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1

General Car Chat / Re: Cadilac Catera 3.0 V6 is it worth to buy for fun or collection ?

« on: Today at 08:03:44 »

That points towards an issue either with the cluster or the connection from the engine ECU.

The dash is the one major difference between the Catera and Omega, and without seeing behind the cluster there may be additional wiring/plugs for the extra displays/warnings.

I suspect that the alternator only feeds the charge light (and battery voltage gauge), whereas the rpm signal comes from the engine ECU information (crank and/or cam sensor).

If the pedal trick works*, any codes may highlight a discrepancy.

* It should as the car is DBW.

The speedometer issue is almost guaranteed to be unrelated.

But engine right on high rpm. Car starts to stall when accelerating. Maybe I should start with (crank and/or cam sensor)?
Previous owner said that they changed crank sensor from omega.

Fuel filter ok?

if it miss fires on acceleration that points to ignition voltage and coil packs

2

General Car Chat / Re: So what have you done to your car today?

« on: Yesterday at 16:29:38 »

(head gasket on these is done without removing the chain assembly and timing cover).

I really can't picture how this is done. 

How do you remove the head and cams without taking the cam sprockets with it?

Cam sprockets are unbolted and have the chain on, tension is removed from the tensioner and the sprockets sit in a casting on the timing cover, head slides out and up (having disconnected the inlet, exhaust, water outlet, a few water pumps bolts, and some timing cover bolts.



On re-fit, crank t 90degrees before TDC (all pistons to the half way), head on, set the cams and lock them, bring the pistons to TDC and and lock the crank. Cam sprockets bolted on, tensioner released and tighten the bolts. 

3

General Discussion Area / Re: Middle East

« on: Yesterday at 12:13:21 »

On my India trips recently we have indeed been traveling across Iraq and hanging a left before Ukraine when heading to/from Dubai   

4

General Car Chat / Re: So what have you done to your car today?

« on: Yesterday at 12:09:33 »

Finished a head gasket repair on a friends 1.4 Turbo Zaf C.

Been a pig of a job, mainly thanks to the moron garage that has been taking cash for previous work and servicing.

Head skimmed as it had been cooked and warped, broken coolant hose replaced (it had been wrapped in self amalgamating tape), repaired the vac connection from the manifold to the brake servo which had been snapped off and plugged with a bolt, replaced the missing two bolts on the water pump,  fitted a new stat as they had gutted it so no internals (how the hell did they think that would help!).

Got it running and it shat its oil load all over the road as the turbo oil feed pipe fractured due to being distorted/bent and rubbing on the manifold, the chain tensioner also decided it had had enough (head gasket on these is done without removing the chain assembly and timing cover).

I have not seen black death in a cylinder head like this since the days of the crappy Ford CVH lumps, two hours cleaning and a couple of trips through the dish washer (bottom end was not as bad as I dropped the sump to check big ends and the pickup gauze) to get it up to scratch

5

General Car Chat / Re: Cadilac Catera 3.0 V6 is it worth to buy for fun or collection ?

« on: Yesterday at 11:59:48 »

You could always look to find somebody good with a soldering iron, the failure mode on the ABS module is a fractured bond wire, in fact two, (as there are two in parallel to increase current handling), not to hard to repair but it is fiddly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpBmT0s8GnY

6

General Discussion Area / Re: Going to take a look with maybe a purchase.

« on: 12 April 2024, 07:25:54 »

This one is midnight blue with tan leather, I'm going to keep the colour the same but although the seats look in good nick I know of someone local who can refurb them completely, I'm going to keep them the same colour but will have the leather in the "diamond quilted" pattern that can be seen on most Bentleys.

Keep them original, Mick.

^This!^ 

How original though?

Say, for example, you replace points and coil on a sixties classic for electronic ignition. Or modern tyres and brakes.

What Rangie describes sounds like an 'acceptable update' to me.

. 

Just wanted a slight difference to make it more "personalised" to me, everything else exactly to as new condition, even my missus liked driving the Granadas at one point we had two she had a 3.0 GL & I had the 3.0 Ghia, the MK2 I had was only a 2.3LX in gay gold 👍

You go for it, its your car, purchased by you, for you, do to it what you want. 

7

General Car Chat / Re: So what have you done to your car today?

« on: 11 April 2024, 15:12:17 »

Note to self, stop looking on tInternet shopping sites,, just bought a pair of rear  B4 Bilstein for £60.

Bilstein have a bit of a sale on at the moment, some good deals to be had

8

General Car Chat / Re: Bavarian brawn

« on: 11 April 2024, 15:11:31 »

Does it sound like a hovercraft for many minutes after you lock it and walk away?

Not a fan of that engine! 

Yeah, about 20 minutes. I thought I had broken it.

Bit of a shite design to get around packaging constraints, turbos in the V, they have 'thermal challenges', we use the same lumps in the new RR and RRS, not nearly as good as the previous SC 5.0 we had.

9

General Car Chat / Re: Bavarian brawn

« on: 11 April 2024, 07:52:58 »

Does it sound like a hovercraft for many minutes after you lock it and walk away?

Not a fan of that engine! 

10

General Discussion Area / Re: Starlink.

« on: 08 April 2024, 16:30:41 »

We have been looking at how we integrate LEO solutions into a car for some years now, have worked directly with Amazon and Starlink on this.

So have you set it up, tried it, and its not performing?

Basically yes.

No obstructions as it looks out over fields. Starlink customer service say that it's as good as it is going to get.

Now using Lebara with the Vodaphone network through a Huawei router,  which costs £12.50 a month instead of £75 for Starlink.

Connecting the TV aerial to the router seems to have made it much faster.....or is that just the placebo effect.

Possible but far from ideal, you can get directional and external cellular antennas which are MUCH better, they just need pointing at the cellular mast (for directional)

I shall look into this.

Do you have one (or more) you can recommend that works well and won't break the bank?

If you can get the modem as close to the antenna as possible then I suspect most will work ok, check as you might need two antennas (to get 2x2 MIMO) or even 4 if its 5g, will depend how many antennas the box has today.

I just use car shark fins as I have them lying around 

11

General Discussion Area / Re: Starlink.

« on: 08 April 2024, 16:24:21 »

The latency will only really be an issue for voice/video calls plus gaming, for streaming and web browsing in general its not noticeable.

You have to remember that 5g frequencies do not propagate as far as the lower 4g and 3g bands, so 5g coverage is generally always worse. It doesn't get better in as much as most 5g installs are NSA (Non-Stand-Alone) so are effectively 5g radios on a 4g base station.

As per Opti, if you have a cellular modem then consider an external antenna (keep the coax length as small as possible) as that will improve reception significantly and again, a directional antenna will be even better.

12

General Discussion Area / Re: Starlink.

« on: 08 April 2024, 14:13:25 »

We have been looking at how we integrate LEO solutions into a car for some years now, have worked directly with Amazon and Starlink on this.

So have you set it up, tried it, and its not performing?

Basically yes.

No obstructions as it looks out over fields. Starlink customer service say that it's as good as it is going to get.

Now using Lebara with the Vodaphone network through a Huawei router,  which costs £12.50 a month instead of £75 for Starlink.

Connecting the TV aerial to the router seems to have made it much faster.....or is that just the placebo effect.

Possible but far from ideal, you can get directional and external cellular antennas which are MUCH better, they just need pointing at the cellular mast (for directional)

13

General Discussion Area / Re: Starlink.

« on: 08 April 2024, 12:36:33 »

We have been looking at how we integrate LEO solutions into a car for some years now, have worked directly with Amazon and Starlink on this.

So have you set it up, tried it, and its not performing?

14

General Discussion Area / Re: Starlink.

« on: 08 April 2024, 07:42:15 »

I've signed up for a 30 day trial with Starlink because my options are pretty limited before 5G becomes more common.

I've gone for the 'residential package' at £75 PCM.......roaming and mobile packages are £85 PCM and according to users regularly throttled back if the demand is high elsewhere.

As suggested by Sir Tig  I have gone for the refurbished dish which costs £150, so £79 less.

I'll see how it goes.

That's not actually how it works, the major issue is the user count on the satellite.

It might appear that there are loads of satellites up there but, there are often only 1 or 2 over the UK at any one time, throw  in a 30 degree acceptance angle for the receivers and you have many thousands of people using the bandwidth of a single satellite.........it then gets worse with between satellite bandwidth sharing (for when they cannot access an uplink, and there are not many uplinks!).

The killer for Elon is that as users increase, bandwidth falls, plus there is big competition arriving (Amazon Kuiper plus others) and he has backed a bespoke setup so will have to replace the current  space junk he has up there (although they only last around five years anyway and they are constantly burning them up over the Pacific)

Interesting live map here:

https://satellitemap.space/

15

General Discussion Area / Re: Starlink.

« on: 08 April 2024, 07:36:19 »

We too live in the countryside but Spain. No chance of copper or fibre ever..

Our choice is 4G or 5G ( when available)  The 5G will have roughly the same footprint as 4G . At max 20 meg 4 G works for TV streaming until “ rush hour” . Schools in/ out, work finishes, adverts on popular programmes etc etc. Up is 700k so useless for video conferencing.

Spain has a programme to enable everyone to get fast internet. We get HispaSat internet. 100 meg down and 7 meg up for 35 euros a month - Free install. It works great for tv streaming but has a big ping so no good for interactive internet gaming. We are currently waiting for technician to visit to give us a free  speed upgrade.
Our install is a 90 cm dish facing South East , cable to a good quality router

Similar technology to Starlink.  Starlink have offers . Look out for one……..

Nothing like Starlink, totally different tech, HispaSat is Geo tech, Starlink is LEO.

Hence you get horrific latency as the round trip delay can be half a second and with bandwidth levelling up to a second.

LEOs are so much closer that the latency is not that different to cellular