Ugh, I love the idea of working on cars, I just hate actually doing it.
I know (at least) one of the wheel speed sensors on the 320 is faulty, but I don't know which. Now I could have taken to a garage and got them to read the fault codes, but that would require money, something that's in short supply at the moment! In theory it's straight forward enough to test them, you just need the right tools.
A multi-meter I have... however, after jacking up the front of the car (not too difficult), removing the wheel, locating the wiring and pulling the connector apart, I discover that the two tiny little pins I need to get the probes across are set back about 20mm inside the plug.. the probes simply won't fit.. so after a little thought and about an hour of McGyver style soldering I've made a suitable rig from two cotton bud shafts, some thick speaker cable, some insulating tape and some thin telephone cable - turned out it worked a treat... so back out I went to the car.
Tested the front right wheel (put the probes across the terminals rotate the wheels and look for a fluctuating resistance).. checked okay.. so wheel back on... drop the car down, round to the front left, repeated the process and that one checked out okay too.
I'd have rather it was a front sensor, simply because it makes lifting the car easier. The problem with jacking the back is I only have one jack that's safe enough to work with, I don't have a flat surface to work on and I need to be able to spin the wheels, which means I can't leave the handbrake on... so I cobbled together some chocks for the wheels, and jacked up the left.. took the wheel off (never fun on a car that's rocking back and forth!).. took me a minute or two to find the sensor, then locate the plug, which is actually not in the wheel arch at all, and get the metre on it... EXCEPT, one of my fantastic soldered joints on the makeshift probe had broken, so... back inside to fix that... 15 minutes later... the sensor didn't check out... wheel back on, car down, move all the chocks, jack the car up.. no need to take the back right wheel off because I know I can get to the plug anyway... metered out fine. Dropped the car back down, removed the chocks.. rushed to apply the hand brake as the car started rolling away!..
Anyway.. took about 3 hours all in. And I know it will probably take the same again to swap the dodgy sensor given that they like to weld themselves into the hub.
Also discovered a dodgy cable to the brake pad wear sensors.
Then I need to tighten the ridiculously loose hand brake cable up, which probably means jacking the back end of the car up.. both sides at the same time.
It's a lot of work to save a few pounds.. but the MOT's due next week and I already need a new set of rear tyres and I've only just had to fork out for the Tax... money is tight!