nickwilliams

There is no stabilised feed on pre-ECU models. Don't know about later ones. The temp. and fuel level gauges are actually wheatstone bridge circuits so they are independent of minor changes in supply voltage. If the needle moves for any reason other than changes in the fuel or temperature level then there is a bad connection somewhere. For the under-seat tank on my 90, reading from the back of the vehicle, the wire colours on the fuel tank sender are black, white/slate, green/black. Nick.

In an ideal world, I'd post a thread about my 90 re-build, but time is limited and I'd rather be actually spanner wrangling than struggling with the forum software to upload pictures, which I find to be a tedious PITA. Nick.

You will lose about 0.6V across the diode, so the bulb will be a tiny bit dimmer, although I'm surprised it's noticeable.

One of these will do what you want. You will need to solder a bit of wire on each leg, or crimp tags on, and cover it with some sleeving.

I think you've reached the point where you need to check that!

The resistor does not prevent backfeed of current, it simply limits the current flow into the alternator field windings. However, there is also a diode hidden in the wiring behind the dashboard which does prevent backfeed (if it's working properly). It's a black cylinder about 40mm long and 8mm diameter with a spade connector in each end. The white and white/black wires are joined at a terminal block behind the dashboard. I could tell you more but its meaningless without a wiring diagram, so send me a PM with your e-mail address and I'll send you what is probably the closest thing to a correct wiring diagram for your vehicle. The wiring diagrams for vehicles of this age are truly dreadful and there may not actually be a completely accurate drawing in existence if it's anything like my 90, which was built as a special order 2.5TD after the 200TDI was introduced. So far as I can see the wiring is a hybrid between two different diagrams, and it's even worse now I have put a 300TDi in it! Nick.

In what way is it not legal? According to the listing it was built for use on a private estate and the seller makes no claim that it is suitable for use on the road.

The UK Government response talks a lot about subsidiarity, which is Euro-speak for the principle that decisions should be devolved down to as low a level as is possible. In this case, I think it means that the UK response to the Commission essentially says 'the UK already does most of this, and the bits we don't already do will be expensive and unlikely to be justified by the cost. Your priority should be to make the rest of Europe conform to the high standards already applied in the bigger, northern, countries, not loading the citizens of those countries with more burdens which will cost everyone more money for very little benefit.' Nick.

I've just come across the UK government's response to the proposals. You can read them here. Nick.

Apparently HSL at Harpur Hill use them to roam around their site, so that's probably where it's come from. N.

I used Terostat PU sealant, but its only a slightly upmarket version of Tiger Seal and there are cheaper alternatives. You need the stuff which comes in metal tubes, not plastic ones. I ain't looking forward to the day when it needs to come apart again.... Nick.

I don't know what the threads are (sorry!) but I do know that the pipe on my 2.5TD was/is 1/4 in. because I had to fit an elbow in it when I swapped from the 2.5TD to the 300TDI because the clutch slave is on the other side of the bell housing. Because I reused the parts from the old engine, I did not have to get into looking at the threads on the pipework, but I do recall that it looked to me as if each of the fittings (master cylinder end, end of the steel pipe, slave cylinder end on the flexible) all had a different thread on them! Nick.

This page is well worth a read if you are going to get into an argument with a motor dealer. Nick.

See also post no. 39 in this thread. Nick

What power rating/current draw are the heaters? Nick.

Heater blowing hot or cold intermittently is likely to be problems with the engine cooling rather than the heater itself. Have you checked the fluid level in the radiator? Nick.

This sets out the law: http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/general/oft913.pdf They cannot charge you for restocking. They can make you pay for the return costs. Their T&Cs cannot over-ride your statutory rights, and under some circumstances it is a criminal offence for the vendor to attempt to force you to agree to their terms. Nick.

Having spent a good deal of yesterday messing about with the intermittent wipers on my 90, I thought posting this might be useful... I was having periodic unpredictable issues with the wipers, mainly them stopping in mid wipe, plus the variable intermittent wasn't variable. I thought this was probably due to problems with the park switch so I changed it. This did not help a lot, so I swapped the whole motor for another one I had. This gave a completely new set of problems - mainly that the wipers would keep going instead of stopping: two swipes instead of just one on intermittent, and sometimes they just would not switch off at all (at any position of the wiper stalk). It turns out that the problem was still the park switch. The issue is that the park switch actually has two functions: as well as having a contact which keeps current flowing to the motor until it is in the park position, it also uses the same contacts to short circuit the windings of the motor when the motor reaches the park position. The reason for this is that short circuiting the motor generates a back EMF which overcomes the momentum of the motor and stops it dead. Without this contact the momentum in the motor can be sufficient to carry the wipers past the park position. At best this means the wipers stop in an indeterminate position somewhere near the bottom of the screen, at worst the wipers just keep going (regardless of what position the wiper stalk is in) because the momentum is sufficient to carry the motor past the park position completely. To make matters even more difficult to diagnose, the latter effect (wipers just keep going) in my case seemed only to happen when the motor had warmed up a bit. I guess this was because the grease in the gearbox got a bit more fluid but it meant that I put the whole lot back together again thinking I had cured the problem once before I realised it was rather more complex than it at first appeared. The park switch is operated by a cam on the gear wheel within the motor gearbox. This cam pushes a pin in the switch which first opens the contact to stop current to the motor and then shorts the contact to the earth pin to spike the motor back EMF. The pin only needs to move a very short distance to open the first contact, but it needs to move quite a bit further to short the other one. The problem was that the cam on the gear was not thick enough to push the pin all the way to the 'short' position. The cure was to remove the cam from the gear and put two M4 washers behind it so as to effectively make it thicker, thus pushing the pin to the fully shorted position. (I can post pictures if required to clarify this.) The other important factor so far as the variable intermittent wipe is concerned is that the timer relay looks for the short circuit of the two contacts to tell it when the wipers have got back to the park position so if the short circuit is not happening it can't detect the time the driver has set for the wiper delay, and hence it will appear that the delay relay is not working since it is only possible to get the default time of 4 - 6 seconds. Hopefully that explanation will save someone else some troubleshooting time. Apologies if it's already posted and I'm teaching you all to suck eggs! Nick.

I'm not a particular anti- Britpart zealot like some here, but I feel I should point out that the BS standard that Britpart claim for these on their web site is for the material they are made from, not for the design or manufacture of the discs themselves. I've made this point before, but it bears repeating. It amazes me how many people assume that things like braking and other safety critical components for motor vehicles (and lots of other machinery) must be OK 'because they would not be allowed to sell it if it wasn't'. There are actually very few laws which require components such as this to be made under some sort of approved or qualified process. As far as motor vehicle components are concerned, if it isn't 'e' (or 'E') marked then it's not been independently approved as being fit for purpose or made under an independently assessed QMS. As it happens, the standard which Britpart quote is for the material from which the discs are made (cast iron) and as has been pointed out elsewhere, so long as the material is good and the dimensions are correct, there's not a lot else to go wrong with a brake disc. But just because the manufacturer quotes a BS number is no guarantee that the standard is particularly relevant, or that compliance with the standard had been independently verified. Nick.

By doing this you may have quite significantly reduced the frost protection on your vehicle. Neat antifreeze freezes at a significantly higher temperature than when it is mixed with water. The lowest possible freezing point is when the antifreeze is at around 50% concentration: this is what is usually recommended by the manufacturers of the antifreeze, and they don't say it because it saves you money! My advise is to buy an antifreeze tester and find out exactly how much frost protection you've got. Nick.

Just a quick follow up to say that I purchased the tyres from 4x4tyres.co.uk and although there were some problems with the order (the rims I wanted were out of stock, and then one of the tyres was damaged when they came to fit it to the rim before shipping so there was a delay while they got a replacement), I found the company extremely easy to deal with and their communication over the issues was excellent. The tyres have arrived in the last few minutes and I will be fitting them later today. I would not hesitate to recommend 4x4tyres to anyone else. Nick.

I used these. Nick.

Chainsaw sharpening files are the cheapest and nastiest files you can easily get - try the same test with a decent Bahco or Stubbs file and you may get a different result. In any case, as a test it only tells you what the surface hardness is and will tell you very little about how tough the underlying material at the root of the teeth (where it really matters) is. A single spot test may not tell you much. The biggest problem with metalwork from China is consistency - Chinese manufacturers simply do not seem to have the ability to get their steels to behave consistently across batches or from one batch the next. Maybe they don't stir it enough while it's hot! Having said that, I have spent a lot of time in Chinese factories, and I'd agree 100% with =Jon=. You need to try them - as someone else has pointed out, you don't have a lot to lose. You may get lucky! Nick.

The short answer is that it's not possible unless you change the stalk. Nick.

With all due respect, I wasn't asking for comments about the choice of tyre - for my circumstances, which are not the same as many others here, I'm comfortable with this choice. I sent 4x4tyres.co.uk a question at about 17:00 this evening and had a reply within 10 minutes, so I'm favourably impressed. Any other comments on their service? Nick.