The KRS thread....

[qwakers]

another surprise structural failure...

I've never seen the front crash bar with any significant rust... never mind so rusty it collapses when you try to use it as a winch point...

[qwakers]

PSA.


most of the pictures in this thread are now geolocked from being viewed in the UK/EU. this is a policy decision by IMGur due to the online safety act.


i MIGHT go through at least the last few pages of this thread and change the hosting of the pics, however with 6500+ pics in my IMGur catalogue, its a mammoth job to change them all. shades of photobucket all over again.

however, all is not lost. if you view this thread through a VPN, all my pics will reappear.

[casey]

Yep, Photobucket all over again!

[New Duke]

As you said at least with a VPN it works as usual. I hadn't noticed this was a thing until Dave's thread on it.
Apparently I'm logged in from Zurich today...

[qwakers]

PSA.


most of the pictures in this thread are now geolocked from being viewed in the UK/EU. this is a policy decision by IMGur due to the online safety act.


i MIGHT go through at least the last few pages of this thread and change the hosting of the pics, however with 6500+ pics in my IMGur catalogue, its a mammoth job to change them all. shades of photobucket all over again.

however, all is not lost. if you view this thread through a VPN, all my pics will reappear.

all pictures in this thread now hosted on the forum and so are visible to all again.... one thread down....

[Kernow Rotary Specialist]

last week i had a old car that i sold, and have serviced for a few years come back in with a few problems.

it was sold at 50 something thousand miles, its now over 70 thousand, and is as healthy engine wise as ever.

it hunts at idle, which was easily proven to be a neutral switch, thanks dave for sending me one, that is now fixed.


it has a issue with both the ssv and vdi solenoids, both aren't reliably opening. having been through the wiring and testing the command side, it is fine, but the solenoids are just worn out. a pair of those are on order from mazda, unfortunately they are a 7-10 day wait.

the last issue is the owner lent the car to his son. not a issue in itself but....

4th gear syncro is now dead, and there is a nasty whine from the driveline.

to add to that there was evidence of the car having had a high speed excursion from the tarmac, with lots of mud on the crossmembers, both crossmembers bent, the new rrp sump scraped, and the floor dented.

some of the driveline noise could well be because the crossmembers are bent up against the exhaust. the owner will be having 'firm' words with his son about binning it and not telling him, i suspect.

i've done a full fluid service, and sorted the hunting idle, so now we're just awaiting the solenoids to fit and it will be ready to go again.

[warpc0il]

That's nearly as much mud as we found baked between the sump and sump guard under the Jeep - 25kgs including the flint rocks!
At least that's designed to go off-road and not just understeer into the boonies

[qwakers]

yeah, i don't thin he was too pleased about the totally bald rear tyres either. the tyres i fitted only a few thousand ago....

[qwakers]

fixing my spare 6 speed gearbox to fit to a customers car...

i attempted to rob a neutral sensor out of this box to fix the customers original box. dave came to the rescue (as did nickp47) with a replacement when the one in this box broke off when removing. unfortunately the customers box had more issues that a oil change didnt fix, so i need to get the spare ready to fit tomorrow...

first i welded around the inside of the sensor, which welded the plunger to the outer housing and gave me something to weld a washer to.then a washer was welded to that, and a nut to the washer.

after all that it wound out easily.

[Kernow Rotary Specialist]

im not a trimmer. not even close. but when a customer has a drivers seat, in a spec i dont have a spare of, that someone has cut about and damaged trying to lower the seat for a tall driver, and he wants it back to standard, well you do what you have to do.

i didnt take many pics. i have none of the starting product or much of the work in progress, becuase it was a pain, but the end of the job got a few photos.

having removed the seat from the car and moved to the nice warm living room, so i could sit on the couch and do it on my lap, i pulled the base cushion and seat pan off the seat. the seat pan was badly bent, so was discarded.

the foam was cut about, so that was going to be a problem.

the spare seat was dismantled and the pan taken off and put on to the original seat,

the foam from the donor seat was cut in the same place and the offcut was glued to the old foam (i hate hog rings and am no good at fabric work, so i didn't want to swap the cover onto the other foam)

the back of the seat cover had been cut off, so i glued a piece from the cream leather seat cover onto it and left it compressed for 24hrs for the glue to cure.

i then discovered the original base frame was knackered, the base tilt no longer functioned. the donor seat was stripped of its base, which was swapped onto the original, then i built up the seat to the original spec.

after refitting unless you know where to look for the glued joint, you wouldn't know...

[Kernow Rotary Specialist]

same car, and a fault that promised to be diagnostically interesting, but in reality turned out to be dead simple to fix.

a sai circuit fault. this isn't the usual fault of a failed solenoid, but is set because when the pump is commanded on the pcm doesn't see any current draw. the list of possible faults basically boil down to a failed pump or a wiring problem.

i swapped the pump because i had a known good one. next cold start it was back, so that 20 second test didn't work. i then went for the next most likely culprit, the sai relay. this is a standard bosch relay, and is under the pcm in the ecu box. i drilled out the fixings, popped the pcm out of the way and pulled the relay out, i then bridged the load side of the relay socket and the pump ran. i grabbed the power probe and added +12v to the signal wire, and it didn't run. i pulled the relay and applied 12v and ground to the signal side, and metered out the load side and found it totally non functional. i dropped a new relay in, sent power to the signal side, and it ran the pump.

so in theory thats fixed, i just have to wait and do a cold start to see if the code re-sets. i would quite like it if the key on self test system and engine run self test system i can run in my scan tool tested the sai system, but unfortunately it does not.

[warpc0il]

Freeze spray on the ambient temperature sensor...

[qwakers]

not worth the effort. ill just leave it sat until tomorrow. its waiting for some salvage bumpers and doors to arrive anyway so no hurry.

[Kernow Rotary Specialist]

to update the above, code didnt return, so all is well.

[Kernow Rotary Specialist]

something a bit different.

a young lass who works where dad does has had a run of bad luck, financially, recently. on top of that, her little 90's honda cg125 is her only transport. the (ex) men in her life have had multiple goes at the wiring, all of which have been dangerous bodgery. this culminated in no electrics at all. it runs (barely) (kickstart and cdi ignition) but that's it. dad was going to look at it for her but electrical is my thing, not his, and she keeps it a mile or 2 from me, so i told her to drop it round.

first discovery was the remnants of wiring that had been on fire, caused by some terrible connections made, a rubbed through loom as it had been routed incorrectly and a bypassed fuse. none of the pictured wiring was cut out, it fell out when pulled.

the burned wire

the bypassed fuse

the horror behind the headlight

and the damaged loom section that probably started the fire.

to add to that, the left hand switch gear has been swapped for a chinese copy, so none of the wire colours match the diagram, i had no idea of the pinout, so i had to spend a couple of hours metering out the switchgear to figure out what was what.


the mostly repaired result. a working set of dash lights, horn, indicators, brake and tail light and well, that's about it. it doesn't even have electric start...

just got to wait for a new flasher relay and some electrical connectors to arrive and i should be able to give it back

[warpc0il]

It's been a while since I've seen a bike "cafe racer styled" by putting the bars on back-to-front

[qwakers]

after more wiring investigation i finally found the primary cause for the wiring fire. (along with the removed fuse ofc.) and explains why the rear indicators where the main affected wires...

it has a 2 pin flasher relay. one side of the relay should go to ignition live, the other to the indicators before the switch. someone had connected the ignition live directly to the feed to the indicators, stuck a connector on and attached it to the battery side of the relay, then found a random ground wire and attached that to the load. every time the relay flashed the indicators, it created a dead short. go figure.....

having repaired that, i found both rear indicators wired backwards so the ground side (that is attached to the body of the indicator, so also grounded here) was attached to the +ve wire and vice versa. another dead short, hence the fire.


i now have entirely sorted the wiring, every function works, just waiting for another flasher relay as the one from amazon lasted 2 flashes before going pop. chinese crap as usual, but what can you do.....

at least its fused now....

[qwakers]

it rode away today with no issues, with pumped up tyres, adjusted brakes, all working electrics and a brand new genuine honda uk spec carburettor, rather than the very messed with brazil spec carb with a seized power valve and half the linkage missing so rebuilding it was impossible.

total cost to her was £60 for the nos carb, bought from ebay from a honda specialist retiring.



she's ecstatic, i have beer. all is good with the world

[floppywing2002]

Just a quick thank you for your help sourcing the electrical tomfoolery to enable the EPS to work without the ecu due to the V8 transplant . All up and working now . Much appreciated , Chris .

[qwakers]

nice, glad to hear.

[Kernow Rotary Specialist]

a good customer now has me service and maintain all his fleet. it is gratifying to be trusted with more than just the rx8's, although i wont touch electronic faults on non rotarys, as i dont have the data or dealer level diagnostic software to diagnose from.

his latest acquisition os a older audi a5 3.0d quattro, which i replaced a window regulator on and gave a oil service a few weeks ago. it came back in at the end of last week with a long mot faliure list.

this list boils down to a load of advisory's, a couple of control arm bushes and... well. a 'bit of rust...

the bushes should have been easy enough, good access and easy to get parts. the rear arm came off nice and easy, the front arm... well, it would have been easy, even though i had to buy some triple square spline sockets. but even then, i didn't have enough clearance to get a ratchet in so i had to weld a bit of flat bar to my nice new socket to get the job done. then the bolt wouldn't come out because the ARB brackets bolt was in the way, so that had to come out.... its just a bit of a pain, and no need to be.

still the job got done...

and the old arms...

i wonder why this one failed the mot?

oh and my local supplier had the fai arms in stock and cheaper than any online supplier could supply garbage starline, so thats a win

all bagged up to show the customer

[Kernow Rotary Specialist]

3 hours work later and one corner looks a lot better...

[Kernow Rotary Specialist]

sills all sorted. you would never know

well, except for the lack of stonechip texture, which i cant help, and the fact that there are dents all the way down the sill except for the bit i welded in....

[Kernow Rotary Specialist]

More paint work. On a rx8 this time.

A customer had a minor incident on his way to drop the car off to me. No biggie, except its his girlfriends car and he doesn't want her to find out

Luckily it's not that bad...

Just gotta pick up the basecoat, flat the primer, basecoat and lacquer. Hopefully I get a good gun finish, otherwise it'll wait a week then flat and polish.

[Kernow Rotary Specialist]

thats better