Rick's b.log - entry 2020/11/28

Leaks

Pressure washing damaged a seal? Oil filter incorrectly fitted?

I got up at 4am and went out and checked. No oil under, everything looked more or less as expected.

Oh God, so it must be something that happens under pressure - when the engine is running.

So I got up at quarter to six, as I was working on Saturday. Because running out of oil would be a very bad thing, I drove carefully, stopping to check the oil level in the village.
And again in the forest.
And on the other side of the forest.
And in the small town on the way to work.
And the supermarket car park after work.
And at home on the way home.

Oil always a little over max.

So, yeah, I think he put in the half litre, got distracted by something, and forgot the other litre. Of course, it wasn't forgotten on the bill...

There is a leak, however. Coolant.

Coolant drips - taken with a UV torch

It only seems to happen when the engine is cold, and it isn't a lot. I held off writing this until today. It's been a week, six times to work and back (~13km each way; or already 156km). This is the state of the radiator.

The coolant level in the radiator.

I have lost more than that driving on a hot summer's day. You see, coolant expands when it heats up, however Felicity has no expansion tank like bigger cars. Coolant is put directly into the radiator to circulate through the cooling system. The engine normally runs fairly cool as the fan is directly attached to the water pump and always spins. However the cooling is obviously going to be less effective when it's 30°C than when it's 8°C, which means the engine runs a little hotter, and the coolant expands more. If the coolant expands too much, the excess is vented.

And when it cools down? Below the top of grille inside the radiator. I've already used about two thirds of a bottle of replacement coolant so far, when there was no leak. So it's a little weird to see that there's a leak and it's barely changing the coolant level.

I currently check this daily, but it's not a big deal really as I habitually check levels on Wednesday and Saturday. A little paranoia goes a long way when one considers what sorts of things can happen if any of this stuff should run low or, worse, run out.

On the other hand, the engine runs nicely. There's still that rattly clankiness, which is now clearly not the water pump, but it's a lot quieter. She still starts up noisy, but a warmed up engine running at driving speed no longer sounds like a tank, but more a sort of pfffff noise. I can hear everything else rumble and rattle. So clearly the change of oil and filters and stuff was appreciated.

Also appreciated was the new drive belt. On damp days when all the bits were moist and humid, it tended to take her a lot of time to get up to speed, and I'd be running the engine with my foot to the floor to hit ~46kph.

Now? I have to be easy with the accelerator because the mechanism engages a little harshly. I press the pedal a little sharp to get the stuff to engage like before, and she's halfway across the road already. And if I press the pedal all the way down like before to hit driving speed, my GPS thingy beeps and I look over to see it reading 52, and the needle speedometer comically reading just shy of sixty! The needle is a suggestion of the current speed that bears only a scant relationship to reality. However it is useful to have when slowing down to hit 30kph areas because the GPS readout has a lag. The needle is more responsive. I just need to remember that ~32 is 30, and ~48 is 45, and ~50 is my driving speed. When everything ticks along at its quiestest.

There was a white van behind me on the way home yesterday. Dickhead was flashing his headlights at me doing thirty in a thirty zone. When the zone ended, I pressed the pedal down and was like 30 to 45 in a couple of seconds. Left him behind. It was a short lived victory as I maxed out at ~47, whereas he could go around me on a solid white line on a blind bend at sixty. Still, with new oil and filters and drive belt she's a lot nippier and sounds less like a crash in progress.

Vote counting

There's a lesson here...

La Banque Postale - buggy app

I don't tend to update apps unless there's a need to. I've been stung enough times with new versions that are buggy, remove features, turn previous features into paid upgrades, spew adverts all over the place, or are just various types of broken.

So the other day I went to check my bank account and the app told me that I had to update. There was no "later" option, it was a mandatory forced upgrade.

So I downloaded the new version and installed it. I didn't bother to keep a copy of the previous version as it was clear that it wasn't going to work any more.

Unfortunately, the new version is worse. It remembered my login number, so I entered my password and a little square box spun, and spun, and spun, continually. I gave up after two minutes.

I left a one star review, and the developer responded by suggesting that I wipe the app's data. So I did. And tried logging in again. Same thing.
So I deleted and reinstalled the app.
And it wasn't going to work.

I deleted the app, rebooted my phone, reinstalled the app, and...

I did get a different result last night. It told me the connection had broken, because I left the app running. The screen timed out, and a little later the WiFi timed out, and the app noticed that. As for actually making a connection? Nope. Not a chance of it.
I tried after giving it all permissions, but that didn't help.

I tried installing the app on the tablet. It runs like treacle because the tablet isn't fast, but it does work. Slowly. It's a little ironic that a basic low end tablet works but it fails on a higher end smartphone. That said, perhaps the phone has a lot more features and one of them is causing the problem? Perhaps the update is using the fingerprint sensor, only messing it up? I don't know. I've sent an email to the dev saying that if they have a version that can spew out a logfile, I'll be happy to give that a whirl. It is important to me to get this working, not to access my account (that can be done on the website, which is what I used when the app was clearly not going to work) but because there's an additional level of security called "Certicode Plus" that is used for some operations, and it appears to need a functioning app.

I note that every attempt, I need to set up a new profile. So it appears that the profile creation is failing.

My phone is a Samsung S9 with Android 8.0.0. It has never been rooted. The previous app worked. The current one fails.

And people wonder why I don't like updating apps. Unless there's a pressing urgent reason, stuff should be left alone, and not updated because <insert cool feature>. And as for forced updates... I have nothing polite to say about these.

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Mick, 29th November 2020, 00:49

I currently have 17 apps that want to be updated and find  the frequency Google apps want to update annoying. I do update some but not more than once a month. Usually within a couple of days of being upgraded, same app wants to be upgraded again! Of course apps with a built in time bomb do have to eventually be updated if you want to keep them. Still on Android 9. My phone nags me every day to install 10, but I have resisted so far. Long list of bugs with 10 and I want a home button, sod gestures. So Google haven't finished 10 and have already released 11? Hmmm.

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