Colin Mill

Mine has always made the buzzing noise when switched but has been reliable - I assumed it was a TADTS job.

What is it with having to buy silicone hoses anyway? German tin-tops do 15 years on the original rubber hoses that won't turn to $n0t if you get petrol and oil on them.

Simply leave the immobiliser active and crank it till you get pressure (the immobiliser does not de-activate the starter).

Well, it could be lots of things but momentary loss of the crank position sensor signal would certainly do what you are getting.

Yes, I was looking at them. Did you see the Jaguar V12 E-type hose kit for £280? Fantastic value when you look at the number of hoses involved. I was looking at piecing the set together using standard elbows etc and, surprisingly this isn't all that bad price-wise even with billet joiners. I notice that most of the kits don't bother with moulding the small "J" hose so I guess the 16mm bore silicone hose is OK with the required bend. They also look a bit short in the supplied 16mm hose to do the heater and the submarine tube to header.

Where do Caterham source their rubber-goods from? I thought my car set something of a record (steering gaiters and top hose perished before it got to the SVA) but obviously not! BTW its worth checking the short (300mm) fuel hose that connects to the fuel rail - mine was dog rotten and I've just sorted it (£1.50 of hose and clips from the local motor-factor as the complete hose+fittings from CC is over 50 quid

He is cheating - he should have videoed doing it with the engine still in a Rover 200 - that might have slowed him up a bit 😬

Done BTW what was the survey driving at? 😬

All very interesting! I wonder if the RAC would have been happy to back up their advice with paying for the engine re-build or worse if a rod came through the side As for the explanation the garage gave for how a missing tooth could cause the rattle words fail me. Unless the engine starts and disengages the starter within one revolution all the teeth on both the starter pinion and the ring gear will be involved every time. It's all rather depressing. I had a conversation with an apprentice at the garage I have used for the last 30 years and it became obvious that despite being in the garage for several years he had not the first idea about how power steering works. Edited by - Colin Mill on 12 Apr 2010 19:27:06

I think Paul has it right - a few miles with no oil pressure is a lot!

I suspect the effect of oiling it is marginal. Any aerosol particles that impact onto the surface of the sponge are likely to stay there anyway and oiling it will not significantly affect the proportion of the aerosol that impact on the surface (very fine particles tend to follow the airflow even around quite labyrinthine obstacles. All I do is give the thing a quick spray over with silicone oil.

Jon I'm slightly confused as, according to the assembly manual the lower end of the spring/damper unit is secured to a boss on the De Dion tube itself using a hex headed bolt BF 1/2 x 2.5 V-grade 10.9. Unfortunately I don't remember assembling this bit so I can't be sure that's right. Edited by - Colin Mill on 26 Oct 2009 17:36:02

I thought that the red or green colouration had more to do with the type of corrosion inhibitor than the base material.

Given that the vertical axis moment of inertia summation involves the square of the distance of the mass element from the CofG I suspect the improvement in this from moving the engine in this way might be disappointingly low for the amount of effort required. It would be interesting to compare it with,say, the effect of reducing the weight in the wheel/hub/brake/wing assemblies as much as possible (as these are about the furthest things from the CofG). Also, perhaps replacing the DD tube with a light alloy structure. Edited by - Colin Mill on 25 Oct 2009 09:50:21

Strangely I had almost exactly the same problem restarting my 1963 Massey Ferguson at the weekend 😬 Simply charging the battery did the trick so I'm guessing it just didn't quite have enough grunt to throw the thing into engagement.