vroom vroom burble :)

On or around Sat, 19 Aug 2006 21:49:53 +0100, Tom Woods enlightened us thusly:

The Ford V6 did that. standing for year, more or less. new battery, fillup the oil and water, turn the key and almost immediate fire-up. didn't even have to put fresh petrol in it. restores yer faith in summat-or-other, when that happens.

best one I ever saw was a lorry-based crane with a leyland diesel (670 or such, probably, or maybe a 760). standing for about 3 years and I don't think it actually did as much as one revolution on the starter before it fired up on idle.

Mind, we had one wagon there which *always* needed aerostart, even though it was used regularly.

My landy's a bit like that, it's not been stood for a year but it's had the same battery in it for 5 years at least, it was in there when I bought it. It rarely gets used (maybe once a month) but even in the depths of winter when there's ice everywhere, it takes a little less than a second to fire up without needing glowplugs. My audi takes 2 seconds to fire and has gone through two batteries in the 3 years I've had it despite having a similar-sized battery. The pinz can take 10 seconds to fire if the engine's hot on a hot day (known problem on that vintage).

On or around Sat, 19 Aug 2006 23:59:30 +0100, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

the SIII takes a bit of winding on occasions. I reckon it's fuel vapourising somewhere. Mind, I could do with hunting a fuel pump up at Malvern - the bugger wouldn't pump after it'd been standing for a while (couple of months) and I had to pull it off and faff with it for a while to get it going again. Sticky valve, seemed like - it's one of those PITA ones that won't come apart though.

When i was an apprentice all them years ago me and the boss went to collect a humber that had been stood 15 years put a battery on it stuck a gallon of petrol in the tank disconected the coil cranked it till we had some oil pressure re connected the coil and started it first flick and drove it out of the barn it was stored in

That's apparently the pinz's problem, instruction manual says put filter intake in summer mode and hold the accelerator down when cranking, it starts reasonably quickly, about 5-10 seconds or so which seems like an age when you're in a hurry! With the weedy 35 amp alternator and two honking great big batteries it might be an idea for me to sort out some kind of charge monitoring system. Mind you it's not like we have hot (30C) temperatures very often!

I'm sure that if you whack it hard enough with a hammer, it'll either unstick the valve or come apart ;-)

I think I mentioned that one chap I know (Rory Manton, he posts here from time to time) repaired his fuel pump body in France by soaking a baugette in araldite to replace a piece of pump body that had broken off, worked a treat and was still on there a month or so afterwards. I saw it recently-ish at a local military show, still looking almost edible.