Been a while since anything has gone wrong on the mighty tardis! But currently has a few niggles...
Firstly, the boost gauge conked last night when i too her for a spin for the first time in a week. I tried seeking out a leak in the vacuum tubing and in doing so have found a large crack by the T-junction next to the battery. Have ordered 4m of silicon tubing from Elkparts, so that'll be Monday's job I feel! I'm not sure if that crack was the casue of the problem in the first place, or whether I made it while trying to jiggle the connections around! Oh well, we shall see on Monday!
The other ongoing issues are the headlamp wipers which have both died and refuse to park properly, the sheared manifold studs (I can tell they will be expensive!), and the air distribution flap which I have still yet to fix. Oh well, it will be an expensive new year I feel!
Well last week I had a thoroughly unenjoyable experience at Neo Bros up in North London, getting Cruise Control retro fitted. For starters they quoted me the wrong price (£80 when it turned into more like £240) and then decreed that it would take a couple of hours, which turned into 4 long and rather dull waiting room hours. Less than impressive service!
But on the plus side, I now have cruise control, and it works like a charm! It also seems to have helped me push my average mpg up as well. Coming back from gigs in the evening, with the cruise at 75, I get approx 33-34mpg rather than the 27 or 28 I'd get under my own steam. Handy!
Well, a strange explanation but it seems to be fixed! It's all down to the light bulbs! I had blown a bulb in the brakelight cluster and replaced it with the wrong sort from Halfords. Doh! Apparently using the wrong bulb sends the wrong voltage back down through the ignition or something which totally confuses the entire system! Very odd! But thank goodness for that, normal service is resumed...
I had a gig last night at Jagz in Ascot, and afterwards the Tardis started misbehaving herself! In three very odd ways...
Firstly, whenever I put my foot on the brake pedal, the sidelights and dash lights (but only in the instrument binnacle) came on! The brake lights also worked and the pictogram showed nothing out of the ordinary. When I put the lights on properly, ordinary behaviour resumed, but when I turned them off it went odd again.
Also, on my way home the boost randomly started topping out at about 1/4 of the way along the orange bar... it felt quite a bit slower, but when I opened the window I couldn't hear anything out of the ordinary, either on acceleration or over-run. The boost gauge still showed vaccum on over-run and a bit on idle too.
And the last thing is the temp gauge... It is usually very well behaved and sits bang on halfway, more or less stock still.
Last night it would get to halfway and then very quickly fall down about a cm (to about 8 o'clock). Like a very sharp needle movement (enough to catch your eye when driving). Then over the course of about 15 seconds it would climb back up to halfway and then drop again. It kept doing this all the way back, even after I stopped, switched off the ignition for a few mins, and kept going. As if that'd help! :-)
Very strange! Even stranger was that when I went to Sainsburies this morning she worked fine, no hint of any problems at all!
Hmmm.
Well, that turned out a bit more expensive than I'd have liked. The wingmirror motor wasn't fine at all and needed replacing! Ace Acton did it for me though, charged £96 for the motor (Ouch! Shame Eurocarparts didn't have any stock, I should've got it from somewhere else really. Never mind, lessons learned and all that!) so in addition to the £43 for the mirror glass, it's been a pretty steep exercise all told!
I've also noticed something else that needs fixing, the air distribution on the ACC doesn't actually seem to do anything. Regardless of the setting, it always comes out of the floor and dash vents together only. At the moment it's not much of a problem, although I will need to get it fixed before winter when the windscreen is more likely to need demisting!
Damn! Only had her less than a month and already her first battle scar... my drivers side wingmirror got clobbered by a monkey in a Saxo coming over Chertsey Bridge. Doh! It looks like it's only the mirror glass that's smashed, the rest all looks OK... Hmmm...
With the help of my mate Tim, and the friendly bloke at "Wicks" in Leicester, the dashboard lighting rheostat is now fixed! Having freshly resoldered the connectors, we drove back from Leicester to London last night, with the flickering dash lights fixed! Next stop, the interior temp sensor, which doesn't quite appear to be working 100% properly. The ACC blows out very cold air when on the LO setting, but when on 17 or up, the air is pretty warm for the first 20 minutes or so of the journey, before settling on the right temperature. Probably just needs degriming!