Hello All, Went to Mr.Prawns house today and we got lots done with his awesome pit! I had the distinct honour of using the pit for work before any other car, Good stuff.
Picked up a load of bits from the dealer before my trip over including the front splitter, new esp button, towing eye and jacking covers.
Headed over to Nicks as I have an oil level sensor problem where the oil level is fine but the light turns on occasionally.
Jumped in the car with Nick and headed off to Halfords to buy some paint for the Leon's jacking and towing eye covers. Got inside, they only had red or blue for Seat. Headed to the back to have some mixed up. We looked at the code in the boot for the colour we needed L041 (Ebony Black). The girl looks on the system and is stunned to see that it is not a mix of colour, just black. Turns out they aren't supposed to mix up just black and in the 3 years she had been on the mixing section she had never had to. You would think this would be quick. Turns out it would take her half an hour to clean the machine from green paint to black. Irritating waste of time on a day that light disappears at 5. Picked up some lacquer and off we went.
Headed back to Nicks and got the car over the pit, avoiding the wooden planks used to contain the hole as they are a bit weak and dangerous at the moment.
Got under the car for the first time and could see some oil on the sump and some on the piping near by. Piping was cleaned and tightened as the jubilee clip was quite loose (hopefully some more boost please) Sump had a surprising amount of oil on the bottom, but most concerning was all the gouges in it from where the car has been lowered so much it had scrapped. Cleaned all this up and will see in a month or so if the oil returns.
Whilst we were down there we thought we would have a crack at repositioning my exhaust back box as it was severely bent where the previous owner had lowered the car so much that he managed to reverse and hit the exhaust on curbs. Bending the box downward and forwards by about 5 inches in each direction! We jack the back box upwards and positioned a scissor jack between the rear anti roll bar and the back of the back box. We then marked up in some areas with a Sharpie for reference positioning points. Gradually increasing the extension of the jacks we managed to find a 3 inches worth of movement backwards. We then noticed how loose the back box exhaust clamps were, rotating the back box by hand! Rotated it around and managed to get the exhaust pretty much back into its housing, the rubbers to the exhaust mounts are okay past the back box but the one at the very rear is still too far forward, but looks a hell of a lot better. Tightened everything up and reviewed results from above. Approval granted.
We then decided to fix the root cause of the problem and raise the coil overs. Nick was very shocked with the suspension in general. He pointed out that they we not cheap coilies, these were Weitec Hicon GT coilies with polyurethane bushing throughout.
The back was sat at 620mm floor to arch on the right and 630mm on the left. Gradually managed to raise them to 650mm. Sorted. Looked better and completely healed my knocking problem.
Then was the turn of the front. Was sat approx 630mm on the right and 640mm on the left, aiming to move to 650mm all round. Jacked the car up, took the wheel off, went to adjust and turns out the adjuster is made of plastic and the threads completely caked in shit. This meant the bugger wouldn't turn, the plastic kept snapping. Soaked in WD40 and went for lunch, came back, still no movement. Decided we would release the spring tension by removing the bolts at the strut. Effort! Managed to get those bolts off eventually (Super tight), so off they came but still no movement. We jumped into Nick's fiesta/rocket car and went back to Halfords to buy one of these:
Unfortunately, this didn't do the trick either, not only did the tool bend to shit but chewed the tabs up royally.
We decided to give up, order some aluminium adjusters and attack this another day as it was about 4pm.
Put everything back together, eventually, with final seating at 650mm rear and 640mm front as we had managed to budge the coilover on the threads slightly, but not enough to meet the target, fortunately we had managed to set the suspension up evenly from left to right.
Jumped back under the car to check out the sensor issue as we had kind of forgotten about it! Unclipped the sensor and gave it a good WD40 dousing, refit and left it. Hopefully this fixes the problem, but might not as it looks like it had seen a knock. If the problem persists we will change the sensor and refill the engine with oil.
Then we went out for a test drive. It felt like a different car. Had grip in corners, low and high speed, and the ride was significantly improved. We expect the handling to improve further if we can raise that front end 10 more mm.
Got back, switched out my broken ESP button for a new one. This is a job I was dreading as I hate electrical stuff. Turns out pliers and 30 seconds is all that is required. Pull out, unclip, throw away, clip the new one in and press it into place.
Then we had a crack at fixing my rear brake light where if the brakes were engaged, the side light would turn off. and no light on one side was present. Turns out it was a dodgy bulb (again), had the car 4 months now and this is it's third brake bulb replacement. There must be a root cause, but as light was not on our side we decided to call it a day. Nick also noticed that the lights were not standard at the front or rear with angel eyes at the front and random at the rear.
Said goodbye to Nick and Tori, and went home to the girl friend. Unfortunately, I said I would be back by 12. So now i'm am getting the silent treatment and writing this instead.
However, that doesn't matter because my car feels significantly better.
In other news, I am off to Wales tomorrow to pick up 5 LCR 18" rims (Bright Red ), a new glove box handle, matts and a modified Audi TT front strut brace.
Car is finally starting to get there. Needs a thorough clean, trim covers spraying and will be presentable and ready for some decent photos.
Once all this is done the next plan is a new full stainless exhaust and manifold set up, fresh remap and a LiquidLeon gauge setup.
Cheers for reading, been a great day and learnt a lot from the VAG King, Prawn
Thanks, Ash Not sure what happened to that post, spacing has gone very weird and it wont let me edit it.
This is what we bought btw:
Pits are made of win
