Approacing the end?

Two years ago, we did our biggest and most expensive repair. We changed the Turbo to a brand new one. Buying a cheap car will always bring downsides and this year they're piling up.

In November 2024, we did our third EU approval. This one was a bit tougher since the ABS unit showed the error C1011. As always, the Sprinter Source forum is fantastic at diagnosing these errors. I purchased a code reader and found that it likely was the motor for the ABS pump inside this unit that was the problem, not the device itself. The easy path is then to just buy a new ABS module and fit that, but these are no longer available. I could try to find it by calling some hundred scrapyards to check if they had the part available. Scrapyards don't have a central system for looking up parts, so this can take a lot of time.

After diggin around the Sprinter Source, I found that there was another option as well. I found a firm that could swap the pump, so I had a workshop disassemble the device, I took it to the firm swapping the pump and then got it back. The workshop then refilled the ABS system and bled the brakes. Cost me $930, so it was quite expensive, but we now have the car approved for another two years! Brilliant! Not just that - the car suddenly had all lights working on the dashboard and there was an alarm if you forgot to turn off the lights? Not shabby to get new features from a 24 year old car?

During winter, we don't usually use the car much but this year AM had to use it to transport something large mid winter. During that trip, the ABS unit got a small crack that allowed water to seep into the electronics. This caused a short that completely drained the battery. Every time I re-charged the battery, the ABS pump would start so the only way to get the battery charged was to disconnect it, re-charge and then connect it. This time, the workshop couldn't solve the issue, so our current solution is just to remove the fuse for the ABS unit.

This is the most beefy fuse I've ever seen? It's 40A and 4 times the size of normal fuses. I'm not sure where to go from here as we just had another issue where the handbrake wire snapped. That's likely easy to fix, but I feel that we're on a downward slope? There still seems to be a short somewhere in the electronics as battery drains even with the ABS module fuse removed. Sigh… The joys of old cars?