That's worth a try. My method when they have been rounded off by someone using an open ended spanner, is to cut the pipe off (as it is going to be replaced anyway) and use an Irwin tapered socket, with lots of Plus Gas too. If that fails, take the calliper off, put the remains of the ferrule in the bench vice and unscrew the calliper from the ferrule rather than the other way round.

I was given a valve block that had been rebuilt but still leaked out of the exhaust silencer. Turned out that the diaphragm was fractionally thinner than another (worn) one that I had laying around. Replaced it again with a different one and all was fine.

It's a bit weird, brake pipes are always 4.75mm or 3/16th inch no matter what the car is even though the ferrules can be either Imperial (on older UK or US built cars) or metric M10x1mm (rather than the 1.5mm thread pitch for a standard M10 thread).

The other advantage with the second type is that they will do steel pipes far easier than the first type. I've got one of the first type, in fact I've got 3 for some reason, and when I wanted to replace just one end of a pipe on my son-in-law's Toyota, it really struggled to put a flare on a steel pipe. The pipe was plastic coated along its length except right at the end where it had rusted and ran the full length of the car so just cutting it and putting an inline join in was far easier than trying to feed a pipe along the full length, much like the ones that run over the fuel tank on a P38.

A flare tool that can do a double flare, something like this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Silverline-633545-Pipe-Flaring-9-Piece/dp/B000LFXPQ0/ref=sr_1_26 or https://www.amazon.co.uk/Double-Flaring-BOROCO-Degree-Automotive/dp/B0B56PCDXG/ref=sr_1_47, some standard brake pipe size 4.75mm or 3/16" Kunifer copper/nickel or copper pipe and some M10 fittings. If using Kunifer or copper, there's no need for a bending spring or pipe bender as it is soft enough to bend by hand.

Not quite, that is my white one parked behind Nigel's Alveston Red P38 and not Dina's Rioja Red one. Taking two cars on a 3,100 mile trip around France, Andorra, Spain, back into France and the onto Italy would have been a bit pointless, not to mention bloody expensive in fuel (even with LPG at 0.67 Euros a litre as it was in Italy).

Thanks for the invite and coffee Nigel, a beautiful little place you've got there.

mad-as wrote:

hay Richard upgrade the valve grinding tool , use the cordless drill and save yourself the blisters. works a treat

I used the drill initially with the coarse paste but then went back to traditional methods to finish off with fine.

davew wrote:

Think you misunderstood my 'CV boots quote' comments above Richard, in that the garage in question just went for the 'highest-cost-possible' option - regardless of the actual physical efforts/time involved (or really needed).

What a lot of workshops will do is charge the customer retail price for the parts when they aren't paying retail so on top of the labour charges they make a profit on the parts too. As there's more profit on a complete driveshaft than on a boot kit, that is their preferred option. That applies to many businesses and not just garage services. I install domestic AC systems, get a substantial trade discount on buying the units and that is the cost I pass on to the customer but I have been shown a quote from another company who quoted retail on the units, plus sundries, plus installation and a further charge for the commissioning and certification. I charge cost for the units, plus sundries and installation but as the commissioning is simply the last part of the installation, that is included. It may be that the other company has only one person qualified to do the commissioning so they use labourers to do the installation and the main man just turns up at the end to do his bit but it still seems dangerously close to fraud to me.

The costs for work on classics vary even more of course: Generally 'specialists' want to offer £££ full restorations, 'Car SOS' style (?)
Others it seems will simply 'quote high' because they don't want the work either - as it is just not as lucrative for them as a modern car ....

A 'proper, old school' mechanic will prefer to work on older cars, modern ones being that more complex and requiring expensive diagnostics (the all vehicle Snap On unit is £4k per year) but the old school mechanics are a dying breed, most these days are referred to as Technicians and are nothing more than parts fitters. Sounds like you need to bring your car up to my mates workshop when you need work doing (although I suspect as soon as you mention P38, he'll be on the phone to me asking if I fancy giving him a hand.....).

My neighbour recently retired as workshop manager for a Land Rover dealer. He saw me using the rubber sucker on a stick method of grinding the valves in on a boat engine I was rebuilding and asked if he could borrow it. Took it into work the next day and asked the mechanics if they knew what it was and what it was used for. Not one of them did.

I'd disagree there, you can buy CV joint boots separately but as most places are staffed by parts fitters rather than mechanics, they would rather remove a driveshaft and fit a new one than remove a driveshaft, replace the boot and refit it. I've been in my mates workshop when he has done just that. He's even got a tool with conical 'fingers' to stretch the new boot over the joint. Maybe 15 minutes extra labour cost so adding £15, and a fiver for a boot, to the total bill but saving the cost of the driveshaft. Split boots are a waste of time, effort and money, I'd never use them and I know for a fact my mate wouldn't.

That type of quote is a cop out. Any half decent workshop will have the Autodata, or similar, system. You put in the details of the car and what job you are going to be doing. It then gives you the time it should take a competent mechanic. On every job my mate does, his office assistant (his missus) calls the parts supplier to get the price for parts, add on the labour for the book time their system says it should take and they will quote a customer an exact price. For example, someone I used to work with has recently moved to my area and mentioned that his VW Scirroco was due a cambelt change but didn't know where to go. From his registration number, they checked the parts prices and labour so I was able to go back to him and tell him £488.49. Not about or roughly, but that is the exact price he was charged. Elsewhere he had been told it would be about £550-600, which, as he said, would almost certainly be £650 when the time came.

They aren't supposed to make that much noise (unless you've got some gansta style drum and bass to play through them at high volume), they just add to the overall sound.

You're in the wrong area. A very good friend has his own business where most of his work is routine stuff, servicing, MoT repairs, discs and pads, clutches, timing belts, etc. and his labour rates are £60 an hour. He actually prefers working on older cars as they are so much simpler, no need for diagnostics on many (an example being anything with electric parking brakes needs diagnostics to wind back the calliper pistons). His rates are around the average for my area, the closer you get to the big smoke, the higher the overheads (workshop rents and so on) so they have to recoup the costs somehow.

Assuming that is testing at the plug without it connected to the ECU, you have two short circuited sensors. Disconnect where the sensors connect to the cabling and confirm the short is at the sensor end and not on the wiring between sensor plug and ECU.

I always have had, Dina knows the brake bleeding process as well as I do.....

There is as that will tell you if the fault is with the sensor (or wiring to it) or internal to the ECU.

Chasman wrote:

Hi! I'm glad to see you're still an active member here!

and I'm replying while away on honeymoon.......

Chasman wrote:

Going to check the sensor input plug pins with multimeter now. Should be 1.2k Ohms. I guess I'm looking for half that across a pair?

You aren't looking at half, they are wired to the ECU individually, so if you look at the diagram I posted above, you can test each one from the plug at the ECU end. From there you will also be able to test for continuity from one sensor to any of the others.

I mentioned the Wabco D known fault as Marty has found it in the past. It reports a fault as one sensor short to another but it isn't on the wiring, it is internal to the ECU. I know he has successfully repaired them in the past (it was on his website but he is currently building a new one as he updated the old one and screwed it up). but as he has now relocated back to New Zealand, sending it to him may take a while.

Diagram

Pinouts

If I remember correctly, resistance of the sensors is around 1.2kOhms although the one sensor short to another fault is a known one with the Wabco D ECU and it may just be pure coincidence that it happened after you had been working on the hubs.

I'm retired..... Dina and I have lived together for over 9 years anyway but it made sense as if we were married then if anything happens to either of us the other gets the pension money. It was her decision that we would have a proper 'do' though.

In between the projects, the red P38, the boat and other things, I install domestic AC units to top up the pensions and give me money to spend on the other projects.

Thanks everyone. We're going away for a couple of weeks on Monday but the laptop will be with me so I can still check in and delete the spam at least once a day......

I'll start with an apology. Two spam posts were on here for almost 24 hours before I saw them and deleted them, but I've been a bit busy.

Some of you will have met Dina, my partner, when we had the grand headlining replacement session at Marty's workshop. Well, she isn't my partner any longer as she finally made an honest man of me yesterday. We are well known in the village, Stilton where the cheese originated, as the couple with the Range Rovers and 3 small hairy dogs (miniature long hair dachshunds). So, the dogs were bought to the venue for photographs and we displayed the his and hers cars outside.

It's almost certainly the first time in my life I've polished 2 cars in one day (in fact, I worked it out, it's only the 4th time mine has been polished in the near 15 years I've owned it).

I just print out the relevant page when I need it and throw it away when I've finished. Common ones are head bolt and inlet manifold tightening torque and order and the brake bleeding process. If I was using a paper manual, there would be some pages that would be totally illegible from oily fingerprints! A bit like years ago when you could get a Haynes manual from the library if you needed one, you could tell what jobs others had been doing as the book would fall open at various pages.