New Stereo and Clutch Issues

I was getting increasingly poor radio reception, with interference from the heater fan motor, wiper motor and electric radiator fan, and decided that while it was almost certainly a fault with the antenna or cable, an upgrade to DAB would make my commute to work more bearable.

I checked the stereo end of the antenna cable once the stereo was out and it looked fine; I had thought it might have been crushed where it bends through 90 degrees to plug into the head unit, but there was no sign of any pinching or crushing.  That meant that any fault with the cable was probably in the connection to the antenna itself, and on undoing the bolt securing the cable to the antenna and the antenna to the wing top, I found the head of the bolt that secures the metal parts of the antenna through the plastic base to the wing and cable and the conducting ring of the base section both to have rusted.  They were given a thorough clean up before reassembling with plenty of Vaseline to keep the water out this time.

With the fascia centre still removed, fitting the new stereo was a doddle.  DAB units have a second antenna for the digital signal, unless you use a splitter/amplifier unit to the existing antenna, but they have a poor reputation.  I initially tried a dipole antenna inside the windscreen, but the head unit kept reading “antenna fault”.  I tried replacing it with another similar antenna from the same supplier, but they were out of stock, so I got an element type antenna that sticks onto the inside of the screen instead.  This produced the same result.  It transpired that the stereo was faulty and a swap for another unit of the same model cured all the problems.  I don’t know why it’s always me that this sort of thing happens to, but at least my luck is consistent…  Anyway, the new radio and both antennas now work well, giving good reception on a much wider range of stations and with better quality when using the DAB stations.  The work also showed that the rear left speaker wasn’t working (I had thought the need for higher volume settings was to do with the poor signal reception).  That transpired to be a bad splice between the speaker cable run and the ISO connector block.  I think the glue from the insulation tape had leached into the splice, effectively insulating the different pieces of wire even though they were still neatly entwined.  Cutting the wiring tails back and re-splicing with freshly exposed ends, this time using heat-shrink tubing, cured that fault.

The clutch lost its fluid again, going soft this afternoon.  I still can’t find any runs or drips, the only suspicious sign being a “gummy” exterior on the flexible hose.  That might be due to drips of diesel from the fuel filter and pipework directly above, so is far from conclusive.  Anyway, I will try to collect a new slave cylinder from Rogers tomorrow and wait for the replacement flexible hose to arrive from Paddock Spares.  The slave is a Bearmach part, so probably genuine but certainly of acceptable quality, while the hose is a Goodridge stainless braided replacement for the standard rubber hose, the same as my brake hoses, which will be robust, impervious to diesel drips and will give a better clutch response than a new rubber hose.

I finally replaced the rubber caps of the bonnet buffer screws at the front of the bonnet (the caps are like miniature black rubber shuttle-cock heads); the old ones were perished and cracked, and had gone sticky, so they tended to stay on the slam panel rather than the screw heads.  The same happened a few years ago on the Range Rover, so I suspect it’s normal after a lot of years.  My bonnet has four of these buffers because of the spare wheel, though normal bonnets just have the two.  While I had the bonnet up, I also decided to reconfigure the fuel system a little so that the heat exchanger that pre-heats the fuel is now sequenced between the lift pump and filter, rather than between the filter and injection pump as advised normally by the supplier (Dieselveg.co.uk).  This means that the fuel is already warm when entering the filter, allowing easier filtration of vegoil and also preventing diesel waxing in severe cold conditions like last winter, so the Arctic spec electrical fuel filter heater should only activate in the coldest conditions early in a run, but should deactivate as the engine begins to warm up, rather than remaining on for the entire journey, reducing electrical loads.  It shouldn’t have any adverse effects on running vegoil – the injector pump, pipes and injectors themselves all warm up to engine temperature, so the slight drop in fuel temperature as it passes through the filter shouldn’t cause any issues.  I plan to make a filter insulation sleeve, though, to minimise such a drop.