J.R.

Go to Colombia, the back street garages there make transatlantic submarines!!!

Yes they are an absolute pig when the captive nut turns, now I know I very gently work them back and forth a couple of degrees at a time, you can soon feel if one is likely to let go but if that is the case there aint a lot you can do about it other than keep lubricating and being even gentler, I have found that an underpowered battery impact screwdriver like a 1/4" hex drive one, worked back and forth can free fixings if you have already got them to move a couple of degrees.

Heat pump power ratings are normally expressed as the output so you have to divide by the COP (if its to be believed) to arrive the input current, I have never heard of one used for cooking. If households do start reaching their current limitations do not worry, mainland Europe is decades ahead of you because the maximum a household can have even a chateau on a single phase supply is 12kva = 52 amps, din rail mounted délesteurs (load shedding relays) are commonly fitted which selectively cut off electric heating, hot water etc when something like a kettle takes the current to the assigned limit. The smart meters cut the current before the main fuse would blow, I'm pretty sure the UK ones will have that functionality, less desirable for the consumer is that the energy supplier can remotely cut you off or reduce your current to 3kw if you are in arrears or there is a billing dispute, that functionality if agreed by law statute can also be used to limit all or certain households supplied current if the grid reaches capacity, France is doing a trial which means it is going to happen, they are just going through the motions.

Not to mention the termination inside the outside charging unit. Its time the UK got its act together and ensured that all electrical circuits are protected, that fuseboards have multiple RCD's including type A and type AC, then maybe it might be tolerable for unqualified people who have been on a short manufacturers indoctrination training course to make mains connections to exterior equipment. If there had been a single electrician on any one of the training courses or even a competent thinking person they would have challenged the tutor who will not have been qualified himself.

Impossible, "Tuning" here means a Kevmobile with a sunstrip and every other kind of stick on accessory, it 100% does not mean engine, suspension or brake system work to increase performance and roadholding, "tuned up/modified" is préparation (verb) or préparé. People with remapped vehicles have put them into the main dealers for a service or even recall and warranty work only to find they have reinstated the manufacturers map and are charging them €350 for the priveledge or they wont get their car back

For "drill press" read "pillar drill" as maybe that is what you know them as, Meddings and Fobco 12 and 6 speed pillar drills also known as drill presses, the quill is the central drilling shaft and chuck that is moved up and down by pulling the side handles (usually 3 of them) which gives enough mechanical advantage to compress a coil over spring on a 7 type vehicle, motorcycle or single seater very slowly and surely and the ability to lock it compressed. The decent ones have angled clamp pads to follow the helical form of the road spring but even they can slip if not tightened or untightened progressively as a pair, the cheap ones slip and slide around alarmingly. On all my Skodas there has been very little room to compress the front springs in situ which allows the strut to come out of the steering knuckle without removing the driveshaft, I doubt there would be room for the set you show but I think I will buy some anyway, compressing springs (and releasing) on the car has the advantage that the vehicle weight has already done some of the work for you and the clamps are less likely to slip.

An electrician that does not keep up with the changes to the IEE regulations is not an electrician but a bod who has been on a day or few days manufacturers training course. The UK regs are rubbish compared with what France had even 40 years ago, that is why our tableau électriques are so much bigger and expensive when populated, each row of breakers must be protected by a type A or type AC double pole RCD, none of this single pole MCBO rubbish, each circuit breaker has to be double pole, they manage that within a single module so there is no excuse for the single pole switching that the UK does, nowhere in our installations can you switch off a live without disconnecting the neutral, I admit that this was probably necessary in the first place by peoples stubborn refusal to respect polarity, my Hôtel had the live and neutral transposed to the incoming ERDF fuse and neutral blade from day 1, it predated double pole switching and had ceramic cartridge fuses, isolating a circuit or removing the fuse disconnected the neutral and left everything live and the only protection was the 650ma RCD in the main ERDF breaker. Worse still when I bought it the power had been disconnected for years, EDF reconnected me and did not even check or realise the reversed polarity. The other bad thing is that the manufacturers are refusing to warrant their equipment failure when it was not as a result of the non conformity to the regulations, the French are terrible for that, perhaps there is some liability on their part if a non conforming installation caused an electric shock from the supply cable but if that were true they would have contacted all their installers telling them to redo the installations.

I know, it was a failed attempt at a joke!

Mon Dieu! I do double that on my pushbike!

Where do you get that idea from, you can use all the existing circuits and a standard fuseboard the only additional component is a 3phase residual current device, the individual phases being protected with their own standard single phase RCD's and circuit breakers, you only run 3 phase wiring to the new circuits like the heat pump and EV charger, everything else remains the same. A standard 2 or 3 row fuseboard can be configured for single or 3 phase, granted our fuseboards (tableau électrique) tend to be much bigger than yours as we have far more circuit protection and all circuit isolation is double pole. I could request a 12 or 15KVA 3 phase supply and ERDF would come and replace the 2 wire overhead cable witha 4 wire one, the Linky meter with a 3 phase one and the 650ma single phase main circuit breaker with a 3 phase one, it would cost me €140 and be done within a month.

Future vehicle not next vehicle, that said I intended keeping the Yeti forever or until I moved on to an old EV but the Roomster is looking more and more suited to my next few years after the main groundworks are done as I currently need the 4x4 and ability to tow several tons of aggregate from the quarry and to dispose of soil and rubble using the tipping trailer. But for living in France I would be converting a Roomster to EV power right away, but here even changing a steering wheel is pretty much impossible hence why a Frenchman of my age has an orgasm when they see a MK1 Escort with bubble arches and Carlos Fandango wheels!

A drill press, the quill mechanism has considerable mechanical advantage and a locking lever, you place the monoshock under the quill (remove the chuck if it does not locate well on the top of the shocker), compress the shock absorber and then lock the quill, restrain the spring with either lockwire or ratchet straps, raise the quill and piston rod, remove the spring C collar and then the spring. The spring alone can then be compressed and locked, the straps/lockwire removed and the spring gradually extended using the quill mechanism. It is by far the safest method of compressing monoshock springs (which are too small for spring clamps) before fitting, safer even than my hydraulic press. All 3 of my pillar drills are older than I am.

Even I in my current naivety of EV's understand that Roots vehicle has a built in 11kw charger but when a Granny Cable is used the charging will be limited to 10 amps, you claim to be a highly knowledgeably Electrical and Electronics Engineer with decades of experience but your postings often lack common sense, did you even read what he wrote?

The cabling side of things I am completely familiar with although some of your acronyms mean nothing to me: 3PH - 3 phase? CT clamps?????????? 2CT, 4CT clamps? I think I am correct in the first oine as you speak of 3xL + N + E, I am not trying to create a rapid high speed charging station for the public but simply want to charge my own EV in the future overnight like Root but with a dedicated higher ampere circuit, our plug circuits are 20 amp anyway and the commercially available single phase charge points are 3.7 and 7.4 kw. No way do I want to go to a 3 phase supply, the property had this when I bought it but overcurrent on one phase results in all 3 phases being tripped, I had 9kva Triphasé which would trip at 3kw on one phase, now I have 6KVA Monophasé which has a much lower standing charge and double the tripping current, I can go up to 9KVA (at a higher standing charge) on the existing overhead wiring, they will change it FOC to larger coductors if I choose to go to the maximum monophasé supply of 12KVA, they replaced the cables a year ago when I went from 3 phase to single phase. Both you and Winston Woof advocate having Ethernet cabling, I have the same question for you both that I asked earlier, why would I need or have to have data communications to put a battery on charge overnight? Who is it communicating with? The power company or me? If the latter I cant see any reason why I would want to be disturbed but maybe I am missing something.

I like the reviews of this Ali-Express type 2 charger! 🤣 "It was more expensive for 26 days, through the Holy it was more expensive for 2 days, the packaging of the Boule was not mixed in the middle of the new, the charger itself was packed at the water-penetrating bag, as it was on the leap region, mazhe pratsuvati without Earth, maximum string 16A" And "Having bought three such charging annexes. One working on the drink of rock. Alone without working through tizhdena. Without turning a penny, and the guarantee is not to be lost. Not Raju kupuwati from The Tsogo seller."

I have a pair of those that I bought 47 years ago and they are still the best and safest I have come across, some garage ones have tempered pressed steel wrap around parts enabling them to fit in between tighter spaced coils. I have a hydraulic press but have never had the need to use it rather than the compressors, for coil over shock absorbers on Caterhams and Westfields etc I always use my drill press as it is by far the safest and the clamps are too big to fit in between the coils and between the coils and damper tube.

What work was done immediately before the problem occurred? I am betting a clutch change requiring the front cross-member to be dropped or work on the rear with the rear subframe dropped or removed. If the car was like this when you bought it do you know what work might have been done before? Was it a Category S or Category N vehicle? Pull a string line across the tyres on both sides of the vehicle with the steering wheel in the straight ahead position and then after moving the steering until the front wheels are pointing forward as best you can judge, this should reveal whether its the front or rear subframe that is misaligned.

What is this plug holster that you are talking about? What exactly are they communicating? Why the need to communicate anything when you are charging your vehicle at home? - I am probably missing something obvious here. Understood but what does "untethered" mean? What is special about a charge point aside from carrying more current than a domestic socket and some sort of protection to prevent charging if there is not earth continuity? Can you not just install a Type 2 socket on a dedicated circuit conforming to the regulations? OK I appreciate that in the UK you have to be a qualified electrician which I am (or at least was) but here in France it is not a requirement.

At that price I would buy a few different SWMBOs, keep the one which gave the least trouble, the next best as a spare and sell on the the others 🤣

I am starting to plan ahead for the future EV charging without knowing what vehicle it will be other than it will most likely to be old and needing repairs so probably an earlier generation one. I am currently wiring the ground floor and workshop electrics so want to make provision. A few naive novice questions. Is there a standard or convention for where the charging points are on the cars, left, right, front or back? I am planning where the charge point will be and don't want to have to reverse the car in to recharge. If time is not of the essence is there any reason why charging can not be done from a suitably protected standard 16 amp French TP+T socket or does it have to be a special waterproof plug (it will be under a car port) or a special charging unit? Do the dedicated charging units communicate with the grid operator by data over the power lines? With the Linky smart meters they already have the ability to remotely cut off or reduce supply according to demand, they are running a trial where they will reduce the current to 3kva and if successfull will roll out across the country. Is there a universal home charging socket that most EV drivers would be able to plug their charging leads into? Any links etc welcomed.

It is a rubber to metal bonded bush, there is no movement between parts to create wear in the traditional sense, all that has happened is the rubber is slightly less resilient and they can make the suspension arm move more under force from their testing lever. Its probably no different to any other similar vehicle if there is no knocking. It is not going to heal up on its own!

I have no idea whatsoever, air circulation is excellent for getting rid of moisture but only if provision is made for the entry and exit of air, the heat generated from LED lights is surely less than from an incandescent bulb but more than enough to fry the semi-conductors without cooling.

Absolutely but is yours a generation 3 EA88 engine? Mine isn't but behaves the same, during warm up the oil cooler is actually an oil heater, its temperature closely matches that of the engine coolant due to the heat exchanger, what you and I are witnessing is the normal hysteresis of the mechanical thermostat in the engine cooling system, the water temp gradually rises and overshoots the thermostat operating temperature before the stat opens and it stabilises maintaining a constant temperature. The oil temp display on the dashboard is telling you the truth, the water temperature guage a pack of lies!

You read wrong, it is a cooling fan, the semi-conductors run 'kin hot and would only last a couple of minutes without the cooling fans.

No, and you havn't been a pigeon either! NB Un pigeon in French means a willing victim. A car braking system will work very well filled with nothing but water, in fact it will have a harder pedal, not advisable as all the components will corrode and the fluid would boil under sustained heavy braking but 99% of vehicles never experience those conditions so an unmeasurable amount of water absorbed is pretty much a theoretical and hypothetical risk used to upsell by main dealers. And I know this for sure having unwittingly experienced it with a very measurable amount of water in the brake system of one of the first RHD Ford Galaxy people carriers before Ford was forced to admit the problem and do a recall, water ran from the screen into a well on the not properly sealed master cylinder cap and then into the brake fluid, it then made its way down by gravity to the front disc calipers and concentric clutch slave cylinder displacing the hydraulic fluid out of the reservoir. I drove that thing loaded with all my business tools and materials like the roads were my personal race track, coming down Detling hill towing a trailer with my race car the fluid boiled and I lost the brakes, as a race driver I knew exactly what had happened but as I had just changed the pads I blamed the new Mintex ones thinking they had faded and generated too much heat. I immediately swapped the pads and bled the system, nothing but pure rusty water came out of the front calipers, I flushed and refilled the whole system and tried to conclude how the water could have got in, Ford at this stage were in full on denial mode, I had bought the car as a write off with the loom and dashboard burnt out following an electrical fire (another Ford denial jobbie!) and wrongly concluded that the fire brigade had used their high pressure hose under the bonnet and the water stream had got into the fluid reservoir. Later on the master cylinder failed through corrosion and later still the concentric clutch slave cylinder.