Motor
Update, after a busy busy time.
So, it’s November. Wow the time is flying! So much has happened. So little time to play with.
Masters: Week 10 has just ended. Loads of assignments to complete for the next fortnight, then study for the exams that will complete the 5 modules that will constitute the first semester of the Masters of Engineering in “Information and Network Security” that I am currently pursuing in UL. It’s been good so far to get back to UL as a student but this time with an appetite for success that wasn’t really there in the past (for whatever reasons..). There’s a desire now to get through this with good results. I like the subjects, I’ve got a good crew of classmates and the craic is good enough. It’s tough for sure with time management being the hardest part so far. I have no spare time to relax this year. At all. It’s fun learning how to use Maple, MSProject and things like that. Weird having to buy textbooks again, but good to have them to refer to anyway.
Work: I’ve completed probation, and am now a fully fledged employee. The shift is not the easiest to manage but it’s not that bad – I still get to sleep at a somewhat sane time and it’s consistent at least. Some shifts of course I’m up the walls and I mightn’t get back to the house till gone half 2 or 3 o’clock with lectures at 9 or 10 in the morning and another night’s work the following night. Learning a lot, still got so much to learn. Trying not to forget what I learned at the start – that’s kinda hard.
Car: The Audi is paid off. Finally. It’s now just a car, with no intention from me of making it any better. It’s got too much mileage to consider tarting it up any bit, and it’s a useful tool to use instead of a pursuit in its own right. I don’t have the time to do anything really useful to it other than put diesel in every month or so. At least my driving mileage has severely decreased now that I’m back in Limerick full time. Due another tyre change soon, may but top-tier all-season tyres on it to safeguard me through the winter.
Sport: Very little time to get out on the Reign for a cycle. :( No time in a boat in quite a while – no free weekend gets in the way of that, but that is what I’ve signed up for! Put a deposit down for a good road bike for the Bike-to-Work scheme – a 2011 Trek Madone 4.5, secondhand, with uprated lighter Mavic wheels with the blade spokes. I’ll upgrade a few bits and pieces on that bike, including as good tyres as I can get. I will cycle to work on it at least once ;) and I’ll have to cycle home for lunch to get the car to drive home when the shift is over. It’s not good to be physically pumped at 2am trying to get to sleep. It’ll be useful to have that bike for the cycle around northwest France next summer just before Dave’s french wedding.
Other stuff: 5 years since fun and games, so that’s an interesting milestone passed. Nothing else of note there that I’ll put down here ;)
Astro: been out maybe 3 times since the start of the summer. Been pretty crap for astronomers in Ireland recently – and pretty crap for someone that works evenings and has college during the day! Starting to see the utility of a good quality grab and go setup that will give good views without needing to cooldown – maybe a 100mm short refractor on an alt-az mount?
Sarah: She passed her Viva with flying colours, a very positive impression from the examiners and a trivially small number of corrections before final submission of the thesis document. Her hard work and perseverance (and slight craziness) paid off big time. She’ll get the hood in January.
Car problems, car problem resolution
The A4 gave me a bit of a fright recently, and led me to believe that I had a big enough prospective bill that scrapping was a probability.
The symptoms were simple enough. A few minutes into a journey starting with a cold engine, the engine would stutter and misfire. The ASR light would come on, and the car would be significantly down on power (barely making it to motorway speeds) and the fuel economy went through the floor.
The VAG-Com scanner showed up a problem with the control of injector 4, and a misfire on cylinder 4. Pricing the spare parts was looking at over 1000 euro, with a big labour bill on top too. As the car is c. 180,000 miles on the clock this was not really economically feasible, so I went browsing the car review sites and small ads for cars to suit what I was looking for in a replacement.
I asked a few questions on some forums I frequent, and it was suggested by some of the regulars on tyresmoke.net to try changing out the injector loom in the head as this is a known problem with the PD engines as they age. So I phoned up Western Motors, they had a loom in stock at €70, I picked it up at lunchtime and went digging in the engine after work. Not the easiest of jobs, but the new loom is now in and connected, and the car is back running on 4 cylinders again.
Now to organise the timing belt for another 60,000 miles of paid off and hopefully reliable mileage.
MR2 – getting it back on the road!
So, the MR2 is now insured as a classic car, as it’s 20 years old. Limited mileage policy, fully comprehensive, full euro breakdown cover for less than €350. I’m very happy!
Now I’ve to tax and NCT it. At least doing the NCT now will mean no NCT until October next year from when it will require a yearly NCT. As the car has been off the road completely since it was last out of tax I’ve to get that Garda stamp then pay more cash to the Government.
A few hour’s worth of hard labour and the fading of the standard Toyota red has now been reversed, and a proper resin wax is now on. I also realigned the foglights, and I replaced the OEM air filter, returning it to stock. The next steps are to probably change out the wheels for ones that are a proper size for the car (staggered 16×7 and 16×8, or 17×7 and 17×9, and a decent set of tires of the correct size (205s on the front, 235s on the back) to tame the oversteer tendencies a bit.
The red did come up well!
