I recently blogged about my efforts to replace most of the bulbs in my Fiesta with LEDs. Mostly this has gone well, but one area where there have been difficulties are the indicators. When I installed the first LED I immediately got “hyperflash” where the flash rate increases a great deal to practically produce a flickering effect. My supplier – Classic Car LEDs – had indeed predicted this problem and investigating and solving it taught me a great deal about
Category: Cars
LED lamps on the Mk 4 Fiesta
Recently, I’ve been trying to convert most of the lamps on my old Mk4 Fiesta over to LEDs. There are several motivations for this: A better quality of light. Reduced chance of a failed bulb attracting the attention of the Old Bill. Reduced possibility of a flat battery if I manage to leave the lights on. I have exclusively used products from Classic Car LEDs with whom I have no connections other than as a satisfied customer. They appear to
Replacing the front top mounts on the Fiesta
Another year and another MOT for my old Fiesta. As usual, it failed and this time the problem was the front offside top mount which was apparently badly worn. I also got an advisory for the other three together with both front springs. With the weather being cold I decided to buy the parts for both sides of the front suspension but only fit the failed offside for now. Since I would have to remove the springs in order to
Blasted Golf door lock
It is often assumed, by those who don’t engage in car maintenance, that fixing the engine must be the most difficult task. However, in my experience the areas which give the greatest difficulty are either parts of the suspension which – being exposed to the road – become badly rusted or, worse of all, doors! The people who design engines organise for the thing to be held together with a sensible sequence of bolts which can be clearly seen and
Replacing the timing belts on the Golf
I couldn’t put it off any longer. The timing belt on my MkV Gold just had to be replaced. As it happens, this was nothing like as bad as I feared and certainly easier than on my Fiesta. The first task – and the most demanding – was to remove the crankshaft pulley in order to get the timing belt cover off. Of course, as usual this is tightened to a ridiculous torque. Surely there must be a better way
How I made a simple job much more difficult!
This is a tale of woe about a job in the Golf which should have been easy but for a variety of reasons (mostly my stupidity) turned out to be a complete nightmare! It all started with the approach of the MOT. I knew that there was a problem with the near side CV boot which would not get through the test so I bought a new one and set about replacing it. Various on-line videos show this task and
Replacing the Fiesta’s fuel pump
Regular readers will recall that I have been having problems with the fuel pump on my old Mk 4 Fiesta. Well, whilst I was in the process of fixing the rear brakes it seemed to fail completely. I guess I should be grateful that it always seems to pack in when the car is on the drive! This time the fuse didn’t blow leaving me not entirely sure that the fuel pump was the problem. I spent some time trying
Fiesta rear brakes
Being stuck at home has not only given me more time for gardening, but also to do some long outstanding jobs on the cars. First up are the brake shoes on the Fiesta rear drum brakes. They have never been done before and on the few occasions I checked them they showed only modest wear. This is typical for brake shoes as they wear much more slowly than the pads on disc brakes. I already had a set of shoes
Fiesta lives for another year
I took the now repaired Fiesta back for another go at the MOT. Regular readers will recall that in addition to rear suspension bushes and a rusty brake pipe, it also failed the last test with truly awful emissions. The natural idle CO reading was 5.39% against a limit of 0.5%. With such a huge discrepancy I was seriously concerned that something very expensive had failed but I couldn’t see how since it had only drive 6 miles since the
Polyurethane rules!
Today I fitted my new polyurethane suspension bushes and it was ridiculously easy. Just as in the YouTube videos, all I had to do was bash them in with a lump hammer using a lump of wood to add some protection. Then the rubber mallet to drive home the steel tube in the centre. The supplied grease made this even easier and I found that I could push the bushes about 20% of the way in by hand! No more