_Chris_

p.s. This is the place mine came from http://www.mobileweldingsupplies.co.uk/used-equipment https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/plonknplonker999

The best advice is to buy good quality secondhand for the same price as cheap crap new. My current welder is an old, battered murex 3 phase welder which cost me £250 on ebay and it's far far better than the £650 one I was talked into buying a few years back. Same advice goes for pretty much any power tool except batteries.

The regulations: Rear must be equal or wider. Rear must be equal or lower profile. It's all about stopping the back being less grippy or more squidgy than the front. Not sure how much is checked in the MOT, I suspect both of the above.

Be careful with solder joints that they are not subjected to any vibration as soldering makes wire brittle. You can get adhesive lined shrink sleeving specifically designed for solder splices which goes pretty rigid once shrunk to keep the stress away from the joint. This will, of course, increase the stress in the connector itself. As a general rule, connections from a wire to a fixed item should br crimped. Wire splices or items which are in the loom are better soldered. This assumes good quality crimps.

As above, you need to measure drop in the Earth return as well as the positive feed. Ideally measure the voltage across the bulb at the bulb, and the voltage across the battery - or better still on the alternator as this is the source of all electrical power when the engine is running. Measure from the large output terminal on the back to alternator body. The voltage drops come from cable resistance (which doesn't usually deteriorate with age), resistance from connections (which is usually the worst deterioration with corrosion - particularly the Earths as these go through the steel body) and resistance from the fuse(s) and switch or relay contacts. If you do run new cabling, use well over-rated cable and components (apart from fuse) as these will have a lower resistance. Minimise the number of connectors used and use good quality gold plated ones. Make sure the fuse is at the battery end of the cabling, and ensure the wire doesn't run over any sharp edges, hot items, or near moving parts. For a given resistance, power is proportional to voltage squared, This is why a small drop makes a big difference.

There's nothing fundamental about Ethanol that will require complete new engines, especially at 10%. It can be more corrosive, although fuel suppliers should add corrosion inhibitors to counter this. Worst case, it may require new fuel lines and maybe some other fuel system components. Not a complete engine. It has a higher RON so no need for fundamental engine changes to avoid detonation. While blended with petrol it is likely this will replace other RON boosters and overall RON will remain the same. The most likely problem is that it needs a slightly richer mixture. If the fuel system can't accommodate this automatically it may require some aftermarket changes, the simplest being an adjustable fuel pressure regulator to increase pressure slightly. On the other hand, Photosynthesis which is fundamental to all vegetation growing converts CO2 to Oxygen. Like most things in nature, there is an equilibrium with plants converting light, water and CO2 to Oxygen and food, then Animals consuming the food and oxygen and converting back to CO2. Reduction in vegitation is just as harmful as production of CO2. They should tax chainsaws as heavily as cars.

Ethanol has a higher RON so detonation shouldn't be an issue. It also requires more fuel/air ratio for correct mixture (stoich AFR 9% pure ethanol, 14.7% petrol 14.1%E10). When running open loop,this will result in running slightly weaker. Closed loop, it should be within the range allowed for automatic adjustment by the ECU. The biggest danger is on turbo cars which are mapped with very little safety margin. Standard mapping on the GT4 is pretty rich when open loop anyway so it's only likely to be modified ones with tweaks to weaken the on-boost mixture. (ECU's / adjustable FPR etc.). I accidentally filled up with some in France a few years back on a GT4 with aftermarket ECU. I was running open loop and on the weak side for the cruising cells for ecconomy. It basically felt very flat and misfired a bit on some throttle settngs. This went away when I increased the master fuel setting a little. When I filled up again I was able to drop it back..

AS far as I'm aware, the only self learning on the later ECU's is idle RPM and knock retard. You are referring to open / close loop mixture control. On the GT4's it only goes to close loop for idle and cruise, I suspect the same may be true on the N/A versions as there are power gains from running richer on full throttle and the regulations of the time only required accurate mixture at idle and light throttle. I presume you are thinking of trying to run weaker on cruise to gain a wee bit of ecconomy ?

Good to see a car with some history being looked after, Have a good holiday.

Were those in a marine engine from a shipwreck ? I suspect they were fitted in 2005 in the Ford factory.

Don't use WD40 as it will make rubber seals swell up and eventually disintegrate. You can get proper lock spray, or find a penetrating oil that is rubber safe.

The laws are very complex regarding taking items to repay debts, and contravening these can be a criminal offence, or at the very least can lead to a large compensation claim. Effectively any items taken that aren't owned by the debtor are stolen property, this may even apply to goods taken without court documentation. Bear in mind that a company and the company owner is not one and the same.

There are many types of LED. An old fashioned pure LED would probably go pop with the current passed by a relay coil, but nowadays many leds come with series resistors (which would stop the relay pulling in) or high power/high brightness which would probably work in the diagram shown. The safest bet is to get an LED rated for 14V (12V) or an old fashioned led plus a series 1K ish resistor and wire in paralell with the relay coil. As far as permanent power, you may have wired to the normally closed contact, and then not have sufficient current topull in the relay. It is also possible that the relay is wired correctly but has insufficient current for the load and the contact has welded together. Amplifiers usually have large capacitors which pull a very high current for a short time at power on, this is renowned for weldingrelay contacts. Another safety issue is that you should have a fuse next to the battery with a rating no higher than the wiring it is feeding. i.e. if you have used 50A wire, then the fuse should be rated 50A or less. This is so that if you get a short in the wiring or any other sort of overload, the fuse will blow before the wire catches fire. You can use lower rated fuses in the fusebox and then run thinner wires from there.

If it wasn't limited to celicas, I could mention the copper pipe over the snapped gearstick on my old escort. It got me home, and worked so well I didn't rush to do the job properly. The cops weren't impressed when they pulled me over one day though.

Have you tried driving it with the traction control switched off ?