Rafe had developed a nasty little irritating rattle in what seemed to be the left front suspension.  We thought given the warranty runs out in 6 months or so, we need to get straight onto to these things and get it sorted. I dropped it off last Wednesday morning and took a technician around the block so I could point out the noise. It only appeared on coarse seal but was a quiet as a mouse on smooth seal.

Initially it seemed that although they could hear the noise, they couldn’t find a reason for a rattle. The suspension checked out ok and after a few hours of searching, there was nothing else.
A bit of light reading by yours truly on the Fiat forum in the UK showed that they have  this issue in Britain too. The Euro’s have smooth seal but they use coarse seal in Britain like NZ.  On Monday, they wired it all up with microphones and went for a drive to locate the rattle. To add the sound equipment, they had to take off the tray which is a big piece of black rubber/plastic mat that covers the whole underside of the engine and gearbox area to protect it from dust. The Brits found that they were the cause of the rattle. With all the sound equipment, they couldn’t hear any noise at all so it seems the tray might be the cause here too. We picked Rafe up on Monday and the’ve left the tray off to try it over the new Year period and so far I haven’t heard a thing 🙂   I’ll head back to the engineers in January and have it put back on with some foam to stop it rattling if that’s what it turns out to be.

As always, make sure you click on these images to see them in hi res.

What to do last weekend instead ?  We decided to walk around from Milford Bridge all the way down the beach and around the waterfront to Takapuna Beach. Its a great walk and only takes about 1/2 hour.

Milford Beach

Milford Beach

Waterfront homes at Milford

Waterfront homes at Milford

The track around the rocks

Getting close to Thornes Beach

Cable car up the hill

Thornes Beach

Nice waterfront homes at Thornes Beach

Thornes Beach

Thornes Beach half way around

Fishing off the rocks half way around. Rangitoto behind

Fiona with one of the waterfront houses near Milford

Almost Crystal clear

Foreshore houses, Takapuna in the distance

Takapuna Beach in the distance

Looking back to Milford

On the way to Takapuna

Rangitoto with the Pohutakawas

We stopped at Takapuna Beach for a while and watched the launching antics of the masses and the wayward backing attempts. Always a good hour or two’s entertainment although better at low tide 🙂

We walked up to Hurstmere Rd and had a nice lunch in a café there and then walked back towards Milford. There is a little track down to the beach right on the corner with Kitchener Rd so we headed back down along the beach and back home.

We’d only been home for a n hour or so when our good friends Tony and Julie popped in with a bottle of wine and some cider and then spent several hours sitting in the sun watching boats come and go in the marina.

A very pleasant day but I’m REALLY pleased to have Rafe back !