Clearing the hood drains

Geoff Walton — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:14:24 GMT

I went to a music store and bought a trombone cleaning brush which is a flexible cable about 3 feet long with a brush at either end. You simply (with a bit of practice) feed it through the opening in the back panel and it forces the accumulated build up of leaf litter out the waste plug under the car.

Best to start by getting a box or similar to hold the roof partly open to give you access (and yes, I know my car is putrid but it's Saturday morning here and it rained last night :-(

Then, take your brush:

Find this hole

And with a little bit of trial and error you will find the correct angle to feed the brush down through the drain hole

If you find it hard to get the brush in the hole, it's quite possible that this is because there is a large amount of litter at the opening of the hole so just be persistent and you'll find it

This shot shows the angle of entry

Once you've fed it through, make sure that you reach under the car (sorry, couldn't get my camera under the car, she's too low) and pull the brush out of the hole from under the car as this will pull any additional litter that the second brush traps.

If you're doing this for the first time, position a container or similar under the car to catch the crap that comes out, you will be very surprised !!!

Under bonnet squeak

Geoff Walton — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:10:08 GMT

While tracking down a mysterious under bonnet squeak I found a problem I'd heard about on the US sites but never located about the radiator hose rubbing on the body work. The squeak was related to it also but I think most will never know about the problem until it's too late.

Carry out the following check.

Disconnect the rubber air intake hose from the throttle body by undoing the clamp.
Undo the two clips holding the two halves of the air filter box together.
Now remove the top half of the box and swing out of the way.
Remove the air filter and then undo the two 8mm nuts that hold the bottom half of the air box to the chassis. You now need to pull the bottom box up as it's clipped in and remove it.

You can now see a large white nylon clip that holds the radiator hose to the body. The clip was the source of my squeak. To the left of the clip, the hose turns down through 90 degrees. The chassis has a curved cut out to allow the hose to clear but if the hose is too far to the right in the clip it rubs on the sharp edge of the chassis and will eventually fail.

I repositioned the hose and then cut a 50mm length of garden hose, split it length wise and then slipped it over the sharp edge of the chassis and glued it into position to prevent the hose rubbing further.

Then I put grease between the clip and body to stop the squeak and refitted the air box in reverse order.

All up this only takes about 10 minutes and may save you being towed at some stage.

Body, interior, styling FAQ NC

Clearing the hood drains

Under bonnet squeak