fix – Patrick's Journal

I Got the Triumph Running

It’s time for an update, and it’s a good one. After a surprisingly short amount of work, I got the Triumph running, and running somewhat better than I expected. I regret not taking any pictures during the process, but it wasn’t really that exciting. I have a few things to address before the car is road-ready, but they shouldn’t present much trouble.

The first thing I did was remove the alternator and take it to a local place for a rebuild. Last time I was working on the car, I hooked up a jump pack backwards and smoke came out of the alternator. After taking it off and spinning it, I found the bearings a little stiff, so it was probably time for a refreshing anyways.

Next, I replaced the head gasket. I figured the gasket needed replacing due to a compression test from the last time I worked on the car. All the cylinders had compression, but it was low and very inconsistent. I expected to need most of the day to prep the head for removal; in fact, it took barely over an hour. I was ready to remove the head at around 11:30am, but no one was around to help me (with both manifolds attached it probably weighs 70-100 pounds). So I decided to work on something else I’ve been meaning to get to.

I’ve wanted to remove the engine-powered cooling fan and replace it with an electric fan for quite a while. I’ve had a fan and a controller kit, plus an engine fan eliminator kit ready to go for a few years. While waiting for my wife to get home to help with the head, I went ahead with the electric fan installation. The fan I bought was too thick to use as a puller behind the radiator, but luckily it was reversible, and thus easily mountable on the front of the radiator. I used the supplied zip ties to mount the fan to the radiator, and then connected the controller. After getting the car running, I discovered two problems with the controller: one, connecting it to the ignition coil doesn’t provide enough power, so I’ll probably connect it straight to the battery; two, the included push-in probe that sticks in the radiator fins sucks and doesn’t with with my radiator. I ordered a screw in replacement that I’ll put in a metal tee in the upper radiator hose.

I still had some time leftover, so I gave the carburetors a quick clean up and refresh and bought some supplies like coolant and a battery.

Once my wife got home, we took the head off, and to my surprise the gasket appeared to be in fine shape. I was expecting a missing chunk or something like last time. The block appeared in good shape also, and so did the head and all the valves. I don’t have a straight edge, so I didn’t check flatness, but I don’t think it’s an issue; I’ve never had coolant and oil mixing. I put the new gasket on and we set the head down on it. The next day I took maybe two hours or so to button it up.

Once everything was bolted together and filled up and plugged in, it was time to fire up the car. It took maybe half an hour of trying to get the car started, and when it did finally get going, it would only stay running with my foot holding the throttle open slightly. Yesterday, I mostly fixed the hard starting problem by adjusting the choke, which wasn’t doing anything at all. Now the car will run unattended, but only with the choke on. That seems to point to some kind of vacuum leak. I tried to track one down last time, but to no avail. Currently, my top potential culprits are the EGR valve, which I plan on eliminating, or the rocker cover, which is kind of out of shape. I plan to address that with a bit of RTV silicone. Hopefully that will take care of things and I can get the car registered and on the road in a week or two. I’ll be sure to add some pictures to the next post.

Finally Got My Car Fixed

Earlier this summer, and in fact starting in the late spring, a bunch of warning lights popped up on my car out of nowhere. A quick scan with my bootleg copy of Rheingold ISTA showed me there was poor/erroneous signal coming from the right rear wheel speed sensor. I couldn’t clear the code, which led me to believe there was probably an open circuit somewhere, even though no trouble codes from the car explicitly said that.

I started by swapping the rear wheel speed sensors from left to right and vice versa, hoping that the problem would be a cheap and easy to fix sensor. Unfortunately, that was not the case. I wanted to check the tone ring for the sensor next, despite it being unlikely that a damaged tone ring would cause an unclearable code.

On this car, a 2008 BMW 535xi, the tone ring is built into the wheel bearing, and you can’t see it without taking the axle out of the bearing. I knew it would be some work to get everything apart enough to look at the tone ring, so I figured for $50 or so, I might as well replace the bearing while I was there. I watched a couple videos on removing the bearing from the car, but I think all of the featured cars were automatics, and mine is manual (fairly rare in an E60). You would think that wouldn’t have anything to do with the rear axle and wheel bearing. You’d be wrong. On the manual cars, the axle is an extremely tight fit into the hub of the bearing. Every other car I’ve worked on, the fit has been tight, but loose enough to push the axle in and out by hand if it’s new and lubed up. On the manual E60s, it’s so tight I had to buy a puller to rip the bearing out of the spindle. There’s probably a special tool to install the axle, but I don’t have one, so I slammed it into the concrete floor of my driveway a few times. This whole thing turned into a multi-week saga because of the weather, waiting for parts multiple times and my constantly fluctuating levels of motivation. My car was on jack stands in the driveway for about three weeks. And at the end of it, I didn’t fix anything. The lights were still on. If I knew how huge a pain this job would be I wouldn’t have done it. On the other hand, now that I’ve done it once, I could do it much quicker in the future.

Next, I decided I wasn’t interested in fixing the car myself. I tried a used ABS module because it was cheap and quick. This didn’t fix anything either. I knew there was likely an open circuit between the right rear wheel speed sensor and the ABS module, but I thought that I didn’t have the right tool to probe the tiny pins on the electrical connectors, and I didn’t want to run new wires down the length of the car. The shop I took the car to seemed more interested in fixing minor or nonexistent problems than diagnosing and repairing the ABS problem. So that was $100 and change down the drain.

I finally got around to diagnosing the problem myself with some help from some male to male jumper wires for hobby electronics. It turned out they’re just the right size to fit into the tiny pins on the electrical connectors. I quickly discovered an open circuit on one of the wires going from the sensor to the ABS module. Yesterday, I finally got around to replacing the wire, and it fixed my problem. At first, on the ABS light was extinguished, but after quickly calibrating the yaw rate sensor, they all disappeared. I took the car for a test drive, and everything seems normal now. The next step is to get a fresh inspection sticker for the car, and then hopefully I’m done with fixing it for a while. I do want to do an all wheel drive service, which I have the fluids for, but I really need a lift for it. I’ll have to see if my friend with the shop could lend me some lift time for it.

Resurrecting an Old Laptop

I really enjoy bringing old computer hardware back to life. For instance, I used to run a previous blog on a Frankensteined computer composed of old parts from a couple Dell desktops. This time, I brought back my brother’s old laptop. My dad asked me to take a look at it because his current laptop is a dinosaur over 10-years-old and it’s just not cutting it for the work from home stuff.

The laptop in question is an Asus Q501LA, which I feel like was refurbished when we got it a while ago. According to the stickers inside, it was made some time in 2014. It has an Intel Core i5 4200U, 8GB of RAM, a 1080p IPS touch screen, backlit keyboard and originally, a 750GB hard drive. It was a pretty good mid-range laptop back in 2014, or whenever we got it. Along the way, it broke down for some reason, and got put into the attic because my brother needed a working laptop for school immediately. The most obvious problem was cracked glass on the display, which was duct taped to the lid. My dad bought a new piece of glass ages ago, which I was planning on installing.

After a quick diagnosis, I decided it needed a new motherboard to hard drive connecting circuit board. Mostly because it broke when I pulled it out. I surmised that the connector that broke was probably already in bad condition before removal because while the computer’s BIOS loaded, the hard drive wasn’t spinning. Luckily, that part was only about $10 on eBay. I convinced my dad that it’s practically criminal to not have an SSD in a computer these days, so I ordered a 500GB Western Digital Blue SSD.

While waiting on the parts, I decided to take a crack (see what I did there?) at the glass on the screen. I quickly discovered two problems: firstly, the glass is glued to the display behind it really well. I probably wouldn’t be able to separate the two. Secondly, on this computer, the display assembly attaches to the lid with a system of snap-fit connectors, similar to car interior panels. Probably 90% of them were damaged beyond use. My dad decided he was willing to shell out for a replacement screen, thinking that this laptop would still be better than a comparably priced Chromebook or Windows laptop.

When the parts finally arrived, I put everything together ready for some success. Unfortunately, the backlight of the new screen was dim, and flickered rapidly while on the charger. Off the charger, the screen was only barely bright enough to read with total concentration. I thought maybe getting Windows fully installed would fix it up, but it made no difference. I was fairly convinced it was a problem with the motherboard because the screen was bought used from a reputable seller on eBay. Both my dad and I were disappointed. For the last couple days, the laptop sat on my dining room table, waiting to be parted out.

Today, on a whim, I decided to try out the old, cracked screen to verify the new screen was at fault. To my surprise, the new screen looked perfect (other than the broken glass of course). I cleaned off some exposed copper parts on the motherboard where the hinges screw in, thinking that may be part of the problem. Even if it wasn’t, clean parts are better than dirty parts. I screwed the new screen back down, and after a little flickering, it came back and it’s now totally normal. The touch screen stuff doesn’t work, which is a tad disappointing, but my dad doesn’t care. I’m pretty happy that it kind of fixed itself, but I wish I knew exactly what the problem was. So it’s mission accomplished I guess. I’ll drop it off to my dad this weekend and I’m sure he’ll be really happy with it. I don’t think he’s used a computer with an SSD for any length of time, so he’ll probably be blown away by the boot up time.