Thanks, mate. I might try to get it back and do it myself. I think garages are at their best with a known issue and a defined task.
My wife's 01 Vogue keeps cutting out after running for about 30 minutes.
The battery is only a few months old and the vehicle has been used regularly with a bit of a gap over Christmas.
Garage's Autologic is spitting out 4 codes:
108 Continuous Power Supply Interruption
148 Interface Immobiliser
107 ECU Power Supply
A5H4/165 Generic take to Dealer
Crank Position Sensor shows okay.
Googling turns up bad ground and faulty fuse box as possible causes of 108 - and possibly the others? I've asked them to check.
We're really buggered here. Garage does plenty of RRs/LRs but they've not seen this set of symptoms and it's intermittent, albeit reproducable.
Okay. All sorted.
Passenger side carpet slightly damp.
WD40ed the EAS ECU connector.
Found a tiny seeping leak in the pipe with the lilac coloured label. Missed it the first time because my dilute washing up liquid needed pepping up with a fresh dose.
Saw back two spring valves were OPEN.
Watched live values creeping up.
15 minutes door ajar.
Pressure valve CLOSE
Job done.
Inlet valve is shut...
Had an EAS FAILURE on the way home.
Turned out to be COMPRESSOR FAILURE.
On reaching home I turned off the ignition and heard a hissing as the car visibly sagged.
The compressor dues actually run, but the system won't repressurise with a short open.
I'll leak check with washing up liquid in daylight but that hiss and sag has me thinking a valve is stuck open...
Need the car tomorrow night (Monday).
Accelerated diagnostic steps would be much appreciated.
Just tried ordering, wouldn't arrived for a month. Cancelled.
Out of curiosity, do our starter motors exceed 200A? Is there any useful information up that high?
Gilbertd wrote:
I've got one of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/UT210E-Current-Meters-Capacitance-Tester/dp/B00O1Q2HOQ?th=1 which isn't autoranging but that makes it better for measuring a very low current drain like you are looking for. You can't blow it up, or at least I haven't been able to yet, and if you've got it set on the 2A scale and more than that is being drawn, it just shows it as an error. To closer meet your spec you'd be better looking at this one https://www.amazon.co.uk/UNI-T-UT210D-Digital-Current-Capacitance/dp/B0753FY711/ref=sr_1_2? but you may find it isn't as good at very low levels. I've also got a 1000A autoranging clamp meter but that doesn't register anything at all until there's at least 10A flowing.
I know what you mean, Fluke do a beautiful graphical meter that is virtually a handheld oscilloscope but the price of one of those is eye watering!
Thank you!
The second one should be perfect:
"Testing AC/DC Current Range is 20A/200A,Resolution Ratio Up to 10mA When Measuremnet Range in 20A"
Have a parasitic drain on a cc 2001 Vogue. I've blown at least two meters in the past so serial current measurement is clearly not my forte.
The AA guy showed me his "amp clamp" and briefly outlined how useful it is... I want one.
I'd like Auto-Ranging from milliamps up to starter motor levels (400-600?)
Hertz and Duty Cycle seem like they might be useful.
I don't really like unbranded or obscure items, because they have no reputational skin in the game.
Fluke are way too expensive.
Draper don't have the clamp style on their website, but are out there.
Any recommendations?
Playing with it just now we have an additional symptom, we can't store reverse dip.
Non reverse memory stores, so both buttons are working. As soon as we engage R, it won't activate MIRROR DIP STORE.
On Sooz '02 Vogue both door mirrors dip perfectly when you select reverse. Coming out of reverse only the right hand (driver's) door returns to the normal position.
However, the passenger door mirror can be set back where it should be using the controls in the centre console. But it's a ball/ovary ache.
Ideas, please.
Cool. Cheers. Getting in there to drill for cable ties or rivnuts is tricky, I'll try to get some welding clamps in there temporarily.
One of my rear bumper mounts has rusted through so it's dangling on one side just rear of the wheel arch...
1 Will it fail my MoT test on the 4th Jan?
2 Fix or replace? I know a welder/fabricator...
DavidAll wrote:
In plumbing terms we would just call it an insert.
I feel a bit of a knob for not googling first. I just like being on here! It also means anyone with a similar question can see the answer...
In air lines they call it a Ferrule. You order with ID and OD. In our case OD 6mm, ID 4mm.
I'll flag it up if it's the wrong size when it arrives!
I'm finally back on my Viair upgrade.
There's no room for it on the small ledge inboard of the EAS housing. I'm going to mount it remotely on the firewall and run a 6mm tube into the housing. Extending the wiring is trivial.
Can anyone tell me the correct name for the little brass ring INSIDE the little blue pipe we connect to the compressor? I know it's not an olive - wrong shape, it has a shoulder. More like a top hat. Is it a ferrule?
Gilbertd wrote:
Chasman wrote:
Viewed in system terms it's actually very simple.
The dampers merely damp the oscillations so are going to work the same irrespective of ride height, although I agree load will have an affect. It amuses me when people say the shocks are completely worn out as you can compress them and they stay compressed. They will, they aren't pressurised gas shocks so won't extend on their own, the test is how quickly you can compress them. As for spring rates being upside down, how do you come to that conclusion? I've always found it to be the other way round, the higher it is the softer it is. There was one road I used to use regularly where I'd turn off a nice smooth 60 mph stretch, so it would be at Motorway height, onto a pretty grim bit of potholed, bumpy, road. The bumps always felt far worse until I'd poked the inhibit and rocker to raise it up to Standard. For the same reason I always lock it in Motorway when towing (although the handbook says to lock in Standard), as it feels far more stable at that height. It's got something to do with the way the bottom of the rubber bladder wraps over on itself the lower it goes.
On dampers, yes they primarily damp, but the valving is tuned to a frequency which is determined by a number of factors including unsprung weight and spring stiffness. Buddy of mine does a lot of track days and bought a messed up BMW which was severely oversprung. Had to figure all that out. They were gas dampers with a rebound rate.
In our cars on stock dampers the springs do all the rebounding. That means when the springs are deflated and soft, high frequency bumps can cause "jack down" where the damper never rebounds before the next bump, moving down until you reach the bump stops. That's probably what you were feeling. The trailer thing is odd, but could simply be that it matched the height of the trailer axles.
donmacn wrote:
I keep an eye on all EAS threads, especially ones like this, as a way of trying to raise (pun intended!) my general level of knowledge.
On the point about marking the pipes before removal, it occurred to me that you could possibly also measure the intended depth they’re supposed to go in to, and then mark that on the pipes - if you were fitting new or amended ones for example?
Yes. Mark the existing ones (if they are tried and tested) then measure or use as templates.
Viewed in system terms it's actually very simple. Adjustable springs, a set of sensors, a pneumatic distribution system and an ECU with 4 sets of 4 numbers to match. The diagnostics are a bit flaky "Invalid fault code" doesn't help anyone. All the electronics are 20 years old and doesn't last forever - capacitors are usually the first to go.
Mechanically it's compromised. There's no way fixed dampers can be optimised for 4 different road heights. The spring rates will vary with passengers and loads because of the leveling mechanism. The spring rates are all upside down. Soft at highway speeds and rock hard off-road. Fitting the Arnott Gen 3s partially addresses that last issue, but the rest are still in play.
All the said, I still love it, the noise it makes and the things it can do that normal cars can't. And it makes much more sense to own a car I can repair (eventually!) than open a fresh can of worms with no community of owners to help me...
Okay, folks. It's fixed thanks to GD.
In a nutshell, some of the pipes in the block were leaking. Instead of using a weak solution of washing up liquid I bought a commercial spray which, for some reason, didn't do the job. Lots of tiny bubbles, but no big ones.
Problem located we started again. Checked if any pipes had been trimmed and chamfered, the lengths from the moulded ridge all matched. Next we began putting them back, using NEAT washing up liquid as recommended, to lube the tips.
We paid particular attention to the distance to the moulded ridge in the pipes once in. The second or third went in further than the others, so we back tracked. Eventually got them all in and matching.
If we do it again I'll mark a circle on them all with a white Chinagraph or chalk pen before removal.
GD also suggested putting a T from our emergency kit into line 6 (purple band) to the reservoir. This meant we could connect a second compressor to the Schrader valve to speed things up and take load off the built in one.
It also gave us a guage which rose to 120psi in a few minutes, then we turned it off and let the built in one finish the job.
It's an object lesson in not letting the complex parts of a problem take your eye off the basics.
I'm just looking for confirmation.
Saw a thread on dead EAS where someone jacked up the rear axle to access height and the system recovered. The hypothesis is that some cars go so far out of range when deflated the ECU throws in the towel.
Any grain of truth to this?
Gilbertd wrote:
I've never disconnected the battery, just make sure ignition is off and the key is in your pocket. No power is no power no matter how you achieve it. Take the cassette out, tape it so it can't rotate and test for continuity from one end to the other.
Super, that's what I thought.