Monday, November 07, 2011

Weary Usefulness

The day-to-day automotive activities at little yellow towers have built up a critical flow.

The Mrs has a new job, and I have a new job - and the pressures of family and work life are such that both parents need to be at different places, neither of which has a decent train line. So the automotive arrangements are thus:

  • I ride the bike to work.
  • Mrs uses the Skoda
  • at the weekends when kids need ferrying around Molly gets a lot of action - and I mean alot!
So as Mol is out and about and as such needs a little more TLC than she is used to. Tonight I managed to get round to one of those jobs that will cause problems if left too long. I noticed that now the evenings are drawing in and we're doing more nighttime driving, there is a little screech from the fan belt when accelerating with the lights on [that's physics that is- more load on the electrical system makes the dynamo harder to turn so the fan belt squeals]. Now I've been doing this for a long time and I know that she will decide to let go at the worst possible moment (maximum electrical load, i.e. in the dark and in the rain) and the least opportune moment (most journeys have the kids along at the moment).


So the plan was to swap out the
fan belt for the one in stock (I like to have one in stock). Easy to do on the drive, a pain on the road, in the rain. that's the theory. However it turned out I was right to get it sorted as soon as possible. The adjuster had lots of slack in as I'd used a screw that was too small (actually it was the right size for the dynamo, but too small for the tensioner arm. So I drilled out the dynamo (sounds brutal but it needed to be done). Once the whole lot was cleaned up and ready to go, I managed to set up the fan belt properly. Now I won't know for sure until the next run out, but the initial go sounded good (squeal gone!) and the lights were nice and bright.

Next on the list is a nice winter
oil change and a quick going over with the anti rust wax and we should be good for a little more autumn action.