Post by Blarno on Dec 23, 2018 13:25:41 GMT
Not the shapely female kind, either. Or male, if that's your thing.
No, more an expression of digust and distaste. Yesterday, whilst on the way home from collecting our Crimbo food haul, my car went into DPF regen mode, as it is prone to every 7 or 8 days, depending on my manner of driving. Nothing unusual there - lots of extra smoke and a small drop in fuel consumption until the regen is done. As I pulled into our close and up the drive to reverse in, a warning pinged up that my reverse parking sensors had malfunctioned. Being as it is a 10 year old car, I figured their time had probably passed and though nothing of it and reversed onto the drive anyway. Jo got out of the car first and quickly beckoned me to the rear of the car.
"Is the bumper supposed to look like that? Why is it black? Why is there a lot of smoke? Where is the reflector?"
"SHIT!!"
As I bent down to look at the bumper, I noticed molten blackened plastic dripping to the floor and the bumper was hot to the touch and flexible. I quickly opened the garage, set up the hosepipe and doused the bumper and underside with cold water. After a cooling off period, I jacked the back up and had a proper look underneath: The foam filling inside the bumper has been completely melted away, taking the majority of the reverse sensor wiring loom and the distortion of the bumper must have caused the reflector to go south some time before. Towbar wiring seems to have escaped unharmed, although this is unchecked so far. It turns out the the weld on the inlet to the backbox had snapped about 2/3rds of the way round, causing the front of the box the sag and point the tailpipe into the bumper cavity just enough to spew molten gas into it and burn anything in its path. Ordinarily, this wouldn't have been a problem, but because it was on regen (which on an older diesel like mine injects pure diesel into the exhaust on the exhaust stroke cycle to burn away the blockage in the filter), the gases were way hotter than normal. Now, as is the case with most of the diesels I've owned, the backbox does no actual silencing of the gases, so I was none the wiser as to it having broken - a petrol car would have been noticeably noisier. Luckily this means I can still drive the car until the new box arrives, but I still have to decide whether to repair or replace the bumper and need to source a new parking sensor loom and/or parking sensors.
Bah bloody humbug.
