smart behind

Not a particularly staggering piece of news but here we go...

I was counting the engines1 in the smart roadster on Saturday in a pretence to spray some protective grease over the rear chassis when I noticed a missing bolt in the lower exhaust bracket. Not a huge problem, get another bolt, shove it in and job done. However, when the holes failed to line up it occurred to me that it may have been AWOL for sometime. This was borne out by the fact that both mating surfaces were highly polished and worn.

A "friend of mine"2 has access to the Merc. Workshop Manual. It said "before tightening everything up, make sure that all the bolts are in place". That's easy for you to say Mr Benz - when you're lying on your back and require arms and hands like a demented octopus it ain't that simple.

It also required loosening the turbo outlet-to-silencer clamp. And then it dawned on me - the exhaust was hanging on by virtue of the strength of the turbo and the top silencer bracket. How long would it have been before the engine fell out?

Interestingly enough, with a replacement bolt in place that boom at 4,500 rpm has miraculously disappeared...

1one
2No, really.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"The delivery extension for this subscription could not be loaded" when using SSRS

Image
OK, so we upgraded our server farm and put on the latest "stuff" (SSRS, SQL Server etc.) and the engineers gave me two servers to play with - SQL01 & SQL02. The idea being that we used high availability to help keep the factory running. We employed a contractor to load up and configure everything. At this point I wasn't involved. My involvement was to move all the reports and subscriptions from the old servers to the new ones once the servers had been configured. All went swimmingly, until I actually started to fire off the subscriptions to test them. Randomly (like 5 out of 10) I got the error in the title. I would edit the failing subscription and/or change the schedule time and it would work. I finally got around to moving 81 subscriptions for the same report (all slightly different parameters going to about 6 different engineers). I press the "go" button and every single one failed. Let's cut out the long story about how I went through about
Read more

Oooh, look, an Eagle...

Image
The Scottish Holiday . After the trauma of the Astra-breakdown episode and the gutless hirecar, we'd recovered sufficiently to begin to enjoy the rest of our holiday with our friends at the Castle... Chapter Seven: One of the things my wife really wanted to see was a seal, or seals if she was really lucky. So we decided to take a day out and around the Mull Of Kintyre. We stopped at "St Columba's Footprints" and carefully studied the jumbled collection of rocks and seaweed. "No seals there dear, let's carry on" "Oh, alright then, never mind. But that's where we were told they are most likely to be." We drove on and took a gated road signposted " To The Lighthouse ". This took us right up into the hills. As we were driving slowly along admiring the view, my wife whispered quietly... " Ooh, look an Eagle! " "Stop that, that's not funny." "No, really. Stop the car."
Read more

What else could possibly go wrong?

So. I got the new radiator hoses from Vauxhall at a stupid £45 for the two and fitted them the weekend before we were due to go away on our Touring-Trip-Of-Scotland. I used this as an excuse to get out of helping with my sister-in-law's 50th birthday party. "But, I need to make sure the car is OK for next week dear!" "OK, I'll take the smart, and woe betide you if you're late for the party!" The Astra is now in bits and has no water in it. It is 6 minutes to 12 o'clock on a Saturday morning. I know this. For some bizarre reason, I decided to test the tightness of the -ve battery terminal by gently shaking the clamp. It was loose. "Ah, I wonder if this is the cause of it cutting out last week?" I took a 10mm spanner and gently tweaked up the bolt. The lead post (as in led, not leed) offered no resistance and gracefully detached itself in its entirety from the battery, the terminal now firmly bolted to the -ve lead (as in le
Read more