http://passionate-about-cars.com How to survive the world of modern motoring Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:40:15 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 © andy@wireworldmedia.co.uk () andy@wireworldmedia.co.uk() 1440 Just another WordPress weblog andy@wireworldmedia.co.uk No no http://passionate-about-cars.com/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/powered_by_podpress.jpg http://passionate-about-cars.com 144 144 http://passionate-about-cars.com/2011/02/20-i-gotta-take-a-leak/ http://passionate-about-cars.com/2011/02/20-i-gotta-take-a-leak/#comments Mon, 07 Feb 2011 18:07:15 +0000 admin http://passionate-about-cars.com/?p=175 http://passionate-about-cars.com/2011/02/20-i-gotta-take-a-leak/feed/ 0 29:34 Steve is thrown into the hot seat as Kathleen is off today - so I chatted to him in his 'Alan Sugar' office. We discuss: The ... Steve is thrown into the hot seat as Kathleen is off today - so I chatted to him in his 'Alan Sugar' office. We discuss: The idea of using incontinence pads while at the front desk An update on the roof insurance story - insurance claims and how to write letters of complaint The art of complaining The slipping clutch on my Volvo 940SE and Volvo drivers in general Autodata When Haynes Manuals go bad Austin Maxi exhausts and carburetor balancing Built-in redundancy conspiracy theories How Steve interacts with the competing garage next door - yes they DO come around to borrow spanners! Traffic wardens and the garage Photo: Elsie esq. law,and,regulations andy@wireworldmedia.co.uk no No http://passionate-about-cars.com/2010/07/16-five-foot-cycle-lanes/ http://passionate-about-cars.com/2010/07/16-five-foot-cycle-lanes/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:15:45 +0000 admin http://passionate-about-cars.com/?p=148 http://passionate-about-cars.com/2010/07/16-five-foot-cycle-lanes/feed/ 0 18:40 Steve this morning showed me an article about cycle lanes in yesterdays newspaper. In todays show we discuss a Triumph Stag with engine trouble and ... Steve this morning showed me an article about cycle lanes in yesterdays newspaper. In todays show we discuss a Triumph Stag with engine trouble and daft cycle lane planning. Andy: Steversquo;s rushing around like a blue arse fly this morning and I walked in and hersquo;s got a Triumph Stag on the rack with an over heating engine and hersquo;s already been to the car and got a newspaper out and hersquo;s ranting about cycle lanes. Steve: Wersquo;ll come to the cycle lanes in a minute Andy, I guess we must get the garage business out the way first of all. Andy: Yeah, whatrsquo;s the story with this lovely yellow Triumph Stag without an engine? Steve: I said to a guy that owns the Stag that you know itrsquo;s loosing water; it was loosing it from around what appeared to be around underneath the manifold in the middle of the engine, itrsquo;s a V8 engine. Not very easy to actually see underneath the manifold whatrsquo;s going on, but when we took the manifold off we could then see that it was actually leaking from the sides of the heads, so we said to him right, itrsquo;s your loosing water from around the heads and obviously the heads need to come off. So he said OK, took the car away and I think it was about three days after that it decided to overheat and blow the hoses. Pressured up, blow the hoses and we recovered it, we got it back here now, obviously done a head gasket. Andy: Yeah, I can see a mangled head gasket on top of it. Steve: Yeah well itrsquo;s done a, I mean therersquo;s two head gaskets so you know. Itrsquo;s really a case on these, take the engine out. But this particular engine had a little bit of a ?[01:46] from the timing chain which theyrsquo;re quite prone for and also a little bit noisy on the cam shaft and when we actually striped it, one of the buckets or the followers on top of the valve was, the cam was actually worn through it. The cam on one of the lobes has worn square and one of the other followers is cracked so yeah. I mean this engine, according to the owner, was actually rebuilt two years ago so, I donrsquo;t know who rebuilt it but it hasnrsquo;t lasted very long for two years because it hasnrsquo;t done an awful lot of miles in those two years. Andy: No but itrsquo;s now hanging on a chain and therersquo;s a young chap. Whatrsquo;s he doing painting it? Steve: Yeah he is, I mean we said to the guy that owns the car you know whilst itrsquo;s out wersquo;ve got the blocks striped right down now, the blocks just hanging there on the hoist and we got young Richard there and hersquo;s actually painting it. Being a Stag, the car that it is, I mean ?[02:52-02:53] wersquo;ll give the engine bay a good clean out and probably even polish the engine bay for him. But yeah I mean it needs a full rebuild. Wersquo;ve made inquiries, I donrsquo;t doubt there are engines out there somewhere but it does seem like the best way to do this is to actually rebuild it and if we rebuild it then we know itrsquo;s going to be done right and done properly because if that engine, we donrsquo;t know the history, all I know is that it was supposedly a recon two years ago and of course itrsquo;s two years down the road itrsquo;s not in a very good state for a two year old engine you know, so yoursquo;ve got to sort of wonder what sort of recon did they do. Or was it just a con engine rather than a recon, I donrsquo;t know. Andy: Well if it was a recon maybe it had been conned before and now itrsquo;s being conned again. Recon. Steve: Yeah I suppose that it depends on the definition of the word recon you know. Andy: So the blocks fine itrsquo;s just the bits that go on to the block need replacing is it? Steve: Yeah the block itself is OK, itrsquo;s you know obviously head gaskets are quite prone for it. Timing chains tend to wear; this one was a bit chattery so wersquo;re going to replace all this. The heads have been sent away, theyrsquo;ve been tested, and theyrsquo;re OK. Theyrsquo;ve bee... faults andy@wireworldmedia.co.uk no No http://passionate-about-cars.com/2010/06/14-peugeots-parking-and-busses/ http://passionate-about-cars.com/2010/06/14-peugeots-parking-and-busses/#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:15:04 +0000 admin http://passionate-about-cars.com/?p=133 http://passionate-about-cars.com/2010/06/14-peugeots-parking-and-busses/feed/ 0 21:02 In today's show, Steve rants passionately about ho much he loves Peugeots, some observations of parking in Brighton, and an opinion about public transport and ... In today's show, Steve rants passionately about ho much he loves Peugeots, some observations of parking in Brighton, and an opinion about public transport and particularly the busses. Andy: So wersquo;re with Steve, this is the third take, Irsquo;ve had a bit of a technical problem, a bit of equipment failure here going on with the old recorder but never mind, this is the third take now. Steve yoursquo;ve had your brother down havenrsquo;t you, apparently he's a chef from Oz? Steve Kennard: Yes he is, yes. Andy: Have you been having nice barbecues and things? Steve Kennard: Absolutely, yes hersquo;s been making the food taste really wonderful. Being a chef you know hersquo;s ndash; as I say hersquo;s ndash; even something silly like mashed potato tastes totally different, absolutely different. So yes itrsquo;s been nice to see him and yes hersquo;s gone back to Oz now so I need to get my work head back on again. Andy: Yes and therersquo;s loads of ndash; is it Peugeots on the shop floor at the moment? I bet you love French cars donrsquo;t you? Steve Kennard: Absolutely, Fr- Andy: Let me guess, electrical problems? Steve Kennard: Yes French cars ndash; most of the problems we get with the French cars that come in are electrical problems. There is... [Car horn] Andy: Excuse me... Steve Kennard: Yes. Yes, this is live. Yes therersquo;s... Andy: No editing here. Steve Kennard: No definitely not. We actually have a ndash; there is a Peugeot 206 there, therersquo;s not an electrical problem actually, that particular one there has had a cam belt failure. But actually when we looked into it, it wasnrsquo;t purely and simply a cam belt failure it was actually a partial seizure on the engine which has then done the cam belt. Itrsquo;s had a total snowball effect. The result is it requires another engine; itrsquo;s not viable to pull that one apart and rebuild it. But- Andy: What caused it to seize in the first place? Steve Kennard: Well we havenrsquo;t actually taken it out and stripped it down that far; wersquo;ve taken the cylinder head off and had a look to see because it had a belt failure. The engine itself was fairly well locked up and you know it wouldnrsquo;t move either way so we took the head off and had a look at it and even with the head off the crank shaft was extremely tight to turn and it shouldnrsquo;t be. If yoursquo;ve got the cylinder head off, yoursquo;ve got no resistances; if the bottom end of the engine is in pretty good shape then it should rotate pretty freely. This one here itrsquo;s taking quite a length of bar on it to turn it over so itrsquo;s suggesting to us that the engine has suffered a bit of a partial seizure at some stage and itrsquo;s probably that thatrsquo;s resulted in the belt failure because the belt in fairness didnrsquo;t look that bad. If you inspect the belts, most belts when theyrsquo;re coming to the end of their working life have got evidence on the belt. If you inspect the belt you can see around the base of the teeth starting to crack up, just a general you know visible inspection of the belt will give you an idea on the condition of the belt. This one here didnrsquo;t really look too bad. It ripped off some teeth where the engine had obviously suffered this seizure and thatrsquo;s it. And of course then it runs out of sync, cam shaft to crank shaft and- Andy: You get things banging into each other? Steve Kennard: Yes yoursquo;ll get valves touching pistons which is whatrsquo;s happened, but even then with the head off the engine should still rotate pretty freely. It hasnrsquo;t been, or it wonrsquo;t do that, so itrsquo;s telling us itrsquo;s got a problem internally and thatrsquo;s going to result in ndash; you know we can take the engine out, strip it down and rebuild it but nowadays the cost of doing that is more expensive than actually buying a ready built unit to fit in. And thatrsquo;s what wersquo;re going to do with that ... faults andy@wireworldmedia.co.uk no No http://passionate-about-cars.com/2010/02/12-dont-drive-your-mini-through-a-ford/ http://passionate-about-cars.com/2010/02/12-dont-drive-your-mini-through-a-ford/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:01:11 +0000 admin http://passionate-about-cars.com/?p=114 http://passionate-about-cars.com/2010/02/12-dont-drive-your-mini-through-a-ford/feed/ 0 17:35 Amongst other things, Steve tells the story of how driving a mini through a ford resulted in a new engine. Andy: It's Friday 29th January, I'm at ... Amongst other things, Steve tells the story of how driving a mini through a ford resulted in a new engine. Andy: It's Friday 29th January, I'm at 1st Class Garage with Steven. Steven's just been playing - not dominos - that game where you have to move things around to make space with cars. Steve: Well, it's almost like musical chairs with the cars, just shunting the cars around so that people can get in and out. And, yes, I mean, it's the same sort of problem wherever you go in the town. I don't know; I don't know what the answer to it is really. Well, I do know the answer is not to fleece the motorists. That's basically all that's happening; it's all about money. I mean, if you go not too far from here there's, like, it's 11-hour meters. And if you go up and down those roads you'll find that most of those are standing empty because, of course, the cost of parking now. So we've got roads around here that has got not a lot of vehicles parked on them because they're now metered. Whereas before the meters, obviously people used to park there, so all the cars that used to park there, where have they gone? You know, they've only moved them to another area. And this is the common practice: when they started zoning this town people used to park on the outskirts of the zones, so they moved the zones out. People park on the outskirts of those zones, so it is a little bit of a knock-on effect. And the parking issues in this town, I mean, I could spend hours talking about it and I don't really want to go down that - because it does make the blood boil. Andy: Have you had any nice, juicy run-ins with traffic wardens recently, Steve? Steve: Just lately, no. I've got to say, in fairness, the guys we've had around here have been very understanding, because obviously we work with cars; we're in the town; parking is a problem. When people drop their cars off, you know, we then have to move vehicles around to accommodate them or we have to find somewhere that we can park them, you know, safely and legally. So yes, parking is a little bit of an issue and we've had run-ins in the past with various wardens - I don't know what their, sort of, their actual job title is now, but... Andy: Traffic enforcement officers, I think, something like that. Steve: Oh, traffic enforcement... Andy: Or parking enforcement officers. Something like that, I think. Steve: Yes. That's a lovely term, isn't it? I mean, just directly outside the garage here we've got double yellow lines. We did ask if we could actually have, like, the white bar that they used to put across sunken pavements. Because this is a sunken pavement, or a crossover as they call it, which means that you - you know, that really other people - or people shouldn't really park there because we need access to it. So we asked if we could have the white bar there because of cars being dropped off; it'll allow customers just to pull their cars up outside there without getting hassled. And one or two of the wardens in the past have really hassled us, you know, they don't appreciate that we have a job to do like they have a job to do. We've got to have a little bit of sense and just - it is, it's common sense really. Andy: But on a bright note it's good news about the understanding wardens that you've encountered recently. We salute understanding wardens, don't we? Well, I do. Steve: Absolutely, I'm all for it. Everybody has a job to do and I'm sure they hate to get abused, but there are ones out there that actually encourage abuse with the way they go about their job. You can understand why people do get wound-up and do, like, howl verbal abuse at them. I'm not condoning it - I can't condone it - but yes, you know, it'll make your blood boil, particularly if you're having a bit of a bad day and their lack of understanding is - it doesn't help matters. It's just fuel to the fire really, isn't it? Andy: Now Steve, last time I spoke to you, which was in December, was faults,,law,and,regulations,,winter andy@wireworldmedia.co.uk no No http://passionate-about-cars.com/2008/06/6-two-post-ramps-and-parking-in-brighton/ http://passionate-about-cars.com/2008/06/6-two-post-ramps-and-parking-in-brighton/#comments Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:00:57 +0000 admin http://passionate-about-cars.com/?p=16 http://passionate-about-cars.com/2008/06/6-two-post-ramps-and-parking-in-brighton/feed/ 0 12:34 Steve enthuses about the joy of two post ramps. What is a two post ramp you may well ask? Ever tried parking in Brighton? Steve gives ... Steve enthuses about the joy of two post ramps. What is a two post ramp you may well ask? Ever tried parking in Brighton? Steve gives us a wonderful example of why the parking regulations in Brighton, UK are more like a type of Human Error tax. Enjoy! law,and,regulations andy@wireworldmedia.co.uk no No