jamesoff

Thanks! Good to know it's about right; I'll see about securing it a little better when I'm home this weekend :)

So I had a look last week (and then was away for work), but measuring from the terminal on the alternator (to the earth strap on the engine block) I had 13.9V idle and 13.8V under load so I guess there's not too much to worry about there? Attached, hopefully, are a couple of pics of the cable routing from the alternator so if that looks about right I'll stop worry about it! [ATTACH=CONFIG]93760[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]93763[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]93766[/ATTACH]

Ah ok, that makes more sense. Thanks again.

I'll do that, thanks. The hose from the top of the radiator to the expansion tank? I'll dig it out of the current route and send it over that way, ta.

What's the correct/best route for the cable for the alternator output/exciter wire bundle? Right now on mine they kind of loop round/under the oil filter/heat exchanger and related hoses. Is this right? (There's no real issue I'm solving here, but it seems unnecessarily untidy/in the way :) Also where does the exciter wire go? I see it pop out of the bundle by the starter motor, and then go through a connector and disappear into another bundle. Where does it go next? I want to make sure the connections are all sound as I'm not sure the alternator is outputting enough volts (I got ~13.5V across the battery when the car is running, shouldn't it be 14.x?) so I figured I'd start with the connections before I look at the alternator more...

My MFA seems to be reading too low recently - an average drive where I'd have expected to get around 25-30 MPG, say, is coming out more like 15-20 according to the MFA. Because I use the car infrequently, I haven't been able to verify that this is actually wrong, but given how much out of my last tankful I've used, and the distance since (I zero the trip counter when I fill up), I'm on track for a bit over 300 miles from a tank, which is what I'd normally expect. I've had this before, and the problem was one of the vacuum lines had disconnected from a T-piece. Reattaching it fixed everything, but in this case that doesn't seem to be the problem. I've checked everywhere except the back of the clocks (I hate getting in there, but I wouldn't expect that connection to have failed) and it's all securely attached and in good condition. I replaced quite a bit of it after the previous problem. The car feels like it's running well too. I popped the MFA into the diagnostic mode where you get the vacuum pressure (?) and instant MPG values, and went for a quick drive. I couldn't get the instant MPG over ~20, and even coasting down a gentle incline with my foot off the throttle at 30mph didn't do much over that - certainly not "99.9" which I'd expect at that point. The pressure reading hung around 220, never lower than 190 or higher than 240, but I couldn't see that it was definitely falling or rising under hard acceleration/coasting. I've no idea what range that value is supposed to have, or how it should behave. Anyone have any suggestions for things to try?

Spotted a shiny Corrado parked opposite my house (Taunton) this afternoon, blue with the top half silver, clear light clusters and numberplate moved from boot to bottom right of bumper. It went before I could go and admire it properly! Made me feel bad about how not-shiny mine is at the moment :/

I'm interested, depending on how a potential buyer lines up with my 16V :)

Is this still available?

Where have you tested the spark? I had a thing a couple of years back where the Hall sensor on the dizzy failed so the coil was ok but the spark plugs never fired.

Mine passed last week with no advisories - first time since I got it \o/

Stumbled drunkenly past a dark VR6 parked on someone's drive the other evening walking home from Kensal Rise station towards Harlesden after a night out.

Seems to be my turn for this today, having not experienced it at all until now. Non-car technical stuff to follow ;) Looks like Cloudflare's having problems reaching the origin, a couple of page loads have resulted in 502/504s from them, and when the page does load (but slowly) it's assets on the page which are loading slowly (or 504ing) holding up the browser. Things which load quickly have Cloudflare's HIT header; things which are slow have MISS so it's definitely related to the origin. Example from loading this page to post here: http://cloud.jamesoff.net/image/1u3j1o3c1V1n - the blue line (DOMContentLoaded event) is just under 10s, the red one (Load event) is just over 15s. Some of the things which aren't loading include the .js files for the editor and wotnot so it's throwing errors in the console related to that too.

I've just had my front tyres replaced after not nearly long enough for the mileage I do so I suspected something was up. The garage who did the tyres said it looked like alignment but they couldn't fit me in on Saturday so it's getting done later this week, I'll ask them for the numbers. Would explain why recently it's felt very light and skittish at the front - I suspect the garage who did the CV boots for me at the start of the year didn't (re-)align things?

LED schmed http://www.audi.co.uk/audi-innovation/concept-cars/audi-laserlight-concept.html