Cantanko

Just a quick post to rave about Tayna – what an impressive company! continue reading…

Bloody batteries… I knew when I bought the truck that I’d be needing a new set at some stage because the ones fitted weren’t exactly matched, the primary (driver’s side) battery being approximately two-thirds of the rated capacity of the aux battery on the passenger side.

I was pratting around for most of this weekend and managed to leave the door open for a few hours, hence the courtesy light was also on for a few hours. Given that their should be upwards of 180Ah of capacity between the two of them, you’d have hoped starting after a 5-watt load for four hours wouldn’t pose a problem. It did. continue reading…

I tend to go a bit overboard on servicing things, especially as the vehicles I own tend to have higher mileage and / or are reasonably high performance. One thing I have learned over the last fifteen years or so is that replacing filters with cheap-ass generic parts usually ends up in tears one way or another. continue reading…

Booo! I had my first “is this going to get me home?” moment with the cruiser today: I started getting the “more throttle means less power” symptom after attempting to fill up at Tesco and finding they’d run out of Fuel. The problem was so acute when driving that I had to use low range to get up the hill near my house! continue reading…

Had a play in the snow with the ‘cruiser this evening in the Stanton-in-Peak area. This is quite possibly the deepest snow I’ve seen since I was a kid, and it has to be said it was excellent fun!

Woo! Yay! Cruiser happened to click over to 250,000 miles as I pulled into the supermarket car park, hence managed to get a photo

A quarter of a million miles. Just about run in, then...

I’ve finally got round to flushing out the cooling system on the ‘cruiser before changing the radiator (it’s on the list of to-do’s before my trip next year) so seeing as the weather was particularly nice, I decided to give it a go. continue reading…

My auto box has a problem unlike any auto I’ve worked with before. When warm and in D, 2 or L, if you mash the throttle the box can’t hold on to first and jumps  into second. I noticed this problem when I test drove the car and to be honest it doesn’t tend to cause a problem given my rather relaxed driving style in the ‘Cruiser, but it can be annoying. continue reading…

Got the calipers serviced today – of the eight pistons, only one was seized and even then not badly. A bit of pounding with a hammer and an aluminium drift had it freed up in ten minutes or so, with most of the time spent cleaning out the calipers themselves, all of the oilways, seal seats and piston faces.

There was a bit of tarnishing on the pistons but not enough to cause either seal damage or concern, however I will probably change the pistons out next year – it’s been put into the maintenance schedule so I don’t forget

I’ve done about sixty miles on the new discs and they appear to be bedding in very well. There are no fluid leaks that I can find and it stops straight and true, rather unlike the way it did before the service!

All in all, quite a successful outcome

I picked up the caliper service parts from Inchcape Derby today – not bad considering the parts were only ordered Wednesday. So far, they’ve always managed to get me bits and pieces for the truck within 48 hours, which does make the sometimes scary prices a little easier to swallow! continue reading…