As i understand it, the grind on the cam lobes is such that the follower is supposed to rotate in the bore. basically its not perfectly flat, its ground at a slight angle. The follower is also specially ground to work with that angle and rotate.
When one or other is worn, and they cant rotate correctly, accellerated wear tends to occur.
I now realise that your not suggesting fitting new lifters, but some slightly less knackered ones for a short time, and in that situation, i'd say sure, go right ahead.
yeh, but if you fit new followers to the worn cam, then fit a new cam to the new followers a few months later, you'll likely just result in writing it all off, as the old cam will chew up the new followers, then the new chewed up followers will ruin the new cam...
Either do the cam now along with the followers, or leave it all alone, IMO
Surely the issue is the two parts wear together... If you fit new followers to an old used cam, the worn cam will ruin the new followers in short order?
This is the usual problem with engines, once you crack it open its a slippery slope down the rabbit warren of doom.
Mine also had a fairly small looking battery, however when i checked the online lookup it matched what it was supposed to have (an "069", rated ~70AH iirc)
It wasnt that old, but had been flattened a few times and sounded weak when cranking, so i had a much larger "110" battery rated 80ah which was nearly new from a car i was breaking. It only just squeezes into the tray. Still sounds weak when cranking, must just be how it is.
I also agree, 115c is "ok". Not ideal, but not OTT hot. On a fully sealed system, 115c probably wouldnt even have popped the expansion cap valve. I've had my Audi round there before when the water pump failed and it was unperturbed by it.
I was driving mine for weeks with a leaking radiator (which ofcourse then started leaking more), and due to the extra-leak one morning the wife drove it to work and had the temp guage round into the red with the warning light on. It took about 4 litres of coolant to fill it back up again, but engine seems otherwise fine.
i changed the oil when i got the car on the road, its been regularly topped up since as it seems to leak/burn a fair amount, it just looks black, smells a bit fuelly and looks like it wants changed again, so i'll get onto that at some point. No signs of coolant in the oil though.
Well plot thickens, maybe...
Weather has been awful, so i havent managed to actually properly measure anything up. Everythings shut anyway so no point getting soaked when i cant order any bits anyway.
Yesterday morning, the coolant was low, and the rocker cover looked slightly damp, i only had about half a litre left of coolant. I put that in, which took it about half way up the reservoir. At a guess it probably needed another half litre to get it upto the cold fill line. Then tightened the jubilee clips. They all felt pretty loose, and all nipped up nicely. Since then, no more steam, and the rocker cover is dry. Its still seems to be losing coolant though.
Yesterday i drove about 95miles all in, two ~40mile trips, two ~10mile trips and some running around local.
This morning, the coolant was barely visible at the bottom of the reservoir, just a small amount visible just at the pipe connection. I didnt want to fill it with water, so drove to asda (which was open on new years day amazingly enough) and bought a 1L "top up" and poured that in, which took it up to the cold fill line.
So from that i deduce that my 95miles yesterday has consumed about half a litre of coolant.
So wheres it going...
The weathers been pretty crap, lots of rain, but i've been really struggling to keep the windows demisted in the cabin. It was needing fan speed 5 and 24-25c to keep the front windows clear, and the rear glass stayed kinda steamy thru most of that 95miles of driving. So ofcourse that leads to the worry that its leaking internally, perhaps in the heater matrix. Oddly no particularly coolanty smell inside the car.
yeh you could well be right, something to investigate. Hopefully i'll get a few minutes tomorrow to have a nose around.
Thinking outside the box... The original throttle heater uses a seperate fitting on the manifold, which went to the throttle then back to the expansion tank. Thats now blanked off on my engine. I wonder if i could use that instead of T-ing the heater hoses at all?
Or maybe use that as the feed, and return to the heater return as normal.
Need to have a look at the bay.
yeh i dont think i want to do it in series given the tiny size of the connections on the vaporiser. I planned to measure today but its snowing so it can wait.
i think the vapouriser is smaller, maybe 12mm? i'll need to measure i think!
I was looking on LPG shop, they have a 19-10-19 and a 19-16-19 but nothing in between :(
http://www.bigas.it/en/products/lpg-reducer/ri-21-double
That suggests 10mm, but i'm not sure thats exactly the same as mine, but maybe the 19-10-19 will be fine after all!
So since fixing the radiator, a few times when i've done a short journey i've noticed steam coming from under the bonnet when i stopped. Initially i just marked it down to it being frosty, and the engine melting frost/condesnation away. Its used a small amount of coolant since fixing the rad, but i wasnt entirely sure if the topping up was simply down to small airbubbles or whatever working their way out.. However this afternoon i went to the nursery to pick up the wee man (about a mile away) and when i reversed into the bay noticed steam coming out the sides of the wheel arches and grille, and when i stopped it was whisping out the sides of the bonnet. Clearly not condesation!!
So i popped the hood, and had a look. Offside rocker cover was wet with a puddle of coolant and there was steam pouring off the exhaust manifold. No obvious leak, but the T pieces for the LPG system are directly above where the coolant seemed to be, and the T Pieces looked damp. I fired it back up, and no visible leak. Drove it to the dump, sat in a queue for 10 minutes waiting to get in, parked, drove to Greggs then home, and no more steam appeared.
So i'm presuming the T pieces are the source. They're configured somewhat peculiarly and i'd like to check before i order some new bits.
So whats there just now, is two plastic equal Tees in the heater hoses, right beside the brake modulator. They've then used some VERY stiff hose, to go from those equal tees, round the back of the engine and across towards the LPG vaporiser. About 10-12" before the vaporiser, there is a straight reducer in each pipe, and it drops down to a smaller size which goes to the fittings on the vaporiser. This smaller hose is still too large, and has been crushed a bit where it attaches to the vaporiser. I'm thinking, at a guess, the very stiff hose isnt sealing properly until it warms up and softens a bit.
What i would like to do, is buy two new metal T pieces, which go from whatever size the factory heater hoses are, down to the correct size hose that fits the vapouriser. Then run two new lengths of hose to the vaporiser.
Before i do this, i want to confirm the current odd layout hasnt been done for some reason i've not considered. I'm assuming its just been lashed up by the same moron that installed the rest of the system.
I'd also like to confirm what size the factory hose is? and also if anyone might know where i can find what size pipe my Bigas vapouriser actually needs (short of taking the pipes off and measuring)
Cheers
Kev
An hour on the bench PSU and sure enough CODE IN appeared.
Entered the code, and the powered it off and put it back in the car. CODE IN appeared immediately and now its working again :)
I'll need to have a think and decide wether i want to go down the aftermarket/attenuator route, or just leave it be. I might have a fiddle with my spare head unit and some resistors and see what we can achieve.
Sub makes sense :)
I stuck a meter across the pins, and it was just saying open circuit on all of the channels, so i imagine theres some sort of amplifier in between. If it was direct to a speaker driver, it should register a low resistance.
More digging required i guess. I have a spare Pioneer head unit with bluetooth i could fit. In the mean time, i think i'll whip the stock unit out and put it on the bench PSU for a few hours and see if that gets it unlocked!
maybe the continuous power up is whats required then.
I did two trips of 40-50minutes yesterday which i presumed would be enough, but clearly not!
Maybe i should just rip it out and fit a modern head unit, but having had a quick look behind it, the speaker connector isnt the usual 8pin one, its a wider 10 pin job. Need to find out whats going on there!
Folks, i'm a bit stumped with getting the P38 to accept my radio code.
The radios been showing code in for weeks since i had the battery off. Last week i tried to input the code, but I had misrememberd the code and entered it incorrectly. The radio then ended up stuck with the incorrect code on the screen. Tried everything and it wouldnt clear, so eventually read somewhere that removing fuse 1 and reinserting would clear the code. Did that and it changed to ----, which the internet suggests is wait mode. I faffed about a bit pressing buttons (the internet says press band and man together, which didnt seem to work, but eventually, it popped up CODEIN again. So i punched in what i thaught was the right code, and again, it was incorrect, and the wrong code was stuck on the screen again.
So i drove home got the right code, and yesterday morning i tried to reset it again. Pulled fuse 1, reinserted and now its back showing ----. Tried everything, no joy, just stuck on ----. Did 80odd miles yesterday in it, easily an hour and a half or more, with it sat showing ---- the whole time. Got in this morning, still showing ---- and still wont change back to CodeIn.
Any ideas? Driving it an hour to the mother in laws tomorrow and dont really fancy zero music the whole way!
Well after my radiator nonsense i finally managed to get it into a state where i was happy to really floor it and had a play this evening.
Full throttle in 2nd gear, it revved up to about 5k before getting the usual jolt. It was fairly mild this time and it continued pulling just fine after the jolt so i kept my foot in. Glanced over at the LPG guage and sure enough, red light (petrol) was on solid, and the gas light was flashing. It shifted into 3rd just fine and continued in the same manner. When i lifted off another slight jolt and the gas light went solid again.
So that would suggest as you've assumed that the gas injectors are running out of duty cycle.
As discussed, the gas nozzles i drilled out to 2.5mm, the original bigas units were 3mm i believe (3.0 stamped into the rail) I dont know wether these are the 2.5 or 3mm internal versions, how can i find out which they are to see if theres any scope to go larger before upping the reducer pressure?
Not got the computer on it yet to check the map settings.
I've used Jurid (on a BMW) and found them pretty good. I've got EBC yellowstuff on my A4 and dont rate them at all.
Ferodo Premier are decent too.
i've also at one point used the cheapest Apex pads in my A4 and they were also perfectly fine. But the cheap stuff can be hit or miss.
what had actually failed on the old one?
This is what i found when i removed my brand new leaking nissens rad:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/grvnywnm024kzm8/2017-12-13%2015.53.54.jpg?dl=0
