Ask a Shiter

[CreepingJesus]

^Coming from an engineering background, I was familiar with the precise dimensions of both 'a baw hair' and 'a gnat's whisker' from an early age; and 'tighten it til it shears, then a quarter turn back' is just as much a received wisdom to me, as the magical ability of the kettle, to clarify thought.

 

Oh, and is there anybody in the ROC?

[Rod/b]

Sounds like the London Underground maintenance standard torque setting for all fastenings: FT. FUGGIN' TIGHT.

[ashmicro]

Tyres. I have a new car coming on Wednesday or Thursday, and while the tyres on it are almost new, they're some comedy Chinese Prawn Cracker & Crispy Duck Rubber Co., so I'm going to replace them. The question is thusly: the car is rated for "V" rated tyres. Is it ok to use "W" rated tyres instead?

 

Cheers in advance, chaps.

[scaryoldcortina]

Yes, as W (168mph) is higher than V (149). Also, there is nothing stopping you using N rated (87) if you want, because the speed limit is 70.

 

Speed ratings are also not checked on a class 4 Mot....

[ashmicro]

Cheers SOC, neat answer. The tyres I want to put on it are nigh on impossible to get in V, and I want decent ones as it's AWD. I shall order them in the morn.

 

Thank You.

[Danblez]

I think this is a stupid question, it is certainly not one that warrants a thread of its own.....

 

What on earth is wrong with nearly every corsa c I witness on the roads that is around an 02 plate or older. They have a horrendous top end rattly clatter on tick over, is it the camchain or summat. I reckon I hear more with the noise than without at the moment.

 

Good to see Vauxhall still managing long term engineering perfection.

 

(Sorry Billy)

[M'coli]

I think this is a stupid question, it is certainly not one that warrants a thread of its own.....

 

What on earth is wrong with nearly every corsa c I witness on the roads that is around an 02 plate or older. They have a horrendous top end rattly clatter on tick over, is it the camchain or summat. I reckon I hear more with the noise than without at the moment.

 

Good to see Vauxhall still managing long term engineering perfection.

 

(Sorry Billy)

You can't lay the blame at Vauxhall's door for the 3rd or 4th owner's lack of servicing!

[Danblez]

You mean some people dont service their old shitty corsa? Next you will be telling me some people dont even check thier oil level.

[Cavcraft]

 

Cam chain will be the answer. My neighbour specialises in Corsa C models with rattly cam chains. He reckons the worse ones are the low mileage, short journey types and that generally higher mileage/well used ones fare much better.

Some Corsa B models (1.0 3cyl) had the same engine and suffered from the same problems. Wait 'til you see one where the oil sensor switch 'thing' goes, another neighbour's did and the car looked like it had been buried in an oil field for several months.

[theorganist]

What on earth is wrong with nearly every corsa c I witness on the roads that is around an 02 plate or older. They have a horrendous top end rattly clatter on tick over, is it the camchain or summat. I reckon I hear more with the noise than without at the moment.

 

The woman next door to me has 51 plate Corsa Comfort, not sure what engine it is! She has had it since new and that has quite a marked knocking sound from what sounds to me like the camshaft!

[Pillock]

All the 3-cyls sound like that. I would assume it's pretty difficult to balance a three-pot but the Japanese examples manage to run without sounding like a washing machine with a brick in it

[Guest Len H]

I don't think the GM 1.0 has a balancer shaft, but the old Subaru Justy engines have one - that's probably why Japanese 3 pots are usually quite smooth.

[Cavcraft]

Hopefully this is the right place, didn't want to start an o/t thread:

 

How safe is it to give someone your bank details so they can whang a deposit over? He hasn't got Paypal (it's nowt to do with an eBay sale) and doesn't seem too bothered about sending me a Postal order or whatever.

Had planned on giving him my basic details (sort code?) and going from there but is there any risk to this? Cheers in advance.

[John F]

Account holder's name, bank address, sort code and account number are all pretty safe, Billy. I put that info on my invoices.

[Cavcraft]

Thanks John.

[dollywobbler]

I use the transfers a fair bit. They can often move the cash within a couple of hours these days, rather than four working days. Certainly more convenience than a cheque, as my bank is 12 miles away. ANY bank is 12 miles away.

[tonedepear]

I'm after buying a welder and learning myself to weld. Was someone on here selling some kit recently? I can't remember if it was on here or not now. Also, how does one weld?

 

First job will be the boot floor next to the fuel tank. What could possibly go wrong, etc.

[Pillock]

What could possibly go wrong, etc.

 

[Des]

It's ok to leave the tank in if you keep your fingers crossed, but that makes it awkward to hold the torch so probably best to remove it, handy for sitting on anyway. Welding is easy, the hard part is cutting back to good metal, getting it nice and clean and making the patch fit accurately, play with scrap until you get the hang of the actual welding, a good technique while you're learning is to do a tack weld every couple of inches, and go around and around joining the dots, the weld doesn't get too hot so you can err on the high side with the settings while you get used to the ideal torch position / current level.

 

My dumb question, would it be correct to assume that older ignition coils that have the low tension terminals SW and CB would most likely be for a positive earth car, and coils marked + and - would be for more modern negative earth stuff? I believe it's normal procedure to swap coil terminals when swapping battery polarity, but is this correct? The HT winding earths via the points, so is it a choice of the spark polarity being wrong or have the butt end of the HT winding going to the ignition switch?

Are coils polarity sensitive or does it make no difference and as long as I stick to the ones marked SW and CB it'll be fine?

[alf892]

Coils. Obviously Sw and CB refer to switch and contact breaker (ie points) and you are pretty much right to say it is from the old days polarity was only one way around. The + and - marked ones simply mean that the feed goes to the + and earth to -. The earth will be via the points. If pos earth the you wire the other way around and hence why you change the wires if changing polarity. Car will run either way around but you get better spark if correctly wired. Also note that HT does not earth via points!! All the points do is switch the coil on and off........and this triggers the voltage in the HT winding.

 

Hore this makes sense......

[John F]

I'm after buying a welder and learning myself to weld. Was someone on here selling some kit recently? I can't remember if it was on here or not now. Also, how does one weld?

 

First job will be the boot floor next to the fuel tank. What could possibly go wrong, etc.

 

Have a look on http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/index.php, there's loads of info on welding there and a few useful tutorials.

[binhoker668]

Stupid questions thread is defo somewhere I can lurk safely!

My question...

Is it a REALLY big job to cut the rot back (W reg Transit - Smiley) and weld a new bit of arch on?

And if you were mig-minded and had the skills, what would you charge?

I have never welded in my life, but defo want to get some work done on my new tranny. Passengers side arch - no surprises there eh?

[Des]

The worst part of doing a Transit arch will be cutting the old one out, gnarly sharp edges horrible grinder sparks etc. Not so much a big job as an unpleasant one, start by whipping out the passenger seat and accurately measuring say 10 inches from the outside edge of the arch and make some permanent felt pen reference marks on the floor and use these to position the new arch, cutting out the old can involve tin snips, chisel, grinder, pain, or if you can get hold of a gas axe / plasma cutter then you is pimpin'.

Use a hot air gun to soften the old underseal / paint / seam sealer so you don't have to exert undue force when scraping clean, helps you to retain some of the skin on your knuckles.

If you learn to weld on rusty old chod, and reach the gold standard of 'Patch withstands a kick,' then one day when you make something from shiny new virgin metal, you'll not believe what you can achieve. Cars present the most difficult challenge to the fine art that is welding, like trying to shovel butter into a badgers arse with a soldering iron.

 

This evening in the shed I put a distributor in a vice, connected up an old SW/CB coil that came from an old pos earth car, spun the dizzy and it would manage 3/4'' of skinny blue spark, tried reversing polarity, reversing coil terminals and both, each time the same 3/4'' of spark, so I'll aim for getting spark polarity right and damn the wiring.

One niggling thought though, coil has a winding of hundreds of turns of thick wire for the low tension, this connects between CB and SW, then the high tension is thousands connected between the HT tower and CB, now as I found, you can connect them in any order and still get a good spark, if getting spark polarity right necessitates reversing low tension terminals, could this be a reason why modern condensers seem to fail so often, or is it just because they're crap.

[face]

Stupid question from me, a non mechanic/expert:

 

What makes a flame come from an exhaust? I know it must have something to do with the ingition of exhaust fumes, but what makes certain cars do this and not others?

[Des]

There's a fair amount of unburnt fuel in the exhaust gas because engines are quite inefficient, it a bit of a pollutant hence cats job being to burn it off. The Barrymobiles which display this phenomenon have most likely an ignition source at the tailpipe and probably pull out the choke or whatever the modern equivalent is, maybe have an air feed as well.

[TimothyClaypole]

Would 15" BBS alloys from some kind of Audi Coupe fit my BMW 2002 Tii

 

They are on Fleabay as collection only with no bids but close enough to pick up for me.

[Negative Creep]

Would 15" BBS alloys from some kind of Audi Coupe fit my BMW 2002 Tii

 

They are on Fleabay as collection only with no bids but close enough to pick up for me.

 

 

If it helps the E30 and E21 are the same pcd as VAG cars (4x100) but the wrong offset (et 25 instead of 38) so you'd need spacers and longer bolts

[Pete-M]

There's a fair amount of unburnt fuel in the exhaust gas because engines are quite inefficient, it a bit of a pollutant hence cats job being to burn it off. The Barrymobiles which display this phenomenon have most likely an ignition source at the tailpipe and probably pull out the choke or whatever the modern equivalent is, maybe have an air feed as well.

 

My old Sapphire Cosworth used to pop out some pretty big flames on the over-run when it was warm. First time it happened I thought I'd tripped a speed camera.

 

That didn't have a cat, but the turbo got plenty warm enough to ignite any bits of fuel that made it that far.

[CreepingJesus]

Re flames from exhausts...

Some of them will be those kits which were de rigeur a few years ago amongst the Max Power types: afaik they spit a tiny gob of petrol into the back box. I think some had a feed pipe and a dinky 8mm motorbike spark plug, but I could be wrong there. The end result's the same - you get a loud pop and a spit of flame. (I offered some cretin a square go some years back, after he repeatedly fired the bloody thing outside my house one Saturday afternoon, while I was on night shifts!)

Some will be tuned turbo cars, either because they've been remapped and the wastegate wound out, to up the boost (increases fuelling and heat output, with predictable consequences), or they've got a proper anti-lag kit, like WRC cars have.

I doubt many will be 80's Vauxhalls, with the original OEM fit alarm. You could do the backfire trick by flicking the alarm on and off with plenty of throttle on...

[pompei]

GR9 4 pissing off tailgaters