The Astra mk3 V6 was dug out of its Winter hibernation as I had a couple of jobs lined up having now covered 60,777 miles. If you missed the custom LCD dash conversion that I made see
here.
First one was to remove the rear nearside door card to figure out where an annoying rattle was coming from.
A bit more poking, prodding and slapping and I found this loose in the bottom door, dried up sound deadening goop.
Also noted the central locking pushrod was loose so applied a tried and tested motorsport fix.
With that faffy job sorted the door card was popped back on.
Next job was to sort the screen wash tubing as the pipes were showing their age having gone through a few heat cycles under the hood and had a small weep. I removed both pipes and cut them back before soaking them in boiling water so they were supple enough to be pushed on for a nice snug fit.
Last job was to try and figure out why the gearbox level plug was still weeping after fitting a crush washer which they don’t normally have anyway. Jacked the car up on its side and removed the level plug.
After a good inspection I noted a slight deformation of the alloy casing when the level plug should sit snuggly, if you zoom in you can see the dent.
The old M18 crush washer outer diameter wasn’t quite large enough to cover the damage so oil could just sneak past. I bought an M17 crush washer which was 24mm OD instead of the M18 22mm OD, filed the ID so it was a tight squeeze over the threaded section of the level plug and then added thread lock to the rear ID of the crush washer. I could have messed with chemical metal to get the mating face smooth but access is tight and I would have had to remove the drive shaft, I’m hoping my fix has sorted it so time will tell.
Level plug torqued to spec being 50Nm and as you can see the new crush washer covers the mating face damage and coupled with the thread lock fingers crossed no more damp patch reappearing.
