Nibbler’s Universe: past and present. New car added to the fleet!

[Nibbler]

Time for an update:

I’ve placed an order on a front valance for project Capri on Motomobil.  Hopefully it will arrive sometime early next year in one piece. Had some bad luck with a couple of packages from Autodoc this year.

Changed floor mats on the Audi 100 Diesel today. A bit fiddly around the pedals but otherwise quite straight forward. A big improvement, the original mats were really filthy and disgusting. The new one is from a slightly higher spec car, but it’s such an improvement that I have no problem with loosing some originality.

Also started to prepare for a proper stereo. The 25 mm power cable you can see in the last picture is a bit overkill for the vintage amplification from MTX and Coustic I plan to use, but it leaves some headroom if I want to upgrade or downgrade later on. I have yet to decide on a head unit. It stands between a late 80s Panasonic cassette player or an early 90s Sony CD-player. 

[Nibbler]

Oh crap! Freezing cold morning, late for work, red Toyota Aygo full with kids. What could possibly go wrong…  well…
After many years with Japanese cars and not having one single breakdown my luck finally went out. Car starts fine but stops after just a few seconds and smells of petrol.

Grey Toyota Aygo is not perfect either. It sets fault codes that lights up the check engine light. After a few more seconds the stability control, ABS light and traction control lights up. I’ve bought an OBD II reader, will put it to use tomorrow.

[stuboy]

7 minutes ago, Nibbler said:

Oh crap! Freezing cold morning, late for work, red Toyota Aygo full with kids. What could possibly go wrong…  well…
After many years with Japanese cars and not having one single breakdown my luck finally went out. Car starts fine but stops after just a few seconds and smells of petrol.

Grey Toyota Aygo is not perfect either. It sets fault codes that lights up the check engine light. After a few more seconds the stability control, ABS light and traction control lights up. I’ve bought an OBD II reader, will put it to use tomorrow.

world renown reliability

 

[Nibbler]

14 hours ago, stuboy said:

world renown reliability

 

Yep, over 500 000 kilometres or 310 000 miles without any breakdowns until now. Honda X3 and Toyota X2.

[Nibbler]

Red Toyota Aygo is back online. First garage didn’t solve the problem, they said that the subwoofer had made both keys loose its ability to speak to the car…

Okay …

So we towed the car to Toyota instead. They had a good laugh about the subwoofer theory. Instead they found a broken cable under the dashboard. Might be rodent related.

[Dyslexic Viking]

This was good, but how the hell did a beaver get into your dash?

[Nibbler]

On 12/03/2024 at 20:30, Dyslexic Viking said:

This was good, but how the hell did a beaver get into your dash?

Ah, I just prefer a big hairy beaver over a picture of a mouse.

[Nibbler]

Update: Audi 100 Diesel. 
Interior change complete, orange indicators instead of white and the stereo build done and the car is out and about. Waiting to get my new tyres put on. Not because the ones on the Fondmetal rims are bad but because I want to go for original steel rims instead. The car runs fine, and eats miles in a way I wasn’t expecting. Keeping a steady 120 km/h is no problem. 

[Nibbler]

Update: VW T4 Multivan. 
Fiddled with the electrics for the auxiliary battery, just simplified things a bit.
Also removed the subwoofer. The sound system in this car sounds bloody good but the subwoofer ate up all the space between the seats and we are mostly listening to podcast’s anyway.

Brakes made strange sounds when pushing the brake pedal. So I had a look at that. The squeaky rear right side looked good. I decided to check on the rear left side as well and I’m glad I did. When I changed the left wheel cylinder in 2021 I bought the cheapest one I could find. It said made in Russia and looked bloody awful. Now 2,5 years later it had developed a leak… fortunately I had a new Bosch laying around. 
 

Upcoming projects on the T4 includes front brakes, roof rack, an old and free Volvo roof box and fixing yet another coolant leak.

[Nibbler]

Audi 100 2,3E came out of hibernation today. Started right up, brakes working fine and the tyres were still round. Everything covered in bird shit though… 
 

And I give you guys a bonus picture from my commute to work. This picture was taken yesterday morning. 

[Nibbler]

Audi 100 2,3E: on the way home I was reminded of just how bad this car handles. My plan today was originally to change the brakes on the T4 but I’m still waiting for parts, so I decided to change the right control arm on the Audi instead. This car has never seen salt so everything came apart just fine. Putting it back together was trickier. The anti-roll bar put up a fight!

The car is now better but not perfect. I need to do the same thing on the left side. There’s considerable play on that side as well. 

[stuboy]

great updates

[Nibbler]

This weekend with cars: VW T4 Multivan.

The Swedish equivalent to your MOT told me to change the brake hoses. They are not a fail yet, but change them before next inspection was what they said. Brake discs looked really thin and suddenly I had decided to change everything including callipers and that was easier said than done. The build sheet specified Girling brakes and they proved hard to find. It took a couple of weeks to source a pair. Saturday morning saw the start of operation “make the brakes great again”.

Agony! 4 hours was spent on this brake pipe. 4 hours! That included a trip to the neighbouring town of Oskarshamn to buy tools. 

That should do it! 

Everything else came apart just fine except for the pins holding the brake pads. I got one out, then I got angry… see picture. New pins are ordered from Autodoc.

[Nibbler]

Audi 100 2,3E: lost its generator belt somewhere along the E22. Don’t know why as it looked fine. New belt ordered. 

Bonus picture of my Volvo roof box I got for free. 

[Nibbler]

This weekend with cars: 4 days off work, T4 brakes, Audi 100 repairs and fever.

VW T4:  Got my parts from Autodoc and managed to get the brakes fitted on the T4. One brake line leaked, but after I nipped it up a bit it stayed dry. Mrs Nibbler helped me with bleeding the brakes and all was good. Nearly, I still had long pedal travel and the handbrake was bad on the left side. Turned out that the self adjuster wasn’t working on the left rear wheel. So I adjusted the brakes manually and all is now good. Self adjuster will be a project for the future.

I also cleaned the inside of the aluminium wheels. There was quite a lot of rust flakes embedded in the mating surface. It’s there from the hilariously rusty Audi A4 that donated the wheels. Maybe this will cure the vibrations over 110 km/h, I don’t know.

I’ve scrapped the plans on using the Volvo roof box as it’s heavy as hell. My roof rack is rated to 50 kg. Exactly the same as the weight of the box… go figure. 
 

Audi 100 2,3E: Mounted a new control arm. Quite straight forward as this control arm strangely was much easier to fit than the other side. The roll bar still put up a fight, but I managed to beat it into submission at the end. 

But the first thing I noticed when I got the wheel off was a quite a lot of grease on the inside of the rim. The cv-joint boot had come undone. My guess is that it was put to far in and when the perma-Quick ring, bracket, fastener (don’t know exact name) was tightened it had nothing to grip on and therefore actually was to loose. But I don’t know, I’m guessing here.  Anyhow, I put in more grease, changed the perma-quick thing and now it’s just a matter of wait and see.

The Audi still isn’t perfect. There is play in the steering joint as well. So that’s the next project. 
 

I also managed to squeeze in a visit to a couple of flea markets. I bought this, looks like a grenade to me? Then I got a fever and today I’m down and out. My plan was to work on the Audi Diesel but sadly no…

[Nibbler]

We are on vacation in northern Sweden and Norway. While navigating thru the town of Östersund i suddenly lost the clutch. Boom, pedal went down… and stayed down… 

I could see that the clutch wire was intact but that it had come undone from the clutch pedal. I tried to get it back on but no, not even close. After a few calls, Bilteknik i Östersund AB told me that they could help me and they surely did. Top blokes! 

[sdkrc]

On 20/04/2024 at 10:41, Nibbler said:

 

Absolutely frothing at the knickers over this barn.  So much room for activities. Gingercators are a game changer too

[Nibbler]

On 25/05/2024 at 22:11, sdkrc said:

Absolutely frothing at the knickers over this barn.  So much room for activities. Gingercators are a game changer too

The guy who owns it rents out space for people like me and caravan/mobile homes owners. It’s quite big. 

[Nibbler]

The past two weeks with cars part 1: starring VW Multivan in Sweden and Norway. 2000 miles and shitloads of petrol.

[Nibbler]

The past two weeks with cars part 2: starring Audi 100 Diesel. Fondmetal wheels with Nokian tyres in the sporty dimension of 185/65-14 got evicted. Instead we now have Avon 185/70-14 with steel rims featuring original wheel trims. Much quieter and a little bit more sluggish , so just perfect.

Also changed both oil pressure sensors. There is a reason behind this, probably more about that in the future. The engine seems to build oil pressure quite slowly both when it’s cold and when it’s hot. I have a couple of thoughts about this and I will probably write more about this in the future. After the sensor change the oil light seems to go out immediately when the engine is hot, so that is an improvement. Information about these engines are hard to come by, but I just remembered that it’s the same family of engines that Volvo used for many years. So maybe I can find something useful on some Volvo forums.

[Nibbler]

Audi 100 2,3E: I changed the worn balljoint in the steering linkage and I was totally convinced that the handling problems would be solved. I came back gutted after the test drive. It was a little better but the car still turned hard left under acceleration. And I broke my balljoint separator.
 

So when I got back I had Mrs Nibbler sit in the front seat and jerk the steering wheel back and forth and finally I found out the reason behind the cars strange behaviour. The suspension strut was moving back and forth quite badly. So I ordered parts and one week later I changed the top bearing and bushing and the car is now fine. 

Had problem with removing the shock absorber bolt. The torx was corroded and I had to force a larger torx socket in with a sledgehammer. 


 
The old bearing was fine but the bushing was a mess!

[Rightnider]

Great to see that it’s finally fixed!

[Nibbler]

Audi 100 Diesel: After reading up on the subject of Volvo D24 engines (6 cylinder version of the 5 cylinder engine in my Audi) I found a few potential problems that could explain why the oil pressure warning stays on for far too long.

-bearings shoot 

-oil pressure sensor is clogged up

-oil pickup is clogged up 

-cheap oil filter 

-oil pump is worn

So I treated the car with new sensors. Problem did not disappear. Gave the car a premium oil filter and new oil. That made it worse. Which is not strange because I went for 15/40 instead of 10/40, or?

Next step is to measure the oil pressure and after that, remove the sump.

But all is not doom and gloom. Last picture for today is taken outside of Jannes Mekaniska Verkstad where the Audi was treated with a new cambelt and pulley, new belt for the diesel pump, water pump and maybe a new CV joint or maybe he just re-greased the old one and changed the boot. Edit: CV joint got changed.

So let’s hope the main bearings are still good 😀 This is not a car with extreme mileage so i keep my fingers crossed.

Any  thoughts about the oil pressure problem would be appreciated!

[Dyslexic Viking]

Have you thought about trying to connect an oil pressure gauge so you can see the oil pressure? Either a small oil pressure gauge or one like the one below from Biltema.

 

And there are many misunderstandings about engine oil 10w-40 and 15w-40 being the same thickness when hot except for the poorer cold start ability of 15w-40.

Quote

Can I use 10W40 instead of 15w40?

 

To be honest it won't make difference. 15w/40 is thicker than 10w/40 when cold, but once the engine is warm the viscosity is the same

 

[Nibbler]

7 hours ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

Have you thought about trying to connect an oil pressure gauge so you can see the oil pressure? Either a small oil pressure gauge or one like the one below from Biltema.

 

And there are many misunderstandings about engine oil 10w-40 and 15w-40 being the same thickness when hot except for the poorer cold start ability of 15w-40.

 

That’s a really good idea to buy one of those. There is one left in Oskarshamn! Hopefully it’s still there tomorrow!

The oil pressure problem is on start up with cold engine. Maybe this is down to a tired oil pump as the time to build oil pressure increased with 15/40?

[Dyslexic Viking]

2 hours ago, Nibbler said:

Maybe this is down to a tired oil pump as the time to build oil pressure increased with 15/40?

I am no expert but it is possible.

[Nibbler]

On 12/07/2024 at 18:23, Dyslexic Viking said:

I am no expert but it is possible.

We will soon find out! 

[Nibbler]

I know that you guys love a sturdy hot bulb engine. Couldn’t figure out the manufacturer’s name.

[High Jetter]

James Watt? 😀

[Nibbler]

On 14/07/2024 at 23:43, High Jetter said:

James Watt? 😀

Wasn’t he more into steam engines?