IanS

Is there power getting to the guage? Depending on the regulator you should see volts at the battery connector of the guage. Modern regulators typically give 8V here, older bimetal regulators will show switching between 0V and 12V to 14V (depending on battery charge) here.

Talking of pink antifreeze it appears to eat thermostats. My wifes car ran cold the first winter we had it, temp guage just off the cold end. I replaced the thermostat and engine temp back to normal and engine management light off. Ran great through the year until the next winter when the same happened. I have now replaced the thermostat 4 times in 5 years (waiting for this winter) Has this happened to anyone else? P.S. this is the first car we had with pink antifreeze

I have been running an leaded head 2L pinto for 10 years on unleaded. Done 40,000 miles plus and no sign of valve seat regression. On the other hand its your money.

Intremittant problems are the worst to find. I suspect that you have a bad earth (bad power normally blows fuses). I would suspect one off the megajolt earths. -Ian

Whilst I agree with not bodging I also think that motorcycle indicators are almost invisible and add to the accident rate. My somewhat personal view is to make it over obvious to other road user what you intend. Blind them so that there in no excuse. flame suit fitted. -Ian

Could be the distributor mechanical and or vacuum advance sticking at full advance. At tickover there is not enough momentum to keep going. When the engine is cranking it fires too early and slows the starter. When cold the springs then do what they should and you run again. Try disconnecting the vacuum advance.

All I can say is that RS left fitting the wiper as an unsolved problem for the builder to bodge as he saw fit. I have a cut down and welded sierra mechanism and cut down sierra arms and cut down sierra blades. It works but is not pretty. Others have used the system fitted to minis with frog eye sprite wiper arms and blades. and I am certain that there are many other ways it was done. so we need a bit more info on what you have.

Engine to chasies earth strap missing?

Haveing just had to replace the core plug covered by the bell housing which requires engine out. Check if new core plugs are needed.

2 possible problems in my view 1 if the angle that the wipers move through has not changed then the outer tube of the rack has popped out either at the motor end or at the first wiper gear box. 2 if the angle has changed then the pin in the motor gearbox that drives the rack has failed and you need a new gear wheel. Just my thoughts. -Ian

My exmo had the optional coil overs at the rear and they were poor and failed farily early on. Dave at Dampertech sorted me decent replacements that have now done approx 55K miles and are still good. I have been meaning to improve the front eversince they punched up through the buttresses since well fixed but still useing the original inserts that are still a bit over damped in my opinion. So I am interested if he can sort out replacement fronts

this is what I did. Not perfect but an improvement that allows decent speeds at night http://www.europaspares.com/auto-electrical/vehicle-lighting/budget-halogen-headlamp-7-00-main-dip-side-dome-lens.html

Mine came free from the sierra donor. Hoodiez arn't what us oldies were.

Slowly drops down has to be a leak. If fitting blead nipples to master cylinder has it rock solid and not creaping down then it has to be some where else in the system. From nipples in the master cylinder I would fit one pipe at a time. In my case first one front (my master cylinder has 2 ports for the fronts) and then the second and finally the backs to check which circuit is the problem. The solution should now be easier to determine. -Ian

I had similar on a saab. When I went back a realy looked I had fitted the pad clips the wrong way round and they were holding the pads twisted. Without the servo not enough force to square the pads, with the servo pedal almost to the floor before realy biteing. As changeing the pads checking that they are realy back as they should be is the first check. -Ian

There is a toothed segment in the staering wheel hub that is locked by the standard lock. The Mountney stearing wheel has various hubs and some had the toothed internal segment needed and some did not. You might not have the correct hub. You could fit the original sierra wheel for the mot.

If the battery is bad then dim to no lights is the result. So your battery is good. It takes very little current to spin the starter on its own so spining in a vice is not much of a test. The starter should take a lot of current when starting so the energy has to go somewhere. Most probable is the contacts on the pull in solonoid having got coroded. If this is the case the solonoid will get hot when trying to start the engine. The other posibility is sticking brushes in which case the back of the starter (away from the pinion) will get hot. Either way a local auto electrician should be able to rebuild without costing the earth.

My first thought is that the water temp in the bottom hose (return from rad) is ment to be a lot (20 to 40 centigrade) cooler than the water going into the rad at the top so finding a fan cutting in temp is probably impossible. As the thermostat is only fully open at 107c I would be setting the fan to come on at around or just above this temperature. There is no point in trying to get more cooling if the thermostat is preventing the coolant circulating. The fan switch will have some hysterisys, probably at least 5c so if it comes on at 100c then it will switch off when back down to 95c so I would expect some movement in the temperature guage, Having the fan switch overlapping the thermostat range will make this worse.

After market cam manufacturers deliberatly do not use the same key location to make you buy a vernier cam pulley. It is posible to make an offset wodruff key to get the valve timing correct. You do need to know the timing that piper designed the cam for and then measure what the nearest timing is that you can get with the normal key so as to know how much offset to machine into the new key.

The Hall sensors I use at work output a short to 0V so a multimeter will not see anything connected between the 0V and signal line. Connect the meter between the 5V feed and signal and you should see the voltage change between approx 4.3V and below 0.5V as you slowly turn the input cog. You might need to connect a pull up resistor between the signal and 5V wires to make it work. 4.7K ohms should work and they can be got for pence from maplins.

Mechanical fuel pump sticking? I have also had hot tickover running problems with closing up vlave gaps when hot leaving the valves just open.

If you have been stripping bits off have you acitvated the crash sensor? Digging in very old memory it is in the spare wheel well and has a red reset button.

Second diode is so light does not light at switch off, the old dynamo cars user to have the bulb on before start of engine and glow for a bit as engine slowed to stop after switching ignition off.

oil temp in the sump is what counts unless an oil cooler is fitted. Oil pump will add a bit to the oil temp but the far less than 1ºC due to this will not show up on your guage. The peak temp that oil reaches in the engine is of interest to check for oil degradation, this could be either the oil in direct contact with the exhaust valve stem or the oil sprayed to cool the underside of the piston. Measuring either of these directly is hard. So the temp in the sump or directly after an oil cooler is what is measured as over high temps here will give some warning of trouble.

Where are you? I have built an exmo. Am in Warrington. -Ian