nickz32

A little glimpse as to what I got up to yesterday

Another little job done. I made up a mounting plate for both the oil cooler and the Improved Racing remote filter mount. This is the “final draft” made with some Ali checker plate, which to be honest, is a bit flimsy (but free). I managed to get hold of a bit of aerospace grade 1.5mm ali sheet that I’ll make the finalised version from.

Potentially up for this... won’t commit before my car is actually running

First stage of the exhaust modification/custom build sorted. converted my expansion down pipes to V band (rest of the system will also be v band) shall be ordering the rest of the pipework needed for my exhaust in the coming weeks

A few more little jobs ticked off today. First up was the steering rack bushes. At a glance they looked ok, but on removal, they were clearly a little worse for wear. Easy job while the engine was out, so replaced with Energy Suspension bushings from Luke Then I should have cracked on with the sound deadening but just wasn’t feeling it, so ended up giving the viscous fan a good clean and removed the melted on black plastic from where the shroud had previously shifted and rubbed against it. Pleased to find no cracks in it and I think it looks virtually new after

Making a bit more progress with the sound deadening.... turns out my Mrs is much better at it than me!

Happy birthday buddy

Yes, 2 pack. Cellulose hasn’t been used since the late 70’s/early 80’s

Always 2pk.

2mm 40 pack. I’ve used 22 sheets so far, so should comfortably have enough to do the drivers side floor under the seat and around the rear wheel wells with what I have left

Road noise is annoying.... exhaust noise is awesome ?

Little bit of progress yesterday reassembling the engine. Waiting on a few parts to turn up that were missing before I can put the engine back in the car. I also pushed on with sound deadening the interior of the car. I took JoelyP’s recommendation and went for Silent Coat sound deadening. Hopefully it’ll do a nice job of cutting out some of the road noise for the 295 section rear tyres!

Then I got home and found more goodies had turned up. My back boxes turned up, Vibrant Street Power silencers (3” inlet 2x2.5” outlet). they’re REALLY nicely made and look awesome with the APR tips.... can’t wait to hear what they sound like

More goodies today! First up, I bought and fitted these Forge Motorsport’s turbo blankets. These tied with the ceramic coated hotside (manifolds, turbine housing/downpipes) should do a nice job of keeping engine bay temps down... whether there’s a performance benefit, who knows.... there has been a few papers published to suggest that there is, but I’m more interested in increasing the longevity of the hoses and loom around the hottest parts of the engine

Hopefully the first of many parts deliveries turned up to day. My Haltech elite managed to win the race with my engine and turned up first, aswell as the exhaust tips for my custom exhaust system These are APR TPK0006 exhaust tips. They’re 3.5” slash cut, double walled tips originally intended for APR’s Mk7 Golf R exhaust system. I think they should look bloody awesome.... not too big like R35 GTR tips but big enough to nicely fill the space in the back bumper. They weren’t cheap, but they’re REALLY nicely made, pics don’t really do them justice

If it keeps happening I might look at reinforcing that section of metal to stop it from bending. It looks like there would be plenty of room to weld a triangle on the back of it that should reinforce it sufficient

With the engine on its way back home, it’s spurred me on to sorting other bits and bobs on the car. the first was an irritating problem of the interior lights staying on regardless on door being open or closed. Even with the lights turned off and the boot light unplugged, it still drained the battery after a couple of days. I’ve had this problem since the car came back from the respray.... which was the first source of confusion as they didn’t remove anything that should have effected this electrical circuit After lots of checks, many messages with JoelyP, I managed to track the problem down to the boot switch. On removal and inspection the issue was obvious. The boot release hand had been pulled too hard, bending the mounting bracket. This meant that the rocker arm that breaks the electrical contact wasn’t getting the nudge it needed from the lock mechanism. A quick tweak on the vice and it was good as gold. I can only assume that whilst in the body shop when they’ve refitted the boot they’ve had an issue with the disengagement of the lock and pulled the lever too hard.

She’s coming home

And yes, you’ve read it incorrectly. Standard unleaded will still be called standard unleaded, just with 10% ethanol. All variants of Super Unleaded are staying 5% ethanol for the foreseeable future

An extra 5% in ethanol really isnt going to make THAT much of a difference. Yeah, it may be the final nail in the coffin for 25 year old + rubber fuel hose, but most of us should be replacing them by now anyway.

Box hill will be RAMMED with bikes on when the restrictions ease, I’d be astounded if you could get a single car in there, never mind a group

Considering what 48p’s cost before becoming NLA, that’s a bargain

Correct