Wouter's Blog – Slowly slipping into Rigor Mortis.

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:

Just wrap the wire nice and tight, it’ll hold…
…then cut them off and abandon them when we don’t need it no more.
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 wrm A Plague of T5s Cars 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 wrm A Plague of T5s Cars 0

One Pot Pasta

The Internet abounds with quick-and-easy recipes. An example being One Pot Tomato Basil Pasta Recipes. In general they are either not that quick-and-easy, or not very good.

But with a bit less quick-and-easy, they can be relatively easy, still quick, and quite tasty.

I started with this keyingredient recipe. As a guideline. So.

One onion, mandolined. Stuck half of it in a pot with some of the fat drippings I keep in the fridge from previous projects, added one small diced smoked chicken breast, fried that up a little.

Added half a tin of leftover chopped tomatoes and a diced yellow pepper from the freezer from back when they were selling then cheap. Left it going while I halved and salted a punnet of cherry tomatoes. Added dried chillies and oregano as recommended, one vegetable stock cube, a tablespoon of chicken stock powder, a litre of water, the tomatoes and the other half of the onions, and a third of a pack of screw noodles.

The latter was a mistake — these screw noodles went a lot quicker than I expected so they were a bit mushy in the end, which came more quickly than I expected.

Fished everything out with a slotty spoon, reduced the sauce, added everything back together and added a bunch of basil leaves.

It was damn tasty I tellya.

2025-11-02 by wrm Foooooood 0

Down at the stern

On our recent Kruger trip, the Golf was decidedly down at the stern. The teardrop does not put a lot of weight on the tongue, on this same trip we got stuck up a dead end “road” and I had to unhitch, pick it up and turn it… I’d say about 30 kilos or so. But there’s a case of beer and a case of wine and a fridge in the back of the Golf, and the springs are getting old…

OK, so there are many options for springs for the Golf 4s, but the Estates already have the strongest ones fitted. Fortunately there’s a cheap and easy fix.

That’s the Golf (five green) at the top, and a Tiguan spring at the bottom.

And it’s easy to change, and it works.

Before and after.

Important! (I did not realise) Loosen the rear axle bushes, drive the car a bit, and re-tighten. If you don’t, the bushes are permanently stressed and this might be why mine went (OK, having 580 000km on the clock, maybe I should expect some wear & tear).

2025-09-05 by wrm Cars 0

Köszeg

So we decided to drive to Köszeg (in Hungary) for the day, hoping to escape the rain.

It didn’t work :-/

But we had a very nice lunch at Kékfény Êtterem és Pizzéria — Bolognese for Tanya, a burger for Pieter, and I had the Rántott trappista hasábbal (aka Smazeni Syr), three beers and a lemonade, all for ~R800.

Then we went to look for a wine bar of some type. Google Maps showed Tóth Pincészet Borház but it’s not there. It’s actually 30m down the road from the Google pin, and I only found that out the next day playing on my PC.

We did find a sports bar kind of place but it was getting late and they have a zero tolerance thing going to we decided to go home.

Köszeg is a beautiful town, will have to return when the sun is shining.

2025-06-16 by wrm Europe 2025 Foooooood 0

Murphy

So the theory was that Tanya would work-from-home from Globoka for two weeks, with one of those days being a (South African) public holiday which we could then use to go out, enjoy the place a bit.

Guess which day is the public holiday. Just guess.

And yes, it _is_ pissing down.

2025-06-16 by wrm Europe 2025 0

And then there was one.

We had a cat when we bought the house. Gimmy, a rescue, he was never quite right in the head.

And then we got two more.

Phoebe and Misty. Misty was taken away from his mother too early, drove Phoebe crazy sucking and licking.

Couple of years later, after Gimmy died, we got two more — Toothless and Smudge.

Toothless (the black one) died young, but not before giving Phoebe such a hard time that she basically moved out and only came in to eat. When Toothless was gone, Phoebe came back and lived with Jessica for a while. But the outdoor life had been hard on her. She passed away in 2021.

Which brings us to today — Misty’s been eating less and vomiting more and in the last couple of weeks he’s lost what little weight he had left, so :-/

RIP Misty 2010-2025.

Which leaves Smudge, who seems to be in the prime of his life.

2025-06-13 by wrm Cats 0

Food

We eat well in Slovenia. Both in and out. The “out”, however, is expensive.

Lunch at Kodila. Four of us, my half of the bill came to a bit over 50 Euros. OK, there was bubbly involved…

… as well as some Mangalica ham (which is quite unlike Ortolan I believe).

The tomatoes are divine. As long as you’re OK with pork and chicken, and znižano and popust (“reduced” and “discount” –many places sell stuff nearing the sell-by date at 30% to 50% off and that’s what we live on).

And this time of year, it’s asparagus season so we tend to pig out on those too.

Chicken stew. Did I mention that the chicken is so much better than what we get in South Africa? I think they leave them just a little bit longer, in South Africa chicken farming is a very exact science with the chickens being slaughtered at the exact intersection between cost-of-feed and return-on-investment.

These are the vegan and non-vegan platters at Pichler-Schober in Austria, where things are even more expensive.

And if you are from South Africa, and you really really need a decent steak to braai on a Sunday afternoon, Kodila can help you out.

But as long as you stick to the znižano, life is good.

2025-06-09 by wrm Europe 2025 Foooooood Slovenia Travelography 0

Cherries!

Got to Globoka. We had cherries.

Perfect timing. On the Sunday we got there, the cherries were almost ripe. On the Wednesday, they were perfect. Two weeks later, they were going off, so I cooked jam. Found this recipe on the internet and rolled with it.

Not that I would be able to replicate it, because I went to town, the stuff boiled over, Pieter cleaned it up… but it was good. Stuck it in little jars, brought three of them home as gifts, received compliments for months after the fact.

Anyway, here’s some more cherry pics.

Our view towards Ljutomer (behind the hill) and Maribor (towards the right, mostly over the horizon).

Tanya and Basil (Gavin needed fresh basil for a recipe. Couldn’t find any. Bought a little plant from the nursery. Basil gave his all on this holiday).