busyness, fixing cars, and the price of fish

So we have been away for a while, busy beavering away on little projects, some that are obvious, some are less so.
We are back to getting on with fun car stuff now with lots of fun stuff being planned. Most of it does include noisy machines, and lots of sparks. Come on, bring it on, this is what the blog is about. Messing about with tools, and cars and generally just having lots of fun!

We will document all things fun and interesting as we go, but we may every now and again just do some practical helpful stuff that might prove useful for fellow fools who like messing about in cars and garages.

So then Jehu has been doing lots of plumbing, helping put a new bathroom into a friends house, and some more radiators into chez jehu. All of which took lots of time, but Jehu tends to find it helpful to have a bathroom in a house, you can only have so many showers outside from a hosepipe! The pay off for this is that these friends are going to be looking after the MG B donor, giving it a lovely bedroom, with a pit no less. It will mean it doesn't need to constantly wear its blanket to keep dry and warm which will be nice.

Enough waffle anyway, time for some useful info. Jehu recently had a little issue with his daily driver, known as the taxi, or the big white bus, or the big white whale ......

It is of course a toyota avensis d4d with 141000 miles on the clock and counting. Proper taxi milage, although we are expecting more out of the japanese engineers yet.

It developed an issue in the recent -3 degrees C weather.
Turned over longer before it started.
Had very little power, less torque.
Engine management light came on after 1 minute or so.
Once thouroughly warmed up, engine stopped and restarted power was back, no management light, perfectly drivable, (in fact did a 150 mile trip like this).

Problem was solved by changing fuel filter (it was overdue). After this power was improved, starting was improved. No ecu lights. It ran perfectly.
Jehus friend Nathan brought his Dads diagnostic kit round and the car was found to have zero faults which is fantastic. Thanks again for his help.

It was concluded that as the diesel is thicker in the cold weather, the clogged up fuel filter was preventing adequate fuel getting to the engine. resulting in the loss of power.