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

[Michel]

So CitroJim is false advertising, it should be CitronissJim I'm shocked.....

Not really Ryan, not when you own two Citroëns

You need a Japanese car to save your sanity when the Frenchies break down..

[CitroJim]

Hold on a minute, Since when did you start driving a Nissan Pixo Jim!! Not impressed

Just as a back story Ryan, Pix has been in our family since brand-new... It was my dad's last car, he gave it to Sian, my youngest, on her 17th birthday. She learned to drive in it and passed her driving test first time in it...

She then ran it for several years until she fully settled in London and no longer needed it so I took it under my wing and use it for short forays into MK these days and for Sian when she occasionally needs it when she's home for the weekend...

So, Pix is a bit special to both Sian and I...

Pix is quite low mileage. less than 40K in 14 years and has only ever consumed an alternator and a battery... Not the most exciting of cars but rock-solid and reliable to a fault... As an Indian built Japanese car should be. It's based on a Suzuki Alto...

[Zelandeth]

Perfect weather today for working on cars. Not.



However I had noticed a very pronounced smell of raw fuel when in the general vicinity of the P6, leading me to believe that the mechanical pump was leaking - again.

Given that we've already had several fireworks land on our roof and driveway from idiots launching them (often in the middle of the day, why?), this wasn't something I was willing to leave until the weather got better. Especially given that looking at the forecast that's not going to happen until sometime around June 2024.

The degree to which the pump had decided to leak became immediately apparent when I looked in the drip tray and discovered that it had dumped well over a gallon of fuel over the last day and a bit.



So in we went. Again.

This complete and utter pain in the tail has now permanently been relieved of duty.



Well, aside from plugging the hole in the block until the replacement pump and blanking plate are here anyway.

Temporary electric pump has now been secured reasonably solidly by attaching it to the washer bottle with several zip ties. I'm not proud of it, but it's only going to be in here for about a week or two and it's not going anywhere.



Also brought some sanity to the wiring - which literally was just stuff I had grabbed from the box of random bits of wiring to test the theory that I had issues with the mechanical pump a good few days back. I'll be completely redoing this for the new pump once it's installed (and I figure out where power will be sourced from), so I just chopped off the excess and routed things a bit more sensibly for now.



Oh, and added a fuse - which makes me somewhat less nervous.



Apologies for the duct tape. Didn't have any insulated connectors on hand and given it was absolutely tipping it down when I did this, getting out the heat gun and necessary extension lead to run it seemed a poor decision...so duct tape it is. Note again, this is a short term workaround, NOT a proper fix. It may end up getting attacked with heat shrink tubing anyway as it's making my teeth itch.

At least as things stand it's in a state where the car can safely be run like this until the new pump is fitted and even more importantly is no longer actively leaking fuel.

[CitroJim]

Gosh, that's a lot of fuel to loose overnight Zel! Think of the cost

Amazing the weather, when I got home I could see it had been wet - oddly, where I was in Leicestershire it was dry for most of the day and only started raining when I was halfway home... We even had warm sunshine!

[Zelandeth]

Gosh, that's a lot of fuel to loose overnight Zel! Think of the cost

Amazing the weather, when I got home I could see it had been wet - oddly, where I was in Leicestershire it was dry for most of the day and only started raining when I was halfway home... We even had warm sunshine!

The cost is annoying, but it was the safety aspect (and environmental as I'm sure it wasn't all landing in the drip tray given the awkward shape of where it was leaking on to) that was bothering me the most!

Current fight? Car insurance yet again. After nearly a week I finally managed to wrestle a confirmation of my no claims discount out of Adrian Flux from the cancelled policy from the Caddy. I've never known a company fight me quite so much in letting me actually cancel a policy...none of your sales nonsense is going to change the fact that I've SOLD THE CAR the policy relates to! Also managed to cost me nearly £50 in fees somehow, based on prior experience with them can't say I'm surprised.

Now having five years (which should be 15 if it weren't due to a prior foul up on the part of Adrian Flux - and people wonder why I don't like them) NCB available, I'd like to apply this to the policy on the Peugeot, because you know...saving money. Not expecting it to be much, but as it's costing me the best part of £700 a year every little helps.

Now here I'm running into another headache. That isn't a change which you can make to the policy using any of the options to edit things through 1st Central's web portal. So I phoned them...apparently their online only policies are something handled completely separately so they can't make changes to it over the phone. I'll need to use the web chat thing to ask for assistance. Guess what's currently not working...Just going to go bash my head against a wall a few dozen times. The operator on the phone said that one option would be to just cancel and recreate a policy with the new details...For which the quote she gave me was £130 more expensive than the existing one...with exactly the same details, just plus five years of NCB applied. Obviously plus the various fees which would be incurred. I had to try really hard to continue being civil at that point.

Why seemingly with the singular exception of Hagerty are insurance companies so utterly impossible to deal with?

[myglaren]

Never had the slightest problem with LV and they are always very pleasant and helpful to speak with, answer the call very quickly and only deal with one person, no being sassed around for different things.
My last change was to drop the C5 and replace it with the Civic. No charge.

[Zelandeth]

Never had the slightest problem with LV and they are always very pleasant and helpful to speak with, answer the call very quickly and only deal with one person, no being sassed around for different things.
My last change was to drop the C5 and replace it with the Civic. No charge.

I did specifically look at them when I took out this policy but their quote was nearly double what I ended up with.

[CitroJim]

I must say, like you Steve, I've had absolutely perfect service from LV in all the many years I've been with them - they have both my modern car multi, breakdown and my house insurance - and they always come up competitive for me. I've been with them so long they were called Norman Frizzell when I took out my first motor policy with them back in 1976. Chosen as they offered (and still do) special rates for Civil Servants and dad had always been with them.

Ditto Adrian Flux... Never any issue. I have always found them friendly and helpful on the phone and very reasonable in terms of cost. Bluebell is insured with them...

[Zelandeth]

Have heard praise of LV from quite a few folks. Just they sadly couldn't offer an even vaguely competitive quote for this. Which seems to be a common theme - the Partner in the eyes of at least most insurers is treated as a van, so a huge chunk of your normal choices either won't touch it at all or will seriously load the premium.

I'm perfectly happy to pay a few quid extra if a provider has come highly recommended or I've had good experiences with before - but doubling the price of an already steep quote isn't going to happen.

[Zelandeth]

In better news, the P6 actually successfully completed a trip to and from Screwfix today to grab a couple of things without any qualifying statements like "It made it, but..." or anything. Yes...only about 2 miles all in, but I'll take it!

Notable that running the electric pump that I can put the choke in a LOT earlier than I had previously been able to, and while it wasn't really a long enough trip to tell for certain it looked like she might be running a touch cooler, both things which make me think that she had been running with an artificially lean mixture even when I believed the pump to be properly working before it completely failed.

[CitroJim]

Excellent news Zel That's great to hear!

[Rp0thejester]

I moved from A Plan who is now part of Howdens. I saved £400 by changing to Kwik Fit. There is cheap insurance out there if you look for it. Yes comparison sites help but don't forget to ring them...

[CitroJim]

I moved from A Plan who is now part of Howdens.

The same Howdens who supplied my new kitchen? If so, a bizarre combination of businesses

[Zelandeth]

Given the weather I've not been doing too much car related this last few days. Especially as family are off work this week so I've been trying to be social.

Wanted to tick something off today though as a few parts have recently turned up.

First up was this functionally unimportant but visually annoying issue in the cabin.





Much better.

Little details, but that was something which drew my eye every time I opened the door so I'm glad to have sorted.

The new fuel pump is now here. Not actually fitted yet, but have had a ponder where it's likely to go. This is currently looking to be favourite. It's an otherwise unused void, and is about as far away from the heat of the engine as I can get.



Should be pretty invisible once installed there as well rather than being up by the ignition coil where it would be rather in your face.

Final job for the day was investigating the lack of a working heater blower, or at least the most simple possible cause of said problem. Actually getting to the blower as far as I can tell basically means removing the heater box, which comes out from the outside. Fun. That WILL likely need to happen either way as the foam seals on the air distribution flaps will inevitably have decomposed to near nothing by now.

For a change I decided to actually follow the rules for and check for simple faults first. I've had a bunch of faults tracked so far to poor connections in the fuse box, so I really should look there first.

Oh look...



Sure enough, wiggling that fuse resulted in the blower motor springing back to life. Not making any horrible noises (yet) and it's working on both speeds. Seems to be moving an acceptable amount of air for a ventilation system from this era.

While they're *supposed* to be on separate fuses, this switch lighting up suggests that the rear window demister has also been tied into the same fuse.



That obviously won't have been helping the situation with regards to overheating contacts in the fuse box.

Given I've found several contacts in that fuse box to have issues I can see it being replaced going forward. Especially as I'd like to add a couple of additional separately fused feeds in the future. I'd also rather be using blade fuses simply because the old glass ones are difficult to get hold of in an emergency these days. I do always try to keep spares in the car, but Murphy's Law states that the one day you need one in the middle of a trip will be the one day you borrowed the spares for something else. I'd really rather be reliant on spares that I can pick up at any Halfords or even most motorway services in a pinch rather than something I need to order in specifically. The only factor I've found around here which still carries them on the shelf is a 40 mile round trip away.

Those Scotchlocks will obviously also be getting filed under B for "bin" once I've tracked down what they're feeding and come up with a more professional solution.

Speaking of things lighting up, this one randomly decided to start working today.



It's not worked on either of the door switches until today. I like self-healing faults!

Having a working heater blower though makes the car a lot more usable outside just the summer months as it means I've half a chance of actually keeping the windscreen demisted on a rainy day.

[CitroJim]

I'm loving seeing this car come back to life and various ancillaries waking up from long slumbers