The Car Thread

[Greetings]

I'd love to, sadly driving it to the UK would probably make my balls drop off and pubic hair grow on my eyeballs. All things considered, it's something I would like to avoid. Got plans to visit the UK next year, my dad's an engraver at Wimbledon and this is probably his last year, really want a tour of the place again because I hardly remember it. Either way, chances of being in the UK next year in a sports car are high. Looking either at buying an S2000 in the spring or using the trip to the UK to buy an E46 M3 convertible since they seem to be dirty cheap your end.

[Prawny Baby]

Cheers lads

How does a 350bhp FWD car feel like? I think I asked in here about a possible 4wd conversion but was told it's a bad idea, perhaps now is a good time?

To be honest Alex, it feels utterly mental in yesterdays weather! Although on low boost at 290bhp it was fine in the wet still as the torque isn't there. I can't wait to try it in the dry though.

Is that spinning up Nick, or just pulling clean? Either way, oh my.

D'oh! You guessed it! First Pull it lights the wheels up at 80. Second pull is clean from 65-90mph believe it or not, then traction breaks at 90mph and the speedo shoots to 110 it really does feel pretty bonkers.

Engine's in the hole and mostly connected up:

We love this

Alot!

[Tom Booth]

Wtf is that?

[Pashley26]

I'd love to, sadly driving it to the UK would probably make my balls drop off and pubic hair grow on my eyeballs. All things considered, it's something I would like to avoid. Got plans to visit the UK next year, my dad's an engraver at Wimbledon and this is probably his last year, really want a tour of the place again because I hardly remember it. Either way, chances of being in the UK next year in a sports car are high. Looking either at buying an S2000 in the spring or using the trip to the UK to buy an E46 M3 convertible since they seem to be dirty cheap your end.

Drop top E46's are so cheap here because they are driven by women, drug dealers, closet homosexuals and wankers. Haha! E46's in general have a really bad image here, anything other than a top spec M3 or CSL is "just a BMW" to most people.

If you do come to the UK and for some reason find yourself in the South West you're welcome to stay at mine, also if you do buy something over here you're more than welcome to drop by our workshop to get it on the ramps. Our workshop is south west of London so a pretty central location within the south. It's also a 10 mile drive from Prawn so you could meet up with a few of us at once.

[Prawny Baby]

it's an Alot TB.

can't you see that

[Tom Booth]

Now you mention it I can, can't believe I missed it before. How much does the a3 weigh now then dude? Is it still bearing its battle scars?

[Luke Rainbird]

I've been calling around a few companies today to get an up to date idea of what it'd cost me to insure a Leon (yeah, still haven't pulled my finger out and done it due to having to pay insurance, tax and a load of other shite haha!) and having just spoken to Greenlight they're able to insure me fully comp for £432 including any mods up to 220bhp.

So at the point of this last post I was waiting on a confirmation email from Greenlight just so I had more than a chat on the phone to go by and a guaranteed offer. Turns out that actually once this came through the price was different....

...it's actually even lower! Not what I was expecting at all, but certainly not going to moan. Let's just hope that payday brings in enough to fund a new project!

[Pashley26]

Dooooo ittttt!

[Prawny Baby]

So, a pretty wicked few days for me I must admit.

After the drama of epic vibrations on Saturday afternoon, and spending most of sunday changing bits and test driving to no avail, I eventually pulled out the one bit it couldn't be, and found the NEW pass side shaft had a failled inner CV.

Luckily, Bobby found me a pair on ebay in London, and a 3 hour round trip saw me with a pair of new shafts. result.

I fitted the new pass side shaft on Monday morning, then decided to go on an extended test drive to see Gareth at Ace Engineering so I could use his corner scales to weigh the car and see how close my home setup had been on the corner weights.

I left home, and put enough fuel in to take it to just over half a tank, in the hope that I'd arrive at Gareths with exactly half a tank for the weigh in. Lucikly, with a bit of frugal driving for the last 20 miles, I was pretty much bang on half a tank when I arrived.

it's a 54L tank, so half a tank being 27L. Specific gravity of petrol is 0.737, so 27L of fuel weighs 19.9L, or I'll assume 20 in this case

I arrived at Gareths, and parked up amongst the fleet of Northloop cars:

We got the car into position and setup the corner weight ramps ready to drive the car on:

And up onto the scales:

And the results: it's a bit heavier than I expected, but the diagonal cross didn't seem too bad considering it'd just been levelled with a tape measure:

And with me in the diagonal weight slightly the other way:

Still, not too terrible for something that's never been setup before. I've got a few more things to move around then change, and about another 2 stone to lose myself, then I'll invest in a proper setup and corner weighting session.

Big thanks to Gareth for being able to fit me in at such short notice, we only arranged it that morning as I had a day off I hadn't really planned. Good to see you again sir

With that done, I helped Gareth deliver a customers car, then headed home to complete my 100 miles extended test drive, and was all set for R-tech on Tuesday!

Since the day I picked the car up back in February, Niki and I have been talking about sticking rods in it, and bringing it back to see what it can really do.

Finally that day came, and the car was booked into R-tech for a map tweak on Nov 20th.

R-tech being 130 miles away, I was up early, and had my standard 'day out' breakfast of a hybrid Pasta n Sauce, 1x Cheese and Broccoli hybridised with 1x Cheese leak and ham pasta n sauce. Properly awesome combo.

And we're off!

All was going well as I headed up the A34, with the car feeling good.

Until I got to oxford and everything just seemed to stop. I was due at R-tech at 0930, so wasn't too impressed with this:

Quick stop in a petrol station for another coffee

I arrived at R-tech at 09:35, and went to drive up onto the ramp, only to find my splitter caught the ramp and it wouldn't go on, so the bumper had to come off:

And onto the ramp it went:

Trying to load the car onto the dyno, it was sitting FAR too low in the rollers, so really annoyingly, after checking all the corner weights just the day before, I had to raise the coilovers at the front to be able to get it strapped down properly

I took measurements, and will reset the coilovers to the same height as near as I possibly can.

It was much colder at R-tech this week compared to Badger 5 last weekend, just 12 degrees inside the unit. Niki also has the benefit of a back door, with a few strategically placed fans to draw fresh cold air in from outside, rather than sucking in the warmer air from inside the workshop.

so, with almost ideal atmospheric conditions for the dyno (cold and wet), a base line run was done, with some really quite surprising results!

318bhp and 310lbft, exactly as it arrived. Very promising indeed. On the old engine with this very same map, it previously made 291bhp at R-tech in feb, so the new engine is 27bhp up on the old one in similar conditions. This was at the original 18psi of boost.

The guys always use a bit of WD40 type spray to help the car get traction on the rollers, but after the first run, we noticed the rollers had gone black. Jim and Niki both said they hadn't seen that before, there was like a layer of rubber coated on the rollers from my RS-Rs!

Sticky!!

After a few issues (Niki had to pop out to attend his daughters school where she was ill - all OK now thankfully), Niki and Jim got to work with doing some load testing and making alterations to the map:

Nikis concentration face:

Strapped down with the fans in place:

The new ECU live emulator Niki has is absolutely fantastic, they load a copy of my map onto the emulator ECU, and run it on this, which can then be live mapped whilst the car is running on the dyno. So different to the old fashioned bench flash / change and re-flash method that used to be necessary with the ME3.8 ECU.

Adam Hobden popped in to say hello and was proudly showing off his new T3/4 monster turbo, having realised his ko4 hybrid was never going to beat mine

Niki carried on mapping, without the help of the water meth at first. it went up to 325bhp/318lbft first, then a few more tweaks saw 331bhp / 327lbft, with the car swallowing up LOADS of ignition advance and not pulling any corrections at all. Boost was kept at a peak of 21psi, which we both agreed we didn't want to go above.

Just before lunch, a few more tweaks saw us at 344bhp and 343lbft, still on the smallest meth nozzle, rated by AEM to 200bhp. Still seeing very little heat produced, and no corrections to the timing at all.

After lunch, Jim fitted the medium sized meth nozzle, which we had always planned to end up on, and Niki ran the car again, similar results again, 344bhp with 21 degrees ignition advance, 2-3 degrees pull in the midrange after some very heavy brake testing (out of a possible 12), but still no pull at all at the top end. Niki decided to try dialing some more timing in above 4500rpm, and the grin on his face after the first run said it all!

A bit more testing, and a few more runs, and Niki found that the car would happily take 27 degrees of timing at the top end without any CF's at all, and was making amazing power.

We settled on 25.5 degrees of timing from 4500rpm to the limiter at 7500rpm, which resulted in final figures of 353bhp and 345lbft, still at 21psi peak boost. It's still not pulling any timing at the top end, AFR is 11.9:1, and despite repeated load testing and brake testing on the dyno, right after the 353bhp run, the inlet manifold was ice cold to touch, and even the cam cover was cool enough that you could hold your hand on it, so that's where it stayed, at the full fat 353bhp.

A few other hyrbids have come close to this, one making 352bhp, and one making 348bhp, but these have both needed lots of boost to make this figure, and have been generating crazy heat, with the results not being sustainable, so Niki has pulled them all back to around 330bhp for the road. Unlike these, mine is making 353bhp with less heat than you'd usually see at 330bhp, the way it flows is just amazing.

The car feels absolutely incredible to drive, with over 330bhp held from 5000-7000rpm, and torque holding above 300lbft from 3500-6400rpm. a very broad spread indeed 3rd gear when it hooks up, from 5-7.5k rpm, is absolutely ballistic, proper hold on tight roller coaster stuff if I'm honest.

Actuator pressure remains very smooth and sensible, with 287bhp and 276lbft at 15psi.

All in all, I could not be happier with the result at all, I owe Niki, Jim, and ben a HUGE thank you for spending so long on the car, the guys cleared the diary for the whole day for me, and had no other customers all day long, just Niki and Jim, all day on my car getting it right, with Ben manning the phone and sorting out anyone who came to speak to Niki.

The drive home was entertaining in the rain, and pretty scary when I did try full boost in the wet. I'm really looking forward to getting it out on the open road on a dry day.

One last cheeky flame pic:

[MadManMike]

That is awesome. What a machine!

Don't suppose you get mates rates there do you? I would like my 1.9TDi mapped...

[CurtisRider]

Prawn that thing is mental! The battle scars just add to the cool factor, nice one!

[haydon_peter]

The battle scars are indeed kinda cool but it will look even better when the bodywork is done! Prawn has spent a lot of money and time getting this done so he may as well finish the job properly and get the car back to its former glory

[Prawny Baby]

Cheers folks.

Mike: I don't get mates rates as such, it's erm, different to that

Bodywork will be lovely when it's done, I've missed having the car looking smart.

Ticcy: bring a booster seat at new years boyo, we'll go for a play

[Pashley26]

Robin I need my flywheel, go buy me one.

Prawn I need the clutch plate haha.

[george_seamons]

Your need to come to Snetterton has just increased ten fold.

DO IT!!!

[Pashley26]

Clutch went on the Audi 52 minutes ago, made one phone call to a friend of mine and TNT are collecting a lightened G60 flywheel and new VR6 clutch with pressure plate within the next 3 hours for delivery tomorrow before 11AM.

All for free.

f**k I love my friends.

Edited November 21, 2012 by Pashley26

[Pashley26]

Bloody awesome, clutch is collected and will be with me by 11AM.

And I've had an offer to have the clutch fitted for free by a friend of mine who works in an independent VAG garage.

The long and short of it? This is what being on forums, being part of a scene and having a select group of friends all with their hearts in the right place is all about. When things like this happen it restores my faith in humanity, and it's the reason I love owning the cars I do and the friends I have.

[dann2707]

Agreed! It's how I find most of the people on here especially on group rides or whatever. Will do anything to help you out if your bike isn't working etccc Nice feeling.

[Andeee]

Sorry could not resist they look so alike lol.

@Prawn

Your Audi must of had a lot of beans spent on it. How long have you had it? Seems to be progressing each time you put a update up. I love the black and orange theme.

Edited November 21, 2012 by Andeee

[RobinJI]

Bloody awesome, clutch is collected and will be with me by 11AM.

And I've had an offer to have the clutch fitted for free by a friend of mine who works in an independent VAG garage.

The long and short of it? This is what being on forums, being part of a scene and having a select group of friends all with their hearts in the right place is all about. When things like this happen it restores my faith in humanity, and it's the reason I love owning the cars I do and the friends I have.

Awesome, really have got to love the generosity within the car/bike scene. Is there anything else you need instead of the flywheel, as I'm guessing another one won't be of much use to you now!? Speaking of generosity, I've borrowed some wheels for the Scirocco until I can get my new ones down from North wales, it'll look silly, but it'll be road legal, which is the main thing right now. I've also potentially managed to get some rather nice brakes dirt cheep, just need to see if I can make them fit.

Prawn, you know my feelings, simply awesome, can't wait to see it over Christmas.

[David]

Anyone own a Focus ST170 or a normal 2.0L Petrol?

[Pashley26]

I've been in one and driven one a couple of times, what you want to know?

Dann2707whatever it is will probably be your best bet.

Awesome, really have got to love the generosity within the car/bike scene. Is there anything else you need instead of the flywheel, as I'm guessing another one won't be of much use to you now!? Speaking of generosity, I've borrowed some wheels for the Scirocco until I can get my new ones down from North wales, it'll look silly, but it'll be road legal, which is the main thing right now. I've also potentially managed to get some rather nice brakes dirt cheep, just need to see if I can make them fit.

Prawn, you know my feelings, simply awesome, can't wait to see it over Christmas.

I don't really care about the flywheel now I've got a complete clutch kit for free with a flywheel. I'd have had to of paid for a pressure plate anyway so I guess I've not lost out at all

Might come and see the Scirocco next week whilst I am off, I'll drop you a text when I'm on my way back from Basingstoke and see if you're about. Could be worth stopping by for the afternoon and cleaning it to death if the weather is ok?

[Dan6061]

Lows.

[RobinJI]

Sounds good Jardo, I've got nothing planned for next week except tinkering and job hunting. It'd be awesome if you fancied having a go at it, although it'll still be on the borrowed wheels, which I think are going to look a little silly. High offset and being painted white on a white car will not be a good look! Unfortunately there's a couple of patches of paint that were cracked by people knocking it outside work, and being sat without attention have started to bubble, so the paint's never going to be perfect, I'm sure you can still improve how it looks 10 fold though!

There's a few nice area's to grab some shots of the A3 and Scirocco too if you wanted.

[Danny]

Anyone own a Focus ST170 or a normal 2.0L Petrol?

My old man had a 2.0l Ghia and now has a ST170

As for the ST:

• Lookout for rust under the rear window
  
• Lambda sensors have a habit of going
  
• The wheels will probably need a refurb unless they have already been done
  
• Stick to the original continental tires, tried yoko's and it tramlined pretty bad
  
• The dash backlight can flicker
  

He's also had problems with the power steering going notchy and some unit that opens some butterflys in the inlet manifold im not sure exactly what.

Saying that he's probably had it 7-8 years now and it gets very little looking after.

Oh and don't bump it if it has xenon lights. They are about £600 each.

And get a 3 door because 5 are just ugly