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The next problem was a non-starting Skoda. That Royal Blue Favorit Estate I'd bought just to make sure it got back onto the road, that hadn't been touched for months, well, that's had an issue for some time and when I tried to move it, it did not want to be moved. This is some of the previous keeper's handiwork:  I still haven't got to the bottom of it, but I think the, or at least part of the, root cause may be a faulty ignition switch. Anyway the starter motor needs jumped, but that is difficult to go while also holding the ignition on. I hoked around the shed until I found a length of wire, then again until I found some old pliers, then stripped back some plastic.  Connected one end  Ran the other into the footwell  And eventual success!  Would you believe that it took three and a half long hours to get this thing to move out of the way? All so I could deposit the E30 in there.  The Skoda also needs a wheel changed as it just goes flat all the time, and then sort the starting issue quickly as it'll soon be due over at Vinny's for paint. That will be a welcome day. All that done, I loaded up a castle and made off on a 1500-mile roadtrip.  Some of that definitely required:  Dropped off the 9 foot tall towers, and headed down into England to pick up a few things - spare parts for my E34 for example, as Richard whom I bought it from had been so good to hold onto them until I was back over in a van; the original bumpers, spare lights, spare boot trim, and a spare tailgate. Also a friend of mine had been storing a few parts for me as well and I got those - including a set of E31 8 series Brembo brakes - a direct fit (and massive upgrade) for an E34 - or E28, come to mention it... Caught an evening ferry and was back in Ireland for midnight, and home at 2:45am, via Slane:  Last time I was here I was taking pictures of the E34 in the early morning mist! That's about it, up to date. Current driving duties can be meted out between the Citroen Relay, Iveco C15, Fiat Ducato and a BMW 330i. The BMW 540i is ready for action if need be and the Discovery gets the occasional run out if I'm going less than 10 miles away. The Range Rover is parked up at the old home farm where it will continue with towing stuff into and out of the field. The Alfa 156 and MG ZT are at my new house, just chilling out, and the Peugeot Partner I gave to a friend last year is back and waiting, I'll get that MOT'd soon too. The Austins are in storage, and the Skoda S110 is hiding out in work and could theoretically come out again soon once I sort out wheels, as the purpose of moving to a house in the country with a barn and sheds is so that I can have my cars at home to tinker with and play with. And it's sunny today. Superb. |
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Very enjoyable, as ever, even with P38 abuse!  |
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Hope you didn't break any towels when you dropped the mitsu!
Entertaining read, 10/10.
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May 28, 2019 12:27:39 GMT
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P38 Auto Gearbox ECUs are sensitive to low voltage and will go into Limp mode if your charging system isn't up to scratch.
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1995 Range Rover 4.0
1995 BMW 320i Saloon
1989 BMW 325i Touring
1991 Mercedes 300TE-24
1991 Mercedes 190e
1970 Sunbeam Imp Sport
1966 Valiant 200 Custom
1964 Ford Fairlane 500 Station Wagon
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May 30, 2019 13:51:51 GMT
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P38 Auto Gearbox ECUs are sensitive to low voltage and will go into Limp mode if your charging system isn't up to scratch. True. The first clue is 'Gearbox Overheat' appearing on the message centre at start up. However, just about every ECU will try and throw in its two penn'orth on low voltage. |
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Last Edit: May 30, 2019 13:53:32 GMT by georgeb
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At the start of May, the time came to move my Alfa 164 from it's outdoor spot at work to inside accommodation at home with me. Being an extremely reliable Alfa, I put a battery in it...  and it...fired right up! Of course it did!  I grabbed the light wood-rimmed wheel, and gently piloted it out and pointed it down the yard to be loaded on a trailer and moved over. Once home it took a thousand point turn to get it half into place, and in the end I gave up on that and turned it around on the lawn. Seeing as the van had just done a big trip, I figured I should reward it with some tender loving care and maybe sort out that oil filter that was annoying me since I bought the van. It had been fitted by the previous owner and had always dripped slightly, and the sump had been oily when I purchased as a result. I had cleaned it up since but still, I did not like it, and I do not take it for granted that anyone else would use good quality oil. Not only might they have chosen cheap oil, they could have tried to buy good stuff and been sold some overpriced rubbish by a greedy merchant, or even had it done in a garage and perhaps even paid well, but unaware of the watery junk being used in some garages. So it's not that I don't trust the seller/previous owner per se, but I don't blindly believe that there is good oil in there. Off came the old filter.  And true enough it was pretty thin and black. But no particles. It was tight enough in there and the access was from underneath. Getting the wrench on was pretty awkward.  Also scored another free strap when out driving the van the next day. I always keep my eyes peeled - when we are transporting loads of twisted and sharp metal (stripped or damaged cars etc) then we often have straps rub through and snap. Truck straps do the same, but usually there is enough left to make a good length strap for us!  Another job was the 540i using PAS fluid - not alarmingly fast, but still, it started to get a bit noisy. Checked it out and found it low, went to the shelves in work looking for the rarest of all PAS fluid, and found an old tin (I knew it was there) which topped up the system and got rid of the noisy.  That all done I took an evening of and went visiting folk. To my surprise, when trying to get away from work, the little ones had built this and wanted to show me...  and we spent the rest of the evening building a super-garage for my lego-man to work from. Rapid expansion and all that. |
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Speaking of rapid expansion, I needed another forklift for a new unit and with a tiny loading door, I had to find a container spec truck (with a little mast that will fit within 8 feet gaps). I was keeping an eye out until then I did actually spot one for sale cheap, well under what I was expecting to pay for a s/h truck, and better yet it was an old customer-turned-buddy that I'd been out of touch with for a while. Nipped down (I say nipped, I mean well over an hour's drive) for 8pm and we got cold enough to quit chatting about 1am... almost forgetting to agree a deal on the forklift! A couple of nights later I was back, with Matthew and William in the Navara with a hired plant trailer. I was guessing around 3 tons, but nope, it was definitely more than that! How do I know? Well, the trailer almost collapsed under the weight, and the Navara buckled under the strain, and split the chassis!  We quickly off loaded it and miserably poked at the trailer and even more at the pickup. But being the type of people who never give up, even when really we should do... one of us had a bright idea, a good two hours after we'd got there, so midnight-ish for sure, of taking the counter weight off. We did that with another forklift, and that made it light enough to not break the floor of the trailer, and the Nissan was less splitty-splitty, and we set our compass homeward and made off like that, keeping a keen eye on the gap between crewcab and pickup bed. The trailer had to go back at 9am so we offloaded that night, at 2am sort of time. That surely pleased the neighbours. It definitely had a cool vibe the next morning. Kind of a Cars sort of deal, just needs a couple of big eyes at the front to match that jaunty angle.  Then I head back down the next evening with my Iveco flatbed to collect the counterweight. It was dropped right over the rear axle of the 'veco, and man could I feel it, dropping the rear suspension by a full foot. It must have been 1.5 tons by itself. Reconnecting with this guy has been paying off since the forklift too, with two cars and some spares having come my way in another good deal. Heading off to pick the first car up involved first a run around the country in the Iveco to pick up other things too. There are great views when you are touring the countryside, and when you have an orange beacon enabling you to stop almost anywhere, and a bed to stand on that's four feet off the ground when empty, vantage points are that bit more attainable.  |
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Meanwhile the 540i had ran out of MOT and such is the mess of N.I. at the minute, that a test date is several months away, so conveniently a customer comes in and sells me two matching silver E39s. One is a silver 528i Sport auto with MOT until December, 19" M parallels and black leather. I took it for a drive and it was nigh on perfect... so I decided to just keep driving that! Some would say the lack of radio unit (of any kind) would be a bad thing, but being a super-quiet auto, it just enhances the relaxment. Yes, new word again. So I really like that and frankly a 528i Auto is so low value that I might as well just keep it about as long as possible. 23-27mpg is the major downside. But it's also one of the tidiest cars I've dailied in a while. But the Iveco was not done hauling yet. I had a mountain to drive up first.  Then a stack of wood to load. It didn't look like much but this really tested the wee truck, it was struggling badly with this load, and I've had it maxed out on payload before and it's barely broken a sweat.  That had to be delivered to Scotland, but there was no way I was doing that long journey with crackling speakers, so they had to go.  They were the usual paper junk, ripped and split. I did have some decent 6x4s I was going to fit, but then I thought I would rather just stick some good components in and have done with it. Which is what I did  And they fitted too, with a bit of squeezing  (that's as good as it looked before too!) It wasn't far past the summer equinox when I went over on the ferry and so at 2:30am I grabbed this shot of Girvan  Dropped the wood off, got some sleep, then turned around and went and picked up a car. Passed a sticky-out rock called the Loudoun Hill, obviously so named because it's quite high.  and near the coast, in fact over most of Scotland, was this "har", this sea fog that just envelops everything. Still, it looked OK for photos.  Some more old junk:  Came back and had some pleasing news, my LR which I had left in with a mechanic I know was now ready to go. Could I have done this job myself? Yes. Did I? No. So I paid a man to do it and he did it and it's done now. I immediately took it away up some oul lanes.  And proceeded to do some 300+ miles in it over the next couple of days. Hey, he said it was fixed! And it is! So my LR is my daily again... but for how long? |
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Jul 14, 2019 17:46:45 GMT
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Another bright idea began to raise it's head, after fixing the LR, the shabby bits like the dented panel and the broken front bumper were looking a bit rough. This idea gained traction (before-its-time-pun) when I realised I could utilise these tyres:  Uniroyal Tiger Paw 15"s that came on the wheels I bought for the Cadillac. The most devoted may go looking through the annals of pages past to find when that was, but my guess is 6 years ago was when I came to own those. The wheels had been off an Astro van as I recall and the tyres are massive as you can see. I did try selling them once but then found the treads had cracked from sitting around. Also, just off an E34 were these awful 15"s with tyres that wouldn't hold air. They needed to come off...  And before I had time to doubt my impeccable logic...  Now I had at least taken the time to look up the PCD of the LR, and the RR, and found both were 5x120 and offsets around 45-50. A set of ET20 wheels would be bound to work then. Standard sizes on both P38 and L320 are 16" minimum. I had tried to find evidence of 15"s being fitted but info was scarce on the Landie forums. I ploughed on anyway and figured if it didn't work, it would be OK. Next step in this great plan was to get the wheels off the Range Rover. This was much harder to do than it first sounded.  That would be because of the 27(!!!)mm nuts torqued to eleventy-thousand-lbfts. I had no sockets that size with me so I used the wrench in the boot, which got four off the first wheel, and then bent, such was the torque. A piece of pipe slid over for added leverage only helped bend it more. Eventually I had to go and get a 27mm socket and the big bar (a 4ft long 1" drive breaker bar) and it was still a right tug but that got them loosened. Next challenge was putting the 15" BMW wheels on. On the rear they had a couple mm clearance, so gravy. On the front, they sort of pushed on, but scraped. I had a feel round the back and there was no gap to the dust cover, so I went to the LR and got my adjustment tool.  All I did was beat the lip back, and that gave enough room, and the wheel was on! Next challenge was the nuts. The 27mm ones did not fit inside the centre recess of the new wheels. I took a drive down to someone local to see if we could get something to suit from his garage, but nothing he had was the same fitting. We took a look back at my LR and realised the nuts on it were smaller - 22mm in fact. Which made me think, they might fit. So back up to the house, pulled two nuts off each LR wheel with the impact gun and tried them on the RR.  Success! They had a small enough shank to fit into the 15" wheel. 22mm-left, 27mm-right. With two nuts per wheel, I got them all changed over and the RR was now resplendent on it's new wheels and tyres.  |
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Jul 14, 2019 18:44:37 GMT
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Concurrently to that adventure, the Land Rover, which at last mention was questioned about how long it could remain a reliable daily - well, not long it would seem. Did I maybe get three or four days out of it - well, maybe a week, lets be fair - before I was hearing squeaky noises and it was very hard to turn. I limped it home and used another car the next day to go get an emergency topup of ATF - all I could find in the 2nd service station I called into.  It took all of that, and that got me over to the old house to the RR wheel change mission. Taking a wee break from that at one of the many moments when it was being obstinate, I ducked my head under the front of the LR to check whether there was a leak needing addressed. Ammm, yes, yes there was.  I pulled down the plastic undertray, just slightly, and got an armful of PAS fluid. Slow leak for some time obviously, and the pipes and the sump and ARB were all wet with oil beading under them. I added that to the list of jobs needing tackled and went back to work. The Range Rover I had changed the wheels in the yard. I needed to make some space and there was an old trailer chassis lying in the field that needed shifting. I drove the forklift in to do that, and lifted it - only for it to slide on the toes and slip sideways. Right over my FavorAt. Precariously close. I had to manoeuvre delicately the forklift and chassis until I could get it settled and set down again - without just dragging it out because it would have damaged my precious Skoda. I did, eventually, manage to do that successfully, but at the expense of getting the forklift bogged down in the soft soil of the field. We've been here before, and this is the beginning of when I should have realised this was all going very awry indeed. With it stuck in the field, the LR repairs became a little more awkward but I reversed it in and over the toes and got if lifted anyway.  Note the bashed up, taped up bumper. It was like that when I bought it, but not helped by me driving it through hedges and pushing things out of the way with it since. Hey, it was already broken, right? So in order to gain access to the PAS pipes I suspected were leaking, I could do another double-bonus job and rip that bumper off. Which is what I did next. It was that cracked and battered, it wasn't hard to get most of it off.   That gave me access to the pipe, and then I rubbed my fingers along it, brushing off the rusty scabs until I found the wet point. I pushed a little too hard and it cracked then, turning the drip into a waterfall. *Sigh.* As you recall from an earlier post, I'd bought a couple of spares cars from an old friend I'd recently become re-acquainted with, and conveniently I'd offloaded one of them at the same house until I get the Koni's and LSD out of it for one of my other future builds. I went to it a found some length of fuel pipe, quite a bit, which would effect a decent repair on this PAS pipe. Unfortunately I didn't have anything sharp to cut it with, or so I thought, until I saw my van was also parked in this yard and recalled there was a small folding Snap-on knife in the toolbox in the cab. I had the keys with me for the van so I was able to cut a piece, and went back to the LR armed with that and some jubilee clips. It must be said that this house, my mums old place, is a few miles from my own house or from work, so fixing this was fairly essential if I was to leave again the same day! I say that, but it's only in typing this that I realise that I could just have used my van instead. Whoops, all that day I was convinced I had to get the LR fixed or walk home! I started fitting the hose, and twisting it off, only to feel a lack of resistance and then the metal pipe snapped off in another place also! It was about 18 inches from the other weak point, and the hose I'd cut was only 10 inches long! Off to get another piece then. And that piece was then fitted, and tightened on, and finally, I effected a repair worthy of the most discerning bush mechanic.  Now...that allows us to get back to the main task of wheel changing. Well, almost. Standing in the way was another 27mm nut. There are 20 wheel nuts on a Land Rover Discovery, 19 of which on this example were 22mm nuts matched to the 18" Disco3 wheels fitted to it. One of them, however, was a 27mm nut which was also crooked and also slightly rung. *Sigh.*  It took a colossal battering of my pristine Halfords Advanced twelve-point 27mm socket to get it over this abortion of a nut. Eventually it did come off, and this is what I was faced with:  I mean... what is that mess? I tried to knock it out in the usual ways, but with no joy. In my dad's old workshop, there is still a vice - in fact is this a replacement one I fitted there when his gave up years ago? Not sure. Anyway that was the next stop. Searched under the bench for a suitable piece of something hard. Ah! This bolt will get it.  Hit that with the hammer and... well...  Oh right. So the centre of this home-made awful nut is also HOLLOW?!! *Sigh.* I found a thinner tool to try hitting the edges of the nut, but to no avail. I stopped as well when I realised the allen key I was using as a club was a bit special...  I've never seen one like that, but I like it. Going to keep that handy. Finally, FINALLY, found a solution that worked, very slowly, but I got the socket tapped off, then launched that so-called "nut" into oblivion (or maybe left it in the vice, can't recall now)  and went back to fitting the 16" wheels with the BFG tyres I'd taken off the RR. Except they wouldn't go on! What now? Ah, this now.  Spigot rings. Hadn't foreseen that, but easily dealt with. Well, three of them were. Number four required a screwdriver to be jammed into it and beaten off. At one point I tried to prise it - and broke my favourite flat-head screwdriver. Yes, it was one of those days. I was starting to realise that. I smacked the last of the spigot ring and snapped it; it came off much easier after that. Finally, FINALLY, after all, I had a Land Rover with off-road tyres on it, and a full collection of wheel-nuts (the 27mm ones to match the wheels), and suddenly, as per the original, unchecked, "bright idea", I had myself an offroader. Now, the broken bumper could be ripped off, the dents did not matter so much, and instead of being a battered road-going example of a Disco2, it was a realtively clean off-road-capable example, which I confirmed by driving it around the field and NOT getting stuck.  It was, however, still a day not to remembered. More to come...unfortunately... |
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Jul 14, 2019 21:54:25 GMT
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And to finish off the saga of last week, this is what happened after all that, on July 12th. I say that date as it's kind of ironic that I would avoid all the bonfires in N.I. ... I moved the Range Rover down the field. Remember it's blocked in because I beached the forklift. It started hissing steam from under the bonnet. fair enough I thought, it's been idling a while, it's hot, it's a hot day too, so I shut it off. Then I walked a few steps away - and looked back.  That isn't white steam any more. That's brown. I looked underneath. I say some flames dropping down from beside the engine on to the grass. I ran to get something - anything - and grabbed the hose and ran back round. Stuck it under the front, but even though I put those bits out, more flames dropped down from the engine bay. I pointed the hose in through the front grille. Peering in I could see a fire starting in there. The headlight exploded with heat behind it and the cold water on the front of it. I ran round, threw the back door open and yanked out what I could from inside. There were still things I didn't need from my house move - football boots, shin pads, sleeping bag etc.-all my camping stuff, all my sports stuff. I got about two goes and then the smoke was so acrid I couldn't lean into the cabin any more. Running around the front I grabbed that battery out of the way, and got back. I stood on the bonnet of the E30 in front of it, with the hose running down the back of it to keep it wet so the fire wouldn't spread. If it caught, not only would it burn, but my Skoda next to it would go, then the forklift, and there were wooden posts on the ground and low hanging trees that would have caught, and then four houses would have been at risk. So I made the call. My brother appeared from nowhere with buckets of water and proceeded to toss them over the back of the E30 as I kept the hose on it from the bonnet of the E30 or the roof of the Skoda, ducking down every time I heard something explode. I guess it was the tyres going.  The fire brigade arrived in around 10 minutes I think, it felt pretty quick, considering they are all retained part-timers and the station is 6 miles away in town, and they got it contained after about 15 minutes. They had to stay back as it was only when they started hosing it that I remembered the LPG system. What we did was enough to save the E30 from going up too, although the lights and bumper were all completely melted of course. The result...  No more P38. No clear reason what happened. Fault in the LPG system? Hot exhaust manifold igniting some residual oil gunk? The fire chief couldn't determine either. However it's rather academic to speculate over the possible cause now as there is no way to know, and it'll only eat me up. I'm pretty gutted, I really liked the old bus. Speaking of gutted:  I apologise to all Land Rover fans, of which I have become one as a result of owning this Rangie and the Disco. And that is when I realised the day really wasn't going my way at all. |
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Jul 14, 2019 23:26:42 GMT
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That is a bit of an event. Sorry to see this happening to you. Luckily you were able to keep more damage at bay.
Good luck mate
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I bet that was exciting. Glad no one was hurt.
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wc
Part of things
Posts: 45
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Really glad it was put out before the LPG tank went up! Was a volunteer fireman for many years and have seen a house totally flattened by an exploding LPG cylinder. Fortunately nobody was injured there either. You can replace the Landy..
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Jul 15, 2019 12:27:51 GMT
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Speaking of gutted: I apologise to all Land Rover fans, of which I have become one as a result of owning this Rangie and the Disco. And that is when I realised the day really wasn't going my way at all. There's a technical term in the LR world that means a couple of steps up from, 'goosed,'and begins with a letter earlier. I think this qualifies! Two of the most recent causes on p38's seem to have been a very fine coolant leak, i.e. as a mist, or crappy eastern fuel lines. Glad everyone is okay though. |
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Jul 16, 2019 10:33:58 GMT
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The coolant leak theory would certainly resonate, as there was a good deal of steam / white smoke at first.
But yes, nobody was hurt. It's *just* a car...
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Jul 16, 2019 12:23:54 GMT
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When I replaced all my cooling system I was losing water. Only a tiny amount a week, but couldn't for the life of me find where. No water to be seen under the bonnet or on the floor. Finally caught it just in the right light, as I was checking something else after a drive. It was that fine, it was almost evaporating as it sprayed out. Fortunately, it was facing away from the manifolds and a quick turn with the screwdriver cured it. One I heard about was a smell of antifreeze, then fire. Seems a heater hose had a pinhole and sprayed a fine mist over the hot bits. Guess I was lucky, as were you guys. Edit to say that there's now one less in the world, which should increase the value of mine by around 0.099%. So thank you.  |
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Last Edit: Jul 16, 2019 12:26:00 GMT by georgeb
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Sept 1, 2019 23:35:12 GMT
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Since July then - six weeks of motoring adventures! Well, after the Range Rover debacle, I needed some relief. I bought a BMW E36 cabriolet. A really shoddy one, with loads of MOT, and a noisy exhaust. Then I bought another one, a really nice one, with loads of MOT and only one colour of panels.  I drove those around a bit and quite enjoyed having a drop-top available for that week we had some sunshine between rain showers (remember that?) I tried in vain to pull the forklift out (remember it was still stuck in the field, thankfully unburnt) with the Land Rover. Although my lunch remained unharmed!  I reluctantly left it, even after my uncle came and gave me hand trying to dig it out for a number of hours. However, I got a text the next evening, after I'd been somewhere else, which said that he had managed to get it out! By himself, one man and a spade. He's some trooper! I was also tasked with finding a vehicle for my uncle to replace his outgoing Fiesta. It wouldn't have passed an MOT with various suspension rattles and was dented all over. Knowing his propensity for carrying gardening tools and lumber and wellies around, I searched out a little van and eventually after a couple of weeks happened on an advert for a 2-owner non-turbo Citroen Berlingo with racking in the back and a good service history. For a smidgeon of cash I was driving back this little champ.  Berlingo went his way, Fiesta came to me. I got a couple of days out of it before the MOT expired on the 3rd August. Then I used it as a bin when I moved out of a 5200sqft warehouse I'd been renting "temporarily" for storing stock for work... since 2015. I swept the place clean over the course of a long couple of nights and all the debris and rubbish went in the Fiesta - first the boot, then the back seats, then the front seats, and then the little Ford scraped driving out over a 3/4" difference in concrete level. Low! Put the Iveco through the MOT as well. Browsing the internet one day (dangerous...) I came across an advert that definitely reached out and grabbed at my attention. A set of repainted MG wheels, only an hour away via the 'scenic' route...and a plan was hatched and off I drove in the noisier of the cabriolets.  It really was quite scenic, and I enjoyed a spirited (but legal) drive without anyone else bothering me.  I had thought I would just stick these wheels to one side for now until I could find some tyres at the right price. The correct size is something like 235/40/18 but I decided one evening to just buzz around blackcircles.com and see what pricing was like. Well by going down a notch to 225/40 I found the tyres were about a third less expensive... and there was a deal on for buying a set of four - which I intended to do anyway - so for a much tidier sum than expected, I ordered a set of Avons immediately. Arrived not many days after  So for around the same price as having a set of my existing wheels refurbished, I picked up a decent repainted set of the same wheels as well as the tyres for them I would have been buying anyway. Definitely quids in here. The new wheels are not immaculate, but then neither is my MG. Some day I will repaint the car and make it perfect, and at that point I can have the original wheels refurbished, but right now, we're good. Slid the tyres on...  Ooops, almost forgot to put the new valve in! Buoyed by this wheel success, I then proceeded to investigate other wheel attainment sources, and nabbed a BMW M5 "Throwing Star" to complete another (third maybe?) set of those stored away, several other wheels for various projects (not interesting) and one more box of goodies:  That's some more wheels to go towards a Skoda, hopefully some news on that soon. And employing some more mathematics with a masculine tendency, I figured that scrapping my uncles old Fiesta was a pointless exercise, without at least getting some value from it. So off I went and purchased an extremely local and extremely cheap silver Fiesta with a broken exhaust and some MOT. Brilliant! I said to myself. You are a genius! You can use the exhaust and other good parts from the old blue one to fix the woes of the silver one, and make yourself a few bob. What a plan. Well, that sort of worked out. Immediately, as in the very next day, the door barrel of the new Fiesta gave up, so it could no longer be unlocked. The key fob battery was flat. So I had to climb in through the boot, which set the alarm off. And then opening the door, and starting the car with the key, was not enough to satisfy the alarm. Only locking it was, but then I still could not unlock it, and the saga continued. I eventually just left it to give up of it's own accord. So I began the process of getting at the lock. Initially just wanting to grease or adjust it.  Was doing this at home and I'd parked the Fiesta in front of everything, like someone expecting to have the job done in an hour. Not so. So I hunted around for tools to keep going, eventually making some top notch combinations...  Seems everything needs removed to get at it.  Finally... there we are.  Even out, it was very stiff indeed. Remembering that A-the blue Fiesta had no lock problems, and B-this was meant to be a quick flip for a few hundred snoops, I went and did the same to the blue Fiesta and took the handle and lock out of it. Four days later like, but I can make it seem instant when I write a post about it right, makes me seem efficient? Nah, it lay there with no glass in the door for half a week. I had real work to do. But in it went and just in time too - for my uncle called me, to tell me the super little Berlingo had just launched all it's engine oil out all over the main road. At 7am. On his way to work. He got a taxi the remaining 30 miles and I said I'd sort the retrieval out. That night I made the silver Fiesta a bit more usable and complete, and left it sitting in my drive with the key hidden so he could collect - and after all he ended up with another Fiesta! And I ended up with the Berlingo back. Still no idea what is wrong, will put it on the lift this week and figure it out. Put MG wheels on the back of the truck to take home and fit. Checked the MOT on the MG. Expired the day before. Bah! |
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Sept 2, 2019 13:33:58 GMT
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D'you know? You make my life look simple. Thank you! |
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Sept 11, 2019 6:54:24 GMT
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Checked the MG wheels the next day and at least two of them had gone flat - from just sitting on the flatbed! not even with pressure on them. So that needs addressed. Took the 540 Touring to MOT. Failed on the bonnet not opening - but the tester gave me a few minutes to see if I could get it open. I ended up ripping the entire grille off but could not get in to it. Drove it home, parked up, booked a retest.  Went to drive it to work a few days later to fix it. Clutch pedal went straight to the floor! So I had to get the bonnet open at home, which meant more improvisation of tools. After maybe an hour I got some needle nose pliers in there and got it to unlatch. Working with this gap:  So once that was opened, slowly put some fluid in  And it bubbled all the trapped air out and then it was OK again. Brought it in and set to the cable. The latch was broken so I replaced that with a good one.  That didn't fix it though, and the cable was to blame as it was still well stretched. Took the handle off from inside which allowed it to be pulled much further and then the bonnet would open and close. Took it for the MOT then and got it passed. Then went to drive it to work in the morning with a view to replacing the grilled and re-attaching the cable handle and trim. Got about a mile from home, then smoke starting pouring out of the engine bay. Nasty, smelly smoke - and we've been there all too recently, remember?! Well it wasn't fire, but you might be able to see:  A pulley, not sure which, seized, and the belt was screeching around it. I had no tools with me so I figured I would just make it snap. So I started the car and gave it a few revs to see, and then, a big slap and a bang.  There's the belt. So that removed, I drove it on to work, through a busy village with no PAS, but whatever. Got about another 2 miles then this  The fan unwound itself and popped off. Made a right racket. Pulled it out then drove the last couple of miles before anything else would break. Went to look about something else instead. Mechanic found the source of the oil leak on the Berlingo - the oil filer was so bad it had rotted through and the oil was gushing out of the filter under pressure!  So much for that FSH the P.O. told me about! A hard day over, I took a nice car home from work then wanted to keep it blocked in, you know, in case of groups of men with sticky fingers. So the best plan of action - park the Land Rover in front of it. Was moving it in and out and caught the front corner of it.  Goodbye indicator. So this update is definitely a sickening one full of disasters! |
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