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For sale: BX Meteor


Fabergé Greggs

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On 10/23/2019 at 5:20 PM, Steve79 said:

I'm soo glad to see this pic. That's my old 3litre 164 manual lusso that I sold to Clive (the vendor) back in 2012. 

Glad to see he still has it. Only car ever that I regret selling and would have it back off of him in a heartbeat. Bet he would want more than the £600 I sold it to him for though!

Ha! It was in great shape and he clearly loves it. I had a bit of a poke around it..  Amazing dashboard and lovely plush seats. Here it is tucked in behind the BX 

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Right, so number one on the list of things to fix was the exhaust hanger.. Solid gold autoshiter @Rave to the rescue who kindly offered the use of his driveway and sparkly wand. 

Fuelled by coffee and jaffa cakes we had the bumper off in moments (who knew they were so easy!) and he'd worked his magic on the exhaust hanger side. The exhaust itself is dead new so everything behaved itself. 

When viewing the car I'd noticed a hefty bit of rot in the boot floor on the other side and haggled accordingly. So it didn't exactly come as a surprise, but even so it's always a bum-clenching when prodding further.. luckily it seems to be pretty localised and so @Rave patched it up to keep everything solid and watertight for now. Many thanks to that man!

I took it for a big old spin at the weekend, and the list of teething problems is thankfully diminishing: 

  • Heavy power steering at parking speeds seems to have sorted itself out after an LHM top up/pump belt tension/bit of use 
  • Drivers window remains closed for now
  • The kickdown is definitely hyperactive,  I need to read the manual and see what the deal is with the mysterious kickdown cable (a brief search on the web reveals it does "so much more" than just kickdown... )
  • I've got a slow puncture on the drivers front wheel. 

On my way home I saw a mk2 Jetta. I don't think I've ever seen one on the road other than my old GTi. 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorted the kick down problem which is very satisfying.

The Haynes manual gave a baffling array of measurements and nonsense for the cable which varied depending on year, petrol/diesel, but gave no indication of the figures that applied to me. 

You know sometimes you’ve just got to have a prod about and work it all out for yourself? The kick down cable is attached to an arm on top of the fuel pump, the same arm that operates the throttle. There was a bit of slack in the throttle, meaning that the arm moves quite a bit before the engine revs rise, by which time it’s pulled quite a bit of kick down cable. 

Taking up the slack in the throttle cable and releasing some slack into the kick down cable has things operating way more as they should! It has a little ferrule to give an indication of where the kick down cable should be at rest. 

Whats more, both the throttle cable and the kick down cable can be moved towards and away from the arm spindle on slotted adjusters, so I slid the kickdown cable toward the spindle, meaning it pulls proportionately less cable for a given amount of throttle. 

Using these points of adjustment you can really fine tune the way it drives..! Whereas before it would hold onto second for ages out of a roundabout, now it’ll happily slosh up and down as it should. 

Lockup is working nicely on 4th too, I’d say it partners with the diesel and general BX vibe very nicely! 

I need to fix the drivers window though. All the press fit poppers and screws come out easy enough, but how does the drivers door card release at the top? It seems really firmlt attached without any visible fittings. Do I need to take the window seal out? 

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Did a hefty 5 hour ill-fated journey to collect a rusting heap of Vespa that turned out not to be straight in this today.

I ran it on about 50/50 sunflower oil- bloody hell you can really smell it! 

All was very well indeed until I got back to London, at which when stationary and in D the idle would become a bit more vibey, and then when the hydraulic pump kicked in it would become more vibey still and chug at what seemed like a very low idle. Popping it into P and revving seemed to clear it, though initial response was a bit fluffy. One time I left it chugging on a slow idle and it died, though easily restarted with a bit of throttle. Could this be Veg related? I should probably change the filter as a first step. 

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Don’t know before my ownership, but it could well be the first time on veg. 
 

So that issue could be either clogged filter or air leak? I’ll change them. 
 

There’s also a bit of muck around a couple of the injectors but looking at it I think it could be the rocker gasket. 

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I'd dilute it with a bit more Diesel tbh. My aul lad ran 70-30 diesel to veg when starting off, changed the filters a few times before increasing the concentration. I'd also leave a bit of space in the top of the tank so if you run into issues on the road you can always throw diesel to dilute it down. 

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Always best to replace the bit of pipe immediately before the pump with a piece of see through stuff so you can check air ingress at a glance. As  LP says the filter housings can leak air in. My mums did that when simply running derv, was fine one evening after  30 mile drive, next day no go. Took me ages to track it down, replaced the lid, solved.

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For the door card, there's three screws behind the speaker grille, two in the arm rest at the elbow bit, one at the hand bit, a screw up by the mirror adjuster, and a plethora of push-fit clips all around the edge.  Once you've unscrewed the lock knob, you should be able to wiggle the card and free it from the window rail.  It can take a bit of force.  It might go easier if you drop the windooooh, you can't.  Generally, if you prise from the lock knob end and gently but firmly wiggle it up and away from the glass, it should go, but you'll be scared of snapping something the whole while you're doing it.  Some success can be had by getting the bottom of the card and just sort of flapping it up and down a fair bit to break the seal the card has formed at the top.  Then the joy of working it around the manual mirror adjusters if you have those, which is slightly easier if you pop the brush trim out first and then push the adjuster as far forwards as it will go.

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On 11/10/2019 at 4:08 PM, artdjones said:

Re:- Heavy steering-it might be worth cleaning out the filters in the LHM tank,or even doing a fluid change.

 

This. The power steering on my BX went heavy and a bit notchy, and - with the help of the AS massive - I managed to clean the filters and change the LHM, which did it a world of good.

 

Don't think I'm teaching you to suck eggs, but just in case it's useful this is the bit of my car's thread showing how I did it.

 

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3 hours ago, purplebargeken said:

Change the filters and thin the veg down a bit with a bit of real fuel.

haven't seen you on the forum for ages! Hiya!

 

3 hours ago, Scruffy Bodger said:

Always best to replace the bit of pipe immediately before the pump with a piece of see through stuff so you can check air ingress at a glance. As  LP says the filter housings can leak air in. My mums did that when simply running derv, was fine one evening after  30 mile drive, next day no go. Took me ages to track it down, replaced the lid, solved.

Izzit 8mm internal diameter? 

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3 hours ago, vulgalour said:

For the door card, there's three screws behind the speaker grille, two in the arm rest at the elbow bit, one at the hand bit, a screw up by the mirror adjuster, and a plethora of push-fit clips all around the edge.  Once you've unscrewed the lock knob, you should be able to wiggle the card and free it from the window rail.  It can take a bit of force.  It might go easier if you drop the windooooh, you can't.  Generally, if you prise from the lock knob end and gently but firmly wiggle it up and away from the glass, it should go, but you'll be scared of snapping something the whole while you're doing it.  Some success can be had by getting the bottom of the card and just sort of flapping it up and down a fair bit to break the seal the card has formed at the top.  Then the joy of working it around the manual mirror adjusters if you have those, which is slightly easier if you pop the brush trim out first and then push the adjuster as far forwards as it will go.

Ace, thanks for this! 

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I've run my 205 on Veg - (stuff from Tesco, not the sunflower oil though) - engine is a XUD7TE on a bosch pump.  A good friend has also ran his 405 on veg, Things we learned from the experience: 

1. 50:50 or greater and it will sound like a clattery load of crap (more so than an XUD should) until it properly warms up - it will often need several cycles on the glow plugs to catch all 4 cylinders (this is with new Bosch plugs, on a new loom with all connections clean).  Once warm it chugged away merrily enough though. 

2. Anything more than 70:30 is a waste of time unless you have a way of pre-heating the fuel to thin it.  It will be an utter pig to start cold, and won't run properly until thoroughly heated up. 

3. The engine has less top end power when running on veg (the calorific value of veg oil is less, so that's to be expected) 

4. You use more fuel (again, lower calorific value hitting you there)

5. It stinks

6. Storing 5 ltr veg oil cans because you bought loads when they were on offer is a complete pain

7. Filling up on veg is irritating, even if you make a little fill kit using an electric sump pump - you still have to fill up once with veg, then once with diesel and do a quick bit of mental maths to keep your ratio's consistent. 

8. Not being careful when filling with veg oil can result in a blocked fuel filler neck breather - which makes filling up even more irritating

9. You have to be doing a serious amount of miles (15,000 or more I worked out) to make any meaningful kind of saving - unless you can get the veg oil for free or insanely cheaply (30p a litre for example). 

10. I got fed up with it (can you tell?) and went back to giving my money to OPEC. 

 

That said, it was an interesting experience and well worth trying!

It is good to know that come the apocalypse I will still be able to chug around, whilst all the mongs in their hybrid econo diesel finance wanker icloud connected jizz wagons will all be fucked. 

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I agree with most of what Mr Schwifty says - winter running on anything more than 70:30 in the winter can make cold starting a bit unpleasant. 

Would add that not all veg is equal, tescos red (rapeseed) and green (sunflower) are both good, stay pretty runny in low temps. Soy bean oil is fine in the summer but hopeless when it even gets down to about 5 degrees. 

I was at about 20k a year, so it was well worth the hassle. I reckon I'll be down to about half that now. 

The 405 is in storage over the winter, I reckon when it comes back out I'll probably stop running it on veg and save that for an old snotter. I do find it quite an amusing and satisfying thing to do, but until you've got your processes in order it is pretty grubby. As soon as you get into replacing fuel hose, filters and fuel pickups, EVERYTHING gets covered in the stuff. 

If I run the polo on it, it will get a full service including fuel filter and the tank strainer checked/cleaned. Best then to start low, maybe 20% and gradually ramp it up. The more viscous fuel will expose any pinhole air leaks in your fuel hose as the pump sucks harder. I find motoring a less enjoyable pursuit in the winter though and more to be endured than enjoyed, which has me leaning more to leaving it on the dino juice. As said though, if I was doing 20k a year still, it would be on veg, it's worth the hassle in that scenario and you make good savings. 

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I'm beginning to think it might be more hassle than it's worth at the amount of miles that I do.. about 7000 a year, but similarly it's something I've always wanted to try! 

Topped up the tank with another 12 litres of diesel this morning after it took a couple of goes to start. 

The weird thing is that it actually seems to be more prone to stall when it's hot, and only then when the revs have dropped due to it being in "D" on the autobox. It'll idle quite happily in P, but then when warm, in D, and when the LHM pump cuts in, it'll become a bit hesitant and sometimes stall.

I do wonder if my idle is just a bit low- it's so much happier with a tiny bit more revs. How do you measure idle speed on an XUD without a rev counter? 

 

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Not sure how you would best measure idle speed. 

I assume it's a bosch pump? If so, the hot and cold idle is controlled by a lever tensioned by a wax stat on the back of the pump as explained below;

Quote

1. Idle

The ideal hot idle would be between 800-900rpm and cold idle between 1000/1100rpm. If you locate the hot and cold idle screws you should be able to see a pivoting arm between the two of them and a cable attached to this, which goes to the wax stat. The wax stat will pull the cable in when the engine temperature is low and this will then pull the pivoting arm to the right (You should be able to move the arm from left to right with your fingers when the engine is hot).

When the pivoting arm is not under tension (Hot engine) it will rest to the left. If you look at how the arm operates you will see it has 2 prongs which rest on the bottom of either the left or right idle screws. When hot it rests against the screw on the right and when cold it rests against the screw on the left. By winding these screws in or out we can change the resting point of the arm and therefore the idle.

Hot idle adjustment - Left hand side screw, slacken the 10mm locknut and wind the screw in (clockwise) to increase the idle speed and out (anti-clockwise) to lower the idle speed. Once correct speed is achieved re-tighten locknut.

Cold idle adjustment â?? Right hand side screw, slacken the 10mm locknut and wind the screw in (clockwise) to lower the idle speed and out (anti-clockwise) to increase the idle speed. Once correct speed is achieved re-tighten locknut.

Also, remember that you can adjust the cold idle speed even when the engine is hot by pushing the pivoting arm to the right and holding it there while you adjust the screw.
 

Quite easy to adjust, if your wax stat is working, you might just need to up your hot idle a bit.

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I've run various Xud's and some love veg, some not so much. I've always put it down to slight differences in pump timing, they seem to like it more with a bit more advance ime. I've run 100% veg if the temp outside is warm enough and had zero starting issues, they will start and run just the same as if it's got derv in the tank.

I've a mate who has done thousands and thousands of miles on waste hydraulic oil too, XUD's really aren't fussy as long as the fuel is thin enough.

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Might have to dob some tippex on it to reflect the beam; some of these things come with a length of reflective sticky tape, I didn't check whether that one did. Their ability to discern contrast seems variable(because cheapo) so may involve experimenting, perhaps paint the pulley black then put a tippex mark on.

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