The new waterneck

I treated a rusty spot on my Corsa today. The weather is great so this is the right time. Tomorrow I'm going to paint it blue again.

I also received the new part for my Mustang. People told me the one I received earlier ain't no good in the long run and advised me to get a cast item. I'm not sure about the number stamped in the side though...

The rust

There is this rusty spot on my Corsa that I would like to fix but I'm not sure if it's gonna leave a hole when I sand the rust away :-/

Milan went to day 1 of a baseball tournament. He did very well but it was a long and tiring day.

Schiphol behind the scenes / The LEGO Mustang

I took a few pics of my soon-to-be working area... There hardly is any room to work though...

Yes, that shiny thing in the middle is what I need to remove and replace. It's the EGR valve which at certain conditions lets some exhaust fumes enter the engine to burn off bad fumes.
Well, it also makes my car run crap so I'm hopefully gonna put a stop to that... Don't know when yet though.

View from the top.

Late morning we went shopping. The only thing I bought was this LEGO Mustang.

I only found out that this is available yesterday. Love, love, love it :-)

In the afternoon the four of us went for a "Behind the scenes" tour of Amsterdam Schiphol airport. It was a fun thing to do.

The only downside was that we never got off the bus during the tour. Btw: that guy on the right is NOT me ;-)

We drove past these Kenyan air planes that had been sold to another airliner and were going to be repainted.

And past the area with private jets. This one belongs to the Dutch royal family.

View towards the Schiphol tower.

We saw airplanes taking off which was cool.

And we saw them coing down, which was also very cool!

And I saw a huge can of Heineken. It made me thirsty ;-)

After the tour we went up the panorama deck where there are always great views.

It was a lovely way to spent the afternoon together :-)

The proof

I made another curry. It was very, very nice and very, very easy to make. I reckon I should eat curries the rest of my life maybe ;-)

Oh, and I got my first speeding ticket with my COrsa the other day. I found out you can download the photo-proof very easily!

The new plugs and cables

The weather was good so I pulled the cables and plugs out of my little Opel's X14XE engine.

This is what the plugs look like. Right to left are cylinders 1 .. 4.

The one I pulled from Cylinder 4 looks quite a lot different from the other ones which I find a bit odd and I'd like to know why this is and/or what might be causing this...

I put in the new plugs, connected the new cables and fired it up. It ran OK and after having run stationary for a while I took it for a quick spin which went well. I'll give it another test drive tomorrow morning when it's cold again.

How to fix a misfiring cylinder...

So my little Corsa is suffering from at least 1 misfiring cylinder when it's running cold. This is a very tough issue to diagnose because there can be dozens of causes. Because it's only when the engine is cold and a slightly more common cause is the ignition, I have decided to put in new sparkplugs and cables. It's not too expensive and easy to do myself. Since the car is from '99 the plugs are not available anymore apparently.

These plugs seem to run very well I read so I'm getting these instead. Will put the whole lot in tomorrow...

The drive

I drove my little car to work today. I liked :-) We have a big in-door parking now with plenty of space coz not everybody has moved yet...

Few little car things

I finally got the plastic nuts to fix the coolant tank. Another job off the list :-)

Bolts are the bottom one on the left and the second from the right. They're made of plastic and have weird threading. The dealer doesn't have them anymore so I had them send to me from a car yard.

Now I wouldn't mind getting rid of this thing. It injects hot air during a cold start to heat up the catalytic converter. We'll see.

Happy birthday mom!

This morning I drove my car to a DIY-garage. You can rent a car-lift and get dirty. I needed to change the first 2 pieces of my exhaust: the front pipe and the catalytic converter.

Lucky for me the chief wasn't too busy and he offered to help me a bit. He had years of experience replacing exhausts so that was cool. Appears he also seen me around Mulligans a few times, my local watering hole. Together we got the job done in 90 minutes, this includes taking it apart once due to a leaking connection. I saved a few hundred euros doing it this way and my car doesn't make that rattling noise anymore :-)

In the evening we visited my mom and dad coz it was my mom's birthday.

Cassie and Ilse were there as well and we had a very nice time :-)

The new exhaust pieces

Morning view from my office. Not bad at all I reckon!

My exhaust-pipe pieces arrived today. I want to do the work myself coz having a garage do it will cost me 300 easy.

The car

If I replace the exhaust manifold on my Corsa, I'll also have to replace the lambda probe. Forgot about that.

We played a boardgame in the evening which was fun. This is Milan's car. I like the photo.

The crappy exhaust pipe

So recently I bought a new powersteering pump because the garage said that it was the cause of the rattling noise coming from the engine bay. Upon my own inspection I now found out that the heat shield of the front exhaust pipe is loose. With a running engine it shakes about and it makes a lot of.... rattling noises. Looks like I better invest in a new front pipe instead of replacing the powersteering pump...

Loos at the top...

And completely loose at the back as well.

The connection between the front pipe and the catalytic converter-pipe is also about to give up.

The rattling noise

I noticed that when cold starting my Corsa, there is a rattling sound for 2-3 minutes while it's warming up. After that the engine starts running calmer and the rattling noise is gone. The engine runs fine from that moment. I made a little movie to capture the noise so that I could play it to the mechanic at the garage that recently fixed my head gasket.

I dropped the car off after work. After he had a listen, mr. mechanic said he had a suspicion as to what the cause was and when I told him to call me if it was gonna cost me anything he said it was most likely under his 3 month warranty. Fingers crossed...

Removing the power steering pump

Simone had to work today so I drove down to my Mustang and work on the fuel pump. I had a lot of time so I thought I'd retry replacing the fuel pump. And what a nice opportunity to see both my cars ;-) I gotta say, I like them both a lot.

Today's target area. The power steering pump sits right above the fuel pump. Since I don't have a means of getting under the car in a safe manner, I'm going in from above which means I need to move one pump out of the way to get to the other...

Well, moving the power steering pump was very easy. I then took the rubber fuel hose off and replaced it with a new one. This was a bit of a frustrating job coz the hose was 8mm which is a tad small but in the end I got it hooked up to the main fuel line.

And then I found out I needed wrenches in inches and not in millimeters... So I could not remove the fuel pump. Need to get a new set of wrenches first... To be continued.

The balanced wheels

When driving over 80Km/h there's a tremble in the steering wheel of my Corsa so I figured I should have my front wheels balanced. If I'd get new tyres the balancing would be for free. My tyres were pretty much on their way out anyway so that was not a bad deal.

They put these kinds of weights on the wheels to counter the inbalance.

In the afternoon we went to IKEA to order a new clothing cabinet. It will be delivered tonight!

Back at home I fixed the top of the staircase by putting on a metal strip.

Makes a huge difference!

And just for no reason other than not wanting to think of what to cook, we went to McD's. Their kitchens always fascinate me. So little space and so many people in it...