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The Car Thread


MadManMike

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A chap who lives next door to my Mum has one with some fancy pipes on it (Vortek rings a bell?), and he likes to start it up and leave it ticking over for a few minutes on crisp, cold, winters mornings while it warms up. Burble burble burble...

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I mentioned the Nissan Stagea and Mitsubishi Galant VR4 a few pages back, both are far from slow. The Stagea is god awful to look at, but I'm quite a fan of the Galant.

Galant is the saloon...Legnum is the estate.

A friend of mine has a Legnum VR4, and its awesome. 2.5l twin turbo 4WD with 280bhp. SO much grip its unreal, and goes surprisingly well for its weight!

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Fair enough, I can never keep up with which names are JDM, which are UKEM and which are variations within the model range. What's wrong with just having one name :lol:

Duncy, under the skin my Scirocco's basically a mk1 golf GTI with a mk2 1.8 driver engine. (Well, it used to be). It was fine as a daily, great fun, surprisingly cheep to insure and fairly reliable. It did have it's issues, but then I'm pretty sure a previous owned had thrashed the bollocks off it one too many times. The carb's can be problematic, but fitting a Weber which is a direct replacement is easy and cheep enough, and basically fixes all the problems. In terms of MPG, with the weber on mine I used to get mid to high 30's driving sensibly, a golf will be similar, or slightly worse if anything. Might be worth looking at a Scirocco if you don't mind the small back seats, they're noticeably cheaper to buy and insure, and more fun to drive in my opinion.

Edited by RobinJI
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Well I've just got a pleasant quote on a 1.8. I'm not fussed about fuel economy cause I get bits of my fuels billed payed.

Going to have a look at this tomorrow evening or at the weekend. Gunna get my workmate to come with me who knows his golfs better than his two hands.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/mk2-golf-/221164757773?_trksid=p5197.m1992&_trkparms=aid%3D111000%26algo%3DREC.CURRENT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D14%26meid%3D4086838841303954571%26pid%3D100015%26prg%3D1006%26rk%3D1%26sd%3D221164757773%26

(That bonnet will want painting! I can do that myself for free at work though)

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That Golf looks ideal. Looks to me like it's got the weber carb I was talking about already on it too. Glad you'd paint the bonnet though! If the insurance is good then go for it, there is noticeably more space in the Golfs, especially in the back. I used to be able to get a 24 or a short stock in the back of mine with both wheels on. I still miss that car.

I got a few photos of the Scirocco this afternoon after giving it a quick clean to remove a years worth of barn-crap and oily finger-prints. Can't wait to get my new wheels on:

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Ive just came from the s4 avant and although quick and very capable ive got to say i would go with a bmw anyday of the week, after living with the audi for 6 months the build quality started showing, that old saying they dont make them like they used to.

Ive had a few german cars now and some people swear buy their reliability were i have had the exact opposite with them.

Dont go with any auto boxes either as ive heard a few kicking out big bills.

My advice go jap dont look back.

Adam your more than welcome to have a go of mine and see how rewarding they are to drive through the twisties ;)

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And bound to break at least twice a month.

Have you owned a Alfa Jardo? Mine was bloody brilliant, yes the build isn't great; but like any car if you service it when it's supposed then they run just fine. It's when people leave cam belts and tensioners too long between changes that things tend to go wrong. That and the variator cost a fair chunk if it goes. Other wise i'd say it's not really any worse than anything not German.

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I haver personally only owned one alfa, a 155. It was a sack of turd and I sold it within two days, I was given it for free and knew it was broken so I cannot really count that.

However my mum has had Alfas for the last 10 years, she had a 156 first, then a 156JTD Turismo and then two 159JTDM Turismo's. Her current 159JTDM Turismo is being handed down to me next year when she gets her next company car allowance.

The first 156 kept having wiring faults, the indicators would flash with the horn and the hazard lights would make the headlights and interior light flash.

The second 156 had a terrible gearbox whine after 11,000 miles and had a new one under warranty. The next year the rear calipers seized on at 75mph on the motorway.

The first 159 however was epic and she still owns it today (it is the one I will be getting) it has faultlessly done 140,000 miles however last month she lost 4th gear and it is going to a specialist in Oxford for a clutch and gearbox in January. The only other issues is at 4 years old she had never ever had one person sit in the back of the car once (Prawn when she gave us a lift back from the beer festival) and the stitching on the seats rotted and the box pleating went flat.

The last 159 she had was a good car, but she used a halves and thirds term to end the finance early and return the car because Alfa service refused to replace the transmission fluid under warranty after two years and 53,000 miles because they said it was a servicable item and she would need to be charged. Even though the gear lever felt like stiring a bowl of water.

Don't forget I actually work at a Fiat/Alfa dealer, so I get the annoyed customer phone calls when their 62 plate cars are driving themselves haha.

Cracking cars to drive when they work; but I wouldn't want to own one long term. I love driving my mums 159, it is brilliant as a car. Which is why she has kept paying to fix it, in her mind it is worth it.

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Absolutely awesome to see the Rocco back on the road! I love that car :)

Two questions for you dude: how have you got your DV piped up currently? I can't see any sign of it in those pics at all? Did you want a stock working OEM DV? I've got one in the garage, I thought I gave you one, but perhaps not.

other question: how are the crazy clocks in use? they look so freaky with the needles passing each other as the revs and speed go up! Must take some getting used to!

Any pics of it inside now it's finished?

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If you want a 007p instead of OEM I have got one you can have for £50 Robin, has a green yellow and blue spring as well as shims.

Leaks a little with the green spring but is fine with the yellow spring+. If you want it I can deliver it to you on Friday and pimp the Scirocco at the same time.

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That's fair enough Jardo, personally i've only ever had 2 Alfas, but between me my mum and my dad it's a whole lot more. A 155 cloverleaf, a 155 Q4, a couple 33 cloverleafs, a V6 75, a GT Junior, a 146 cloverlead and 2 145 cloverleafs; only 1 has gone wrong where the tensioner disintergrated and caused the cam belt to jump. Luckily it was only at idle and caused very little damage.

Apart form that they've all been brilliant, I loved my 145 Cloverleaf to bits; it was crap inside, but the engine and handling made up for it. Sounds like we were fairly lucky though!

Fed up of the beemer already, going to get a few bits sorted and give it some love and sell it on. Looking at an Octavia VRS estates, looking at something around an 03 plate, what's to look out for? Probably have around the 2-2.5k mark to spend.

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Luke, I'd be up for coming down, but these wheels are seriously horrid at any speed above 60, I guess I could head down slowly but it'd be a pretty boring drive! I'm going to go and get them balanced in a second to see if it makes any real difference but I'm pretty sure they're just bent.

Jardo, I may well take you up on that offer of the Forge one, but I need a little time to financially recover from putting it back on the road first, it's left me a little broke!

Nick, the BOV is plumbed into the pipe from the turbo to the intercooler, it's why the centre bit of pipe's black, because that's steel pipe so I could weld an output onto it. (Didn't have time to mess around with practicing aluminium welding with this project). The signal line comes from a T in the brake servo pipe (before the 1 way valve!)

The clocks aren't too bad. The speedo's not actually wired in yet because I'm lazy and happy enough knowing what revs in what gear equate to the common speed limits, so they don't pass each other. I don't find it too odd, but I do keep shifting at 5k, because it looks like that's where the scale ends even though it's just the trip computer interrupting it! The fuel gauge is all over the place too. I wired it up on the off-chance it might work at least slightly, but it doesn't really. I'll probably look at fitting a Passat sender into my tank sometime but for now it's a fairly big tank (52l) and a fairly frugal engine, so I should be able to make do estimating it.

I forgot to put this picture on here:

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You can just about see the BOV in this picture, it really is ridiculous! Pipework comes out of the underside of the intercooler pipe for neatness:

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Edited by RobinJI
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