Jonathan Kay

I have fitted a Bi-Xenon kit to my R300 (from HIDS4U) and replaced the lenses with Cibie's plus fitted the newer style lowered mounting brackets and the lights are excellent now. Do they self-level? And if not any problems at MoT inspections? Thanks Jonathan

What bulbs do you have? Better conventional halogen bulbs can make a big improvement. Beyond that you can replace the whole lamp with different halogen units or LEDs (at a very high price but there's one story in the archives). I don't think there's a legal way to fit HIDs... Jonathan

Is it affected by the language selected in "Personalised Settings" for the "Information Display"? Page 86 of the Manual. (I doubt that it's that well coordinated but worth trying.) Jonathan

Our only thought initially is, the car is on its conditioner (CTEK). The battery is new and full so not being actively charged, but the conditioner will be occasionally checking the voltage / giving a brief charge pulse. I'd check the charging voltage. Jonathan

There are two commercial repairers that have come up in the past: Speedycables and JDO/ John Ostick. You want to do it DIY, which is a bit different from most previous queries, but they may be able to help you with components, and they both sound like small craft businesses who will might be good for a chat. Good luck, before and after photos please. Jonathan

What sort of charger? The clever conditioning chargers can be fussy about very flat batteries. With yours I'd top it up (if possible and needed) jumpstart it and then try and charge it or go for a run. Usual precautions. I don't think there's any consensus in previous discussions about the best batteries and why. My 7 is used on roads and for trackdays. It lives on a conditioning charger when in the garage. It has a Powervamp PVR 25 and if I were buying now I'd consider a PVR22 as they are cheaper. Jonathan

Might they have got confused with the telltale for high intensity rear lights? Do you have one of those? MoT Inspection Manuals. Jonathan

Someone has also suggested a couple of tests on the crank position sensor. First, to check the resistance which is ok, and second, to check the voltage when the engine is cranking. I attached the multimeter to the sensor pins and cranked the engine but nothing registered. Is this a valid test? What's the voltage between the battery terminals at rest and during cranking? (If you didn't have a multimeter I'd recommend (along with Garry7) trying to start with an external battery (in or out of another vehicle).) Jonathan

Don't know how it works on Stack dashes. Have you got a wiring diagram: let me know if you want one. Jonathan

So IDRC... ;-) Jonathan

If you can't identify it from Polevolt or similar I suggest you post a photo of the other half. IIRC someone here can recognise these things by eye. Jonathan

Does she have the option of returning that and buying a unit which includes the generator and the switchgear? Does she want the generator to be able to power the whole system or only a predefined part of it? And what's the power range? Jonathan

I'm used to send pictures on a site for giving them an address but what part of the address must we actually copy to put in the URL frame ? It needs to be the URL just for the image, not of a page that includes the image. Try it, and if it doesn't work the first time tell us the URL of the page as plain text. Jonathan

That would be Doug... Baker. :-) Jonathan

That one gets to dropping the diff at step 6... Jonathan

Thanks Jonathan

Was it this? It's called "Prop Replacement" but it involves taking a lot of the back end to bits. Jonathan

Great detail: many thanks. Is there a simple answer about the models of 7 and/ or ECUs to which that would apply? Jonathan

Foiled again. But wouldn't it have been fun to shout "Contact!"... Of course it needs the deeper fix as Andrew has observed. Jonathan

Brise have actually been very helpful on this. They have already supplied Pete with an alternative starter based on a different core. In fact they asked me to do this analysis on the starter we had as they were aware that some of their starters had caused problems but had not been able to examine one causing problems in situ. Hopefully this information (which I will pass on to them) will allow them to resolve the issue for the benefit of all. Thanks. Do you and they suspect that the problem is inherent to the design of the model or that it will vary between units? To be honest I don't think it would be very hard at all to provide a buffered power supply to the ECU; if I had the time (rather than two little daughters!) I'd probably relish the challenge. A rough measurement of the current draw on the ECU supply pin would allow a calculation of the size of capacitors required etc. An alternative would be a small integrated switch-mode supply with step-up that could continue to provide 12V out with a reduced input. It would be quite a fun little challenge to crack; however counting against all of this would be the added complexity and the fact that the car would then be depending upon bespoke electronics. I would prefer a simpler and more "traditional" solution to be honest. If you sensed the voltage on the solenoid feed and the extra PSU only joined in when that came up you'd only depend on it during starting... But for a genuinely traditional approach you could start cranking with the ECU off then flick it in after that initial transient drop in voltage. Biggles or what? Jonathan

9.5 V while cranking is lower than comfortable. The battery may be starting to fail, and it seems that some ECUs won't work reliably if you get below that, so that even though it cranks it won't start. Charging is OK. Jonathan

Never mind that, I've got £10 riding on "Crank Position Sensor" at 7-2 with Ladbrokes, and £20 on "dodgy battery" at evens with Betfred. Couldn't you find an accumulator? I can't stand the tension much more. Very good, but it may need to be higher... :-) Jonathan PS: Is this a convenient hook for ceiiinosssttuv? Jonathan

I'd rather that it didn't disable my client-side spalling chicken (OS X and iOS). I can't think of any other site that does apart from appalling online employment stuff where I end up preparing offline and pasting. Jonathan

Thanks for that superb analysis. First thoughts: Sounds totally consistent with what people have been observing. Are those vertical white gridlines 50 ms apart? What's the voltage just to the right of the second of them? Related to (2) and knowing that curve is there a way that an ordinary multimeter could be used to diagnose this? Are you going to discuss with Brise... and will their response be "Fit a bigger battery"?And one that's off the wall: How hard would it be to build a protected PSU to keep the ECU feed voltage (but not the battery voltage) high enough during cranking? Jonathan

You're not the only one who'd like definitive advice on this. I've tried to understand the options but I get lost with the problems with the serial data cables and the precise version of Windows needed to run the software. I tried to get my mind round it in this thread. The ideal solution for me would work across multiple types of vehicle, probably use Bluetooth (obviating the serial cable) and preferably run on an iPhone rather than needing another single-purpose device. Jonathan