The Wife's Vectra-C - The other battle wagon

An area of the forum dedicated to the other marques and models sat on your driveway (please post only one thread per car)
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Robsey
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Re: The Wife's Vectra-C - The other battle wagon

Post by Robsey »

The wiring went to plan quite nicely.
Amazing how stiff the original injector wires were.
Baked on a hot engine for 20 years (207,208 miles).

The insulation was rock solid and not keen to be stripped off.

As said earlier, the wires were:-
twisted together,
pushed into a bullet crimp connector, and
crimped tight into place.
Sleeved with heat shrink tubing.

Finally they were bound in cheap and tacky pvc tape.
It was stiff, brittle and not very sticky.
But hopefully will improve with engine heat.

Image

The engine still takes a while of cranking to fire up, but after about 15 seconds of lumpy idling, a quick blip of the gas, and the car idles and revs smoothly.

Maybe it needs to build up fuel pressure or compressions.
_______________________

Another job that had bugged me for a while was the front fog lights.

The Vectra uses CANbus technology normally, but my engine bay module (UEC) doesn't support front fog lights.

I had used the old-skool relay method many years ago to retro fit the fogs.
Moving on to about 16 months ago, I sent the car away for dual mass flywheel and clutch replacement.

When the car came back, the foglight feed wire in the engine bay had been cut or snapped, and badly joined by one of those plastic coated crimps.
Obviously this joint failed almost immediately.

As I was in the engine bay, I sourced a new wire, crimped and sleeved into place.
Eh voila, front fogs now work again.

Image

To a fashion - the left fog bulb was dead.
So another job for another day.
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Envoy CDX
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Re: The Wife's Vectra-C - The other battle wagon

Post by Envoy CDX »

Nicely progressing though Rob, tackle them one job at a time. :)
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Robsey
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Re: The Wife's Vectra-C - The other battle wagon

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It was a nice day, but at my age, the prospect of crawling on the floor to change a fog-light bulb doesn't seem too appealing.

My neighbour advised me that she has noticed oil drip marks where I park the car.
Hopefully nothing to get into a pickle over as the car was only MOT'd and serviced last month.

UPDATE -
Some daft muppet left the sidelights on. :no
So I came to get in the car today, to find a completely flat battery. :wall
It is on charge overnight - fingers crossed that the battery is charged enough to start the car in the morning. :oops:

FURTHER UPDATE -
The battery reached charged far too quickly.
It is buggered.
Fortunately an old wheelchair battery is enough to get me to work tomorrow, and the factors on the way home.
It is on charge, just to be sure it has the necessary oomph.
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Envoy CDX
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Re: The Wife's Vectra-C - The other battle wagon

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Hopefully the battery did its job and the new battery is now fitted.
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Robsey
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Re: The Wife's Vectra-C - The other battle wagon

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The wheelchair battery got me to work this morning, and to the car shop this evening.
The engine light was on all the time.

Got a new 110 battery this evening, and it is like a different car.
Engine light also stayed off.

I presume the battery had been on it's way out for some time.
The revs had been quite jittery, and a bit of hesitation at times.

I am not sure if part of the smoothness is also due to the new injector plugs.
The big crunch will be how much cranking it needs in the morning.

It was nice to see the fuel range climbing on the way home, despite being in traffic.

UPDATE -
I don't know what it is, but the Vectra is being a total sod at the moment.

Coming home from one of the wife's clinic appointments, the car started misfiring again.
The injector wiring was checked. No problems there.
Total head scratcher.
The engine refused to go above 3000 rpm in neutral.
Had to drive 1/2 mile on the hard shoulder to build up enough speed on the motorway.

The engine bay is full of soot.
I can only consider a head gasket issue, as the coolant was down a little, and the engine was fully up to temperature.

I will see how it behaves in the morning.
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Robsey
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Re: The Wife's Vectra-C - The other battle wagon

Post by Robsey »

Well it was rubbish again.
Luckily the clockwise M60 past Stockport is always bogged down with heavy traffic, so the Vectra struggling to get past 45 mph was barely noticeable.

I have put my OpCom somewhere safe, so I had to break out my bluetooth ELM obdII interface.
The Torque app on my android phone kept closing down.
I did get it to read the codes this morning and clear the engine light, but the spanner light illuminated instead.

At the end of work, and a few errands, I conceded defeat and paid a huge £2.95 to update the app.

Image

I was surprised to find that the ELM tool also sees the other fault codes that trigger the spanner but not the engine light.

"Injector 1 - pending"... whatever pending means.
There was a "Engine Coolant Temp" error too, but once cleared, this stayed away

So I pulled over, and waggled the wiring for injector 1.
The wires are very hard and stiff, and manipulating these caused the misfire to appear and disappear.

After positioning the injector wires 'just so', the car ran beautifully all the way home.

The temperature gauge looked very warm - Torque said 96°c.
But it didnt go any hotter than that.
Diesels usually run mid 80s °c, so seems a tad high.
Fingers crossed.

Looks like I will be re-working all four injector connectors this weekend.

I hope that is all I need to do. This car is seriously getting on my nerves.
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Re: The Wife's Vectra-C - The other battle wagon

Post by Envoy CDX »

Understandable its bogging you down Rob, fingers crossed its just the injector wiring. From memory you've replaced inj 1 wiring before?
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Robsey
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Re: The Wife's Vectra-C - The other battle wagon

Post by Robsey »

This was the fault code history before I tied back the wiring, and cleared the codes.

Image

There is a bit of fluttering of the exhaust at idle, which I presume is the ECU trying to work out the mixture based on erratic temperature sensor feedback.

But so far, so good, the car is responding well and pulling like a train.
I am tempted to leave things alone while they are working - lol.
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Re: The Wife's Vectra-C - The other battle wagon

Post by Envoy CDX »

:thumb :thumb :thumb :thumb :thumb :thumb :thumb :thumb
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