OV9

Alex88 wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 7:02 pm Currently waiting for the Mini to be recovered. Cooling issue and overheated while driving.

FFS!

Mini has been collected and delivered to the garage. Apparently it started fine, barely any smoke, and drove onto and off the lorry without issue.

Fingers crossed the leak can be fixed and no actual damage has occurred.

Garage found the issue - cracked oil cooler assembly. Apparently £300 or so to fix.

Hopefully the car runs ok post repair despite the overheating

Edit: car is back already and driving fine. Fingers crossed it resumes normal duties.

Jaguar XF 3.0D Porftolio S a-cad-and-a-bounder edition

It was MOT time today, and although I was confident I had a good one, well it's a Jag, and you just never know. It's on 77k miles now having put about 14k on it since I bought it in May last year. I absolutely love it and has given me very little trouble.

Thankfully today was no different, and aside from a number plate light out that I hadn't spotted, it went through with no advisories. I need to get it to J-Cat in Norwich for a gearbox service, but I'm currently spewing money into fixing Will's motorbike so that can wait a bit.

The guy who did the test even commented "you've got a good one here", which is good to know.

It'll probably explode tomorrow.

BMW R1250 GS TE Triple Black never-been-offroad edition

The rear tyre was square, so time for a change.

Last time I swapped the factory fit Michelin Annakee Adventure tyres for slightly more road oriented Metzler Tourance. I didn't like them ultimately, and although they gripped well enough in wet and dry, it needed more of a shove to tip the bike into corners than I liked. I also felt I'd lost a bit of utility on the crappy grass-up-the-middle lanes we have around here. It's too heavy for me to want to go full on green-laning on it, but loose gravel/dirt roads are not hard to find in my general riding area.

So I decided to order a set of the latest Annakee Adventure 2 tyres to replace them. I got a text from my tyre guy this morning to say they were in, so I went out to the garage to remove the wheels and found the rear was completely flat. Good timing then. Hopefully have them back on later today or tomorrow, and out scrubbing them in at the weekend.

Alex88 wrote: Tue Mar 10, 2026 3:38 pm Garage found the issue - cracked oil cooler assembly. Apparently £300 or so to fix.

Hopefully the car runs ok post repair despite the overheating

Edit: car is back already and driving fine. Fingers crossed it resumes normal duties.

Good grief, that didn't take long. 25 miles later and it's back in limp mode. This time it's the wastegate actuator.

4 years or so with no issues whatsoever and it's now literally one problem after another

Alex88 wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2026 7:15 pm

Alex88 wrote: Tue Mar 10, 2026 3:38 pm Garage found the issue - cracked oil cooler assembly. Apparently £300 or so to fix.

Hopefully the car runs ok post repair despite the overheating

Edit: car is back already and driving fine. Fingers crossed it resumes normal duties.

Good grief, that didn't take long. 25 miles later and it's back in limp mode. This time it's the wastegate actuator.

4 years or so with no issues whatsoever and it's now literally one problem after another

The garage probably didn’t put something back together right….

It does all seem very coincidental, for sure. They also gave the car back following PCV valve replacement and the VVT solenoids were spitting oil because the o-rings were missing!

There's another shop near me that I know is good. I'll take it there instead.

Car has done 350miles the last few days, not a grumble, >33mpg door to door both ways, etc, although I am regretting not getting the cruise control sorted. Need to get that arranged - was too easy to drop it into third, drop to 40mph and fucking punch it to check the rev limiter was working - watched the MPG go from 34.6 to 33.2 after a couple of those after nearly 300 miles, apparently it drinks a lot when you kick it hard

Also, a couple of american colleagues were over, one of which I discovered is a major car nut (has a tweeked G-series M3 with >500bhp@wheels that he exitedly showed me pics of) and he had spotted my Z4C in the car park and was taking pics of it before I told him that it was mine, and he was welcome to just have a good sniff about it at lunchtime, which we did, and he lit up a like a kid being told he could have any sweetie he wanted from the pic 'n' mix, because those things are so fucking rare over in the states.

So explained how it's a cut 'n' shut E46 with E9x running gear, how it rides, how the engine audio tuning works (pipe form the intake to the cabin, remove foam for mad intake noises), using it to buy cheap wine and kit kats much to the chagrin ot the paint-licking enthusiast types due to it being so rare, etc, and he had the biggest grin on his face, got more pics, etc etc.

By a long sea mile the most positive 'does it do big skids mate' interaction I've had - and with a director too, that never hurts when it comes to clout

Sub update. Decided to buy an all in one underseat sub. Wired it up, turned everything on and nothing. No output from the sub whatsoever. Sub is turning on but no sound from the unit (regular speakers are fine). I then wondered if the Bremen's sub-out was not working so tried using the amp out connectors. Still nothing. Luckily, the sub has wiring for speaker level inputs so I'm going to give that a go next.The sub came with a wiring kit to support that (presumably for factory units that don't have sub out connections) and it will actually be a less complicated cable run if I go that route.

Checked the radiator fan issue and it looks like the coolant temp sensor is borked. Ordered a new one and I'll sort it next week.

Focus written off, just waiting to hear back from gap people now. I think looking for a boring, practicable, cheap to run, reliable everyday car that’s not too boring is the hardest type of car to look for, there’s no “want that one” factor like if you want something performance orientated

jamcg wrote: Fri Mar 13, 2026 5:29 pm Focus written off, just waiting to hear back from gap people now. I think looking for a boring, practicable, cheap to run, reliable everyday car that’s not too boring is the hardest type of car to look for, there’s no “want that one” factor like if you want something performance orientated

Giulia. The Ti's look great, reliable, reasonable money, and you can tell people Ferrari designers were involved with it.

6 series had some slight knocking underneath. I couldn’t feel any play in anything but the cheapest and easiest part to replace was the sway bar bushes. On RealOEM 3,4,5,6,7 series all have different part numbers and then M sport, sport, diesel etc have different part numbers again whereas the aftermarket seems to be one size fits all
So I went to BMW even though the part is no longer available and they had 3 left in the whole country. The old bushes whilst not perished almost fell out of the housing and the new ones were a bastard to squeeze in and the car doesn’t rattle anymore so I guess they just rubbed away. Happy that gamble worked.

After having an absolutely fantastic run with a X3M which was struggling on the corners but launching away laughably. Firstly a nice bit of driving and what a ridiculous turn of speed. I'd say by 100 metres it would gain ten car lengths and I was exiting the corners a bit faster.

What did happen a few times though was it felt like the PS5 were going off. So today I dropped the tyre pressures to 30psi front and 28 rear and it felt much better. Dropping from 33/31. Possibly warmer weather or I just have a naturally bad set-up. I've a few bits and pieces to change before I get a good alignment as I want to change the tie rods and go to spherical bottom joints.

Roll on cool summer evening drives.

Dave!

Any ideas on how to get a good connection on the CTEK quick connect cable on the earth post?

I slipped a rubber o ring to keep it held down but it’s still not a good connection.
Really just need a battery post terminal but I can’t find a small enough one!

Yeah definitely don't use that.

Why can't you just go onto the battery ?

Dave!

Drives the BMS crazy or something? Might be a myth but I’ve never risked it modern cars!

A loose connection is bad, it needs to be clamped firmly.

The BMS should have no issue with a quality charger.

Dave!

i was about to say, mine is on the battery, but i’m not sure you could call mine a modern car!

I've only ever fitted the CTEK quick connectors directly to the battery. It's madness to do otherwise; you might have a bad earth or something; all the CTEK needs to do is charging the battery directly.

Mine is also directly onto the battery terminals.

I'm not using mine at the moment but I've always gone direct to the battery.