115: Saturday 6th February 2010

First thing today the new Allbright contactor came in the post. Went off to my daughters football training, then got stuck in fitting the new contactor. I tried it first before I did any work towards mounting it. It worked fine and cuts the heater off no problem. The contactor has some threaded holes in it's side for mounting, so I put some aluminium angle onto the side of the control box bracket and mounted the contactor to it. Tested it again and it is still working fine. So now I have heating and demisting for the windscreen. That's another job ticked off.
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Next I set about the power steering again. I gave the motor a quick run to clear any fluid from the pump. I was convinced that the wrong grade power steering fluid was the problem. I checked the manual and the Probe system uses automatic transmission fluid. I had just over half a gallon of that and looking at it I could see it was much thinner than the other type I had been using. I fitted the pump back on and bled it then it started running slow again. I checked the battery voltage and it was really low, so I got out a back-up battery and then it whizzed up a bit, but as it bled some more air out it started running slow again. I have had it with this set up and I am going to look at getting a Toyota MR2 pump and some pipes made. It is a much better packaging for the space I have too. I connected up the replacement DC-DC converter and this worked fine, but since it doesn't fit in the space I had for it, I need to find a new home and run cables etc. This is just a formality. At least I now know it works properly. I guess I'll put the rear brakes back together next. It's too cold again now to carry on and we have friend coming over tonight, so I packed up.