CurtisRider

Just ask people how much they spend on alcohol every week and what they are left with afterwards, if they say 'good memories' then you can punch them. I'd rather spend £50-£100 a week on my car than spunk it all on drink every Saturday night, ruining my Sunday cos I feel horrific.

As mentioned before, my auxillary air valve is shot on the Porsche, and i'm not stumping up £100+ for a new/recon one. I have just bought a heater valve for an Audi 80 new for £6 as it looks about the same size and looks to have the same size pipe fittings, I can either run a bike cable to it to manually operate it or I'm thinking of using my spare Arduino nano, a servo and a temp sensor to control it electronically. Hopefully this will end up being a fairly decent low budget fix!

Car passed the MOT advisory on front discs and corrosion on a rear spring, they said it seemed a good car apart from those things. Now to order the cam belt stuff and attempt to remove this stupid oil drain plug that has a mangled head by whoever touched it last so I can finish the service (I tried a suction pump but it didn't work very well and i'd rather do it properly)

Surely a high speed puddle is all you need for that?

Cheers on the advice chaps, maybe i'm just over worrying! The sooner I can stop spending on the Astra the sooner I can get playing with 1.8T stuff

Fingers crossed eh? I totally expect it as an advisory, just hoping I don't need to replace them yet as I want to do the cambelt first! This garage seem pretty pretty sharp and I'd rather have a safe car than a death trap...

Rears: Fronts: You can see on one of the fronts there is a section that has had rusted raised section previously on, I chipped this off when I had the brakes off to do the clutch. There is a slight groove in the pad where this section was hence why it has not cleaned up with use yet. The other brake disc has a groove in the centre, presumably where a stone has been caught EDIT: The brakes work well, have plenty of bite and the car stops in a straight line, so performance is good (but it's hard to say how close to full potential they are as i've never used one with new discs and pads)

Brake disc condition...what is acceptable? I need to MOT the Astra soon and they are my only real concern as everything else looks pretty good. My fronts have a bit of grooving but nothing massively deep, they function well and the pads have at least half the material left. The car has sat for 6 months so there is some light pitting but this has been greatly reduced since using the car. I'll try and get photos later. I'm intending on replacing the discs and pads at some point as I like everything to be good on my cars, but if I can leave them until January then that would be thuper

Hang on, you were actually being serious? I thought this was just a wind up...

The Tmarrs one that was linked by Dave, budget dropper with a modified lockout lever. I've pull it apatt and reassembled with nice grease+filed the holes so the pin grips nicely as I read they can be an issue

Just incase anybody is interested, I revisited the post and found that although the cable looks like it has a gear cable end on, it is in fact designed to work with something smaller. A quick session with the bench grinder and I now have a perfectly operating post!

I'm getting 50MPG cruising at 80 where possible on my commute in the Astra, whereas the Porsche works out as 22ish MPG driving the same way (however I find that difficult and end up hooning it more and it goes down to about 15MPG). I find it weird that I have half a tank of fuel left after a week, usually I'd have put a tank in by now.

Ouch, that's mildly hilarious though! By f**ked up do you mean it has frozen itself shut?

Mines the 1.9CDTI 120bhp (but its a 16v like the 150 just detuned), it's not going to set the world on fire but with a remap I think it would be quite an enjoyable commuting car

Fair enough, I'm going to make some for the 924 at some point as the rear ARB links are probably the original 30 year old things and other people run some like yours. I feel dirty saying this but i'm starting to like the Astra, I had missed diesel in a weird way. It's making me question the 1.8T conversion in the 924 and whether to go 1.9TDI... I feel even more filthy now

Are they going to be ok when they encounter road grime? Can you get boots for them or are they crap?

Well it's quite obviously you living up to your new cars appearance?

I fixed the Astra this evening. The fitting to the slave had popped off, fortunately the metal clip had wedged itself onto the gearbox housing so I didn't need to get any parts turns out the previous slaves rubber seal was still in the hose fitting and therefore I had 2 seals in there...the hose probably was never clipped on correctly as there wouldn't have been enough space so that explains it...my bad :$ I hate stupid little oversights like that, thats the trouble with doing something like a clutch swap over the course of several days (just doing it in odd spare hours) you lose track of what you have done...

Have I just become Dan?

So other than breaking down, i've done some other stuff: Pollen filter was due a change... I don't think i've ever bought a car that has had it changed before, grim! Old exhaust vs new: Tip and hangers swapped over And refitted, not wonky so Jardo might not appreciate it Sidelight was out so I rummaged through my box of crap and found some blue tinted halogens...surprisingly very white looking Lots more to do...

Clutch pipe broke, lots of fluid everywhere. FML Got the car recovered, now to get all the bits in the way removed and see whats broken, figuring its the plastic clip that goes to the slave. I already hate the Astra more than the Porsche

Yeah I was going to spend the £20 on a locking kit, not worth the risk! I think i'll just go for it as I don't have £300 knocking about to have a garage do it (seems the usual cost). Then it is just a case of tidying it up a bit (a good polish will help loads), changing the oil when the new sump plug arrives (the old ones chewed and my suction pump thing isn't working very well), replace the rotten back box with a nearly new genuine one i got for a tenner, replace a fog light and it should look respectable enough. I'm trying to not start playing with it, I want to save the money for the Porsche which seeing as it's not relied on as a daily now I can get saving for the 1.8t

I'm going to change the cam belt myself on the Astra, I never done it before on an interference engine so I feel a little anxious about it! It looks easy enough on the video I watched, just about taking your time and ensuring EVERYTHING lines up as it should. Any tips from people who have tackled the 1.9CDTI engines? I'm replacing belt, tensioner, waterpump and aux belt whilst i'm there.

Well I've now taxed and insured that Astra SRI CDTI I bought about 5 months ago, drove it for the first time and it actually seems a decent enough little car for £600

Those sidelights look way too sparkly...