RobinJI

Photos! (from Combe) Nick looking excited to head out with BigAl: And out on track:

Yeah, I mean the bike stuff. I find it great for doing engine bays and wheels. I'm not really sure what an equivalent would be. Just noticed they have actually started selling it as car wheel cleaner, but I'd just been using the bike stuff. (Link) Like I say, I'm sure someone who knows about cleaning cars will be along and know better. I just used it as it's what I had lying around, and I was really impressed with how well it worked.

I've had good results cleaning my wheels with muc-off, but I'm sure someone who actually knows something about cleaning cars will be along soon with a better suggestion. 1.8t people, what sort of mpg are you getting when sat at 70? Since getting my speedo (and therefore trip computer) working the Scirocco's returned an average of 35mpg with a mix of town and a-road driving, sounds about right, but the odd thing is the instantanious on the motorway sat at 70 is only 35ish, the best speed seems to be 45ish, which is a lot lower than I'd expected. I can only assume it's because the revs sit a bit high on the motorway with my little wheels, but I'd still expect it to be better than that. I'm not sure if the Scirocco would be better or worse than the cars 1.8t's are normally found in in terms of aero, it's not all smooth, but it is quite sloped with a low nose and a significantly smaller frontal area.

I know that feeling of pictures doing a car justice Dan, although yours genuinely does look pretty tidy, much more so than mine! I've always referred to it as the car being a "20 footer" (or similar distance) in that it looks great for 20 feet, just don't get any closer. I've just finally got around to wiring in the speedo in my Scirocco, and a really weird but pretty cool thing's happened. The engine, ECU, dials and wiring is all from a '99 Passat 1.8t Sport, and the Gearbox, and therefore speed sensor is from a 1.8t A3 or similar. There's a difference in how the sensors work, they're both hall sendors taken from the diff, but the A3 one's powered and the Passat one isn't, so to wire the A3 sensor up to the Passat clocks/ECU I had to add a power feed to the sensor and swap the plugs on the loom, as well as extending it a little, which is why I hadn't got around to it until now. The odd thing is, the engine, gearbox, wiring and everything to do with it are expecting 225/45R17 tyres, (or equivalent), while I'm currently running 185/45R15's, which are 16% smaller, so you'd expect the speedo to over-read by 16%, but it reads spot on. It's within 3 or 4 mph of a GPS from 10 up to the other side of 100. Awesome for me, as it means as well as the speedo its self reading correctly, it means the oddometer will count correctly, and the MPG readout should be correct (if I ever get around to wiring in the buttons that operate it!) but I'm a bit confused as to why it is! All I can think of is that the clocks must be expecting a different number of pulses per revolution than the diffs giving out or something. Over the next few days I want to get my OBD2 port and the buttons that operate the trip computer wired in, which should mean I'll have everything to do with the dials fully functional (well, the fuel gauge reads backwards, but that doesn't really bother me). Is anyone off here coming along to ADI, and if so, do they fancy bringing VCDS along so we can have a laugh at how many fault codes I've clocked up over the last year?

Haha, it wasn't that bad, no where near 90 degrees. The odd thing was, with the car stationary rocking the wheel back and forth the wheels would respond to the slightest movement of the steering wheel, no actual dead area, but out on the road it felt slack. Again, if you just gently put a little movement in it'd respond, but it still felt slack. I think some of it could have been adjusted out on the rack, but I'm sure mine was past it's best, and for £35 for a brand new rack (decent German brand, it was second hand but never even unpacked) it wasn't worth messing with it, as adjusting it means removing it anyway. The steering's still not as positive as I'd like, but I think it's just a result of it being a 30+year old design. I really do think it needs drastically more caster. There's a 2.9 turn quick rack available, but the standard one's 3.4, and I'm not sure that's enough difference to justify the £160 price tag. Maybe when I've got some spare cash I guess. Also, I don't know what you're taking about with the golf, 'twas but a scratch!

I bought a new steering rack a little while back and finally got around to fitting it today, not as bad job to do as I expected. I put it on with new track rods, rod ends and gaiters, as it didn't make sense to re-use the old ones. The shell's on about 180k now, and the rack was getting noisy which worried me. The new rack came (as it should) with brackets to hold the rod-shift linkage. As I'm running an internally mounted cable shifter this is all no use to me, plus my downpipe runs very close to the rack to help ground clearance, so I lopped that lot off and chucked some paint on earlier in the week, then fitted it this morning. The rack as it arrived, covered in brackets: And a comparison of the old and new. You can see the brackets are gone, and there's some new poly-mounts on there. I haven't taken it apart to see just how warn it is, but once off the car it was obvious the old rack was VERY warn out, it made horendous noises when you pushed it from lock to lock, and the puddle in this picture is all water that dribbled out of it! I'm very pleased with the improvement it's made to how it drives! The steering's completely lost the slight dead-spot it used to have and feels nice and responsive now, as well as tracking more steadily and smoothly than before. A very worthwhile thing to get done. If you've got a high mileage car then it's well worth considering changing the rack, this didn't make any obvious signs it was warn until the last month or so, but the steering has always felt the same since I bought the car.

I love the Escort RS Turbo seats in my Scirocco. Not for larger types, as they're pretty tight hugging, but they suit me ideally at 5'9" and 13st. I quite like the fact they've got the tilting handles for access to the back on both sides too, so when fitting them to another car you can put the nice fresh passenger seat in the drivers side without issue. That said, my driver and passenger seats feel pretty much identical still anyway. This style seat seems to be in a few different cars with different cloths and fittings but the same foam and frame shape, the quite square bolsters are a good way of spotting them, but I think there was a similar looking later seat that was wider and less hugging, found in mk3 golfs.

I've chucked a standard Ford Puma sub in my boot the last month or so. Does the job of making my stereo sound marginally less crap, plus, it was free, and the Sony amp I'm using to run it was £5. Must sort my stereo out sometime, I really need some half decent front speakers and a bit of sound deadening to make long drives a bit less dull/noisy.

I'd be amazed if the damper isn't removable, every set of 'ebay' coilovers I've seen so far have been, even my Scirocco ones are, despite the fact the standard struts wouldn't have had removable inserts. Usually there's a screw in cap in the top of the lower leg of the strut, with 2 holes in it, it's not that obvious as it sits flush with the top, and they some with a boot covering all that up, but a well chosen big pair of cir-clip pliers or just a hammer and a punch will unscrew it. (I'm sure there's a proper tool for it, but I can't remember what it is right now.) Or like you say, a clap on thing would work just fine. Glad you've got something sorted for the MOT. Watch the back-end with the difference in spring rates though!

We can't really say without seeing it unfortunately. Dan, yeah, I'd agree with Nick, it's probably not the best bet for a dissertation. That said, you can do pretty much anything if you go into it deep enough, just beware that anything where you're analyzing an effect on performance/efficiency is going to be expensive/difficult to do any real-world testing in a scientifically accurate manner, it also limits how good job you can do when time inevitably runs short. You could probably drag out something to do with hose coupling methods into a decent paper, in which you could discuss the effects of inadequate/failed methods. It could be worth trying a Jackson Tuning on Club-Polo (The guys called Phil Jackson, he's on other forums and stuff too). He imports and sells loads of coilovers, and seems pretty flexible with people just wanting pairs or replacement parts. How complex is the mount on the strut? Is it something that could be welded to your current coilovers fairly easily? The dampers in yours should be removable, so you can weld to them easily enough, and it should be easier than trying to weld to the arms.

I don't normally get involved in shit like this, but please SHUT UP! You repeatedly avoided the question of how you came into possession of the frames, while ranting about prices. No one does, or has ever, questioned the prices, in fact they've commented that they seem good. What they have done is repeatedly ask you where the frames came from (not necessarily directly, but it's be pointed out that this is the main issue on many occasions.) and you've REPEATEDLY dodged or ignored the question, and now you're calling us the stupid ones? Surely you can't be so blind as to not be able to see the problem here? Also, people not knowing whether you're making a profit on these frames doesn't make them stupid, or bad at maths. Maths is not a source of data, it's a method of processing data, to extract meaning from it. Maths can't tell us how much the guy welding the frame is being paid, how far the frames have been transported from the factory, the method of transportation, the cost of the materials used, the cost to pay the guy who chose these materials, that welder and that method of transport etc.. It can tell us what the resultant total of that data is if we're provided with it, but it can't give us the source, can it. Now please either grow up, stop throwing your toys out of the pram and start acting like a decent member of the community, or piss off and leave us alone, because this pointless argument isn't going to get you anywhere. (PS, how are these topics even still open?)

Unless they had a bloody good reason to try and stop the Range Rover, it looks like the bikers were being brain-dead idiots. Even if they did have a good reason it was still a bloody stupid thing to do. The Range Rover didn't react in the best way possible, but it looks like a fright and flight instinctive reaction to being placed in danger, rather than a consciously malicious attack. I hope none of the bikers got hurt badly, as it probably wouldn't have been them personally who provoked it, but as a group they did bring it on themselves. Also, Nick's running 17's, 235/45R17 (or close) for road tyres, not sure about slicks.

Yeah, as Dan says, get it all checked for alignment, not just 'tracking'. You don't necessarily need loads of fancy kit, a basic laser alignment set-up like most garrages have for tracking and a camber/caster guage will do the job perfectly if the person knows what they're doing, and they tend to be much cheaper too as they're not charging extra to pay off the bill for the huge machine, the trouble's finding somewhere competent with the oldschool kit. Without knowing your area then Dan's plan of somewhere with the kit to make it easy/obvious to the guys working the machines will be the best bet. Although Adam might well know somewhere. Speaking of things in the road doing damage to cars, my sump's taken one hell of a battering from a rock about the size of half a concrete block that was lying in the middle of the road on my way to work. the rear center of my sump's now about 1" higher than the rest of the previously flat bottom. It's not leaking and the oil pressure's fine, but it means I'll have to sort a new one before the next oil change, as the sump-plugs no where near the lowest point anymore, and looks far from healthy its self (it's now a 5 sided bolt, whoops.) Ah well, I needed to make baffled one sometime anyway. Anyone got a spare steel sump from a mk1/2/3 golf or b3/4 Passat? (any 1.5 or bigger petrol besides VR6 or any diesel would do.)

More food for thought for Paul, although you probably already know everything in it: An idiots guide to to k-jet

I'm sure Nick said something about a special cut-down/adapted spanner making his relentless much easier to fit, might be worth quizzing him on it. Do you think you'll get it repaired or just replace it with something else?

Paul, this could be worth a watch (admittedly I've not watched it right through my self yet, so it could be crap, but it looks like it should be interesting): George, that's gutting about the manifold, I wish manufacturers wouldn't keep making/selling turbo manifolds made from thin stainless, it's completely the wrong material for the job. I take it that ones a relentless? They seem to be a bargin for the increase in flow they give, but not exactly structurally sound.

Are the new wheels VW ones or aftermarket? It's more than likely the '65' part that's the issue rather than the width. The 65 means the height of the tyre's 65% of the width, so 127mm, while your old tyres were only 111mm heigh (60% of 185mm). But yeah, you should just be able to get the old tyres put on the new wheels, which will solve the issue if the new wheels are VW ones. If they're aftermarket it'll depend on the wheels width and offset as to what you can get away with.

Nicks 3rd session out on Saturday, a much better run than the one I posted this morning, again, sorry about the pointless bit at the start, it gets going at 5:00.

Nick out on track on Saturday, sorry about the pit-lane at the start, it gets going at 2:50 I tried cutting it down, but my laptop overheated and conked out, so I gave up and uploaded it full length:

Yeah I think it's just a Scene thing. I often leave my bonnet at half-mast at shows, but I just do it by putting the bonnet-stay in a different hole. I guess if you've got gas-struts a lanyard's a fairly handy way of doing it. (I leave it half up because it looks silly and blocks the view of the car all the way up, plus I like how low Scirocco's roof lines are, and having the bonnet sticking right up detracts from it.) Currently uploading an in-car video of Nick out on track yesterday. 335 minutes remaining I stuck a little Sony Action-Cam (HDR-AS15) I bought a while back on his screen with a suction mount to see how it came out and I'm really impressed with it! The camera's got built in steadying (it's got a 170deg lens, but with the steadying turned on it crops it down to 120deg and moves around the cropped area to keep things smooth, while still managing 1080.) The cars in front and the track seem to stay completely still while Nicks bonnet moves around in the bottom of the shot. I'm pleased with the actual picture quality too. I'd definitely recommend one as a cheaper alternative to Go-Pros for filming car stuff. It does a live stream to, and control with android/i-phones, so you can set-up the shots and start/stop the camera from in the car when it's mounted externally, which is pretty handy. Plus the usual Go-pro-alike stuff, 120fps@720, 60fps@1080, 170deg or 120deg lens without steadying, 60m waterproofing, and it mounts on a standard 1/4" tripod thread.

A few shots from the Forge Motorsport Action Day at Castle Combe yesterday, always a good day: Nick going well (despite what he was saying!): And random other people (mostly the drift guys, they always make nice spectacular photos):

That's not really drifting, that's oversteer. Drifting's by definition is intentional and controlled. The arse end stepping out's oversteer. (Sorry to be a pedant, the over use of the term drifting/drift is something that's getting to bug me recently. )

That does look awesome dan, the tints definitely work, It'll look great with the grilles in.

Paul, if it's running smoother on premium you might need to wind back the ignition timing a touch unless you plan to always run it. My Scirocco says minimum 98ron on the fuel flap too, what a crock of shit, the original engine in that thing would have run happily on any old shit. Jardo, how on earth does your car have 'Every mod possible on the standard turbo'. Does it also have a supercharger strapped to it? It doesn't even have water meth does it? and that's pretty common. I know the spec's fairly sorted, which is all you really meant, but you need to stop talking in such certainties, as it makes you come across as much more of a cock than you actually are Glad the breaks are good, and it is looking smart.

I'm itching to get stuck into a project soon too. I've even got what I want to do all planned out in my head, just need a better job so I can get on with it! The Mini's getting put on the long term back bench, and I want to do something more sensibly achievable in the mean time (and as much as anything, something more aimed at fun than outright performance like the Mini is.)