What have you done to your car today?

I moved the Mazda 3 and MX-5 onto their own policies, Ford Insure (admiral) multicar was cheap last year and quite good for mods but nothing was covered like for like which would leave me out of pocket in a big way should something happen.

There's nowhere else to moan about this so I'll do it here, one broker couldn't quote because the only underwriter that was competitive would not cover cars they knew were used for track days - despite the car not being covered on track their justification was that you'd be 'hyped up' driving home from track and cause an accident. Totally bizarre given someone sensible enough to take it track would leave it there... People that modify their cars for extra power for the road are obviously lower risk than people who do it for track :confused:

Anyway, £399 with Greenlight after a 10 min phonecall, all mods declared and covered like for like with any additional non power mods at no extra cost. Admiral quoted £450 at renewal. The Mazda 3 was £576 despite having 15+ years no claims, still cheaper than the £700 admiral wanted.
 
Changed the fuel pump and swapped the distributor cap back over to the old (better) one on the E30.

The fuel pump now seems much quieter, and the car cranks twice as fast, those must both be good signs haha. I should buy a brand new pump though, because the one I swapped over to is even older than the one I took off.

I suspect the old fuel pump was taking a lot more power than it was supposed to, resulting in the slow crank. The old one would also dip in speed when the engine RPM dropped, whereas this one doesn't seem to do that.

Not tested driven it yet though.
 
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Had car passed it's MOT. Advisory note that brake discs are worn (original ones from 2014) so went ahead with getting the front two replaced with the pads, along with a service of changing oil, brake fluid, various filters. £510 lighter.

Car has 34k on the clock and do short suburban journeys.
 
Fasten your seat timing belts! And trying some evaporust. Seems to be good stuff! Smells awful once it has eaten away at some rust.

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The old turbo. The new one has no perceivable play at all. And cleaned the RTV and gunk out of / off of the sump. In hindsight I should have used power tools, because my hands ache something fierce now. :p

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Did the most cursory of vacuums inside. Made quite a difference but I've definitely skipped a few crevices :p oh, and forgot to do the boot.
 
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Screen in my 2019 Astra K seems be dying/have died. I can source a replacement on eBay for £120 from the UK or from AliExpress for £60 from China. Not sure which one to go with in case it transpires its not the screen at fault..
 
Taxed both the RS6 (£700 :() and the Citroen C1 (£20 :)), realised I hadn't had a service done on the RS6 in the past 12 months so booked it in for a "Minor" (aka 10k mile) service in a couple of weeks time, and finally MOT'd the Citroen C1 for another year of 60mpg goodness! :)
 
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Plugged a puncture again because I CBA spending another £300+ on two new fronts after 4 punctures in 3 years. Will run the fronts through to summer now as plenty of tread left. Bring the hate.
 
Gilbert89 said:
Drove it too fast and potentially have been caught speeding.

On my way into work doing 35 in a 30 and suddenly see a Camera Van :o
He was in the back, window open…

Only my own fault, could have been worse but hopefully with all the mythology applied and my Speedometer over reading I will dodge the bullet, unlikely I know!
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Not sure about anything modern, but older cars even stuff around the mid 2000's, is always 4mph in your favour, any Honda/BMW I've ever owned/driven, that has been the case versus GPS, and I have had your situation and got away with it, it's just the waiting and wondering, a mate of mine randomly got a speeding ticket a year later, so the myths you'll read online aren't always true.

Oh and FWIW if you have bigger than stock wheels on your car, that'll also put the speedo out a bit in your favour, there is a calculator online for wheels/tyres that you can work it out with versus factory spec.
 
keef247 said:
Not sure about anything modern, but older cars even stuff around the mid 2000's, is always 4mph in your favour, any Honda/BMW I've ever owned/driven, that has been the case versus GPS, and I have had your situation and got away with it, it's just the waiting and wondering, a mate of mine randomly got a speeding ticket a year later, so the myths you'll read online aren't always true.

Oh and FWIW if you have bigger than stock wheels on your car, that'll also put the speedo out a bit in your favour, there is a calculator online for wheels/tyres that you can work it out with versus factory spec.
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I don't know what "In your favour" means here but if you have bigger wheels then you'll be driving faster than standard wheels. Meaning the car speedo will be more likely to under read so you get an unexpected ticket.

4mph over sounds a bit sus also. My 2003 Yaris reads a percentage over GPS so it's 2mph at 20, but more like 3 at 30 and 5 at 60. If it was a straight 4 over, it would read 4mph when you're doing 0mph...
 
LuckyBenski said:
I don't know what "In your favour" means here but if you have bigger wheels then you'll be driving faster than standard wheels. Meaning the car speedo will be more likely to under read so you get an unexpected ticket.

4mph over sounds a bit sus also. My 2003 Yaris reads a percentage over GPS so it's 2mph at 20, but more like 3 at 30 and 5 at 60. If it was a straight 4 over, it would read 4mph when you're doing 0mph...
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As in if you're doing 30 you're actually doing 26. This is pretty common on analogue dial cluster cars. It's usually a given it's around 3-4 secs out.

Every car I've had I've always gone up an inch or two on wheel size and fitted wider wheels/tyres with a lower profile. The speedo has always continued to read under, as I purposely have checked this, even when I've run taller profile really wide tyres and rims, like going from a 7.5J to a 9.5-10J, it still has red under.

It maybe different on newer cars with digital tachos/calibration, but wasn't the case for anything I've ever built/tested/driven, they have all red the same 3-4MPH real world difference, in my favour.

It varies depending on the car, but all 5 of my E36's for example have been 3-4 MPH out in my favour, and all 4 of my Honda's have been the same, as have any of my mates E28/34/36/38/39 BMW's.

I've driven a lot of older cars and none that are older have ever been 1:1 with a gps/satnav, always said it was going faster than it was.

I know on newer cars you can recalibrate the digital tacho if you change wheels/tyre size.

I don't think it's sus at all, and I'm reasonably sure that is 1 of the reasons the 1-3mph leeway existed, as there is a variance on old cars.
 
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There's some confusion of terms being used describing over vs under reading I think.

Most cars, if not accurate, will over read slightly - they'll tell you that you're going slightly faster than you really are. They're absolutely not allowed to under read and tell you that you're going slower than you really are, so any margin of error from factory will tend towards over reading.

If you fit wheels with a larger rolling circumference, this would cause the speedo to begin to 'under read' by comparison to the standard size, as the car travels further per wheel rotation. Increase the size enough and this could result in the speedo actually under reading, even if it was slightly over reading to begin with.
 
Decided to take winter wheels off and put summer ones on - Never again - took me about 3 hrs what with neighbours coming to see what I was doing and main thing was my body - at my age it is a right pain in arm/shoulder/legs/knees and head .
I will take them to a tyre fitter next time. Will be £100 well spent.
Never in my life thought I would get to this stage of not being able to do basic jobs.
 
If you pay £100 to have a set of wheels swapped over you're uh... Yeah.

Don't do that.

Even if you mean changing tyres over on one set of rims that is extortionate. But swapping wheels over is 5 minutes work for a garage. Should be a tenner and a thankyou.
 
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