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

[Zelandeth]

Yeah, I'm going to check that. Thing is that it only seems to be noticeable from cold. Any later starts in the day it's seemed fine.

Still somewhat amusing looking at the battery cables in the Xantia compared to the van. The cables in that are about 15mm in diameter and trying to bend them through anything like a sharp bend basically requires you to hang off them with most of your weight.

Probably explains why the system voltage in that doesn't drop further than 11V during cranking (for the 0.5 seconds it usually takes to start it)...still never known an IDI diesel that starts that quickly.

[CitroJim]

Thing is that it only seems to be noticeable from cold. Any later starts in the day it's seemed fine.

That was always how it was all the time I owned her Zel... I do wonder if it's a lazy starter motor?

[Zelandeth]

Possibly! Will see how it is with the new battery. If it's exactly the same I'm not going to worry to be honest, it's not got any worse in the last year and however many thousand miles I've done.

It's a good opportunity to check the battery leads though, tempted to renew the battery terminal clamps anyway while I'm in there as they look like the original ones and if so they're probably past their prime.

[van ordinaire]

Zel, yes, she was always a slow cranker at first... It's worth checking the battery cable terminals crimps again just in case they're going high-resistance... There's a long thread on here somewhere about it...

That'll be "Check your POSITVE battery lead!!" No: 4 in "Citroën"

Glad I'm in such prestigeous company: I've mention a couple of times my Xantia, just occasionally, makes me wonder if it'll start - but it's rarely when it's been standing but the 2nd or 3rd start of the day.

That's a cracking price for a Bosch - shame we can't all go to Costco.

I remember asking about dating batteries, but no one came forward, how do you read/decipher/interpret those codes?

[Michel]

That's a cracking price for a Bosch - shame we can't all go to Costco.

We can. It’s easy to become a member.Turn up, with ID and proof of address, pay your £30 joining fee and there you are.

A lot of guff is spoken about car batteries!

[Zelandeth]

More than happy to pick stuff up for folks on here if there's anything like that which are needed and pass on when you or someone can pick stuff up to relay it to you.

There are quite a few things we get from there, but this was one of those occasions where the membership pretty clearly more or less paid for itself in one shot.

[van ordinaire]

That'll be "Check your POSITIVE battery lead!!" - 4th down in "Citroën"

That's a cracking price for a Bosch; shame we can't all go to Costco, on the strength of our FCF nembership

Nice to know I'm in such illustrious company, 'cos my Xantia, occasionally makes me wonder if it'll start - not something I'm used to (apart from the red Cherokee having had the sulks for 3 months now) BUT not from cold, if it's going to happen, it'll be the 2nd, possibly 3rd, start of the day but I've learned to release the key, turn it to start - & it will, with no hesiation!

[Zelandeth]

New battery in and it appears normal service is resumed.

Recorded the first start so the relative cranking speed could be observed for those who know the car.



What's immediately apparent from the driver's seat is that the dash lights barely dim when cranking now. I did after this start and stop the engine five times in succession, and then checked the battery lead at the crimp for any signs of getting warm. Stone cold...so don't need to worry too much about that just yet. I may well still swap the leads as a preventive measure if I get a quiet weekend at some point. *cue hysterical laughter at the concept of a quiet weekend*

One of the main things I wanted to get done today was a driveway rearrangement. This would get the Activa off the lawn, Lada off to one side, boxed in by Chris' modern company car overnight, and the van boxed in by the Activa overnight. Also means that I won't keep having to ask people to move their cars for me.

First though I needed to properly bleed the clutch on the van as I was sure there was still air in it. This was a simple one...two minute job. However the pedal was still "sinking" over time - and with your head buried in the footwell you can hear the clutch pedal "hissing" as this happens. Oh well, looks like I need a new master cylinder as well then. Not the end of the world, will get one ordered. Access predictably is fine to change it.

Having bunny hopped my way out of the drive I was able to stick the Lada off to one side and put the van where I wanted it...and answer the question nagging at the back of my mind...do I actually have enough space to get a car, the van and still open the garage door?

Just!

Last task for the day, something on the Invacar. Today's task being to sort the main oil leak. This was a bit of an odd one as the cause was the dipstick.

The way this is constructed is that the cap has been brazed onto the rod that makes up the dipstick, which is doubled over to make the handle. The issue I had was that there was obviously a pin hole down the centre of it, and due to the bottom of the dipstick tube being below the oil level in the sump it would "bleed" whenever the engine was running.

After half an hour and the messiest bit of brazing in the history of the world, this was the result.

Engine has actually been running for about 20 minutes there, and no sign of seepage... I'll take that as a win. All the oil on the tinware by the fuel pump is from this leak historically.

The only other leak is this one...

Which is coming from the sump drain plug, just a new copper washer needed hopefully.

Was quite nice in that when I left it sitting on a fast idle for twenty mins or so to check for oil leaks, then opened the door and the cabin was toasty warm...the heater does actually seem to have an effect on the cabin.

Oh, and someone asked me how the door opens/closes on the Invacar, so here's a quick demonstration.



Simple but effective - and I think a solution which saved them from having to provide something heavy duty enough to anchor normal door hinges to, as the "hinge" is effectively attached directly to the chassis. The door stay is attached to the dash support beam.

[CitroJim]

Pleased all is now good after fitting the new battery Zel

[Zelandeth]

Haven't been out anywhere today but started her up earlier today to do the regular fluid checks etc and am glad to report that after sitting overnight the electrons had stayed in the battery where they belonged and she started up as normal.

So it's looking like we did just have a life expired battery.

Of course thanks to you Jim, it's the first car in my memory where getting the battery retaining clip out wasn't a gigantic pain thanks to it having been greased when the last battery went in.

I'm used to battery swaps taking an hour...usually 1 minute actually changing it after 59 minutes swearing at the retaining clip/bracket which has rusted in place during the last 15 years.

[van ordinaire]

That's a cracking price for a Bosch - shame we can't all go to Costco.

We can. It’s easy to become a member.Turn up, with ID and proof of address, pay your £30 joining fee and there you are.

A lot of guff is spoken about car batteries!

Oh, I assumed it was like Mackro & you had to establish some sort trade connection, but they'd accept social club officers/committee members.

[Zelandeth]

Well this evening had a bit of excitement.

Noticed early on that the fridge didn't seem quite as cool as it normally is... wasn't sure if we were imaging it though. However a quick check soon revealed that it wasn't cooling.

Of course this time of year the fridge and freezer are full to bursting. Cue frantic shuffling of everything into our old fridge (the huge double door American style thing in the kitchen came with the house as the seller couldn't fit it into their new house), the chest freezer in the garage, and some overflow into the fridge in the van which is also now cooling.

Cue 30/70% response between "argh, broken thing..." and "yay, an engineering challenge!"

Okay...so quick assessment. No cooling, internal circulator fans running, condenser fan running, compressor not running.

Lower rear cover off (no idea why I keep putting all eight screws back in given I have to take it off every couple of months to clean fluff out of the stupidly designed condenser), compressor is stone cold. All the starting kit and protection circuitry is built into a block on the compressor, only wires to it are a switched power line and a common ground. Initially I wondered if it might have a stuffed start/run cap, but stone cold compressor suggested otherwise.

Quick check, no power getting to it. Now this being a modern unit, it's not just a thermostat and a compressor...there's all manner of microprocessor nonsense involved. Despite this though I was pretty sure that there would be a relay involved in the actual motor control for the compressor. Time to dig into the brains of the operation.

Well...what then followed was a twenty minute argument with the metal cover on the electrical enclosure on top of the fridge. Daft design which consists of two screws on the one side and two totally inaccessible clips. It eventually succumbed to my will when I made it clear that I wasn't *asking* it to open.

Immediately obvious when the cover was opened was the unmistakable whiff of fried electronics. Sure enough it seemed the magic smoke had escaped from something.

Didn't take long...hey look...one crispy relay.

Investigation showed the coil to be open circuit. A further bit of experimental poking, bridging out the contacts resulted in the compressor merrily buzzing into life. Didn't sound laboured or in any way unhealthy...so hopefully just a relay having decided that it's time had come. Two quid later and I've a new relay on the way.

I hate to think how many folks would have binned the thing for this and wound up paying out £800 odd for a new one. It's one of those huge double door American style jobs which cost a fortune for some reason.

Though I do have to ask the question of *why on earth* does a fridge need this much control logic?!?

Simple answer...it doesn't! It's downright ridiculous is what it is.

Hopefully the new relay will restore normality.

Seriously though, couldn't it have waited a couple of weeks?

[CitroJim]

Of course thanks to you Jim, it's the first car in my memory where getting the battery retaining clip out wasn't a gigantic pain thanks to it having been greased when the last battery went in.

That was the result of some epic battles I'be had with battery clamps in the past Zel

Once I needed to apply heat from my little mapp gas kit to release one!

I had some fun with my fridge a week ago too so I can have empathy... Mine was cooling poorly and as it's well over 30 years old I thought its end had come but it was just the usual problem... A buildup of dust in the forced air condenser cooling ducts. I have to blow them clear one a year or so...

Bit of relief as like yours, mine was well stuffed with Christmas fayre!

[Zelandeth]

The condenser on this fridge is an utterly daft design. It's basically a cuboid shaped spiral of finned tubing, and as such it's totally impossible to clean the fluff off anything aside from the outer surface unless you happen to have an industrial strength source of compressed air to hand. All because they wanted to save a few pence over using a proper panel type condenser like you'd see on an industrial one. As such I'm pretty sure the cooling efficiency has suffered from about six months of age onwards. I do my best to keep it clean - when we got it the entire spece behind the cover was just a solid block of fluff and dust. Yet getting in to clean it involves removing eight screws and a panel which has "Caution, no user serviceable parts inside" etc stamped in about ten languages on it. The manual makes no reference anywhere to cleaning the condenser either...Nicely thought out Samsung, good way to ensure people need a new fridge every few years...

I'd planned to do something actually useful this afternoon. However this is me, and I predictably managed to sidetrack myself.

I started out by sorting the sticky heater controls on the Invacar. I discovered that the outer sheaths of the Bowden cables were moving around too much. Their termination at the heater box is what can be best described as "a poor effort" and that was why the cabin heater rarely switched fully off. Securing the cables together has sorted this out.

An added bonus is that the cables now look tidier as well and we all know that this is important.

At this point though I wound up distracting myself. The sheer level of clutter in the car needed to be dealt with...Not least returning the fire extingusher to the bracket it should live on because I was utterly fed up of dropping it, tripping over it, dropping it on my toes etc..

Obviously I hope I'll never need it, but I'll be keeping this one on hand in case. In an actual emergency (especially in a plastic car!) I'd rather have the most effective extinguisher on hand...and I know given a choice between a modern powder extingusher or an old school Halon one which is the one I'd grab. I do however need to find the proper bracket for it, it's obviously been changed here to accommodate a later powder one which is taller.

Once I'd cleared most of the clutter out it clearly revealed how filthy the interior was...so that then needed to be scrubbed up.

It's a slightly less unpleasant place to be now at least.

I had hoped that I could get the panel behind the sun visor out. The fabric covering has disintegrated and I want to sort that. To be honest it's just a solid sheet of aluminium so just paint will do and would look better than shredded fabric. Getting access to the heater/choke control box (which I want to paint) requires removal of this part too I believe. Unfortunately the mounting screws are totally seized in place, so I'll probably need to drill them out at some point. At least there are only two.

[van ordinaire]

Zel, just keep that fridge going because electronic one are old hat now - the latest ones are "smart" -to what end, I can't imagine!