MGB GT fettling

[Scruffy Bodger]

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I drove the flaky old Citroen today and it's actually not too bad. Comfy seats, no rattles or groans and it's not too badly specced. It even has aircondioning and in standard PSA fashion it doesn't work! It handles ok too, very different to one CLINT had years back, that was a very different experience

[paulplom]

I'd use that as a daily no bother at all.

[Scruffy Bodger]

I'd use that as a daily no bother at all.

I could too tbh, you have to stir the box a bit to get it moving but other than that he'll just run it and play cam belt roulette.

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Meanwhile I've been playing with the neighbours V50 with battery draining systems on and off. The local garage had given up on it so I said I'd take a look. The diagnostic listed a host of problems. I checked the basics, cleaned up the earths and it seemed to help. Battery drain after a few mins settled down to less than 0.01 amp on the meter. The trouble was the first time she took it out to use it it threw a proper hissy fit and the AA had to follow her home. BOĹLOX!

Before shed gone I'd borrowed an Elm 327? doofer with the hope of a bit of datalogging, this was initially blamed for the fit by the AA bod.

A look at the codes afterwards maybe suggested otherwise? It had lost the link with the throttle pot, ECM, central locking etc etc. The ECM got cleaned up as best i could and i cleared the codes.

I think that was 6 days ago now? It's been driven a few times and so far all codes have stayed clear. Time will tell, fingers crossed it stays that way. Need to get mine plugged in next.

[panhard65]

Lack of throttle response and loads of other faults is the BCM /fusebox. Cleaning it up and sorting the dry joints you can see works for a while but to be certain the pos won't let you down it needs a new one. I did 2 over the last couple of years both were ok for at least a year. One owner flogged his so I don't know how long it lasted. The other started to play up again after about 18 months and the owner had a new BCM fitted. In my opinion it was more than the car was worth having it done but it has been fine since.

[Scruffy Bodger]

Lack of throttle response and loads of other faults is the BCM /fusebox. Cleaning it up and sorting the dry joints you can see works for a while but to be certain the pos won't let you down it needs a new one. I did 2 over the last couple of years both were ok for at least a year. One owner flogged his so I don't know how long it lasted. The other started to play up again after about 18 months and the owner had a new BCM fitted. In my opinion it was more than the car was worth having it done but it has been fine since.

If it continues to play up this is the option I'll suggest https://volvodiagnostic.com/shop/index. ... &id_lang=1

The car has sentimental value as it was her mothers apparently. It's now maybe worth 1800 quid? A couple of years back she paid Volvo 3.5k plus fitting to have a new gearbox installed It drives and goes really well so I can see why she'd prefer to keep it going for a reasonable cost. It's an 07 plate 2.0 derv with a shade under 100k on the clock.

[Scruffy Bodger]

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Neighbours bloody car was flat again this morning, lasted about 4 days this time. After jumping it and letting it charge for 10 mins or so i took it for a quick spin to make sure it was fairly well charged. During the drive it showed a message saying Alarm Service Required. A googling of this suggests it can cause battery drain. There's a battery pack in the siren that fails and causes the main battery to drain.

I've pulled fuse 56 for the siren which has also disabled the central locking. It's shown codes for deadlocks on all doors in the past so may be linked?

I've knocked up a couple of extra leads to convert a Maplin fuse tester I remembered I bought years ago. It's for Maxi fuses not minis. Sadly the mini fuse body couldn't take the temp of the soldering iron. The leads on my multimeter aren't ideal for shoving uphill into a fuse box in the footwell so I thought I'd try this instead.

[Hooli]

I've heard of similar things on alarms before. It's a favourite of aftermarket bike alarms for that battery to fail & then they won't disarm.

[Hooli]

Actually I think the Saab I had off SiC had a similar issue so the fuse for the siren was removed. I can't really remember though.

[Scruffy Bodger]

Actually I think the Saab I had off SiC had a similar issue so the fuse for the siren was removed. I can't really remember though.

Replacement batteries seem to be available if it is that but you have to cut the siren apart to get at it. Sounds like another careful job for that multi-tool if it is. I'll measure the current draw across the fuse tomorrow before I start going to all that trouble. From what I've read if the car is fully asleep current draw overall at the battery should be in the region of 25mA so any more than that across that fuse may indicate a potential problem.

[paulplom]

P2 v70 and the like are famous for the alarm batteries failing. Probably the same unit.