Doesn't sound like anything serious, but you never know. There a sort of whirring, whistling noise (sorry to be so vague) coming from my 2003 Zetec Fiesta. It's very intermittent, in fact some days it doesn't even do it. And it's fairly quiet - you can't hear it when the engine is doing anything much higher than tickover. But fairly random things seem to trigger it. Sometimes it'll happen when you change down, or go into neutral and park up. Sometimes it'll just happen if you press the clutch. But once it's started, it'll carry on for a few seconds (i.e. after you let the clutch out again). I'd get the wooden stick out, but it never does it straight away after it's been parked, and if it's been for a drive, it would have just faded out by the time I get the bonnet up.
Well, I replaced the belt last year. It's a stretchy one, so there's every possibility I cocked it up. I do have the feeling it's in that (alternator, PAS, idler, water pump) area.
Now you mention it, it has been worse on the freezing mornings, and I'm sure that increased battery load seems to affect it, although I could certainly be imagining that. Possibly the alternator becoming harder to turn (as I assume it would when it works harder) is having an effect on a bearing in that area. Or something.
SWMBO is Italian. I only see the mother-in-law once or twice a year. She is (unsurprisingly) fairly noisy, but I can hardly understand a word she says. When they talk, it sounds like they're arguing, but apparently, they're not.
BTW, what can you do with an alternator, other than replace it, to see if it's mechanically okay? Would such a noise be caused by worn bearings, or brushes?
I didn't even know there were such places. Shame that the stretchy belt can't be taken off more easily, though. I think I'll spend a bit more time trying to make sure it isn't something else, before I take the alternator out.
if you can actually get your head under the bonnet while the noise occurs: squirt some water on the belt, if the noise immediately stops you have found the problem. If it remains the same at least you have eliminated belt noise.
I've learned quite a bit by osmosis, but when they're together, they lapse into a dialect that she tells me is very rustic. I can understand her if she speaks slowly, and uses 'correct' Italian.
I bet it's not as rustic as our local dialect. If they were English our neighbours would be muttering "Oim a vaarmer and oi'm avven a tracker oi'm am." at regular intervals.
It's very bad manners for them not to speak Italian. I have to put up with that as well, but at least the educated are insisting that their children speak Italian nowadays.
They're not overtly rude people, I guess they assume I'm not interested in what they are talking about. Quite often, I will hear the name of a restaurant we went to years ago, and the missus tells me that food is pretty much what their conversation revolves around. This is in spite of the fact that their metabolisms have recently become somewhat delicate, and they have to be very careful what they eat.
But it's nice having an Italian missus. She really appreciates how good this country is, instead of knocking all the time; and how well-behaved most of us are. And even she is afraid to drive over there.
No, sadly it's an inbuilt ignorance. Speaking dialect is something people do from either lack of education or from regional arrogance or often a bit of both. It's ultimately self-defeating since speaking dialect won't get anyone a decent job in Italy. It's also self defeating because I can drive just 10 km and the dialect is different and impossible to understand.
It's not even as if there are great works of literature, stunning epic poems or even great beauty of expression to be found in dialect. It's mostly just a way that people can tell that they all come from the same village. It has an ample wealth of words for shit, pig, cow, horse, wheat, wine and olives but is poor for almost any other form of expression.
Food is an eternal topic of conversation, but also gets a bit wearing since for the most part the discussion is based around "they don't cook as well here as we do at home" even when the local speciality is something like dog turd on a bed of cat litter. There's great culinary art in Italy and some excellent regional cuisine but everyone is fixed in their belief that "how we do it here is best".
It leads to a great deal of boring cooking because people eat the same bloody thing week in, week out.
Where we are (Adriatic coast) driving is safe and sensible, with the exception of roundabouts which only appeared in Italy a few years ago and no one knows how to use them. They all assume that the best way to drive on a roundabout is to close one's eyes and go as fast as possible.
Motorways can be a bit scary, but have got a lot better since "Safety Tutor" was installed. It's now more or less impossible to exceed 130kph for more than a few km, because every motorway is lined with speed cameras. The only way to make Italians behave themselves.
I'm guessing from the description involving food, dialect and scary driving that your missus is from Campania because that's the place where the driving is worst, the focus on food the highest and the dialect the least understandable.
I love Italy and Italians BTW, but there are aspects of life that do annoy. Driving, dialetto and the insistence that no one else knows how to cook are the three most irritating after the bloody bureaucracy.
Actually, they're from a farm near to Parma (they made Parmigiano), but I've never been there, because she says it is a complete dump, and it has to be said that I like things clean and tidy. They have far more land and property than they can manage at their age, but they won't even consider doing anything worthwhile with it. So we usually meet up somewhere else, like Sorrento, where there is plenty to see (for those of us that still have the energy). So they've spent nearly all their lives in a small village. The missus said that her parents were always telling her that she had to speak proper Italian at school. Her dad didn't actually go to shool, but started work on their farm very young. He's an ex-alcoholic who can't drink any more (it would kill him), so he's quite antisocial, and can be fairly disgusting. It doesn't bother me if he wants to, for example, have an al fresco crap while no-one's around, but the female members of his family are mortified. Apparently, he was considered quite a catch when he was younger.
But anyway, this is why the missus moved to England. She thinks the English are all paragons of virtue by comparison. I love Italy, too, but it annoys me that they seem quite happy to leave jobs apparently half-finished, and piles of crap everywhere. I will probably never go to Naples again, because it's just a disgrace. Why can't they just clean the place up? And do people really have to beg, in this day and age, in an EU country?
When they come to stop with us, they think we live in luxury, including the food. But it has to be said that I only like to eat out in places where the food is exceptional, otherwise what's the point in eating out? There are a few things we have here that they really like. Surprising things like Heinz baked beans; and bacon and eggs for breakfast. At least we have proper bacon :)
Jings Crivens That's the frozen north. Not only is traffic up there calm and mild but for the most part they can't cook. I love Bologna where they can cook.
Parma is quite nice and clean. I stop in the Holiday Inn on my way home and I really can't complain about cleanliness.
Standard for Italian old folk. Our neighbour owns a beautiful 18th century farmhouse with hundreds of hectares and he would rather let it rot than repair it or sell it.
Intriguing. We have another neighbour who is from Parma and who moved south to buy a cheap property; he's an alcoholic. He opened an agriturismo (farmhouse B&B) and then sat down and pissed away the income.
The beggars are mostly Albanian or Romanian. The shit in the street is a disgrace.
Heinz beans are a "delicacy" in our local supermarket. A mere ?2.50 per tin. The local farm shop "Agrivert" do a really good full English all-day breakfast. They use thick cut prosciutto instead of bacon but IMO it's better than bacon.
Yep, when her mum calls on the phone in winter, she quite often tells us that they're snowed in. One of the biggest jobs they have in autumn is to collect a shedful of firewood for the winter.
Sorry, I didn't express that very well. She says that her parents' home is a dump, not Parma, which she says is very nice.
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