Winter Servicing

[kiwi]

Time to pick the brains as the car is undergoing its pre winter (yes I said winter as the South island got ravaged by some low level snow) make sure everything works.

1, Fuel Sender recently replaced this with a second hand one and now I have a twitchy needle. There is a small dent in the cylinder but dont think that affects the float travel.

Most disconcerting when you do a quick flick of the instrument panel just before doing a overtaking manauver on a narrow road

2, Drivers Door warning light, keeps sticking on best advice to cure that please? Last time I tried one of these I ended up losing it in the bulkhead

3, Would you believe the Heater control has jammed thats going to be fun trying to flush or worse remove and flush. I know from experiance.

Other than that the only other thing I noticed is she is a pain in the arse to start in the cold compared to my Korean Vauxhall Astra Auto.

[jeremy]

Door warning lights are operated from the door locks rather than the switches in the door pillars - which operate the courtesy lights only.

It sounds like you have a jammed water valve - I've been spraying the one on my TD with silicon spray for the last 71/2 years to keep it sweet. It feels as though there is a gland or something rubbery that grips the shaft - so a spray up besides the clutch pedal may save some dismantling.

My fuel gauge was erratic when I got the car and I found the plug was partially off as the wire to it seemed to have shrunk. From what I remember (it was years ago) the flat cable was pinched under the black floor cover disc which seemed extremely poor design and I'd have a very good look at all the connections round there.

[kiwi]

Well fiddled with the fuel sender wire and it seems that some smart person at some time cut a larger hole in the side of the Black cap which means the wire is not being pinched. Connection feels a bit loose to me and cant see a way of tightening so most likely this is the cause.

Door warning light issue got me as now thats gone to the tail gate probably another short

Heater system well that one is going to be a lot of fiddling to get sorted but the effect is minimal, Aircon still blast out cold and car is stored in garage so dont get condensation to clear in the mornings. Cant really tell if enough hot air is flowing yet.

Things involving electrics may change though This morning getting the car out a cold single digit garage was a bit of a mission to start the starter sounded like it was straining. So got the Battery checked and it came back as just outside the need to replace zone. Needless to say with winter coming and working on a sub zero temperatures mountain its bound to die on one of those god awful Ice Storm days.

Whats interesting and new to me is the battery is Calcium based so the old home chargers designed for lead batterys dont work

[jeremy]

I think the problem with using an old type charger on a calcium battery is that it'll work too well and destroy the plates.

When the things get fully charged they tend to gas and produce bubbles of gas in the plates. The plates themselves are formed from spongy material to get the greatest surface area - and so the bubbles tend to break up the spongy plates.

Your car charging system will have a peak voltage of somewhere round 14.4 and just will not go any higher. Permissible limits for dynamo systems were up to about 15.6 volts (I always set my regulators at the maximum - and it gave me nice bright headlamps!)

Modern battery chargers are supposed to have accurate voltage control units and so reduce gassing - and hence plate damage. (I say supposed - having charged a battery with one the other day and the thing seemed to be gassing excessively to me)

Gassing only occurs on a fully charged battery - so if you don't charge it fully it won't gas!