Hi I am new to this forum but am a member of 3 other forums so I am pretty well versed on how they work and the help and knowledge they can provide.
This car is my daughters in law and to date it has been a good car for her needs(newish baby(now 20 months)) and although it is a 2004 it is a nice car. But as all cars of this era of the then new electronic cars it has a few messages now and again. The first one we had was to do with the coolant sensors and the top hose one was the culprit. This time it has had the same message and this time it flagged the lower hose sensor. Now that one is awkward to get to if you are using a jack and axle stands. You cannot actually see it from above and once you have the front undershield off you can access it. The next message was the ABS with the reader showing there was trouble with the rear right sensor. The message would not clear and so it was a hard fault. I gained access and removed the bolt and pulled the sensor out. Or at least I tried to but only managed to get half of it out as from the look of it the bit that goes through the hub had sheared off and remained in the hub with signs of green mold indicating signs of a crack and failure of said item. I only hope that tomorrow I can get the rest out without having to strip the disc off which would mean removing the caliper etc etc.
But if that was not enough she reported that the rear sidelights did not work and that the nearside brake is intermittent. Now it seems the system of the back lights in question is that there is a single bulb in each side of 21w which is the brake light indicator and also acts as the side light bulb as well by using a second feed to the bulbs of 5v which is enough to power the side light. Unfortunately being a single bulb this means if it blows then you lose two lights on that side but not only that it means that a bad connection can also result in the same result. By a bad connection I mean corrosion on the tab that the bulb sits on! This means that a new bulb holder will be required as cleaning the connection with a file or the like does not really work or if it does it is very temporary. These holders are just over £16 each plus vat and my local dealer does not keep them in stock and I will have to wait till next week before I get them. She is due back to work on Tuesday so that is a problem! It seems from what I have read on the forum that this is a common problem! Thoughts anybody?
This car is my daughters in law and to date it has been a good car for her needs(newish baby(now 20 months)) and although it is a 2004 it is a nice car. But as all cars of this era of the then new electronic cars it has a few messages now and again. The first one we had was to do with the coolant sensors and the top hose one was the culprit. This time it has had the same message and this time it flagged the lower hose sensor. Now that one is awkward to get to if you are using a jack and axle stands. You cannot actually see it from above and once you have the front undershield off you can access it. The next message was the ABS with the reader showing there was trouble with the rear right sensor. The message would not clear and so it was a hard fault. I gained access and removed the bolt and pulled the sensor out. Or at least I tried to but only managed to get half of it out as from the look of it the bit that goes through the hub had sheared off and remained in the hub with signs of green mold indicating signs of a crack and failure of said item. I only hope that tomorrow I can get the rest out without having to strip the disc off which would mean removing the caliper etc etc.
But if that was not enough she reported that the rear sidelights did not work and that the nearside brake is intermittent. Now it seems the system of the back lights in question is that there is a single bulb in each side of 21w which is the brake light indicator and also acts as the side light bulb as well by using a second feed to the bulbs of 5v which is enough to power the side light. Unfortunately being a single bulb this means if it blows then you lose two lights on that side but not only that it means that a bad connection can also result in the same result. By a bad connection I mean corrosion on the tab that the bulb sits on! This means that a new bulb holder will be required as cleaning the connection with a file or the like does not really work or if it does it is very temporary. These holders are just over £16 each plus vat and my local dealer does not keep them in stock and I will have to wait till next week before I get them. She is due back to work on Tuesday so that is a problem! It seems from what I have read on the forum that this is a common problem! Thoughts anybody?