Morris Minor Owners Club

Rasputin wrote:The beauty of new cars,according to the tv adverts,is that you never see another car on the road.

This must be true as many people drive exactly as if there are no other cars around.

I had a rustfree Celica GT-Four, cost under £4k, very rare to see another. Barnstormingly fast on acceleration. Porsche performance for 10% of the money and parts cheaper. What's not to like? 35mpg on the motorway, but single figures over Buttertubs Pass! Bangernomics!

Trouble i having trying to find a new hub for my 57plate astra. Found 3 different types so far and neither of them are filling me with confidence that they'll be the right ones. You cant just replace the bearing so need the whole hub. Which should make replacement easier tho. Drove the minor 300miles over the new and jumped back in the astra for the last 30miles. Only bits i liked more was the gearbox and ability to go up hills quicker. Apart from that i prefer the moggie.

The newest car i drive is a 1996 imported Toyota Granvia, It is a people carrier based on the Toyota Hi-ace van, I wanted something that held 5 people and a wheel chair and you still had plenty room in, It has electric blinds 7 seats and 8 cup holders and a table, I paid £2,700 for it about 10 years ago and in that time i have sent £1000 in tyres exhaust and servicing, It now has a very small dent on the long panel after a bad driver reversed into me with a trailer, He denied it was his fault and after almost 2 years his insurance paid £2150 to get the work done, A few days ago i was offered £2000 for it, but i am keeping it as it still runs great and there is nothing better i could want.

I will have to use my modern car as my Minor is having mechanical problems at the moment and getting fed up with because its seems one problem after another. I've ordered new part and hopefully will be fixed soon.

My brother was reporting a misfire with his 2004 Renault Clio RS 182, so I did some investigation yesterday. Someone had broken the MAP sensor on the inlet manifold and poorly glued it back together, so it snapped off with the slightest touch, thus creating an obvious air leak into the inlet plenum!

Also, one of the platinum tipped spark plugs had been replaced with a conventional copper core one, with the wrong gap, of course. Replacing these items with new ones still hasn't cured the problem though, so it looks like it will have to be plugged into a Renault diagnostics gadget. Oh, the joy of modern cars with French electrics!

A tree surgeon told me that even chain saws (At least professional grade ones) now have to be plugged into diagnostics . It is claimed that this is to save the planet but I think too much emphasis is placed on the exhaust and not enough on long term serviceability. If older chainsaws end up in skips, because it is too costly to maintain them, that is potentially more damaging to the environment. Cars certainly have gone that way, just like lots of things......no wonder the arctic pack ice is apparently full of plastic particles.

Indeed the joys of a modern car.
I started in the u/k as an apprentice at a ford dealer in 1969. I was taught old school diagnostics however went on to emigrate to california where I encountered the first cars of this electronic revolution [1984 general motors cars] I was trained as a smog tester and saw the whole thing develop .

It far from baffles me and I understand the need given ever tighter emission requirments over the years.

However the real art of engine diagnosis is now lost on the newer technician and I think thats a shame.

Chipper wrote:My brother was reporting a misfire with his 2004 Renault Clio RS 182, so I did some investigation yesterday. Someone had broken the MAP sensor on the inlet manifold and poorly glued it back together, so it snapped off with the slightest touch, thus creating an obvious air leak into the inlet plenum!

Also, one of the platinum tipped spark plugs had been replaced with a conventional copper core one, with the wrong gap, of course. Replacing these items with new ones still hasn't cured the problem though, so it looks like it will have to be plugged into a Renault diagnostics gadget. Oh, the joy of modern cars with French electrics!

Well, my brother ran the car up the road to a local garage who ran their diagnostics gear on it, and it came up with injectors short-circuiting on cylinders 2 & 3. Sure enough, when I pulled out the injector rail and tested to see if they were spraying evenly, number 2 wasn't working at all, and a measurement with a multimeter revealed both 2 & 3 injectors were way down on impedance, hence the "short circuit" diagnosis. Two new injectors later (at a cost of £117.48) and the new MAP sensor and spark plugs at around £100 and we now have a decent running engine again.

My granddaughter is three. We passed a Citroen Cactus on Monday and she said 'Why has that car got rubber mats stuck on it? It looks stupid!'
She's a chip off the old block.

Hopefully fixed my van as the dynamo had packed up and I have put a spare one on which came off one of Morris 1000s we have scrapped over the years.

My wife eventually got round to swapping her ancient jeep, but couldn't break the jeep habit. We now have a 3 year old Cherokee Trailhawk sitting on the drive, bought for a third of the 'new'price. It's very useful for climbing kerbs and is stupidly uneconomical. Insurance and road tax would pay for a holiday. I pretended to be aghast but think that it's not a bad idea to have a bit of fun before the mobility scooter beckons. Took it out for a sneaky drive today...what a lot of fun it is!

I had to come to the rescue with my Morris van this morning when my neighbour had left her lights on her VW Passat all night and her battery was flat so I got jump leads out and got her car started.