On holiday in France last year in my elderly Citroen C8 towing our caravan, I noticed the air con seemed to be struggling. As we slowed for a town, the coolant temperature needle began to climb. I pulled over to do some investigating, left the engine running and put the heater on full blast. There was no steam, no smell of coolant and no drips from underneath. Both radiator fans were stationary, which I found odd, given that the big fan always runs when the air con is on. The little fan moved freely when poked with a stick, the big fan was very stiff. I couldn't find any blown fuses.
We only had about 60 miles to go to our destination so I thought I would gamble with taking the big fan off to help the airflow as I guessed it wasn't going to freewheel, and carry on using the heater to cool the engine.
Ten minutes work with plastic poppers, 4 bolts and a meaty electrical connector, and the big fan was consigned to the boot. Leaving the heater on wasn't much fun in the 28 degree heat but we made it to my wife's family's retreat without disaster.
On examination, the fan was defintely at fault, being stiff and graunchy when the blades were turned. At first I suspected the bearings but there was no discernible play. That motor had to come apart, so, excusing myself from the excitement of a shopping trip, I set about some dismantling.
At some stage in the recent past the horrible little steel clips that held the ferrite magnets to the outside of the motor casing had rusted through, allowing the magnets to fall onto the armature. Presumably the armature had been spinning at the time of contact. A sizeable chunk of ferrite had been gouged out of one of the magnets and converted into black grit, which was everywhere. The bearings and commutator seemed OK and the brushes looked like they had plenty of life in them. There was continuity in the windings. It seemed possible that an hour of bodging and some glue might bring the motor back to life. I phoned the shopping party and ordered some epoxy adhesive.
After cleaning, the magnets were stuck back into position, the bearing felt pad was oiled and the motor went back together. The size of the motor and the fan blades suggested I should I should test the motor bare, lest the thing turn hostile under power and chop my fingers off. After a suitable interval to allow the epoxy to set, the motor ran nicely when connected to a battery.
When everything was back together and installed in the car the fans still didn't work, so I started looking deeper into the fuse question. None were blown that I could see, but there was a passing reference in the handbook to a 40 amp maxi-fuse that only a dealer could replace; allegedly. It was a bit of a challenge to find the blown fuse, hidden sideways under the little fuses. Fortunately, there was an easily accessible maxi-fuse that was labelled 'hi-fi system'. I wondered briefly why I needed 40 amps to listen to Radio 4 before robbing the fuse to use for the fan circuit.
Bingo! I now had air con and cooling, and strangely, I still had a radio.
Anyone else done any holiday roadside bodging or would a problem like this mean a trip to the garage ?
40 amps for a hi-fi. What's that all about? Last time I looked at radio fuse on a Blaupunkt Montreal IIRC it had a 5 amp fuse.
|
Some aftermarket amp or bass units consume so much current they need to be wired directly to the battery with a 100 amp fuse!
I would guess the 40 amps is for a up model ICE option your car was not specified with.
|
My sister seized and spun the big end bearings in her Reliant Robin.
Can't put a three wheeler on an ordinary truck, can't lift it, and I certainly wasn't going to tow the damn thing all the way back to Reading.
So in a layby on the A303, in the snow, I unbolted and lay down the engine, took everything apart, filed the crank with an ordinary file, to get rid of the stuck on bits of shell, put oversize shells in and then put it all back together and drove it to Reading with no heater and a leaking exhaust.
No torque wrench, no gaskets only a cornflake box and some hermetite, some cheap own brand oil from the nearest Esso and some water from a horse trough where we broke through the ice.
It ought to have been faster than before given the amount of bits I lost or simply didn't put back.
Of course by the time the thing got to Reading the engine was totally knackered and I had frostbite, but a day of torture and the price of a set of oversize shells was an awful lot more achievable than the price of transport, storage or a real mechanic.
I think she eventually put another engine in it. b***** awful things, Robins.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Fri 31 Mar 17 at 16:04
|
Easiest bodge was on a newish BMW1200RT - the hard wired Sat Nav broke in France. Bought a map, stole a pencil and paper from the hotel to write the route down ;-)
|
|
I once used an aluminium wire coat hanger to replace a duff HT lead.
|
|
I bodged a hole in the floor of my wife's Fiat (Original) 500 with a lid from a paint tin, some filler and a spray can of red paint.
|
Four men in a car that I'd forgotten to tighten a hose clamp.
Used the old boy scout trick of putting out a fire to top it up (didn't half stink when I drained it!)
|
The water pump stared spewing when we were at the in laws on a bank holiday Monday.
We needed to be home the same day.
A neighbor ferried me to a spares place that was open and got a replacement pump.
RTFM ( Haynes) ----need a viscous fan spanner. I undid things very slowly with a mole wrench,
then slowly reassembled things.Was pleased with myself.
,
|
Clever bodge.....Me mate and I bought a Fiat 850 when we were dabbling in s/h cars. £50 from a neighbour of my mum's as a non runner. I got it going, just points, and Tony minted it up and took it to the car market......people were all over it and he was back to mine before I'd had the chance to go and help him. That's all incidental, however.
Seeing our success, my neighbour across the road decided to have a go. He'd just learned to weld and had all the kit. A white 850 came up in the 'sheds' pages but it looked as if the floor needed some work. Duly jacked up in his drive he called me over to have a look at it and give my opinion.
The clever bodge, that he hadn't seen, was that a previous owner had jacked a piece of thick plywood up against the footwell floor and filled the interior with an inch of concrete, removing the board when dry and then undersealing both sides to hide it all. I think the scrapman bought it in the end. All that glisters.....etc.
|
|
I once got a stone through the radiator miles from anywhere in some country lane in Hampshire. When the steam had cleared I removed the grille and found the split downtube, right in the centre of the radiator. Using a pair of nail-clippers from the glove-box and a pair of pliers from the boot I snipped all the fins away from the tube, cut it in half at the split and folded both ends over and crimped them hard with the pliers. I found a road-side ditch and managed to catch enough water with a pop-bottle to re-fill, the radiator looked a mess with a hole almost the size of dinner plate through the centre of it, but "the repair" lasted for another six years before I scrapped the car.
|
I once made a rocker cover gasket for my mates old Honda 500cc twin out of a pair of pyjama bottoms. We were in the middle of nowhere when it decided to let go and spray oil all down his left leg. Pulled over into a layby and there just happened to be some old clothing dumped there.
Have also used araldite to stick a penny onto the top of a piston of a motorbike that decided to blow a hole in it as a get home measure.
|
My Cortina was overheating. It took me a while to work out what was going on - the viscous coupling had failed.
I was getting married the next morning, and we were going away by car for the first few days, so I needed to do something.
I drilled four great big holes through the coupling, and bolted it up tight. Tried to space them evenly so it was roughly balanced. Put it back on the car the morning of the wedding.
It worked fine for the next three years, until I sold the car.
|
Cooling fan bodge - long post warning - Zero
