On the Wednesday, two days later we were driving round locally when the car was suddenly surrounded by a huge clous of what I thought was smoke, look liked a 1950's smog - if anyone remembers them, I subsequently found that it was in fact steam and the whole contents of the cooling system had been discharged through the exhaust pipe, either the head gasket has gone or the head is cracked, in any case its now in the row of cars at the top of the field.
We were now faced with the prospect of going in the 406 which apart from the dreadful fuel consumption was suffering a power steering fault, I changed the pump to no avail and was going to change the rack, I disconnected the one from the silver car but couldn't get it out without dropping the subframe, but by this time it was to late to do anything about it, so we went in it as it was.
As I was going to Axminster Tesco's to fill up with diesel there was a clonking noise which I chose to ignore, until we got on the motorway when it turned into a rumble, I pulled into Sedgmoor services and tightened the o/s front wheel nuts and the noise dissapeared.
First time I've done that for many years.As we proceeded up the M5 I was aware of a vibration and steering wheel wobble, but after a while it went away so I ignored that as well, didn't happen again until I used the brakes, then each time I used the brakes, I eventually came to the conclusion that the n/s front calliper was sticking - severely. We managed to reach our destination with a very hot front wheel so the following day I removed it and indeed the brake was stuck hard on.
The calliper looked in good condition with no rust or corrosion, even the piston was shiny, but I pulled back the rubber boot and poured a liberal amount of brake fluid over the piston and the sliding mechanism, I felt pretty sure this would ease the problem as it always had in the past - but it didn't. By this time every time you applied the brakes there was a loud squeal for about a mile followed by a rumple and vibration then it went off so I used the brakes as little as possible and got very annoyed if someone did something silly and caused me to brake. I managed the 111 miles of the A9 from Inverness to Perth without braking once but by this time the linings were down to about the thickness of a fag paper.
I did make it home and the following day swapped callipers with the old silver 406, they were a bit sticky so gave them a good dose of brake fluid and they loosened up quite nicely. The result is that the car is now doing 50+mpg locally as opposed to the 37.7 it has been doing it also goes up hills much better
.We have had the car for six months and this problem was obviously there when we bought it but surprisingly it hasn't got any worse or better in all that time, or in the last 1600 miles or so. The piston was stuck solid, I even attacked it with a large hammer and drift but it wouldn't move, the sliding part was fine, I have never had that happen before - and, the power steering is all right now
.Peter
