u/SPANNER-RASH

IT RUNS!

The £2.5k auction Triumph Bonneville is back, and this time I'm finding out whether I actually bought a bargain or a very expensive ornament.

After flushing out the absolutely disgusting old fuel, fresh petrol goes in… and somehow, the 1979 Bonneville fires into life.

And then, because apparently I have absolutely no sense of self-preservation, I took it out for its first proper ride. 😂

I’ve only gone and bought another old bike at auction… and I’m not entirely sure whether I’ve bought a bargain or a complete disaster!

£2,550, apparently very original, plenty of patina and potentially a very good bike hiding underneath the cobwebs.

The big question is… will it actually run?

Fuel delivery checked. Carbs balanced. Spark plug swapped. Yet one exhaust header is still noticeably cooler than the other three.

At this point I'm running out of easy answers, so it's time for some proper fault finding.

Have you ever chased a fault like this on an old Honda four? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts before I start pulling things apart again.

I recently changed the timing belt and water pump on my 2015 A180d (OM607). Mercedes charge a fair amount for this job, but it's actually very DIY-friendly if you've got a decent set of tools and the correct timing pins.

I filmed the whole process as a detailed step-by-step guide, covering the timing procedure, water pump replacement, torque settings and a few tricks that make the job much easier.

It should also help anyone with the same engine in a Renault, Nissan or Dacia.

Hopefully it'll save someone a few quid.

It has freshly cleaned carbs, clear pilot circuits, fresh oil and no nasty surprises inside the engine.

I'm thinking carb balance or a fuelling issue, but I'd be interested to hear what you'd check next.

I also deleted the mechanical rev counter drive, explained why I still use Hylomar Blue instead of modern anaerobic sealants, and torqued everything down to the factory specs.

Would you have gone with Hylomar, ThreeBond or something else?

After months of cleaning, measuring and rebuilding individual components, this episode is where it starts looking like an engine again.

Fresh bearings, rebuilt crankshaft, heated crankcases... and the nervous moment when you find out whether everything fits as it should! 😅

I brought my E46 M3 out of storage... 15 minutes later it was dead. 😭

A battery light, rough running, and an electrical burning smell, the smoke rising from the alternator was the dead giveaway.

I decided the only option was a replacement Valeo unit as I read way too many reports of people burning through the cheaper ones.

At least swapping an alternator on an E46 really isn't that bad when you know how. 🤓

Anyone who's ever had a long-term project bike will know exactly how this happens...

You put it away for a few weeks, life gets busy, other projects take over... and suddenly two years have passed.

That's exactly what happened with my Honda CB750 project.

This week I dragged it back out of storage to find out if the old girl would still run. What followed was a bit of fault-finding, a few worrying moments, and hopefully the start of getting this build finished at last.

After 20 years of riding, I'd stopped carrying a puncture repair kit.

Then this happened.

A completely unexpected puncture, miles from home, no obvious cause, and a bike that wasn't going anywhere. Thankfully a couple of fellow bikers came to the rescue.

This video is a reminder of why every rider should carry a repair kit and inflator.

The crankshaft assembly begins on my 1976 Triumph T140V desert sled project.

This tiny hidden part has killed more Triumph engines than most people realise... Would you reuse these big end shells or replace them while you're in there?

What I found when checking the steering head bearings genuinely surprised me. Ducati’s specified adjustment torque is only 3Nm, which feels absurdly light when you actually do the job.

My 2013 Porsche Cayenne 3.0 TDI suddenly broke down with a loud bang, loads of vibration and absolutely no power. It barely crawled home in limp mode and I was convinced I'd blown the engine up.

What made it really confusing was that an entire bank of cylinders had stopped working, so I ended up going down the rabbit hole of ECU faults and wiring problems which apparently are quite common on these engines. After a lot of testing and overthinking, it turned out to be a single failed injector on cylinder 2.

I’ve put together a full video showing the whole process from the breakdown itself, through diagnosing the fault properly, replacing the injector and coding the new one to the car. Hopefully it’ll be useful to anyone with the 3.0 V6 TDI found in the Cayenne, Touareg, Q7 and loads of other VAG stuff.

Would be interested to hear if anyone else has had injector failures like this on these engines, as someone more used to working on older simpler cars, this one really threw me.

Old Triumph rebuilds are never straightforward 👀
Heating crankcases in the oven, replacing gearbox bearings, and finding blasting grit where it definitely shouldn’t be… 🔧