SuperbTWM

Could be that the injector lash has not been set correctly or the cam lobe is excessively worn?

Sounds like the Haldex isn't working to me

Was there somebody watching to confirm both rear wheels were definately not spinning?

Mine says 8500 miles when I fill up and it does about 20K+ before I fill it up at 1500 remaining. I would say its normal, don't expect 6500 remaining miles to be 6500 miles worth

A typical coaler only takes many hours from flat cold, They were all designed to base load and run all the time which they did for much of their lives In my time at Eggborough from 2005-2018 the market had changed and as such they used to ‘2-shift’ so they came on in the morning and off in the evening leaving them hot pretty much all the time ready to load up in 85 minutes IIRC. Remember these plants and CCGTs are not standby plants and are mostly running on planned runs anyway. A CCGT can create some load at very short notice but it too has a steam turbine to warm though albeit a much smaller one. Our new plant has lots of electrical heating on the steam chests though and that can come up in load ridiculously fast.

Yes I am well aware but if a little more thought and planning went into it and the plan to remove coal was better executed then it would be a much easier journey, especially as I think the Net zero thing is just a bit of a con, especially when the rest of the world are not following suit. If everybody had a battery and only used off-peak power then night time demand would equal day time demand and the price would be the same, what then? how is that sustainable? Probably, still plenty of coal about.

If electricity was a sensible price you wouldn't have to have batteries, it's a solution to a problem we have created.

The price speaks for itself, 43GW demand, only 8GW of wind. All available CCGT's were on, We don't have any oil fired anymore and diesel/Open cycle Gas is £££££ hence the price. Funnily enough we never ran our Open cycle GT yesterday despite us running it profitably at only £300 MW/hr just before Christmas

Just for info, the price of wholesale electricity yesterday at 17:30 was £2900 MW/hr. At the time of this post it is roughly £150 MW/hr These are sort of rediculous swings we are paying for due to the poor decisions of our Government who decided to shut all our coal fired power stations and rely on renewable generation.

Interesting, I’m sure I had a 1.5 diesel Peugeot 508 with this gearbox or something similar. I was amazed at how compact it was

I don't think this is an option is the UK, unless you get a VW Toureg or Amarok, pretty much every VAG car you have manual or DSG. I did hear a rumour that in the USA they have a lot more conventional auto gearbox options but It didn't make sense to me to be true.

Trained 20 years ago? 🤣 Can I ask what colour the two pressure switches are that you have fitted on the new engine (and old engine if they are different)

Your right, I don't think you will ever know for sure, I just don't think the solenoid is the smoking gun your mechanic might think it is but it doesn't change the fact the engine is ruined. What would be interesting to know is the exact behaviour of the oil presure when it transitions between low and high. If you suddenly give it a bootfull, how fast does the oil pressure increase. I don't think i've seen any information on when the car even decides to reduce the oil pressure. Is it just coasting or low rpm/speed/load, is it in low/high pressure for motorway cruising, who knows.

So the question is..... Is the cheapo sensor reading correct or is there another issue?

It might be oil starvation but this solenoid is not to blame IMO. I find it very unlikely for the car to be stuck in low oil pressure mode as the car has to see the High oil pressure switch make or you will get a limp mode situation, at least that was my experience when diagnosing a faulty pressure switch on this engine. Even if the high pressure switch had failed in the closed position, I believe the car will throw an error as when in low pressure mode it knows the switch should be open. I mean the coil end of that solenoid looks horrendous, were there any codes for it being open circuit? They all make this noise when cold

If you wait until the gearbox has stopped turning after disengaging the clutch and you still get a grinding noise, the clutch is dragging and you probably have a clutch or flywheel issue. (reverse has no syncro) You will probably find if you select another gear first before quickly putting it into reverse you won't get the noise. I had this exact issue on a Golf and it was the DMF failing

I think on a large scale the National Grid would have to find some way to have full control over these systems. Either that or they would have to be frequency controlled in some way. Currently, any generation under 100MW can export to the grid without any notification, this is because a chunk this small does not cause any disruption ot the grid. We are only talking a few KW here but if you populated every house with one of these that could be exporting randomly you suddenly have a very large capacity of generation that can start and stop anytime resulting in complete chaos and it would be very hard to manage. These systems also have no ability to import or export MVArs for power factor correction, this is typically done by large thermal plants but I believe some of the more modern wind farms are capable of doing the same.

I wouldn't get hung up on fuel economy with that mileage, at best you might save £5 or £10 a month driving a much lighter car about and that is being optomistic. I would just be thankfull you are not spending £50 a week. I know if I did only 3000 miles a year I would be enjoying a much more powerful car.

Thinking about it, if you haven't got any fault codes for the regulaing valve, then electrically it should be alright. I think more than likely the fuel pressure regulator has failed mechanically, if you don't find anything wrong electrically there is quite a detailed test procedure for the regulating valve which involves metering the return fuel into a measuring jug

You just contradicted yourself there. Doing 3000 miles a year isn't going to pay back for an EV either

That does sound like a good deal!

the regulator is a solenoid, not a sensor I too am suspitious of the Haynes advice though as I havnen't seen muh detailed information from them in a long time I am a little sceptical you will find anything wrong with the wiring, but it rules something else out and thats what fault finding is all about. Have you measured the fuel pressure given by the lift pump? Is this the engine with or without the extra auxiliary fuel pump?

Well, assuming the Haynes manual is correct, I agree with you in that your next step is to measure directly at the ECM and bell out the wiring if required. One more thing, are you measuring the voltage to the ground pin or a chassis ground?

I think Home battery storage is the only real way having solar panels 'works' for people like me that will be at work all day while the solar panels are exporting back into the grid for very little (unless you were an early solar adopter on one of the more lucrative deals). Making use of that power in the evenings and not having to pay to import power is where you make all the savings. Even just having a battery and charging it 'off peak' to use in the day could well give you a decent return. Even better if you can choose to export back to the grid at peak times and make even more money back. There are a few problems for me personally though: One is the the expense, for a quality system that offers battery back-up in the event of the loss of a grid connection (not essential for everyone but I do suffer from occational power loss) costs a fortune and I can't make the sums work for me for it to be worth it. Also, space is an issue, installers tend to want to put the solar inverter in the loft which is a big no from me and there is nowhere else really to put it unless I put some sort of enclosure on the side of the house. Having an electric car would help as I would pretty much be guaranteed to use up all of my cheap power however we don't at present, as again, the cost of them outweighs the savings. If I was out looking for brand new Diesel cars it would probably make sense. Having a heat pump is also one way to make sure you are making sure of your 'free' energy, but again, large initial costs vs gas, don't have room for a great big hot water cylinder and its not going to make me a millionaire by saving 10 Bob on Gas All this new tech works but you have to do calculate how long it would take to pay for itself and make sure the equipment isn't worn out by the time it does. A lot of people were conned into getting heat pumps when the Government started incentivising them. Through no fault of the technology, they were installed by people who didn't know what they were doing, did not do the correct heat loss calculations and installed units that were either too big or too small and are now costing them a small fortune in electricity and essentially gave them a lot of bad press.

Have you tried measuring this voltage while cranking to see if you get the supply then?