The Cam Belt

A hot Saturday in June, a generous mate of Brad's who knows his way round an engine, a load of tools and blind faith.  The end result?  A fresh cam belt installed and the Espace still working.

I'll be straight up from the start, Tim and Tone did all the hard work.  I was mostly getting my freshly shaven head sunburnt and rooting around in the toolbox for a left handed screwdriver(thanks Tim :-p).  We started off following the Haynes manual, but before long when Tone had finished another job he came over and gave a running commentary on what everything was and critically what to undo and when!

On to the pics: -

Stand by

Much to report folks.

Stand by for a biiig post tomorrow.

We have a fresh cam belt ;-)

Breaker, breaker, Come in.

As donated by a dude at work, we are now CB'ed up!
It's late, and after finishing another chapter of my novel today, I'm tired and all typed out. A picture says a thousand words. Here's a pic (ed. Maybe next time include a valid URL to so the image works!):

Update: A 5ft aerial, 5m patch cable and a roof mount are on order!

All hail the genius of cable ties!

Ever since we’ve had the eSpace we’ve never been able to open the rear doors from the inside. At first we thought perhaps the child-lock was stuck in the ‘on’ position, but on closer inspection the fault was in fact down to very shoddy French design.

Upon removing the door trim a complex and impressive array of mechanical rods and pulleys are revealed, which are connected to each of the door handles (there’s the main one plus one near the top of the door for passengers in the boot area). However no one seems to have the told the French designers the old adage, ‘you’re only as strong as your weakest link’ because despite deciding to use metal for 99% of the mechanism, they’ve elected to use weak plastic for the remaining 1%, the bit responsible for joining the bars to the handles. And guess what, amazingly in the intervening 15 years since it left the factory the plastic bits on all four handles has snapped! Who’d have thought it…

Spurred on by fixing the electric windows (see earlier post) set about ‘extending’ the metal rods using a series of cable ties (widely revered as the strongest material ever made!) so that you can operate the door latch from inside. I hope to get some pictures to help explain, but essentially you pull down on a the end of cable tie which is protruding into the cabin from below the door handles, while at the same time leaning on the door. Something which you do instinctively when using a handle but is surprising difficult when pulling on a cable tie, rather like trying to rub you stomach and pat your head at the same time!

Goodbye Sauna

For the past few weeks (conveniently coinciding with the warm weather we’ve been having) the eSpace’s electric windows had stopped working so Tim’s been enjoying a free sauna whenever he’s been out and about. He’d performed a quick check of the relays and fuses (in fact managing to check and replace the wrong ones!) but they still didn’t work.

Having had to drive it myself on Sunday in the soaring temperatures with only the passenger side rear window operational (as the rear drivers side is a sheet of perspex (ed. We really need to get to a scrap yard and get a new bit of glass!) i decided enough was enough.

After spending a while trying to decipher the circuit diagrams in the Haynes manual and checking every relay and fuse in the thing, including two incredibly annoyingly located fuse boxes under the bonnet Tim turned his attention back to the glove box. While fiddling about with it he noticed a rattle, and too both of our amazement a connector was swinging in the wind! Bingo, reconnected and the windows are back in action. How simple was that…

I believe that Tim unplugged it during the infamous ‘controlled emergency breakdown simulation’ and due to the excitement forgot all about it! At least only he’s been effected by his own stupidity for the past four weeks!