Mobile Auto Solutions blog

Lost gears

Sun, 04 Oct 2020 19:46:16 GMT

Breakdown on test drive

Test driving a customer's car after a full service, all of a sudden I was stuck in 1st gear, never a good sign. Managed to limp it back to the customer's house to find the clip holding one of the gear cables had come off. I was imagining a slow walk back along my route to see if I could find the missing clip when I spotted it lurking on the gearbox.

Missing brake pad

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 20:53:13 GMT

Brake pad worn so thin it fell out.

Brake pad had worn to metal a while ago, it then wore the disc so thin that eventually the pad fell out leading to a loss of brake pedal and a lot of noise.

Peugeot pollen filter

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 20:17:26 GMT

Distinct lack of servicing.

This pollen filter had not been changed for at least 100k miles, possibly longer. Restricted air flow into the cabin can often lead to an overworked fan and an early failure.

Citroen ABS fault

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 06:13:00 GMT

Broken ABS reluctor ring.

The rear magnetic ABS reluctor ring on this Citroen had started to fall apart giving a spurious speed reading to the ABS ECU and causing the ABS warning light to come on. A new ring fixed it.

Overdue cambelt

Thu, 07 May 2020 19:59:08 GMT

Not too many miles but too many years.

Most cambelts have a change interval measured in both miles and years, whichever comes first. Whilst this Peugeot is 30k miles short of it's mileage limit it is unfortunately 3 years overdue. The belt hasn't snapped but teeth have been stripped putting the cam and crank out of sync and valves meeting pistons.

Seized brakes

Tue, 05 May 2020 06:05:24 GMT

A very substandard MOT

MOTed 40 miles ago, not even an advisory on the brakes. The cause of the issue was the dust seal on the caliper piston coming loose and allowing water in and the piston seizing.

Rodents and Vauxhalls

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 19:22:58 GMT

Rats causing a misfire by eating wiring loom.

Customer parked the car in his under apartment parking area on Friday evening and everything was fine, came to start it Sunday morning and was greeted with lots of vibration and the engine management light. Rats had decided to make a meal of his injector wiring loom. A new loom would have been the best repair but was both very expensive and very unavailable as Vauxhall are currently shut. I had to solder in lengths of loom as the creatures had taken some of it away and had also managed to chew down right to one connector which made things awkward. I covered my repair with conduit although there is still plenty of other vulnerable areas if they come back.

Ford Ka Thermostat Housing

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 18:01:07 GMT

Fixing a leaking Ka with limited time.

A Ka used by a local care in the home company had sprung a leak. Their cars do 50k miles a year and are only in one place for a short amount of time so the job had to be done whilst the car was still warm which was a bit ouchy. All sorted now though.