Gremlins
 

Hi all

My car has developed a number of gremlins.
I believe it may be something to do with the oil leak I have had resolved recently. The oil must have been leaking down the front and back of the engine and so in the process leaking over the belt and pulleys, including the alternator.

No, for some reason a belt change wasn't suggested to me at the time but it is booked in tomorrow to have this done.

Issues....
The power steer has micro-moments of almost being non-existent.
A failing in the power boot, it is struggling to close and takes 3 attempts and is very slow. Opening not an issue but slower than normal.
The entire dash fails for micro-seconds, going completely dark/black. (especially is on a fast-ish long right hand bend).
The interior lights flicker and pulse with a door open.
The interior light in the boot lid has become very dim and almost not worth having.
I am sure there are other little developments but I cant remember them at the mo!

Anyway, I thought a degrease and belt change could be a cheap-ish logical solution, do you think my logic works! LOL
I replaced the battery about 80k ago.

Seems like some power shortage somewhere, could it be alternator? Hope you get it sorted

I've had the interior lights pulsing every so slightly in mine for a while, and a new battery is on my shopping list.

When I had my [well documented] oil leak one of the techs managed to change the belt in situ rather than removing the front of the car to get to the £20 belt, but small hands and patience are needed, so it is possible to do it like that but far easier to do when other work is being done at the same time.

Re the boot lights, I've changed mine to LED units as they are cheap enough to replace and simply clip in. Same style as the under-door lights.

Hi all

Thanks for the feedback.

The garage dont think it is belt related but more aligned to a CPU/software/power issue and want 2 days to investigate.

I will keep you all in the loop.

New issues

The mileage is now showing SAFE
The parking aids (including camera have failed).
The speedo & rev needle sweep on start up is also crashing/stuttering.

Simply to rule it out, have you checked under the front carpets for any water ingress from blocked sunroof drains?

No I haven't! Good point, every little helps.

A further update.

The previous owner had a Cobra Tracker installed way up into the dash behind the glovebox. Apparently it was still ‘on’ and drawing down heavily on the battery and having an impact on other things. It has been disconnected from the power and all seems better.

Even my auto turning headlight fault went for a while and everything worked fine, but it’s back again!

Carpet was dry by the way.

Nice one! But how did you discover that?

I mentioned to the garage that the media/hard drives etc in the glove-box are really noisy, like a PC hard drive writing data .
They had a look and realised the noises were coming from elsewhere, had a proper poke around and revealed the tracker!

So all good but .......... I am annoyed the 'headlight turning corners' light is back, the flashing and initial BING is very annoying!!!

Is this with the AFS lights? I have an intermittent fault with mine, and is stems from a fracture in the wires inside the headlight unit, caused by light swivelling and the wiring being too tight.