Your fleet running reports

[mik]

So with a 60% rear torque bias, the e-tron is very happy to play drifty-slidey in the snow. Although you have to turn the stability controls completely off.

Instant response makes it very easy, but it is weird doing noiseless drifts....

[V8Granite]

Mercedes A180D has a nice engine and gearbox combination but a horrible throttle pedal, it’s all or nothing and horribly calibrated.
Numb steering.
MASSIVELY over-servoed brakes.
Horrible interior with every button ever produced and a confusing interface which is so in-intuitive I simply ran out of patience to try and get the basics working.
Plus the moulded head rests are too close to my head so I can’t stretch at all in the seat.

New car on Monday which will hopefully be a Golf or Astra.

Dave!

[GG.]

Wetwang

Please tell me that's an actual placename.

Oh yeah! A mere 20 miles from where I grew up

Smart passed its MoT today. Bit touch and go as it had a tyre pressure warning message and light (despite the pressures being fine) which I understand could be a fail these days.

As it turned out (nervous googling whilst I waited) all it needed was a ‘reset’ and the message went away. Kwik fit didn’t seem to notice...

[Jimexpl]

Pretty sure my cambelt idler bearing just what itself and took the cambelt with it. One dead Defender.

Will get it recovered home and then decide what to do once I’m back from work in 3.5 weeks

Dave!

Bummer, but swapping in a good s/h engine should be fairly quick & easy ?

A week ago I could have sold you a Touareg

There are no good second hand 200tdis about sadly, I’d rather rebuild it and take my time. Maybe aim for the giddy heights of 150hp and a bigger turbo

Dave!

Is it still viable to put the 2.8 (TGV?) engines in? I remember being impressed by a brief drive in one about a decade ago, with a non-standard turbo.

[V8Granite]

It is but I’d need new chassis mounts and it’s not a big enough leap over what I have.

Really it’s the standard engine Defenders should have had for the ROW market imo.

Dave!

[Delphi]

Actually managed to get a job done on the 928 this weekend. Successfully replaced the LCD display in the clock. Apparently, a lot of people swap out the entire clock. The new display cost me £20 and the whole job took me 30 minutes vs > £100 for a second hand clock.

[Mito Man]

What does the red exclamation mark button do?

[Jimmy Choo]

What does the red exclamation mark button do?

Fart detector.

[Delphi]

What does the red exclamation mark button do?

That's the error clear button. If there's a problem there's a big red exclamation light that comes on at the top of the instrument panel. Pressing that button clears it. It's basically telling the car you've seen the error.

[Mito Man]

That's cool, like on airplanes!

[Delphi]

That's cool, like on airplanes!

Considering the car was designed in the 70's, the engineering on the 928 is amazing.

[Explosive Newt]

Found some greeny algae lurking on the recesses of the hood canvas of the Boxster after it had been parked over Christmas for a month or so. I had been a bit measly with the Autoglym water-proofing stuff and probably not got it right to the edges, I think. Scrubbed it away at the time but took advantage of today being the first vaguely dry day for weeks to re-clean and re-proof the roof, covering over the adjacant paintwork so I could spray it all over properly.

[Sundayjumper]

I'm not celebrating just yet, but I'm feeling fairly hopeful. Having connected a code reader that will give me the camshaft deviation measures, it is reporting 0 & 3. Acceptable tolerance is ±6. Posts I've found about engines needing cam chains, people have been reporting camshaft deviations of 12 degrees or more when the chain is definitely knackered. This is making me think it does not need a new cam chain

After thoroughly clearing the errors I took it for a 20 min drive and nothing came up.

I'm suspecting electrical gremlins. Several times it has baulked at starting, then been fine on the next try. Dying batteries can apparently cause all kinds of electrical weirdness on these. The car's possibly been sitting a while and cold weather will finish off a battery that's a bit so-so. Maybe a slightly iffy cam sensor and a slightly iffy battery are combining to give slightly iffy readings to the ECU ? I've left it on a battery conditioner overnight to make sure it's fully charged and I'll see what happens tomorrow.

A9E84335-751F-4892-8835-CBCFFA03BCFB.jpeg (122.44 KiB) Viewed 1857 times

P.S. I bought a Cayenne S

P.P.S And a Mini Cooper S

[DeskJockey]

No messing about then!

[jamcg]

I'm not celebrating just yet, but I'm feeling fairly hopeful. Having connected a code reader that will give me the camshaft deviation measures, it is reporting 0 & 3. Acceptable tolerance is ±6. Posts I've found about engines needing cam chains, people have been reporting camshaft deviations of 12 degrees or more when the chain is definitely knackered. This is making me think it does not need a new cam chain

After thoroughly clearing the errors I took it for a 20 min drive and nothing came up.

I'm suspecting electrical gremlins. Several times it has baulked at starting, then been fine on the next try. Dying batteries can apparently cause all kinds of electrical weirdness on these. The car's possibly been sitting a while and cold weather will finish off a battery that's a bit so-so. Maybe a slightly iffy cam sensor and a slightly iffy battery are combining to give slightly iffy readings to the ECU ? I've left it on a battery conditioner overnight to make sure it's fully charged and I'll see what happens tomorrow.


A9E84335-751F-4892-8835-CBCFFA03BCFB.jpeg


P.S. I bought a Cayenne S

P.P.S And a Mini Cooper S

My van on low battery causes abs fault and engine management lights and also puts the engine in limp mode so entirely possible a good charge will sort it. Modern cars do not like anything other than full batteries

[Sundayjumper]

I've not tried the car again yet, it's cold & raining and I'm a wuss. I'll do it later.

There's a receipt with the car for a new battery in late 2014. I'd expect more than six years from a battery but I don't know how the car has been used. I also come across a blog post claiming anything other than OEM or Bosch will cause problems. I've always used Bosch as my default so I'll run with that theory. I've just ordered a nice new Bosch battery. £120 delivered. Very reasonable.

[V8Granite]

I’d look at the auxiliary battery aswell or at least see where it’s connected. Mine was behind the main battery so made sense to change both.

I’ve got an OBD power supply cable aswell which is handy for battery swaps etc.

Dave!

[Sundayjumper]

It doesn't seem to have an aux battery. In the Touareg it was under the spare wheel (main battery is under the passenger seat) but there's nothing there.

[V8Granite]

It doesn't seem to have an aux battery. In the Touareg it was under the spare wheel (main battery is under the passenger seat) but there's nothing there.

Dashboard out job then haha

Dave!

[Sundayjumper]

<happy dance>

I've just been out and started it from dead cold with a fully charged battery and there's no errors. Both camshaft deviations at 0 degrees.

A new battery will be no bad thing anyway. I might even do cam & crank sensors as a precautionary measure.