This just to brighten Keith's weekend ... whilst grovelling in the bowels of the engine, the manifold, which was floating on the exhaust pipe, strayed too far aft and made contact with the live feed to the starter motor. It took me a few seconds to work out what the crackling noise was and locate the source of the smoke.
Grabbing the manifold assembly, I felt a searing pain as I burnt my hand on a very hot turbocharger drain hose. It would appear that the best return path for the current was via the hose and due to the gauge of the braiding around it, it worked very efficiently as a heater (scope for further experimentation as a heated fuel line me thinks).
Unfortunately this wasn't the end of it. Having got the engine back together and taken it out on a test drive, the satisfaction of a job well done was marred by a trail of oil running down the road and onto my drive. This resulted in another two day delay to order, obtain and fit a replacement hose!
Slowly falling out of love with my car!
