Edd China's Workshop Diaries Episode 1 (or What have I been doing all this time? Part 2)

ah welcome to the workshop well i'm just battling with my t5 band but you may have noticed that the last couple of months have been more working on my workshop than in my workshop so it probably seems like a good time to have a look around but before that let's have a bit of a chat because it has been a while [Music] now it turns out there's been a bit of a pandemic and like many of you i've kept myself very busy with a lockdown project and mine was actually to build a mezzanine in my workshop we found an old trade stand on ebay with a fantastic spiral stick i thought that is ideal so i got that but then when i got it in the workshop it wasn't really tall enough so then raised it by about a foot which meant of course the stairs no longer actually reached the ground so then i had to add those and then i added a lot more structure around the outside to make it a bit bigger to make it fit the space better then of course i had to put all the flooring down then all the carpet and then all the furniture now i've got a wonderful place in the workshop where i can purvey all the jobs i should be doing rather than just sitting there chilling or having a coffee now perhaps the biggest question you guys have been asking me is what have i been up to all this time and of course that's part two because i will told you part one but basically the first thing i did having left the show was actually get busy with some amphibians an acquirer in fact i borrowed one to go on an amphib which was down the river thames there's about probably 60 amphibious vehicles all messing about on the river it was fantastic fun but that then led to me doing some work on an electric acquirer but we called it the equator so what we did is actually electrify their high-speed amphibian and the idea was to then go and try and set a record at coniston water but it turned out it took quite a long time to get ready we had a few parts that were on the way so instead i actually set a couple of records so we did some british records with small amphibian which is basically like a quad bike another one called a humdinger which is actually more like a boat with wheels and once i'd set those records some big lug off a top gear type show called grand tour actually then nick my record as they often do so then the following year we actually don't with the electric vehicle and set that record as well and because i managed to set two new records in two new classes i was very honored to be given awarded a k-7 silver star now that was actually the k7 club was formed originally by donald campbell just to thank all the people who are involved in the blue bro project so it's a real honor and it was fantastic fantastic time to spend just doing stuff i would never normally get the chance to do now around that sort of time unfortunately my mother felt very ill so she actually had a progressive lung disease and of course many of you very lovely and sent lots of lovely messages when we were sat there in hospital with her for about six months actually while she was trying to get better unfortunately after a while it didn't entirely last and she had to go but we had that extra time with her which was rather wonderful and in fact while we were with her that last day in fact i actually signed the contract to my book deal and she was very very chuffed to hear that and then just sort of went off to sleep having signed that contract i then had to write the book and that was actually quite a project but it was actually very cathartic as well but then of course we went on a book tour met lots and lots of you out there so thank you all for coming and thank you all for buying the book which made it into the best seller list of the sunday times which is rather wonderful as well and if you haven't bought it and read it well then you can still go out there because the paperback is now available so do rush out and buy a copy immediately please anyway then i designed the world's first all-electric ice cream van and did a world record attempt did a bit of ice racing in sweden i even got to play viking for a day on norseman then at the end of 2019 just before the world changed we took the sofa the casual loafer over to california and drove it from la to las vegas for the sema show now as you'd expect there were a few little issues on the way including a small fire we then did some filming with jay leno for his show and then drove it back to la and then we drove it all the way up to san francisco just to go down lombard street the wiggliest road in the world he drove this from l.a yeah and it was like today was chilly i mean like last night we got caught when we got to santa cruz we missed the turn and we're not into the boonies and then kind of came all the way back and uh the fog was mad it was missing fog everywhere i didn't come to california for that how you doing this is quite lovely it really is i think that fern's seen better days [Music] boy i gotta say flying around in a roadster is hard a motorcycle is hard but this has to be i mean i guess you're acclimated to it so it's not as no exactly anxiety all the the various germs that i got to shake hands with over the have started to kick in so that's what i've been doing but one of the questions that comes up perhaps the most is can you fix my car now that can be anything from a full refurb down to why does my car make a right noise when it goes around a left-hand bend well obviously i could try and fix some of your cars so if you keep on sending in those questions i'll do my best to get around to eventually answering at least some of them [Music] now perhaps the second most asked question at the moment is when am i going to be back on your screens well it's funny you should ask how about now how about we just do a show maybe once a week just follow a couple of jobs in the workshop doing all kinds of stuff not just cars maybe boats maybe planes maybe bikes maybe tractors maybe just stuff in the workshop and how about we do that for as long as you guys bother to watch we all know i'm quite good at fixing stuff but i'm not so good at filming it and then sharing it with you so how about i get myself a crew to actually do that job and then how about i get a load of partners together to actually pay for that crew how about we meet here every week in the workshop and we call the show ed china's workshop diaries we'll hang out here in the workshop we can fix some stuff we can pick up some tips and tricks along the way sometimes we'll have some guests we'll have some friendly faces people can pop in who either need some help or can give us some words of advice or some infinite wisdom you realize of course you're still wearing your orange gloves then i am actually yeah that's because i keep spilling my tea we'll also go and see some artisans some experts who can show us how they do what they do we'll be exploring engineering tradition and future technologies in equal measure what this machine can do is uses light to scan the surface in 3d and then put that straight into the computer so i can then process it later and it takes way more measurements than i can be bothered to do which is rather handy so let's start the scan and you can see that i'm just basically just gently sort of painting our 3d sculpture with this laser light and it's just taking that data and actually transporting it straight into the screen so it's actually already building up quite a nice shape now all i really need from this scan is the detail about the first motion shaft coming out of the gearbox and also of course all the holes that go around the edge of the bell housing i've got a pretty nice image there so i think the gearbox is done now a large part of what i've been doing in the workshop has actually been about electrification and also prototype development so that's definitely going to feature in the show along with 3d design and modern manufacturing techniques such as 3d printing cnc machining waterjet profiling so this is an invitation to share my sanctuary [Music] hi it's where i come to get away from it or to get those little jobs done get those niggles out of my head but it's going to be a lot of fun and i'm looking forward to having you come and hang out with me [Music] right then back to my battle with the t5 van so my friend dan has been borrowing it for a while and he commented the other day that actually he's consuming quite a lot of coolant in fact he's topping up every couple of days which is obviously not ideal i popped it on the ramp had a little look and i think i found the source of the leak it's this little chap here so basically this is a kind of a cooler like a radiator for the oil system and it sits just by the oil filter on the engine now it was covered in pink coolant so it was kind of easy to see what was going on but i want to be absolutely sure that this is the leaky part so the first thing i like to do is have a little test rig just to make sure that this is actually leaking the way i think it might be so to that end i've got myself a syringe got some old hose so if i now just make a sort of a stopper and a little funnel if you like a way of getting fluid in so i just cut off a couple of bits of rubber hose like so i'm just going to stuff one end with the end of an extension just to and open it out a little bit and then the other end while i'm doing that i'm just going to pop in a bolt just to block it up so now i'm going to wind that in to the cooler so theoretically now that should stop anything coming out and then back to this just open that up so i'm hoping i can get a little end of the syringe into this that's better okay and then pop the syringe into there like so then i need some coolant so i'm just going to draw some of that up there like so for all leaks out i'm just going to stick that then into our cooler right so now this hopefully it's not going to go absolutely everywhere all right so as i squeeze the coolant in i can hear some air moving there we go you can see the coolant the pink coolant coming out of the cooler where it really shouldn't so clearly what's happened over time is the aluminium of the cooler it's very thin anyway has actually corroded and actually started sort of to structurally let go and of course that's why the coolant is leaking out but also there's quite a bit of oil around here because of course there is oil and water inside this cooler so i'm first of all surprised that it hasn't mixed in the oil of the engine but also it might explain why the engine is looking a little bit oily as well as very much covered in coolant so at least we now know for sure that that is the problem so i'm going to get a replacement one of those but the trouble is and the reason i was welding is actually because of the housing itself so the cooler just sits on here just in front of the oil cooler and you can see there are actually five bolts that hold it in place now i managed to get off two of them and the easiest way to do that was of course to take the whole thing off the engine to give myself a bit more space a bit more movement but the thing is the ones that looked a bit dodgy i heated them up i tried all kinds of stuff and they just weren't going and then they actually sheared so i sheared off three of them had a little bit of the stud still sticking out so i tried an old trick where you get a nut and you actually then pop that onto the stud itself and weld it into position which is what i was welding earlier on and then of course the heat should penetrate into the bolt into the actual housing itself maybe break off where it's kind of frozen into the metal and then you can then wind it out because you've got a bit of purchase on that nut unfortunately all i've been doing is just shearing off more and more of the stud so then my friend john suggested actually just drilling out those studs but using a reverse drill the idea being that as you're actually going around the wrong way it'll actually wind the stud out but he had no joy with that either so you can see there's a couple of these have got little tiny holes in the top so in the end i've had to resort to buying a new one but luckily volkswagen do sell a new oil cooler with the housing and the cooler itself all as one unit clearly this happens a lot so now i've got to fit one of those now i drained the oil from our van while the engine was still warm but nobody was looking and i did notice i think a little bit of water in that oil and of course that does make sense seeing as the oil cooler had sort of started to degrade and obviously if water could come out then obviously also oil could go back in to those water galleries so i want to have a quick look so i've got a little experiment here let's pick up the oil here now what i reckon is if i just pop this in to our nice clear container here we should see some separation because there's a lot of oil in here i'm just going to tip the first amount out into this bowl because the fair few liters that's possibly behaving weirdly so i now try and pull the rest in here maybe without spilling it everywhere now you can see you can sort of see the gloopy oil on the top but you can definitely see some beads of water underneath and they're all a bit absorbed with everything you can see it's moving a bit quicker than the oil does so what i'm hoping is if i pull the rest of this in here give it a bit of time it'll actually separate we can come back and have another look okay so oil's had time to settle now so let's have a look and see if anything's dropped out oh my word that is a huge amount of coolant to have in your oil so i think this job was utterly vital and i think i've just about swerved a bit of disaster there wow [Music] right so this is our new part and i made sure that i also ordered the gasket to go with it always do that if you've got all the ancillary bits and pieces so here we go this is our brand new extremely expensive part you can see we've got the cooler here we've got the oil filter sitting here in the housing there and of course i've now got my gasket so i can now bolt it to the engine of our van now before i bolt anything shiny onto our dirty odd engine i'm going to give it a bit of a clean first [Music] [Music] all right so that's all five bolts now in position but there is one hole with some thread still there and that's because it's for a sensor you can see it's just down there on the bottom there of course that sensor is still attached to the old unit so now just remove that pop it in here and then connect it up the sensor we're looking for is this one here looks like an oil pressure sensor you can see it actually goes into the gallery just inside there now should be just easy to whizz it out okay give a bit of a clean and pop it into our engine [Music] now before i connect the water hose for our oil cooler i'm actually just going to take off this bracket here off the old housing to pop it in position on the new one basically just stops the hoses rubbing up against anything spinning or hot [Music] [Music] [Music] right now this is a brand new air conditioning pump the old one sort of was decrepid some time ago and i've been waiting for a good moment for the van to stop long enough for me actually to fit it now i've got the little connector here it's quite clever so you've got like a toothed cog like this actually on the engine and of course this is what connects the two together so i'll pop that in place first and then this is just held on with three bolts which is a little bit fiddly to get in so i'm just removing the dust caps from the new conditioning compressor and then replacing them straight away with the air conditioning pipes obviously normally if you do the job like this you try and minimize the time completely whether the system has any air in it because there's moisture in the air and that doesn't really work very well actually in the system but in this case it's going to have to back out the system for a while just remove as much air as possible probably put in some dry nitrogen and then let it come back out again back it all out again and then eventually once you check for leaks or stuff we can then put the refrigerant back in but i'll get my mate john to give us a hand with that once i know for sure that i've got rid of the leak [Music] with the new oil cooler in place and a new ac pump i really want to make sure that i've got rid of that leak so the next thing i have to do is bolt on the radiator assembly and connect up all the pipes so so the air intake pipe onto the air filter box the turbo intercooler connector and the other turbo intercooler connector the coolant reservoir the wiring for that and also one of the pipes hoses that goes on the back the top radiator hose the bottom radiator hose which is quite tricky to get to the power steering reservoir going into position and finally the battery and because i've had the front assembly off the vehicle i don't need to top up all of the fluids so i've got to put in some more oil some more coolant and maybe even some power steering fluid as well this is quite a sporty engine so it runs on 0 30 fully synthetic oil and to make sure that the oil can go in and the air can never come out i'm just going to open the dipstick a little bit well it seems to have worked its way around the system pretty much but of course i'm going to get a full burp if you like until the engine is running and the thermostat is open so i get to start the engine which means i get to have a look and see whether our leak is fixed [Music] well that is a great result there's no sign of any coolant or any oil dripping down on this side of inter bay so that's definitely fixed it so this man lives to fight another day all i have to do now is put everything back together but should we do this again next week see you then [Music] you

Channel: Edd China

Views: 1,032,317

Rating: 4.9740238 out of 5

Keywords: #AskEdd, Edd China, Grease Junkie, Wheeler Dealers, Discovery, Motor Trend, Cars, Discovery Channel, Memoir, Memoirs, Book, New Book, A book of moving parts, Virgin Books, Penguin, ISBN 978-0-75355-354-1., Workshop Diaries, Edd's new show, Where's Edd, Mechanics, Fixing stuff, Top Tip, #WorkshopDiaries, Car Repairs, Repairs, Exploring stuff, Motoring, Tools, Workshop, Diaries, Garage Revival, Autos, Vehicles

Id: snL20nBCi04

Length: 23min 25sec (1405 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/MikeOxbigger]

Thanks very much, subscribed.

I'm hoping this will be like all the good bits from old Wheeler Dealers - basically all the bits without Mike Brewer.

[u/p_fips]

I wish I was Ed China. Apart from the bit where Ed met Mike Brewer

[u/Donnermeat_and_chips]

Edd: here is the interesting part of the show where I do all the hard work and give you handy tips

Mike: Hold out yer 'aand

[u/OnlyMortal666]

Cool!

[u/widnesmiek]

So - kinda like Wheeler Dealers

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because I normally fast forward over the MB bits and just watch the Edd bits

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except longer and better because the MB bits are gone

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subscribed

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and thanks for pointing it out!

[u/socom2323]

This is great news!