The Car Thread

[Prawny Baby]

Haha, there were a few more clips with you in Adam, and you even got a mention by name too! when you moved up to 3rd and started pushing Amy along at one point!

Jonny has edited and uploaded the first of his clips from Bedford

somewhere mid afternoon Im guessing (You can hear me comment we'd done 168miles at the point we went out)

Jason (Vorhees from ASN) as passenger, low boost for the whole session, lovely dry conditions

One out lap, then about 2 and a half flying laps:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-6js5KoqVc

Thanks for the vids Jonny!

[CurtisRider]

Change of plan, whipping the engine out is easier than removing all the transaxle shite and gives me a chance to spruce up the engine with new seals and paint. So far my total of parts is £300, eurgh

[RobinJI]

I just updated my Scirocco's thread over on Retro Rides, incase any of you are interested:

Well nothing ground breaking's happened to the Scirocco recently. It has required a little TLC since starting a new job with a somewhat rough back-road commute though.

The good news is, the new job keeps my hands clean during the day which has massively boosted my mojo for working on my own car.

Since Christmas it's had 4 new wheel bearings, and the new track-rods I fitted in October are feeling a bit tired. I've also fitted 4 new 195/50R15 toyos and having a little more sidewall's transformed how it drives. I actually prefer how it looks too, it fits with the '80s OEM+ look that I'm swaying towards.

The front left wheel bearing was truly ruined! It had started getting a bit noisy, and then the rumble turned into a clunk, I changed it as soon as I had a chance and the old one came out in quite a few bits! This was the outside inner-race :-S:

And more worryingly, at lunchtime on a Saturday, 50 miles from home, the drive flange was SHAGGED, the cut in it wasn't me, that was there before taking the bearing off, and the inside inner-race had spun on it wearing the drive-flange to the point that the new bearing wasn't even vaguely tight, let alone the interference fit it should be.

Amazingly, a quick trip to the local GSF revealed they had one on the shelf for under £20! Success! So a nice new drive flange was thrown in with the new SKF bearing.

And all back together (well, hub-nut aside anyway):

Then it was onto the rear bearings, which went smoothly:

While I was working on it, it dawned on me that considering this is an engine-swapped car, there's very few engine bay pictures in this thread, so here's a quick lazy phone shot of the engine, I'll try and get some proper ones sooner or later, but it's very much function over form in there (I really must replace that header tank!):

Having finished that, I drove the car outside and it thanked me for the TLC with some truly horrible noises and a refusal to move under any real load. Yep, an inner CV exploded. I think it may have been dislodged while I was working on the car, but I'm not really sure how, the shaft didn't move any more than you'd expect when taking the hub off.

This lead to a lot of arguing with the RAC over their definition of 'specialist equipment'. They quite fairly state in their Ts & Cs that modifications resulting in the use of specialist equipment would make me liable for the cost of the specialist kit. Seems completely fair yeah? until they try and tell you they consider anything but the silly fold out things in the back of a van that a LOT of standard cars wont go on to be 'specialist'. I've never had any issues with them on this front before, but I think the guy just couldn't be arsed on a Sunday night, so he reported it to their head-office as being my fault he couldn't tow it, and I had to spend around 2 hours on the phone to them to get them to send a real tow-truck. Still, they got me home in the end.

I threw a new GKN joint on the next day and it was back to being the good old workhorse it is, well, except for a rather obvious wheel bearing rumble...  B-|

Yeah, I'd replaced 3 of the 4 bearings, as I knew I'd replaced one front one a couple of years ago. Turned out that one had died too. Cocl. And balls.

The MPG had also dropped right down to around 24 average, a lot lower than I was used to, so since then I replaced the Lambda sensor (which I was 90% sure was the culprit) the coolant sensor (because they're cheap) and the MAF (because I had a spare) which got it driving much better again, as well as bumping the MPG back to where they should be:

I also replaced the final wheel bearing this weekend, and it's lovely having a nice quite car again. Scirocco's are good solid feeling cars when everything's in good order, and it's nice to have that feeling back properly. I need to drop by the local alignment place this week but otherwise, until a decent brand of TCA's are back in stock anywhere it'll be left alone for a while. (Well, I may potter at a few cosmetic bits.)

I find Scirocco's are one of those cars where people often imagine them at a different scale to how they really are. They do look quite big, and it's easy to think of them as a 'medium' sized car, but the reality of it is that they really are small cars. The low roof-lines one of the things about them that I really like, and it's views like this show their real size:

The wax I put on back in December's still working well too, as soon as I clean the car it goes back to beading nicely:

At some point in the middle of all this I got bored one evening and went down to Lyme Regis for a couple of quick photos. Not many came out well, but I was pleased with this one:

(PS, sorry about the quality of some of those images, Photobucket seems to have decided it can't be arsed with even the lightest pretense of quality.)

[Muel]

I'd imagine this is the best place to ask as you guys know about these things.

I was on my bike earlier, and I was doing 44.7mph in a 50 limit but it might have looked more like 85mph if you were coming the other way. Anyway there was a policeman coming the other way in a freelander, but I didn't see him until he was 100 feet or so away, because there was a line of trees so he was slightly in the shade. (I saw a white car coming but didn't spot it was a police car). I continued riding and didn't see him again.

Is there any chance that he could unjustly accuse me of speeding and use his ANPR to produce some obviously false evidence and then send me to prison? Given that everyone and his dog has a dash cam these days I doubt the coppers go without them...

[godbarber]

Leon Cupra! Love her

[Simpson]

You dont have a number plate on the front.........

[RobinJI]

Oh yeah, also, we got this working again at the weekend, I'm massively jealous of my friend who owns it:

[Muel]

You dont have a number plate on the front.........

That was my reaction, but according to a mate of mine they have cameras on the back now as well.

[Simpson]

To get caught doing something wrong you have to have done something wrong. Chill out.

[err]

Pure awesomeness

I love that thing!

[MadManMike]

So I got my traction control light to turn off and it all works again now. How?

No idea. Turned the car on after work and the light was out. Absolutely no idea why, I can only guess that the new wheels have tweaked geo slightly back to what it should be...

It's getting fixed up on Saturday anyway, just surprised to see the light out

[Pashley26]

What a f**king cock!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RUXh8lkrZA&feature=share&list=UUGHr_1okcAUFAhdaFYqpyKA

Also notice the song i'm listening to the lyrics are "this is happiness" but it 100% sounds like "this is a penisssss" I sing along to it normally haha

What a cock.

I would have sat there, as long as it took for you to realise you were being an arsehole.

[Greetings]

We've already finished discussing that, you're a bit late

[Simpson]

Yea going back to that. I ignored it before but seeing as its been brought back up.

First thing my Dadda told me on my first ever lesson. Driving 101. On the roads leave everyone room, anticipate and judge and beware of everything around you.

you didn't slow over the speed bump and drove her into a dead end with your idiotic driving - even more stupid to post on a forum expecting sympathy. On my 20 minute drive to work through Essex on an average day someone will do something far more dangerous than that 10 times, but if you leave room it really doesn't affect me. You made that situation dangerous by being a dick.

[Jolfa]

Yeah, skimmed over that as I'm on my phone most of the time and it's more effort than it's worth to reply, you were definitely in the wrong and driving like a willy.

In other news, waiting for a few last bits in the post, sending my ECU off to Estonia on Weds and some time in the next 2 weeks (all being well) my car should have somewhere around the 360-380bhp mark.

I've never even been in a car that powerful nevermind owned one

Then it's got to go to a garage for a new clutch, because it couldn't keep up with 280bhp and I can't be f**ked to fit it myself

[zetecmk2]

'79 3.0S - quite good fun but potentially looking for a new home in the next couple of months. If it stays though, it's getting a Cosworth BOA dropped in asap.

compo cx's....love 'em on a capri.....good to see a 3.0 essex still going though!!! if you need bodywork.. :wink2:

[Jake.]

What a f**king cock!!!!

Surprised you didn't just go on the kerb really.

[AdamR28]

Videos from the weekend... both pretty long, but constant action throughout so hopefully not too boring!

Race 1:

Race 2:

[JD™]

Looking good Adam Watched various chunks of race one, I'll get round to race two later. You're consistently quicker than pretty much everyone through those scary Craner Curves, nice job

[AdamR28]

Cheers dude! Yeah it's frustrating killing that yellow car in the high speed bends and then getting driven past on all the straights / uphills... Either I am under power or she is over the power cap, we'll have a rolling road at one of the rounds so we'll see at some point...

[Pashley26]

In potential Jardo plans news...

Took a car to a customer yesterday, she bought it.

It is replacing a one owner from new T plate Impreza WRX, I offered them £500.

Fingers crossed.

[Mark W]

Shit got pretty real at the end of race 2! Good recovery on that straight-on moment at the last corner

[AdamR28]

Haha, yeah I did the same thing a few times last year and decided to try and turn in - ending up with plenty of gravel inside the car. Luckily I didn't this year else I'd have been collected by Jeremy (the car in the gravel after I'd done my U turn).

[Mark W]

Yeah, dodged a bullet there!

Out of interest, how come they use that circuit instead of going left at the Esses and doing the two hairpins? I'm used to seeing that track from watching WSB/BSB there, and it always weirds me out seeing people lining up on the left of the track on that back straight then swinging right I'd have thought having two tighter, slower corners like that would have been pretty good for racing in cars like the MX-5s?

[JD™]

I'd imagine it's something to do with getting a decent amount of laps in in the time period they've got – you'd probably be adding a good 20-30s to the lap with that big slow section, so you'd lose a few laps I reckon. It's always a shame to see that short track though, I'm a big fan of that longer section as a spectator.

Just watched the 2nd race Ads (although again I was sort of skipping through, probably watched half overall), another good performance obviously. Clearly a big difference in those tyres when it starts getting a bit slippy – unless it was deceptively more wet than it looked!