Ask a Shiter

[TagoraSX]

What is the approximate weight of a car door from something like a mk2 granny from the 70's/80's?

 

I want to put an ad on shipley and its asking for the weight.

[willswitchengage]

Is filtering illegal in Germany/Belgium/Luxembourg? The internet tells me it is in France.

[Sloth in a bowl]

I'm considering changing the Kia Pride front seats for something that has a lower ass and longer back. Making it more comfortable and holding me in place better on high G cornering.

 

How standard are seat mountings or is it going to be a job where I need to drill new mounting points into the base of the car. I'm already assuming that replacement seats will not fit the current mounts.

[Sloth in a bowl]

What are symptoms of xud head gasket failure?

 

Pug is drinking water with no obvious leaks. White smoke at start up and noticed some white smoke yesterday caught in headlights of car behind yesterday.

 

Not air leaks as I have clear hose running directly to pump with two in line filters.

 

Oil is black with no mayo.

If only a pint every 2000 miles then just keep it topped up, if worse then throw in some K seal and see if the coolant loss stops?

I had suspect water to exhaust on the V40 for ages but as it lost very little and only when the engine was cold, I never fixed it.

[Asimo]

I'm considering changing the Kia Pride front seats for something that has a lower ass and longer back. Making it more comfortable and holding me in place better on high G cornering.

 

How standard are seat mountings or is it going to be a job where I need to drill new mounting points into the base of the car. I'm already assuming that replacement seats will not fit the current mounts.

In my limited experience the only standard thing about car seats is the bums that sit on them.

 

Lots of seat things have to be sound for safety reasons, more still to allow the runners to work properly, belt mounts etc may be involved  so why not cut the floor section out of the donor car and weld that into the Kia complete with runners, anchors etc (done to MOT standards)?

 

There may be a Mazda or 'subishi or something else related to your car which would be a genuine swap rather than a major project but only intensive scrappie-surfing will tell. Good luck!

[Sloth in a bowl]

In my limited experience the only standard thing about car seats is the bums that sit on them.

 

Lots of seat things have to be sound for safety reasons, more still to allow the runners to work properly, belt mounts etc may be involved so why not cut the floor section out of the donor car and weld that into the Kia complete with runners, anchors etc (done to MOT standards)?

 

There may be a Mazda or 'subishi or something else related to your car which would be a genuine swap rather than a major project but only intensive scrappie-surfing will tell. Good luck!

Plan B is to buy a pair of 2nd hand pride seats and gut/re trim them to a better shape.

 

Pity that Ford Festivas were not sold here as they look to have better seats and the option of a very perky 100hp motor.

[laser wheels]

You know when you see a car you are interested in, and you put the reg number in the search box on the insurers website to get a quote and it comes up with a different car? Is that a bad sign or not? It's always looked a bit suspicious to me, but am I being too cautious?

[320touring]

You know when you see a car you are interested in, and you put the reg number in the search box on the insurers website to get a quote and it comes up with a different car? Is that a bad sign or not? It's always looked a bit suspicious to me, but am I being too cautious?

The 735 Ive just bought had a private regards swapped off. Took about 2 weeks for the databases to catch up.

 

Alternatively, porky digits can lead to unexpected results. .

[laser wheels]

Yeah, this isn't so much private regs or reg swaps which I can understand but more like cars coming up as, for example, the same model but different engine size or the Fiat Multipla this afternoon which came up as a Brava.

[michael1703]

What's the name of the thing that goes on a clevis pin which looks like two spring washers that is used as an anti rattle device?

[steve_earwig]

My dad would probably call that an anti-chatter spring, but I never know if my dad knows this because he's smart or he made it up to stop us asking stupid questions.

Hmm, my meter goes up to 10 but as the digital display passed 20 amps I disconnected it in rather a hurry. I wondered why the fuse blew but as I only just added a fuse I thought I'd miscalculated. This is on a mate's Moto Guzzi, the starter was meant to have been rebuilt but I'm beginning to think it was rebuilt by a chimpanzee. More investigation required I reckon. Ta muchly

Thought I'd give a "followup" on this. the starter works fine and didn't blow the 25 amp fuse I stuck on it. The main reason the engine wasn't turning over fast enough to fire is because of the Mickey Mouse jumpleads my mate was using, I lent him mine and it fired up straight away. Btw if anyone's wondering why a bike has a pre-engaged starter on it, it's a Moto Guzzi, so it's full of stuff you don't expect to see on a bike, in point of fack't said starter started life fitted to a Fiat Tippex or something.

[Lacquer Peel]

Hey crew. The centre silencer is burst on my Fabia, a new one is £28, far too much money obviously.

It's burst at the back edge of the silencer, would silencer repair stuff even work on the edge or should I swallow the £28?

[michael1703]

£28, not worth bodging

[Lacquer Peel]

I am tempted to go to one of the mega scrapyards down south and buy a good used exhaust, it needs a few other things from a donor car. Has anyone been to UPI Inverkeithing recently and seen any diesel Fabias?

[wuvvum]

Not having a great deal of luck with the front calipers off the Volvo.  I tried pumping the pistons out by reconnecting the calipers to the car and heaving on the brake pedal.  The nearside caliper managed to pump three of the pistons out, the offside managed one.  Then the seals burst on both and pupming just resulted in the caliper pissing out brake fluid.

 

Is there any way of removing (very stuck) pistons which are completely retracted into the caliper, without the aid of hydraulics to push them out?  There is a slight lip on the outer ends of the pistons, but there's no way I'd be able to get enough leverage on these to prise the pistons out.

[rml2345]

I am tempted to go to one of the mega scrapyards down south and buy a good used exhaust, it needs a few other things from a donor car. Has anyone been to UPI Inverkeithing recently and seen any diesel Fabias?

I wouldn't bother with UPI Inverkeithing as the office is run by feckless idiots who have no idea what's in the yard. Even telephoning them is pointless as they'll tell you something is there that clearly isn't.

 

Edited to add: Nothing seems to hang about there long.

[nigel bickle]

Wuz ,G clamp the free pistons in, then try again.  Your 'stuck ' one will be the only one able to move.

 

The seal, although shot should hold up enough to allow reasonable hydraulic force.

 

Or send them off for refurbing/exchange.  Past Parts at Bury St Edmunds cant be too far away?

[Inspector Morose]

Wuv, try screwing a grease nipple in the end and pumping it full of grease to push the pistons out. The grease being thicker won't piss past the dead seals so much and might give enough force to push the pistons out. They've got to come apart anyway to rebuild them so an extra few mins cleaning the grease out won't hurt. Worked for me once or twice.

[wuvvum]

Why is so much of the world run by complete and utter cunts?

[Station]

What is the little plastic thing in locking nuts for? The little nut shaped thing and the little T shaped rod thing? Can't work it out, but they're in every locking nut set I've seen?

 

[Station]

Is there a way to permanently block sellers from ebay searches? I commonly search for the cars I own and I constantly get the same seller selling 'used' aerials/wipers/led bulbs using the same images 1000's of times. I know how to do it for individual searchs, but believe it or not, ebay what with their incredible rapport with the customer/seller hasn't yet implemented a system to do this.

[twosmoke300]

Its to pull off the tossy little crome caps on the nut

[grogee]

Ford did do a Fiesta 'Studio' on the last model, which didn't even show in the brochures. That had manual windows, a cassette player, and not a great deal else. Did have PAS though IIRC.

 

Not sure if they do one on the new model.

 

What is a 'cassetteplayer'?

 

(joke)

[grogee]

My 13-plate Focus 1.6 TDCi 115PS has drums on the back... which are painfully obvious behind the tarty 17" wheels. Drums aren't that bad according to my braking expert friend that works at Nissan. Less servicing, less noise, less trouble. The fronts do all the hard work (and deposit brake dust all over the tarty alloys).

 

A while back Vauxhall was doing 'stalloy' wheels, these were steel wheels with a plastic cover that looked alloy. It was better than those Halfords plastic cover jobs though because the spoke holes lined up so it looked '3D' if you see what I mean. Although they'd look shit after a few kerbs.

 

My mate who knows about wheels says steelies are almost always lighter than cast alloys... if you want proper light ones you have to go for forged alloy, like Merc did a few years back.

 

like these (scroll down): http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5083994

[grogee]

NEW QUESTION ALERT!!!!!!

 

I saw a picture of a Vauxhall Astra engine the other day. It had a blown head gasket. This got me wondering about new cars. Manufacturers these days have a fixation with not installing an engine temperature gauge. The new Astra doesn't have one; as do many other cars. Old tin, even my dreadful eighties stuff, had them. A freind's Punto was bereft in addition; however it had a warning light.

 

So, a temp. gauge used to be considered a vital indicator of engine health. If, and on occasion it has, mine behaves oddly; I'll complete my journey, smoke some fags and maybe consider ding something. I have replaced thermostats, flushed radiators, resurrected broken fans and generally prolonged the life of some of my cars by the dictation of the temperature gauge.

 

However if it wasn't there I wouldn't have known about these maladies until, perhaps, too late. So the question is: are cars without such an instrument more prone to catastrophic failure and overheating?

 

My Volvo S90 (nee 960) had an overheating funny turn. I phoned breakdown and got towed from Basingstoke to Leamington. It transpired that it was the sender that was broken, not the engine... I suppose manufacturers can say there's one less thing to go wrong. Thinking about it, my Primera had a sticky gauge that wouldn't work unless you bashed the dashboard with your right fist.

[grogee]

Halfords used to sell these little squares of film that you put on your wing mirrors which repelled water. Meant that you wing mirrors were always clear and pretty much never iced up. I cant find them anywhere.

 

Does anyone know what I am talking about or am I making things up again? I cant think how to search for them.

 

Talking of things to stick on a mirror - does Halfords still sell those blocks of plastic that are semi-spherical so help you see the blind spots in your mirrors? 

 

Don't know what happened to Ford's mirror man in the late Nineties, but he was sure turning out some dreadfully useless mini-mirrors. Can I see owt backwards? Can I fook.

[HH-R]

He must be working for Fiat now, the mk3 Panda mirrors are flippin hopeless. They made them bigger for the last ones but they look like van mirrors so people swap them for the old ones even though they're crap.

[Tayne]

does Halfords still sell those blocks of plastic that are semi-spherical so help you see the blind spots in your mirrors? 

 

If you have blind spots in your mirrors then they are set wrongly.

 

You need to have the mirror face as close as possible to perpendicular to the side of the car. That way the mirror covers the lane next to you without a blind spot, your interior mirror and peripheral vision do the rest.

[Pillock]

I still find there's blind spots, especially when there's no curvature to the end of the mirror like some cars have.

I've noticed that safety drives thicker and thicker B and C pillars which doesn't help, I could lose a supertanker alongside my Peugeot.

[mercrocker]

Is there a way to permanently block sellers from ebay searches? I commonly search for the cars I own and I constantly get the same seller selling 'used' aerials/wipers/led bulbs using the same images 1000's of times. I know how to do it for individual searchs, but believe it or not, ebay what with their incredible rapport with the customer/seller hasn't yet implemented a system to do this.

 

Pisses me off, too.......If you include a phrase common to those twat listings and prefix it with a "-" (minus sign) in your searches you can at least filter them out of the results.    Ebay unfortunately side with these fucktards because its basically a 21st century online Grattan catalogue and they are not the slightest bit interested in the likes of you and I.