What have you done to your car today?

Old BMWs, you'd have to be mad to own one

Yep. I thought only one of the hangers was knackered so bought one. I took the bumper off to do the job (much easier) and it revealed both of them gone so i'll have to order another one. The other one is still kind of in one piece but the outer one was totally ripped apart, torn, snapped, mangled, FUBAR. Stock backbox is very heavy on these so I guess it takes it's toll, they were ok 6 months ago though.

As for the smoke, never seen the car smoke before at all, hasn't done it since. Doesn't do it under heavy accel, or after a prolonged period of overrun, nor idling. Hopefully it is a one off, last night I shuffled the car around the drive 3 times only running the engine for seconds at a time. Think I flooded it a bit doing that as it stumbled into life on 5 cylinders. Will have to keep an eye on it, if the valve stem seals are giving up then that might be the straw that breaks the camels back.
 
Hmm, yesterday I checked the car all over for leaks and couldn't find any in preparation for the MoT coming up then I gave it a good wash, wax and hoover inside before having help with some electrical items.

I then re-installed the aerial and radio in it, making sure the aerial and wiring was okay before I fixed the monochrome time/date display. So now it looks all shiny but nowhere near perfect because of the stone chips and dents where people have opened their door on it or thrown things on the roof :( but never mind!
 
Hi there

Jaaaag was leaking oil into it's spark plug holes causing arking resulting in miss fires, so changed the internal gaskets today.

Couple of pictures what left hand bank of the Jaaaag/Ford V6 looks like:-

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Not a bad job took a couple hours taking it easy and slow. :)

Also changed wheels on Porsche to track wheels and rubber yesterday, shall post up some pics later.
 
Turns out when I reattached the caliper yesterday, I'd overtightened/cross-threaded one of the bolts holding the caliper bracket to the disc. Driving around the town late last night, horrible thunk noise followed by a grinding - pulled up straight away to find the whole caliper had twisted away from the disc on the remaining good bolt.

Queue a 40 minute wait for Green Flag, a stern lecture from him on the dangers of over-tightening, and a sheepish tow home. Luckily there was no damage done past scratching the inside of the alloy, which is due for refurbishment anyway.

So today, straight down to dads firm, where he drilled out the old bolt hole, fabricated a double threaded bush on the lathe, and found me a replacement bolt. Back on the car and it's good as new.

Engineer dads are awesome, although I'm not sure he liked spending his Sunday morning rectifying his noob son's mistakes :(

Old stripped thread...
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...drilled to 16mm, and a double threaded bushing in to form a new 12mm thread...
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...replacement bolt from the fasteners stock and hey presto.
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Lesson learnt - even if you expect a bolt to be tight, go easy and don't be a ham fisted ****** like me. Luckily I was only going slowly when the inevitable happened.
 
Hi there

Fitted the track wheels and cup tyres Saturday, pleasantly surprised how good they actually look:-

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Cup tyres are certainly stickier for sure. :D
More pictures in Porsche thread.
 
Sun is out & making the most of it. Not given the car a proper going over since it came back from the body shop. Wash, clay, wash, SRP (bonnet + boot) then wax.

The results? Fairly pleased given the age of these parts, all original paint here. The new rear quarters are as you would expect.

Door by NotPoshPete, on Flickr

Bonnet by NotPoshPete, on Flickr
 
Fitted a new jap-canon to the Accord on my own car.

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But most of the bank holiday weekend was spent helping a friend who was converting a Nissan S12 from auto to manual. Which was emotional at points but on the whole pretty straight forward!

Kind Regards

Alec
 
Fitted the bigger 282/262 (from 262/242) calipers a few weeks ago and on Saturday I upgraded from the 15/16 to 1" Master Cylinder to maintain the same pedal travel and a give a bit more oomph. Pain in the ass at times but it straight forward in the end. Only ruined by two bolts snapping for the seat and strut bar :mad: Couldn't of done it without a mate again, I didn't have the balls (cheers Jimmy)

Before
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All out, suprisingly clean
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Bench bleeding to prep the system
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The only way to remove the Master Cylinder, just take the seat out first
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The bigger system has a different line up so I followed the aged old internet advice: "Just bend it, it'll be reet" and it was :D
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And I appear to have not taken a picture of the finished result... but you get the idea.

Pedal travel is back to normal, I can heel and toe again. :)

TEGIWANK failed on delivering my braided lines or they'd have been done at the same time, I have RC5+ and MTEC blanks to go on when they do turn up however.
 
I did stacks of car stuff on Sunday, mostly on a friends car and then worked on the m3

Currently the m3 has the entire intake system in the boot and it's chucking down with rain. Going to have to deploy the gazebo to finish it today :@
 
Fitted a Zisco ram horn-style manifold and external wastegate kit to the Starlet, along with a decat. Unfortunately the top intercooler pipework that bolts to the turbo's compressor housing outlet no longer fits properly, the turbo must be at a slightly different angle than stock. No biggie, it was always a job to get the pipework to fit with the standard stuff anyway, a mate of mine should be able to cut and weld the pipework to make the angle better.

(Pics are massive so I've put them in spoilers)
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Also gave the car a wash and cleaned up the engine bay a bit. Excuse the cam cover, I need to do something with it soon, either paint it or polish it.

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Car decided to collect a screw at some point in the last week. Pumped the tyre up yesterday and it was down to 20psi today.

A quick trip to the tyre fitters and it's as good as new :D

Never had to have a tyre repaired before. Thankfully I didn't have to buy 2 more as these are brand new!
 
I did stacks of car stuff on Sunday, mostly on a friends car and then worked on the m3

Currently the m3 has the entire intake system in the boot and it's chucking down with rain. Going to have to deploy the gazebo to finish it today :@

On Sunday i had a friend pop round with his B5 S4, a really nice car but has started to show signs having a stuck caliper on the NSF.

He was popping over so we decided to have a look, which lead to a whole day of disassembling all the brakes "just in case" and also a couple hours hunting down an intermitent idle hiccup.

The brakes had been changed recently and in the usual professional mechanic way, the calliper or carrier was not cleaned up at all prior to the new pads going in.

The pads were as good as fused into place and i think the heat build up caused a piston to stick.

Everything was cleaned and refitted nicely, even the piston was freed up but a tear in the jacket on one piston means rebuild/new calliper time :(

Idle problem seems to have been due to the usual vac leak issues. All vac lines replaced, some hoses trimmed to allow the aftermarket, crappy, Forge dump valves to fit better

Then i tackled the M3. Changed some coolant lines, replaced a seal on the radiator drain plug and a new expansion tank cap be the cooling system fixed.

Then i decided i wanted to put a drop of oil in the fuel pressure reg, which involved the entire intake system coming out (a horrible job IMO)

On Monday we went away to see family, so i didnt get to touch the car until today, which meant reassembly in the rain because it will be needed for work tomorrow :D
 
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