AMB

Having had water in the fuel before, I've found that the garage itself is a better indicator. I've also tried 2 stroke in the tank and convinced myself that it ran smoother, but no difference to mileage.

Square rather than oblong Ebay

Slipped a decimal point Les! I suspect that the confusion between 10A and 0.25A is that between a solenoid/contactor and a relay. 2-3A for a 200A contactor seems about right

Although it was a fairly recent engine change, I didn't need to supply any proof. I just filled in the V5 with the new number and senit it to DVLA. It was returned without question. I had more problems with the insurance than with DVLA. They wanted receipts and an engineers report.

I'm not convinced that removing the condenser completely wouldn't also have got him home. The main function is in suppressing points erosion - the coil is inductive, so breaking the current without a condenser would lead to arcing, loss of spark energy and eventual points failure. The secondary function is to provide a ringing circuit which provides a controlled rise time and consequently more effective ignition.

Buy Lucas or Bearmach and spent some of the saving in not buying original to upgrading to relay driven headlamps.

Further to Chicken Drumsticks research. The "requirement" for self levelling and washers is linked to HID headlights with an output in excess of 2000 lumens. As MoT stations have as much or little clue about light output as I do and manufacturers tend to exaggerate the performance of their lights, MoT stations seem to either take a hard view or ignore it as not testable/provable. The fallback in all cases is the beam pattern. Fail that and it's not arguable. E marking on a purposed designed headlamp should ensure beam pattern. In discussing it with my local MoT tester he also claimed that many systems utilising separate main and dip HID headlights would fail because of the time taken for the lights to come to full brightness, thereby failing the criteria for the switchover to be without any associated delay. I'm fairly certain that most LED headlight bulbs of acceptable light output would fail on beam pattern if fitted into a standard reflector. However, the only restriction that I could find on indicators, side lights and rear lights seemed to concern actual maximum wattage. Not on the type of light source. I'd suggest a chat with your local MoT station before paying out. If you want to go ahead regardless, find another MoT station with a different opinion.

If you are discharging a fully charged sound battery in a week then you are looking for quite a reasonable current - 350mA or so - just over 4W. Self discharge in that time should be ~1% or less.

What sort of drain are you experiencing? Do you have a meter? If so cannibalise a fuse so that you can plug it into each circuit in place of the regular fuse. Measure current taken on all circuits and track it down. Only the starter motor and alternator should not go through the standard fuse box. If the sum of the currents through the individual fuses is less than the drain measured at the battery you are probably looking at the alternator.

Barry is spot on - do not use with Lithium Ion batteries! I wouldn't recommend a welder either. I have used the technique on NiCads and NiMH with limited success, but wouldn't recommend with any high capacity battery. The theory was that you put a semi-controlled burst of energy through the battery to burn through any shorts. That burst was supplied by discharging a capacitor charged to greater than the nominal cell voltage (6-9v for a single NiCad cell) into the battery - obviously observing polarity. That capacitor was charged via a resistor which was suitably sized to charge the cell at nominal 1/10 rate. The resistor and charging source remained connected when the capacitor was discharged through the cell via a switch. With any luck the burst of charge burnt through the short and, once the short was removed, the cell started to charge normally via the resistor. The restored batteries were never particularly good and the self discharge rate was noticeably higher than the originals, but they served a purpose.

I've a couple - an old 3M and a cheapie from Lidl. I wouldn't be without them. The cheapie works fine as long as you keep an eye on it. Leave it heating too long between jobs and the glue stick starts to melt back into the ratchet feed mechanism, at which point it no longer feeds and you need to pull the stick out and clean the gun as it cools. 3M is quite an old one but better designed, it doesn't suffer from the same fault, but is quite low power, so difficult to get enough hot glue out fast enough if dealing with largish areas. You might need to experiment with glue sticks, I've got some which are supposedly designed for wood and others with a higher specifiic heat which is ideal for metals. Before I retired I used to borrow a professional one from work with controlled heat setting.

I agree with Tanuki I'm guessing that overload on the belt caused it to slip (causing smoke). That overload could be faulty alternator or transferred load through the alternator from the winch. Whatever the initial failure, the alternator was at least partially working on the way home because the battery charge light was off and the rev counter was reading. I'm assuming that the V8 takes it's rev counter feed from the alternator like the diesels. If so, a constant 1000rpm would suggest a slipping belt and going to high revs for any period would probably lose any remaining grip, hence rpm dropping and charge light illuminating. RPM dropping to zero is consistent with either a failed belt or a failed alternator, but, as overheating the belt has gone. However, that would be the least of my worries, forget the alternator, have you still got a useable engine.

Sounds very much like a failed alternator closely followed by the fan belt. Smoke on load probably the fan belt slipping on a partially seized alternator.

Ralph is correct, as are Jason and Mike. LEDs are polarity sensitive - the best ones contain reverse polarity protection, but put a cheap one in the wrong way round and it could damage it. They are also supposed to take less current. That may affect your indicators unless you install a load resistor in parallel, though there may be one built in and there are electronic flasher units available which are designed to work with LEDs. Last. but not least, reflector design assumes a near point source near the focal point of the reflector. Cheap LEDs of equivalent power to an H4 have a diffuse light source, which results in a less defined beam. In summary, LEDs technically illegal, but probably OK (with above reservations on polarity and flasher unit) for indicator, fog, side and rear which don't have focussing reflectors, not acceptable for headlights. After market HID illegal for road use unless specifically designed and approved for that vehicle. All HID must also be fitted with self levelling headlights.

Have you tried the repair option? Open the Add or Remove Programs control panel, select iTunes, then Change... Repair. Some info here

I'm surprised at the advice not to use Loctite on the insert itself. In my experience it's standard in aerospace and marine industries - though part of that is admittedly extreme paranoia on galvanic corrosion and risk reduction. Theory suggests that, for the maximum pull strength the helicoil be used without thread lock, because the insert deforms slightly under load to spread that load more evenly over more turns of the thread, whereas locking the insert makes it act more like the original thread. Perhaps that's why the advice. It shouldn't matter either way if the original thread was strong enough for the load.

I agree with CwazyWabbit - I've prepared damaged threads using hand turned chuck plus drill - provided that you take in slow stages no problem. You also avoid the problem of drill judder when drilling in tight places. Loctite Thread Lock is also a good idea initially, as is slightly peening over the start of the seating thread to stop the insert backing out. Be careful to use the minimum amount of Loctite and clean out any excess. One note of caution, make sure that the helicoil sits below the surface by the equivalent of half a thread. If too close/slightly proud of the surface it can start to unravel. Don't ask - >£250k of production ruined (not to mention recall) in leaving the initial job to an unsupervised apprentice. That's when we discovered twinserts!

If my experience is anything to go by, removing seats would not help. First it counts as a modification which ups the premium, secondly the companies that I contacted stated that they would quote against the standard spec for the vehicle - removing seats wouldn't help.NFU didn't want to quote because I'm not a farmer, smallholder or in any other way connected to farming. Online systems often use a counting system whereby too many changes from standard, regardless of impact, automatically result in refusal to quote. I found Elephant to be best, but I needed to speak with a person first. Even that was not easy - too many people just working their way through scripts.

I got a reasonable quote on a 98 110 CSW (9 seat) from elephant. Flux and Lancaster were a waste of time.

Happy Christmas to all.

The alternator charges the battery. Anything and everything else has wiring in the way. Wiring equates to voltage drop, so the alternator output connection must be a higher voltage than at the battery. To get the most volts at the headlamps you need the lowest resistance point from the highest voltage in the system. On my 300Tdi installation the shortest run is from the alternator inside a convenient wiring loom. If I took it from the starter feed, it would be a longer run, albeit with the high current starter feed being very low resistance.

The alternator bolt is the highest voltage take-off point in a running system. If you want maximum volts to your headlamps, that's where you connect. Richard - if you have bolt connections on the back of your alternator, it will be obvious, the heaviest gauge wiring to a connection usually marked as B+. However, depending on age etc you may have a three pin connector.

Unless I've read the VIN decoder wrongly. It was a 3.5l, V8 carb, petrol, Low Compression, 2000 model year, 110, 5 door Station wagon, built in Solihull

Sticky solenoid?

If its only a slight grumbling whining noise it can't be the girlfriend. That's a much louder more intrusive noise usually accompanied by a sharp pain in the ribs.