I didn't get far with replacing the NRVs. My cunning plan was to find off-the-shelf "push fit" ones that could be machined down to fit the holes in the block, but I haven't really found anything that doesn't fall apart or have too small a hole up the middle to let enough air through.

I looked at using an Arduino to drive six big MOSFETs. The normal controller pack provides about a 100ms pulse of 12V to the coil then PWMs it at 30% duty cycle at around 24kHz, using a bunch of opamps, transistors and passive discretes. I figured that since microcontrollers are as cheap as opamps and actually designed for PWM I mway as well just use that to drive everything.

I got a prototype pretty much working, drew a board, and then never really got a chance to finish it off, same old story. I'll put the files up on github if anyone fancies a shot at it.

Finally after 18 months or so Google Adsense has reached the payment threshold of 60 quid, so that's the domain name paid for the next couple of years.

Not bad.

Depends what they call "greenlaning". Most of the Youtube videos I've seen where people get stuck - like, recovery point stuck - are far more extreme than what most folk would call greenlaning.

Most of the "all the gear but no idea" guys going "greenlaning" are using ridiculous tyres and winches and stuff to go up tracks I'd do at 45mph in a Vauxhall Astramax.

I've driven one on coils, and it was horrible on the road and very nearly as bad as a Defender off road.

When Miah and I did mine, the three nuts and two bolts came out easily. The nuts needed a deep socket, but they're stuffed right up out of the way where they don't get soaked with salty water and they're well covered in underseal.

The tank was easy to drop out once the metal plate came away, and then the pipes just unscrewed from the pump. I needed to cut the old pipes on the pump and buy some new pipe olives but I just reused the pipe nuts. To remove the plastic lock ring I just tapped it round with a screwdriver and a rubber mallet, once I'd cleaned all the mud off the top.

Dead easy.

Merry Christmas all!

Sadly not. I bought it with about 167k showing and a ticky engine, which turned out to be a (very) dropped liner. I bought an engine off eBay (cn4x4sss) for 500 quid and David Hallworth and I fitted it. It's done not too bad, considering! Not sure what the real mileage for it was but Charles said it was out of a vehicle that had done 80k. It was certainly pretty clean inside, and "dirty enough" outside.

Given that "conventional wisdom has it" that cams and cam chains last about 80k, is it fair enough to think that mine is well and truly due?

Rolled over to 250k yesterday afternoon :-)

Sounds like the XYZ switch might be failing, or just need its connections cleaned up a bit. IIRC the inhibitor switch is part of the gear selector itself, and the XYZ switch just tells the ECU what you're trying to do. If the gearbox gets really unhappy with this state of affairs it'll go into limp-home mode and only give you 3rd and reverse.

Mine made hell of a black smoke on startup when the failed fuel pressure regulator was dumping petrol into the plenum.

I don't recall seeing any activity from the rev counter during cranking on my GEMS, and I know it's how I used to check for electrical issues on my old CX with the ignition pack - you'd see the needle kick on every compression. So I feel like I'd have noticed. I'll actually check later on though.

Fuel tank is full - with what, is the fuel any good?

If the crank position sensor has water in the plug or is on the way out it'll give all sorts of weird "crank, no start", "crank, start, won't rev" kind of faults, often intermittently.

If it's an early Clarion stereo and it's intermittent but comes on when you tap the bottom of the case, it's a dry joint on a big surface-mount resistor under the heatsink beside the tape deck. Easy to fix and a common fault.

I think I'll grab one of the Anritsus from work and have a sniff around.

Miah's was doing that, not sure if it ever entirely stopped. It seems a fair enough bet that it's the diode pack in the alternator.

Conclusion: Well that's weird.

I got round to the flat, put the jump leads on, let it charge up a wee bit - door open, key in pocket! - put the key in, turned the ignition on and the alarm went off. Key out, lock, unlock, key in, turn on, chorus of Assorted FAULT BEEP BEEP BEEPs, ALARM TRIGGERED, ALARM TAMPER, IGNITION TAMPER, turned it to start and it fired on the first flick! Like, it's never started that readily before.

Well hell.

That's an interesting wee deelie, I wonder what's under the heatshrink and where it gets fitted? I guess it just sends "immobiliser learn" and then anything at all to the GEMS ECU?

Also interesting that just jagging across the starter relay ought to make it start - mine has no spark. So that answers that question, it ought to be possible to bump start the engine if it's in a manual.

davew wrote:

Principle 8: Build strong communities that respect civil discourse and human dignity

You've been told repeatedly to stop your nonsense. You're not exactly going out of your way to "respect civil discourse", are you?

You are of course entirely free to discuss the topics you want, but if you are asked not to discuss them here, you ought to respect that.

I really, really don't want to see locked, edited or deleted threads or banned users here.

Now let's be clear about something - locking, editing or deleting a post, or banning users, is not censorship. You have a right to free speech, but you do not have a right to force anyone else to publish it for you.

Or, if you'd prefer the TL;DR version, wind your neck in, like you were told to weeks ago.

I really don't want to start seeing banned users (apart from spammers) and locked or deleted threads.

Yup, I'm planning on taking the BECM round to Miah's so we can pull the contents of the EEPROM. I don't think I ever got a note of the EKA from the previous owner! I checked to see if it had been scribbled in the manual, too. The radio code is there but not the EKA :-/

I'm hoping I can get a shot of Miah's Nano. There's an app called "GEMS ECU Utility" for Android that reckons it can clear the adaptives and resync the immobiliser but while I could get it to connect and do stuff it didn't improve matters any.