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What have you done to your Elgrand today?

LeStempy said:
The button panel plugs into the rear of the instrument cluster, maybe it's not plugged in.
Click to expand...

You were spot on thanks 👍 after finding a video on how to access behind the cluster sure enough it was unplugged. How that could be missed is beyond me as it's a huge plug.
 
Also yesterday I had a go at removing the front grill to get the heat gun on it but none of the what appear to be plastic screw rivets will come out. When I finally do remove them what's best and reliable to replace them with.

Having failed to get them out had a go at the rear plate surround. A number plate screw snapped which I replaced but it's meating a lot of resistance on the hole so need to clean it out. I then discovered the surround is bolted from behind the trim. So that was the end of that.
On a plus note, I've discovered my karcher k4.600 can be fed via a hose in a bucket so that's a big finger to the hosepipe ban 😄
 
Drove to work, 8 miles on the motorway 14.9mpg and that's doing 55-60mph with a chunk of downhill

I need to brim the tank again now I've sorted the trip counter, which I found is actually in miles as it tallied exactly with distance to work. Then work out mpg after a full tank rather than rely on the onboard computer
 
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So a mate turned up, just scored a 52 for may as well be nothing, running when last running parked under a tree with the main battery fuse blown, he did the right thing and took it for a warrant, it failed so you have x amount of days to sort that get a recheck and pass before you have to start all over again by paying for a new go, two major clues here to the happenings already. he failed on you guessed it, the piece of copper pipe hammered flat and jammed in where the main fuse on the battery was supposed to be. n0 park lights, no low beams HIDs, no horn. Assorted cracked and broken driving park stop etc plastic. Loose front bumper, no glass drivers wing mirror and all four corners for the brakes not just pads not a hose, all of the brakes components along with a sigh off sheet for the mechanic to declare what he did and where he brought the parts from, which parts, the whole nine yards, ready set go, lets start with the park lights, good fuse, power yup,no power at the light, lets work our way back toward the feed till we find were it is evaporating. it didn't go to its proper home instead it went to a aftermarket button to do with clarion stereos by the steering wheel, there is another feed coming off of the same switch where do that go I do not know. were to it come fro0m , down by the middle stero ways. i started the car and turned on that random switch Park Lights fixed. so main fuse blown parklights wired the sterio power but the proper power still works from the magic power box. horn that was a relay in the magic battery box, fixed. back up shit the fog lamp bulbs just evaporated. pause think thats ok they have already passed so they wont look again because a recheck only involves the original fails. next is the headlights and the power and switchs all do the right thing but the HID bulbs only flash for an instant, is that the bulbs or the ballast, the 12v feed power dont drop any worrisome amount upon initial startup so its not a draw issue on the supply second battery hooked up so as to ensure im not setting myself up there. removed the bulbs for the mate to get tested. im feeling energetic so its time to totally rebuild the brakes, cleaned, honed bores, all seals and dust covers replaced, pins lubed and new pads all round, sanded the shit of off the handbrake shoes and bleed new fluid through the hole system. fixed. spent a bunch of time putting the dash back together as i had tried to find where that headlight power went and the other new power came from. fixed, but still dont know. started fixing the plastic on and around the tail lights with clear perpex and hot glue sticks melted with a lighter fixed followed by frankenstien stiching the front guard together with cable ties, fixed. double sided tape behind a flat piece of mirror glass sticking it into the wing mirror its in there and most probally will stay in. fixed its now 930 pm and the recheck is the nerxt day a mate pulls up the drive with HIDS on his car, lets go, great time to finally find out that the bulbs and ballest have left the building, bugger me. its morning time and old mate dont have much time or 180ish for each bulb let alone enough children to sell for two new ballasts, thinking...thinking... last chance is to try and jam some sort of 12v LED in the hole and power it from the origanil 12v low beem feed which means the origi8nal switches will be used. so the cheepest non brand LEDs fit in the HID socket but it does take a lot of time and Skin to get the clips to seat properly so they dont bounce around. ouch. time is running out, I slapped up a couple of adapting wires to mate factory plugs to LEDs taped everything up. fixed. but hold on thats a LED bulb in a HID head light no way is it bright enough or possibly in the correct position to focus in the same place as before they are going to fail. 2 hours to go. old mate drove off to the testing station i went home and cursed myself for not pushing for the bulb test to happen sooner. bugger it . so everything passed the low beams even focused the light in the correct place on the headlight test board, what have you done to your Elgrand today,
 
P4ddy said:
Drove to work, 8 miles on the motorway 14.9mpg and that's doing 55-60mph with a chunk of downhill

I need to brim the tank again now I've sorted the trip counter, which I found is actually in miles as it tallied exactly with distance to work. Then work out mpg after a full tank rather than rely on the onboard computer
Click to expand...
If the trip meter is reading in miles. Then the computer output fuel economy system is probably also miles so not km/l but m/l so your economy is probably not as bad as you think
 
Reverend RobP said:
If the trip meter is reading in miles. Then the computer output fuel economy system is probably also miles so not km/l but m/l so your economy is probably not as bad as you think
Click to expand...

I had a search and trip going in miles means it's chipped (bob said it's kilometres but fixing the trip says miles, that will explain his collection of points 😆)
It says the chip slows the pulse for it to read in miles, so yea the km/l is in fact miles per litre. The Speedo also has the K blacked out so it just say mh

So this morning instead of 14.7mpg I got 23.6mpg.
 
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P4ddy said:
I had a search and trip going in miles means it's chipped (bob said it's kilometres but fixing the trip says miles, that will explain his collection of points 😆)
It says the chip slows the pulse for it to read in miles, so yea the km/l is in fact miles per litre. The Speedo also has the K blacked out so it just say mh

So this morning instead of 14.7mpg I got 23.6mpg.
Click to expand...
my bus also is fully converted to miles including trip so hopefully my 5.3 litres per km is actually to gallons as not had it long as was wondering
 
slayer said:
So a mate turned up, just scored a 52 for may as well be nothing, running when last running parked under a tree with the main battery fuse blown, he did the right thing and took it for a warrant, it failed so you have x amount of days to sort that get a recheck and pass before you have to start all over again by paying for a new go, two major clues here to the happenings already. he failed on you guessed it, the piece of copper pipe hammered flat and jammed in where the main fuse on the battery was supposed to be. n0 park lights, no low beams HIDs, no horn. Assorted cracked and broken driving park stop etc plastic. Loose front bumper, no glass drivers wing mirror and all four corners for the brakes not just pads not a hose, all of the brakes components along with a sigh off sheet for the mechanic to declare what he did and where he brought the parts from, which parts, the whole nine yards, ready set go, lets start with the park lights, good fuse, power yup,no power at the light, lets work our way back toward the feed till we find were it is evaporating. it didn't go to its proper home instead it went to a aftermarket button to do with clarion stereos by the steering wheel, there is another feed coming off of the same switch where do that go I do not know. were to it come fro0m , down by the middle stero ways. i started the car and turned on that random switch Park Lights fixed. so main fuse blown parklights wired the sterio power but the proper power still works from the magic power box. horn that was a relay in the magic battery box, fixed. back up shit the fog lamp bulbs just evaporated. pause think thats ok they have already passed so they wont look again because a recheck only involves the original fails. next is the headlights and the power and switchs all do the right thing but the HID bulbs only flash for an instant, is that the bulbs or the ballast, the 12v feed power dont drop any worrisome amount upon initial startup so its not a draw issue on the supply second battery hooked up so as to ensure im not setting myself up there. removed the bulbs for the mate to get tested. im feeling energetic so its time to totally rebuild the brakes, cleaned, honed bores, all seals and dust covers replaced, pins lubed and new pads all round, sanded the shit of off the handbrake shoes and bleed new fluid through the hole system. fixed. spent a bunch of time putting the dash back together as i had tried to find where that headlight power went and the other new power came from. fixed, but still dont know. started fixing the plastic on and around the tail lights with clear perpex and hot glue sticks melted with a lighter fixed followed by frankenstien stiching the front guard together with cable ties, fixed. double sided tape behind a flat piece of mirror glass sticking it into the wing mirror its in there and most probally will stay in. fixed its now 930 pm and the recheck is the nerxt day a mate pulls up the drive with HIDS on his car, lets go, great time to finally find out that the bulbs and ballest have left the building, bugger me. its morning time and old mate dont have much time or 180ish for each bulb let alone enough children to sell for two new ballasts, thinking...thinking... last chance is to try and jam some sort of 12v LED in the hole and power it from the origanil 12v low beem feed which means the origi8nal switches will be used. so the cheepest non brand LEDs fit in the HID socket but it does take a lot of time and Skin to get the clips to seat properly so they dont bounce around. ouch. time is running out, I slapped up a couple of adapting wires to mate factory plugs to LEDs taped everything up. fixed. but hold on thats a LED bulb in a HID head light no way is it bright enough or possibly in the correct position to focus in the same place as before they are going to fail. 2 hours to go. old mate drove off to the testing station i went home and cursed myself for not pushing for the bulb test to happen sooner. bugger it . so everything passed the low beams even focused the light in the correct place on the headlight test board, what have you done to your Elgrand today,
Click to expand...
IMG_1785.gif
 
The 'chips' / 'gizmos' wire to the canbus (vehicle computer network) behind the instrument cluster, they read the actual speed signal from canbus which is in kph, convert kph to mph, then output the mph signal back to the canbus that connects to the instrument cluster. When wiring them in the canbus wires that run to the instrument cluster are cut so the gizmo can be wired to both sides (input and output) side of the cut.

At first, years ago, I didn't think that fitting a 'chip' would change the fuel computer to work in mpl instead of kpl, I thought it'd just be the instrument cluster that 'saw' the mph signal so it wouldn't affect the fuel computer because the fuel computer would still see the kph reading.
I was wrong about that because it does also make the fuel computer see mph and read in mpl.

Vehicle speed is carried on the canbus on multiple 'channels', the 'chips' change the reading (from kph to mph) on only the channel that the instrument cluster and fuel computer use. If the 'chip' changed the speed reading on other canbus channels it could have a negative effect by e.g. perhaps causing the gearbox to change gear at incorrect speeds. In practice it doesn't have any noticeable ill effect except sometimes causing error codes if an ECU notices that the speed readings on various channels don't agree.

But it does seem some 'chips' can cause problems for other canbus channels, sometimes leading to all sorts of problems including the engine and gearbox not working properly, particularly if the chips go wrong. I have 'fixed' duff crank sensor / cam sensor / hard starting problems / gearbox in limp mode refusing to change gear problems / heater not working properly problems, all by simply removing problem kph to mph chips and puting the wiring back to standard behind the instrument cluster. They can work well when they're working well but they can cause all sorts of seemingly unlrelated problems if there is a problem with the chip / gizmo. I personally prefer fitting Lockwood Dials over fitting a chip / gizmo.. Even if they work properly and don't have any problems I still prefer the speed needle on the cluster to move to the 100kph/60mph extent when I'm doing 100kph/60mph instead of only moving to the 60kph / 38mph extent when I'm doing 100kph/60mph. The chips/gizmos do remove the around 115mph speed limiter but that's hardly an advantage on an Elgrand.
 
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Last night I removed the new but duff alternator from my black Elgrand and fitted the old used alternator I removed from a duff complete engine I have in the yard to the black Elgrand.

The black Elgrand is now fixed :)

I have contacted the supplier of the new alternator that turned out to be dead on arrival and they are happy to refund me for it, no fuss or arguments, great service (though I would rather the new alternator had worked lol).

It was much easier changing the alternator with the Elgrand on my ramp with all my tools available than it was doing it on the floor at a campsite in Cornwall with just a little socket set lol.

The above follows on from this https://forum.elgrandoc.uk/threads/what-the-fuck.6048/page-768#post-676086
 
Removed this....eventually. Paint won't budge with heat gun.

1000024234.jpg
 
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