AMB

WD40 OK for confirming diagnosis but I'd recommend something heavier unless you want to make this a regular occurrance

There is a suggestion on other forums that you can switch between km and miles by holding down the trip reset button beyond the point where it zeroes.

Many thanks - another thread bookmarked to help with my job list

It's extremely unlikely if not actually impossible. Suggest that you may have changed the odometer to read in Km instead of miles. It's about the right ratio. Engine performance change is unconnected. Don't know anything about the V6 so cannot suggest specifics, but I would check electrics first.

Have yet to replace my lock barrels, so cannot comment on size, but can state that my '98 300Tdi has separate door and ignition keys and is near enough factory standard. As one of the last 300s, it may have been more of a bitsa than most.

Some good stuff. Most mains to dc inverters/converters rectify the incoming mains first before switching. In practice, little difference between rectified output whether fed from pure sine wave, modified sine wave or square wave inverter. If the charger is rated for 110v and 230v input without tap switching then there shouldn't be a problem with the laptop charger. If running a radio etc, then you may need a pure sinewave inverter because of the increased potential for power supply interference, but more problematic with motors or any other load with a significant capacitive or inductive component. As Cackshifter noted, many inverters will take a standing current at no load. Pete is right - the more stages and the more electronics in the way, the less efficient the overall conversion will be and 150W is the maximum to even consider running off a cigarette lighter socket. I wouldn't be happy pulling more that 100W continuous through a cigarette lighter socket - say 85W output from the inverter. Put the problem into context. Headlamp load is proabably approaching 150W - how long would you want to leave your headlamps on without engine running?

Where is this magic recycling yard? My background and qualifications are in electronics so no problem at all in modifying. May find that some are only rated for short duaration and may need additional heatsinking or an uprated fan for longer periods.

Good idea on the UPS, though you obviously have far higher quality recycling/junk yards than I do locally. If the internal battery is 12v ( a lot run at higher voltages for greater efficiency) then it's probably better to replace it as part of a dual battery system and get the best of both worlds.

The key issues are 1) polarity of the plug, is it the right way round, Some laptops have diodes to protect against wrong polarity, but most don't; 2) voltage out. Too high and you'll blow the laptop, too low and it will take more current from the charger, dragging the volts down still further until it doesn't charge. Laptops are generally constant power loads, ie take the roughly the same amount of power regardless of voltage; 3) current output from the charger is more than the laptop requires at the nominal voltage. One caveat on 3) - assumes that the charger is regulated and doesn't rely on output impedance to control voltage. It's unlikely to be other than regulated if 110/230v input rated. Having said that, my experience of Belkin in general has not been good.

I suggest that you check out the requirement for the laptop charger. I suspect that the 1.7A is the peak input requirement and not the steady state. Most laptop chargers give out something in the region of 60W. If it was really taking 1.7A at 240v (408W) continuously then it would be dissipating nearly 350W in a very small box and getting extremely hot. Have just measured my Lenovo charger (also rated at 1.7A and 240v input, 18v 3.25A output). It takes <0.5A when charging a near flat battery and running the laptop. If so, a much smaller inverter will do. I use one rated at 150W constant for similar duties. I also have a 600W constant inverter which is far too big a load for the cigarette lighter socket (100W nominal max) and ideally should be wired into and run from a dual battery system.

I'd second the comment that everything is repairable, but caveat it that it might not be the most practical/economic way forward. If it is that bad in one area then other areas are almost bound to be bad. Clean up underneath, have a really good poke and scrape to assess the condition overall before committing. Of course, that is on the assumption that you want to keep the vehicle.

I'd second new turret rings.

- it wouldn't without insulating at least one of the terminals from the tank, probably both. You may be able to drill a large enough hole to hold an insulating bush and screw through that, but I have serious reservations about breaching the integrity of my cooling system by drilling holes in it. You may get to test whether the system works for real as a direct result of fitting this. I can't see any obvious reason why the circuit shouldn't work using the RRC sensor cap, This senses whether water is present through conductivity. Once the water level drops below the top sensor the circuit is broken - as per the sensor cap. Only question is whether 680 ohms lies within the design parameters for the alarm circuit.

Don't know whether the same would apply to a Td5, but when I had problems on my old company Mondeo there was a procedure for clearing the fine tuning in the ECU and the "best" way to reprogramme. It didn't clear fault codes, just sensor tuning settings. The ECU contained a default mapping, as you drove it would adjust to your set of sensors and a target. With the Ford, it would only learn during the initial stages after a reset and not continue learning as the sensor degraded. That's how and why, I learned to reset and tune the car. To reset, the sensor settings to default you disconnected the battery, turned on ignition and radio (or other non-relay switched load), left it for >30 minutes then re-connected, reprogrammed radio codes etc. The >30 minutes with effectively a short across the power terminals was to discharge the memory inside the ECU. After this procedure, the engine was a little lacking. Nothing that you could put your finger on, just lacklustre. You then needed to drive in the manner to which you wanted the car best tuned - carefully for economy, like a lunatic for performance. There was also something about transitioning between 40 and 60 mph at least three times before the re-programming sequence finished.

Am surprised. Mine is a '98 300 CSW - previous owner had it from 2000 and kept every single bill and receipt. Record of changing wiper blades and similar, but nothing about putting in a torsion spring. It's on my list to change, but not a priority.

Not standard on my 1998 300Tdi. Mine has the single return spring to the body.

There's also a mod available for the clutch return spring as per the Puma http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stage1v8/Technical110PedalMods.htm

Apparently not - more height in the system. But always a good idea.

Some of the pictures published on Landyzone http://www.landyzone.co.uk/lz/f20/newbie-254061.html

Agree - range measured is perfectly normal. Assuming that you are using equipment properly designed for in car use it's more likely to be voltage spikes, which a standard meter will not indicate. If so, a couple of capacitors directly across the cigarette lighter socket may help - something like a 0.1 microfarad polyester (NOT electrolytic). Unfortunately, many cheap chargers are only rated to 16-18v input and spikes on a charging system can easily exceed that.

Silly question, but is it an immobiliser problem?

We found anyvan.com to be very good on Ebay items - just enter the Ebay item number on their site along with destination etc and they'll find someone to quote.

My 300 110 is factory fit standard with 235/85 R16s. According to GPS, speedo reads approx 8% high. Take care with GPS speedo calibration. If you have a good quality modern GPS it will probably use Doppler and relative satellite position to measure speed accurately. Older/cheaper models calculate speed by assuming straight line motion between position samples, then performing a running average across the calculated velocities. For best accuracy on older models, calibrate on a reasonably straight road and take more than one reading

New regulator (incl brushes) for an A127 less than £10 incl postage. Complete repair kit (regulator, brushes, rectifier, slip rings and bearings) <£25 on Ebay, compete with instructional video. Suggest that you check the earths and tidy up as necessary and, if your alternator is fitted with a sense wire make sure trhat it connects to the battery via a low current path

You will not stop a professional thief. The best that you can do is to extend the time taken to bypass your anti-theft measures and/or make it obvious that in bypassing your measures it will unacceptably reduce the value. Opportunist thiefs often don't know enough to bypass anti-theft measures and can cause a lot of damage in the process in trying to find out. Defenders are notoriously easy to break into. Your best defence against opportunists is to fit basic anti-theft, not to carry anything valuable and make it obvious that's the case (no tinted windows!). A properly fitted FIA master switch with low current fused bypass is easy, fairly effective and cheap to implement. Combine it with a fuel stop solenoid and you start to extend the time that any thief will need to take. Although a standard immobiliser will get an insurance discount (and should be considered for that reason alone) it could well take a professional longer to disable a home grown system.