1202 ALARM

  Taking the throttle body off the MR2 is a pretty simple job with one exception.  There are 2 coolant hoses that go in and out of the Idle Speed Control Valve (ISCV) which are a pain in the backside to re-fit as there is so little space in the engine bay.  This is the real problem working on this car because everything is so tightly fitted in.  Anyway, after spending about 30 minutes fiddling with the hose clips I came up with the idea that I needed pliers with an extra wide nose to crimp the clips open so I could get them back up the hoses.  A bit of searching in my scrap boxes and I found these 2 threaded clips which I pushed onto the pliers.  DIY extra wide nosed pliers.  Job done in under 5 minutes with these!

The power window mechanism suddenly stopped working on my Skoda last week and the window dropped into the door.  A bit of bodging with some bits of wood kept the window closed tight while I waited for the replacement parts to arrive.  It turned out that one of the plastic sliders had broken and that had allowed the cables to go slack so one of them had screwed itself up round the winding mechanism. The mechanism is common to several Skoda, VW, Audi and Seat models and the spare parts were very easy to get and also cheap.  The inner panel came off easily and everything made a fair degree of sense so it was easy to work at. I also discovered the speaker in the driver's door had dozed, probably due to water getting in over the years, but as luck would have it I had recently acquired an identical spare speaker, so I swapped that out as well. The door with the temporary bodge to keep the window closed.   The old winding cables before being replac...