Ulysses

Those arms look very nice indeed!

Good day out laning yesterday (now). Went well in north wales for a sceninc route. Sadly Dave retired late morning with a suspect head gasket (see Daves Boogie thread). Rest of the day went ok once we had made sure Dave was ok to get home under his own steam. More will follow when i've had some sleep...

On the way home the car started to stall. It stalled on the motorway but clutch started ok (at 50~60mph). Did that a couple of times with me desperatley looking for services to pull of the motorway. Broke down and stopped at Jct.29 just under the roundabout. Cranking and fuel, but no spark.I'd missed charnock richard services by a few miles sadly. All this in the persisting rain.
 

Called the recovery lot (greenflag) who said would get to asap at 17:36. In the meantime I connected the tablet PC to the ECU and looked at the fault logs. They showed over 500 faults with the crank sensor and about 400 with the cam sensor. Now it is normal to get a few issues with cam/crank sensor signal sync when starting/cranking the engine, but there is a lot more errors than I would expect to see on the log.

Macadams (contracted recovery agent) turned up in the usual transit sized van pretty quick and together we pulled out the (suspected) crank sensor, cleaned it up and... it made no difference. With no spares and no option to fit my 31" tyres onto his towing dolly, it was back to waiting for a flatbed vehicle to pick me up. Annoyingly, I did have a spare crank sensor in my spares-on-board box, but some stupid thing made me take it out on saturday before the trip. Maybe i'm cursed? I have annoyed the god of what-spare-parts to carry somehow?!

19:49 another Macadams guy calls and arrives shortly in a massive 18ton flatbed truck Loads me up and we are off... to Tebay services on adventure in the huge truck. Arrived at Tebay and unloaded about 22:40. Went in with my new mate for a coffee (good coffee at this stop) and he called the next agent to see when he was going to pick me up, which turned out to be another Macadams guy...
 

22:00ish another vehicle arrives. His normal vehicle of choice had decided to have a breakdown issue of its own with brakes and he had to turn around from southwaite to longtown to get another vehicle to come and get me from Tebay. Anyway, loaded up and on the road pretty quickly. A smaller flatbed vehicle this time, but nipped along well enough and more suited to the roads where I live.
 

00:30 Unloaded and he helped me push it into the garage too. Cant fault the service from the 3 guys that helped me today. All 3 where friendly and helpful. Interested in the vehicle and the greenlaning hobby and did their best. The secret I leaned from one of them was the Brittania (LV) recovery will actually send a flatbed first time if you ask them to. The others (incl greenflag) all send a smaller van thats not suitable to tow it first, to asses the situation. 

So overall. A good day on the lanes seeing mates and driving some superb Welsh scenery, let down by a couple of issues for both Dave & me 



 

That's unlucky. 2 of you on the same trip having engine troubles, it's not the Jimny variant of covid19 is it? :laugh:

Thankfully no covid issues to report, but there might be a 3rd engine issue victim from this trip 

Mine was, as expected, the crank sensor. On Monday I replaced it with the spare that I'd stupidly taken out of the car on Saturday and it fired straight up. Very annoying 

Videos & pics are uploaded and Brett is hard at it finishing off the blog. Here is some of my pics from the day:

 

Had a trip out to visit my mam yesterday in Ulysses. Took the scenic route over hartside and some scenic lanes on the way, all with no gates and no risk of getting stuck solo... GOPR3165 Aiketgate GOPR3166 Longdales GOPR3167 Renwick GOPR3168 Haresceugh

Discovered that the steering was still wayward. Decided to check the wheel bearings and kingpin bearings. Sure enough front driverside bearing has gone. Luckily a spare in the garage so popped it on this morning..

old:
 

new:
 

Martin's blue grease can be seen in the old bearing still and it looks good still too, shame about the bearing race wobbling all over the place! All back together and off into town for some beers. Still wayward steering .

Had a look at the steering bars and found the toe-in was actually toe-out so adjusted it back in again, but had consumed a beer whilst fiddling so thought it best to delay the test drive for now. Plus I can hear further beer calling from my nice sunny garden 

Nice views. I really need to think about visiting the UK someday.