Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

In case anyone remembers my conundrum with our Volvo v70 veering right. I checked the tyre treads today and the front left is 1mm more worn than the right. Also slightly uneven wear on the left. . Is this enough to cause it?

Should I swap them with the backs or is that a bad idea?

Personally I would never have unevenly worn tyres on the same axle. I’d also want to know why one was (quite a lot) more worn than the other.

After changing tie rods I drove it for about 200-300 miles before doing the wheel alignment. Left front was apparently pointing inwards a fair bit. Could that be enough distance the chew through a mm of tyre?

Do you negotiate a lot of roundabouts? The front left tyres of all the cars in my area wear quicker because of them. The wear you describe is enough to make a difference. If they're not directional tyres swap left for right etc and you may notice the difference. The left/ nearside also drops off slightly due to the camber on most roads and will have an impact too.

Bear in mind that the Alfa 159 ‘wagon’ has a tiny boot, barely a glorified hatchback, and the seats don’t fold fully flat if that matters to you.

Yes. Unlikely to be totally even wear, will likely be a kind of a wedge shape wear with it more on one shoulder than the other.
Jack it up both fronts at a time and compare wheel bearing/cv shaft drag, could be a brake dragging, could be a bearing failing causing it to pull.
Lower ball joint on 2000 on v70 is common, it'll feel fine with weight off it, but with weight on it you'll get some play,kinda hard to testy as the lower arm is chunky. Defo worth doing, think lemforder make the best part for the job, meyle hd or volvo genuine (which is lemforder but possible different rubber spec?).

Porsche really dropping the bollock on these electrics.

(TBF All German marques)

Had a bad wheel bearing on the left, took about a month to get fixed. Would that maybe explain it?

And yes, slightly uneven wear on the tyre itself as well

To sum it up - can I move the unevenly worn tyres to the back, or will that cause instant death? I'm not on @Dammit levels of perfection but want a safe car

This site might help you?
https://forscan.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1834

The 16v is such a fun car - Got to find the funds and time to do it justice at some point - really needs a full respray, welding and rewiring and no chance of that any time soon unfortunately.
My mate is at Audi in Canterbury.

Yes, been reading about that. I don't need too much extra space but a bit more than the S3 I think is fine, will get bars for the bike anyway. Ideally I get an A4 I think, but finding a nice 3.2 is proving difficult.

Cheers - I gave it a go to keep as original as possible. The chassis was completely shot so I had to get a new, galvanised one after some serious deliberation. Pretty much everything else is original/refurbished, apart from seats, some fixtures and wiring.

Yeah this. I had a 156 Sportwagon as a first family car, but they are really estates for people who don't want to admit they need an estate. Fantastic car in general, one of my faves (after MX5 and 205 GTi), but barely fitted the crap for one kid in the boot.

Did your mate run a garage called voodoo motorsport once in kingston .

CWG 694 is a beauty. lovely work and nice story with grandpa. good work dude

So long as both safe/not wrecked yes*

*If your car uses the ABS sensors to calculate if you've got an underinflated tyre, then you'll get the tyre pressure light on.
And during ABS braking, it might act a bit weird. On Volvo I ran larger tyre circumference on front to rear, good for whatever reason I told myself at the time, but under ABS braking (old school 3 channel, 1 for FL, 1 for FR and 1 for rear axle total) it thought the front was locking, so would take the line pressure off them. I soon went back to tyres that matched.

Finally got round to doing the thermostat as the weather warms up. Better late than never.

Some hard to reach bolts, one dropped into the belly of the beast (and then retrieved), managed to not get coolant everywhere. Runs straight to temp now. Bosh!

I haven’t bled the system. Just ran engine to temp and topped up.

Will I do any damage if I run it and top it up as I go along, checking each day before I drive it etc.

Or should I make the effort to do the bleeding properly before driving it? Ie, will air in the system do any damage while it works it’s way out?

5 Attachments

Anyone?

https://hypebeast.com/2021/2/mercedes-benz-faulty-emergency-call-system-one-million-recall-announcement

not sure about damage or not but I've just bled the system on my E87 N52 engine, really easy with the electric water pump, not sure if the E46 is the same?
watch for it flattening the battery because it runs for 15-20minutes

@Dammit surely? Though it's only a recall in the US right now

Mine is a 2015, so I don't think that is applicable to me.

It was sound. Coolant low light came on as I backed out, so I topped up. Drove a few miles, left to cool and topped up again.

It’s running much happier now (I don’t know how much that’s psychological, classic after doing a repair), MPG higher, fans blowing hot, and temp needle at 12 o’clock quickly after starting.

What a relief. Probably should have done it sooner, but isn’t that always the case?

Cheers - It took a good while to get it stripped down and back up again but he was chuffed, which was great.

It's beautiful, chapeau!