onions

Turns out it's never too dark for a photo. The neighbours are wondering what I'm up to - taking photos in my car after dark: I've never had trouble with a co-driver managing to use mine (often against my will).

Mine is mounted on the side of the centre console above where the front footwell air vents come out. I was just careful not to drill through the air ducting when I did it. It's a bit dark for a photo otherwise I would take one for you. If you drive with your seat far enough back you can get away with attaching it to the door for the fusebox/steering column/wiring loom towards the centre console. I just couldn't get to grips with it there; it interfered with my clutch leg too much.

Yep. That neatly does the same job as my taped-up bodge-job.

Not quite the same house. We live in the same town and have the ISP - which should be NTL if you check it out. Mind you, with the amount of time I spend in muddyplugger's garage the wife is pretty sure that I do live in the same house as him.

Cheers for that. I'll have a root around tomorrow and take some pics if I find anything which might be of interest/use to anyone else.

My front wipers seem to be slowing down with age. they have now got to the point where the fastest setting is slower than the slowest setting was when they worked - if that makes any sense. The situation is the same whether I hold the stalk down (in single wipe mode) or have it clicked all the way up in continuous. They seem to improve a little if they are left running for a while. With British summer looming I thought it would be best to have working wipers when it hits. So: Where should I be poking my large flat-blade screwdriver first? What parts am I likely to need (from your own vast experience)? What's all that going to cost then? Thanks in advance as usual folks.

On the contrary - nice arrows. I might have a go at that soldering lark today.

I found this too: CR2032 Button Cell But even though it's only 24p for the battery the £2.95 delivery charge may make it a bit price-prohibitive.

That's why I did it to the spare one!! (Didn't break it honest). As far as distance is concerned - I have a newish remote and a remote that looks like it has been with the car since day one. With fresh batteries the newish one will easily operate from 60-70 feet away (more if you hold it to your head Clarkson style). The older one works at about 30-40 feet. Both of those distances assume that I have line-of-sight with the car, although sometimes it will go further or work through a double glazed window in my house, depends on how it's feeling. If you're only getting 6 feet then you need a new battery in my estimation.

Just took my spare one apart and I have this to report: Take you remote off your keys as you will need to split it into its two bits. You can do this by putting a screwdriver in the top and twisting as shown here: Once it is in two bits you will have a bit of black plastic and a bit that looks like this: You can just slide the battery out and replace it with a new one. I had mine out for a couple if minutes to take the following photo and it worked OK when put back together: In case the image ain't too great the battery says, "(loads of stuff I can't read) Lithium Battery, CR2032, 3V". Then as Mr. Haynes would say, "Refitting is the opposite of removal".

You can replace the battery yourself with little danger of anything going wrong. I bought a replacement battery from a bloke at Billing last year and it came with some weird and wonderful instructions about doing the change out of range of the car and once the battery was removed I was supposed to press the buttons for 10 full seconds to remove any residual charge in the remote. In the end I popped the back off the remote and changed the battery (standard looking button cell) the way I would change any battery and it works just the way it used to (except from a longer distance). I'll prise the back off my spare remote if you want me to see if there's a battery number.

That's between me and the car. Pictures available at a small price.

Please use same advice when applying Deep Heat or Tiger Balm.

Good to hear. Now you've got a fully working bass-bin you can cruise round town and attract the ladies with your low rumbling tones.

Update - it's anice day so I went out and writhed the head unit out using a couple of screwdrivers and I can confirm that I have a phono plug added by someone at some point as you will see in this pic: And when you trace it back to the wiring loom it is attached to the red and black wires in this pic: Those will be the same wires that have bits left in the back of my original stereo. So your phono plug should work unless the wire is broken at some other point. For the sake of completeness - the sub phono is connected to the left of the two sub outputs on the head-unit. There is nothing connected the right one and the sound has always seemed alright to me.

Okay. I think I've saved myself the trouble of getting the stereo out of the car. I went in the loft and got the old stereo (which I kept in case I ever sell the car) out of the box. In the back of it is a very fetching square pink plug with a black and a red wire hanging out. The wires have obviously been cut and I imagine the reason has been that one of the car's previous owners cut them off and stuck a phono plug on the end so they could fit a different stereo. If you're satisified that the phono plug you fitted is done right then there should be no reason that you should get no sound, whichever output you plug it into on your head unit. If I were you I'd be getting my multimeter out and checking for continuity at both the head end and on the speakers themselves. Also, make sure that the subwoofer setting is turned on and turned upon your head unit: mine was turned off by default. As far as I recall the sub is just made up of 2 or 3 completely standard speakers once you remove the metal grille, so you would most likely be able to replace any broken ones with el-cheapo Maplin ones - unless you wanted to bling the whole thing up with one if those great-big carpeted boxes they seem to shove in the back of tricked-up Novas.

Same thing with the back of my stereo (L and R sub) but I'm pretty sure there was just a white phono plug tied in with the rest of the stereo wiring loom. If I can find the keys to release the stereo I'll have a look tomorrow.

When I switched my factory fit unit for a JVC one the fitter didn't connect up the sub, so I took the head unit out when I got home and I found that there was a loose phono plug floating around that hadn't been connected to the unit, so I just plugged it into one of the phono outputs on the back of the unit - that did it for me. Of course that won't help if you don't have the plug as part of the stereo wiring loom to start with. Hope that's of some help though.

Funny that a clock thread should turn up at a time like this. My father-in-law has just taken ownership of a 300tdi Disco and quite a few of the segments in the numbers aren't working (even the though the bulb is). Would that be a new clock required then? Anyone got a part number or price? Maybe I'll post about something that's not trim-related next!!

Thanks - I'll have a look at that. Having had a poke around today I can't find any play in any of the bits between the steering wheel and the steering box in case that gives anyone some ideas. I'll be working round the bits underneath ASAP. I took the time today to put the steering wheel back to (almost) the right angle. Obviously you have to take it off to make the adjustment. I thought I was in for a bit of a hard time because the Haynes said it was a 3 spanner (medium hard) job. In reality it only took 2 big screwdrivers a socket set and 10 minutes - it takes at least that long for me to get the gearstick gaiter off the centre console to clean the crumbs off the rubber mat. I didn't realise I was so mechanically adept.

Aye. Got mine from Halfrauds for about £1.50 - it just clips into the holder. The biggest pain was remembering where to shove the screwdriver to release the clock.

Cheers gelf. All suggestions willingly taken. It's best if I can check eveything in one go before I go crying back to the garage.

I'll check it over tomorrow. I guess the potential problem if they haven't is that it all comes to bits while I'm driving?

My '98 300tdi Disco has recently had a new steering box fittted. The old one didn't feel too bad, but I had on good advice that with the amount of oil that was left in the old one by the end (very little) that it was on it's way out. Since getting it back the first 500 miles or so were pretty good, steering was a bit more positive all round, but for the last 100 miles or so I feel like I am constantly correcting the steering - one minute I think I'm heading for the kerb and the next I'm off towards the centre line. It's not a massive amount but you notice small changes in your own car. There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of play in the steering when the car is stationary. Also, when the car was put back together the steering wheel wasn't put on quite straight (when you put it perfectly level you drive off towards the kerb), which isn't a massive problem in itself apart from playing tricks with my mind, so I'm wondering: 1) What could be going wrong next? 2) Is this just a typical Disco "thing" that should be lived with? 3) Has the slightly off-level steering wheel played havoc with my tiny mind and if so does anyone have a reconditioned thinking box available? Many thanks in advance folks..