillaume_automobile/

[stuboy]

So I decided to get the egr fitted only 5 bolts, last bolt was dam slow winding in, not even like was cross threaded... well after all the grief it's still the same , low speeds ok... but then lack oomph, I'm  wonder if boost pressure issue

[wuvvum]

New* hub and strut fitted to the Z4.

It took rather longer than I'd hoped as both ball joints put up quite a fight, but they came apart eventually.  Fitting the new strut was easy, although I did waste a bit of time trying to get it to seat in the hub properly until I realised that you have to have the pinch bolt completely out or the locating lugs on the strut will catch on it.  Then once I'd fitted and tightened the pinch bolt I then realised I'd forgotten to hang the brake flexi bracket on it before I fitted it, so it had to come out again.

It's all back together now though.  More or less anyway - the track rod end ball joint nut is a bit knackered after I battered it with a hammer to try and get the ball joint to come out, so it now can't be tightened all the way, and the new M12 nuts I had in my stash are the wrong thread pitch.  So I've put the original nut back on for now with a load of washers packing it out so it's tight - it's going to need to come off soon anyway as I knackered the dust cover so I'm going to need to fit a replacement one of those.  I knackered the bottom arm ball joint dust cover as well, but there's quite a bit of play in the ball joint (odd as the arm looks fairly new, although braying the feck out of it with a splitter probably didn't help) so it's going to need a new arm before long, so I'm not going to bother buggering about with the dust cover on the old one.

Wheel bolts were a bit of a twat to refit as well - to start with I thought I'd bought some weird spec hub with a different thread for the bolts, but turned out it was just where the hub had been sat around and the threads had gone badly rusty.  Plenty of grease on the bolts and winding them in with a long bar soon sorted that.

I went to see a mate last night and mentioned my BMW suspension woes, and he offered to lend me his big 230v rattle gun to see if that'd get the other side pinch bolt out in one piece.  I was dubious, but somewhat to my surprise:

So that's a relief as it means I don't have to change the hub on that side, so no buggering about with ball joints (assuming I can persuade the strut out of the hub anyway...).

[Mrcento]

Christ, either there's an epidemic of Mk1 Qashqais having the exact same unlucky accidents near me, getting hit in the exact same place, or there's a sudden epidemic of the rear arms snapping, because that's 4 of them now in the past 2 weeks i've seen parked half up on pavements with the drivers side rear wheel bent in (Usually steering the car towards a lamppost, parked car or pedestrians).

[reb]

Today I'm going to sit in my mum's kitchen to bash out some work on a project that I've been putting off. Cheaper and quieter than Costa, while still not having the wealth of distractions featured in my own house.

Of course, I forgot that the bus times are completely different on a Sunday which has knackered my schedule for the day. Oh well.

[richardmorris]

Spotted out walking this morning. 

[beko1987]

A water main exploded Friday under the main Thame bypass, and it's currently shut. So me and the boy went to explore the 'forbidden other side' of it and took the litter picker

We got bored of laughing at the idiots ignoring the road closed sign, that big blue thing is a horse box who reversed badly the half mile back to the diversion! 

Was alot of hidden grot, I found 5 massive cable ties though which I bought home. Sort of ones I'll stick in the car to hold a broken suspension or body part together with to get me home if needed 😂

[Lankytim]

Finally found time to replace a corroded fuel pipe on the 145 today. A few months ago I removed the tank to clean and repair it and disturbed some of the existing steel pipe work near the rear axle. As this was corroded it immediately sprang a leak. Very annoying.

The corroded section was removed and a length of rubber fuel pipe clamped in to replace it. After priming the fuel system the 145 sprang into life first turn of the key and settled down to a nice idle. 
 

I nearly gassed myself but I suppose that just adds to the giddy delirium you get when you finally fix something shite related! 

[Zelandeth]

25 minutes ago, Lankytim said:

Finally found time to replace a corroded fuel pipe on the 145 today. A few months ago I removed the tank to clean and repair it and disturbed some of the existing steel pipe work near the rear axle. As this was corroded it immediately sprang a leak. Very annoying.

The corroded section was removed and a length of rubber fuel pipe clamped in to replace it. After priming the fuel system the 145 sprang into life first turn of the key and settled down to a nice idle. 
 

I nearly gassed myself but I suppose that just adds to the giddy delirium you get when you finally fix something shite related! 

Note that hose you've used isn't going to be a long term fix with ethanol in fuel these days.  You need something that's got the R9 rather than R6 suffix.  Though most stuff from mainstream motor factors these days will turn to powder in six months irrespective of what it's labelled as.

You're much safer buying from specialists such as these guys these days as they actually care what they're selling.

https://www.glencoeltd.co.uk/cohline-fuel-vacuum-hose/

 

That's the sort of job I'd find all sorts of excuses to leave for another day though, looks like the one end was quite a faff to get to.

[Lankytim]

2 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Note that hose you've used isn't going to be a long term fix with ethanol in fuel these days.  You need something that's got the R9 rather than R6 suffix.  Though most stuff from mainstream motor factors these days will turn to powder in six months irrespective of what it's labelled as.

You're much safer buying from specialists such as these guys these days as they actually care what they're selling.

https://www.glencoeltd.co.uk/cohline-fuel-vacuum-hose/

 

That's the sort of job I'd find all sorts of excuses to leave for another day though, looks like the one end was quite a faff to get to.

I do need to stock up on ethanol friendly fuel hose, this will do as a temporary fix for now though. Accessibility wasn’t too bad once the back end was up on axle stands. 

[Joey spud]

I went to an Autojumble today in Maidstone,to be honest I thought they didn't exist anymore but yep £3 entry to the indoor venue. It was quite busy and I spent some money.

I give you fingerless gloves £1,trim removal tool £2,box of nitriles £5 and a very respectable but grubby HS4 SU jetted for a 1300 A series for £12 (I will get this Morris Minor running properly).

[egg]

Canterbury resident Eric Dixon, 100, still driving after reaching milestone birthday...(been driving since he was 13 he reckons!!)

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/canterbury/news/i-m-100-still-driving-and-have-no-intention-of-stopping-300408/

[lesapandre]

Brewing up a massive storm here in London - some railway lines already out with falling trees - just got home on the last through train.

Looks mega in other parts of UK. If you don't need to go out don't.

Keep safe folks.

[wuvvum]

Aye, it's a bit breezy here an' all.  Waiting to see how many of the car / bike covers survive the night...

[Rust Collector]

6 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

Aye, it's a bit breezy here an' all.  Waiting to see how many of the car / bike covers survive the night...

I’ve only just worked out that all the old car batteries I’ve been hoarding make ideal tethers for the straps on the corners of the covers. I’ve thrown some old tyres on all my covers and tarps too for extra protection*.

[Split_Pin]

My house is moving (I'm in Central Scotland). Even the gable end is making strange noises.  I've lived here 12 years and there's never been wind strong enough to do that. I've just double checked my house insurance as I think I'm going to need it by morning.