12V on pin 7 should pull in the compressor clutch as it goes to the clutch coil. However, it does go via the trinary switch and when I first got my car I had the same problem you had. That turned out to be a bad connection on the switch, unplugged it and gave it a squirt of contact cleaner and it has worked ever since.

If 102/202 is showing signs of going green, chop it out and solder the wires directly. It's fiddly but well worth doing (same goes for 104/204 on the other side).

My other half is with Direct Line as they came out cheaper than any of the others on the comparison sites. She recently changed her car from a 2004 Mercedes C180k Coupe, 1.8 litre supercharged 4 pot with a whole 143 bhp, to a 2007 Mercedes SLK280, 3.0 litre V6 with 231 bhp. I was expecting her to fall off her chair when she rang Direct Line to change the car but we were both pretty surprised. All they wanted was an extra £30 a year. Makes no sense at all.

and it's got LPG too..... Looks to be at home alongside an L322 and a Roller.

A small amount of play in the steering is unlikely to be the splines, more likely the rubber joint in the lower column (between the two splined bits). Slop in the steering box is easy enough to sort, just give the adjuster a slight tweak. Mark the position with paint first as it will almost certainly move when you slacken off the lock nut (17mm and will probably need a couple of extensions and a universal joint on the socket to get on it, there's no way you'll be able to get enough grunt on it with a ring spanner). Shimmying when braking is usually worn discs.

Is it showing all 4 lights on the height display? That signifies a fault condition. On the Nano, go to Faults, read the faults, clear the faults and then exit out of it. You should get 3 beeps from the dash and the 35 mph message then it will clear and all burst into life.

If the vaporiser is leaking gas into the coolant passage, you'll get pressurisation in the cooling system. To the point where you will probably conclude that you've got a blown head gasket or slipped liner. If it doesn't have pressure in it after it has been run and then allowed to cool down again, then it isn't that. I'd say water pump. Any coolant split on it will evaporate off almost instantly so if there is a puddle laying on it, it's pissing out. My SE did just the same as you describe, river running away from underneath and that was because the Britpart water pump the previous owner had fitted just before I got it had done nearly 2,000 miles and was completely shot. Take the serpentine belt off and try wobbling the fan, I'll put money on slack in the pump bearings

It's a live axle, the rears should be parallel unless the axle is bent, you've got a really badly buckled wheel (in which case if they rotated it 180 degrees you'd then have 0 degrees 15 minutes toe in) or they didn't seat the measuring kit correctly on the rim. However, if they are showing 15 minutes error on the rear, it doesn't give a lot of confidence in the reading they got at the front. Tie rods usually are seized but not so much that Plus Gas and a big pair of Stilsons won't shift.

As Sloth has said, if there is no gas in it, there won't be power to the compressor as the supply goes via a pressure switch. They should evacuate it, start filling with the engine running and the HEVAC set on Lo on both sides. The compressor will kick in as soon as there's enough gas to get the pressure up high enough and then continue filling until the amount they have set has been reached.

I would if it was doing it regularly but it's just the very odd occasion, like once every 6-9 months, so not worth messing around. Saving petrol isn't that high on the priorities, I've still got the same petrol in the tank I put in about 5 months ago. Currently running on LPG at €0.45 a litre, that's under 40p.....

Lambdas should flip flop between 0 and 5V or thereabouts. If Bank 2 is sitting at a steady 1.79 and not moving, it's dead. 1.79V is on the low side of centre point so will be telling the ECU it is a touch on the lean side, hence the positive short term trim on that bank.

Water pump or leaking rad if it's all over the front.

There's this place http://www.rrlondon.co.uk/ I got the Ascot from them as they were selling it on behalf of the owner. It wasn't them that had MoT'd and failed it on numerous non-existent faults and they seemed a decent sort of place (for London anyway).

Mine is encouraging me to walk to the village shop to get my fags. If I start it from stone cold, run the 400 yards or so to the shop (on gas or petrol, makes no difference) and then turn it off, it's reluctant to start unless I switch it to start on gas and give it a big bootfull of throttle which would suggest it has a bit more fuel there than it needs. If it has warmed up a bit more, it starts on the first turn as it always does any other time.

The other time I've had starting problems is if the evap valve decides to open and flood the inlet manifold with petrol vapour. Then it will start but run really roughly, if I keep it running for 30 seconds or so it clears or I can switch it off, restart and then it is fine

If the MAF is giving a high reading, then it will dump more fuel in to keep the mixture correct. But I wouldn't have expected that to affect starting.

Morat wrote:

Gordon, have you scanned the Motronic for faults yet

Difficult as it's a GEMS....... Although checking for any fault codes is always a good place to start.

I had mine done at a local branch of Formula 1 (but not sure if they are National). They charge £39.99 if they have to adjust anything, or £15 if they just check and find no adjustment is needed.

Blimey, mine only got rid of the mud from the inside of the mudflaps from Marty's track after the radius arm weekend yesterday. That was only due to torrential rain through Belgium, Holland and half of Germany......

That test checks everything, even if the compressor isn't turning it will still allow the Nitrogen to pass through it. What they should do is pressurise it, shut off the valve and then leave it for a while to see if the pressure drops. Simply listening for a leak will only show up a big leak but not a small one. It's quite possible that you can have a leak where it will work for maybe a couple of months but will be losing the refrigerant very slowly, listening definitely won't find that. Not sure why they use Nitrogen as the first step in the regas process is to vacuum the system to get everything out of it so you could just as easily use air as it's going to be sucked out anyway. Maybe something to do with air having water in it?

That looks like someone has turned the UK CD into a bunch of pdf files, exactly the same structure and content as the CD.

Is that the single file one that popped up on RR.net? So it's just one huge pdf but is created from the US version that covers all models.