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[JamesV6CDX]

Well, since installing my new battery, and making a decent connection at the terminal, I have not experienced any LPG idle problems whatsoever.

Fingers crossed

On a funnier note, they hate me at my local Waitrose in Cheltenham.

My tank fills pretty quick, but the last 10 litres go in quite slowly. Every time I go there to fill up, my car ALWAYS trips out the LPG pump when putting in the last 10 litres - they're getting really fed up with me  

[Kevin Wood]

Nothing to do with the fact that there's only about 2 litres of air in the tank at this point?

Tank starts to sound like the submarine in "Das Boot"?

Still, glad to hear that (fingers crossed) the misfire is gone. Thinking about it, I've always scratched my head as to why it improved when you selected higher impedance injectors. Insufficient suppy voltage ties in nicely with that observation.


Kevin

[cem_devecioglu]

May be an old fashion idea but I think nowadays factories are using too much electronics and sockets and very long cabling messing up the problems in a modern car..

Every socket connection sooner or later gets oxidised, soldering points break in time and become nightmare..

Hope you beat the problem James

[Kevin Wood]

When I was at school (so 20+ years ago) we did a project whereby a whole light cluster could be controlled using what amounts to a CAN bus - a twisted pair of signalling wires plus a +12v supply line. Any number of devices could sit on the bus and it included full bulb failure reporting.

I don't understand why manufacturers are still fitting wiring looms as thick as my arm in places

Kevin

[cem_devecioglu]

When I was at school (so 20+ years ago) we did a project whereby a whole light cluster could be controlled using what amounts to a CAN bus - a twisted pair of signalling wires plus a +12v supply line. Any number of devices could sit on the bus and it included full bulb failure reporting.

I don't understand why manufacturers are still fitting wiring looms as thick as my arm in places

Kevin
 

Obvious solution..

[TheBoy]

When I was at school (so 20+ years ago) we did a project whereby a whole light cluster could be controlled using what amounts to a CAN bus - a twisted pair of signalling wires plus a +12v supply line. Any number of devices could sit on the bus and it included full bulb failure reporting.

I don't understand why manufacturers are still fitting wiring looms as thick as my arm in places

Kevin
 

One possible answer is CAN is too complicated for the idiots in overalls running around most dealers.  But then, so is electricity.

But you could imagine taking the car in for a blown bulb - 'Sorry sir, you need a new rear light cluster ECU - £800 please'

[Kevin Wood]

When I was at school (so 20+ years ago) we did a project whereby a whole light cluster could be controlled using what amounts to a CAN bus - a twisted pair of signalling wires plus a +12v supply line. Any number of devices could sit on the bus and it included full bulb failure reporting.

I don't understand why manufacturers are still fitting wiring looms as thick as my arm in places

Kevin
 

One possible answer is CAN is too complicated for the idiots in overalls running around most dealers.  But then, so is electricity.

But you could imagine taking the car in for a blown bulb - 'Sorry sir, you need a new rear light cluster ECU - £800 please'

True, it'd remove the need to the idiots in overalls to tamper with leccy on the whole, though, which can only be a good thing.

I agree a light cluster would probably be inflated stupidly in price. However, I think this is the motor industry inflating the price of things just because they're percieved to be "complex". Other industries seem to be able to build small amounts of intelligence into devices without them costing three figure sums (think printer ink cartriges, etc.) Even your sub-10 quid set of fairy lights has a couple of channels of bulb outputs driven by a small CPU (much to my irritation).

The cost of fabricating a set of wiring looms as complex as those in an Omega must be significant.

Kevin

[TheBoy]

When I was at school (so 20+ years ago) we did a project whereby a whole light cluster could be controlled using what amounts to a CAN bus - a twisted pair of signalling wires plus a +12v supply line. Any number of devices could sit on the bus and it included full bulb failure reporting.

I don't understand why manufacturers are still fitting wiring looms as thick as my arm in places

Kevin
 

One possible answer is CAN is too complicated for the idiots in overalls running around most dealers.  But then, so is electricity.

But you could imagine taking the car in for a blown bulb - 'Sorry sir, you need a new rear light cluster ECU - £800 please'

True, it'd remove the need to the idiots in overalls to tamper with leccy on the whole, though, which can only be a good thing.

I agree a light cluster would probably be inflated stupidly in price. However, I think this is the motor industry inflating the price of things just because they're percieved to be "complex". Other industries seem to be able to build small amounts of intelligence into devices without them costing three figure sums (think printer ink cartriges, etc.) Even your sub-10 quid set of fairy lights has a couple of channels of bulb outputs driven by a small CPU (much to my irritation).

The cost of fabricating a set of wiring looms as complex as those in an Omega must be significant.

Kevin

Oh, don't get me wrong, I fully agree with you.  The problem comes when the majority (not all - there are good ones about) of spotty overall wearers at dealers are the kids who perhaps didn't do so well at school, and hence are blown away by anything that requires thinking/logic...

[cem_devecioglu]

The problem is motor industry see electronics as big profit area..

The biggest processor they use is an 32 bit RISC in BMW M6..

I wanted to hear how much price they wiil quote for that in case of

problem..

[Kevin Wood]

I would guess they price ECUs and the like to recoup some of the (considerable) software development costs as well as the hardware. IMHO, it's fair enough to do this once, when you buy the car, but not if you're replacing duff hardware. Would you expect to have to purchase a new operating system every time your PC fails?

Even quite powerful microcontrollers are cheap these days, and there are a wide variety of devices to drive automotive loads like injectors, coils, etc. The problem isn't in the parts, but the markup for devices that are percieved to be complex.

Kevin

[STMO123]

Note in my astra manual.

If the battery goes flat DONT  use a power starter, you'll knacker the electronics. DONT bump start it, you'll knacker the cat.

[Kevin Wood]

Just covering their @rses.

DONT bump start it, you'll knacker the cat.

I've never understood that one. If you've cranked it until the battery's flat (and there's fuel) you'll already have chucked a load of unburnt fuel into the cat. If not, what's the difference between bump starting and turning the engine on the starter? Very little.

If the electrical system is totally dead you won't get any fuel by trying to bump start it, and if it's not dead, it's no worse than cranking it, surely?

Kevin

[Ken T]

It would prob cost a couple of quid to put a PIC cpu and a couple of switching FETs into each lamp, which would give full control of lamps plus let you know if the bulb went. Could be really clever and fit spare bulbs, so if one went just change over to the spare. Writing the code to control this wouldn't be difficult, really. It could be really good, you could add extra stuff by just plugging the accessory into the power/control bus, and programming its control at the main ECU. You could customise your car to be the way you wanted it, eg automatically close windows if the door lock pressed, or change the time the interior lights stayed on for, etc.

  I recon they are still trying to do this sort of thing with full CAN bus arbitration stuff, which means its overcomplicated to hell (KISS).

Ken