Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[CitroJim]

Should have been clearer - it's not a specifically radio issue (in fact, haven't got as far as plugging an antenna in yet), it's just audio playback in general. The issue is that it *sounds* like you're listening to a station that just needs the tuning tweaked a little bit - specifically that slight sibilance on vocals being the most noticeable issue.

Zel, been thinking about this... Sounds like a power supply or decoupling problem to me. I'd be checking the usual suspects - electrolytics...

Mike, nice Ford They really had style back in those days... Shame they lost it and never really found it again

[Zelandeth]

Good thought Jim.

To be honest I don't think I've ever even had the cover off that amp...maybe time to do so!

[Zelandeth]

Hmm...

Lada just flooded again, moment I touched the throttle to pull out of the Motorserv car park.

Eventually chugged back into life in a huge cloud of smoke (yay for having a massive battery!), cleared it's throat when I revved the nuts off it for a second - and behaved impeccably for the rest of the way home.

Hmm...

[CitroJim]

The injector might be intermittently sticking open Zel... having seen just how much it injects on idle even a short session of sticking would flood the inlet manifold...

I wonder if it might be worth having the injector ultrasonically cleaned?

[Zelandeth]

Certainly possible and not a bad thought Jim.

I do have an ultrasonic cleaner as well, usefully!

Also hopefully have a spare throttle body and injector soon too. Getting the injector out of the throttle body is just a case of undoing two bolts and pulling it out from what I recall.

[Zelandeth]

Audio progress.

Misbehaving amp has almost definitely been traced to the source switch, as it was noticed that the 8-track (currently on aux) was only working on one channel, and then was exhibiting similar symptoms to the turntable a moment later - until I worked it back and forwards across all settings a bunch of times. Definitely needs cleaning though.

Will see if I can get some Servisol into it without totally dismantling the switch first. Good opportunity to generally de-dust and check over the amp anyway, as mentioned earlier, I don't think I've ever had the cover off it, despite having used it daily for a decade!

[Zelandeth]

Found another virtually new but disintegrating hose - main circuit PCV line this time. Has turned to plastic it feels like. Changed it. Sadly not sure of its origins as there are no markings on it aside from "1639" which suggests a late 2016 production date.

Time to find a supplier of proper good quality silicone hoses I think (including the oil resistant ones for the PCV hose). Fed up with this nonsense.

Spent a good ten minutes drooling over a K plate Cherokee Limited SE in Morrison's car park this afternoon. Absolutely mint condition, and pretty much exactly as I'd have specced it even down to the colour and the lighter than usual wood on the dash. Did have a chat with the owner, sadly they have no intention of selling it - in their words "what else could I replace it with?" Fair question, as I agreed very much the same was true of the Lada for me.

[Hell Razor5543]

Spent a good ten minutes drooling over a K plate Cherokee Limited SE in Morrison's car park this afternoon. Absolutely mint condition...

So I take it there was a hole through the middle?

[Zelandeth]

Spent a good ten minutes drooling over a K plate Cherokee Limited SE in Morrison's car park this afternoon. Absolutely mint condition...

So I take it there was a hole through the middle?

Shush you...no, that would be the one I went to look at at the weekend. Reckon it had more rust than my old VW camper.

...and that had been sitting under a tree a couple of hundred yards from the coast for eight years.

[van ordinaire]

A. in & around MK - Volvo estate!

Where DO you find these rotten XJ's? Must be something in the air up there. Oh, & the pre-facelifts seem less prone to rust (especially the tailgate! )

[Zelandeth]

Dunno, Van! Just unlucky I guess.

Been almost tempted by that one that's just been relisted on eBay (think this is the third time) that's been painted orange. Only downsides for me are that it doesn't have leather and it's 230 odd miles away, which is a long way to go to look at a car. Think the paintwork has put a lot of people off as it's always finished reasonably cheap...if it were closer I'd probably take a look. The fact that it's been relisted several times warrants careful examination anyway - though we all know how many timewasters there are about these days.

Had the Lada out a few times today and it's behaved. Throttle response seems markedly better since the ECU reset, so fingers crossed that might have sorted things out...

My other half was out having fun yesterday, finally got around to using the experience day voucher we bought him a while back, so was seen belting around the outer circuit on Dunsfold Aerodrome in a Lamborghini Aventador.

Much as I'd rather do it in something like a Muira, do admit to being a bit jealous. On the other side of the coin, I've driven a Ferrari F-40, so really shouldn't complain! Forever the car on my list with the most comically exaggerated turbo lag.

Meant to spend some time on car stuff this afternoon, but managed to literally lose about three hours trying to bring some degree of sanity to the photos directory on my PC.

Wouldn't mind so much save for the fact that my screensaver pulls random images from it - and sideways ones appearing drive my OCD mad...so I have to find and rotate them all. I'll get there eventually.

Not sure if the cars will see much attention this week, got several other tasks lined up. The main one is (finally) routing cabling throughout the house to enable wired networking. I officially ran out of patience last week.

The biggest headache at this point looks to be getting from the master bedroom into the loft. Originally I'd just planned to replace the aerial socket in here with an ethernet one - but there's no access to the wall cavity from the loft...so that suddenly becomes a lot harder to execute. I have visions of me trying to cut an access hole from above and instead of finding the wall cavity, ending up in the room...

Once I've got access to the loft it's pretty simple - especially as I don't mind the socket in my room just being on the ceiling in the corner, so not being able to get into the wall isn't really a problem.

Need to apply some thought to this one.

Once I've got the cable into there, it's a pretty easy job to just install a proper WiFi access point in my room where the network switch lives. Maybe slightly awkward to route onward cable to the server - but I've got a few ideas there. I'm not totally dismissing just moving the server to the loft to be honest...thanks to the old TV aerial amp and the security system control box there's readily available power there at least...

...if I can neatly get an ethernet cable from the router to the loft... that's the tricky bit at this point. It's the master bedroom and I'm forbidden from routing messy cables round the place or up the walls. So I really need to find a way to get into the wall cavity.

[MikeT]

Sorry to butt in Zel but on the ethernet problem...
(I don't like them and I don't use them and consider them a very last resort) but my sister installed those RJ45 sockets that use the mains ring as a conduit for my mum's router and they seem to at least work reliably (though I haven't tested it for perfection) and to date (a few years now) known it to never be a problem. As you have power in the loft, perhaps this option would save you running the cable?

ie like this https://www.mymemory.co.uk/d-link-1000m ... gJIq_D_BwE

[Zelandeth]

Sadly power line networking isn't an option here really due to two things - the length of distance involved, and that the two wings of the house are on different circuits. From memory the power up in the loft is tapped off the lighting circuit in that wing as well rather than one of the (four I think!) ring mains. There's always a bit of an ish factor here as they fitted a new consumer unit shortly before we bought the place, but never bothered to label any of the breakers. Helpful.

Tried it, and it still works - but is just as intermittent as a poor WiFi signal, so defeats the purpose of the object. The fact that it also wipes out AM radio reception for a good distance in every direction is also an issue.

It's the size and shape of the house that's the real issue. It's shaped like a capital L, and the BT socket (hence the router) is riiiiiight down the one end. The issue at the other end isn't so much signal strength, but quality (I'm guessing due to thermal insulation film in the walls) as there seems to be a lot of signal reflection issues looking at the recieved signal on a scope.

Unfortunately the main TV is at the furthest possible point from there, and it means that things attached (like the Chromecast which links into the NAS and our media library) that need network access are at best, twitchy.

It's going to be a faff to do, but once I've routed the cabling the hard wired network should just be fit and forgot. Once it's done I'll set up "north and south wing" wireless networks on different channels, and that should be the end of it.

[van ordinaire]

Don't know if it's the colour or the price - or a combination of both that's putting people off; I mean for a week-end off-road toy the colour's irrelevant - & might even be a plus. While many prospective vendors have a vastly over-inflated idea of what an XJ is worth, that one is almost too cheap. On the other hand, providing it'll scrape through another MoT, how could you go wrong?

You've left it a bit late to view it - even last night when I read your blog, too late to give a response any thought! If you'd let me know earlier (preferable in advance of a week-end I'd have the C15 down in Devon) I might have been able to pop over the Tamar; ironically I was supposed to be going down to Cornwall this(?) w/e for a bumper I'd found on ebay BUT, typically, forgot the end date.

[Zelandeth]

Sorry Van! Didn't even think about the fact that there are folks on here down that way. To be honest I'd not be dragging other folks into this at the moment - especially as I still need to shift two cars. If it was local I'd have taken a look just on the off chance that it could be too good a bargain to pass up.

Today I have mostly spent standing on my head in the lofts. What really saved my bacon at the end of the day was that the pipework for the solar panels runs down the corner of the bedroom and into the loft - so there's a little 45 degree "wedge" in the corner that acts as a duct to hide that pipework. Turned out that there was a tiny gap in the loft where I could *just* get a cable into, likewise when I cut a hole in it level with the adjacent sockets, I just had enough depth available to situate the network socket faceplate. I didn't bother with anything as fancy through in my room and just stuck the network socket in the ceiling as it was by far the easiest option!

Just need to tidy the wiring in my room up a bit, then can call phase 1 complete. Next headache is getting a cable through to where the server lives... that's a challenge for another day though. There must be a way, as when they installed the burglar alarm Comms lines were routed through to there - so my main line of investigation is to figure out what route those take.