GRIZZ’s English 2001 S10 Extra Cab 4.3 V6 Truck

[Grizz1963]

So the Caddy continues to:

Firstly, MAKE ME SMILE
Secondly, MAKE ME WORRY
Thirdly, CHALLENGE ME.

I have never owned a diesel, Fly by wire type car, company cars are fully maintained, so do not count.

Having bought it and faultlessly driven home the first 104 miles, then refusing to start outside the MOT station, followed by later self correcting and starting 3 hours later, I was still happy to do stuff to it, and for it.

When you buy an old car, or a new one (enough examples out there) you buy it with a great big prayer stuffed in your top pocket that it will just keep going until it is time for you to move it on for something else, or it becomes part of your deceased estate/fails MOT catastrophically.

So having done 13k plus miles in the last 22 months, my expectations are that it will always need some wear and tear fettling, and service maintenance.

AND OF COURSE MODIFYING.

So on Tuesday I headed out to go price up some 16” tyres for the alloy wheels I had bought previously, before going online and looking at Black Circles and other options. Despite spending unnecessarily on the Caddy, I want to still try contain the fiscal damage.

So I headed out, enjoying the clatter of the diesel and the drive, which in all honesty, is MUCH MUCH BETTER than some people make out, this includes people who have actually never driven or lived with one.
It has to be pretty decent, or else you would not have seem as many sold in the years of productions, and most of them being commercial vehicles, they would have been ragged to an inch of their lives.

Imagine my surprise when I left the second roundabout from home, a mile or 1.6km away when suddenly there was no throttle to accelerate from the roundabout…… The engine was idling happily, but prodding, feathering, stomping, swearing at the throttle and car made absolutely not one iota of a difference.

So I cruised to a standstill at the bottom of the road, even trying to bump start and turn the ignition off and on before coming to a halt, all four wheels, only just on the grass verge, but it beats the way I have seen people break down and abandon cars halfway in the road before.
This road is used by loads of heavy goods vehicle and construction and farm vehicles, and there was no side road to drop into.

Opened the bonnet/hood, of course greeted by a beautiful expanse of plastic, no tools in the Caddy because not expecting to have to undo anything, except a spare wheel in case of a flat.



So obviously not much I could do there.
In the mean time, the engine was happily sitting idling away.

So I considered calling Green Flag recovery, of course the last time, they never actually made it to me as after 3 hours the car fixed itself.

So plan B

Call Mickey next door, he is a good one for helping with recovery and having towed him home years ago in his Focus that had stopped running one day, knowing he would have some heavy duty strops/straps to tow me home with.
He agreed and said give him 5 minutes.
So I set to, removing the cover over the towing eye in the lower bumper, using the key to get it removed, Zelandeth had engineered it into position before.
Once removed, I tossed it in the rear along with the little blanket I had kneeled on.
Tried to turn on the car again, success !!!!!!
And the throttle, which was dead 5 minutes before, was functioning like before……
So I called Mickey to tell him it was working and that I would drive it home in front of him, just as he came off the roundabout in the distance.
Drove it home, accelerated a few times, pulled up onto the drive and thanked Mickey.

I needed to get to the GP and a couple of other appointments, so took the Company car, Focus.

On the way back, I stopped at a local garage that Sally and her sons uses, I have used their tools before and gave them some tools a few years ago when a lodger brought some massive sockets home, they also did the servicing and some repairs on the MX5 for me years ago.
I went in and said that I had a problem with the Caddy and needed to read the codes that it would obviously throw up, what charge, and did they have some time to pop it on for me same day.
Yes, bring it down or take the OBD reader, so I opted to fetch the car and hope it would go the one kilometre down to their workshop without bother.
So we hooked it all up when I got there, Cliff headed out to get their own work van MOT’d and some tyres fitted, so Steve the other mechanic helped me, fortunately, they were waiting for parts delivery on two vehicles on their lifts.

Steve crawling around





Cubby hole/glovebox held in place with a panel screw….. Yup the result of 21 years and 103k miles on the road.
Stuff wears out and breaks.

The reading.



Steve Checking and cross referencing results, also a phone call to some specialist, and more Google searching.



Next up, we opened the air intake just to see if the throttle body was maybe dirty, causing something, like the butterfly to get stuck open and send an error message to put the car into limp mode.

What we found.



No butterfly and no screws.

120 miles of my driving and it had never felt weird, hesitant, or made a scary noise.

So we checked the price of a new throttle body, only available on back order, and at £628.00 plus 20% VAT it was going to mean a car scrapped……

BUT…… if I could find a broken throttle body, I could rob the butterfly from it and fit it to the van. Searches by @westbay Tony revealed that the price of a used unit was a whole lot more palatable.

So I stood chatting cars, bikes and trials riding with Cliff and Steve for another half hour or so and agreed that I would try source the parts and then fit them.

Feeling quite insecure because of the missing parts, but also a certain amount of F@CK1T I drove the van home and pulled it through to the back drive. I still had tinting to do to the glass.

Next, I went indoors, made a coffee and started a WhatsApp chat with @zelandeth who once again engaged in a chat and explained stuff to me.
I am so thankful for the times he has patiently answered the phone or text messages to talk me through stuff.
Conversation as per WhatsApp below.

Grizz

Morning,
My little VW Caddy van just stopped working a mile from home. Engine running and no acceleration on pressing accelerator pedal. Called my neighbor to tow me. 5 minutes later I tried throttle again and it was fine.
Are they drive by wire?
Guess I need to find out.

Zelandeth

That's an odd one, yes it is fully fly by wire, so hopefully just a pedal sensor on the way out.

Grizz

Well……
The throttle boddy is missing its butterfly and screws.
Somewhere something happened.

Zelandeth

That can be disregarded - that throttle body is only used by the EGR system to generate manifold vacuum, and apparently they are well known for disintegrating so the plate was removed when that throttle body was replaced when I first got the van as it was acting up then.

There is no throttle in the traditional sense on a diesel, it's all done by controlling the fuelling.

So the components of that are not in the engine you'll be glad to know.

Grizz

Lololol.

And…….
You will know by now that I am no mechanic.
The quote for a replacement on back order was £628 plus vat.
I am suspecting it could be the actual throttle pedal whatever thingy.
And 13k miles later it still was not needed.
I said to Steve the mechanic that I had done 120 miles without hassle, except the non start at the MOT station.

Zelandeth

Yeah, the replacement cost £35 on eBay for a used one which I then removed the guts from as you've seen as it serves no real useful purpose.
Throttle position sensor error code definitely fits - it's a moving part that's got 120K miles and 22 years behind it so not a hugely unexpected item to be wearing out.
The original throttle had completely lost its marbles and was randomly closing on light throttle, causing loss of power and a proper James Bond smoke screen.

Grizz

I honestly have no clue.
Other than losing the ability to fuel and rev up today, and being a smelly diesel, and then 5 minutes later being fine…… I have xero clue.
But if the throttle regulator needs replacing that would be a good/great fix.
You type fast like a teenager

Zelandeth

Wouldn't surprise me if it was related to the non-start you had before, hard to say for certain but it seems suspicious that it's popped up very soon after that happened.

Grizz

And there is an intermittent immobiliser fault

Zelandeth

Missed that, that could also explain it. Though I've no real advice on that one as it's modern enough stuff I've no prior experience to call on.

Grizz

Gotcha.
Driving it, still is a pleasure. And I like it.
Just glad you are prepared to share your 22 months, 13k miles of experience as I am clueless.

Zelandeth

It's by a long shot the most modern vehicle I'd owned until the current Peugeot in terms of engine electronics etc, so there was definitely a learning process for me too!

First common rail diesel, first using fly by wire nonsense, and only the second vehicle made this side of 2000.



So that was last Tuesday.

Since then I have been occupied by various things that needed doing.

Over the weekend @joem83 and I had a chat that ended up with his reply confirming more wear and tear theories.

Including this……

This is what problem I had lol.

At the top of the pedal in the car is the poteniometer thing, it's just hooked to a normal accelerator pedal. It's dead easy to replace. I replaced mine to no avail.

Ended up pulling the ecu, taking the pcb out and cleaning all the corrosion off with PCB cleaner and a toothbrush.
Put it back in, cleared code and it was fine.

I made a rain cover for the ecu out of a plastic folder thing & cleared all the drain holes.

So this is possibly the culprit.




So at the weekend, between all the rain I crawled into the drivers door-twill, did a bit of disassembling and found this……

Glovebox removed, cover in place.



Exposed.



And the possible culprit.





There certainly is some damp in there, so of course 101 other gremlins could be waiting to be flushed out.

We will see.

There you go, always interesting stuff happening here.



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