Today I did something to my car (volume 2)

dr.fuzzenstein

Special Circumstances wrote: »

Chrome is only for genuine yank tanks, tarmac merchants, and born again bikers ;-)

Nah, chrome was cool when it was on real metal. Now it's just plastic coated in chrome and for some reason that just isn't right. So if you have a car up to the late 70's/early 80's, chrome looks the biz, but it's always pants on later plastic cars.


Update on the key situation:
Turns out I was programming the key wrong.
You're supposed to stick in the key and turn it from 0-3 three times.
Then you turn it to 3 one more time, but then only back to 1, not 0.
NOBODY TELLS YOU THIS!!! :mad:
Anyway, mini rant aside, that's what my local Ford dealer told me and took the time and patience to show me. Sheils rocks! Be it Ennis or Limerick, they have always been A1.
So, turned key as per new procedure, car beeps, press key, car beeps again.
No luck, car won't respond to key. The good news is, the key transmits and the car picks it up.
The bad news is, either the module has crashed or it is defective and needs to be exchanged.
Ford advised me I would have to have it reset, but for that I would have to book the car in and that won't be cheap. Or I could just disconnect the battery, hoping that will do it and it will reset itself.
Any ideas?

dr.fuzzenstein

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Nah, chrome was cool when it was on real metal. Now it's just plastic coated in chrome and for some reason that just isn't right. So if you have a car up to the late 70's/early 80's, chrome looks the biz, but it's always pants on later plastic cars.


Update on the key situation:
Turns out I was programming the key wrong.
You're supposed to stick in the key and turn it from 0-3 three times.
Then you turn it to 3 one more time, but then only back to 1, not 0.
NOBODY TELLS YOU THIS!!! :mad:
Anyway, mini rant aside, that's what my local Ford dealer told me and took the time and patience to show me. Sheils rocks! Be it Ennis or Limerick, they have always been A1.
So, turned key as per new procedure, car beeps, press key, car beeps again.
No luck, car won't respond to key. The good news is, the key transmits and the car picks it up.
The bad news is, either the module has crashed or it is defective and needs to be exchanged.
Ford advised me I would have to have it reset, but for that I would have to book the car in and that won't be cheap. Or I could just disconnect the battery, hoping that will do it and it will reset itself.
Any ideas?

Try the battery thing first and sww what happens. Make sure you have your radio code

dr.fuzzenstein

Snotaul Goodman wrote: »

Try the battery thing first and sww what happens. Make sure you have your radio code

That's the first thing I looked up

dr.fuzzenstein

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

That's the first thing I looked up

That ford stereo code thread must have been one of the busiest in the motoring forum for a while

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

dr.fuzzenstein

Snotaul Goodman wrote: »

Try the battery thing first and sww what happens. Make sure you have your radio code

Bingo!

I could have saved myself two weeks work (well, on and off and nothing to strenuous) had I just done that from the start.
Undid battery, locks kinda clicked, reconnected it, input radio code and tried my remote key.
Worked first time, didn't even have to program it in.
I work in IT and I didn't follow my own advice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p85xwZ_OLX0

So, Top Tip to all Focus owners:
If your remote key won't work anymore, try turning it off and on. This will potentially save you a lot of trouble and expense. Just make sure you have the radio code.

dr.fuzzenstein

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Bingo!

I could have saved myself two weeks work (well, on and off and nothing to strenuous) had I just done that from the start.
Undid battery, locks kinda clicked, reconnected it, input radio code and tried my remote key.
Worked first time, didn't even have to program it in.
I work in IT and I didn't follow my own advice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p85xwZ_OLX0

So, Top Tip to all Focus owners:
If your remote key won't work anymore, try turning it off and on. This will potentially save you a lot of trouble and expense. Just make sure you have the radio code.

Great stuff Dr fuzz. A career in IT awaits me :pac:

wotzgoingon

Well today I tackled the annoying airbag light that was on the dash. Ran it through with INPA and it said two faults. Passenger occupancy sensor and driver seat belt tensioner. The drivers seat belt tensioner involved me taking out the drivers seat and connecting the plug that was somehow disconnected, done that that fault code was gone after clearing it. Then moved onto the passenger fault. I went through my resistors and got twp 100 ohm ones and a 1N4001 diode but I didn't have one, so went through my electronics stuff and seen I had a 1N4002 soldered to a circuit. De-soldered it off and soldered the two resistors, one on each side of the diode in series. Cut the connector off under the seat and soldered on each side of the resistors and connected it up and cleared the error and the light went off the dash, happy days.

dr.fuzzenstein

Snotaul Goodman wrote: »

Great stuff Dr fuzz. A career in IT awaits me :pac:

Isn't it more lucrative to be a crooked, shyster lawyer?

Duke O Smiley

First time in 26 years with minimal effort

Snotaul Goodman

Snotaul Goodman wrote: »

and the new locations for my phone and sat-nav when these dash magnet ball things arrive from China

So my magnetic balls :pac: arrived eventually. Only took over a month!

The sticky pads that came with them were crap. Wouldn't stick to the dash at all. Even putting new double sided on them wasn't good enough. The next option was super glue them to the dash. Eh, no! So I decided to make something.

Old plastic reg plate and a pair of balls :pac:



Chop a piece from reg plate



Super glued balls to plastic



Taped and spray painted





Double sided tape to dash



Huzzah!



All nice and neat.

GvidoR

You may want to put those pics on imgur, flickr or something. They're not working.

GvidoR

GvidoR wrote: »

You may want to put those pics on imgur, flickr or something. They're not working.

Ah crap. I'll sort it

GvidoR

GvidoR wrote: »

You may want to put those pics on imgur, flickr or something. They're not working.

Working now? Must have looked weird with all the ball talk and no pictures :pac:

GvidoR

Yup. They're working now. Nice and neat indeed.

wotzgoingon

Another day another problem fixed on e39. I had no reverse lights and it was really annoying me. I could get them working with INPA but not by putting car into reverse. I tried the switch on gearbox, disconnected it and probed it with multimeter, and got continunity. 12 volts heading in as well. So looked up e39 wiring diagram online, goes through IKE(Instrument cluster, DME, LCM etcc.. all electronic stuff and a ground line through all electronic equipment.

So I brought the dog for a walk and was thinking scrape all the electronic stuff and hard wire it up myself, so i did and now I have a fully function reverse light.

wotzgoingon

wotzgoingon wrote: »

Another day another problem fixed on e39. I had no reverse lights and it was really annoying me. I could get them working with INPA but not by putting car into reverse. I tried the switch on gearbox, disconnected it and probed it with multimeter, and got continunity. 12 volts heading in as well. So looked up e39 wiring diagram online, goes through IKE(Instrument cluster, DME, LCM etcc.. all electronic stuff and a ground line through all electronic equipment.

So I brought the dog for a walk and was thinking scrape all the electronic stuff and hard wire it up myself, so i did and now I have a fully function reverse light.

Anyone I know who had reverse light problems in newer cars just got them hard wired. Saves a huge amount if hassle and money

Lekrub

It was actually last week, but I gave a quick refurb job to my alloys. They just needed to reach respectable level, not showroom.

Cost: Only a 12 euro can of halfords alloy Lacquer. Had some left over water based car paint already. Luckily I had access to a sandblaster and air spray gun.

Time: Friday to Sunday. Few hours Friday to get the alloys off, clean and prep. There was 16 yrs of filth to cut through! Saturday morning sandblasted all the flake off. Rewashed with a cleaning chemical and masked. Saturday afternoon gave them all a couple of coats of paint and leave dry which bought me to around 5pm. Then put on the alloy lacquer and let dry over night.

All back together Sunday morning and ready for the road that afternoon. I know they should be left longer but there was no time and it was get it done kinda job.

Ready for Nct next week and probably donedeal. Productive weekend and money saved from beer!

Bpmull

Today I changed my fuel filter. I serviced the car a few weeks back oil and air filter but the fuel filter was the wrong type. Got the right one last weekend but only got the but it in today.

The old filter 32k km on it:



The engine bay is looking a bit dusty / dirty I must go at that at some stage although it is bone dry no fuel/ oil/ coolant leaks which is the main thing to me

rizzee

Got a couple of sets of resistors in the post so no more bulb warnings for me

rizzee

Got a couple of sets of resistors in the post so no more bulb warnings for me

Edwardius

Edit, can I resize images within posts? these are ridiculously huge!

Did the clutch on the aul Avensis over the weekend. Armed with a bunch of videos, Haynes manual, a toyota repair manual and copious quantities of ignorance I began...

Disconnect battery, remove battery, filter, ancillaries, driveshafts (you basically disassemble the suspension in this step) attach engine support, take load off engine, take off lower crossmember thing as well as 3/4 engine mounts. Much swearing preceeded this point. I had an extra strap as a redundancy (250kg SWL) and a jack underneath too:



The offending article... this sucker started slipping a bit a couple of weeks ago, I've been minding it but didn't trust it not to give up somewhere far far away:



This was the flywheel side, the pressure-plate side was worn to the rivets and beyond, pressure plate had some gouging from the rivets too. Nasty...



shiny new clutch kit from LuK, disc, bearing and pressure plate were included, got it for €94 or so delivered from mister-auto (it was discounted).



Halfrauds wanted 20 quid for an aligning tool. Thankfully the 15mm long socket in their own socket set was perfect for the job!



to be continued...

Edwardius

Torqueing the bolts: I went ghetto here, they need to be torqued diagonally to seat the plate properly. My awesome torque wrench only goes down to 28Nm, I needed 19 so I had to apply 79N over the 0.24m length of the wrench (with the wrench horizontal) to get there. An 8kg Kettlebell came in handy here!



Right, how to remount mr. gearbox?



So I got under the car, rolled the gearbox onto my chest, pushed it between my knees, raised my knees to get it level with the engine and wriggled it about a bit until it seated onto the locating pins and clutch disc. Took less than two minutes to get it in, the hip flexors were tired the next day though.

Reassembling it wasn't as bad as disassembly, I learned a few tricks along the way. The rear engine mount bolts were a bastard, took an hour to get them tightened alone. double, triple and quadruple checked all torques and bolts along the way and then took her out for a spin... Big difference, it engages a lot more firmly now and the clutch pedal is so much lighter. Ran up 100 miles between yesterday and today and she's still holding. I have to do something to the exhaust because it's rattling a bit, it won't fall off though, it's just vibrating off the underside of the car a bit.

This took the whole weekend (18 or so hours), I reckon I could do it in 7 or 8 hours now, most of the time was spent scratching my head and worrying about breaking things.

Gavman84

Fitted lowering springs today delighted with it nice drop compared to before. Also got exhaust heat shield tightened and fixed the cig lighter.:D

Atlantic Dawn

Edwardius wrote: »

Torqueing the bolts: I went ghetto here, they need to be torqued diagonally to seat the plate properly. My awesome torque wrench only goes down to 28Nm, I needed 19 so I had to apply 79N over the 0.24m length of the wrench (with the wrench horizontal) to get there. An 8kg Kettlebell came in handy here!
.

Fair play, love these write ups, thanks for sharing. Nothing more satisfying than doing a big job yourself.

Duke O Smiley

Good bit of progress made on the Wolseley this evening. Stripped the paint, there isn't much else to do really until the welding starts and I have a welder coming around tomorrow to take a look so now this evenings topic of conversation at home is what colour the car should be painted. The original colour is a very rare BL colour called Wild Moss and it was only used for two years on the ADO17 models, and obviously given how original the car is I would like to sorta keep it at that, but on the other hand I'd like to choose something else, obviously period and model-specific..decisions, decisions

Atlantic Dawn

Duke O Smiley wrote: »

Good bit of progress made on the Wolseley this evening. Stripped the paint, there isn't much else to do really until the welding starts and I have a welder coming around tomorrow to take a look so now this evenings topic of conversation at home is what colour the car should be painted. The original colour is a very rare BL colour called Wild Moss and it was only used for two years on the ADO17 models, and obviously given how original the car is I would like to sorta keep it at that, but on the other hand I'd like to choose something else, obviously period and model-specific..decisions, decisions

I take it the can of Carlsberg was purely for medicinal purposes

Lekrub

Gavman84 wrote: »

Fitted lowering springs today delighted with it nice drop compared to before. Also got exhaust heat shield tightened and fixed the cig lighter.:D

Looks good. Not too much of a drop.

joujoujou

Edwardius wrote: »

Edit, can I resize images within posts?

I don't think so. But you can easily resize them before upload using widely available image browsers/editors. And plenty of them are free to use.

Edwardius wrote: »

these are ridiculously huge!

[...]

Indeed they are. :eek:

dr.fuzzenstein

Edwardius wrote: »

Edit, can I resize images within posts? these are ridiculously huge!

Not as far as I know, I usually resize them using MS Paint in Windows (don't laugh, it works) or Gimp in Linux (it works, but is more awkward). Usually to make sure they are about a maximum of 1000 pixels wide.

Actually, MS Paint is awesome if you just want to crop, resize, paint in an arrow, circle something, some text, most things that you would need to do for about 99% of images posted on any thread online.
Gimp can be very awkward and hard to use for such basic tasks, but then again, it's Linux, I would expect nothing less from Linux.