As I have now discovered. Unplugged the front left sensor and still only get the one fault on the front left. So it does display correctly on the Wabco C system.

Brute force and ignorance and you should be able to pull the duct out in one piece.

You might need more than a ring spanner, the centre nut is done up to 109 lb/ft, so socket and big breaker bar is the way to do it.. Changing that rear seal isn't actually that difficult. With the drum in place put the handbrake on so it doesn't turn when you undo the nut. Let the handbrake off, remove the drum and the rear flange should just pull out. RAVE shows a gear puller being used but I've never known one need it, they usually just pull out. Lever the old seal out, push the new one in, coat it with ATF then put the flange back.

That isn't part of the gearbox, it's the transfer case output. To get to the gearbox you have to remove the transfer case, a whole new can of worms, especially as it weighs the best part of 70kg.

and when she isn't working , she's taking dogs for a walk or going to the gym......

Taking the actual glovebox lid off is interesting as there's a couple of non-captive square nuts on the hinges at the bottom which fall out and are a real pain to get back in. However, if you undo the 3 screws along the top and one each side that are visible with the glovebox open, the whole lot drops down and just hangs on the release cable. Disconnect that and it drops to the floor but when you put it back there's no need to adjust it, it stays adjusted.

More playing, this time on the newly acquired red one. I'd already mentioned the bodgery I'd found on it with the steering column being welded so it wouldn't move up and down and the fact that the ABS was giving multiple errors relating to the traction control as someone had replaced the Modulator with one from a base model with no traction control, well not any more.

Spent Tuesday giving Marty a hand to clear his workshop and rescuing any parts that might be useful before everything went in a scrap metal skip. Those parts included a steering column and the correct brake modulator so started swapping them yesterday. Figured that if I got everything free and dismantled on the steering column and then removed the brake modulator, that would let me get at the top joint on the intermediate steering shaft a lot easier, so did that. Getting at the bolts that hold the modulator in place isn't easy but they came out, released it from the brake pedal and it started to move. RAVE says to unclip the brake light switch, which I did, but it unfortunately doesn't mention the second one for the cruise control vent valve and the brake pedal came back on a spring and smashed it......

Although the brake modulator was free, getting it out is an interesting exercise as the brake pipes run in front of it, so they had to be bent to one side, the throttle cable runs in front of it so that has to be released and moved away and then it only comes out until it hits the top shock mount. After much swearing at it and wiggling it about, it came out. Left that for a while and swapped over the steering column. As well as two bolts to the bulkhead and a couple more to the pedal box, the column is held in on two long studs and it looked like it would sit on those and allow the intermediate shaft to be slid onto the splines. It isn't. As soon as I tried to align the splines it dropped off the studs so I had to wait until my assistant came back from taking the dogs for a walk, so she could sit in the car and guide it in. While waiting I lifted off the ignition coils as the monkey that had been in there before had managed to run the throttle cable under them and not over the top like it should be. Steering splines slotted in, steering column in place, so bolted it all up. Reassembled the switches and wiring on the column before calling it a day.

So today it was back out there at it. The correct brake modulator actually slotted straight in and I'm still not sure why considering the grief getting the old one out had caused me. Bolted it in place, and started connection the pipes again. As they were the original steel pipes and had been bent I had to try to bend them back to the original shape so they would line up with the holes, not an easy task and one union started going in cross threaded so I had to clean the threads up before it went in as it should. Filled it with brake fluid and now for the moment of truth. Ignition on, Nanocom booted up and read the ABS fault codes. It still had all the previous Traction Control faults showing so cleared those, cycled the ignition off and back on again and the dash beeped and said ABS Fault..... However, read the codes again the only one there now was Left Front sensor open circuit. No big deal on that then once I work out which one is actually faulty knowing that the Nanocom gets them muddled up (or does it? It does on the Wabco D system on a Thor but this is the Wabco C on a GEMS so it might get them right). I'll just unplug the front left sensor and see if it gives the same fault or if it tells me there's now two open circuit sensors.

All that is left now is to wait for the assistant to finish work and go through the brake bleeding process.

I've use the hacksaw blade method in the past and it isn't fun but I've now got an oscillating multitool (one of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/Silverline-Tools-430787-Multi-Tool/dp/B0784BPP92/ref=sr_1_1) which I bought for one specific job and have found numerous other uses for it since having it. Next time I'm doing it I'll try using that.

Yeah, they do that. When you first turn the ignition on, it cycles all the blend motors from one end of the travel to the other to check the feedback. When it fails to see movement from the feedback pot, it just stops. Sods law says it stops at the full cold end of the travel in winter and full hot in summer.

Driver's side temperature blend motor is the lower one of the two on that side and hides behind the heater ducting so that needs to come out (the same way as if you are changing the heater core O rings). I always get into it via the instrument cluster hole once that is out and removing the LH instrument cluster bracket gives more room and stops you cutting your hand on the sharp edges. It is bolted to a couple of studs and you need an 8mm socket to undo those.

DO NOT run the blend motor, or even turn the ignition on with the blend motor not attached to the heater matrix. The HEVAC will do a test and it will move to the end of the travel which is further than it will move when it is attached so it will immediately bring up an error. Then you will need to open up the blend motor to reset the gears so the arrows line up. Push it onto the shaft and rotate it until the screw holes line up and it will push fully home then.

But the main question is, did you get the parking brake drum off?

Doubt it. Is the £40 shown as OEM or Shitpart?

Could be air, bleed it as per the book and see if that cures it. It should at least cure the sinking pedal.

It's got a top and bottom wishbone so the bottom one will be the one that takes most of the weight of the car so it stands to reason that one would wear first. The top one doesn't have anything like as much stress on it so isn't likely to wear anything like as quickly. But, while it is apart, you may as well replace both, at least then it isn't going to fail on the top one next year.

The Bluetooth ones would be a waste of time for most people due to the lack of range. One quotes a range of 33 feet, yeah right, in a straight line with nothing between you and the car (and if you fit it under the bonnet the range would be more like 3 feet). As for the 433 version, that would probably cause the problem you are trying to monitor.

I doubt anyone on here suffers battery drain problems these days now everyone knows what causes it and how to stop it. My Ascot will sit for at least 4 weeks, sometimes longer, and still has enough in the battery to start it.

If you get vibration when you didn't before splitting the propshaft, rotate the doughnut and hope you can get it back where it was before.

If it is out you'll get a vibration through the seat of your pants.

Now you know how to do it, you may as well change the parking brake shoes before bothering to take it out. Then you can check everything.

With one wheel at each end off the ground, you can rotate the propshafts. So as you have it with both rear wheels off the ground and both fronts on the ground, the viscous coupling in the transfer case will allow movement but it is hard work and you need to hang on it and wait. If both front and rear can turn, then the problem is stopping the propshaft rotating when you try to undo the nuts..... All you need to do is lift one front wheel off the ground. In fact, if I am doing them, I put the suspension on High and jack up the left front and rear wheels. Disconnecting the propshaft then is simply a case of undoing the 4 nuts at the drum and dropping it down, should take about 10 minutes.

Then, with the 4 nuts on the back of the brake drum you can remove ALL of the propshaft and not just bits of it. Inside the drum is a flange, a sort of mirror image to the one on the outside. It is arranged so the flats of the bolts are against the centre so they can't turn and the bolts can't fall back because there isn't anywhere for them to move back into. The spigot on the propshaft flange is there to stop the propshaft flailing around under the car if the doughnut breaks. Hopefully you marked where the doughnut was attached or you could have upset the balance by taking it apart somewhere you wouldn't normally take apart.

If there's no need to take the engine blocks, then I'll leave the trailer at home. Quite how something that light weight can cause the whole car to shudder is beyond me, it's fine with some weight in it but when empty it is just a nuisance as it bounces from bump to bump. Everything else will go in the boot or on the back seat. I'll bring my chainsaw to make the big bits of wood fit.....

That was a fun way of spending a weekend, not. I mentioned I'd found the source of a coolant leak on the Ascot so decided to deal with it. Unfortunately it was from the RH bank, front core plug, the one hiding behind the engine mount. So it was inner wheelarch liner out, then attack the exhaust manifold heat shield. The first bolt sheared the head off and all of the others were so badly rusted that even the Irwin tapered socket couldn't get a grip on them. No room for the angle grinder so had to resort to a Dremel. Once it was free, it still didn't want to come past the steering column but eventually got it out with BFAI. Then it was the turn of the exhaust manifold bolts. All were tight and I was expecting a real fight with the two rearmost ones but they were the ones that undid easily. Downpipe to manifold nuts off but the manifold refused to come out of it's resting place so I just showed it up and back out of the way. Then had to drag the engine crane out to lift the RH side of the engine so I could remove the engine mount. Like the exhaust manifold bolts, this involved a 3/8th universal joint and multiple socket extensions to work my way in around the steering column, chassis rail, shock absorber and front air spring. Got that off and from underneath I could see what I was dealing with, a core plug that had rusted enough for a drip of coolant to come from it every second or so. Scraped the rust off and it became a constant stream......

I considered doing a bodge job on it with epoxy putty but as I had spare core plugs decided I'd attempt to do it properly. Access was the main problem as the bit on the chassis where the engine mount sits stopped me from being able to get at it easily with a punch and still leave enough room to swing a hammer. Ended up having to hold the punch in very long nosed pliers so one hand was well out of the way and give me room to get the hammer in there to tap it out Thankfully, it came out easily. Then it was a how do I tap the new one in place? Found a socket of the correct size and ordinarily it would simply be a case of giving it a smear of Loctite and tapping it in perpendicular to the block but the aforementioned chassis was in the way. Wrapped tape around the socket and left a flap of tape free so I had something to get hold of with the pliers and was able to gently tap the new core plug into place. All of this done while laying on my back under the car, but once in, put some coolant in and watched very carefully. No drips, success!

Normally putting it back together is a lot quicker than taking it apart but even that was a fiddle. The exhaust manifold kept snagging on the downpipe so ended up disconnecting the other side to let the whole Y section drop out of the way. Got 7 of the 8 exhaust manifold bolts in and the last one (bottom front, the one you can't get at easily from above or through the wheelarch) didn't want to know so I had to slacken the others off again to allow it to move so I could get that last one in. Finally connected up the downpipes, bled the cooling system and fired it up. No visible leaks and everything back together except for the manifold heatshield, which I'm considering leaving off as there's no fixing points left (and from the number of cars I've seen without them it doesn't seem to do that much) and the wheelarch liner to put back tomorrow.

It won't be 09:00 but I'll get there earlier than last time, hopefully around 10:00.