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886

Omega General Help / Top end rebuild problem

« on: 22 November 2010, 22:06:53 »

It has been an on / off project for the last 6 months on my 3.0 V6, where I suspected the head gasket had gone on the near side bank of cylinders . It had, the near side gasket around the exhaust ports on both front and rear cylinders. The gasket had disintegrated in this area on both cylinders, with some slight pitting on the head. The offside gasket was also not in great condition, but has not been leaking.

I've had both heads lightly skimmed, so they match and rebuilt the engine. All new top end gaskets and stretch bolts for cylinder heads. I've also redone the oil cooler gasket, new thermostat, water pump, plugs, leads, new stretch bolts for the cam sprockets, new cam belt and tensioners (I found the oof cambelt dvd excellent and very helpful).

However, all was well on starting up apart from a engine rattling sound on tickover, which largely disappears from about 1500rpm when you rev the engine. I don't want to drive the car until I have identified the problem, in case I done something stupid on the rebuild which causes major engine problems.  I thought it might be a lack of oil in a cam follower, but after leaving the engine running for about 30 mins to get rid of air from cooling system and checking the running temperature was ok, the knocking sound is still there. 

I've run the engine a couple more times but no change to the knocking sound. I tried going around the engine listening with a screwdriver with no definite conclusions, but think it might be from the near-side bank of cylinders, towards the front.

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated?

887

Omega General Help / Head Gasket

« on: 16 May 2010, 17:14:08 »

I've been reading articles on your here for a few months and have found it a very helpful friendly site. I have a poorly 1999 3.0L Elite Estate.

I've been losing water for sometime which has got progressively worse. It is not the HSE valve as this was replaced, when I started losing water, this slowed the rate of loss down, but did not stop it. It is now misfiring on tickover, once the engine has warmed up, but is ok underload above 2000rpm. There is also no steam from the exhaust on a hot day when the engine is cold, only when it is up to temperature. The dis pack and plug leads were replaced about 15,000 miles ago, but there is oil in the plug holes (cam box gasket leak?). There is no oil in the water and there is no white gunge on the oil dipstick.

I have done the test suggested in one of your help articles by filling the radiator expansion tank to the top, left the cap off and there is air returning through the top tube on this when I rev the engine, it also smells of exhaust fumes! 

Yesterday I did a compression test on a warm engine (I think is it the nearside bank of cylinders that is missing as the plugs were cooler than the offside, when I removed them). What is puzzling me a bit are the results, as I would expect the compression to be lower if a head gasket had gone, but for two of the cylinders, on the nearside bank, it was much higher. The only reason I can think for this is that water is being drawn into the cylinders and this means that there is less room for the air to compress and making the reading higher?

The results were:

drivers side:
back: 230psi
middle: 252psi
front: 238psi

nearside:
back: 297psi
middle: 265psi
front: 235psi

Any advice on whether you think head gasket has gone would be appreciated as I don't want to strip the engine down and replace them unnecessarly!

888

General Car Chat / Merc 320 CLK auto gearbox problem

« on: 06 August 2011, 16:53:25 »

My next door neighbour bought the car from our local stealers, just over 3 months ago, so the warranty has just run out! 

They had just done about 40 miles of motorway driving and driven into the destination town, where they were going to a wedding, when there was a whirling noise from the gearbox and it was stuck in top gear.

They used their breakdown cover to get them home on the back of a truck. 

Looking in the manual that comes with the car, first problem I found was that ever since having the car they had it switched in winter mode.    A case of Please read the manual.

The manual also said that if there is a problem and the gearbox goes into limp mode it will stay in the gear that is currently selected. To reset this turn off engine for a minimum of 30 seconds, turn the ignition on for at least 10 seconds to reset the system and then start the car, to get you to your destination, and then get a Merc stealer to check the system. I went through the reset procedure, there was no EML on, so I took the car round the block and it drove perfectly.  

Now I think the problem may have been caused where the car is only normally used for short runs and this long run has exposed a problem. My advice to them was as the car has done 96000, the gearbox has probably never been serviced, the oil level maybe low, so get that done and then see if there are any further problems. Reminding them that oil is much cheaper than bearings! 

I would appreciate any further advice that I can pass on to them 

889

General Car Chat / Two recoveries in a week

« on: 13 July 2011, 22:17:24 »

Until last week I've always managed to do roadside repairs to get my cars home, but last week with a crankshaft sensor fault I had to get it recovered, by my neighbours boy who has flatbed recovery lorry.

Today, his dad, Tommy came round to see if I could find a part number for a Merc coil pack where he has a misfire. I asked him if he had changed the plugs he had bought last week to try and cure the problem, to which he replied, no, he had not got a long reach plug spanner. Now I've always got time to help Tommy as until he retired from collecting scrap cars, he would always get me parts for my miggy off scrap ones for for nothing and he used to bring round bags of tools, CD's, bulb packs, first aid kits etc that had been left in scrap cars.

The Merc gorilla had obviously used a scaffold pole to do up the plugs, as it broke my cheap plug spanner rather than undo. His lad came out with another plug spanner and long bar, so I was able to change the plugs, now Tommy said lets take it for a test drive...

Immediately you could tell the problem was still there, so I said to Tommy, lets abort any further testing, now at 78 I think it is fair to say Tommy's youthful driver days are behind him, but he insisted on taking it up the steep hill on our local 60mph bypass, half way up the hill we were down to 20mph, by the time we got to the top 10mph  . Now the road up the steep hill is two lanes, so we didn't hold the rush hour traffic up too much, we managed 40mph on the downhill bit to a roundabout. I said to Tommy pull into the no-through-road off the roundabout and to get his boy to recover him, Tommy said we will be ok, it will get us home.... 

Now on the return trip it is all single carriage and very, very busy, now doing 10mph max, with Tommy saying let them wait, with horns beeping and lights flashing it was not my idea of fun, I couldn't find a seat button to eject me or to lower it to the floor to hide my embarrassment  , by the time we were down to 7mph  I managed to get Tommy to pull over and get his boy to recover the Merc. Two recoveries in a week!

I'm 99% certain it is mass airflow meter. Merc stealers want £120, the local auto-factors trade price £249, and where Tommy's eldest boy runs an independent garage, he getting it for £48. I'm not sure what the moral is here apart from shopping around and auto-factors are not always the cheapest.

One thing I'm certain of, next time Tommy want me to accompany him on a test drive, I will make my excuses and beat a hasty retreat. 

890

General Discussion Area / And you wonder why the country is broke

« on: 10 September 2011, 04:47:02 »

The UK government is spending about 52% of GDP on public services up from (37% in 1997).

This is a very good example why 

Broadmoor submits £250m redevelopment plan.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-14851509

How many patients does Broadmoor treat about 250, so they are spending about £1m per patient on redevelopment. 

This sort of madness (no pun intended, ok you know me, so there is really  ) is why I can't wait to move to a low tax country, where I'm emigrating to Ukraine. There the Government spends about 40% of GDP and the Government debt burden is about about 40% GDP against 63% in the UK and growing fast!!!

tr]

Tax	UK	Ukraine
Income	Basic 20%, max 60%	Basic 15%, max 17%
Saving Interest / Dividends	20, 40, 50%	5%
Council Tax	I pay £1993pa	In Ukraine £0
VAT	20%	20% but will be reduced to 17% by 2015
Petrol	£1.35l (£6.16 gallon)l	about £0.77l (£3.51 per gallon)
Water Rates	£493	£0, (from well with electric pump into header tank)
Gas / Electric	£180 per month	Not sure but I think it will be about 25-50% of UK prices

[td]Food[/td][td]Globally Competitive[/td][td]About 75% produced yourself with small holding[/td][/tr]
tr][td]Consumer goods[/td][td]Globally Competitive[/td][td]About 10% higher than UK[/td][/tr]
[/table]

If you are self employed in Ukraine, you can register as a Private Entrepreneur and turn over up to 300,00UAH (about £23,000) and you pay a fixed amount of tax per month 200UAH (£15.38) and their equivalent of NI 86UAH (£6.61). If most of your turnover is your personal labour cost, like it is with me as a computer programmer then you can earn £23,000 and pay £264 tax / NI per annum. If your turnover exceeds £23,000 then you pay 17% on the excess above this.

The disadvantages of Ukraine are: Very cold winters, very bureaucratic with very corrupt public servants, poor infrastructure, poor Internet connection outside of major cities, but speed better than UK in cities, with Wimax available. Roads poor (but no parking charges except in Kiev), health system very basic, free in theory but in practice you pay for medicines and bribes incentives to be treated by doctors, unless you take out private health insurance at about £40 per month and use private hospitals. Secondhand cars are very expensive min. price for anything is £2000 (40 year old pile of rust) and about 4x same price in UK, road fatalities about 4x UK, murder rate about 2x UK.

Advantages: Hot summers about 30degC, no nanny state, nobody cares much about what you do, unemployment benefits - none, your problem, most people in this position are supported by their friends and families, when communities and families have very strong bonds in Ukraine, education system generally good with 5th highest percentage of qualified engineers and scientists per head of population in the world. House prices in my wife's village are about 100,000UAH (£7700) for a bungalow with about 1 acre of land.

Sadly the UK cost base and taxes means it is no longer a competitive place to do business. 

891

General Discussion Area / Channel 4 - Operation Armadillo

« on: 09 September 2011, 07:47:04 »

Anybody watch this on Danish troops in Afghanistan?

After the Danish troops had been ambushed and were under very heavy fire by the Taliban, to neutralize them they threw a grenade into a ditch and badly injured 4 of them.

When they charged the ditch they found the 4 badly injured Taliban and in their words, "they emptied 5 clips into them as it was the most humain thing to do" and then the officer fired couple more clips down the ditch which killed the 5th member of their group.

They were heavily censored by their commanders back in Denmark for the possible unnecessary killing of the 4 and indiscriminate killing of the 5th. The officer that that killed the 5th in his defense said if he had stuck his head down the ditch to check the situation of the 5th Taliban he may of had his head blown off as he may have been dead, injured or pointing a gun down the ditch...

To me it seemed very humain and proper that the 4 injured Taliban that had been trying to kill them seconds before should not have to put up with much pain and suffering and were able to join Allah at the earliest convenient moment, quickly followed by the 5th.

What do you think?

892

General Discussion Area / Lost both my cooking apple trees in 6 weeks

« on: 21 August 2011, 21:24:21 »

I have two mature cooking apple trees and two eating apple trees in my garden.

At the beginning of the second week of July we had very heavy rain and gale force winds. This half uprooted my Bramley apple tree. I've firmly propped it up using a wooden pole for now until the apples get bigger, but once it has cropped it is going to have to come down as it is potentially dangerous. 

This week after the heavy rains, followed by fairly strong gusting wind on Wednesday, I found on Thursday morning my other cooking apple tree, which has three different varieties grafted to the root stock, on its side in the garden. I spent a couple of hours this afternoon picking the apples and got 11 carrier bags full, with another 4 carrier bags full of wind falls. This week I'm going to have to cut the tree down as it is blocking off part of the garden. 

Both of the trees are about 20 years old and I've lost them both in the space of about 6 weeks. 

893

General Discussion Area / Lidl Cross Cut Mitre Saw

« on: 22 August 2011, 17:04:16 »

I bought this cross cut mitre saw from Lidl today and I'm impressed. It is a lot of saw for the money. 

http://www.lidl.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg//SID-41B5819F-7EF41914/lidl_uk/hs.xsl/index_23502.htm?offerdate=&idcheck=true&ar2=&id=737&country=GB&zipcode=GU17+9AF&city=Camberley&district=Blackwater&street=London+Road&ar=2&nf=True

More heavy duty and much better than the cross cut saw it replaces, which it is broken with tooth missing on the electric motor gearbox spline.

894

General Discussion Area / Well done Mark Cavendish

« on: 24 July 2011, 18:37:59 »

The Manx missile, Mark Cavendish, did well today winning his 5th stage of the 2011 Tour de France and becoming the first UK citizen to win the Green Jersey.