J.R.

Catalytic convertor does not affect the Lambda value, it is downstream of the oxygen sensor, incorrect Lambda correction will prevent the catastrophic convertor from operating correctly and may result in its blockage.

Does the flap release if you hot wire it?

I follow your logic but I think it would be very very inefficient due to the pumping losses, if you have ever tried rotating an engine by hand with the valves closed and spark plug in place it would illustrate the forces required better than I can explain, you have heard the gases passing into the crankcase when rotating an engine with working valve gear, the cylinder deactivation with closed valves would have the gases passing back and forth to the crankcase with every revolution. I can theorise a way to minimise the power loss and that would be for the deactivated cylinders to feed into each other and being 360° out of phase which they would be anyway (180° in respect of piston movement, 360° in respect of the combustion cycle), I very much doubt that is what they are doing were it physically possible. I really would like to know what they do to mitigate or overcome the problem, maybe its exactly as you say because the thermal efficiency of a petrol engine is so low anyway that its better to compress and displace gases creating heat than fire up the Otto cycle on more cylinders than are needed for the power output.

If someone had been mucking around with the torsion angle in the past its quite possible that the timing marks would never line up correctly without moving the cam(s) relative to the pulley and you would be faced with the 50/50 choice. I got the cam timing wrong on my MK1 Octavia when I changed the belt, the problem was my neighbour who was watching the flywheel TDC mark while I was looking at the cam timing marks, he had twice as many functioning eyes than me but was looking at something other than the engraved line.

Excellent news and well done on avoiding valve/piston contact. I have bought a few cars cheap in the past that in hindsight had been sold after cam belt or cylinder head gasket jobs and the owners complained of power loss to be told by the garage everything is correct. They have all felt a little wheezy to me but hard to be sure if you did not know the engine, on the Suzuki Jeep I had already owned one so was pretty sure the cam timing was out. They were all (3 vehicles) transformed by correct valve timing, on all of them the marks on the camshaft(s) fell either side of the fixed mark dependant on whether you advanced or retarded the cam, that is to say for the mechanic it was a 50/50 choice and he would not know which one to choose, I used a timing disc and dial guage to find the max lift ATDC point but it was very difficult to get the figure from the manufacturers, in the absence of it I would choose the mid point between max lift BTDC and ATDC for the inlet and exhaust cams.

Does it show green and red in a night time shot or very bright white? Even in that shot its showing up very bright but if it lights up your garden it must be.

They may not have been quoting the actual figure but they pay far less than the going rate for repairs at their approved centres. One time when I was negotiating with the assessor a salvage retention price for me to effectively buy back my car from my insurer to repair myself I was pushing for the maximum I thought I could negotiate and the guy said the vehicle did not have to be written off and they could repair it, he showed me the actual cost to them of the much higher insurance estimate, they were getting a very very good deal from their partners. They and not the insured are always the winners when it comes to a claim, you just see how much your premium jumps next year even if the third party insurers accept liability, if you have protected bonus then its a given that you are going to be shafted come renewal time.

I watched about half the video which is a lot for me. One observation, a green LED will probably show up as white on a night time photo and also much much brighter than it actually looks to the human eye. Decades ago when I first started installing CCTV cameras with covert Infra Red spotlights on the screen image you could see a white beam like a wartime searchlight but if you were in the field of vision looking at the camera or looking at the scene live you saw nothing but blackness, I could also see the flashing IR beacons of aircraft taking off or landing at Gatwick which were not visible to the eye, all these images or those of leds show hyper bright on a screen image, I test TV remote controls with a smartphone and use it outside as a laser level capture device.

Then the piston would be creating a partial vacuum on every downstroke sucking up air past the piston rings and then compressing it on every upstroke, good for engine braking, not so good for the health of the engine and the pumping losses would no doubt exceed any fuel saved. But indeed that is what I have also read.

Happy you have a resolution, it could have been a lot worse.

"Properly" in many garages means putting it back on with missing fasteners or tywraps or throwing it in the skip and denying all knowledge of its existence! The rear M6 setscews that go into the alloy subframe normally shear despite my prior knowledge and best efforts to release them.

Having done the first principles procedure outlined by Sepulchrave there is also the possibility of the (not) vernier pulley adjustment being needed for the new belt, VCDS can report something called Torsion Angle (I think) which is how many degrees from the optimal the injector timing is, this can make a big big difference. My way to retain the existing crank & cam pulley alignments is to slice the old belt in half circumferentially then back off the tensioner just enough to persuade the new belt half way on, retension a little if needed then cut off the old half belt which will have kept the timing alignment for you, slide the new belt into its correct running position then adjust the tensioner as it should be. On a PD engine I would then check the Torsion angle figure from VCDS and adjust if need be, that has pitfalls of its own so please ask if its indicated that you need to adjust it, also beware, a zero figure is far more likely to mean the angle is outside measurable limits than it is spot on, especially given how rough your engine runs.

Maybe wah007 saw a video of the accumulator housing aftermarket repair kit being fitted?

I have not studied them but would say that there would be less load from the valve springs not opening and closing. Are the valves closed or partially open in the situation you describe? Closed valves would create engine braking and also draw engine oil up past the rings. I got my first car for a bargain price because the seller my BIL, 10 years older than me said the engine was foutu, running on 3, smoking and rattling like a pig, his diagnosis piston and big end failure. I knew better and in 5 minutes had it running like a jewel, well as much as a Vauxhall Viva engine could, without spending one penny, the stiffnut tappet adjuster on an inlet valve had unscrewed, I pinched it up in the vice and reset the valve clearance, no misfire, no more oil burning, no more rattling. He was incandescent with rage because the precocious cocky s0d that I was at 17 took great pleasure in telling him my great news!

3 houses being built in my street, 2 by the local firm doing most of the new builds, here you buy a plot of land and engage a builder who will flit between yours and other sites, the big developer sites like in the UK dont exist, they just create the plots, the roads, sewerage, water and electric to the edge of each property and sell the plot to someone who finds a builder or selfbuilds. In over a year I have seen workers on each of the sites for a maximum of 9 days and most of them they have already cleared off by the time I pass in the early afternoon, the groundworks, foundations, floor slab, walls and roof timbers (all single storey bungalows) go up remarkably quickly with the right equipment and guys, never more than 2 guys and rarely more than one day on site for each stage, for example all the outside walls in one day because the cellular clay blocks are just stuck together with expanded foam. One building has stopped at floor slab level and nobody sen on site for months, the other is roofed and "dried in" windows & doors fitted etc, since then radio silence. The 3rd was done by a self employed Portugeezer and was going up in record time, unfortunately he was a scammer who provided false papers for business registration and the essential 10 year "assurance decennial" and he took the customer for €80k before they realised that the work was sub standard and would never be signed off, this house is also at the "dried in" stage but lacking roof tiles, just felted (membrane) and battened. I am/was considering buying it at a ridiculous price (€60K) to put things right and complete it, on further inspection I find he had misordered the factory roof trusses so built all 4 walls in the incorrect position to accomodate it, the square area is correct but the length longer and the width shorter meaning the walls are not sitting on the foundations 😒 But it was built in record time!!!!!

If you removed the fuel tank and its heavy contents from an ICE powered vehicle it would have more luggage space and do more MPG.

Misfuelled with petrol? How many miles did you do before it cut out completely? Was it a fill up from a nearly empty tank or a top up? You and the mechanic are right to suspect fuel contamination as it happened after fuelling but it could be a coincidence, you are right to rule it out.

As previously proposed I doubt that you would feel the engine braking from an alternator, the mechanical engine braking is a lot less than before for fuel economy reasons, the further you can go down a hill with your foot off the accelerator the further up the momentum will carry you before needing fuel again. I deliberately did not say a closed throttle because back in the day that was what happened together with fuel still being dragged through the carburettor jets, the vacuum created by the closed throttle was a very significant part of the engine braking (not so on a diesel) modern engines not only cut the fuel off completely above a threshold, say 1250rpm) but also open the fly by wire throttle body to reduce the vacuum and hence engine braking.

Usually, the last 060 battery I bought was for my current Yeti and the Bosch was cheaper at that time. Bosch Silver equivalent to Varta Blue IIRC, they both had exactly the same specs and EN CCA ratings so it could have been any colour really.

From a random flick through the video of a few seconds each time I hit paydirt. "best piece of advice that I ever recieved was that I had to go out and tell the world my story......................" And if no-one is listening then make up something to get their attention 😄

I thought that as well but writing it would have detracted from my posting. To answer the question "What would you have done" : I would not have phoned my wife. I would refuse to be photographed with a Daily Mail sad scowl. I would not be photographed parked on double yellow lines in front of a pedestrian crossing even if it was where the Police had left my vehicle. I would not say the Police leaned in and did "something" to stop the vehicle because of the obvious conclusions people would draw.

I'm pretty sure there are no gears on an EV drivetrain, well there will be reduction gears but none that are changeable or selectable gears. Selecting forward, reverse or neutral using the control you will probably call the gear lever or selector simply powers the motor windings in the forward or reverse rotation, simplified but you will understand my point. Unless there is an electromagnetic clutch in the drivetrain, one that fails safe (no power transmission) and can be isolated by removing a master key like the battery master key on a competition car every single EV will have the potential to have a runaway situation like this. The brakes will be servo assisted, that will be another electrical system, the brakes are probably nominally more powerfull than the engine torque and standing on them would I'm sure work at lower speeds but at higher speeds unless you understood exactly what to do and how imperitave it would be to do it with maximum force the friction material would glaze very quickly and boil the hydraulic fluid, most EV brakes are pre-glazed through lack of use anyway. I'm not convinced that even with servo assistance you could bring an EV to a safe halt from high speed against the torque of a runaway situation which could be far more than the software limited rated power intended to protect the battery. Hopefully the MG will have data logging, the guy might be a Walt seeking attention, this bit I loved: Mr Morrison initially called his wife in a panic to ask her to warn vehicles ahead of him that he could not stop his car. Maybe she has a helicopter! I'm sure there is more to this than is being reported especially the bit about the Flics leaning and and doing something.

I hadn't practiced that when at 17 and bored in a traffic jam the idiot that controls my actions asked himself "I wonder if I can drive with my feet crossed?" 😒 I wont bore you with the detailed explanation but it was going alright until the traffic in front came to a sudden stop, my reflex reactions then made me rev the engine to valve bounce and drop the clutch ramming the car in front, the reflex reaction to that was to do the exact same thing again pushing him into the car in front of him, rinse and repeat a 3rd time and there were now 3 victims of my rear ending, the heads of the people in front were shaking back and forth like rag dolls 😒 maybe the others as well. The guy 2 cars ahead gave me the immortal words "where did you get your license, in a raffle?", it was only 2 weeks old at the time. Thankfully whiplash claims, ambulanc chasing lawyers and control input logging were not invented back then, I panelbeated and sprayed the car of the couple in front, they were wearing neckbraces 😄 and found the guy in front of them getting his parts from the breakers yard, they said he was a BIL so they gave them to him free. If that were to happen today the claims would be in 5 or 6 figures.

Correct. Who he?

Who knows? Only one way to find out!