Aargh...

Having spent 2 days the other week doing the head gasket on my son's Peugeot 106, I was less than impressed when I got a phone call today.

"Dad, All the water has just come out of the radiator."

"I topped it up to the top like you said" (Oh, it's my fault now?") "and it's all come out." 

"Ok, what did you do? Was it leaking?"

"No"

"In that case, you've put too much in and it's just chucked it out to find its own level. Bye."

I was driving, so not really impressed.

I sent a security text - "make sure there's some water in it before driving home".

When we all got home, I took a look. "Ah, that's not good, there's oil in the radiator cap"

"Well, the antifreeze I topped up with did look a little strange"

"Eh? What can did you use?"

"That one"

He pointed to the old can I filled up last week with old engine oil after servicing the Astra, the old oil due to go down the tip.

"Um, let me guess, was it black?"

"Yes, how did you know?"

I spent the next hour flushing the system.

"Also," he said, "I checked the oil and it was off the dipstick, I had to use all of that new oil to top it up."

Odd, considering I had (obviously) changed the oil after doing the head gasket. I checked it. It was half an inch OVER the full mark.

"What colour were you looking for?"

"Black"

"Let me explain about new oil and straw-coloured 106 dipsticks..."

"Ah."

I took out two litres of oil.

On the plus side, at least he was trying to look after his engine, and, after about seven years, I've now found the "MAX" line on a 106 radiator...

It's about here if anyone's interested.

...which of course, as anyone who owns a 106 knows, the actual water level is impossible to see.

Knit 1, Pearl 1 - the book.

Sooo, I decided to service the Astra and also fix the tiniest of water leaks from the thermostat housing. It was barely visible and the only tell-tale sign was a slight reddish smear on the head. Thinking ahead, I rang the Vauxhall dealer to see if they had a thermostat housing gasket.

Thursday:

*ring*
"Hello main dealer, have you got a thermostat housing gasket?"
"Yes, it's £49."
"WTF? How much?!"
"Yes, it only comes with the thermostat."

Bloody hell, I knew main dealers were dear, but that's taking the p.

*ring*
 "Hello local motor factors, have you got a thermostat housing gasket?"
"Yes, it's £79."
"WTF? It's £49 at the main dealer!"
"OK, we'll do it for that, I'll order one for you."

Friday:

I took the day off for the job. Servicing? Easy. Even doing the fuel filter with those bloody stupid clip things was easy.

I removed the thermostat housing and then the penny dropped (or £49 even), the thermostat is the housing, the whole damn caboodle is in one piece - ally housing, thermostat and rubber seal gasket!

What am I bid? £49?, no £79

Something said to me "Luke, check the thermostat". OK, it was the Haynes manual really. So, armed with a pan of boiling water I found that it opened, but never closed. Bugger. Now I have to fork out the £49, and, because the car's in bits, I have to train it to town and walk to the shop.

"Hello, me again. Have you got that thermostat I ordered?"
"Yes. Is that the old unit?"

He took one look and with a deft twist of two thumbs, removed the old unit from the housing. "I remember these now. QH200K. Hang on." Five minutes later I had a new one fitted to the old housing.

"That'll be a tenner. You can have the new gasket for free."¹

I fitted everything back together, filled up with coolant and fired her up. It ran beautifully, not just OK, but perfectly, and, and, the temperature gauge worked for the first time since we've owned the car - about 6 years.

I ran the Astra round the block to test it and noticed the tiniest of drops of water on the floor under the radiator.

"Hello, me again. Have you got a radiator?", "Yes", "See you in the morning."

Saturday:

I picked up the new radiator and at the end of the round trip to town to pick it up, water was pouring out from the seams. It took me four hours to take it out because one of the air con radiator mounting bolts had rusted up and the incredibly stupid design meant that the plastic bracket on the rad wouldn't hold the nut and it just spun where it was. I cut the old radiator off the nut. I gave up for the day and went out.

Sunday:

I put it all back together. I took all the old crap down the tip to recycle the boxes and on the way back, doing 50mph, the engine cut dead. I restarted it, drove another two miles home and it cut dead again. Each time, all the dash lights flashing madly. I took all the relays out to test them and promptly broke the orange speed controller which isn't a relay at all but a sensitive piece of electronics which doesn't take kindly to having 12v poked up its output. I ordered one off eBay.

Monday:

"Hello main dealer, what could be wrong?" - expecting a 'bring it in and we'll charge you shed loads (again)'
"Were all the light flashing?", "Yes", "It's your immobiliser in the key, just keep the spare key with you in case. Bye". 

While putting back the radiator, I noticed that the top & bottom hoses were looking a bit wafty. I have ordered new ones, they will be here tomorrow in time for the weekend...

¹Someone else now has a new complete housing less a rubber seal...

Knit 1, Pearl 1

Having just spend last weekend doing the head gasket on my son's Peugeot 106 I felt less than happy when the MIL light came on the Astra last night. It's always lost some coolant "somewhere" but other than that it's run pretty well over the years. The Vauxhall dealer simply taking a "wait and see" approach, which translates to "rather than fix a minor (leak) problem we'll wait until it goes bang and charge you sh*t loads".
 
I pulled (and cleared) the codes. "Cylinder 3 misfire", and, it required about a litre of water to get the coolant level right. I started to suspect a head gasket. So armed with a credit card, I drove to the local factors. On the way, it started to misfire quite badly..., and then miraculously run properly..., and run just fine on the way back too. I bought nothing, but ordered plenty.
 
I pulled (and cleared) the codes again. "Cylinder 3 misfire".

Ok. Check the oil - absolutely no water there and no creamy stuff in the rocker chamber. Check the water - perfectly clear & red. Final check, do a sniff-test using the bit of kit I bought last week to confirm the 106's head gasket failure.

Blue. Check again. Blue. Rev engine. Blue. Wait for fans to come on. Blue. No yellow "you-have-CO₂-in-your-coolant". This confused me somewhat.

Ok, remove all plugs and do a compression test. 230 psi across the board. Now I'm stuffed and I give up - nothing says there's a head gasket failure. So, I clean the plugs and put them back in, fire up the motor to move it back to the road and immediately there's a solid misfire. Bugger, have I just trashed the ignition pack with all the ins and outs?

I pulled the codes. "Cylinder 1 misfire". Hang on, it was 3 last time wasn't it? I remove the plugs (again) and put plug 1 into hole 2 and 3 into hole 4. Fire up the motor, solid misfire and "Cylinder 2 misfire" AND "Cylinder 4 misfire". Whoa! Remove plugs and put 2 into hole 4 and 1 into 3. "Cylinder 1 misfire" AND "Cylinder 3 misfire".

Ah ha.

I manage to find two old NGK's from my old Arkley kit-car kicking around the garage floor and replace 1 and 3. Bingo. No misfire.

Four Out Of Six Ain't Bad.

Things to do:

1. Service the car. Stop ignoring the "INSP" light.
2. Try and work out how two plugs could suddenly fail in five minutes.
3. Explain why I no longer need all the bits I ordered.
4. Un-book Thursday and Friday annual leave that I begged and pleaded to take off.
5. Smash the two plugs into a thousand pieces with my 4 pound lump hammer.

 And, I think I found the tiny coolant leak from the thermostat housing...

I'm glad I'm old sometimes.

Occasionally there are times that my wife calls "bottle it" moments. This evening was one such moment.

The local school was holding a Fete & Music Night for St George's Day. It had been going all day and my neighbour had already complained that "if you can hear the music indoors, then it's too loud". I tended to agree, as the bands who were booked to play in a small village, probably deserved to be booked, well, for small villages.

I simply turned the TV up a bit and watched "The Voice".

A while later, my wife called me from upstairs. "Listen", she said, "it's a Pink Floyd tribute band". We sat in the loft extension with the window open looking out over the estuary with the stars just starting to show against the deep blue & dark red of the sunset.

The band played "Comfortably Numb", by Pink Floyd as their last number. Jeez can that boy play the lead guitar.

Wow.

Is it Moral, or, Morale?

This was going to be entitled "The Missing Link", but after today, I feel that "morale" is more appropriate.

Chapter 1: I went to our Devon office on Monday for an "analyst meeting", it was in fact a shameless excuse for a free lunch and to say "bye" to the people who were leaving when the office shuts at the end of the month.

There were four of us in the company Skoda, plus luggage and laptops so I was quite irritated to be asked, "By the way, can you take back that Development AS400 that's sat in the hallway and those disks?". Humph. I went out and rearranged the boot and made space for the "office environment server", or "large-slab-of-useless-metal" as I fondly call AS400's.

It rained. I got soaked. I went back indoors.

"Oh, don't forget the tape drive and all the cables.". Humph. I went out and threw all the luggage into the back seats and wedged the drive next to the AS400. I then filled in all the gaps with the laptops and bags; very carefully placing the four 5" disk drives on the soft bags so they wouldn't get damaged. The tail gate just about shut.

It rained again. I got soaked. I went back indoors.

Chapter 2: We drove back from Devon, having to drop into second for all hills and began holding up lorry's and cyclists on the long ones. We got back and when I pulled my holdall from the boot to put it into my car all the disks nestling in the fabric of the bag fell out onto the concrete.

Chapter 3: The next day, I got "the boys" to carry the AS400 into the server room where I was left to plug it all in. I should at this point say that I didn't take it to pieces, but all I had were half a dozen pieces of cable, a monitor, keyboard, a tape drive, and, an AS400. All I had to do was to put it together. And, more importantly, I'm not an AS400 expert - at all.

How hard can it be?

I plugged everything in because none of it can go in wrong - thanks IBM. But, the monitor runs off "twinax" and that had to be plugged into some weird 8-way connector. There were some other ports on the back that looked like serial & parallel ones, so I assumed that the monitor could take almost any format.

That left me with the keyboard. It had a large round pin plug. I had filled up all the other ports on the AS400 and there was nowhere for it to go, I spent 10 minutes looking on the back of the 400 and still couldn't find anywhere for it to go. This was the first of many calls to Devon from my office, "where does the keyboard go?", "In the base unit of the monitor, on the side". Oh, obviously.

I hit the power switch. Nothing happened. I went back to the office. "Nothing's happened", "How long have you waited?", "Um, about 30 seconds", "Have a cup of tea for 20 minutes and then look". On my return the little green LCD panel said "01 A N V=H" and absolutely zip on the monitor, nothing, bugger all.

"There's nothing on the screen but it says 01 ANV=H."
"That means it's up OK. Are you sure there's no little line at the bottom? Are you in port 0?"
"No and Yes"
"Check the cables". Repeat this conversation a lot of times. Repeat me getting irritated a lot of times.

I replaced all the cables with all the other spares I had. I even plugged the spare big cream-coloured "D"-Type extender on to the twinax cable but that made no difference.

I went home.

Chapter 4: The next day. I thought that the monitor may have popped on its way back from Devon. "Can I pinch a monitor from the Production 400 please?", "Yes. Be careful, take the whole cabling loom right back from the backplane - don't disconnect anything else!" I went over to the main server room and traced the cable from the "big" box to the monitor.

"'Ello, what's that big cream-coloured "D"-Type extender doing connecting the monitor base unit and the back of the CRT?"

I plugged in "my" cable into the development box's monitor. This was the first time I laughed for two days as the little line appeared.

"Hello Devon, guess what? Now, how do I changed the IP address to match our LAN?"

This is another story.

---

Epilogue: The moral of the story is "if someone else takes something apart, then they can sodding well put it back together".

Morale? Well that's another thing.

Brasil VII - Lunch to end all lunches

Midway through our Beach Buggy Safari, there was a planned stop for lunch. I was told that "it was in the middle of a river". This didn't overly concern me as surely there must be a bridge or something to get to the restaurant?

I was wrong. Quite wrong in fact.


The restaurant was indeed, in the middle of a river. The tables were located in the water and we now realised why we were told that bringing swimming trunks was mandatory. When we got there my wife took one look and announced "There's no way I'm walking through that water with my gammy toe". (Never mind the fact that this water was probably better quality than Evian even though there were children swimming in it). "I'll eat on the bank".

This naturally upset the locals. And one returned with a chair. "Seet down...", his friend, quick as a flash, whipped out a carrier bag from behind his back and tied it around her foot. "Don't move", and the two of them carried her out to the table.

Spot the carrier

When we'd all stopped laughing (wife included) we ordered the lobster.

It was shortly after that when my sister said, "Oh, I think you've got sunburn!" - this was a marginal understatement.

Now let me tell you that sunstroke and lobsters do not mix. I spent that night and all of the next day, half in bed and half, well, somewhere else. Put it like this, regrettably I shall never eat lobster again.

CzechMate at the 100 Club

A quick plug for my son's band "CzechMate". They're playing the 100 Club in Oxford Street, London on 17th August 2012.

Worth a trip there. Good value for £8.

...and the Nambucca too, July 15th.