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The Car Thread


MadManMike

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Today was a good day.

Yesterday I went to see my mate Lewis, because he had a VCDS cable and I had given the VCDS laptop back to Andy (but it's actually Prawns.)

Who can guess the connection to knowing Lewis.

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Chatting in his garage I just said to him 'You don't happen to have an AGU cable throttle body do you?'

Bingo!

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Went home, swapped the throttle body over. Instantly the idle was perfect, a little higher than previous and when it was cold it was properly idling at 1100RPM and then dropping down to about 800 when cold.

So happy with that!

The old TB had oxidisation on the tracks, so it wasn't working very well at all and didn't know where it was a lot of the time. It also wasn't giving the ECU the correct signals for throttle position.

Drove it to my mums this morning, still wasn't boosting BOOOO.

Used her laptop (my old one) to reset the fault codes, everything seemed normal and there were no lingering codes. So I assumed I'd fixed it but it would still be in limp mode.

Then these popped up on Club GTI.

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New lower arms, inner and outer track rods, polybushed with new bottom ball joints.

£100 later I was on my way to Winchester to pick them up.

Got onto the motorway and on the slip road some dodery old person in a Lexus was in the wrong lane, lorry in front of me and closing quickly, had to put my foot down to nip out.

Fuuuuuucking hell.

All the boost! Went straight up to 1.5 bar and stayed there, felt incredibly unsafe, wheels spinning at 80MPH and all over the place.

I was however grinning like a school kid!

Worried that I wasn't able to log it to check everything was being well behaved I stuck to half throttle for the rest of the trip.

Seemed to be going well though, as I passed through he local airfield to give a top speed run...

That's at half throttle.

Full throttle it misfires a little, feels like plugs to me. And my later VCDS logging proved this to be the case.

Picked up the lower arms, sprinted back to mum's to get the laptop and went out for some logging and checking.

Everything seems perfectly in trim, happy indeed!

Still going to get it mapped obviously, but I'm feeling happy about it all.

Very smooth, loads of power, easy to drive. Unless you give it full throttle haha.

This is half throttle, VCDS logged at 54% throttle. Boost is pretty constant, holds well. Really wants to go fast when the revs come up.

So I washed it to make it feel good for behaving itself.

Edited by Pashley26
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Pheeeeeew.

I've kept my no breakdown sheet clean, by the skin of my teeth!

Went to play table tennis in Winchester, before I left the fuel pump wasn't priming. I couldn't work out why.

Took my tool box out of the boot to get a screwdriver to drop the dash down and check the fuse box and relays, pulled the relay out and cleaned the contacts, checked there were no blown fuses and put it back together. Straight into life.

The relay was looking mighty cruddy around the terminals, so I assumed this was the problem.

Drove to table tennis, stopped off at the petrol station and the cash point on the way. Car started straight up both times.

Played table tennis, left the hall at 10. Wouldn't start :(

Relays out, fuses out, tapped the fuel pump, cycled the ignition. Nothing.

I thought I'd check the rear fuel pump because the pump is connected to that to prime with the ignition.

Checked under the car at the connector, all seemed fine.

Moved inside the car, inspected where the wiring loom for the pump meets the factory pump, all seemed ok. Obviously I moved the wires around when I inspected them.

Cycled the ignition again to see if I'd made any difference, pump primed and it went straight to life.

So I'm assuming there's a poor connection in the boot where the loom for my uprated pump meets the original pump wiring. I'll have to strip it back and check. I'm guessing that it's been caused by my tool box in the boot upsetting the wires, and removing my tool box earlier was enough to get it going again.

I did however get home without any sort of assistance, despite making attempts at calling Prawn haha.

So technically, I don't think that classes as a break down.

Edited by Pashley26
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Before TFTD I had around 5mm front/4mm rear tread remaining. I was planning on giving it some stick on track and swapping them over when I got home. I still haven't gotten around to it yet as there's a little left before they hit 3mm still.

Guess it was a good job I didn't let Dann drive the Leon :P

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f**king Dan and the right foot of doom.

Ultimately quite fast, but hilarious to behold.

I've just convinced my mum to do another track day.

Last time she did a "track day" was in the 80's in my dads old 911 turbo. She thinks she will be scared. I doubt it...

I might make her do it in the 500, which hilariously I'm driving around in and looking super butch until my new tires arrive.

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Edited by Pashley26
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So within about 2-3 months of having the caddy back, I've set fire to the starter motor, broke the passenger door, broke the radiator, the clutch has gone, the gearbox has seized, theres 2 big cracks in the windscreen and I lost the keys and had the ignition barrel replaced.

Christ. I am a liability.

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Just booked my car in to get the exhaust changed on Friday. Can't WAIT to get that rattly, blowy piece of rust ground off and my shiny new one bolted on!

Then I have a weekend of replacing steering components to hopefully make her drive in a straight line with no knocking or whirring.

Just waiting for the wheel bearings to turn up, should be here tomorrow :)

I love making progress on the car!

There's a potential that I'll be selling this car and buying a mint (Seriously!) late mk1 UK 1.8 MX-5 with half the miles of mine, though that's not certain yet.

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This lot will definitely be the most rewarding, if it solves my crappy steering problems :)

Making my car a wee bit quieter will make my commute a little more bearable too. Two hours of heatshield rattle a day certainly starts to grate after a while!

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