Blimey, mine uses about half a litre between changes every 10,000 miles . OK, so it's only done 50,000 since the full V8 Dev rebuild and what it uses is mostly down to the tiny leak from the back of the valley gasket which is down to the plonker (me) who didn't use enough RTV on the ends of the rubber seals.

Bit late to the party here as I've been driving to get where I am (a lot closer to Super4 than normal but still a bloody long way off). I've been in exactly the same state as you are now and found that no amount of driving will get the TPS voltage to adapt down to normal. It'll appear to go part way, but all it is doing is adjusting the idle valve setting. The way it works is that the voltage from the TPS is stored in the ECU as closed throttle, when you give it a tiny bit of throttle the voltage rises and that acts like the progression jet in a carb. Idle jet supplies fuel at idle, main jet supplies fuel at open throttle and progression jet supplies it during the transition between the two. So, if the ECU sees the stored voltage, it sets the idle air valve to get the idle correct, you open the throttle a crack and the idle air valve opens to raise the revs before the airflow through the butterfly takes over and allows big gobs of air through.

So, you have two choices. Do an adaptive reset that changes the stored voltage that the ECU is expecting to see or make the voltage match the stored one. The first requires a dedicated bit of test gear which you don't have (and the unit your man has with plug in modules will be a generic tester with the modules giving the specific codes for the vehicle you are plugged into, like the £4k Snap On unit that does little more than a £30 generic tester) the second can be done with a bit of mild bodgery. Enlarge the mounting holes in the TPS so it can be turned, start the engine and let it idle at 1,000 rpm or whatever it has decided it is going to idle at, then turn the TPS clockwise a touch. That will bring the voltage down to what the ECU is expecting to see and the idle will drop to normal. Mine was like that for 3 years until I bought the Nanocom, reset it so it wasn't lopsided and poked the Reset Adaptive Values button......

I did my pre-MoT grovel under it to see if I could see anything that the tester would get offended about but as the top and bottom ball joints were replaced about 20 months ago and the track rod ends a year ago I didn't even look at them. Found I've got a very slight oil weep from the pinion oil seal on the rear diff but other than that I, or the tester, couldn't find anything amiss underneath.

I still wouldn't fit anything else either. Went back for the retest this morning and mentioned it to the tester and he reckons it's the same with everything. Hardly any rubber content, if any at all, and track rod and CV gaiter boots with splits is become a very common failure.

When I went for the MoT last year the rubber boots on both ends of the track rod were perished and falling to bits. Rather than mess around I just got the complete Lemforder track rod kit so track rod with a ball joint on one end, track rod end and adjuster and fitted that. Took the car in for this years MoT yesterday expecting all to be fine and it failed on track rod ball joint boot split. Now my local factors stocks random sized boots for a quid each so I shot straight down there and picked one up. Split the taper and took the split boot off and found the ball joint itself was perfect and still had the original grease in it but the boot was falling to pieces. It doesn't look to be made of rubber either, more like a sort of rubbery plastic (vinyl?). Whatever it was made off, it doesn't last like old fashioned rubber does. It may not perish but it splits instead but I would have expected it to last longer than 12 months (admittedly that's 23,000 miles). So if you've fitted Lemforder expecting to fit and forget, think again.

Is that 3-5 working days, 3-5 public holiday days or 3-5 days without a Y in them?

Congrats, now you've got an apprentice. Having someone with little hands is always useful.

Reminds me of a poster that started appearing around Central London sponsored by some bunch of vegans. It showed a picture of a sheep and a dog and the caption said "Why do we keep one as a pet and kill the other?". Someone had written on one, "because we aren't in Korea....."

You should have said, we did the one in the Ascot on Monday, you could have called round and seen how it's done.

no10chris wrote:

O-rings and switch pack aren't exactly major problems

But the O rings are to some people, it's a huge job that is going to take days to do. My record is down to 26 minutes.......

It'll have Dunlops on it then (or Britpart....).

I fully appreciate the problem, however, in this house, Dina is the one baking in the sun outside doing battle with a Honda powered mower while I've been inside watch the GP from Spa......

First thing would be to check and see if you have Dunlop or Firestone springs. I wasn't even aware that there was anything other than Dunlops to be quite honest.

They need to touch the metal sleeve in the centre of the mounting but not be touching the rubber part. The compressor also needs to be held up far enough that it doesn't touch the bottom of the plastic box.

Or just hit the flat ones with a ball peen hammer......

It's a diesel thing.....

Put the washers on the EAS pump the right way up and the problem will be solved, you'll never hear it running without sticking your ear to it. On each mounting point it should have two dished washers. The bottom ones should be concave side down and the top ones should be concave side up.

This is the one I used, worked perfectly http://www.lsoft.net/unformat.aspx

Heights look right but it definitely sounds like you got your lines crossed. The lines should have coloured sleeves at each end on them. Check to see if yours do. As you look at the valve block from the other side of the car there's the 4 outlets for each spring and the ones toward the front of the car are for the front springs. It should be front right (green sleeve) at the top and front left (no sleeve so black) at the bottom. If they are no longer wrapped in their loom, it's easy to get those two mixed up.

I downloaded some software to recover pictures from the memory card from my camera after my ex unplugged it from the USB port without shutting it down. It recovered all bar about 3 from over 400 pictures. It's installed on my desktop computer but I'll fire it up in teh morning and have a look and see which one it was. It had to be paid for but I think it was only 10 Dollars or something like that. The free undelete programs tend to only show you what they can find but not let you recover them.