The Caddy passed a nice milestone while we were on the way to an appointment a few days ago. Thankfully I had my other half with me so was able to get evidence of it...as I was on the M1 at the time I couldn't exactly pull over to grab a photo.
Hopefully many more to come.
Despite suffering from a lack of a working pressure washer I needed to get the Mercedes cleaned up ready to be handed over to the new owner - this meant the best part of an hour driving around in circles until I found a jetwash that was actually working. Was the most horribly rushed and patchy job in the history of self serve car washes, but at least I had most of the moss out of the window seals and brightwork, so it looked a lot better.
Still one of the classiest looking cars I've ever owned I think.
The car rewarded me for cleaning it by blowing the offside rear indicator bulb. Of course I didn't have a spare in stock...so wound up nicking one from one of the repeaters on the van. It won't be going anywhere until the salt is gone from the roads anyway. Plenty of that a out just now...the corner of this roof was silver before a 20 minute run up the motorway a couple of days ago!
With the cleanup complete though I was able to pass the car on to its new owner. Only a few miles up the road and someone I know, so I'll still see it now and then I'm sure.
Off she goes.
The space will be filled again soon though, some of you may remember this one being mentioned a few months back.
Which will be quite a rewarding revival hopefully. They're pretty simple cars and this one by and large is exceptionally solid. A friend has already offered me use of their car roller which will make the bit of welding on the offside sill inner several orders of magnitude easier. Will also make doing a decent job of rust proofing it easier - though I may well still just farm that out to a specialist.
Revival work is what I tend to enjoy the most, so I'm quite looking forward to it.
A surprisingly large parcel arrived - even more surprisingly quickly given it came all the way from Germany - for the Caddy. Got here quicker than some things ordered from an hour up the road.
Hardly mission critical, but definitely tidies things up a bit. Does make quite a noticeable difference to the noise level outside the van too so isn't entirely cosmetic. I usually hate engine covers, but this only takes about 90 seconds to install/remove and makes a good tray for putting things in so isn't a huge problem.
Does look like it's taken about ten years off the engine bay though!
While I was rooting around in the area I dropped the new cabin air filter in. Dead easy to get to compared to many modern cars which require you to stand on your head in the footwell and/or dismantle half the dash.
I'm quite used to seeing these having never been changed so was half expecting a solid black rectangle of unidentifiable organic matter to come out, but it wasn't actually too bad. Definitely due a change but it's definitely been changed sometime in the last few years.
You may recall me noticing some horribly hacked wiring in the engine bay related to the obviously long defunct aftermarket alarm system a little while back.
Which had also left a gaping hole in the bulkhead.
I've now found that end of the tail (buried behind the heater box), and each of the wires has been taped, heat shrink covered then the tail as a whole treated the same way. The actual alarm module is buried up behind the centre console and I didn't have the patience to go chasing that further today.
This lot was pulled out.
The above area now looks like this. By pure chance I found a bung sitting on the drive that was exactly the right size to fill the hole left by that alarm wiring.
Much tidier.
A friend dropped by today with their fancy diagnostic gizmo to see if we had any fault codes stored which might give us a pointer on what's going on with the twitchy idle/EGR issues.
As we had hoped there were a couple of codes stored.
The first of which is the interesting one.
"Motor for intake flap (V157) - sporadic - open/short circuit to earth."
The second code is expected as it's indicating the solenoid for the EGR valve being open circuit - because I've unplugged it.
This is really useful as it gives me a component to home in on with my investigation. First port of call is to make sure the wiring to it isn't obviously damaged as it is quite exposed. Then we'll give it a good clean, which it really wants anyway.
Tomorrow's task is going to be putting together the contents of this very heavy box, which arrived too late yesterday to do anything with...but should solve my pressure washer situation.
Should be a decent upgrade from a fairly low end electric pressure washer...and having 30 metres of hose to play with will be a massive help in itself compared to the four I'm used to. Putting that all together will be tomorrow afternoon's task.
A silly little accessory arrived yesterday for the Invacar.
Suitable replacement for the keychain that I somehow managed to lose back at the start of the pandemic.
Have also come up with a temporary solution to the air filter issue. This doesn't look in any way ridiculous...
To be honest it's basically only there to keep crud out of there until I can track down/manufacture a replacement for the missing bit of the cleaner housing. I won't be driving it like this given the insurance company may declare it's a performance modification...must be good for at least a 30% power increase of course!
I think that brings us up to date for now.
