tomfromthenorth

:sad: Daffy you have put me to shame, mine look like Jeremy Clarkson did it. On the long list of things to sort out I have just added "sort out the horrendous hacked up mess that is your boot lining Tom you scruffy pup" :lol:

Mate a zed is a difficult car to own. I would only advise one as a second car, mine was a daily driver for about 7 months and it was expensive. Fortunately I could afford it but it was cheaper to run a second car than simply a zed alone, I hated putting a lot of miles on the car and oil changes every 1000/2000 miles meant I was doing it monthly. I don't want you to think I have a downer on the whole idea, but I would reccomend buying one as a second car. Something like a mk1 mx5 for a grand as well as a £2000 NA is a better idea than buying a twin turbo alone, or a new hyundai i10 or a vw fox or whatever. All of these things the mx5 would be a lot better than the zed. -short journeys -fuel economy -insurance and service costs -parking (a zed is quite a big car) -driving in the wet and snow It would save you over a year at least the £1000 it cost to buy, that money could go into the zed, you would learn a lot about your zed and it would be all the more rewarding for it having worked on the car. The mx5 would teach you a bit about rwd without biting you hard, as a zed may during the learning process. If you do simply buy a zed and go for it, I hope you played a lot of Gran Turismo and have plenty of self control. A zed with a soft back tyre or 4 different "nobrand" tyres, or daft camber, or rock hard coilovers as a lot of them have will be a skittery sod come winter time.

I don't know what to advise here Stephen, half of me is really sensible and half of me bought a 300zx :lol: I want to say don't do it, it will cost a lot of money, even if you are a natural and skilled driver they have a learning curve like the side of the Shard and provide a LOT of rope to hang yourself with. The other part of me wants to say, petrol prices are only going one way, life is short, you should do what you want to do. On ballance Stephen, coming from someone who bought a 2.8 capri at 19 and on a daily basis alternates between cringing at the grief it caused me and smiling hard at how awesome a time I had... I don't think you should buy a Twin Turbo, perhaps an NA wouldn't be as bad but a TT definitely has potential to empty your bank account and get you into trouble. If you weren't so far away mate I would show you my car, the fact that most of the engine is in the passenger footwell should hopefully scare you off :wink: I had a Citroen AX as a first car and it was amazing, not because it was a good car, just because it was my car, my first car and changed my life forever. :clover:

When I got my car Terry it was dangerously hard, I had snap oversteer so quickly wet and dry. I gave it to Jeff at Zedworld tk look at and he said all 4 corners were different pre loads, heights and damping settings. He set my pre load and height and I set the damping. When i got 18 inch wheels I had to raise the ride to stop them catching the arches and with that had to change the damping a lot too. But I have never changed my pre load, so Jeff is your man it seems for that because it is lovely. Mine is quite tall at the rear and small adjustments mad a big difference to the feeling of the car's pivot point. Tipping it further and further forwards at one point I was driving a capri again! All of these changes make things like tyre side wall height and pressure more sensitive.

When I got my car Terry it was dangerously hard, I had snap oversteer so quickly wet and dry. I gave it to Jeff at Zedworld tk look at and he said all 4 corners were different pre loads, heights and damping settings. He set my pre load and height and I set the damping. When i got 18 inch wheels I had to raise the ride to stop them catching the arches and with that had to change the damping a lot too. But I have never changed my pre load, so Jeff is your man it seems for that because it is lovely. Mine is quite tall at the rear and small adjustments mad a big difference to the feeling of the car's pivot point. Tipping it further and further forwards at one point I was driving a capri again! All of these changes make things like tyre side wall height and pressure more sensitive.

On the limit daft driving aside for a minute, if it is really stiff or really soft it doesn't feel that uncomfortable, if you have it too stiff at one end however, it feels awful. You get like a high frequency jiggle as either the nose or tail over damps a bump. If the back is too firm I feel it in the small of my back as an unpleasant jiggle. With your ARBs, you can get firm cornering without setting the coilovers to the shopping trolley end of their adjustment. Enjoy the shorty Si :D

On the limit daft driving aside for a minute, if it is really stiff or really soft it doesn't feel that uncomfortable, if you have it too stiff at one end however, it feels awful. You get like a high frequency jiggle as either the nose or tail over damps a bump. If the back is too firm I feel it in the small of my back as an unpleasant jiggle. With your ARBs, you can get firm cornering without setting the coilovers to the shopping trolley end of their adjustment. Enjoy the shorty Si :D

Being a shorty it will probably be more sensitive to changes, with less of a lever I imagine the settings will be closer together, you get coilovers specific to the swb don't you? Perhaps go a bit softer with the car being lighter.

Being a shorty it will probably be more sensitive to changes, with less of a lever I imagine the settings will be closer together, you get coilovers specific to the swb don't you? Perhaps go a bit softer with the car being lighter.

I have holes in my boot liner because I found it took a lot of experimenting to get it right. I change mine all the time +/- 1 or 2 clicks. They are broadly set something like stiff -15 clicks front stiff -10 clicks rear If you set them in the middle 15/30 you will be able to tune the front to make it ride nicely. Pre-load and length make a big difference too. Go for the middle on damping, it's a great feeling messing with your settings then having the car behave just how you want it to. :clover:

I have holes in my boot liner because I found it took a lot of experimenting to get it right. I change mine all the time +/- 1 or 2 clicks. They are broadly set something like stiff -15 clicks front stiff -10 clicks rear If you set them in the middle 15/30 you will be able to tune the front to make it ride nicely. Pre-load and length make a big difference too. Go for the middle on damping, it's a great feeling messing with your settings then having the car behave just how you want it to. :clover:

That sounds grim mate "hear their fate" is it the sound of someone opening a packet of pancakes :lol:

No it is not Steve :biggrin: doing the job above is very nearly an engine swap anyway, I learned a lot doing it and have a lot of new bits that would clip onto a new block, injectors, intercoolers... ... its quite a list.

Cheers steve :clover: I think it's ok, it was running fine when I shut it off, so long as it didn't then warp sat hot. I can't be on with an engine swap :pinch:

Haha, dunno Si, if the engine has taken the heat without leaving the head looking like a poppadom I will consider myself very lucky. It isn't long Gary, back on the 10th of January.

Oh and an important warning. If you get the battery light with no symptoms (I also got "anti lock" light) you may have lost a belt! I realised after about 2 minutes of head scratching. In our game, we have flight reference cards to help us get to the bottom of things, in this case I think that they would have read... Battery warning caption illuminated Immediate actions Reduce speed to min power, achieve safe flight. Check for dangerous indications. No other symptoms Land as soon as practicable Subsequent actions If you have one or more of the following: Rising oil/water temperature No/cooling heater output Steam Heavy steering Clattering from the engine bay Land immediately I updated my emmergency from "that is odd" to "maximum ****!" When I turned the heaters up to full because the oil temp hit 90 and they blew cold!

I got it fixed by the way, then it blew up (exageration) The issue was a small air leak I think making it run a bit rich and sooting up the engine. I found it needed a bit of a post assembly re torque having had a few heat cycles. I also cleaned and re gapped the plugs and put some fancy red ex through as it was chimney levels of sooty. Then after 20 perfect miles the water pump bearing collapsed it threw the belt and overheated. My oil temp showed it go from 80 (when it threw the belt) to 116. This was in about 4 miles that were driven at minimum load, sort of 60mph in 5th min throttle then the car was immediately turned off. It dumped all it's water in about 2 miles. It is probably fine but may be nadgered. I promise I will put pics up some time, very bloody busy here trying to clear work and get to the Falklands.

I imagine there will be a performance island and if you go too big it will start to get laggy. That may be 6 inches for all I know but it may not be any advantage over 2.5.

I have just fitted a second hand S2 ptu to a brand new loom. Looking at the plugs they are all the same. I think it will just be the weakest cylinder on a 'not new' engine that can't quite cope with the poor conditions before the others. Keep the ideas coming please guys.

Having recently had all mine out and back on, you would be playing tetris trying to get 3 inch pipes under the bonnet!

I found this really good guide for reading spark plugs. http://honda-tech.com/forced-induction-16/***-basics-reading-spark-plug***-3063102/ I must get this sorted, I fly south on the 20th! I gave myself some headroom on the build for exactly this sort of thing but it's getting pretty close. My plugs are all sorts of wrong! Soot on the ring indicates rich, I couldn't see signs of det but think the timing looked about right. I will take any and all advice guys.

That is the only silver lining at the minute, that it isn't, a ring, a valve, a piston... I hope the map hasn't gone wibble after the ECU was disconnected, or that the injectors are somehow wrong. A mix up at czp and I got NA 270s or something. 1) Timing 2) Air leaks 3) Fuel filter even though it is nearly new 4) Reduce spark plug gaps from 0.9 to 0.6 which is where the last ones were The MAFs both upset the engine's running when they are unpluuged, not to say they are fine but they certainly are working to some degree.

Imagine the cool crisp air and the beautiful off beat warble of a 5 cylinder engine. And here is a pic of the plugs, the clean one I wiped clean as it was exactly the same as the other 5.

Hello again, well the car is back together and runs. It wasn't an easy job, but all the same wasn't rocket science. Poor access and 2.5inch hard pipes with tricky nut/bolt and jubilee positions being the greatest obstacle. And a loom designed to fit any car made ever, but none of them particularly well! Short and long in all the wrong places. Anyway, photo deluge to follow but for now we must deal with the crocodile that is closest to the canoe. It is misfiring and running badly. Symptoms, Soot out the back. Big miss and stumble as it comes on boost. Awful bag of crisps noise arround 3500rpm plugs that are clean bright white with deposits on the ground electrode and soot on the collar. intermittent 5 cyl running after misfire if left to idle. Good things new injectors. new fuel filter. new plugs bcr8es @0.9mm. no air leaks. no error codes. new loom. drives beautifully (sometimes) All the datascan readings appear good. I will buy a timing light and check that first, even though it has not been disturbed, the cas is still where it was and the datascan reads 15 btdc. Then plug gaps back to 0.6mm Then I don't know please help me :lol:

Good man :thumbup1: