Great! just been out to the car to check the orange connectors and at a glance they are plugged in with no wires hanging out. I'll disconnect the batt neg and WD40 them tonight. I have the special jumper cable pack. The airbag one is the red cable.

I do not think they worry about this on mot but maybe they do on new test? I had a while back on MK1 and mk2, I was going to take out connector and solder direct but wiggling and cleaning was enough. Read on some other parts of fiat forum that this was a safety circuit but hey,removing connector must be better than having it there.

widemouthfrog is a genius! You heard it here first.
Doused the bejesus out of the orange connectors with WD40 under the front seats (after disconnecting the battery neg terminal and waiting 5 mins) and cleaned with a cotton bud. Took 2 attempts but the airbag light is staying off!

Just the slightly iffy handbrake to go.

Well, that's all the known faults anyway![emoji28]

Pfffss. Fail.

Needs handbrake cables (ordered)
Rear brake pads on nearside (fitted)
Small section of diesel leak off rail. (Repaired)
Two shock absorber nuts tightening (done also blue lock tighted)

The handbrake cables come in tomorrow so will try and fit them tomorrow night and get the retest done ASAP.

Oh and the bleedin airbag light is back! Though the MOT tester didn't mention it.

OK, it could be considered a long list, but what's the parts and time cost needed to put the whole lot right?

Brake pads are consumables and wear out on any car. Those aside, I'd say it's a pretty cheap and simple MOT pass. The BBJ is the costliest item and that's only an advisory.

Cheer up!

Aye. I'm glad I had some of today off as I managed to crack on with most of the issues. It's only the handbrake to go now and I'd be doing that too if eurocarparts had it in stock today.
I'll try and address the advisories soon but with xmas coming it might have to wait. The front tyres are absolutely shocking too, I can light up the inside wheel in 2nd at every junction just with the throttle pedal. To be clear they have 6mm of tread, they're just plain awful!
I may put the Coupe wheels back on with some mid range tyres.
I'll work out the average monthly outlay on this heap soon. I think It'll be the same as a Dacia on PCP!

Right. Handbrake done. Three separate cables. With the rear end jacked up it was almost a pleasant job. It feels drastically different and the longer nearside cable I took off was nearly seized solid.

The leak off rail leak was much more involved than I originally thought. The pipe itself was fine but even so I replaced the last section with some new stuff I had spare. The leak was actually from a little brass nipple that the leak off pipe goes on to. It goes into a aluminium casting with what might be a fuel return pressure regulator and a temp sensor. Anyway I first thought this brass nipple was a press fit in and had become loose, but after a second look I realised it is threaded! [emoji28] *fanfare
So brake cleaner, threadlock and some longnose pliers means that's never coming out again. Had to take pics on my "big camera" as the phone was flat so will remember to uoload sometime. Just got to book it in for retest now.

Well she passed.

So as promised, how much have I spent in 12 months on the road:


I've covered 21K miles in that time. We've had 1 new Ford before and the excess mileage was 6p per mile, so at that rate it would have cost £887 just in mileage excess.

So she must be on form after all that attention, well not really. There's a squeal coming from the auxiliary belt which is hard to diagnose (initially i thought it was getting wet from having no arch liner but now I think it may be a bearing on the idler / tensioner that gets hot after a couple of minutes running). The ARB has shifted again in its mounts so i'll have to employ the use of the hydraulic pipe clamps I bought. There's a slight knock coming from the driveshafts general area when I lift off down hill - I think this is probably a worn CV joint. There's the MOT advisories to address (bottom arm, TRE, rear shock) and a wheel alignment needs doing. Inside i've still got the passenger window switch to source and come the summer it's be nice to have working sunroof motors and re-gassed aircon. The missing arch liner really bugs me and the front tyres are absolutely awful. I must make a decision on the wheels and get them sorted ASAP as i'm going to go through a hedge at this rate. Oh and very occasionally I get 'ENGINE CTL FAILURE' or whatever when I accelerate hard. I think this is probably an injector on it's way out.

Sigh...

Fix It Again Tomorrow

Was the "sump" expenditure before or after fitting the lowering springs?

widemouthfrog said:

Was the "sump" expenditure before or after fitting the lowering springs?

Click to expand...

Oh after of course!

This is the second car I have lowered and the second sump I have smashed:


The kitty litter is soaking up all the oil making it's way onto the A130.

Calling all you ravers.

Well i've been a total muppet and demonstrably squsihed the front end of the Multiplop by shoving it into the rear of a VW transporter. I was in the outside lane on the A12 Friday doing 40mph in light traffic and i'll be dipped if the van in front wasn't completely stationary and I had about 40ft to stop.

Well I was doing a good 20mph when I made contact and by all measures the airbags did not go off. The car is driveable albeit with a even more confused and demented face than before the accident. The transporter was luckily a works owned one and the guy or I couldn't find any damage and neither occupant was hurt. The guy kindly let it fly so hopefully nothing will come of that avenue.

Anyway the pressing issues are thus:

• Bonnet catch is too far back and does a dubious job of holding the bonnet down
• the rad fan is catching somthing and sounds like an air raid siren

The latter was most amusing as i only found that out this morning, after some exuberant driving on the way into work. The fan came on and I nearly soiled myself. It was still buzzing away at about 90db when I arrived at the work car park and upon turning off the ignition the noise persisted. "oh" says me. After trying to pry various bits of slam panel with my bare hands and the jack handle it transpired that the noise was not for stopping. Hmm - no 13mm spanner in the car. I walked a good 1km into work, got a spanner and back out of work and pulled off the Batt neg terminal. "ahh, serenity".

So back out at lunch and touching on the neg terminal redeploys the air raid siren so there must be some relay / thermal switch or some do-hicky damaged. Luckily I located the fuse and pulled it. I don't think i necessarily have to worry in this weather but in addition to a new bumper reinforcing bar and slam panel I appear to need some bits.

Collectively: sigh......

That's a really bad start to the year,but hopefully it's all fixable.

Bu**er. Does it look like it's time for the fat lady to sing, or do you fancy retrieving it? Considering you hit at around 20mph, it sounds like you got pretty lucky. aquamarine may be able to help out with the replacement parts?

I hope you weren't hurt?

widemouthfrog said:

Bu**er. Does it look like it's time for the fat lady to sing, or do you fancy retrieving it? Considering you hit at around 20mph, it sounds like you got pretty lucky. aquamarine may be able to help out with the replacement parts?

I hope you weren't hurt?

Click to expand...

only my pride!

I've had a close look today - I think it's really only the bumper bar causing all of the grief. The bumper isn't even cracked. The slam panel will probably go back to shape with a bit of manhandling. My first thought was aquamarine too but I think he's in North East? I'm on Essex/suffolk border so not at all handy. I'll try to give DAM Fiats a shout today and visit the graveyard:

What a photo! One of yours? I'd love to make a trip to DAM Fiats but it's a long trek from here.

That photo is proof positive of just how little was changed under the skin by the squarenose facelift.

Hi, sorry I'm in North West but afraid the shell went to the grave last week with slam panel etc attached. Sorry. Glad you're ok.

aquamarine said:

Hi, sorry I'm in North West but afraid the shell went to the grave last week with slam panel etc attached. Sorry. Glad you're ok.

Click to expand...

Balls! Thanks though, I thought that was the case.

Just rang DAM Fiats - the bumper reinforcing bar is a cross member welded to the chassis legs.

hmmm, the solution will have to be considerably more Heath Robinson - and potentially free.



and

Right. Been to DAM fiats but he's had a clearout.

The graveyard pictured in post #214 is no more but there were two bugs left. Took some photos of the square nose.




Think the bumps and dips on the chassis legs are the crumple zones. Jon says he usually drills out the spot welds from the legs onto the front cross member and then ideally welds in the donor cross member. He said nuts & bolts would probably suffice. Going to try and get round to getting the bumper off on the weekend and see the extent of the damage on my bug. Oh and this was the roundnose.

Obviously sent many ideas wizzing around in my head. At the very least I'll enquire about a non dented bonnet should I overcome the crash damage.

Quick update on this.
Dropped the frony bumper to assess the damage.
The centre section of the front cross member is properly bent in and squeezing the radiator pack.

The areas around the chassis legs don't look pretty either;

However I'm still wondering what the best course of action is. I can get a cross member off DAM fiats but there's a lot of work in swapping it over. Considering cutting out the centre section and making a simple bolt in bar to go between the chassis legs.
I think I'll try cutting out the middle first and see if that makes the front end all floppy or if it still retains it's racing rigidity.

Of course I should really just scrap the bleeding thing.

On the second picture, some of that could be hammered back into shape? Not sure how thick the crossmember is and with radiator in the way hard to get a good hammer swing