What have you done to your car today?

acemastr said:
What annoys you so much about the electric steering?
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That it broke :p

There's an issue somewhere in the system, I've diagnosed as much as I can without ripping the whole column apart and it seems a faulty torque sensor. It's not replaceable, but could technically be repaired. ECU testing wanted £450 to strip the column down and repair any issues they find, plus I have to pay to post a large and heavy column to them.

On the other hand, a mixture of new, refurbished and the odd used part lets me convert to hydraulic for roughly £400. I'm confident enough to do the work myself so no labour costs, just a weekend spent under the car!

So, logic said I've done a lot of work on this car and enjoy it, so I won't be selling soon. The electric steering is possibly the worst part of the car in terms of dynamics, so I'm using this opportunity to bin it. It'll be nice to have a roadster that doesn't have numb steering compared to an E46 compact...
 
My car has been on stands for the best part of a week.

Whiteline really let me down with the wishbone bushes, They sent me ones made for a Mazda 2 last week! But I should be getting some tomorrow, be it +0.5 caster ones.
I'm sure I won't notice the difference on the road.

I managed to weld in the flexi joint into the 2nd Decat pipe, this should allow for less stress to be placed on the new Sports catted 3" DP.
I just need to cut up a 3" to 3" joining tube so I can connect the 2nd decat to the rest of the exhaust.

I also changed the brake pads today and checked the discs and calipers for any issues which might be causing the off knock.

Hopefully tomorrow the car will be back on the road.
 
I know you think you are improving these cars but you seem to spend an awful lot of time and what must be money constantly replacing stuff that can't possibly need doing unless the thing was a shed to start with.

The more odds and sods you replace like that the more you discover / expose as being a bit weak. Would understand if you'd owned it a couple of years or it was 15 years old but likelihood is you'll spend a load of cash and time then just move it on and start again
 
rodenal said:
I know you think you are improving these cars but you seem to spend an awful lot of time and what must be money constantly replacing stuff that can't possibly need doing unless the thing was a shed to start with.

The more odds and sods you replace like that the more you discover / expose as being a bit weak. Would understand if you'd owned it a couple of years or it was 15 years old but likelihood is you'll spend a load of cash and time then just move it on and start again
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Yes well..

I found that one ball joint was dead, that what started the whole thing with the wishbones...! I changed them on both sides with OEM ones, then one of them decided to leak all its oil on the floor (oil filled bushes)
I thought it best to change them for Whiteline ones considering they won't fail again and were only £50 all in.

The exhaust was a modification to get more power, so wasn't a requirement, more of a want. I could have left the exhaust alone afterwards, but having read some people having issues with DP's cracking due to stress I felt it best to add a nice flexi joint, I did it myself so only cost £30 for flexi & Sleeve and my time.

Everything that's been done to the car has been done by myself, apart from the cam chain. So compared to some people my costs are minimal.

I'm now a teacher, so i have had a fair few weeks off, plenty of time to do DIY on the house and DIY on the car :D
 
Not my car, a mates RX7 but...

I've spent the best part of nearly three hours upside down in the passenger footwell trying to figure out the wiring from an Auto to manual conversion.

It should be a fairly simple task of cutting a connector off the old auto engine Loom and splicing it into the new manual engine Loom. Turns out it isn't so simple when the new manual loom if from Haltec for one of their Standalone ECUs and none of the wiring colors match
 
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Cba starting a new thread for this, but interesting article and video on the daily post (my local paper) today, depending on your perspective http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/dashcam-driver-a5-ogwen-valley-13550768

I don't see any "shockingly poor" driving to be honest except for around 28 seconds in. The overtake at the end is one I've made several times and visibility there is excellent, you can see for almost half a mile up the valley. Also, if he wasn't supposed to overtake there surely there would be solid white lines?

I also like how the article mentions "when the Boyes’ silver Peugeot car overtook him and a van in front, against solid centre white lines" but doesn't show that part which is supposedly the most dangerous thing. What it does show is the unmarked police car driving at 96mph on a 60mph limit road :eek: Pretty good when the next story down is about them throwing the book at someone doing 105mph on a 70mph dual carriageway...

In spirit of keeping things on topic, I will be driving along there tonight so will be keeping an eye out for sneaky rozzers :D
 
Recently they've downgraded a lot of that road from 60 to 40, the road is even more fun though if you keep the car between the lines :)
North Wales Police seem to be (cashing in) getting tough on car driving tourism, lots of marked cars on my last trip.
 
Wrapped my intake pipe and airbox with heat reflective tape...shame it's gold...

My crossover intake pipe sits right above my sports cat and turbo so accumulated quite a bit of heat. The airbox which is metal sits at the front of the engine bay but still managed to gather heat also so thought I'd do that as well. Shame it's gold but it's all hidden anyway...

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Looks a fairly neat job, what brand of heat wrap did you use? I used some silver zircoflex stuff to wrap the underside of my mx5 airbox, was pretty effective but that stuff was at the upper end of the price spectrum for that sort of product.
 
TBH I think for that to work well you would have to use it as heat shield. On something between the hot object and the one you want to keep cool.
 
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Will said:
Looks a fairly neat job, what brand of heat wrap did you use? I used some silver zircoflex stuff to wrap the underside of my mx5 airbox, was pretty effective but that stuff was at the upper end of the price spectrum for that sort of product.
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This was just some cheap stuff Ramair were selling on their ebay. Been eyeing up the DEI brand before but it’s eye wateringly expensive for something that I’m still sceptical about. The stuff I put on was £12 for 10m instead of £30-40.

I used just over 10m for both the crossover and Mountune airbox.
 
Nasher said:
TBH I think for that to work well you would have to use it as heat shield. On something between the hot object and the one you want to keep cool.
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Agreed! This was just something to try before doing something a bit more involved like that. The Mountune sports cat I have meant removing most of the heat shield cowling from the standard cat!
 
Put it through the MOT, no advisories for the 5th year running although it's now 9 years old, I'm hoping with good service and it not being abused, it'll go through the next 5 just fine.
 
Clov!s said:
Put it through the MOT, no advisories for the 5th year running although it's now 9 years old, I'm hoping with good service and it not being abused, it'll go through the next 5 just fine.
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One can hope. But you will find that bushing and ball joints will start to perish soon.
 
Clov!s said:
Put it through the MOT, no advisories for the 5th year running although it's now 9 years old, I'm hoping with good service and it not being abused, it'll go through the next 5 just fine.
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My 2007 mk2 Focus ST was like that, only advisory it ever had while I had it was for worn brakes. New owner has it over 100k miles and it's still clean every year.
 
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