I am taking a slight detour here from my usual stuff to talk about something a bit different. I am going to return to Texecom and electronics but just lately I have been preoccupied with other things so I thought I’d write about them as well.

I am not really a petrolhead as such, but I do like interesting or unusual cars and I do (as you have no doubt gathered) like tinkering around fixing things where I can. Some cars I’ve had have been interesting (Saab 9-5 Aero, Saab 900, Rover 800 Vitesse) and some… less so (Rover Metro, VW Polo, Ford Focus). I have had some success over the years with various car related jobs although they have generally been electrical rather than mechanical, such as retrofitting factory Bluetooth / USB interfaces (Ford S-Max) and similar job for adding remote central locking (VW Polo).

I found myself in need of a new project, and this time I fancied something a bit sportier, and also wanted a low initial cost. Breaking all the rules, and rather impulsively, I came home with this:

…or rather when I say I came home with it, I bought it as a non-runner with very little knowledge of what was actually wrong with it. I can’t exactly recommend this approach, very risky, although so long as you don’t spend too much it’s OK. I have seen quite a few other cars older than this sold as non-runners for more than I paid so I think I’m ok for now. Still you have to consider the possibility of it turning out badly.

In case you don’t recognise it (I wouldn’t have) it is a Mazda 3 MPS Mk2 from 2009. These are relatively rare and little known cars (less than 1000 of them left now) in a similar class to Golf GTIs and Focus STs. It has a 260BHP 2.3l turbo engine, and a fair amount of attitude as you can see from the picture.

I bought it very much as a project – in the full knowledge that it will need money and effort spending on it. However I didn’t pay much for it and I reckon that even with a fair amount of money spent I won’t have lost any money. When I first saw it it was in a sorry state, mouldy inside with a lot of water, completely dead and according to the previous owner wouldn’t start after running out of fuel. I’m not sure this was the whole story though.The local garage had a mess with it, and after draining out a lot of oil and replacing plugs and filters it started and ran, albeit with a lot of blue smoke and misfire errors from the on board diagnostics.

So first job is to get the mechanicals sorted out. It is currently with a local turbo specialist as I think the turbo needs replacing (drinking oil and producing a lot of smoke) and I understand that the K04 turbo in these cars is prone to failure. My analysis is that the previous owner found it was drinking oil and kept pouring more in, overdid it and then gunged up the plugs leading to it not starting at all.

I am hoping that doing something about the turbo will address the major issues, and then I can turn to the smaller ones.

So far these are:

i) Lots of water in the boot

ii) Some damaged loose / trim inside

iii) GPS / sat nav not working

iv) Bluetooth not working properly either (only pairs with phone and not media audio)

So I will write some updates as we go and hopefully as I tick things off.

I might have bitten off more than I can chew here… but it’s a bit of an adventure too. Also I hope I can keep one more of these on the road, you don’t see many around and I think they have real character.

In my quest to repair the motor in my Siemens washing machine I have stripped the machine down and got access to the motor but have experienced some problems in getting the new brushes in. This is for two reasons: the first is that I have not removed the motor, and the second is that the pattern parts I have bought don’t fit properly.

Most of the instruction videos out there do suggest removing the motor but I had tried without, and whilst this may at least in theory be possible I would not recommend it. There are lots of videos out there which show you how to remove the motor, such as this one:

The key insight here is to put the machine on its side, rather than (as I had done up to now) on its back. You need to remove a panel on the back of the machine, and you can then reach inside and undo two 10mm bolts. This is best done with a ratchet or normal spanner, as there isn’t much clearance between the back of the machine and the bolt head. However I did use a socket to get it going. You also need to remove the belt from the drum and the motor spindle.

Once the bolts are out, the motor is still held pretty firmly on several plastic lugs. On this picture you can see the socket on the right hand side of one of the bolts.

To get the motor out, you need to lever it off the lugs by using a big screwdriver to move it sideways and off the lugs. You need to be ready to catch the motor when it drops off, and it is heavy!

Once you have got the motor on the bench it is a good deal easier to work on the brushes. As per the last post, what you have to do is push the brush in first (ensuring the angled edge is the right way round), and then compress the spring and push it in, and then secure in with the locking tab.

I had to cut some metal off one of the tabs to make it fit properly, and even then it was difficult. On the other side, no matter what I did I just could not get the tab to fit in, whilst the original one seemed to fit fine. In desperation, I cut the tab off completely and soldered on the original one instead. This needed a lot of heat and solder, and it did make the wire rather less flexible. After a further struggle, I was finally able to get the brush with the soldered tab installed as well. On reflection I would have been better off returning them and getting some official parts but I didn’t really have the time to do this. I have had a moan at the supplier though, so we’ll see what happens next.

It was now just a case of putting everything back together again. It was very simple to reinstall the motor and wiring and bolt it into place. However, refitting the drive belt was not initally easy at all. The belt is pretty thick and stretching it over by hand was impossible (at least for my puny arms).

However, Youtube came to the rescue with this very useful video:

The winning tip here is to secure the belt to the drum pulley with a cable tie, and then turn the drum from the front of the machine by hand. This pulls the belt on to the pulley with minimum effort and worked first time!

So with everything back in place it was simply a job of switching on and testing. I had already cleared the fault codes so did not need to do this again, and much to my relief the motor immediately came to life. I can’t really say if it is any better than before, but it is definitely working and with new brushes should hopefully last another 9 years. Having had this experience I reckon I could also change the motor itself quite easily if I had to.

So a longer set of posts than usual, and although an apparently simple task I learned a lot. If you are attempting this these are my top tips:

• Use official parts (even though they are more expensive)
• Remove the motor before doing anything else
• Check carefully the orientation of the brushes before replacing them

Overall though a very satisfying result, and overcoming the struggles almost (but not quite) makes it worth having had the problem in the first place!

In the previous post I went into the background about diagnosing the fault on my washing machine, which has come down to some kind of motor problem. The next step then was to replace the brushes as they are highly likely to be worn out after nearly 10 years of use.

There are lots of videos out there on Youtube and other places on how to do this, but I have learned a few lessons through doing this that aren’t in the videos so I thought I’d share my experiences.

First thing to do was to get some replacement brushes. There are loads of sources of these, but I bought some pattern parts from a reputable website which were listed as being compatible and looked something like this:

I started with a guide referenced in the previous post here, although this was light on detail. It suggested lying the machine on its back to access the motor, so this is where I started:

There were a number of Torx screws on the grey plastic panel which were easy to remove, revealing the bottom of the drum and the motor itself. So far, so good…

The motor has a big multi-way connector and an earth, and one of the brushes was clearly visible in its white plastic holder. You can just see the yellow connection to the brush in this picture. There was also a load of black dust and muck everywhere, which is consistent with worn brushes.

When I removed the old brushes it was quite clear what the problem was:

No prizes for guessing which is which! The old brush was worn right down to the wire, which was no doubt what was causing the error and if I’d left it much longer it would have failed altogether.

Everything was going to plan so far… so now just a case of installing the new parts. The brushes are on the end of a spring, with a copper wire attached to the brush at one end and a metal tag at the other, which in turn connects to the rest of the motor. The brush sits in a channel within a plastic holder (in white on the picture above). The spring is compressed into the channel, and then held in place by slotting the clip into two slots in the side of the channel. This is hard to explain, and it is covered in the various videos. This picture shows what it looks like when in place:

The brushes have an angled edge, and you have to put the new ones in to match the ones you have taken out.

Althought most of the guides suggested removing the motor, I thought I’d try doing it with the motor in place as I had read that this was possible in some cases. However – it isn’t! I spent a long time wrestling with the new brushes, but compressing the spring whilst trying to fiddle the tag into place proved not only frustrating but also ultimately impossible. It was marginally easier on the one in plain view, but not so for the one on the other side. The number of times I got it almost there only for it to ping out again… and I was lucky not to fracture the brushes which are quite brittle.

The other thing which became apparent was that although visibly identical, the pattern parts I had bought just did not fit properly. The brush, spring etc were fine, but the tag was subtly different in shape which meant that you could not press it through the slot properly to lock in place. It just wouldn’t budge and after a lot of effort I eventually resorted to trimming some bits off the new one in an attempt to make it fit. After some trial and error I did one side in, but I just couldn’t do the other one. This picture shows a close up the original tab (brass) and the new one (silver) and you can see where I have cut it down somewhat:

This is already turning into an epic post, so I will stop there and for Part 3 I’ll cover the final steps.

In a strange kind of a way, I am always a little bit excited when something goes wrong with with an appliance or device at home. Whilst of course I would prefer it if things did not go wrong (especially if they cause major inconvenience). However, on the other hand it offers an opportunity to learn about how something works and the possibility of repairing it. And also of course a chance to write about it and hopefully help someone else.

I have written about household appliances before (a dishwasher), and this time it is a washing machine. I’ve always been keen on buying quality brands with the expectation that they will last, and so far this has proved the case. My washing machine is a Siemens E14-16, otherwise known by its Siemens model number of WM14E162GB/12. I’ve had it for years, and I think it bought it in 2010.

I’ve never had any trouble with it, other than the fabric softener channels get clogged up from time to time. Unblocking these was a bit of a job but that’s a story for another day. However, I tried to use it the other day, and nothing happened The front panel is pretty basic, and the only display is a few columns of LEDs. The machine wouldn’t start, and a few of the ‘spin speed’ lights were flashing.

The front panel looks like this. I was seeing the ‘1400’, ‘800’ and ‘no spin’ lights flashing:

Somewhat to my surprise I found an explanation of this in the manual:

So it’s a ‘motor fault’. Rather than calling customer services, a bit of googling around revealed the most likely explanation of motor faults to be worn or damaged brushes on the motor. This isn’t the place to give a detailed explanation of how an electric motor works, but in essence there is a rotating armature which is fed current via ‘brushes’ (actually solid blocks of graphite, like pencil lead) which are usually spring loaded. They gradually wear down over time, and when they wear our they cause a lot of odd behaviour including noisy or poor running, sparks, overloads and ultimately the motor stopping altogether.

In my case I was able to reset the machine and clear the fault and it did carry on working. The reset procedure was extremely obscure and not covered in the manual. I was very glad to find it as part of a Q&A on a very similar subject here. The procedure is:

• Turn the dial to off.
• Turn it to the 6 o’clock position.
• Press and hold the spin speed selection button.
• Turn the dial 1 click clockwise (whilst holding the button)
• Release the button.
• Turn the dial to off.

This got the machine going again, but the motor sounded noisy and it seemed highly likely that the brushes were failing and this fault would be the first of many unless I did something about it.

There are a lot of guides and videos out there about how to do this, but I am going to do my own as well as there were a few pitfalls I encountered which might be helpful to others. I’ll go though the details in the next post.

I am really sorry for the lack of activity on this site during 2019. It’s not due to any lack of interest on my part nor of interesting things to do but real life has intervened to some extent.

I still have a large box full of Texecom goodies to look at, and various other interesting things to talk about. I am hoping to start writing about these soon. I am still getting some comments and the blog is clearly still of use to people, so thanks to all who are reading and I will be back soon!