Yes I'm still here but not so often. Not sure what happened to 2018 it was there one minute and gone the next. The summer was fantastic but unfortunately I didn't get the little car out as much as I had expected. There were plenty of short trips to the Rose but no trip to Italy and Spain which was talked about early spring. Let's see how this summer goes.
My last trip on the 16th of October last year ended with the car overheating. I though it was because I'd run it low on water so I hobbled to the nearest shop to buy bottled water and then got the car home. But never went out again until yesterday! Snow has almost melted and weekend weather was supposed to be sunny and around 8+ degrees. Thought it would be a great idea to take a start of spring trip to Rosenhill. Well, I started by changing to the winter tyres and then had to dig some of the snow away from outside the cellar. Then I took a spin around the block. It went well for the first km or so but as I was reversing back down the driveway again steam started to come out. There was rusty water being sprayed out from the coolent connector pipe from the engine block. It doesn't look much but this image is after the engine has been running only a few minutes.
The pipe supplies the water to interior heating system plus a couple of other things that are not connected, so are plugged with rubber end plugs. It seems that one of them had warn and started to leak.
Not easy to get to so easier to remove the inlet manifold.
Manifold and compressor out of the way.
Rusty water sprayed everywhere. Tried to remove most but will wait until the car is running and use a high pressure hose.
The mount on the engine used to keep the compressor in place broke as I removed it. Will replace in the week
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This is the offending rubber end stop. I need to find something a little tougher.
Must have deteriorated over the almost 8 years since getting it on the road.
While I have the inlet manifold off I can get to the oil filter housing so I'll take the opportunity to change the filter and the oil. Haven't done a great deal of mileage but it was two years ago I rebuilt the engine so good to do another change.
I mentioned I changed the headlight bulbs to LED last winter; well they failed the MOT (besikningen) as they are not allowed unless the car is re-rigistered with them. Besides the lamp housings are not designed for LED so although the lights were brilliantly bright the pattern was not good for oncoming vehicles (I thought it looked okay!).
.... BMW have still not delivered the bracket which I thought may happen. So I found a local metal shop who welded up the broken bracket for the price of fika bröd (swedish coffee break cake). Also bought a new rubber hose plug.
The new rubber end plug in place and one I prepared earlier (Blue Peter!) to show what it looks like. This one is much stronger than the previous one.
Oil filter top removed ready to replace filter.
New oil filter
New inlet manifold gasket
Took the car out for a longer drive and the feeling was fantastic. The winter months are finally over!
Enjoy and share your build project links with me.
