stevetheangler

Last Friday (9th August), Liz and myself set off at 0700 on what should have been a day’s fishing at Nordley Pools near Bridgnorth but unfortunately we ended back home about 3-4 hours later followed by a Green Flag van.

We got to Bridgnorth OK but at a turn we should have made to head towards Broseley there was a ‘Road Works, no access to Broseley, follow diversion’ sign – which we duly did – a route that took us out along the A458 Bridgnorth-Shrewsbury road for many miles before signalling a turn towards Broseley. Anyway, we got just short of Broseley and there was another ‘Road closed – no access to Bridgnorth – access to frontages only’ sign which seemed to indicate that the road works where actually in Broseley or at the Broseley end of the Bridgnorth-Broseley road meaning that if we’d taken our usual turn in Bridgnorth then we’d have reached the pools with no problem. So, at that point a little disgruntled vbut not a major problem, we start to head back to Bridgnorth on the A458 again… however 3-4 miles back, just reached the far side of Muckley Cross the car engine died basically, max throttle resulting in a gruff, bumpy tickover at best. So we pull over and contact Green Flag for whom I have a ‘Recovery’ subscription. Within the hour the GF man has arrived and looks at the engine and puts his diagnostic probe in the diagnostic port. He tells us, smell of petrol indicates that engine is flooding with petrol, and it appears that the cause is a problem with the O2 (aka lamba, exhaust) sensor giving spurious data to the car’s ECU (blackbox, computer) that basically controls all engine functions and settings these days which in turn has been re-adjusting to deal with the spurious data and has, finally, reached its limits of adjustment such that its pumping too much petrol. He says that he can try one thing – disconnect the battery for 5 minutes in the hope that the ECU will reset itself and that it’ll last for a while until we can get it looked at at a garage otherwise he’ll tow us back home. He does that and on reconnection of the battery the car starts up first turn of the key and seems to be running smoothly and the guy suggests we start for home and he’ll follow us for 10 miles or so to ensure all seems well and if we have problems to just pull over and he’ll tow us back. In the event the car did the home trip without a single burp m- and the GF guy followed us all the way back to the doorstep (20+ miles).

I’d already got the car booked in for its annual service this Thursday just gone (15th) so on the Monday I rang the garage to ask if they’d look at the sensor problem whilst in then which they agreed to and did. The results was that they could find no problems with the sensor or any error codes showing from the diagnostics – disconnecting the battery had cleared the database and it seemed that no new errors had been flagged on the homeward journey or on the few short runs I’d made in the period between breaking down and getting to the garage – which is satisfying. The garage did say that sometimes weather changes can cause O2 sensors to act funny or that the ECU itself glitched and that was rectified by the reboot (usual PC repair – ‘turn it off and back on again’ – bit of a cliche but works in 95+% of computer problems). Anyway, seems now that the car is back into action … but did cost me… on the service (£150 in its own right) they found a broken rear offside coil suspension spring which had to be replaced – well, they replace in pairs really so both offside and nearside were replaced – at a further cost of £245 – and the wheel alignment was out – and I’d noticed the car had been pulling to the left recently – which was a further £25+.

But now I’m ready to hit the water side once again :)

So, tomorrow, Monday 19th, I’m intending making a visit back to the River Severn – Hampton Loade being at the top of the list of actual venues.
I have to pay a day ticket currently but I am on the waiting list of the controlling club (Kinver Freeliners) whom also have some great stillwater venues plus further Severn stretches and some on the Teme and Avon. Hopefully, we’ll (Liz is on the list, too) get that call-up to join next June… :)

No pics of the day this time – a Volvo V40 estate on a grass verge with the bonnet being not the most inspiring of views after all!! :)

So, session 41 is getting prepped for – tackle already done, just bait and flask and butties to be readied now really… :)

So, that’s it then until I do my session 41 blog later in the week.

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