I’ve had my share of skinned knuckles & gashed thumbs, spent many a minute or twenty looking for the spring that shoots off into the dusty corner of the garage (usually under the cupboard where the big spider lives), and had all the fun imaginable removing part exhausts from scrapped cars to replace sections on mine.
I now let the experts do it … 4 post lifts, windy guns, 18" extension bars, and access to many boxes of bolts, screws, nuts & washers if needed :lol:
It’s more expensive, but at my age I’d rather watch thanks
I plan to get a 2 post lift at some point, it would make many tasks a lot easier but for me its the challenge spurred on by the fact that if the car is worth little more than the fuel in its tank unless it works then I have little to lose by fixing it.
Just over 50,000 miles ago I stopped using a Ford main dealer.
They took three and a half hours to do a main service, booked as a while you wait in advance, didnt have any brake pads in stock and asked me to make a second appointment.
Some shouting took place and I havent been back since.
On a 10,000 mile service interval, thats five services at an average of £400 a time, I have had the oil done by a local independant to keep the book stamped but never paid more than £90 even when he did the brakes though I did source the parts for that.
A quick look on Autotrader says the car is worth about £1100, dealer history adds about £200.
The bottom line is, if I break it in the process of trying to fix it, I dont really care but I do like the challenge of having a go.
After all these are simply machines constructed from mass produced components and assembled from scratch in a matter of hours by minimum wage workers with a few hours training.
When the gearbox broke again, I ordered one from a breakers and just said “How hard can it be ?”
If I had to do it again, I could probably do it in a morning.
Would I do it again, most certainly but I would never earn a living from it.
More car fun today. An orange light on the dash lit up. It is kinda engine shaped. I haven’t looked in the manual yet, but I suspect it will say something like stop driving and see your local service centre. Engine seemed perfectly normal so I ignored it for now and did a 100 mile round trip today.
That will be a “check engine” light.
If yours is a 2.0 lancer it may have two catalytic converters according to some googling so if anybody starts telling you to change the cat ask them which one !
To understand what the actual fault is requires an engine code reader, all cars since 2002 have to have an OBD-II socket in the car for use with a standard code reader.
I have a reader, they are not expensive, about £45. I bought the reader and a Lambda sensor for less than Fords price for the sensor
If you find a need to go to Oxford drop me a PM.
I can read the code and reset the light but it will come back on if one of the sensors is faulty.
Thanks for the info and offer although I’ve no plans on the radar to go near Oxford. Guess it’ll be a trip to the local garage yet again…
Like taking a pet to a vet, the car didn’t want to start to get to the garage. After much trying it did eventually go… waiting for news now…
Did you find out what it was yet ?
Front oxygen sensor giving erratic readings. They’re going to try replacing it and see what happens.
Did have a quick google looking up what one of those would cost although didn’t find the specific one for my car. Putting that aside, how hard are these things to change? Screw+plug it in? Not that I have a clue where. Can’t even find a Haynes manual for my car, even though they do one for the Space Shuttle, Millennium Falcon and the USS Enterprise. Think I’ll get one of those code reader thingies ready for future use. I see they come in two versions. Is it better to get a stand alone unit or one that connects to a laptop?
Anyway, with the garage doing it, I suspect I’ll need to bring my own lube by the time they’re done.
As and when I change car next, I’ll make a note to pick a more common model so at least it’ll hopefully be easier to get info on them.
I couldnt see a Lancer specific model but th carisma one may well be identical
Looks like this at each end with wires in between
If Mitsubishi are anything like ford the same part will be used across a range of cars.
The sensor used on a Ford Galaxy is the same functionally as the sensor used on some models of Ford Ka.
The price however isn’t the same, Naughty Ford :nono:
Fitting it is simple, getting at the place where it needs to be fitted might not be so easy especially if you have to remove any sort of engine under tray to gain access.
Just picked up the car. I knew the total before I went in but I was a little surprised at the breakdown. 1 hour each for investigation and fitting replacement sensor, but £200+ for the sensor? Hopefully that’ll be the end of that.
Even my credit card company has noticed my increased spending recently, they’ve offered to put up my limit… didn’t waste their time did they?