Thursday 27 December 2012

No more twittering fan belt!

Ever since I have owned my white 190, one of the pulleys that the fan belt wraps round has been slightly wonky, causing the belt to wear and make a slight noise when the weather is dry.  On sunny days, it was a bit like a bird twittering.  A replacement part was hard to source, so I had left it like that, until a second-hand pulley came my way recently.

I needed to replace the water pump and I changed the pulley at the same time.  It is now nice and straight and if I want to hear twittering, I'll have to open the window and listen to the birds :-)

I've also recently changed the switch for the blower.  This was causing problems as without the blower, the windscreen would steam up and I couldn't see where I was going.

These kind of things are to be expected as the car is now 23 years old, and these repairs are not related to the fact I run the car on vegetable oil.

A warning light has just started coming up, showing me that I need to change the glowplugs - a job for the weekend, I think.  It will give me a chance to try out the new tool set I got for Christmas.

Friday 20 July 2012

To sorn or not to sorn that was the question

With the MOT looming and a couple of jobs needing doing (blowing centre box and a few small things) I decided to sorn the car for a couple of weeks. Just to give me the breathing space to do them in my own time. I have now picked up a second hand box for £30 and will fit it once it stops raining. Then a quick once over, change of filters, general service and off for its yearly inspection.

The wagon has been invaluable over the last few weeks, lugging accidentally bought alloys around, and garden stuff up the tip. Unfortunately it means it is starting to get tatty inside but my new dyson will take care of that no problem  :)

Thursday 7 June 2012

Five years of vegetable oil motoring!

All has been quiet since last year, when I posted the message about running for four years.

The car has been pretty reliable (touch wood) but I've had trouble getting a plentiful supply of waste vegetable oil.  One of the take-aways I used to collect from has decided to dispose of it another way. This has left me a bit short of fuel on occasion.

Friday 13 April 2012

DONT PANIC, All Quiet on the Western Front

It seems like an odd post but as the cars are running well and doing there jobs of lugging us both around (and various other things/people). No complaints, no grumbles, no issues. Nothing to report.

Well, apart from that I was extremely grateful of the veg running ability recently during the ridiculous panic buying. I refused to panic buy and was rewarded for my efforts by finding that I couldn't fill up with diesel when I had run out of veg. Luckily my local tesco petrol station was surprisingly empty when I rocked up to the counter to buy 20L of sunflower oil at £1 a litre, passing the empty pumps NOT full of £1.50 diesel. Its still a bit cold over night to be 100% sure sunflower oil is safe but mixed with the diesel already in the tank it seems fine.

So, at what point in the chaos does panic buying become the sensible thing to do ? (if you cant run off veg that is)