01-09-2015, 12:58 PM
Well this is rather overdue an update! Not that there's been an awful lot happening with it, the missus has been driving it daily without too much trouble. Or at least not from the car; the missus moaned like f*ck lol. As such, come insurance renewal time we swapped - she now drives the nad and i'm in this.
Driving it daily i very quickly realised that the moaning wasn't entirely unfounded, tbf to madam. The already tired shocks had clearly passed the point of no return since i last drove it and the top mount bearings were getting a tad grindy. Plus the driveshaft replaced when i first bought the car has already split all its boots and gotten gritty inside... Not impressed with that, but it's outside of the years warranty so that's that. One quiet day at work last week i replaced the lot with some second-hand b4s, nearly new bearings and mount rubbers, and some actually new drop links and os driveshaft. Gave her a quick oil change while i was there, briefly considered changing the air filter before deciding it'd be much more fun to sack off the intake tract altogether. She now chirps, whistles and squalls like a good'un, all the more so thanks to the thoroughly knackered turbo.
Unfortunately while i was under the car i spotted a couple more issues. The front tyres are down to the wear markers, that's already been sorted with some lovely new ps3s. Of more concern was the rather large bubbly patch on the sill, which i pressed with a finger in the vain hope that it might just be a paint bubble... It wasn't, my finger went straight through the sill with ease and on closer inspection it's pretty severely rotted in that corner - after a thorough poking it seems the sill is almost completely split from the body and floorpan panels for best part of half a metre and is developing a lovely hole up further up the sill. I would ignore it until i take it off the road, but the mot is in three weeks and while my tester may be friendly he's not daft enough to let that go.
Hopefully i'll have some better news for the next update, i'll leave you with a picture of the moment i found the slight hole...
Driving it daily i very quickly realised that the moaning wasn't entirely unfounded, tbf to madam. The already tired shocks had clearly passed the point of no return since i last drove it and the top mount bearings were getting a tad grindy. Plus the driveshaft replaced when i first bought the car has already split all its boots and gotten gritty inside... Not impressed with that, but it's outside of the years warranty so that's that. One quiet day at work last week i replaced the lot with some second-hand b4s, nearly new bearings and mount rubbers, and some actually new drop links and os driveshaft. Gave her a quick oil change while i was there, briefly considered changing the air filter before deciding it'd be much more fun to sack off the intake tract altogether. She now chirps, whistles and squalls like a good'un, all the more so thanks to the thoroughly knackered turbo.
Unfortunately while i was under the car i spotted a couple more issues. The front tyres are down to the wear markers, that's already been sorted with some lovely new ps3s. Of more concern was the rather large bubbly patch on the sill, which i pressed with a finger in the vain hope that it might just be a paint bubble... It wasn't, my finger went straight through the sill with ease and on closer inspection it's pretty severely rotted in that corner - after a thorough poking it seems the sill is almost completely split from the body and floorpan panels for best part of half a metre and is developing a lovely hole up further up the sill. I would ignore it until i take it off the road, but the mot is in three weeks and while my tester may be friendly he's not daft enough to let that go.
Hopefully i'll have some better news for the next update, i'll leave you with a picture of the moment i found the slight hole...