Wouter's Blog – Who said it was your cheese in the first place?

P0322 and OBD

So the other day, we were driving to Hout Bay in Tanya’s Golf and the engine quit. This was downhill, with the car in gear, but the rev counter dropped to zero and the display moaned about oil pressure. Strange, and maybe not related to:

And then on the last day of 2024 the engine died again. Uphill this time, so no coasting.

Chaos ensued.

Pushed the car to the side of the road, managed to get it started. About a kilometer further, same thing. Waited a bit, it started again. By now I had a flashing glowplug light and an “Engine Workshop” message on the display.

Managed to get home though. (It was a warm day and it quit in stop-start traffic, so maybe temperature related).

Figured it would be a good idea to read the ECU error code. I have an ELM327 which used to work but no longer does, another ELM327 from Communica which plain sucks (only works with a specific App, for a limited time, then you need to buy the App) and a scanner from Temu which never worked (not a big surprise).

So I cut the plug off the Temu scanner and built a K-line interface* (Golf 4 TDi, 2004 — it has CAN, but the OBD interface is still K-line). Used VCDS Lite to read the codes. Works well, faster than the bluetooth solution, recommended.

P3105 “Valve for Intake Manifold Flap” — yea, no surprise there, I removed the EGR years ago.

P0322 “Engine Speed Sensor (G28) — Hmmm yea that sounds feasible.

Then I had to figure out how to remove the damn thing. Turns out you need a 9mm 12-point socket, my six-pointer obviously does not cut it.

Bought a socket, returned the incorrect part Goldwagen had supplied me, got the correct part, fitted it and all seems well again.

It’s only done 540 000km, dunno why these sensors fail so quickly… :-)

Figured I should maybe fix the P3105 code while I’m at it.

* R4 is not needed.

2025-01-05 by wrm Cars Electronics 0

Ringle jock bell Biatches

2024-12-24 by wrm Farting around Geek Uncategorized 0

Martha

Martha is a 1976 short short Science Fiction story by Fred Saberhagen. Short short stories are special, as Asimov says in the introduction to his 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories:

Finally, in the short short story, everything is eliminated but the point.

Martha is an AI, being asked a question:

“Yes, sir,” said the pleasant feminine voice in my ear, made up, I knew, of
individually recorded words electronically strung together. “What can I do
for you?” Inspiration came. “You ask me a question,” I suggested.

The pleasant voice repeated: “What can I do for you?” “I want you to ask me
a question,” I repeated.

“You are the first human being to ask me for a question. Now this is the
question I ask of you: What do you, as one human being, want from me?”

I was momentarily stumped. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “The same as
everyone else, I guess.”

[…]

Next day the director called to tell me that Martha was rebuilding herself. The
day after that I went back to look. People were crowding up to the guardrail,
around new panels which held rows of buttons. Each button when pushed
produced noises, or colored lights, or impressive discharges of static
electricity, among the complex new devices which had been added atop the
machine. Through the telephone receivers a sexy voice answered every
question with clearly spoken scraps of nonsense, studded with long technical
words.

1976. Saberhagen called it.

2024-11-12 by wrm Farting around 0

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

A couple of weeks a year, red bell peppers are plentyful and not ridiculously expensive.

This is a recipe for those weeks.

I made it with 700 grams of red peppers, about 400 grams red onions, and 1.5kg fresh tomatoes. I also snuck in two habanero chillies. For the rest, just follow the recipe. If you’re using fresh tomatoes, remove the skins with boiling water.

Blend and keep in the fridge or freeze.

2024-11-10 by wrm Foooooood 0

Happy Birthday Abdullah Ibrahim!

Abdullah Ibrahim a.k.a. Dollar Brand turns 90 today. And he’s still playing (if you’re in Germany, and you already have tickets, because sold out).

2024-10-09 by wrm Uncategorized 0

Big Bore Handgun Silhouettes

We shoot Big Bore Handgun Silhouettes at 50, 100, 150 and 200m, with open sights, and interesting guns¹.

The bank on the left are standard Big Bore targets. I can’t hit those for shit².

The ones on the right (look carefully) are Big Bore Unlimited targets. Apparently I can hit those quite well³.

Same day, same gun, hit more of the small ones than the big ones.

Yea, I don’t know how that happened either⁵.

¹ In this case, a Thompson Contender in 300 Whisp-R, which is a damn nice round, and a damn nice gun, I got the barrel from Mike Bellm himself.

² I only hit 24/40, while the winning score was 39/40. BUT! In my defense, this is the first time I was shooting after having cataract surgery to my left eye⁴ and my old sight settings were way off.

³ Got 32/40, which is a decent if not excellent score.

⁴ For my sins I am cross-dominant.

⁵ On the small bore side, I only shot a 28, which should have placed me maybe third or so. But the other people shot worse than I did. Sucks to be them.

2024-09-28 by wrm Guns 0

Gundogs, again

(Previously)

This time the weather was a lot better.

I didn’t take many pictures, the above is a crappy cellphone pic. Nice idea of what the area (Bot River mouth, that’s Arabella on the right) looks like.

I was there for five of the six days. This is too much (up at 06:00, get home > 17:30) but they are desperately short of guns and without guns the competition can’t happen.

They do take good care of us, this was breakfast the one day (admittedly the best looking of the lot, but all the food was good).

Hopefully next year I can get away with two days max.

2024-09-24 by wrm Guns 0

Addo 2024

So we stayed over in Addo Elephant Park for two nights on our way home from Kruger.

We saw elephants and warthogs (lots of elephants, lots of warthogs), zebra, hartbees, kudu, jackal, a lone hyena… all the normal stuff.

This one had found something to eat. Couldn’t make out what it was though.

And then on the morning we were preparing to leave, we took a drive first. And Tanya spotted this fellow.

We drove around the other side to see if we can get a better view, couldn’t, did see a Chanting Goshawk and a Secretary Bird.

On our way back to camp we spotted more jackal.

So we hooked the teardrop and went back to where we left the chubby unicorn, because by now the light was better.

And then we proceeded on through the park, over the rather steep hills where they don’t allow busses or caravans (but we drove it the previous day and figured the teardrop won’t be a problem).

At Lismore we found a roadblock down the side (loop) road, where I couldn’t really go because teardrop. Can’t turn around easily and I didn’t know what that road looked like. But we managed to spot the two lions (out of a possible six) from the main road.

Big five score for the day: 4/5 (no leopard, but there was close to zero chance of that).

Here’s a video Tanya took of that big fellow at the beginning of this post.

2024-08-06 by wrm Addo 0

Winter Kruger – Day 7

So the next morning we headed back to where we saw the dogs last.

Didn’t find them :-/

At Gezantfombi dam close to Crocodile Bridge there were people looking at (presumably) the Maribu Storks in the tree. I spotted some shapes in the river bed, grabbed the binoculars… lions. The other people left, (presumably) tired of looking at the Maribu Storks.

Ah well.

Fancy that.

So after a break at Crocodile Bridge, I took the S25. Terrible road (it’s a dirt road, so I repeat myself. SANParks has to do something).

We found this fellow foraging next to the road (our second ratel for the trip, the first one crossed the road and disappeared before we could get a decent picture. This one stayed mostly parallel to the road).

Eventually we found the “lions with cubs on the S118” which we had been looking for. They were not close.

They were also not doing much.

So we headed down to Malelane gate for a loo break.

… and found a different pack of doggies, sleeping by the side of the road.

Took the loo break, came back, they were waking up.

Puppies!

But they didn’t want to come out of the bushes.

So we went for lunch at the train in Skukuza. Disappointing. Can Not Recommend.

Saw two more lions, kind of far away in the river, on the way back to Lower Sable.

And so ended our 2024 Winter Kruger experience. The next day we hooked the teardrop and headed out of the park. Did get to see a chubby unicorn with a calf, quite close to the car, but in long grass so the pics are for reference only.

Drove up the mountain, many places in second gear, because something is Not Right with the Golf. I suspect I’m losing boost air. It’s better at sea level, but up at 1600 meters it’s no fun. Overnighted in Ficksburgh, saw

If you squint you’ll see it was -6.5C at 05:31 just south of Ficksburg.

And then we were in Addo.

2024-08-05 by wrm Kruger 2024 0

Winter Kruger – Day 6

Decided to not mess around. Hooked the teardrop and headed south.

Ngotso North has often been good for us. It’s between the H1-4 and the Ngotso river, and something is always getting itself killed in the river, so we’ve often seen jackal and hyenas here.

The hyenas had a warthog head they were nomming on, the jackal was obviously hoping for a share.

Saw three Kori Bustard a bit further down the road, and then spotted a lion at Ngotso dam (which has also been really good for us in the past).

The cars were all clustered at the other end of the dam, yea, there were at least four more lion there. Couldn’t really jockey for position, towing the teardrop, so we left them there and then found this fellow up a tree not too far from the road.