Rewire it back to standard then use your relays on both the CDL and keyswitch wires to simulate the key being turned and the CDL switch being operated. It needs to supply a signal to the outstation from the latch, a momentary connection between the Blue/Red and Black wires will make it think the key has been turned in the lock and at the same time you need to put a continuous connection between Green/Red and Black to hold it unlocked and open circuit to hold it locked.

Looks like you've got a bumpy ride home then......

It's gone into hard fault so you need diagnostics to clear it. Do you have a cable and the free software or any other dedicated diagnostics?

When driving with the tailgate open I get pissed off with the constant beeping and the dash telling me the tailgate is open, so I always flick the latch closed with a screwdriver so it thinks it's closed. You only need to flick the latch on the lower tailgate that the upper would latch into.

You like living dangerously don't you? It could be done but how are you doing it at the moment? Are you using an extra actuator to physically move the sill button or are you applying a pulse to electrically simulate the sill button being pushed down?

Not actually done anything to it at all but went out shopping yesterday in preparation for the impending England lockdown. I've got a new petrol pump to fit with a gauge sender that isn't worn out at one point on the track, so bought some hose clips to fit the hose I've already got (as I'm expecting the pipes above the tank to be rusted and may need to replace them) and I've got a new chain, bearings and seals to put in the transfer case so bought a set of bearing pullers and bottles of ATF. Also got a pair of engine mounts to change and as the RH one may involve removing the inner wheelarch liner to get to the top nuts, asked in my local factors if they had anything similar to the plastic fixings to put it back (as at least 2 are currently missing and the others aren't in brilliant condition) and they actually have the real things on the shelf. 50p each, which is twice what Island want for them, but off the shelf rather than having to add postage and wait for them to arrive. Just got to wait for a couple of days with no rain now to spend my time laying under the car.

You must have a short somewhere as it is fed with an ignition switched supply. Try pulling the relay (relay 11) and see if that stops it.

That's why I tend to use the front fogs as well on country roads or when it's really dark.

JLImmelman wrote:

My concern is that the quality of the bolts supplied isn't consistent, so applying the same torque to the bolts might make a weaker bolt stretch more than the others and possibly go into the plastic deformation stretch range instead of remaining in the elastic range as it should. This would cause the gasket to not be clamped sufficiently in the area around the bolt causing symptoms consistent with mine (I hope!).

Should I be looking at checking and setting the tappet pre-load (http://www.v8engines.com/engine-4.htm#preload) while I wait for the head studs to arrive? Am I correct in saying I'd need to remove and bleed down the lifters before doing this?
Would a 10thou skim from standard be enough to push the tapped pre-load out of spec, or is this something worth doing anyway?

That is my concern with stretch bolts. The ones that were originally fitted 20 odd years ago would have been made to a specific specification but you've no way of knowing if the ones available these days are to the exact same spec. While the stud kit is not cheap, using them, along with top hat liners will give you a much stronger engine.

10 thou shouldn't take the preload out of limits but it's worth checking anyway. There's a much easier way of checking it here http://www.v8developments.co.uk/technical/valve_train/index.shtml.

Yes, a full cassette that is known to be working is much easier. Also means you have to drop the headlining to fit it so you can re-trim it to deal with the drooping cloth while it is out.

Yes, the centre of the motor has a slot in it and when the car was new it was supplied with a Tee bar to wind it back and forth but a large flat screwdriver works just as well. The usual problem is that the system goes stiff and one of the many small cast levers breaks. You can buy a set of replacements from a seller on eBay but they are 3D printed plastic, require an awful lot of fettling to get them to fit together and move smoothly and aren't as strong as the originals. Not heard of anyone that has managed to get them to work for more than a couple of times before they break.

If the sunroof is there but doesn't work, after the battery has been off you'll get a sunroof not set message on the dash and, as it doesn't work, you can't reset it. If you aren't getting that message, then it is quite possible the BeCM has been told the sunroof isn't fitted to stop the message. In that case it isn't going to work even if it is in perfect working condition.

Yeah, bit of a trek for you......

Give Dave at East Coast 4x4 a call on 07527 953807. I spent about 3 days trying to get one of the eBay kits to run smoothly and after I had it broke the second time I opened it so I got a complete working cassette from him for the Ascot. I think it was £80 but I had to go and collect it from near Beccles in Suffolk so may not be that convenient.

C'mon, I never talked you into it, just suggested you'd find a much better class of person on here and most of us are based in the UK too. I had a TD5 Disco as a company car for a while and, while it wasn't great, it was a lot better than the 200TDi that it replaced.....

Copart is where the insurance write offs go, so lots of damaged but repairable cars on there and some, such as stolen and recovered where the insurance company have already paid out to the owner, that have little or no damage at all. Others are main dealer trade ins and cars submitted by private sellers. Prices have gone up in the last few years as the damaged ones are bought by the transporter load and taken to Poland and Lithuania to be either stripped and sold off as spares or repaired and bought back. Anything with a VW or Peugeot/Citroen diesel engine in it gets snapped up for more than you would think it is worth. I sold an old Citroen C5 diesel for a mate and it was bought by a Lithuanian who told me that he could sell the alternator and starter for 100 Euros each, 500 Euros for the engine, another 250 for the gearbox and so on. Considering he bought the whole car in a state where he could drive it to Lithuania for £500, he was going to make a fortune on it.

and as cylinder 2 is the front right, that would allow pressure into the water passage so it looks like your diagnosis is correct.

Elring are fine and I've used ARP studs in the past rather than the stretch bolts. I was advised by V8 Developments to torque them to 80-85 Nm, which works out at just under 65 ft/lbs which I'm more used to. Going on other alloy engines this seemed about right so I do them in three stages, to 35 ft/lbs (45 Nm), then 50 ft/lbs (68 Nm), then finally to 65 ft/lbs (88 Nm).

You may find that it wasn't the bolt stretching but the thread starting to pull out of the block. If the thread has pulled out of the block, or at least it has been weakened, you may not be able to torque it properly and the block will need to be helicoiled. On one engine that had been seriously overheated, I had to do all three of the upper middle ones (the long ones). I used a couple of the ARP studs as a standoff to hold an old head gasket 3 or 4 inches above the block face, that gave me a guide to drill and tap the block so it was perpendicular to the face. Then screwed 2.5x diameter helicoils in. I had to buy a pack of 10 helicoils so still have a few spare if you can't get hold of them

The best one I've seen was a customised Harley Davidson we imported. It had been customised to the point where it had no front brake and, as we all should know, it is the front brakes that do the stopping. At anything over walking pace, if you applied the brakes, all that happened was weight transfer shifted the mass to the, unbraked, front wheel while allowing the rear wheel to lock up so you carried on at exactly the same speed as you had been travelling at. It was fully road registered and legal to use in the US but had to be re-engineered to incorporate a front disc brake to get it road legal here. Having imported a few as container fillers and ridden them, I don't like Harleys anyway, but that thing was a deathtrap.

I'm not knocking it but I've imported 30-40 vehicles from the US and found things like track rod ends that have so much slack the car could barely be kept in a straight line (and one that was so bad the track rod actually fell off!). There's been threads on the other side where people have said that they've lost all their brake fluid because one of the short steel pipes at the back has rusted through. These are things that the MoT test would pick up on before they became dangerous. That's what it is, it's a safety test. The object of it is to make sure the vehicle isn't a danger to the driver or anyone else. Originally it was almost solely brakes, lights and steering but other things have been added over the years so seatbelts (driver safety in event of an accident) and body/chassis structure were added (Will it fall apart on you? Will the jagged edges of rusted bodywork rip a pedestrian apart when you hit them?) and exhaust (will it gas you while you are driving along).

I agree that there are some testers that seem to use it as some sort of power trip or will try to make the rules up as they go along if they don't like the look of you, but mainly it's a pretty good indicator of the state of a car and how well it has been looked after. You can also check the MoT history online for a car so you can see what it has needed in the past. If a car goes in and has a number of advisories (things that it will still pass the test but will need attention soon) and you see the same advisories the following year, you know the owner doesn't really care about it.

Ours is much more than that, it is a safety check and includes almost all of the vehicle. The full testers manual is https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mot-inspection-manual-for-private-passenger-and-light-commercial-vehicles which shows how to test and what is a pass, fail or advisory. Although emissions are part of it, they aren't done through OBD but by putting a probe up the exhaust and measuring the emissions. It can be a bit of a pain but it at least means that you are told about rusted brake pipes or fuel lines before they start to leak and anything else that you may not have noticed but could be dangerous.

How did you get round the reversing lights being on when they shouldn't problem?

I don't know, as soon as the live auction started you can't see it online. I didn't bother going as standing around in the rain in Wisbech didn't really appeal.....