Thursday 31 July 2008

Fuse

Even though my car is 18 years old. Not many cars will tell you that a fuse has blown and which one.


When I started the car last night to come home I noticed the "Lightning bolt" on the dash which means a blown fuse. I pressed the VCM button and the on board computer told me it was in fuse box one, which is the right hand fuse box.


Only to find out it was the cigarette lighter fuse that hand blown. Nice and simple! 5p Fix.

Wednesday 30 July 2008

Hot Hot Hot and Still Hot

Had some one out today to take a look at the Air conditioning in the Jag. I was hoping that it would just need re-gassing but guess what... Its not that simple.

The electrics checked out OK but there is a leak in the compressor. So it needs a new one and they range from 150 to 300 quid... Ouch... It will be winter soon... LOL


Saturday 12 July 2008

Boot lock

This afternoon I set on the task of fixing the boot lock. Since I have had the car, I have had to use the key to unlock the boot.
Where, this is not a major problem, it was a fault that needed sorting.....
For some reason you could not unlock the boot with the button in the glove box and when you unlock the car with the remote the lock would pop but not unlock!!


(Yes that is a driving cap that Rash and Ramus bought me)

I first set about checking the fuses in the car but quickly realised that the car would tell me if a fuse had blown and which one...
Maybe there was a wiring problem with the button!?

I started by checking all the wires under the glovebox. I did some continuity checks and after about 45 minutes I was certain that it was not a wiring problem...



Then I turned to the lock and release unit. I stripped the units out and checked the mechanical workings of the lock. I noticed that a small micro switch did not look right... I bent the metal contact away slightly and hooray, it seems that the micro switch told the car that the lock had manually been locked and was over-riding the central locking!

Now the button in the glove box unlocks the boot and pops it up a little.

Now I could set to work on wiring the boot release up to the alarm. The alarm has a trigger relay for the boot. It took me some time to figure out how to wire this up but by cutting into the wires and getting the relay to complete the circuit, the alarm now unlock the boot as well.

The cool feature with the alarm is it unlocks the car and deactivate the alarm, then it unlocks and pops the boot.

Wednesday 2 July 2008

Not done yet

Well, what can I say. I have not had chance to sort the headlining.

Now its about time for the Jag's six month service. Bit's I need to do on this service are as follows:

Air Filter
Spark Plugs
Oil Filter
Oil Change
Coolant
And if I feel brave, Transmission fluid!

When I do the service I will look at taking the headlining out. At the moment I have a temporary fix, which is working.