Ask a Shiter

[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

[ashmicro]

I used to do a similar trick with my Samba when it had the 1360cc TU in it (on twin carbs). It had contact breaker ignition (i.e. points). The trick was to run the thing up to high revs while going downhill, and turn off the ignition, and let the gearbox turn the engine and mechanical fuel pump, When the ignition was turned back on I'd get a fair old "CRACK-BOOM!" and a decent flame.

 

This was all well and good until I blew a weld off the exhaust

 

And the "James Bond Smokescreen" stunt. We got a big rubber bulb thing, about the size of an orange, with about 8 feet of rubber pipe on it (it was part of a syphon kit for a tropical fish tank). Fill said bulb with Redex fuel additive, and run the rubber tube from the passenger footwell into the engine bay, under the air filter housing and secure with about 1/4" in to the top of the carb. So, if one was being tailgated, one asked the passenger to stamp on the rubber bulb and squirt the Redex into the carb. Epic smoke ensues, think turbo-era F1 cars letting go and you're about there.

[Rod/b]

I've seen the same done with a big syringe (it looked like the sort of thing they must use to put horses to sleep) full of old brake fluid and a bit of old tube tapped into a vacuum take off on an Escort cabriolet.

[504GL]

GR9 4 pissing off tailgaters

 

My 406 was great in that respect. Doing 30mph through a willage with an idiot tailgating me or with his highbeams or fogs on....... 5th gear, foot to the floor and an almighty cloud of diesel smoke would come out the back

[myglaren]

I did on occasion get flames coming out of the Imp exhaust when it was being pushed somewhat. Can't say I ever knew why though.

A friend told me a tale of a mate of his with a moggy. Used to do the aforementioned trick of turning off the ignition and letting the mechanical pump continue to shove fuel through the system, then turning the ignition back on to create a huge backfire.

 

He did it with my mate in the car one day. He said "I was really impressed and when we got out to see why the car was so noisy, the explosion had peeled open the silencer like a banana - completely ruined"

[CIH]

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.

 

CATs don't burn fuel ? Infact unburnt fuel in the exhaust kills CATs.

[Des]

Excess unburnt fuel kills cats, like a missfire or wrong mixture, they're designed to cope with the normal levels from a modern engine, anyway, they're evil because they killed carbs.

When I was a lad, my younger brother had an 80cc bike which would do around 60mph, he used to complain of cars constantly overtaking him very slowly and dangerously, monkey'd with the engine to get it to 70mph, but this resulted in the dickheads then tailgating him. The cure was a Beetle washer bottle full of diesel, a washer pump wired in place of a missing indicator feeding the derv down a length of brake pipe with the end squashed into the exhaust downpipe, unbelievable smokescreen from the thing.

[Craig the Princess]

Does putting diesel 10/40 oil in a petrol engine do any harm? I was half asleep this morning when the oil light came on in my Rover 200 Coupé and stopped at the shell garage for oil (by the way £14.99 for a litre!) and put in 10/40 oil as recomended. IT wasn't until I threw the bottle away that I noticed it was diesel oil.

[Des]

Any harm will be insignificant compared to running with the oil light on. I believe diesel specific oil was to be avoided in the old days when it contained detergents, but these are replaced by polymers or something so the differences between diesel and petrol oils are lessened, and I'm sure I've seen oil that will suit either. In fact diesel oil is gaining favour with older petrol chod as certain additives are being dropped or replaced to suit modern stuff.

[Pete-M]

they're evil because they killed carbs.

 

Injection is the way forward. I pretty much gave up on carbs years ago, injection rocketh mightily and it's bloody simple.

[Cavcraft]

they're evil because they killed carbs.

 

Injection is the way forward. I pretty much gave up on carbs years ago, injection rocketh mightily and it's bloody simple.

 

/\

This.

 

Can't ever recall recall having any fuel related problems whatsoever with an injection engine. They tick-over, run and drive far better than a carb'd lump.

[pdg]

After many stupid comments I have two stupid towing related questions...

 

Is it still legal to use a home-made trailer these days? I thought I heard somewhere they need to be type approved / plated now (but maybe I dreamed it...) AND any clue as to whether towing a vehicle with an a-frame is legal in France or does it need to be on a trailer?

 

Thanks muchly.

[Father Ted]

those 12v ceramic heaters - are they any good or a load of shit?