How am I ever going to tell which car is mine out here...Oh...wait...
I get the impression that while it may have taken a while for us to tick over the first thousand miles the second one will take anywhere near as long...
That's just under 500 miles in two months.
One of the bits of trim fell off the inside of the offside door last time out, so today I decided to call time on the spray adhesive and got some old school goop involved.
The trim was then firmly wedged in place while that sets.
I reckon this will stay stuck a lot better. Can see me redoing most of these in the same way at some point. Summer will be the real tell when things get warm.
Also on the subject of doors...I completely randomly spotted today that the weatherstrip between the two sliding window panes on the nearside (the offside one is missing) was installed backwards...I apparently totally failed to notice that there was a plastic side and a felt side when I installed it. Does a far better job of stopping the draught when the window is closed now!
Only took me approximately two years to notice. Ten points for observation to me. Oops.
Annoyingly it appears that even with the level sorted that we do still have a slight oil leak. It looks like it *might* be actually coming from the oil pressure switch as the whole area around it looks a bit wet.
Have given the general area a good spray down with degreaser so we can have another look after the next trip out to see if it's the culprit. Would be nice as it's a cheap and easy part to change.
Not holding my breath though...My gut feeling is that we're looking at a leak from the crankshaft oil seal.
The belts are in a state as you can see too. They have been loose for a while now...but lately have been getting a bit ridiculous. Aside from the increasingly unhappy squeak every time the starter is operated from cold, it's never good when you can SEE how slack a belt is.
Yes, that is as floppy as it looks. Especially the one nearest the camera.
The reason I hadn't done something about this sooner was simple: I'd been completely and utterly unable thus far to shift the nut on the Dynastart pulley. The belt tension on this engine is adjusted (like on old VWs) by adding or removing shims between the pulley sheaves...so any tension adjustment involves removing that big nut. While there are two holes in the fan to allow you to wedge it in place - the nut was tight enough that these holes were ovalling out from the torque I was applying.
Right up until the point that I *finally* spent an hour turning the back of the garage upside down and unearthing the impact gun.
In approximately 0.3 seconds it buzzed it straight off without it seemed like any effort whatsoever...Didn't even have to lock the pulley...
Sometimes you just need the right tool for the job at hand.
It's not a tool you'll use for every job (and using it for the wrong one can cause you no end of headaches...), but really is an absolute godsend when presented with something like this or trying to get a wheel nut that's been done up by Kwik-Fit to 10,000,000,000 times more tightly than it needed to be. This was less than £50 and for the three jobs I've really used it for so far I reckon has already more than paid for itself in saved time, sweat and spilled blood. Just make sure if you get one to get a good quality set of sockets to go with it.
The other reason I wanted to get this lot apart was so that I could actually clean up the pulley running surfaces...After this engine had spent a good number of years sitting outside in the weather they were unsurprisingly in quite a state - I'm honestly surprised that the belts didn't just self destruct given the state these were in.
Definitely beyond the point of "self cleaning" at this point...so out with the carbide mop. Realistically I could do with a new set of pulley sheaves, but the heavy, rough pitting that will shred belts is gone at least.
The fan hub (which forms the rear face of the pulley) got the same treatment.
Again...It really has seen better days, but is a lot better than it was.
The belts will want replacement now as running on the pulleys in that state has unsurprisingly wrecked them. I'll grab a new pair next time I'm in the vicinity of Motorserv. They're not exotic or expensive so I'm not worried about that. They are at least properly tensioned now though (if anything a little over-tight in the case of the front belt).
Not really too worried - they'll be getting replaced shortly anyway - I'll spend a bit of time ensuring that the replacements are tensioned as close to as per the manual as possible.
Quick test revealed that the "chirp" on activating the starter is indeed now gone.
https://youtu.be/e-50mlDp2L0
I had also completely failed to appreciate quite how much noise the belts were making at high engine speeds...The engine is SO much quieter and smoother when revved now. Will be interesting to see if that's at all obvious when on the move - though given that about 85% of the noise you're aware of is CVT and gearbox I rather doubt it.
