Supernaut's Cars - 323i / Megane

[PrinceRupert]

2 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

Indeed. I did the gearbox mount and the top engine mount (on the driver's side wing) already.

I just haven't done the lower rear one due to the O/S driveshaft going through the mount, thus making it a PITA.

Yup I changed the top two then went to do the lower rear and realised I needed to remove the driveshaft ... which I had replaced a few weeks before and was I fuck doing it again haha.  

 

[Split_Pin]

Surely the radiator isn't a bad job on these? 

[dozeydustman]

1 hour ago, Supernaut said:

The 205 is still clunking from underneath.

Could be the lower engine mount, could be the exhaust.

 

I have a new fan switch but it looks like the rad needs to come out to do it. The fan is still playing silly buggers. It doesn't always come on unnecessarily though.

 

 

Anybody want a 205? I've spent almost 50% on top of the purchase price and it's still irritating me. That brown Avensis is very tempting.

 

108k miles, MOT until August '22. £700.

I’d be up for a couple of tickets if you go that way

[SRi05]

2 hours ago, Supernaut said:

That brown Avensis is very tempting.

 

She's inviting you inside. Dare you resist her charms 😂 ?

[Supernaut]

BMW just dropped off.

They didn't say anything. Extra 8 miles on the clock (about right) and the seats were in comical positions. The driver's seat was on the floor and in the back, whereas the passenger seat was set up in such a way as to fold somebody in half.

I got an invoice for the work that totalled 0.00.

[PrinceRupert]

 

5 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

Surely the radiator isn't a bad job on these? 

Piece of piss on mine, dunno what engine supernaut has but presumably not hard.  Also wouldnt need to take radiator out to change fan switch on mine anyway.

[Supernaut]

1 hour ago, PrinceRupert said:

 

Piece of piss on mine, dunno what engine supernaut has but presumably not hard.  Also wouldnt need to take radiator out to change fan switch on mine anyway.

Well, where is the fan switch? Mine is a 1.8D.

I've got the replacement fan switch, but can't seem to find anywhere that concisely says where it is. It's not the sensor on top of the thermostat housing, it's different.

[PrinceRupert]

1 minute ago, Supernaut said:

Well, where is the fan switch? Mine is a 1.8D.

I've got the replacement fan switch, but can't seem to find anywhere that concisely says where it is. It's not the sensor on top of the thermostat housing, it's different.

Screwed into the rad about halfway down on the right hand side (looking at car). 

[reb]

If you want we can take mine apart to look for it, we've put it together once we can do it again!

[Split_Pin]

6 hours ago, Supernaut said:

Well, where is the fan switch? Mine is a 1.8D.

I've got the replacement fan switch, but can't seem to find anywhere that concisely says where it is. It's not the sensor on top of the thermostat housing, it's different.

There should be 2 on the thermostat, one is the coolant temperature sensor to tell the engine when to come off cold start, the other is the sender for the guage. 

The sensor you have os only for the fan and is just a thermo switch. It will definitely screw into the radiator somewhere.

[Split_Pin]

It looks like it's on the nearside right under the top hose inlet (diagram looks like it's from the back of the radiator). Might explain why you can't see it.

[PrinceRupert]

It fits in either of those holes.  I had to switch the plastic insert from red circle to blue circle and fit fan switch to red circle.

[PrinceRupert]

Ps this was the best place i found for part numbers etc

http://www.miamistu.co.uk/pug/

[Supernaut]

9 hours ago, reb said:

If you want we can take mine apart to look for it, we've put it together once we can do it again!

Surely it would save time to just take mine apart, as it's the one that needs done anyway!

[captain_70s]

On 12/16/2021 at 9:12 AM, Supernaut said:

Anybody want a 205? I've spent almost 50% on top of the purchase price and it's still irritating me..

Yes, but cannot have

Thems rookie numbers anyway, until you spend 2x the value of a car you're not even shiting you stingy bastard!

I'd offer assistance but I'll not be free during sociable hours until post Crimbo...

[reb]

6 hours ago, Supernaut said:

Surely it would save time to just take mine apart, as it's the one that needs done anyway!

Ah but yours probably has all of the bolts!

[Supernaut]

This morning I seamlessly* covered the tiny hole in the bolster and also moved the steering wheel round a couple of notches.

The other day I got a Makita torx driver set as part of a Secret Santa. I put it to use removing the airbag so I could do this.

 

Since I got the car the wheel was always a tiny bit off-centre to the right when going straight ahead. It was in for the steering column recall on Thursday. While they have indeed replaced a significant portion of the steering column (basically the whole section visible in the engine bay), they left the wheel even further off-centre, and to the left!

It drives in a straight line perfectly fine though. I went in this morning to ask them about it and got the response that the tracking wasn't included in the recall and would be £120 + VAT, please.

That's Douglas Park BMW of Stirling, folks. Avoid them.

 

I sorted it myself just now by clocking it round a couple of notches.

 

 

 

I'll just say it again; DOUGLAS PARK BMW OF STIRLING ARE A BUNCH OF CUNTS.

Meanwhile when I lived in Aberdeen, John Clark BMW were always lovely when I went in for stupid wee bits for the 316. They even let me lounge around in their display model i8 and i3.

[Supernaut]

MOAR REPAIRS!

 

The BMW has had a slight ticking from the very front of the engine, at the top end. I suspected VANOS at first, but it's only got single VANOS on the intake side, and the ticking is from further over towards the exhaust side.

I poured in some hydraulic lifter treatment. No dice.

 

I sought the wisdom of the local BMW I6 elder in the form of @jaypee and he suggested the spark plugs can make a ticking noise if they're a tiny bit loose. He has prior experience of an engine ejecting a plug due to this.

So, I dutifully wandered outside to the car with the required sockets and re-torqued the front two plugs.

 

It's only gone and sorted it. It idles like a Swiss watch once again.

Just look at it. Phwoooaaaarrr.

[Tepper]

Nice work! Speaking of VANOS, there's a good chance your seals are shot. There are a few tests that you can do to check, but at this age they're almost certainly knackered. It's possible (but fiddly) to do them in situ without a huge amount of disassembly - made a good difference on my brother's E36. While you're at it, it's pretty straightforward to take some data logs and change the point at which the VANOS switches over, the stock map tends to switch it quite early.

Or just keep driving it and enjoying it!

[Supernaut]

Data logs?

I have zero electronics for this car.

It also still goes rather well relative to the other stuff I'm used to driving!

[Supernaut]

Glad I just checked the rest of the plugs now.

Plugs 4 and 5 (assuming 1 is the front) were finger tight, with sooty deposits in the plug wells indicating a bit of blow-by. Ticking time bomb ready to eject its plugs!

 

This is not reflective of the previous owner. These engines are apparently prone to doing this over time anyway.

[Tepper]

On 12/19/2021 at 8:02 PM, Supernaut said:

Data logs?

I have zero electronics for this car.

It also still goes rather well relative to the other stuff I'm used to driving!

If you're into that kind of thing, the support for DIY mapping and tinkering is excellent on this ECU. A £10 cable and free software (RomRaider, MS41 Flash Tool) is all you need to make datalogs and remap this ECU to your heart's content. The idea is you flash one map with the VANOS turned off all the time, take a datalog, flash another map with VANOS permanently activated, datalog, then by overlaying the two sets of data you can find the optimum point for the VANOS to switch. There's lots of other stuff you can play with too, it's well worth a look if you're interested. Drop me a message if you want any more info.

 

[Supernaut]

18 hours ago, Tepper said:

If you're into that kind of thing, the support for DIY mapping and tinkering is excellent on this ECU. A £10 cable and free software (RomRaider, MS41 Flash Tool) is all you need to make datalogs and remap this ECU to your heart's content. The idea is you flash one map with the VANOS turned off all the time, take a datalog, flash another map with VANOS permanently activated, datalog, then by overlaying the two sets of data you can find the optimum point for the VANOS to switch. There's lots of other stuff you can play with too, it's well worth a look if you're interested. Drop me a message if you want any more info.

 

That's very interesting, and the sort of geeky stuff that fascinates me.

I'll leave it alone for the time being as I'll be doing a roughly 300-mile roundtrip for Christmas. 😁

 

I wonder if the mapping software works on Linux. At least one of my laptops is running Kubuntu. I can't remember what the other one has, it might still be W10.

[Supernaut]

I just took it for a wee drive for the first time since torquing up all the spark plugs.

 

Yep. Yep. There were definitely a few ponies escaping past the plugs. It even idles more smoothly now.

I also did something very childish with just a 10mm spanner and a small flathead screwdriver:

That's the air intake with the trumpet inside it removed. The intake is now a wider diameter and flows directly into the filter.

It doesn't make any real difference in normal driving but at WOT the intake noise resonates around the cabin.  It's rather fun.

[Supernaut]

Number porn!

[reb]

It's not at 177.7 miles on the trip, 0/10

[Andyrew]

On 12/20/2021 at 2:43 PM, Supernaut said:

Plugs 4 and 5 (assuming 1 is the front) were finger tight, with sooty deposits in the plug wells indicating a bit of blow-by. Ticking time bomb ready to eject its plugs!

I changed the plugs! Well 5 out of six.  Think bosch went in.  Same time as the rocker cover gasket was changed.

1 plug was left in the drivers door to be addressed at a later date as i was running out of time that day and didnt like how the plug felt when trying to get it out, a couple came out fine but others had felt like they were picking up up on the threads from either being in there along time or being over tightened (maybe they had been nipped up numerous times in the past) these had been worked out steadily with a splash of lube added to the mix all the while you pull a stupid face 

They would have been nipped up but given the way they felt it would have been only "just enough" at the time.  Interesting to learn these lumps are prone to backing them off,  if i knew that id probably used a torque wrench. 

Everydays a school day.

[Supernaut]

A gratuitous photo from the top of Glen Shee on Christmas Eve, featuring @captain_70s.

This one's from my big camera rather than my phone.

[Supernaut]

Time for an update, then.

Thanks to  @Lacquer Peel for taking this photo on Saturday. As mentioned elsewhere it was my birthday, and that happily coincided with @320touring and @jaypee hosting a number of us at their unit. Big thanks to them!

 

 

The 205 is staying, for a couple of reasons:

- The raffle died on its arse

- I realised that even if I did get £800 for it, what else can I buy for that money in this market?!

- I'm now used to the required driving style and I actually find myself overtaking people on A and B roads in it. It's not as slow as the numbers suggest!

- Even though the road tax is high, other running costs are low. Parts are cheap, insurance is stupidly cheap, and being a tiny car with a diesel engine, it does decent MPGs too.

 

I've adjusted the throttle cable to make things much more linear. I adjusted out the slack, and tweaked the limits of its travel slightly, so there's no deadzone.

On Saturday I replaced the coolant temperature sensor in the back of the radiator. The cooling fan now behaves itself once again! The temptation was there to disconnect the hard line in the wheel arch and flush the whole cooling system but @davidfowler2000 pointed out that it looked a bit crusty, and sent me a link to a site where I could buy a stainless steel replacement. That's on order and should arrive shortly. Once that's here I'll be able to flush the whole system.

 

Yesterday I also gave the fuel pump a cheeky wee quarter turn on the max fuel screw. It's definitely perked it up a little bit. 30-50mph in 3rd gear is decent. It's still not fast by any means, but it's not slow either. Probably on par with the BMW 316i I used to have, if not slightly peppier.

 

I took the BMW 323i out for a drive yesterday, after having not driven it for a fortnight. It feels lardy compared to the 205, but it's also significantly faster. Big smiles were had. It's still absolutely fine, no work pending on it. I might do an oil change in the spring, even though it came with what looked like brand new oil when I collected it in September. It's still a nice golden syrup colour right now. The 205 could do with oil at some point. Well, I assume so as I haven't really looked at it!

[Supernaut]

Another one from Saturday:

My phone can't decide whether the car is blue or green. Nor can I!