Why Do It Right When You Can Do It Wrong?

Time Bomb

I havn’t said much about it, but a while ago I ended up buying two T5 Transporters* The idea is to have a vehicle that’s higher up than the Golf, to better see the edibles when we go to Kruger or Bakubung or Addo or whatever.

How I ended up with two is that I bought the first one, sight unseen**, from a camel trader in Brits, flew up, and drove down. Didn’t quite make it. While that was being sorted out, I found a second one in apparently really good nick. It too had… issues.

Anyways, shortly before driving up to Pilanesberg, I investigated a slight brake noise. Found this:

Took off the caliper, turned it one turn anti clockwise, that straightened the hose right out. Except…

Yarrr. I drove this thing from Brits to Mossel Bay and a friend drove it from Mossel Bay to Cape Town. And it was sold to me with a Road Worthy Certificate. Shows you how much those are worth.

So I had to drive all the way out to Mandalay to get a spare from a bus some other dude is stripping, because I have no idea what I did with the hoses from the bus I stripped (maybe they were buggered too? No idea).

All good (I think the noise was caused by the complete absence of the spring to the right of the hub which pulls the moving part of the caliber towards the centre of the hub. That thing that looks a bit like a Manta ray. Had one from the spare bus).

 

* And most of another one for spares.
** I did have a FOAF look at it, I was told he knows cars. Turned out maybe not so much ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2026-10-05 by A Plague of T5s Cars Fscking Idiots Why Do It Right When You Can Do It Wrong? 0

More horrors

If you buy a car that has had many previous owners (and both the Kombis* qualify) you will find some horrors just below the surface (cue Jaws music).

Like the ABS light “fix” I blogged about earlier.

Or this one:

  1. Just wrap the wire nice and tight, it’ll hold…
  2. …then cut them off and abandon them when we don’t need it no more.
  3. At least this dude had a soldering iron.

All of this much better when covered with various layers of insulation tape of varying quality.

This guy did a slightly better job, he used the back half of a crimp connector to connect his repurposed household twin (i.e. mains) wire to the white/lilac (being lights) wire to the cluster.

And of course I am in here because I am doing my own thing. Hopefully the next owner doesn’t curse me :-) (For the record, solder and heatshrink tubing works for me).

* Ah yes I bought two** Kombis. That’s another story.
** Or three, depends on how you count.

2025-12-09 by A Plague of T5s Cars Why Do It Right When You Can Do It Wrong? 0

VW T5: Testing 7H0 927 803 / 7H0 927 804

The days of passive sensors in cars are over. Have been over for a long time, because this is the ABS wheel speed sensor used in 2004+ T5 VW transporters, and it has a bunch of electronics inside (I’m guessing similar to this device).

It’s a two-pin device, and if you try to measure the resistance, you will get ~4.5 megohm. A component tester will tell you it’s two back-to-back diodes, one with Vf = 0.7V the other around 3V.

So, connect 12V to pin 1 (the flat side of the connector) via a 1 kohm resistor, and 0V to pin 2. Multimeter to pins 1 and 2. You will see the output voltage (i.e. the current through the resistor) change when you wave a magnet around the business end of the sensor.

In my case, the sensor was not the problem.

This was the problem. This “fix” (being a stiff wire rammed down into the connector to make contact with the sensor pin, all wrapped up in insulation tape) didn’t last long, I guess, so they resorted to Plan B.

This… was their Plan B. Remove the cluster, disassemble the cluster, cover the warning lights (ABS and Traction Control) with funny putty, and re-assemble*. A two-hour job, rather than the half hour it took me to replace the connector end with a good one from the spare, with good solder joints and heat shrink tubing. Doing the job right. What a novel concept.

And of course it took me more than two hours to sort out the cluster. Getting the funny putty out is much more work than putting it in.

* My brother tells the story of the fellow who took his car in because fifth gear did not work. Guy fixed it for R100 in parts and half an hour labour — he replaced the gear shift knob with one from a four-speed.

2025-11-02 by A Plague of T5s Cars Why Do It Right When You Can Do It Wrong? 0

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