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The Car Thread


MadManMike

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Seeing how tight your gearbox looks makes me realise how dead mine has gotten....
Its been leaking gearbox oil for the last 2 months after hitting a pile of loose chippings on a blind bend. Now its a whiney sloppy mess. :(

Other news, i got more bodykit parts! need to start cutting and bending the sheet metal for the rear diffuser, and once the front parts have arrived its getting a full respray. No more 50 shades of yellow.
New wheels but im either selling them or waiting for summer and selling the current ones.

Also in relation to the IG car villan fad:
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Plate got eaten up by snow
Car is Flithy

Supreme sunstrip is retarded but i love it.
Car is WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY too high.
Frontbumper is a mess.

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The Mrs had a 306tdi when we lived in Cornwall, picked it up for £350 from the local scrappy and apart from smoking like the end of the world on startup that thing was awesome and completely bombproof, used to rag the shit out of it, pull heavy trailers around and commute to Nottingham and back (on one tank usually) without ever skipping a beat, went pretty well too! 10/10, would buy another.

/coolstory

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I absolutely love it. 

£250.00 and it’s in great shape, the list of what it’s had done over the years is massive. It’s had anything it’s ever needed. 

 

I fixed the boost leak tonight: 

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Proper bodged, factors don’t list that seal. Chopped a bit out, filled groove with silicone, replace cut seal shortened to suit, smear sealant round inlet, fit. 100% leak free haha. 

Twiddled with the rpm limit in an effort to make it less restricted by lack of fuel up top, and wound the boost fuel compensator valve out a turn too. It really takes off now! Hilariously fun for an old diesel. Need to pop in a boost gauge to make sure I’m below 20psi, anything above and things start breaking. Already looking at different turbos and a Bosch pump for more boosts :ermm: 

 

Powerflow rear box is coming out in favour of the 2.5” stainless tube I’ve found to fill the gap for more turbo diesel whistles 

 

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Just got home from a 12 hour aux-belt change on the e36 :o

On the bright side, it's successfully fixed the horrible rattle/sqeak the car had at low revs, on the down side.. 12 hours!!! 

Everything came apart fine, besides the fan removal tool I'd bought being a 36mm, when it needed to be 32mm, but a quick chop and weld and it became 32mm anyway. Oh, and the tensioner needed a 'tool' making to release it, in the form of a 1.5m length of box with 2 old head-bolts in it. 

Once the fan' off, there's no shortage of space at the front of the engine in 4-pot BMW's :lol:

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Once the belts were off, it was clear what was making all the noise, the belt tensioners pivot had warn to the point that the tensioners idler wheel was skimming the back plate of the crank pully. The tensioner needed a 17mm allen key to remove it, which I don't have, so I welded a 17mm bolt to the handle end of the fan removal tool which did the trick nicely. Removing the tensioner showed why it was sitting so out of line; the peg it rotates on was badly warn at an angle. Oh yeah, getting this peg out of the tensioners arm needed a 50mm socket, I don't have one, so some time with the welder and some 3mm plate later I did have one. 

A quick check on real OEM and the new part's £120 and wouldn't be here until January. Sod that! I threw the peg in the lathe, skimmed a couple of mm off it then bored out some tube to a snug fit and chemical metalled it on. I let it cure while I changed the oil, then chucked it back in the lathe and turned the O.D. back down to the right size. Job done, time to throw it back together.

Before (well, after a 1st pass in the lathe, excuse the embarrassing state of the lathe!) 

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After: 

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I got as far as having the belt back on with all the bolts in, then when I tried to torque the bolt that holds the tensioners idler pully to the arm, it just span. Balls, off it comes again, luckily I had helicoils to hand, so it was easily sorted. I assembled things to exactly the same point I got to before, then as I torqued up that same bolt, a loud crack preceded a chunk of aluminium hitting the floor. The end of the arm had split off around the bolt hole! As I removed it to inspect the damage another chunk fell off the other end of the arm! Lots of swearing later and wondering how the hell it was going to get home (my unit/workshop's about 7 miles from home), I decided the best option I had was to remake the whole bloody arm in steel.

I dug a length of an old baluster out of my off-cuts pile, which almost had the right I.D. for the pivot 'pin' I'd already fixed. It was close, but still needed slitting, squeezing smaller, welding closed again, then boring out in the lathe to get it to the right size. Then after some time cutting and bending 3mm steel plate, I welded it up and had a new tensioner arm! 

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It took a couple of test fits to get the pully sitting spot on, but luckily from that point on everything actually went smoothly, and the arm seems to work well. 

I'm bloody knackered, but it's so nice to finally not have any dodgy noises coming from it! The rattle had been there for a while, slowly getting worse while I struggled to work out where it was coming from. I was worried it could be the DMF, so I'm relieved not to be forking out ~£200 for a new one!

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They are ridiculously useful, I'd have been completely screwed without the lathe and welder yesterday. I'd have needed to get a friend to come and get me, get a dealership to order the part next day for God knows how much money, then get a lift or dig out the road bike to collect the part and go fit it. Not to mention leaving my car in the way of the guys I share the unit with. 

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I’d f**k euro off and see if someone does a single mass conversion kit for your car mate. 

 

306 has thrown an interesting development my way. Raised it on the lift to perform exhaust surgery ( ruined it, silencer goes back on tomorrow ) and the axle was hanging down by the two forward most bushes only, the rear ones have just peeled off from the backings haha. Great. 

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Done loads to the mx5 so going to do a lazy copy-paste from Nutz

As the roof decided to drop copious amounts of water into my passenger footwell, I invested in a new mohair in near perfect condition for £60

 

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Engine bay looking sorry for itself...note the surface rust on chassis rails. Decided it would be safest not to investigate just yet  whistle.gif

 

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What lies beneath?

 

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heatshield looking pretty heavily oxidised

 

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Very grotty cam cover.

 

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Decided that the bay needed a tidy up ; so painted the cam cover and radiator brackets with metallic purple VHT paint ,  fitted a crankcase breather and made a new oil filler cap at work ( CNC machinist by trade ) and sprayed the chassis rails and other bits and bobs.

 

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Cam cover whilst painting.

 

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Fresh off the mill

 

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Managed to get the pregnant Mrs involved in spraying / polishing the turd.

 

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Chassis rails after some hammerite spray black

 

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Found a water leak that was causing me to lose about 500ml a week. Fearing the worst i had a good scout round and found this excellent bodge. Snapped tee piece with zip ties holding it in place yuk.gif

 

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Decided to change the Cambelt, water pump and fix the above.

 

 

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Decided I really wasn't a fan of the original Jasper Conran wheels so thought a change was in order. Picked up these on the cheap from a local buy/sell page at £95

 

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Maybe a tad chunky tyres  whistle.gif

 

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Fancied modifying the standard reflectors into US spec daytime running lights.

 

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Managed to find some cheap Tein coilovers, fancied rebuilding them as I work at a hydraulics company.

 

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Thought I'd do some more aesthetic improvements so removed the numberplate and its nasty plinth ( found about 4 sets of holes  rant.gif )

 

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Found a breaker Mx5 on the way up country to see some family so made a detour and grabbed some mint wings , mk2.5 rear lights , bootlid lights wheel nuts and a full airbox setup for £70. Locally managed to source a rear bootlid to replace my rotted one for £15

 

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Fancied some pressed plates as thats what I run on my Audi. Not very JDM etc, but I like the look of it. 

 

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Fancied de-tangoing the headlights, blacking them out and polishing the lenses. While I was in charge of the sprog for an evening I got busy with the heat gun.

 

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Much better

 

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Chucked one of those silly towstraps on too

 

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Had a quick nosey around the suspension whilst sorting a dragging brake caliper for my MOT ( she passed! somehow  drool.gif ) and found a hell of a lot of surface rust, knackered bushes and not a sign of any original paint. 

 

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Found a polybush kit and got it paid for ( £65 Flo-flex kit ) with ARB bushes. Started ripping arms off, and ran into many seized bolts , rounded heads and general bollocks. Eventually got them all off. Note bolt seized into front suspension shock and window cut into arm next to lower arm captive nut.

 

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Started pressing out bushes at work , turned up some tube and bar to press them out perfectly squarely.

 

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It turns out that they were that seized into the arms that just by pressing them out I managed to flare about 80% of the housings  wallbash.gif

Fantastic.

Only found this out after getting a mate to sandblast them all and etch prime them.

 

Tried to source some more, but ended up with a choice of paying £80 for some more ( and having to press out all bushes again , blast and prime ) or turning new housings and welding my original arms. opted for the latter.

 

Cue a 6pm-2am stint after work turning housings, making guides and cutting and welding.

 

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 Housings were 45/40 tube. Turned some new from 40/50 and drilled for a grease nipple/

 

Measured up and made some spreaders to go in-between the housings , slid some 40 dia. hydraulic chrome bar to align and tacked it to the arm with a piece of scrap plate.

 

Once tacked I ground the original welds off, and tapped off the original housings. Tapped new ones onto the chrome bar and tacked 4 corners onto the arms. I removed the chrome bar and MIG spotted the new housings on.

 

Turns out the lower arms are a b*****d and took about 4 times as long to gut the welds out  dinosaur.gif

 

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I tapped in some polybushes and dropped the long bolt through the Upper Front arms to check alignment and was pleasantly suprised  woohoo.gif

 

Took all the arms to my garage, cleaned up , welded up any grinder marks and plated the window in the lower rear arm. Then sprayed them all with UPOL Raptor truck liner ( amazing product ) the finish looked great, super pleased.

 

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Now they were all refurb'd I built up the rear subframe and bushed the lot. Red Lithium grease used, so hopefully no squeaks.

 

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Big improvement.

 

I knocked up a mandrel at work to chuck up my new rims, spent a few hours polishing up the scabby lacquer back to bare alloy.

 

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Before and after .... just need some new centre caps and to touch up the powdercoat in the centres.

 

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One damaged wheel that needed some TLC

 

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Had some free lunch breaks at work so knocked up a new gearknob to replace the worn painted silver one. ( Quite fancied the 911 font, although not exactly jap )

 

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Also made a handbrake lever 

 

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One sad looking Mx5 and one clean Audi.

 

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7 hours ago, Luke Rainbird said:

Cracking progress, Alex. Very envious of your access to (and skills with...) Decent workshop equipment! Car's in a far better state now than the start of those posts for sure (Y)

Thanks man , I’ll take that as a complement. I’m pretty lucky where I work ! It’s getting there still needs loads 

2 hours ago, MadManMike said:

Speedy work dude, nice!

Thanks man , so looking forward to getting it out on a track next year 

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Had a productive couple of days, managed to get the arms back on the front end and some wheels on at long last.

 

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Found that I didn't have enough time to rebuild the Tein shocks, so picked up these nice BC racing in pretty immaculate condition ( barring some spring corrosion ). Planning on stripping the springs off and spraying with some UPOL raptor when i do the front subframe.

 

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Pulled the hubs/driveshafts off for a clean-up and paint. Ground the Disc guards off, wire brushed them thoroughly and gave them a lick of hammerite.

 

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Slight improvement.

 

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Built the Bc shocks to the subframe ready for installation.

 

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Had a bit of a nightmare fitting the subframe, lad that was going to help me bailed so I had to struggle with a trolley jack in the rain.

 

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Managed to get it bolted up with some persuasion.

 

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Quick shot of my bargain bucket seat; £15 from a charity shop of all places.

 

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Edited by Alex Dark
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