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

[Zelandeth]

First accomplishment of today was figuring out a way to stop the heater cable from rattling...it can be wedged in the handle of the ash tray.



Not a permanent solution, but will save it from driving me insane until I can properly sort it.

Having a slightly more in depth look under the bonnet than yesterday I spotted a couple of things amiss.

Firstly, looking at the radiator something just didn't look right. How the top hose was sitting was what really drew my attention to it initially.



A little poking and head scratching revealed that it should actually be sitting more like this.



The top brackets appear to have either fallen apart of are totally missing. Strange.

I deployed a highly technical cable tie to pull it closer to the right spot until I can properly Investigate and resolve that...has at least got some clearance between the top radiator hose and fan shroud now, this was previously touching.



On the other side the shroud had worn quite a deep groove in one of the air conditioning lines too, this now has a bit of actual clearance.



Will need to see if there is any gas in there whatsoever soon. I suspect not.

Then I noticed this.



That's the state the main line coming off the vacuum pump was in. That's not going to be doing anything any favours, especially as at the very least the actuator for the EGR system is vacuum controlled, and there are lines running off to several bits and pieces around the engine bay.

Ten minutes later it looked like this instead.



Sorting this appears to have completely eliminated the hunting idle, the ever present smell of diesel and obvious white smoke on the overrun/light throttle openings. It has also made the throttle response far smoother, so that leak was definitely causing issues for a few things. Likewise the brakes definitely feel stronger now, so I think the servo was also struggling a bit for vacuum pressure before.

It looks like there was originally a plastic cover that sat over the inlet manifold etc. I'm not too bothered about that, as it's one less thing to remove for service access - if I come across one though I'll probably replace it just because I know it should be there. Definitely at the bottom of the priority list though.

While I was in the area I changed the air filter. Old one wasn't too bad so had definitely been done in the last couple of years, but for the sake of a few quid it's on my annual-ish list. Especially on a normally aspirated diesel where getting as much air into the engine as possible is always a priority!

Nice to have got a couple of small jobs ticked off which have had a noticeable impact on the driving experience.

[Xantianut]

Nice work!

[white exec]

Could that spare wheel go underneath, or covered up by your proposed flat floor?

[Zelandeth]

Could that spare wheel go underneath, or covered up by your proposed flat floor?

Underneath the vehicle is a non-starter as the floor has been dropped so far. I don't think the full size one would fit under the "fake floor" but a space saver might.

Will see how it goes, but I don't think the position of the existing one up there is really going to get in the way for how we will be using the vehicle.

[Gibbo2286]

The spare wheel on my Hillman 'tilly' sat on the cab roof.

[Zelandeth]

The spare wheel on my Hillman 'tilly' sat on the cab roof.

That just shouts "wind noise" at me. If it were shifted anywhere a rear mounted 4WD style would probably make the most sense provided it was low enough not to seriously get in the way of rear visibility.

-- -- --

Not much to report today. Had to take my husband to a hospital appointment this morning, so have confirmed that cold starting doesn't seem to be an issue for the Caddy, even at -4C that we had today, and oddly is the coldest we've seen this winter so far. All despite the rather old looking Lion branded battery, which I'd generally trust about as far as I can throw it.



I think the best I've ever got out of one of their batteries before was about 18 months, so I'm already mentally budgeting for having to replace that at short notice at some point.

This temperature also meant I was surprised to find that for the first time since I think 2009, I have a car with a full compliment of working rear window defroster elements.



Luxury!

Something which become extremely vocally apparent during that trip though was that the wiper blades were past it. Cleared the screen okay, but unless it was absolutely saturated wanted to jump, skip, judder, squeak and generally make a nuisance of themselves. I did clean them as they didn't look all that old, did help but not by much. So a new set went on.



This restored quiet and calm to the cabin while driving in the persistent drizzle which we've had here all afternoon.

Not an exciting update today!

[Gibbo2286]

I don't think my old 'tilly' ever went fast enough for wind noise to be a problem Zel.

[Zelandeth]

I don't think my old 'tilly' ever went fast enough for wind noise to be a problem Zel.

I'm quite astonished by the degree of refinement this thing has on offer. Very little wind noise at motorway speeds, just a distant thrum from the engine really. Exhaust is a little boomy but not enough to be objectionable. Think that's part of the wheelchair conversion as there's no space for the standard rear silencer, not sure if this just uses a smaller one or simply a large combined one forward of the dropped floor. Not being turbocharged means there's no turbo to muffle things "at source" either.

Even road noise isn't all that bad, especially for a van running on low rolling resistance tyres (I give it even odds on me swapping those for better ones at some point, guess we'll see how she handles on the first really wet day). Reckon with a bit of carpet over the ramp where it's just vinyl at the moment would cut down on the inevitable reverb in there and cut noise further.

[Zelandeth]

Cleaning time has begun for the new arrival.

Interior only as I'm currently without a pressure washer - and they've literally just driven past our house and dumped about five tonnes of salt on each of the roads in our neighborhood so it would be pretty pointless.

Looking forward to dealing with the likes of this though...



Really will be better for a good scrub up. Plus there's about three quarters of a forest worth of leaves in the windscreen scuttle.

While the exterior is a task for another day, the interior looks a bit better for an hour's work this afternoon.

The dash plastics in particular were really dull and lifeless. There's a very clear line where I'd got to visible here.













The seats really want to come out so I can give the carpets a proper scrub, and the seats would really benefit from a wet clean themselves too. Both jobs which will be waiting on warmer and drier weather.

I did note that both front footwells are a bit damp - I'm not reading too far into that though until I've cleared out the scuttle drains as given the amount of organic matter under there they're almost definitely clogged up. The headlining would also benefit from a deep clean - that will need to come out to deal with the rust at the base of the window over the cab anyway so those things will probably happen at the same time.

Only other item of note done today was getting the fuel filter and the feed lines attached to it replaced. Simple enough job.



Think I'm going to go back and do the ones on the return too, just didn't have enough hose clamps to go round today (I despise those spring type ones with a passion - especially the ones VW use as they have really tiny tabs on so are nigh on impossible to get hold of if you don't have the proper tool). Given I was able to pull the one on the feed side straight off, the hose had obviously been squashed enough under the hose clip that it was no longer doing anything.

One of the O-rings on the return line stub was cracked, so definitely think this was due changing.



Hopefully this will put a stop to air being pulled into the fuel system. Time will tell I guess.

[Zelandeth]

Having run out of daylight yesterday today's quick task was oil & filter change.

Set the oil draining, then realised something...the Caddy is modern enough to have one of these strange plastic caps over the oil filter.



...Which I've never had to deal with before. After wasting half an hour trying to get it unscrewed without the right tools I gave up and went round to Halfords and grabbed one of these.



Even with the right tool, holy hell that was tight. I wound up basically hanging my bodyweight off the thing before it eventually started to very slowly come loose. No way it was coming off without the special tool for it.

I then made a horrible mess and spilled oil everywhere when lifting the old filter out.

New one in - which helpfully has the top marked as I didn't realise they weren't symmetrical until after I'd put the old one down and lost track of the rotation.



New filter also comes with new O-rings for both the cap itself and the feed tube assembly which drops down through the middle of the filter. I made a definite point of lubricating the outer seal with fresh engine oil before reassembling. Tightening it precisely as much as necessary to snug the seal up and a smidge more. Hopefully I won't have such a fight to get the cap off next time round.

The old oil smelled quite strongly of diesel and seemed quite watery (it is 5W40 though so not all that thick anyway), which isn't a huge surprise given the van was chucking clouds of unburned fuel out the back on the overrun because of that vacuum leak I found a couple of days back. By no means the worst I've seen, but it was definitely ready for a change.

New set of floor mats have also been thrown into the cabin to tidy the floors up a bit.



I may get a set of properly shaped ones ordered at some point, but these at least seem to stay put. The rubber ones that were in there before had virtually no grip on the carpet and I'd nearly died getting into the driver's seat about half a dozen times because of that, so these are an improvement in that department.

Hard to believe I've done just over 500 miles in this thing already! Still thoroughly enjoying driving it too.

[Hell Razor5543]

I wonder if that is big enough to get a motorbike in (using the wheelchair ramp)? I know somebody who rather likes the idea.

[mickthemaverick]

H
Even with the right tool, holy hell that was tight. I wound up basically hanging my bodyweight off the thing before it eventually started to very slowly come loose. No way it was coming off without the special tool for it.

Tightening it precisely as much as necessary to snug the seal up and a smidge more. Hopefully I won't have such a fight to get the cap off next time round.

I remember learning many years ago that in most engines the oil circulates round the filter in a clockwise direction. Therefore its minimal drag on the outer face is continually trying to tighten the filter whenever the engine is run. Quite a clever idea to help prevent age leaks but it does result in excessive torque needed to release them!!

[Zelandeth]

I wonder if that is big enough to get a motorbike in (using the wheelchair ramp)? I know somebody who rather likes the idea.

Wouldn't surprise me, the load bay is pretty long, I'll measure it if I remember tomorrow.

Looking at mine someone has disabled the ramp (probably because they usually rattle like a tumble drier full of marbles), but looks like they've just Sikaflexed the corners of the fold down section to the side of the load bay so wouldn't be hard to reverse. For my purposes it's absolutely fine so I'll probably stick an angle bracket in there with a couple of bolts and rivets to brace it a little. It can still wobble a bit now, which means the bottom of the door can also move. Not really a problem, just feels flimsy and doesn't inspire confidence - which is the complete opposite about the rest of the van.

I think that's what has surprised me the most. It just feels *solid* and inspires confidence. Can't get my head around the handling either, the tyres aren't the best but even so it's astonishing how planted she feels in the corners. Very little body roll either. I guess at the end of the day it's a slightly streched Polo with a box plonked on the back, so that's not too surprising...but it doesn't *look* like this should be fun to chuck into corners, does it?



If I can get the rust under control (she is a few months short of 20 years old after all) I can see this being a vehicle which sticks around. I'd like to tidy the paintwork up a bit, hopefully with a bit of tidying done of a couple of the dents - especially this one, which helpfully you can get to the back of at least.



Never going to be perfect, but I reckon we can get that looking a lot better.

So...paint. I've got an idea in mind already, but open to ideas at this point.

[Zelandeth]

This afternoon I decided to have a look at the key to see if I could do anything to tidy it up. I also wanted to get into it to confirm if it had an immobiliser chip in or not so I knew which type of spare to order. Currently I only have the one key and that's always a recipe for stress in my mind.

The key looked like this...which is why I was determined to try to tidy it up a bit.



The fact that the tape was decomposing and sticking to every bit of pocket lint (or in this house, the omnipresent dog hair) was also rendering this high on my to do list.

Like a complete and utter idiot I didn't wear gloves while pulling this to bits...and of course the mixture of electrical tape and duct tape had both well and truly started to decompose into the stickiest goo known to human kind. Said goo is now all over my hands, desk, keyboard, mouse, phone, probably in my hair - and all over everything within about a 500 metre radius. Rookie mistake.

Oddly when I pulled it apart I couldn't see anything wrong...all three bits of the assembly click together firmly, and the flexible membrane on the side with the remote buttons on isn't split.

Testing the two CR2016 cells showed they were both fine, so I just reassembled everything after a good clean. Oh, and yes it appears the van does have an immobiliser as there's a chip in there.





Sure enough, the light on the key did flash when buttons were pressed...so I went out and walked through the key synchronisation routine, resulting in...



We appear to have fully functional remote central locking again.

I'll take that as a win!

Though I did notice this mess in the engine bay when doing a check for oil leaks following the change yesterday...



Which is moderately concerning. I know this van did at one point have an aftermarket alarm (which doesn't appear to function), so I wonder if this was a result of a refusal to shut up one time to often - the loom tape does make it look different to the main vehicle loom, which is why my first thought was alarm. I will definitely be checking to ensure there's not power there shortly.

[Zelandeth]

Well we're in to my usual garage to see if the AC will take a charge. I stuffed about 40psi of nitrogen in few days ago and it doesn't seem to have dropped, and I confirmed the compressor would run (only for a couple of seconds obviously), so fingers crossed it might work.