I remember those words from Sloth when we were trying to get the old Poly bushes out of my radius arms back at the last summer camp. At some point in the past, my car had been fitted with Orange poly bushes which had survived pretty well I must admit. They put up a real fight trying to get them out of the radius arms, we couldn't press them out, cut them out or drill through them hence Sloth asking if there was a blowlamp in the workshop so we could burn them out. As it happened there wasn't so we had to continue with brute force and ignorance. When they were eventually out, we found that moisture had got between the bush and radius arm so the hole in the arm that we intended pressing a new, OE rubber, bush into, was covered in rust scale. I spent ages with a hammer and punch knocking the scale out to clean up the hole for the new bushes.
Although it hadn't felt bad before it felt much better with the correct bushes in, so a good job done. Just recently I noticed that the rear panhard rod also had orange poly bushes in it and they weren't looking too good. I'd also noticed the odd random clunk from the back end at times too so decided to do those.
The end that attaches to the chassis was badly worn with a good 5mm of side to side slop in the centre steel bush. That fell out and the poly bit eventually came out after lots of prising with a big screwdriver. Inside was, again, well rusted so needed a lot of work to clean it up enough for it to be possible to push the new rubber bush in. However, the axle end hadn't really worn at all. Tried pressing the steel centre out and it didn't want to know. The poly is so flexible that it just springs back to how it was when pressure is taken off. Tried cutting the outer lip off so the whole thing could be pushed out. Same problem and it was at this point I remembered Sloth's words and picked up a blowlamp. He was right, it can't fight back when it's a liquid but even that wasn't simple. Heat the poly up and it goes black, bubbles a bit but doesn't quite reach the liquid stage and had to be dug out a bit at a time with a screwdriver. Once out, I had to spend even longer cleaning up the hole as it now had melted poly in it as well as rust scale. Pressed the new bushed in and fitted it back to the car.
What surprised me was how much difference two seemingly insignificant bushes make. With the sort of mileages I do I want my car to feel 'tight', no slop or play in anything and it had, but now it feels even better. So yet another reason why poly bushes are a bad idea.
Pierre3 wrote:
But I could still be driving my old Ford Anglia 105E into which I fitted an early Lotus 1600cc twin cam engine.
You can relive your youth, if you have the money......
https://www.carandclassic.co.uk/auctions/1966-ford-anglia-1200-super-pg22vg
I had a 375 too. But wouldn't want to go back to one.
Depending on which one it will be for 94-97, 98 or 99 onwards, all different and not interchangeable.
Symes wrote:
Talking about tyres I'm glad that now tyres 10year old (manufacturing date) are illegal 🤗 why anyone would use/trust tyres that old amazes me
But people still complain when 20 year old air springs start to leak and they are made of exactly the same stuff.......
I don't rotate them although I did swap front to rear a while ago after the fronts were starting to wear more on the inside edge so put them on the back and replaced the worn track rod end that had caused it. Spare is an 8 year old Maxxis on a steel wheel that has done about 40 miles from new, when a Michelin I had on previously decided to disintegrate, as I use it the same as I use petrol, something for emergency use only. My driving style is 75-85 mph cruising and don't slow down for roundabouts (even with a V8 up front, once you get up to speed you don't want to slow down as it takes too long to get 2+ tonnes back up to cruising speed again). Most of my long distance driving is done with a 3 tonne trailer on the back too.
I must admit I expected the Vredesteins to wear quite quickly as they are a soft compound tyre so they meet the 3 peaks requirements. Grip in the wet is superb and they are pretty good on snow too. I had to drive up to Estonia to find some to try them out when I'd first fitted them though. In the snow a couple of weeks ago I expected them to be a bit poor as they are now well worn but they still stuck well. I'll be getting another set shortly. If travel restrictions are lifted before April I'll need to have a minimum of 4mm of tread to drive in some European countries.
No, diesel is different to V8 but still different ones for different years.
Probably not entirely down to previous bodgery but the original design fusebox was weak and was redesigned after a couple of years. Original part number was AMR3375 which was superseded by AMR6405 which was backward compatible. There were quite a number of differences for the 97 MY, most of which are minor but seem to be to correct things that had been found to be weak.
I fitted a set of Vredestein Quadrac to my car in December 2017 before driving to Latvia for New Year, mileage at that time was 344,940. New they had 8mm of tread. Now, 3 years and 67,625 miles later, they have between 2.5 and 3mm of tread left. Not bad for a 3 peaks marked all season tyre.
Our works vehicles had auxiliary batteries in an airtight box with a tube run through a hole in the floor to vent any gases out. Something like this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/302537828590
Do it how plod did it on mine, put the battery on the RHS of the boot. All you've got there is the satnav that is so many years out of date as to be about useless anyway.
But don't hold your breath. DVLA used to deal with registering an import in around 10 days. Still waiting for a V5 for one that I sent the papers in 2 months ago. The last one I did took 3.5 months. Even a re-import (UK car that had been exported and then bought back) took 3 weeks instead of the usual 4 days.
We used a transmission jack to lift it and long M10 coach bolts that could be threaded into a couple of the mounting holes and used to align it so we could slide the case into place until the dowels met. Although I've had a TC off before laying on the ground, with the car on a two post lift, the transmission jack and two of us under there, it still wasn't a fun job.
I fitted a set from X8R recently and had no problems.
Ah, wrong side of Norfolk then. For work I had a split patch. We went by postcodes and I had E, EC, PE and NR, so one day I'd be driving down the M11 to get into London which used to take me about an hour and a half but another day I'd be thrashing across the fens into Norfolk which at times would take me twice that!
Worst ones, after many years of finding them, are oil tank level sensors. When the battery starts to go down instead of transmitting every 15 minutes they transmit constantly. Never measured one as the antenna is integral but I reckon they run a lot more than the 10mW they should.
Norfolk is pretty big, which bit? I'm just outside Peterborough.
If the blue wire is unplugged from the receiver, then it has no aerial on it so it will only respond to the fob, and any other 433 MHz transmission, if it is very close. Just because the BeCM is sleeping what you don't know is if there is anything else waking it up, so it could sleep after the 2 minutes but then be woken again by something. If you've got something like a remote weather station sensor next to where you park the car, that will transmit every 5 minutes or so and will wake it up. Marty's RF Filter allows you to leave the aerial connected so the fob will work over a decent range but it checks for a valid P38 code before waking the BeCM so it doesn't respond to any other 433 MHz transmissions. Do you have multiple short range devices of any sort installed at your house or do you have a radio transmitter site anywhere in the near vicinity?
It may be nothing to do with the receiver. Easy way to check is to unplug it completely. It's got the single blue wire on it and a three way plug. Unplug the 3 way, the fob won't work (obviously) but that will discount the receiver waking the BeCM so you will then need to start looking at the actual current being drawn and start checking what circuit is drawing the current.
Where in the country are you? I used to trace problems like this for a living before I retired and still have the equipment needed.
www.p38webshop.co.uk
Although Marty is away, Nick (Sloth) will be producing another batch of filters although the last I heard they were waiting for another shipment of printed circuit boards.
That's the biggest problem with English weather, you can never say what it is going to do. Where I am it's been a couple of degrees C below freezing since last weekend. Forecast says it will be +2 tomorrow and up to +12 on Monday with double figures all next week. What happens after that is anyone's guess, it isn't unknown to get snow in April! Just when you think winter is over, it comes back to bite you.
Ah, so it's obviously a difference in the splines on the gearbox output shaft rather than being a difference between the gearsets. Knowing I was going to be changing bearings in mine while it was apart, I treated myself to one of these https://www.machinemart.co.uk/p/clarke-cht686-10-254mm-circlip-pliers-set/. Not brilliant but did the job.