Your fleet running reports

[John]

Caterham K-series owners must be positively chilling in this weather compared to drivers of the Ford Sigma and Duratec variants. The exhaust, cat and manifold located on the driver's side make them a bit toasty in the footwell/leg area

[integrale_evo]

It doesn’t have catalysts, but I don’t really enjoy driving the ‘sud if it’s over 25c. You can get ok airflow into the cabin as long as you’re moving, but lack of insulation means lots heat soak through the bulkhead and floor, plus lots of clear glass for its size and thin pillars mean it’s a bit like a greenhouse!

[Sundayjumper]

M3 - MOT passed last week, no advisories. But they reckon the emissions are quite high? Not sure why, it had a new airfilter and oil change over winter and I run it on SUL. 1400 miles between MOTs, so pretty low amount of miles.

Small air leak ? My Compact had high emissions, eventually traced to a slightly leaky exhaust manifold gasket. In between pulses of exhaust gas you get a slight vacuum as the momentum of the gases pulls against the now-closed valves, it draws a little air in, the lamba sensor reads the excess oxygen as meaning the engine is running lean and the ECU pumps more fuel to try and compensate.

In this case diagnosed by listening very very carefully and noticing a ticking noise. On removing the gaskets the leak was obvious.

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[integrale_evo]

Did a little reading, whipped out the jets on my carbs and found they were 115s. The twin carb alfasuds come with 130 or 135s.

As the engine is standard other than the carbs stuck on top I decided to go with 130s. A whole £12 for a set of genuine Weber ones - for my £130 a pair Chinese copy carbs

They take literally seconds to pull out the old tubes, swap the jets, then screw back in.

All of the stutters, hesitations and farts back through the carbs on part throttle transitions are gone, it drives superbly, really happy. No bogging, at any rpm, never expected it to be so good.

I still can’t quite get it to idle as smoothly and consistently as I’d ultimately like, but it’s fine. Perfectly useable. If that’s the only compromise I need to make then I’m happy!

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[Sundayjumper]

An annoying issue has cropped up on the M5. I started a new job on Monday (yay) which sadly means going to the office three days pw (boo).

Monday - went to & from work no problem. Had a Coronation Chicken sandwich for lunch.

Tuesday morning - car started fine but warned of battery discharging overnight.

Tuesday lunchtime - popped over to the other site, car was fine. I'd brought my own sandwiches: egg & bacon mayo on thick tiger bread.

Tuesday hometime - car warned of battery discharging. Got home fine. I watched the system voltage and it was rock-steady at 13.6V while driving.

Wednesday - WFH. I think it was cheese & ham. Late evening I went to get something from the car and it was DEAD. So dead that my regular charger wouldn't even recognise it as being connected. And obvs. with a dead battery I couldn't open the boot to get at it . Connected my better charger to the jump start points ion the engine bay and left it overnight.

Thursday morning - it had enough juice to open the boot, so that I could disconnect the battery and attach the charger directly.

Thursday lunch - cheese & ham again. I need to buy some more Branston Small Chunk.

Friday morning - battery still not fully charged But it's 105Ah and the charger is rated at 6A so crudely - 105/6 = 17.5h in perfect conditions so meh. Maybe 24h+ to rejuvenate and then charge isn't too far off.

Made it to work. Fish & chips for lunch ! Not amazing quality but only £2.88 in works canteen including a glass of squash.

Friday afternoon - battery discharge warning again but started OK. It was hot.

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Friday evening & today I've been investigating, monitoring the current draw. The car shuts down correctly and goes to ~200mA. Internet seems to say it's meant to be 80mA but again meh. In theory 200mA would take three weeks to kill the battery, not 24h.

BUT ! After about half an hour it was shooting up to 5-6A. And that'll definitely kill it. A sweaty process of removing fuses one-by-one today has revealed the culprit to be one or both intercooler pumps. I say one or both because they should both be controlled in parallel by the bank 1 DME but in the BMW tech document it says they're 50W each which is about 4A with the engine off but battery full charged at ~12.8V. So just one that's crapping itself independently and sucking 5A ? Or is the DME running them both at 60% ? We don't know yet.

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[Explosive Newt]

egg & bacon mayo on thick tiger bread.

Do you make it yourself or are we talking the pre-made stuff you buy in pots?

[mik]

When WFH I absolutely HATE having a sandwich for lunch.

Something on toast.

Or in a fresh crispy Morton’s roll.

But not a sandwich.

[Jobbo]

Sandwiches are the best lunch of all. If I have something else I crave a sandwich next day. Not the same thing as the day before. I wholeheartedly approve of SJ’s lunch choices.

Glad my M5 charges fully overnight though. And it was 27.5C at 9.00am yesterday leaving my dad’s house in Hampshire but I haven’t yet seen 40C on the display. Eek. Even our kitchen thermostats for the underfloor heating were only getting to 36C today but I think they were under-reading to be honest.