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241

General Discussion Area / A successful day - sort of.

« on: 31 August 2008, 00:14:21 »

Been getting the Westfield ready to go to Scotland next weekend.

Following an embarassing display of displeasure last weekend a new battery was sourced. Quite a bit of cash saved on the Halfrauds trade card.

Decided that the fuel pump with its' hammer-assisted starting had to go. Sadly, due to bad planning, I had 3/4 of a tank of fuel which had to come out. Some of it came in handy when the mower ran out later though.

Just got to find out where I left the fuel filler cap now.

Ran into the house with a mouthful of 98RON shortly after removing it when a syphon attempt went a bit wrong and I'm temporarily unaware of its' location. Don't really fancy 1500 miles with a bit of rag stuffed in the hole. :-/

Kevin

242

General Discussion Area / Fuel costs...

« on: 22 August 2008, 15:06:35 »

Well, my first relatively "normal" week of commuting into the office, for comparison's sake, since my LPG conversion and I've just filled up the tank.

245 miles covered and I thought I was going to bust the 30 quid barrier with this one. Nope. £29.91, even considering the rather pricy LPG around here (59.9p/l).

That's 22.3 MPG on gas and a fuel cost of 12.2p/mile.

I'd guess at about 26 MPG if I were on petrol for this tankful. That works out at about 19p/mile.

Kevin

243

General Discussion Area / Another day, Another RAC Windscreens debacle

« on: 16 August 2008, 13:00:18 »

Mrs. KW got her windscreen replaced under her insurance by the above in may last year. They did an average job. Managed to butcher the scuttle retaining screws and lose the caps, of course but otherwise OK.

Today she receives in the post a bill for the work.

Time to shift into "snotty letter writing mode".

Kevin

244

General Discussion Area / Anyone for a little engine upgrade?

« on: 06 August 2008, 11:33:17 »

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280251492389

245

General Discussion Area / Well, it runs.. on LPG.

« on: 19 July 2008, 21:35:55 »

Been a funny day. Put the finishing touches to the LPG install, decided to take it out and fill it with gas.

First gas station - nozzle wouldn't connect properly (may have been user error

), second station was out of gas, third and fourth were on the map but couldn't find them in reality. Ended up filling at a motorway services at vast expense (but less than petrol) and burning about 1/4 of a tank of petrol for 1 tank of LPG. Still, it filled nice and quickly to 65 litres and shut of (right on the money for an 80L tank).

Anyway, switched over to LPG. Ran like a bag of spanners.

Looked at the live data and the two lambda loops are going mad fighting each other. Then I noticed the injector durations on the two banks were up and down like a yo-yo, and of each bank there was one injector duration that was dissimilar to the other 2.

Eventually it dawned on me. I'd got the injector signals for cylinders 2 and 3 swapped over.

Plenum off, re-wire, back together and it runs on LPG like a dream. With no manual tweaking after an initial auto-calibrate it's within 5% deviation across the board and runs just like it does on petrol.

A successful day - in a round-about way. :-/

Kevin

246

General Discussion Area / LPG- TomTom POI?

« on: 21 July 2008, 10:18:03 »

It appears I'm now in the happy position of needing to locate LPG stations. Can anyone recommend a decent POI list for the TomTom?

There seem to be a load available on the web, some dreadfully out of date, some only covering a single supplier and some containing biofuels as well.

Just wondering if anyone has found a good one.

Cheers,

Kevin

247

General Discussion Area / A pleasant day

« on: 20 July 2008, 20:36:29 »

Decided to go to Farnborough today. Bit of a sparse display for £28, I thought, but one or two lovely moments:

No introduction required....

The sound of half a dozen Merlins passing always lifts my heart. This trio passed by my house at about 500 feet - sneaking along below the cloud on Friday evening while I was spannering.

Also a lovely sight of a DC6 (and the sound!

- why don't they make airliners with air cooled radial engines any more).

Fantastic glider aerobatic display too. A continuous sequence of barrel rolls along the length of the runway while on tow.

Much respect from someone who needs to concentrate just to stay behind the tug.

.. and the LPG'd MV6 got me there and back without missing a beat.

Kevin

248

General Discussion Area / Vapouriser has arrived!

« on: 26 June 2008, 10:52:19 »

.. apparently. Emma has just received a parcel from Jeremy containing a "silver round thing with lots of pipes sticking out".

Kevin

249

General Discussion Area / Thanks to Jay W..

« on: 25 June 2008, 23:09:54 »

.. for popping over tonight and providing advice and moral support while I drilled tank mounting holes in my MV6.

Should be plain sailing from here when the rest of the LPG bits arrive.

How was the LPG on the way back?

Kevin

250

General Discussion Area / The basics - Roadside recovery

« on: 09 June 2008, 15:58:54 »

Marie and I helped out one of her neighbours yesterday and it made me laugh. His Astra had started running rough and he'd called out one of the "big 2" recovery companies to sort it. After a read of the codes he announced that it was the coil pack (a big module containing 4 cpp coils on this engine) and that it needed the main dealer to diagnose, etc...

Had a quick look. Read the codes with the elm327. Misfire cylinder 4. Pulled out the spark plugs and the gap must have been 2.5mm or more. Number 4 looked particularly mullered and covered in black cr@p.

We sent the chap off to Halfrauds for some new plugs and some fresh oil and a filter for good measure and aftyer 20 minutes of tinkering it was pronounced "as sweet as a nut".

Is it a sign of the times that a roadside recovery service can't diagnose a faulty spark plug?

Kevin

251

General Discussion Area / I want some

« on: 06 June 2008, 10:26:09 »

http://www.hexhold.com/hand-tool-set.htm

8-)

Kevin

252

General Discussion Area / New safety device

« on: 19 May 2008, 11:57:22 »

So, we have side and front airbags. How about a bottom airbag?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3c5gLUm9Rc

253

General Discussion Area / Tomorrow I will be going...

« on: 10 May 2008, 21:29:04 »

Here: http://www.jecoxford.org.uk/event/event59. A classic car show run by the Jaguar club (but with classics and sports cars of all types represented) in the village of Hambleden near Henley on thames.

The local Westfield sports car club have an invite every year and it's a lovely spot for a picnic and a bit of tyre kicking on days like tomorrow's forecast to be.