ELM327

 Earlier this year, I purchased a very cheap fault code reader named the ELM327 blue tooth for around £5.00p 

This is the 1st time I have used it on my car, it allows you to connect to an app on your phone via Bluetooth. 

Setting up the Elm327 Bluetooth 

1. plug the unit into the Obd2 port in your car and see if it lights up, (sometimes you will need to switch the ignition on before it will light up) 
2. with your phone, search for Bluetooth device OBDII
3. Connect to OBDII it will ask for a pass code (it is usually 1234 or 0000 if there is no info with the plug) 
4. I have an android phone and searched in google play for ELM327 and found an app called clear and go (picture below) many other apps available that I haven't tried.

1. Then you open the app and press connect, and it will ask you how you wish to connect, select Bluetooth, and it will give you a bunch of options (select ODBII) and it will go back to the main screen
2. press scan (if it is and engine fault, it will show up in the top of the main screen. )
3. select the error code, and it will give you more information about the fault and help in trying to fix it.
4. Press clear, and it will delete the error code, if you have fixed the fault the engine warning light will clear (sometimes you need to turn the car off and then start the car up to see if it has fixed the fault, sometimes it's an intermittent fault that may return over time)

Ravioli is not well!

On my drive home from our holiday, my car decided it wanted to drop out of cruise control and the VSC warning and 4wd disabled as well as the engine light came on!!!!

At the time, I had no way to test the car, but it drove fine and had no limp mode, I drove the car home and plugged in to it and found error p0113.

Fault meaning and remedy:

 What does this mean? 

P0113 TOYOTA code possible causes Dirty air filter Faulty Intake Air Temperature (IAT) Sensor (Part of the Mass Air Flow [MAF] Sensor) Intake Air Temperature sensor harness is open or shorted Intake Air Temperature sensor circuit poor electrical connection Faulty Engine Control Module (ECM) 

How do I fix code P0113 TOYOTA code? 

Check the "Possible Causes" listed above. Visually inspect the related wiring harness and connectors. Check for damaged components and look for broken, bent, pushed out, or corroded connector's pins.

This is what my sensor looked like, fixed by 2 screws on the rear of the air filter box as this sensor has two functions, it is known as the MAF sensor.

Firstly I checked the air filter I replaced in March April time and check the box isn't full of leaves.

Secondly, I checked the connector to the sensor and unplugged and pulled the wires gently, as well as checking the pins and the connectors for corrosion.

Thirdly, I removed the sensor to check there was no visible fault.

I found no big issue when with the above, so next was to try and find any way to test the IAT of the sensor and at the time I came up with nothing, but I found a comparable l MAF sensor for £11.94p, so I ordered it. 

No more tick, tick, tick

 

A few weeks ago I pre-ordered some Wi-Fi plugs to replace the old timer sockets as they are old and noisy, they cost me less than £13.00p for two, 

you need to set them up via the tapo app, they are very easy to set up, you can use them via your phone and other ways, you can also set timers on them

here is how you set up a p100 Wi-Fi plug

Im not yokeing

 

So today my tumble dryer egg's arrived from a company called eco egg, I purchased the unscented version via Amazon because there was no postage as I'm a prime member.

There are many versions of tumble dryer ball brands you can buy, but we have purchased this for 2 reasons.

1. We purchased the laundry egg for the washing machine a few years ago, it washes the clothes almost as well as a leading brand's that we have used and there is less packaging and waste.
2. You can buy some fragrance sticks that fit inside the egg to scent while helping dry the clothes 

The dryer egg claims to save the drying time by up to 28%, it's done by the eggs creating warm air pockets in the damp clothing and will help to try them faster.

First thoughts in the 1st time of using the eggs I found they are rather loud crashing about in the dryer drum with a half load. I will try them more with a bigger load.

Check them out

dryer warranty

 With the new dryer the technology being quite new, I was keen to get extra cover for the dryer as it  cost £450, I don't want to have any big bills with it,  I was going to go with the supplier AO, I went to register the dryer on Hoovers website, so it has its warranty, and found they do extend warranty that you can keep it for the life of the dryer, it is also cheaper than AO offered, I think all the key features offered was the same 

To register your warranty goto

The offers at the time I took out my extended warranty is below 

The new dryer

The new Hoover HLE H9A2TCE-80 heat pump dryer 

Well it was an early start this morning as I received a text saying the new dryer will arrive between 745 and 1145am. 

As requested, I was asked to remove the old dryer and make it easily collectable for the free collection they provided for me, so I took it out of its little space it was in and put it into the back garden for the delivery team to collect.

At 10:45 it arrived, they dropped the new dryer into the conservatory ready for me to fit, they were very polite and helpful and promptly removed the old dryer as they offered over the phone.

Within 20 minutes I had it unpacked, I am installing to collect the water in its internal moisture collector tank, you can set it up so the moisture collected go straight into the waste pipe if you have one close by, all that had to be done was to remove the two blocks in the top of the drum for to protect it in transport, and it is ready to use.

The manual recommends you download the App on your phone, the one you need to download is hOn

The app will guide you through the setup of the Wi-Fi to the dryer, I tried 4 times to connect the new machine as recommended, it kept failing! On further reading upon this app I found it needed to be the low 2.4ghz bandwidth to run it, so ill need to look into setting this up on my router.to see if I can set this up.

1st impressions: 

• compared to my old dryer it the opening is much bigger so makes loading and unloading much easier
• the door only opens to the left, it can't be changed like some, so this causes some loading issues
• the twin filters seem to collect the lint quite well
• lots of options to get to understand 
• the water tank is very easy to use 

January seems to be an expencive month

Well after an expensive start to the month it doesn't seem to have got any better, today the 1st filter has gone brittle and large lumps have broken off.

I searched for the part and all I came up with was company's to contact regarding getting a new door on the 10 plus year old tumble dryer, if it is available, I'm guessing it will take more than a week to get here.

We decided we needed to look at a new tumble dryer was in order, I started to look at some on various websites and as I flicked through I found one that was a lot of money and boasted an energy rating of A+++! 

Wow A+++ rating? I looked at why, the tumble dryer is called a heat pump tumble dryer. I have never heard of this type of tumble dryer before, so with this I got my google's out and researched into it a little.

For years we have had two types of dryer.  Both involve a lot of electricity to heat up the inside of a metal drum and dry the items that tumble around in the drum, and the moisture escapes via a filter to an exhaust or into a condensing system to collect the water. 

both do the job well but not very efficiently, from the energy used and the fact the items inside could be dry but still using lots of electricity while still running on the timer, more modern and expensive ones have a moisture sensor internally to aid in saving on the cost. But lots of heat escapes and is wasted.

In comes the heat pump tumble dryer, from what I understand is it is a back to front air conditioner, it uses the warm air created from the system is used a lot more efficiently to heat the tumble unit and the clothing of the drum to draw the moisture and remove it from the system, the efficiency is a lot better as it contains the heat and moisture internally as opposed to it escaping from the machine like older designed machines.

I was weighing up whether the cost of the machine would be made back? You are looking at a cost of approximately £350 for the machine, but to offset that you would be saving around half the cost of the electricity than the old dryers.

My old dryer on an 80-minute cycle used approximately 70p, the new dryer says it uses approximately 25p their standard cycle, what ever they class as a standard cycle it does not say what the cost per kw hour is at the time of testing the machine and there was no comparison with a standard tumble dryer

but if you look at it I think I should save approximately half the cost per load.

So to compare I was looking at a condenser drier costing £219.99p  and the new dryer I have purchased has cost £239.99p (double the price) so I use the dryer once a day approximately  5 times a week and I hope it will last a minimum of 7 years I work that out at a saving of £637.00p, so I will recover this cost happily.

To add to this, the cost of electricity is about to double in cost in February, so it will definitely save on the day to day electricity cost, only time will tell.

Feeling Flat

Today I had to jumpstart my car again, it has been sat there for 2 weeks not used, so I can't complain about it but with modern cars they measure the voltage of the battery when the engine is running and charge it up as needed to conserve fuel the alternator is switched on and off.

The lower the battery is when fully charged, the more the alternator will run and the more fuel the car will require when the engine is running

if you don't understand what I mean, think of it as a bucket of water under running water and as the bucket gets older it split at the top so to keep the water level at the top  you will need to top the bucket up more frequently, as the bucket ages the split travels slowly down the bucket, and you need to top the bucket up more frequently until the bucket splits and won't hold water.

I tested the battery after I took the car for a long run and tested it after 15 mins of being parked up it slowly dropped from 12.8 volt to 11.9 volt, the car would start and run, but the battery was failing, it would work fine if I wanted to drive it a lot more regularly, but I don't need to,  so off to Halford's I went for a new battery, I picked the heavy-duty one as the car is a big 2.2 diesel engine takes a lot of  power from a battery to start it.

On removing the battery I found it was from 2015, so it's lasted 6 years, I don't think that's bad for a big diesel engine, especially as it doesn't get used much.

On removing the battery retainer, I found one of the bolts to be seized and as soon as I put some force into removing the bolt, the head broke off! This turned into an hour and a half of removing the plastic trim and clips then drilling and tapping the hole from a 6 mm bolt to a bigger m8 bolt and putting the trim all back together again

job done  

A sad day

Today was a sad day indeed, it appears I need to put my hand in my pocket and replace my 7 year old laptop.

I returned last week with footage from my family holiday in Finland, at first I thought it was the software that I use as it's free 1080p. I had sound but no picture, I tried it in Windows Media Player and I still had the same issue.

I googled the fault and found I need a codec to allow me to view the video footage, I tried 4 different ways but in the end I went to Microsoft store and paid for the 79p codec and I could now watch the footage. But no I had the issue where when I pressed play it took forever to load and when playing it kept freezing and skipping.

I spoke to my friend, he felt the cpu and the graphics card were struggling to keep up, He told me to start up the xbox game bar ad look. I found the gpu at around 75% and the cpu 90 and above as well as the ram at 70%

He said adding ram to the laptop may help ease the issue, but when editing and processing video footage it will take an age to do, but we could not upgrade the graphics card or the cpu, so I could try more ram but I may be wasting my money 

At this time, all I can rely on is the person that knows about computers, so I guess it's time to look at replacing the computer.

What to do I like a laptop as it folds away and is portable, the issue with it is there isn't much you can do to upgrade it, so it's not very future-proof. My other issue is now with my children growing up they have some homework on the computer as it is now, so I need to start planning further down the line.

Bay window stains

 From earlier on this year we had a leak from the gutter which we got repaired as soon as possible, but the water was leaking directly over the bay window and in turn was leaking up through the moulded seam and leaked into the roof and stained the sealing of it. 

I let it dry out and painted a few times with bright white emulsion, but the stain kept returning, so I felt it was time to seal it for good 

From Toolstation 

So after the 1st coat and 2 hrs do dry, I can confirm the stain seems to have been covered, and no visible sign has returned fingers crossed 

The paint says it can be painted over with any paint, we will see when i get some more emulsion 

Painting the walls

 While the scaffolding is still up I decided it's an idea to get the front wall painted around the top window and area I won't be able to do while on a ladder, so while it stopped raining it was time to give it a coat of magnolia paint.

I went and got a tub of exterior masonry paint and brushes, got out a wire brush to clean off the loose paint and dirt and started to paint the upper wall, it looks better with the cracks in the cement and the older paint covered over.

You can't see it so well in the picture from last night, but it's looking a lot better this morning in a normal light, ill try and take one if it stops raining