Daily running update.
July 31st... The gearbox control system decided to dump all of it's hydraulic oil on the floor after one of the pipes from the solenoid block popped out due to a worn clip.
Result - stranded at the road side having dumped lots of oil on the floor
However, a new clip and a quick bleed with fresh oil (plus a generous washing down with brake cleaner) and all was good.
Fast forward to August 30th and again, the A2 dumped me at the roadside but this time it just put me in neutral and took away the throttle so it sat there idling.
I could tell that it was something do with the ECU not knowing which position I had put the gear lever in as the instrument cluster knew when I had moved the gear lever over to 'Tiptronic' but otherwise it just showed 'N'.
I was moving the gear lever across to Tiptronic when the failure occurred.
I got a lift home and then collected the car (A-frame) later that day and it sat on the drive in disgrace for a couple of weeks until I had time to look at it.
The fault turned out to be a broken wire to the gear selector switch at the bottom of the gear lever.
I soldered it back together and the car was fixed.... for a while!
Saturday evening 22th Sept saw the fault return and I was 35 miles away from home without tools at 10pm
I managed to get into the area by using whatever was lying around inside the car. The wire next to the one I had repaired had broken!
I managed to shove the wire back in and jam it with an opened key-ring and the inner parts of a pen. It was enough to get me home where I did a proper repair finishing at around midnight in the rain. Not fun!
I have realised through this process that there is a bit of a design flaw with the A2 3L shifter.
The wiring to the three pin plug (gear lever switch) is fixed around 75mm away from it but when you move the lever across to Tiptronic, the whole module moves... but the wires can't! So they have to flex and pull and eventually, they break. Not ideal!!
I'll be replacing the wires and lengthening them plus re-routing them so that they run around the linkage (or similar) to allow for more flex in the system.
For now, I'm not using Tiptronic mode and the car is fine.
MG