Luke Rainbird

By this point I was getting a little annoyed at myself for not having sorted the car out properly. I was putting it off for stupid reasons but fundamentally I’d just lost motivation with it all. If someone had offered to take it off my hands cheap I’d have certainly considered it. When you find yourself in that situation, it tends to go one of two ways; Either you whinge and moan and do nothing about it, or you pull your finger out, throw a bit of money at it and sort it out. I decided on a hybrid approach, and whinged while I threw some money at it to get it back on the road I was content that the engine was in reasonably good shape (other than a bit of heavy breathing), and given the gearbox was working well before coming out of the A3 I was pretty sure that wasn’t a stumbling block (I’d been one of the last people in the car with it before removal, and the shim could only have helped too) which meant the issue HAD to be somewhere between the two. The DMF/PP had a few light heat marks prior to me fitting them to the new setup, but they weren’t making any untoward noises at all and the stock clutch wasn’t slipping much. The only thing I’d changed was the fitting of the Sachs paddle, but this is designed as a direct replacement so shouldn’t cause problems. Let’s just replace with brand new parts - the old ones had covered ~130k and despite not wanting to pull the box again, at least this way I could absolutely rule them out as the cause of the noise. Saturday morning rolled around. Friend with garage away for weekend and had kindly offered me use of it, which meant no rolling around on the drive, roof over my head and most importantly light so I could work into the evenings when it was dark outside. After shuffling some cars about to make room, I first popped the Golf onto the lift. It’s been making a strange squeak on small bumps recently, which I’d assumed was coming from the ARB bushes but I was keen to get underneath and check there was nothing else at play. With the exception of a worn wishbone rear bush all looks pretty reasonable under there. GSF sell stock wishbones including both bushes for £42 each, so I’ll probably just replace the pair together at some point. Using one of their ~50% weekend discount codes I should be able to pick up both wishbones with all bushes, a set of ball joints and new ARB bushes for a total of £65 or so. Bargain Golf taken care of, I headed home to drop it off and pick up the LCR. Limped it down to the garage tentatively (fortunately it’s mostly downhill) and got it on the lift. An hour or so later I was back to this all-too-familiar sight: Early afternoon, Soph popped by with a delivery. I was waiting on a set of OEM pressure plate bolts I’d ordered a week ago that were yet to arrive so figured it was those but alas, they’ve still not turned up. Still, she brought something much more important: After a quick chat she disappeared and I got to work splitting the box from the block. I soon found the source of the noise, and my heart completely sank. Flywheel had a considerable amount of rocking play in it (though still no more play rotationally than the brand new one) as a result of knackered bolts. On inspection, it looks as though one or two have failed creating the rock and noise, with the others being weakened/cracked on my drive to the garage and breaking as I tried to remove them. I was reluctant to drive the car at all, even to the garage, but it’s very fortunate it took it steady and hadn’t tried to drive the car anywhere else or it could have been DMF through the bellhousing time. Use genuine OEM bolts from the dealer, gents - these were claimed "genuine" from an online source, and I suspect weren't which may well have been a factor in their demise. Here’s half a snapped bolt for you. With so much stuck in the end of the crank, compounded by the fact that the bolts are bloody hard and come with some decent loctite, there was no way they were shifting easily. At this point I was trying to figure out the best way forward, and working out how long it’d take me to get home in a car borrowed from the garage, strip down the crank from a spare engine and get back to the garage with a view to swapping them over. This’d mean having to reuse bearings and bolts (the dealer was closed by this point) which is NOT good, but I could theoretically drop the sump at a later date to sort that out. Perhaps I could head home and bring one of the spare bottom ends to the garage and use that, though of course it’d be on stock rods and I’d have to reuse a head gasket etc, so not ideal again and it’d negate the entire purpose of pulling things out a couple of months before. The car needed to be out of the garage by Sunday evening so leaving it in bits was not an option, I needed to get it out of there, ideally under its own power, within 24(ish) hours. I was getting incredibly frustrated, so decided the best plan of attack was to have a dinosaur biscuit and clear my head working on something else for a while. I opted for a sauropod and sorting out some iffy threads on my turbo adapter. Chased threads, cleaned it all up, got the turbo bolted up again. Much better. Feeling much better for having made at least SOME progress, I turned my attention to the crank once more. I am not a talented welder and whilst there’s a MIG plant at the garage with which I could weld a bolt to the remaining stubs, it’s a little iffy. The last thing I wanted to do was to weld the snapped portions in place, or to end up with spatter on the end face of the crank, so I decided against this for now. With nothing to lose, I decided it was worth at least trying to drill out the remnants of bolts that remained. Despite attacking with penetrating oil frequently whilst working on the adapter plate, they were still not moving at all. At least we know the factory loctite is decent! Sadly the same could not be said for any of the drill bits in the garage, nor any that I had at home. Nothing I tried got remotely close to making a dent in the bolts. If anyone finds this thread whilst desperately Googling for a way to remove snapped flywheel bolts, then I’m afraid your common or garden HSS & Ti bits aren’t going to do much at all. Determined to get the feckers out one way or another, I hopped in a car and zipped into Plymouth. It was a Saturday evening so limited places were open, but even fewer were on the Sunday so it was the only chance I had really. Eventually I’d found a couple of stores and picked up various supplies; 2 sets of Cobalt drill bits plus some extras in the sizes I planned on using, 2 sets of extractors, assorted penetrating oils, PlusGas, thread cutting fluid and brake cleaners etc. Armed with all of these and the remaining dinosaur biscuits, I was set to either sort the crank out or trash it beyond any thoughts of using it again in the future. Do or die time. I cleaned everything thoroughly, before marking the centres of each bolt. I then gave both the bolts and drill bits a liberal coating with cutting fluid and went at each bolt in turn with a 2.5mm bit; not the strongest but I figured if I could keep it straight it’d be the best chance at getting started I had. If I could make a pilot hole, then I should be able to progressively increase the diameter and take things out far enough to get an extractor in and wind the bolts out. One pilot hole complete, then two, snap. Balls. Still, I was further ahead than I had been, and I’d bought extra bits for this exact reason. After faffing about and breaking a few more bits (uneven surface where the bolts had snapped was less than helpful at this point) I had a small hole in each bolt. Winding an extractor in proved tricky - being so hard they refused to cut their reverse thread and instead I ended up with a couple of stripped and useless small extractors. Not to worry, I’ll drill them a little larger and use the next size extraction tool, we’ll get there in the end, surely? Except they all met the same, disappointing end. Next plan of attack was to continue increasing the size of the bore to weaken the stubs as much as possible, though with a view to not damaging the threads in the crank. If I could remove the bulk of the bolt, I could try to either break the remainder out or chase through with a tool - except they are M10x1.0 (fine) and I didn’t have a suitable tap. Ah well, let’s crack on and figure that out later. Worst case, I mess up the crank and have wasted some time but I’m no worse off otherwise. I managed to increase the holes in each bolt to around 5mm or so before they didn’t want to go any further. This still left a good 2-3mm all round each bolt, which was far too much to break. In fact, even the off-centre-drilled bolt which by this point had a paper-thin annulus was still too tough to break out. I’d tried knocking in a torx bit earlier on (while the holes were ~3mm) but to no avail, however thought I’d give it a shot at this size. I grabbed another torx driver (T50-T55, IIRC) and a lumphammer, and slowly but surely I was able to, rather brutally, get the torx bit in the bolt solidly enough that I felt it might withstand a good amount of torque. I slowly built up pressure with a 12” ratchet, rather than shock loading it which would likely round things off and make life even more awkward than it already was. With more constant PlusGassing things eventually started to reluctantly rotate. Not long after, one bolt was out. Bingo! Another 20 minutes or so of very careful work saw the remaining sections removed too. With that the crank was one quick clean up away from being good to go again, however it was getting late by this point so I called it a night. Sunday morning rolled around, and I got to the garage at around 10. First task was to clean up the crank ready to fit the new DMF. Although I was happy that the old snapped bolts were out, I was also conscious that I’d given it all a fair bit of abuse the previous day. With this in mind, I wanted to chase through the threads. I mentioned before that I didn’t have an M10x1.0mm tap of any sort, and hunting around the garage proved fruitless too. Still, after adding some flutes with a grinder I knocked one up using another flywheel bolt I had to hand (I had a complete spare set) Lots of cutting fluid and back and forth later, I was happy with the state of things and ready to bolt up the new flywheel, so that’s exactly what I did. I was incredibly cautious with it and loaded up the torque extremely slowly, feeling it out as I went in case any of the threads were still not perfect. I slowly worked around in typical Star of David fashion until all bolts were threaded in a handful of turns, then proceeded to build torque to spec in stages. In reality, I probably should have been a little less anal about this, but I was extremely keen to do everything i could to avoid having a repeat of the last time. I am CERTAIN that I torqued everything to spec properly last time yet still had a problem, so I’ve been even more precise with it all this time around. Wound in a few turns, equalised torque to a low setting, increased uniformly over a few stages at 10Nm intervals up to spec from there. Long story short, DMF fitted, happy days. Time for a celebratory biscuit. By the time I got there, the carnivores had thinned the herd. Seen here in the process of taking out a deformed sauropod of some sort. Next up, grab the conveniently sized socket as an alignment tool and mount the clutch plate This is a plate I’d picked up second hand for next to no money at all. It’d been advertised as having been worn out, so I made a cheeky offer for the plate with a plan to get it relined with friction material, however on arrival I was pleasantly surprised to see it still had ~7.6mm material left. Not far off new! Here’s compared to the 8.1mm of meat on the brand new clutch plate I received with the DMF/Pressure Plate: I’ll hang on to the plate, but if anyone’s in dire need drop me a line At this point, I realised I had cocked up. You may have spotted it in the photo above, but if not you’re just as bad as me. In all the excitement of saving the crank and getting the new flywheel fitted, I’d completely forgotten to fit the thin shim which sits between the block and the bell housing. Muppet! There was absolutely NO was I was removing the DMF again at this point, so I opted to make a tactical slot in the shim and a few minutes later had wrangled it around the flywheel and into position. Phew! Shiny new pressure plate up next. My OEM bolts hadn’t arrived, so I had to make some. They’re standard M8 so these 12.9s will do the job just fine, but needed to be cut to length or they’d foul the flywheel. Few minutes with a grinder, file and some nuts and job’s a good’un. newpp Time for another self-congratulatory biscuit. By this point the carnivores had left little else. They’d been working as a pack to this point but I expect the group dynamic will change when they get hungry... I’d received a new LUK CSC with the clutch kit, so although the Sachs unit was nearly brand new I opted to change it, particularly since the previous one had died so quickly. Interestingly the LUK part is a 2-piece unit, unlike the Sachs. It’s also a plastic housing vs the alu Sachs one. All fitted, time to reconnect the gearbox and engine. Snugged up the bolts (torqued them all fully once back in the car, as easier to get to the two on the bottom when it’s off the floor) and got it all on the crane once more. And back in the bay Nipped up the aforementioned bolts, and fitted this critical component. I don’t think I’ve ever worked on a car which still had this, but decided I wanted one so got it ordered! With it back in the car, I proceeded to get all the hoses/connectors back in place. I’m fairly sure I have a grounding issue somewhere as my battery keeps dying, so need to investigate this. Eurgh, electrical systems…. Still, connected up, I topped up fluids, held my breath and turned the key. No nasty noises, and fluids retained so that’s a bonus! I do have a slight oil leak from the turbo return line but it’s a complete bodge at present anyway, so I’ll look to buy some flanges and do a proper job of that. Perhaps some AN line, who knows. Content that the car wasn’t going to spit its dummy JUST yet, I refitted driveshafts, wheels, bumper et al and moved the car out of the garage. A good clean up after myself and it was like I’d never been there at all... I returned to the dinobiscuits before I locked up. Turns out there can be only one, so they’d fought amongst themselves and this meathead proved himself to be Alpha… ...or so he thought. I took a slightly scenic route home. Didn’t give anything much abuse, but progressively through the range it feels good. No nasty noises or warning lights flashing up, and the turbo appears to be spooling up as it should with the new N75 too. That said, I’ve still only done the few miles this far, so it’s early days. I REALLY hope this is sorted. Watch this space!

Cracking stuff chaps. Robin, forgive me if you've said already but what tubing did you use in the end? Did you go with something FIA/MSA compliant? I know you're not looking to race it, but lots of people seem to use them as an acceptable standard set of guidelines Long time no update, because long time no progress. Having got the engine in the car a couple of months ago, then had to pull the box to replace ridiculous slave failure, then put it back together again and had more problems I’ve not really touched the car recently other than a couple of very minor bits of tidying up. Despite shimming the box and taking up some play, I still had a nasty drivetrain noise but without being 100% sure of the cause was reluctant to pull things apart again just yet until I had things a little more figured out in my mind. It’s a slow day at work today, so I’m working my way through photos since the last update and here’s what’s been going down. Replacement n75 arrived. Used, but known to be working fine, came with OE hoses (mine were previously random, not that it should matter) and more importantly wasn’t snapped. It’s possible to fit these in situ, but super awkward so I figured it best to pull the blower out of the car to swap it across. Also meant I was able to get in and remove a snapped stud in my adapter plate While things were apart, I also took the opportunity to triple check timing on the engine. I was confident that these were all ok, but given the nasty sounds it was all making I wanted to do so yet again for peace of mind. If timing was out, it’d be time to stick a camera down the bores and check for contact… Fortunately, timing was all spot on. I also fitted a set of cam caps from my AMK as the AYP didn’t come with any. Minor detail and for general use shouldn’t make any difference, but I don’t fancy oil exiting the breather above under heavier use. I also dropped the sump at this point. I’d done 2 changes since the new engine went in, and the oil was in pretty decent shape but given all the crud that’d been flushed through since install, I wanted to pop a new pickup pipe in. Seemed as good an excuse as any to check there were no nasty surprises at the bottom end. In keeping with the theme of the forum, I even did some work on the Golf. Soph kept having a warning on the dash that her boot was open, accompanied by an irritating chime. Quick shortlist in my head was either a break in the wiring at the boot hinge, hose popping off or a faulty microswitch. One quick spray of the rear wiper showed spluttery flow and resulted in a few drips at the boot catch, so it was pretty obvious which of these had caused it. Popped the trim off and 5 minutes later we were good to go again. Turbo was still off the car as I was lazy. Eventually got around to fitting the new n75, and while it was out figured it’d be rude not to pop an anti-surge compressor wheel inside. Old vs new, and ready to refit. Minor upgrade but should help keep things smooth when mapping. I’ve refitted the valve cover breather connection to the turbo inlet. Although there’s no breather in the same location on the valve cover for the 1.8t as the TFSI, it provides a convenient spot to route my catch can into when I finally get it fitted (still not done, need to get on it. I’m using an old stock head and the stem seals are pretty bad!). It’s also a nice aluminium bellow style, which makes for easy adjustment to position, so I’ll likely run the hose along with the TIP, although I’ve not decided on can location yet. Talking of the can, it’s just a cheap Chinese one I picked up for a couple of quid. May swap out for a “proper” setup down the line, but this’ll do in the meantime. Didn’t want the cheap, leak-happy sight tube, so I tapped the ports to M10 and JB Welded a bolt in place, then cut the bolt down so it’s a little more flush. Before I fit this, I’ll properly flush the existing bulges and give it a lick of paint. Stuffed some stainless scourers inside to act as a baffle. Back under the bonnet, I had a slight coolant leak. It wasn’t super fast, but enough to be a pain and when running I could see a slow but steady drip from the CTS flange. Turns out it was cracked inside, though I have no idea whether this was the case when I swapped it across from the old engine, which is slightly concerning... Still, new one on without too much fuss. You’ll notice that it’s a little different to the one which came off, so I had to get a touch creative with a new hose to suit. I’ll revisit this as I’m not too happy with it but it functions perfectly so it’s low on the list. Weather was poor for a week or so, so minimal progress was made on the car. During one random chat with @Prawn we were discussing brakes (more specifically his rather lovely new setup) which sent me down a rabbit-hole of procrastination. Despite the fact I neither need, nor can afford/justify new brakes, I ended up drawing up some bits on Solidworks. Don’t think they’d be too tricky to knock up either, so may well revisit at some point in the future…

Looks like a Clarks hydraulic brake of some sort. Unsure on model (or if they even had model numbers) and year, but if you pop in to your local Halfords they may be able to help narrow it down as they used to stock these (and presumably still stock the latest iteration).

I seem to recall, several IPB updates ago, that TF had the "ignore user" feature installed. Of course, I may be getting TF confused with one of the other forums I use, but I can't help feel that even with declining activity, there are still a few folk I'd rather not have to see posts from. Any chance of getting it added again gents?

This is my new favourite Lloyds bank advert

Sod paying that much for one rotor - draw it up and have it laser/water cut. Hell, you get get a dozen of them for that money But yes, that should do the trick

Looking forward to seeing you back on big wheels, Ali

I've seen issues with 180 calipers and 183/185mm rotors before.Hard to tell from the photo which rotor you are running, but it'd be worth double checking the diameter as an easy start point.

It generally goes one of two ways with things like this; either they sort you out relatively quickly and painlessly, or they're a real PITA. My old man recently had to return an item he'd bought (power inverter for a campervan, thrilling...). Booked himself a courier, collected fine, fully insured (~£350 IIRC) and picked up the next day. Happy days all round. It didn't ever arrive at the destination, despite having their address in large print on 3 sides. Tracking showed it having been collected, then literally NOTHING else. Cue initially polite emails/calls asking for confirmation of it's progress/location, getting no reply, escalating things slightly with all their internal procedures (similarly involving hard to reach phone lines and a few automated email replies). They did absolutely everything in their power to wiggle out of it, and then finally paid out so stick with it. Karma's a bitch really - a few days after they'd issued the refund, the package turned up back at the office he'd sent it from. 3 massive delivery addresses and they couldn't figure it out, yet one small print "Sender: " line and it came home. Booked another courier that day and 24hrs later all was right with the world again. Sadly there's not really anyone you can forward things onto at the moment, just keep hounding them and you'll get there in the end. Seriously though, become the biggest pain in their ass you can. Make them want to do anything to get rid of you, and hope they don't hire a hitman.

Strong music choice Enjoyed the vid, nice once gents.

Office is quiet this afternoon, so I've been digging out some old playlists and tweaking them to suit. Just had a pair of elderly clients walk into the office with Wu Tang blaring out. Not sure that's what they were expecting, but they seemed cool with it

Tell you what, I'll get them to double it and stick it in your account for you

Unless your current supplier are going to run you for hundreds, it's a minor difference. That said, I had a letter through from nPower yesterday to say that everything was in place for the switch, and they'd send a copy of the final bill (inc. exit fees) to both myself and Bulb. Given nPower are notorious for being a bunch of bastards, that was a pleasant surprise. Imagine other suppliers would do something similar. George - They've always been pretty good on the webchat when I've used it, but from a few reports they're relatively quick on email too

I put in as much info as their "detailed quote" or whatever they called it would allow and it wasn't too bad. As a point of interest I pulled up our last annual bill from nPower and compared the like-for-like costs and it worked out better than they'd implied online. The rough quote was always going to be out as we have a relatively large place but just the two of us in there, so our unit charges currently make up a lesser total than most. Sure that'll change down the line though!

£240-360 a year isn't to be sniffed at though, especially with £100 on top for switching. Level up again if you share your link around too IIRC they've reduced their prices twice this year so may come down a touch further. Would be rather nice but I won't hold my breath

We both do Will put some of it aside to get the first round in next time I see you

Was little more than politely asking if they could hook a brother up, really. Top marks for customer service - bearing in mind I've not paid them a penny yet, they've credited my account £100 and paid £40 in exit fees from my old supplier.

Bulb have just increased their referral credit to £100 each for new customer and referee. I used a £50 link, but 2 minutes on the webchat has just seen both myself and the guy who referred me get another £50 each no questions asked. For anyone who's thinking about it, here's mine again. Hook us both up yeah? bulb.co.uk/refer/luke4461

Local chap bought a pair of eBikes for himself and the wife as a means for getting to and from the nearest pub (~3 miles from their home). In theory, this is a resonable enough idea, but he bought a pair of 1250W bikes from AliExpress and they're both tiny with no real strength/coordination so neither of them are remotely in control. Dark nights with no lights through country lanes whilst pissed might not be the best idea

Done. Now please stay away from my family...

Bloody hooligan.

Lads, I know we're old and past it, but that doesn't make 2pm "late night". Naptime perhaps, but not late night. Everyone knows that means 7pm.

This. No proper community feel about things anymore. Trials is a small sport, and when we were all gathered either here or on OTN the community came together really well. Ok, it meant a higher number of bellends to deal with too but I'd take that over the ghost town any day. A local FB page for each area and some instagrams seem to be where things have gone now, which on the face of it is fine but doesn't do much for that vibe we once had. That, plus we're all old and boring now.

Yeah it's definitely worth doing the maths. IIRC, Bulb were cheaper than our previous nPower tariff (some Forces/Emergency Services discounted one) on Gas for standing and unit, but only one or other (I forget which) for Electricity. We ran the numbers and it made about £2 real world difference annually to us so still a fair saving overall, but for heavier users it'd certainly be worth double checking that. Don't take any of their advertised numbers for granted as I'm sure they all have some spin on them. I was able to pull up my last annual bill from nPower to use as a reference. Iressa were different again, so might be worth a look for you, Dave. Plus I think they also pay any exit fees from your current suplpier, which would save you having to wait until the end of your current contract

I was pretty impressed. I know my folks have just moved over to Iressa and had a decent saving too so might be worth checking out too We're relatively low users as there are typically only 2 of us there and we don't use half the house often, though when we're home we tend to have 1 or 2 devices of some sort running (laptop/PC/TV/xbox/etc) and the washing machine gets used once every other day so a decent rate would make less difference to us than it would to you guys. I think parents have saved themselves somewhere in the order of £400 for the year by switching (bigger house, less energy efficient building, more active use etc)