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Alan Clogwyn

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Posts posted by Alan Clogwyn

  1. Do they actually stop the car? You can tell when theres air in a brake system very very quickly!

    The rears can be a bitch to do if you have ABS because of the proportioning valve, it usually traps a lot of air, so even when you think theres no more, about 20 bleed attempts later anothe rspurt of air comes out and its cured!

  2. Anyone who takes the time to look after and tastefully modify a car gets respect from me, whatvever the car is. People who just buy posh cars get none. They are the people who don't actually have a clue and are just buying it to show they have money and a small dick. Likewise people who buy large fibreglass aeronautical parts and araldite them onto a suitably low powered rustbox, no repsect for that.

    Most respect to people who build kit cars, hot rods or restore proper old school cars.

  3. Should move up here, My car is never locked at home. Worst thing to ever happen overnight was in Porthmadog where it was on the High Street overnight and someone attempted to steal a dide repeater. It was an orange standard one too!

    I won't park my car round the front at work though as Tourists can't drive. It was out front for a mere 4 hours (in the entire time I've owned it!) and someone dented my door. :angry:

  4. It's just a gasket like any other, a squidgy thing to fill the gaps between two components to make a perfectly tight seal. There are holes in it for the cylinders and passageways for oil and water to reach the head from the block. Some engines don't have seperate cylinder heads and therefore have no head gasket, which is pretty cool.

    Why do they fail? Pressure and heat. Both surfaces of modern HGs are coated in a glue which bonds them to the head and block. Get the engine hot and this glue melts, lets gas through and pop that's your headgasket gone. This is a minor failure, wouldn't kill you car on the spot dead but would make it pretty unhappy.

    The other way is as above, a Major overheat warping the head so that theres no hope of a gasket sealing the gap.

    Symptoms? Depends on engine design and the exact nature of the fault in the headgasket. On both my Celicas the leak in the gasket went only as far as the cooling jackets. The grey one was severe enough to cause a loss of compression that eventually killed it. On the brown one the leak was much much smaller, and all that managed to do was pressurise the cooling system, causing it to blow out all the coolant and eventually overheat.

    A really severe headgasket problem could potentially allow coolant and oil to mix or enter the combustion chanber. This is characterised by emulsified gunk in the coolant or oil or both (mayo). This is rarer than people think.

    What might indicate a problem with the head gasket/how to diagnose it? Well unexplained overheating is usually a warning. with the rad cap off and the engine running, if the water's bubbling away then the HG is kaput. a bubble every now and then is not a problem as moving water does make a few bubbles, but if it looks like someone blowing down a straw into their coke wit hice then it's bye bye HG. Low compression is another indicator but its' not a foolproof test. You can get a Headsaket tester which is basically a liquid that changes colour in the presence of combustion gasses, you use it over the open rad cap and i ttells you if theres a leak through.

    The Brown Cdelic proved very difficult to diagnose as when it was cold it showed no symptoms, only when it got warm did the leak show itself in the cooling system.

  5. the thing is if you change from using semi synthetic to fully synthetic it could possibly make your engine leak oil. without going into to much detail it basicly melts the build up which would be sealing seals etc. therefore leak. so best thing to do is just stick with semi synthetic therefore get the part protection hence (semi synthetic) as to fully synthetic in newer car with newer piston rings etc..biggrin.gif

    Err, just plain no I'm afraid!

    After working on engines all my working life. The term black death is used when an engine over heats to the point all the carbon build up starts to flake off into the sump due to the heat. It then gets pulled up onto the pre filter in the sump hence starving the engine of oil. Black death.

    I've never ever come across an engine that has suffered this, thankfully, and I've worked on some dogs.

  6. Sludge formation is due to the breakdown of oil and entrapment of carbon. Since Toyota has a tendency to make engines with crap piston rings it's no suprise really, but to be fair using cheap oil and not changing it regularly enough will be the primary cause.

    Use proper synthetic stuff and change it before it looks like treacle on your dipstick(You are checking your oil regularly aren't you?)

  7. It did, and I told the company it's here waiting to be collected to be sent to the guy, I even emailed him and said if yoy're waiting for your stuff it's here. I left it 2 weeks al lwrapped back up and ready to be collected but no one showed, and no one emailed me back. To be fair it wasn't very high quality stuff, I'd have been very peaved if I'd paid the £700 for it. Obviously they don't have very good dispatch staff or customer service team either!

  8. I can't think of any car sold in the UK in the last 20 years which have insufficient lighting if the lighting is kept in good condition. If it were the case the vehicle would not pass type approval and would not be allowed to be sold.

    Gen 5 Celica, Vauxhall Nova mk2.

    Still I think HIDS should be banned, the yare the most dangerous thing I come up against on other people's cars.

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