My New Zealand Shite - Yet Another Car Added

[Jon]

One thing fixed, another thing broken today.

 

This is the state of the driver's door handle, as bought. It works but the handle doesn't spring back into place and honestly, as a user experience, it's akin to receiving one of those ominously weak handshakes. 

 

Cracked open the door panel and noticed that the return spring for the handle was all jaunty and obviously not properly housed.

 

Putting it back in place however highlighted the issue. When the handle is lifted, the 'lid' of the plastic shroud the spring sits in flexes, as it's snapped. 

 

A classic, textbook bout of procrastination took place, wondering how to sort it, until I whipped out my digital caliper, sharpie, drill, angry grinder and 1mm cutting disc and a bit of old metal from an office filing system.

 

I came up with this - a strip of metal, folded into a U shape (by hand! Grrr!), then cut the gap bit out with the grinder and drill bits. I'm as surprised as anyone that it actually flipping WORKS!

 

Yes! I don't want to brag but it feels like a premium car's door handle now, all springy and assertive. A nice firm handshake now, with direct eye contact and everything.

 

The downside is that I've somehow broken the central locking, which was the main reason why I had the door panel off. Previously, the solenoid activated with a key turn but now it doesn't. The rod between lock barrel is still connected, so it's not that. Lifting the door knob manually doesn't work either but if I use the auto lock switch on the door panel, the solenoid activates. I even took a video of me trying the lock/knob vs the switch and there seems to be no physical difference in rod travel between the two - it's just that one makes the solenoid do its job and the other doesn't.

Elecrtical issue, perhaps? Any suggestions would be greatly received! 

 

 

 

[cort1977]

Nice one Jon.  I was wondering why you had purchased such a forgettable appliance when the rear axle reveal made everything clear. I too am a sucker for 4wd in unlikely vehicles, makes everything more interesting.

[Jon]

 

On 7/30/2020 at 11:58 PM, cort1977 said:

Nice one Jon.  I was wondering why you had purchased such a forgettable appliance when the rear axle reveal made everything clear. I too am a sucker for 4wd in unlikely vehicles, makes everything more interesting.

I know! I surprised myself with this one but it's got too much going for it (low price, low running costs, AWD, post 2000, compact for storage etc.) that the positives outweighed any worry over it being a bit dull. And in actual fact, it isn't really.

 

Anyway, a few more cosmetics:

 

Wiper arms before.

 

And after some etch primer and matt black spray paint. Easy peasy job, so if it doesn't stand the test of time, no worries! Just do it again.

 

 

Then I got a bit ambitious since it's been dry this week, so decided to whip out the driver's seat for a clean. 

I've lined up a few key detailing ingredients, carefully selected on the basis of their cleaning excellence and not just because that was what was in the laundry at the time. Precisely pour an unspecified amount of SARD stain remover into the clinically cleaned bucket, then add Reflect powder (suitable for front AND top loading machines). An over flowing scoop should do. One mixed into a bit of a half-arsed 'paste' using too much water, the beguiling aroma of tiger lilies should be bursting through.

 

Then slap the aforementioned 'paste' which is too runny/gritty equally* on to the seat, then pour on the bucket excess and desperately try to grind it round the whole seat in an equal fashion. Apply pressure washer.

 

Looking good! 

 

It's at this stage that the sun goes in, you remember previously having borrowed a carpet cleaner to suck up excess moisture and that yes, it's still bloody winter.  Great. Bang in front of the fire for a couple of nights, so it can simultaneously absorb much of the heat away from you and leave you with a damper home in the process. This being an adult thing is working out so well!

 

Regardless, it's all in the past now, so let's see a before and after shot:

 

 

 

Not bad, I'd say! I even stuffed an extra bit of foam into the squab, in an attempt to floomph up the right had side of it, which had been crushed to dust from drivers getting in and out. It was a free fix and used up a small piece of otherwise useless foam, so despite not being perfect, it is an actual improvement. It does highlight the grubbiness of the passenger seat but that can wait until it's actually good weather and I can borrow a carpet cleaner again. 

 

In a similar way, I was able to swap out the cruddy original gear knob dalek for some random one earmarked for the dump, liberated from a Japanese centre console of unknown origin, which was in the back of the Land Rover when it turned up. I think it adds to the '4WD' vibe rather well and am sure will add some perceived ground clearance/running gear robustness as a result.

[Jon]

Mrs_Jon decided she'd like to spend a day off from work today watching awful television whilst crocheting, so I went outside to wash cars and fettle. After washing cars, I thought I'd tackle the other floppy door handles on the Vitz, so proceeded to crack open a door cover (2 screws and some plastic plugs - literally a 1 minute job), to discover that the spring was completely absent. Checked the door bottom too and no dice. Or even a missing door handle spring. Fail.

Next job was to try and get the interior light sensor/plunger for the driver's door to work, so I unscrewed it and swapped it over with a working one, from a rear door. With both swapped, neither now worked, so I decided to just put things back in their rightful places and worry about it another day. Reinstated the back door one and then whilst screwing the front one back in, all of a sudden a beeping sound is heard. Turns out it's at precisely this juncture that the annoying Toyota 'keys in ignition' beeper has reinstated itself. It had never worked before and I was very glad of the fact, as it's a personal irritant! So I turn the headlamp switch and all of a sudden that annoying alarm has decided to awaken, too! And then I look up.... and the interior light has started to work again in the 'door open' setting...

Flummoxed at this turn of events, I decide upon either divine intervention, or perhaps I've disturbed a poor earth somewhere. Whatever, time to go in. Put the key in the door lock and now the central locking is working again!!!

 

An utterly boring update here (to go along with my utterly boring day) and bereft of pictures, so have a giant fish on a Bedford:

 

 

 

[MJK 24]

Awesome thread!  Very jealous of your NZ life, too.  I spent a few months there a few years ago and promptly fell in love with the place!

[Jon]

On 6/14/2020 at 12:34 AM, Jon said:

There's further news on the Cavalier front, as it's playing silly buggers and being problematic again but I'll do a write-up some other time. Today's enthralling post concerns Mrs_Jon's 17 year old Clio and its non-functioning washer jets. I'd known this had been an issue for a while but had put off fixing it, as Mrs_Jon didn't seem too fussed by their lack of functioning and thus didn't moan about it. And since I rarely drive her car, I tend to forget that such issues exist...

 

However, we car swapped the other day and since it's winter here, the windscreen was starting to get mucky from road spray, so I tried the jets and then instantly remembered they were broken, the exact moment the wipers began smearing the grime all over the screen. A couple of oncoming trucks knocking up water spray helped clear it but frankly, I'm too old to be mucking about using this method to reliably* clear a windscreen - this is the type of trick I'd have to utilise on my £220 MkIV Escort 17 years ago when I was broke, not on one of our 'good' cars nowadays.

 

Symptoms were that the washer motor was making a noise but not flicking out any water. A suck/blow test seemed to show the issue at the pump, as the pipes were clear. At this juncture, I find it's best to see if someone has tackled such a job before and then posted a video of it on Youtube  - this can save time and effort scrabbling around pretending I know what I'm doing, plus it makes a great excuse for sitting down and drinking a coffee. Turns out there's a couple such vids and they both made the job look easy - remove the passenger wiper arm, peel back some bits of trim below the windscreen and then you can whip out the motor from the bottle, then ideally replace. Job done. Easy.

Here's an example:

Except these were on 1.2 Clios, with a single washer motor. Mrs_Jon's is a 172, which has headlamp washers and as such, has two motors - the easy-peasy-to-get-to one is actually for the headlamp washers and the buried, annoying one (which doesn't exist on a 1.2) is for the windscreen. Great. Also, I don't have a replacement, as it seems to be a less common part and not many 172s were sold in NZ. Most excellent! To rub salt into the wounds, the 1.2 washer motor just pulls out from the top, as the water outlet is at the bottom of the motor and it slots into the bottle, to form a seal. The one that I was trying to get out had a 90 degree elbow but barely any space to remove it.

 

I was using my phone as a torch to look into the dark hole to try and see what I was doing, so was able to accurately draw in some expertly rendered representations of the tools I was using to grapple this mother with - a screwdriver and set of needle nose pliers, for those of you with no artistic licence.

 

Here they are in action. You can see here that the washer bottle is buried beneath the wiper mechanism and I wasn't about to start removing that, just so I could access the bottle more easily, as the bottle seemed to have mounting bolts close to the bulkhead that weren't accessible. Note also the loom to the cabin, which the screwdriver is butted up against. this needs to be yanked as far out the way as possible, to clear a gap for the washer motor but of course, it hasn't much of a tether, so moves probably an inch, max.

 

After way too much farting about, I've got the bugger out! Red arrow points vaguely to where it's come from. Disconnecting both tubes and blowing down each hole reveals the blockage is in the bit between them, about where the red arrow points to on the motor.

 

One post on the Cliosport forum suggested that there was a piston which flips between each outlet, as the motor spinning one way provides water to the windscreen and the other outlet supplies the rear window, when the motor spins the opposite way. The issue lies with the rubber ends of the piston swelling over time, blocking both outlets.

 

A breakdown of the unit on my sterilised work bench revealed an unevenly swollen piston.

 

I therefore ground down the rubber on a file, as I thought this would give a nicer outcome than if I just lopped off the excess with a Stanley knife. Othesr on the Cliosport thread had commented along the lines of "LOL it's not worth trying to fix, just buy a new one, they're like £5, you miser" to the OP but it's an easy fix, saves a few quid and saves something being needlessly thrown away. Plus it's an instant fix, no sourcing of parts and waiting for them to arrive, which is ideal for me in NZ, a country not well known for it's embarrassment of obsolete Renault parts.

 

Anyway, the refitting was an ABSOLUTE WAR due to slotting the pump back into the bottle via the 90 degree neck in the tiniest imaginable gap, whilst trying to line up the neck and hole blind and then get it to slide in to the bottle in parallel. But just look at those jets squirt!! 

Apologies for the boring update but I have to document this somewhere for myself, as no doubt the piston will fail again over time and I'll have to fix it again, or replace the unit.

 

 

RIGHT, well this 'fix' seemingly lasted about 18 months, as at the WOF (MOT) last January, the tester mentioned he'd passed the car but the washer jets had failed, as there was no fluid in the reservoir. Drove it home and filled the reservoir and sure enough, the pump made a noise but water didn't flow...

I did the right thing and promptly forgot all about it/ignored it until it was close to WOF time again - mostly as I don't drive it much (Mrs_Jon's daily) and I was emotionally scarred from the previous time I fixed it.

This time however, I decided to pull my finger out and tidy the garage enough to work on it under cover, so I could take my time, be closer to tools at hand and not get sunburnt or rained on; testament no doubt to the fact that I'm now in my 40's, so getting more sensible.

Firstly, disinter the Visa from its storage spot.

Notice in the process that it's over 6 years since it's been on the road and that it really is time to do something with it.

 

I re-read the quoted post (thanks, past-self) and then cracked on. Here's some notes for future self, if I have to do it again (I will - I bought a pattern part, so it'll likely shit out in no time):

1. Bench test the new pump prior to starting, to ensure it's not duff out of the box

2. Grease the flipping wiper spindles. It's really not fun wrestling across a car trying to get these unstuck, especially since it's easier to remove the wipers and raise the sprung arm up, thus adding the drama of cracking the 'screen, even with protection in place. Of course, it requires the bonnet to be both open and closed at the same time, to raise/lower the arms, remove the blades, remove the nuts etc.

3. Prop the bonnet up beyond normal height, to get a bit more working room. And then lower it back to normal position in the bonnet prop locator at certain times, when the prop is now in the way....

4. Once wipers and leaf guards are removed, disconnect the battery and move the loom slightly, out of the way to gain access to the pump. 

 

For those still reading, the pump is at the bottom of the above photo, with the yellow and green wires. There's no way I was removing the wiper linkages, to access the washer bottle, hence the intricate gymnastics.

 

5. Use a long screwdriver to dislodge the pump from the bottle. Do make sure you forget to drain the washer bottle, or put anything below to catch the fluid - this step is very important, as a damp concrete floor is paramount.

6. Once extracted, blow into the pump, to make sure it is blocked up. Try the same trick for comparison on the new one, to see how much easier it is and successfully diagnose the fault.

7. Piss about wasting time, tying to open up the old pump to make the same 'fix' which will ultimately fail again, before coming to your senses and just replacing it. Be sure to retain the old pump though, 'just in case', and for maximum confusion/self-doubt in years to come, as to why you kept the old, broken one.

 

8. You're now at this fun stage, where you have 2 options - install with or without the power connector attached. WITH means that you will struggle to line up the pump to breech the retaining 'hips' of the washer bottle, whilst WITHOUT makes it easier to use the female end of the connector as a grip point with a pair of needle nose pliers, as you adjust the lateral movements with the long screwdriver. But then you have the unenviable task of pushing down the connector to clip it in place (it is of course, not a connector that simply clicks into place and is much more of an interference fit that requires uncalculated amounts of mashing)

9. It's also very important that you try either the long, sturdy screwdriver that's ultimately too bulky to use effectively in the small space, then switch to the long, flimsy effort, that doesn't give quite enough force to push the motor into position. Having selected from step 8 that WITh is impossible and opted for WITHOUT, proceed with lateral effort, then wrestle with housing the connector, with an undetermined amount of force, with the strong potential of dislodging the pump from the seal in the bottle. An 8mm allen key is just long enough to cradle the bottom of the pump as you apply the downward force. It's also equally just short enough to fall out your hand at times and get caught up in an offshoot of the loom, so overcome this by reinstating the loom in its rightful place and thus making the gap really tight for blind work with 2 hands.

10. Note that the bonnet prop is in the most annoying place it could possibly be for intricate car surgery and that your outdated low lumens LED light is still too bright. Overcome the former by moving the bonnet up higher for more head room but getting the prop even more in the way, then alternating between the 2 compromises. ACTUAL HANDY HINT: diffuse the light output by shining the light through the washer bottle.

11. Once the pump is installed, fill with a wine bottle's worth of water and test the jets. Satisfied you've successfully fixed the issue, reinstate the wipers with liberal coats of grease on the spindles and then test again. At the inevitable stage that once all buttoned up, the flipping thing doesn't work again, call it a night. Do make sure to you've adhered strictly to all the steps in step 5, so that you can't ascertain whether it's a case of a poor seal resulting in leaking fluid, as you trudge wearily from the garage, shutting the door on your problems for another day.

12. Next day, repeat steps 1-11 and then conclude upon hearing the water gush from the bottle, that perhaps you just hadn't put enough water in the bottle in the day before, to effectively test it more than once. Try 2 wine bottles of water at step 11 next time... 

 

THE END.

(thread updated genuinely for reference on how to fix the issue more effectively next time, hence all the blurb)

[hairnet]

hi jon

moar holden

moar cav

fanks

 

[Jon]

More Holden content upcoming in future.

Current status:

 

 

 

 

 

Further news down the line. I've also SOLD a car too (I know!!) but despite a deposit left, I'm not jinxing it until it's collected next week and I've the readies in the bank.

[hairnet]

did stu hilp with whatever you bought to replace it

@STUNO maxima update - thinks

are you beat up by the boss cos you didnt fix the 205?

are you related to @PhilA  cos you hiv broken renos also

 

[Surface Rust]

Love the Commodore, interested to see you've gone with a non-standard clutch installation.

You'll upset the purists with that approach...