I don't appear to have any rubber bits on the two tabs - just looks to be black painted metal? Sigh
I think I know of where you mean - didnt realise that was the reason for them so I'll take a closer look later and see if the rubbers are in place.
Cheers!
Well - passed the MOT, with the best advisory ever: 'Noisy exhaust'
That, and three compliments about it between reception and getting back in the office, certainly improved my mood :)
Windscreen should be getting looked at next week.
I can only think as Simon says - he was hoping I wouldn't notice until winter comes around. At which point, its probably too late to do anything about it.
MOT at 11 today... at least it doesn't have a crack in it. Friday 13th..
As a slight silver lining, I found out why my wiper linkage was making a racket.... a bit of mesh I'd fitted to the scuttle grilles had fallen off not long after I fitted it, and had become jammed under the linkage. Something the fitter would have found... had he taken the panels off like he was supposed to.
Today I had my windscreen replaced, by the company my insurer provides - Nationwide Motorglass.
I left the car in a nice open space with plenty of room around it, and let the guy get on with it. He let me know how long it would be etc, all fine. I checked with him that they'd supplied a heated windscreen, and not made a mistake with the wrong glass etc. All fine.
Hour or so goes by, and its all done. No problems mentioned, told to leave time before driving, longer before washing etc. Anyway - I get home, pop the bonnet to check no dislodged trims. Notice a screw missing, but no biggy.
My old heated windscreen had about 3 lines total that worked - and was open circuit one side, so it basically didn't work. I tested the resistance from the relay sockets to ground to check it was all connected okay (not exactly the weather to be testing it, and who knows if it should be left for the adhesive to cure fully before using it). One side open circuit, the other, 1.4Mohms. errrrrrrr... that isn't right.
Figured fine - it hasn't been plugged in properly. So I pop the strip at the bottom of the windscreen off carefully... and the air turns blue.
For those that haven't seen this area before... at the bottom of the glass in the middle of the screen should be two black wires - the grounds for the two halves of the screen. Both, as you can see, have been cut clean off. The black wire visible is the remains of one ground wire to the old glass.
This is the remains of the passenger side positive cable, again, from the old glass. This was presumably the side giving me 1.4mohm, as it was flapping around touching the body/painted surfaces. Brilliant - so a cable that would properly eventually wear through the paint and short out.
What he has done is pull the old glass out of the body, ripping off the cables in the process. He has then cut off all of the wires on the new glass, and bonded it in. What the fuck.
I can only assume he has ripped the old glass out before realising some of the screws holding the scuttle panel in were rusty, but frankly you could still get the positives in place and connected even so. The grounds a bit tricker maybe. But he should have at that point contacted me, to ask what to do. I would have happily removed the screws myself as I have now done to inspect the damage. The positive loom on the drivers side has had the connector bracket bent, and the rubber cable bung pulled out of the body. Thankfully the plug itself wasn't broken.
I have been in contact with the company, who are sending someone out on Tuesday to 'inspect' it to confirm what I'm saying. If he/they even try and deny he has cut the wires off the new screen, they won't get far:
On Tuesday I'll be leaving the car in our visitor parking, which will cover it entirely in HD CCTV.
I am incensed by this... what was he hoping? That it would get to winter and I just wouldn't notice? It would still come back to his company. How many others does this happen to? Is it just him, is it standard practice when its 'too hard' to do a proper job?
Fucks sake. I hate being watched while I work, so I left him to it - he's a professional, supposedly. Now though... I'll be sat there watching whoever does it next, as well as having it recorded in full view. Sometimes its just easier to be paranoid, can't trust anyone to do a proper bloody job.
On the iPad once you've pressed the copy button on Imgur and its highlighted, you should be able to long-press the highlighted text and copy etc should appear :) Repeat and paste should appear where necessary.
I wonder if that was what the guy doing mine thought last year... as I don't think it was tested at all! I wondered down the road while they had it but it isn't exactly quiet, and I never heard it running for any length of time. No printout either.
Mine is due tomorrow, on which someone has just pointed out is Friday the 13th. So it will probably fail spectacularly.
All academic of course, if the bloody windscreen fitter doesn't turn up today to replace the cracking view I currently have across the driver's side...
If you replace any fuel line, get some decent Codan R9 stuff or something, not the generic crap available on eBay/Halfords etc...
Check my thread on here about our red one nearly catching fire because of dodgy fuel hose used at the back of the engine. Or Google it - plenty of examples of it failing. Even the generic R9 stuff is known to be dodgy.
Gilbertd wrote:
Martyuk wrote:
EDIT Or am I interpreting the flowchart wrong? Should it go from the BET section in chart 1, and then onto chart 2 (as it's starred with the note)?
Yes you are and so are they. You start at the beginning with Chart 1, then continue with Chart 2. Chart 1 ends with doing the BET test and if the vehicle is later than 1992 you then go onto Chart 2. First entry on Chart 2 is BET passed, test complete, you only continue if it failed the BET.
Was talking with Marty the other day - this should explain the lack of LPG testing at all on chart 2 etc. And should put them right to test it as such.
I've pressure washed mine a few times - just bagged fuse box and alternator, and avoided the coils, EAS box etc.
Also sprayed over with diluted Screwfix degreaser.before rinsing off.
I think I googled the problem with this model - I'm sure I've seen one post where the owner capped off or somehow otherwise blocked the pipes at the engine end to effectively eliminate the rear a/c evaporator, to get the system at least leak free.
Might be a way to go to at least get some a/c working in it? Would need less refrigerant in it come fill up time.
Sounds like an utterly crap design all round to me. Re. the mig/alu thing.. I have a spool gun that goes on my Cebora mig, which I've attempted to use a few times just to get the hang of it. It is a whore!
That's not a bad idea.
Typically - got home, left it a few hours. Nothing.
You can bet it will piss all over the car park again tomorrow morning! What with the oil drops (rocker covers... again), and now coolant splotches, its not as if anyone would have a hard time finding where I park.
5 litres of ready made water glass on the way. Hoping it turns up on Friday so I can drain/fill with water and water glass / run to temp for a while / drain / put coolant back in on the weekend.
Spoke too soon. Spat out a load at work again. Not sure if its coming out of the expansion pipe though or if the tank has a crack in it.. its wet underneath but the tube isn't really. Will leave it to heat soak when I get home and see if there is any evidence now that I've moved the tube around a bit.
Nice :)
I've made up an OBD port 12v supply cable - I used it when I replaced all my main positive cables and ground cables, primarily for the same reason as Gilbert - to prevent having to set all the head unit EQ settings again! Plugged the car into a power supply and then disconnected the positive cable from the fusebox, then the battery. I imagine if I locked the car or opened the tailgate plugged in this way, the 5 amp OBD/diagnostic fuse would likely blow, so I just avoided doing so!
I have a spare starter that the solenoid is sticky on. I should probably strip that down and have a look at it at some point.
Well its strange... I think I've been having this pressure problem for a long time now. During the winter, without fail every time after the engine cools down on a cold day, I'd get a leak from somewhere. Never while hot and up to pressure - only as things cool, and I guess contract while pressure still is still trapped in the cooling system. Now its warmer, that behaviour has gone - well until yesterday.
I haven't tried the water glass yet, my sodium silicate seems to have broken down. Will order some more and be trying it soon. Interestingly after driving home, this morning it hasn't spat any more out.
The engine and Volvo cooling fan have been coping well in this heat, even with the a/c working hard. The knocking and missing at startup haven't been as apparent, though that noise has been replaced with what seems like a bearing somewhere on the ancillary belt getting a bit lary at times.
Today however I've found a little puddle on the ground that appears to have stemmed from the coolant relief pipe on the tank, and few other hoses are leaking. Coolant level has obviously suddenly dropped as a result. The pressure seems far too high.
The dryer has dessicant material in it like the EAS dryer, which can only absorb so much. If its open to the atmosphere, it can then obviously absorb moisture much quicker.
I don't think the hoses are designed to be permeable, they just are by nature. A fixed installation doesn't, or shouldn't, lose any gas over time - though most still have a dryer to absorb traces of moisture that haven't been fully boiled off during the vacuum down process, and some incorporate a filter of some kind.
I'd imagine the Merc's could be starting to use an electric compressor, if its actually still cooling without the engine running.
The dryer removes moisture that can get in through the permeable flexible hoses - and prevents corrosion on the inner surfaces etc. If the system has been open to atmosphere for any length of time, it should be replaced. On a P38 they also get rusty as hell... and given they're on the high pressure side, I'm surprised they don't go pop more often.
I have a feeling they might have actually been CNG. But still - they just sort of disappeared.
Thinking about it, we used to have buses that ran on LPG in Southampton, but they seemed to disappear not long after introduction.
Not entirely sure why... and now we have the supposedly worst-thing-on-the-road diesels, with older models having DEF and DPF kit retrofitted etc currently. I'd love to know why LPG stopped being a viable option.