OK, So I never got as far as actually updating this properly! I will do at some point soon, but life is so busy at the moment! Quick one though.... Can anyone guess what these are for?
OK, so I think I've neglected this thread a little as of late! the next few posts will be shameless copy and paste updates from elsewhere, to hopefully bring it somewhere up to date! Having collected some materials, it was eventually time to retire the old and somewhat split splitter. As is now becoming customary, the car was positioned over the pit so work could begin The splitter has been off LOADS of times before. It's always been dead easy and never given any trouble. This time was different, this time, it knew it wasn't going back, so it put up a fight. 3 seized bolts, with allen heads that eventually rounded off. Time for the drill. With that done, the trusty plywood was removed for the last time: I wanted to extend the new splitter slightly, but I liked the front profile of the current one, so I decided to retain the leading profile and extend it from the middle. I marked up the new sheet of ply, 25mm from the back edge: And positioned the back edge of the old splitter at this 25mm point, then traced around the leading edge only: Then pulled the splitter back to the rear edge was now flush to the new sheet, and traced around the back of the splitter and wheel cut outs: The result being this addition in length, whilst retaining the shape I liked. Out came the jig saw: Followed by the palm sander to radius the edges. Not finished at this point, but by the time I had finished I couldn't hold the camera steady as I was still vibrating lol With the whole thing shaped and profiled, I mixed up a 50/50 mix of exterior yacht varnish and thinners, and applied a first thin coat to really soak into the wood to give it maximum protection: With that drying, I started removing the drilled out studs from the splitter fixings. It was at this point, that I noticed my slam panel had cracked on each side, presumably from the splitter impacing the ground, as rather than break 'downwards' from downward pressure in the splitter, both mounts had been pushed up through the plastic slam panel section: I came up with a plan to repair and reinforce these, then set about moving the car into the road so I could crack on with servicing Toris Lupo. And that's where it all went wrong lol
Usually, the splitter holds the brake cooling ducts in place. With the splitter removed, the ducts just hang loose under the car. Obviously these would drag and catch, so I zip tied the ducts to the splitter mounting studs handing down from the slam panel. I've done this countless times before, and never had any issues. As seen at some point last year, we have a small speed bump in the access road to the garage: Very mindful of this, I actually got out, and gently pushed the car over the speed bump, making sure the ducts didn't catch at all - success, we're over the bump! just a short 20 yard drive into the road to park up now. Somehow, and I have no idea how, the right hand brake duct caught on the road as I exited the side road. I didn't hear this over the engine noise, travelling at a whopping 2 mph, until it was too late. I got out of the car, to find my brake duct under my feet as I stepped out. D'oh! The duct had snagged and come off, and the car had run over the spiral bound brake duct squashing it totally flat. To make matters worse, rather than the zip tie breaking, instead, the corner of my already cracked slam panel had ripped clean off! Argh ********! no pictures of any of this, because I was really rather ****ed off about the whole thing! I ignored the A3 for the rest of the weekend, feeling rather grumpy about it. Instead I serviced the lupo, which Tori helped with, that was great fun for a change! It was quite novel having her helping and showing her all the bits of her car, educational too. Then I took the lupo for a hoon seeing as the A3 was broken. Thrashing 75bhp down the lanes wasn't quite the same lol Last up, a final (4th) coat of varnish for the splitter, this time neat varnish to get the gloss finish I want.
So, in light of the current trend for awful weather, I've got 2 little projects on the go at the moment. When the sun shines, I'm outside on the splitter. When it rains, I'm inside fiddling with these lights. Splitter progress: It was incredibly cold on Sunday morning at 0800, but I was feeling strangely motivated, so I put on a few layers, and headed out to brave the -2 weather and try and get started: Bumper off in about a minute, revealing the mass of stuff to strip off to get to the slam panel: Intercooler out, lights off, and it's nice to see the Direnza rad looking just as good as it did when it went in: A few more bolts and a few plugs to disconnect, and I lifted the front end off: The essential cooling parts that allow me to lap all day long: Before disturbing the splitter mounts, I took a base measurement from the old mounts. the splitter surface should sit 65mm from the underside of the slam panel in order to sit correctly: On further inspection, the old slam panel had some additional cracking to the main structure also. I knew that I didn't want to simply replace it with a new one, as it's fate would surely be the same again in a similar time frame. So I set about reinforcing the slam panel, and finding a way to transfer some of the load elsewhere. the solution, was a fairly light weight box section across the bottom, made from 20x20x1.2mm steel to keep weight to a minimum. I drilled holes in this, to suit the original splitter mounting holes, and bolted it up to the old slam panel: I then got cracking with the CAD, and made up a few templates for the idea I'd had, and transferred them to steel. No pics as it started to rain mid way though Soon, it had started raining heavily. We set up the gazebo to offer some shelter, but it was no use and ended up half way down the street! Far too wet to carry on: Ash had popped over to borrow some tools, and annoyingly, at this point he had no front strut on his LCR, so we had no option but to reassemble it in the pouring rain. Not enjoyable! I came inside and sulked because I couldn't go for a drive in my car. Tori pointed out that it wasn't all bad, and wrote me a sign to cheer me up lol Fast forward to yesterday, and I got a bit more time to work on it in the afternoon. I got my steel plates finished off, and clamped into place on the car: And tacked up, before being removed for final welding up: The upper plates bolt directly into the chassis rails via the slam panel mountings, with the drop plates hugging the profile of the slam panel and tying the box section cross member into the chassis rails. It's very tight for room down the sides of the slam panel, with the intercooler sitting very tight against it. So tight infact, that I've just realised as I type this that I'll have to grind back some of this new piece I've made, and it's only just occurred to me! that's a shame, because I painted it last night I realise that the brace will have the potential to flex a little, but I don't see that as a bad thing. the original slam panel mounting was also flexible to a degree, and I think this perhaps aided it's long life, despite eventually dying. This new mount should spread the loads from impacts across the whole slam panel, and also into the chassis rails, as well as increasing stiffness then the splitter is loaded downwards from air pressure. I wish I'd realised I'd need to trim it down before I spent ages painting it though lol
Been hard at it again this evening: Realising be front splitter mount would foul my IC pipe work had been playing on my mind l day. So I set up the lights when I got home and sorted the issue out straight away: All ground back flush to the all panel. For the more observant of you, yes I have skimmed the panel with the grinder. But it's the old panel that's going in the bin so it doesn't matter I did forget that briefly myself earlier and got really upset when I found a the crack in it though lol then remembered it's the old one still!
Time for a post that's not going to be in any way performance related for a change! Lighting! About 8 years ago, The car went AWOL in a steep pub car park, and rearranged it's own headlights. At the time, facelift lights were fetching big money, and things like DEPO copies didn't exist. So wanting a cleaner look, I went for some Ebay angel eyes, with 8k HIDs too, because blue lights were cool when you're 19, right? They never really lit the road well at all, and have gotten steadily worse with age (or is that my eyesight?), to the point where now, the car is getting dangerous to drive at night. Unlike many, I use my track car quite frequently, so given how much of the time it's dark in the UK, it was time to sort out the lighting once and for all! First decision: Slam panel - this defined the type of light fitment I'd be going for. I decided due to the availability of decent quality DEPO headlights in facelift fitment, that I'd go down that route. So I bought a facelift slam panel so I'd be mounting the lights using all 4 factory mounts. Next up was a set of depo replacement lights: very shiney! These are very shiney indeed, and would stand out like a sore thumb on my all black car. I've seen many people strip their lights down and paint the (non reflective parts) insides black to tone them down a touch. I decided immediately that I wanted to do this. The quality of the lenses and light bodies is perfectly good on these, but the halogen projectors aren't the best. Halogen projectors also aren't ideally suited to HID bulds due to a different shape, and a different cut off pattern. So, if I'm stripping the lights down, and removing the lenses, I may as well go all the way with this! So I purchased some 2.5'' Mini H1 Bi-xenon projectors on recommendation from George The first light went into the oven at 70 degrees for 10 minutes, and after much struggling, the glue softened, and I was able to prize the lens off: I then removed the reflector bowl. Here you can see the old halogen projector on the left: I removed the halogen projector, and offered up the new bi-xenon unit. Obviously none of the holes lined up, but the mounting posts did seem to be at an ideal height, which was a good start! I drilled a tapped the two upper studs with an m4 thread, then set about making some little alloy plates to mount the units. Seen here roughly cut out to test fitment: With that working nicely, I needed to make a lower mount for the unit, and also provide the ability to adjust the beam height relative to the main beams. I decided the lower right hand stud would be ideal, and to add a threaded fixing to the projector unit, I replaced one of the 10mm studs for a 20mm stud, giving me a 10mm threaded lug to attach to: A bit of work with the grinder and pliers, and I came up with this: The new projector is now mounted very solidly, and is fully adjustable for angle too! I'll be test fitting the lights to the car and setting up the beam alignment carefully before sealing the lights up again! With the theory proven, I made 2 more of the tabs for the other light, and radiused off the corners to avoid sharp edges: Will hopefully be splitting the other light down this evening. Having done the first one now I'm expecting the second time around to be a little easier!
So, having got my xenons mounted, it was time to paint the inside of the lights ready to reassemble: Sadly, during assembly, the thread in one of the adjusters somehow stripped. To be expected I guess at 40 per light. I tried to remove the fitting, and that broke off too! This was going from bad to worse! I decided that what I needed was a steel thead to adjust the lights. What I did. Was dremel out a little slot in the adjuster. To take a small m5 nut: Then secured that in place using an epoxy jobby: When that set, I ground it back to be sure that the adjuster would still run cleanly in the guides: And finally assembled:
Progress report! Saturday was utterly miserable weather wise: I spent most of the day in the gazebo, working on Bobs leon. We did an N249 bypass, PCV delete, catch can install, and the worlds most irritating thermostat change. Someone had rounded off a lower bolt, so we had to remove the alternator to get onto the lower bolt squarely. Only, the alternator was seized on! Argh. Got it done in the end though, and it drove much nicer: As a favour, Bob did the soldering on the new light plugs, seeing as he likes all that small fiddly rubbish that I hate! We plugged in a light, just to test they worked. Success! Sunday morning came and the weather was much nicer. First up I trimmed down the wings to accommodate the new facelift lights. I used my new OMT (Oscillating multi tool) that Mum Dad got me for Christmas - it was great! I ground that smooth, filed off the edges, and applied some black enamel paint I had to protect the edges. Next up was a new towing eye mount, seeing as I've done away with the crash bar supports it used to mount to. I ground the bottom of the old towing eye bracket flat to accept the eye plate, and bolted it through. The bolt in there currently is an 8.8. I'll replace this with a 12.9 ASAP though. the new position also sits much better within the bumper openings too. so double win. Splitter mounts next. As shown previously. The old mounts sat exactly 65mm from the slam panel: The additional support beam I've added is 20mm thick, so I set up the lock nuts on the mounting posts to be 45mm from the mounting faces, taking into account the 1mm washers I was using too. To be safe, I ran a tap through all of the threads before fitting: Then I mounted the posts on the slam panel, and made tiny adjustments to get them all sitting perfectly level. 'Make the noise' (prize for anyone who gets the reference!) [/QUOTE]
Time to test fit the new splitter! I bolted on the wear bars to try and stop the underside getting damaged when I offered it up. edit: Worth noting this is NOT the final painted finish. This was just a light coat of black I threw over it before final paint. I've kept the old wear bars for the minute. They started out at 10mm thick, and were all around 7mm thick still, so plenty of life left in them for now. The mounting point retaining blocks had worked well on the whole, although due to being scraped I did have to hammer the old bolts out: I then cleaned up the rough edges of the counter sink with the dremel, and replaced all the bolts for new ones. The splitter went into place, and got bolted into position. No pics of the test fit as my battery died. I replaced 2 of the threaded hangers on the outer edges. These had been bent from grounding impacts pushing the splitter upwards. I bolted the splitter into place on all the remaining mounts, then adjusted the hangers to meet the splitter surface. Checking it was level (or falling toward the nose) the whole time. Next up was the oil cooler mounting. Previously I'd used 2 m6 bobbins, rather roughly drilled through the slam panel edge on a nasty angle. It was never a nice solution, and as expected, the bobbins broke away when I tried to remove them. So I bought a mocal oil cooler bobbin mount which held both fixings in a single rubber block: I still didn't like how it sat against the slam panel, so I made a metal place to mount the bobbin, which I could then bolt securely to the slam panel. I routed out the lower edge of the slam panel to allow the oil cooler mount to sit naturally. Painted the plate to stop it rusting, and bolted it up to the plastic panel. The old drilled and fixed cooler mount made the slam panel flexy at the point where it had been weakened. This new mounting seems to have made the whole area much stiffer. Sunday ended much as Saturday began. With everything getting utterly soaked! I tried to crack on working under the gazebo, but the weather got pretty extreme and I spent more time trying to stop the gazebo taking off than actually on the car, so at 5pm I called it a day: [/QUOTE]
Monday - obviously I went to work. We poured this slab for a bus stop. How exciting! lol I managed to get home with a little daylight remaining, so decided to make the most of the half decent weather. New mounting bar for the intercooler made: And the intercooler hung and reconnected: Then it was finally time to hook up the lights for the first time: I fired them up, and thankfully they all worked! A quick alignment check against the wall showed that one of the projector units wasnt quite level, and the beam was sitting at quite an angle: I also found when I tested the main beams, that with the dipped beams set level, the mains were at different heights. I removed the lights, and split the lamp bowls from the bodies yet again, and tweaked the projector units on the adjustable tabs to try and level them up. Back onto the car, and the beam positions looked much better: And a quick check with the main beams confirms theyre pretty nice and even now. The projector units on the car are exactly 1m apart, so I tweaked the beams until the cut offs on the wall were also exactly 1m apart, and eyed the line in by standing behind the car and tweaking until I was happy that they ran true. Ive not wired up the bi xenon solenoids yet, so the full beam picture is still somewhat short of the final light output, but its looking bloody impressive so far, and the cut offs are so precise and sharp theres absolutely NO glare from them at all until youre right down at road level. This is main beam without the bixenons wired up: [/QUOTE]
Last night I finally got the lenses back on too. I'm happy to say this was a MUCH nicer job than removing them. I warmed the light bodies and lenses up in the oven again, 70 degrees for 10 mins or so, then just pressed them together. They went together very easily, and the glue held immediately. To be sure I fitted the clips top and bottom straight away whilst they were hot. and left them to cool. They're now nice and solid, and appear to be well sealed. And, ignoring the worlds most distasteful chopping board, they look great too I think! I also got sent this image, of something that's on it's way to us as we speak!
Saturday morning started off with nothing too stressful. I soldered the bi-xenon solenoid wiring into the main beam loom on the lights, then set about modifying the light covers to accept the HID wiring. Little slots were required in each side of the hole for the largest of the HID plugs to pass through: All finished the the lights sealed up for hopefully the last time: Heading outside, I put some conduit on the wiring to the lights to keep it neat and tidy under bonnet: I offered the lights into place, and strapped the ballasts under the lights this time so as not to clutter the engine bay: At this point Andy popped round. His work van broke on Thursday, so sadly he had had to borrow a car for the weekend. It was no Berlingo Van, but beggars can't be choosers lol 625bhp of twin turbo W12 power! I put some wooden runners down, and slid the splitter under the car towards it's final resting place: I dropped the bumper on, and offered up the old air dam to see what alterations would be needed: I turned my attention to making the side arch fences. Where previously the bumper is held on with little trim screws in the sides, I wanted a proper reliable thread, so drilled out the bumper guides and fitted M6 riv nuts in their place: To secure the fences at the bottom, I'd previously used wood screws from underneath, but part of my brief on V2.0 was to use no screws, and replace them all with threaded inserts. I didn't want a T-nut visable on the top surface as they're messy, so I did a test run on a spare bit of ply and found that when I expanded a riv nut inside a hole, the expansion on the outside of the nut jammed it in place very tightly, giving me a much neater threaded insert on the top surface: I also added a riv nut mid way down the arch liner in one of the original bumper mounts to make sure the fence followed the curve of the arch: Seen here with the new arch in place: Bumper and fences off one last time, and it was all finally secured into place: The air dams on the sides were still in good condition, so got recovered in protective special tape (Duct tape!) and refitted. The centre one needed to be replaced, but I didn't have a long enough piece of foam board left, so I had to join 2 parts: All joined and smoothed down prior to coating with more 'special' tape: Finally all refitted for the last time:
With this done, I was finally able to take it for a drive after a month off the road! I popped round to see Andy who was working on the S4. Sadly, the Bentley got in the way of this picture lol I spent a few hours with Andy reassembling his 2.7TT S4 lump. He's ditched the ko3's and fitted some Garrett T25 units instead. These things are HORRIBLE to work on! The A3 came in handy again, Andy was short of a few inches of vacuum hose, and mine was of fairly generous length so I chopped off a few inches to leave my orange mark on the S4: Night came, and I was finally able to go and test out these new lights I need to tweak the beams down a fraction, but it's absolutely great driving at night now! And due to the sharp beam cut offs it's not blinding anyone else either. Dipped beam: And mains: The car feels 10x safer now to drive at night. it looks smarter, and I'm really happy with the new splitter too
For a long while, we've got by for road use on old part worn semis. Often at the very end of their life. And usually as cheap as possible or free. For a change, we decided to invest in a new set of tyres. The brief was simple: Cheap Grippy enough in the dry to make road use fun Safe enough in the wet that I won't die on first use Cheap I considered the obvious options of RS-Rs and NS2R, and both were very cheap in 225/45/17. However, neither are famed for their wet weather performance, and neither remained as cheap when I looked into going up a size to 235/45/17. This extra width obviousy gives me more rubber on the road. But also sticking with te 45 profile at an increased width gives me a little more height too: no bad thing with the new 140mm splitter! :racer: So. Where to go? Last Sunday Andy suggested I take a look at the Khumo KU36. I was interested. Research didn't show MUCH info, but what i could find seemed fairly positive. I took a gamble, and ordered a set on Monday morning: I got impatient, so had them fitted to my bronze Rotas on the day they arrived
It's always a gamble trying something fairly unknown. RSR and ns2t were around 68-72 in 225/45, but annoyingly jumped to to over 90 in 235/45. The extra height was as important as the width, so we went with these Comparison to the old 225 Dunlops:
