Quite a long story with this one. Well, quite a long story with me, but lets rewind as far back as is relevant...
I bought the locost chassis a while back. In fact, way before the epic garage was built. now i always need 2 cars on the road at one time, due to staying so bloody remote and having a wife who does not, in general, appreciate my wibblepoo cars. As such, there is the Civic Type R for the reliables, and i usually have about a grands worth of "squib"*
Up until this point, that had been the mk1 MR2, which has been well documented in a separate thread. Once that came off the road i needed a replacement. Seeing an opportunity to kill 2 birds with one stone, i got an MX5 with a decent length of ticket and a gut-full of rot. That was a decent enough daily beater last summer, and once the ticket ran out it donated all of its mechanicals to the locost project. As a happy coincidence i managed to clear my end on it, making the initial outlay basically a 6 months of free motoring.
So, this got me thinking of bangernomics. Bangernomics done right, not just buying a sh1t tip and losing money on it.
In came the Volvo 240. Bought for 400 quid as an answer to my workhorse problems, only a transit van would have more load lugging space. Problem was, it was petrol and far from the most economical. i knew an estate would be the solution, just not this one. Luckily the 240 was, surprisingly for me, a bloody good buy. Zero rot, i performed some well documented mechanical repairs on it and got it in pretty decent shape. I then sold it for 800 quid, almost doubling my money on the curse word. This bangernomics game was going well.
So, 800 quid to gamble again. In came what i regarded as "low hanging fruit". Buy another MX5. This time it had the 1.8 lump, LSD, hard top and leather. Other bits and bobs were included such as exhaust and alloys. An easy sale.
Also, a useless car for practicality. I tarted it up a bit, popped an advert up on the first sniff of sunshine, and sold it onto an 18 year old lad from here.
By this point i was, give or take, £600 up in my game of bangernomics, with a year of technically free motoring into the bargain. Time for the end game.
£600 budget, strict long-term criteria of massive practicality, minimal running costs, and comfort for the daily commute. There was only one logical choice....
B5 Passat. I had one before many moons ago and loved it. Run it on anything, torquey, comfy on long runs, sturdy, and feels like a Golf.
Got it for £630 on eBay with a years ticket and 6 months tax. Extra bonus points for it being located in Perth. So, off to break it to the wife that i have bought car number 71. Fairly comprehensive discussion on my car addiction, before the idea to sate the purchase with an overnight stay in Pitlochry in some fancy hotel. I think i have found the ticket to many daft car purchases in future... include them in short breaks!
First impressions were OK. No history of any belt change, which made for some bullet-sweating on the drive home (150k on the clock.... surely its had a belt change once, right??), a clunk on turning, a clunk from the rear, interior stinking of dog, but otherwise all was well! The biggest issue on the drive was a weak radio antenna and no ipod connectivity on the Kenwood. Even that was cured when we found a local market selling CDs...
..and the dog scent sated with my first purchase for the beast...
Got her home event free. One particular bonus point was this:
The mighty fabled Towbar has returned. All the practicality! So how does it fair in the harsh light of post purchase reality? Well, as you may have spotted, it has a *touch* of rust...
..made worse by the lack of sill trim on that part. Front wings are less crusty but still blistering. This will be a long term thing to solve, but there were more pressing things that needed attention. That belt for a start.
One of the impressive things i like about these Passats is the DIY tricks you have for maintenance. They designed this well, unlike the B8 which i had before that just.... wasn't. I expressed my thoughts on that one before... but one point was they took the transverse engine from the newer VW stuff, rather than the Audi design used in this model...
Due to the longitude engine pressing so close to the slam panel, they made the front end completely detachable...
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...like so...
Which makes doing a timing belt an absolute hoot! That said, it makes changing the aux belt tricky when its on...
While I'm here waxing lyrical about the merits of B5's... see that lower spar running across the front of the car that supports the front of the engine?That's also the turbo boost line from turbo to inter-cooler.. Utter. Genius.
So, belts on, its not going to Hari Kiri. Whats next? Clunks....
So there was a front and rear clunk. Knowing this is the trailing arm rear axle version of the Passat (quattro's get IRS) this should be a dawdle. Up with the rear to see what i expected to be a perished shock bush or something.... I found this:
Yep, the aluminium topmount for the shocks *should* have 2 lugs bolting it to the chassis. This was the lightweight edition. 2 rear topmounts ordered and i forgot about it. No point going any further, right? Uh, wrong. Made a mistake here. Once I actually tried splitting the topmount from the shock, It wouldn't part. After much banging I faced the fact that i was going to have to chop it to save the shock. Once half dissected I knew otherwise....
wibblepoo. That will be 2 rear shocks on order too. Luckily GSF had an offer on 2 rears for £50 quid. Unfortunately this meant ordering from GSF, and 3 weeks later I finally tracked down the delivery they sent to some random company in Aberdeen. I'm still injecting venom to the negative feedback to be left.
So, all built up:
(Yes, i know the bumpstops are not on in this picture. They are in real life...)
And that was the rear clunk fixed!
OK, front clunk to address and we should be good to go, daily driver with no fears of sudden breakdowns.
So, front end up, and i found more than one clunk. For those in the know, the B5 Audi / VW suspension is a work of genius, designed to alter the scrub radius and improve handling. Well, on paper. In real life, its an overcomplicated riot to work on, a far departure from traditional McPherson Strut.
I found an upper control arm (half a wishbone, basically) on one side with a dead balljoint, a tie bar, and a lower control arm were humped. Ugh, if one is gone, the rest cant be far behind. That and the fact that the total bill for those parts was basically the same as a master set... enter the weekend killer:
Every consumable suspension joint for the front of a B5.
The top control arms had to be removed with the strut....
Then refitted and torqued up with weight on the axle. These bushes are so stiff that you need to have road-weight on them before torquing or they will pull against themselves and wear out quicker.
Oh aye, see that bolt that holds the balljoints into the top of the hub? 2 balljoints, 1 bolt.. All the seizes.
The lower arms were slightly easier...
So thats where I'm at. Dove her into work this morning...
...and it feels fine. Nice and quiet, sturdy, no clunks. Will need to sort the tracking to be on the safe side, but its not radically out.
I did attack the interior with a bucket, sponge and water-sucking vax. 3 times. It smells a lot better.
The rust... remains. i can live with that though for the immediate future, especially when there is so much room for activities...
I bought the locost chassis a while back. In fact, way before the epic garage was built. now i always need 2 cars on the road at one time, due to staying so bloody remote and having a wife who does not, in general, appreciate my wibblepoo cars. As such, there is the Civic Type R for the reliables, and i usually have about a grands worth of "squib"*
Up until this point, that had been the mk1 MR2, which has been well documented in a separate thread. Once that came off the road i needed a replacement. Seeing an opportunity to kill 2 birds with one stone, i got an MX5 with a decent length of ticket and a gut-full of rot. That was a decent enough daily beater last summer, and once the ticket ran out it donated all of its mechanicals to the locost project. As a happy coincidence i managed to clear my end on it, making the initial outlay basically a 6 months of free motoring.
So, this got me thinking of bangernomics. Bangernomics done right, not just buying a sh1t tip and losing money on it.
In came the Volvo 240. Bought for 400 quid as an answer to my workhorse problems, only a transit van would have more load lugging space. Problem was, it was petrol and far from the most economical. i knew an estate would be the solution, just not this one. Luckily the 240 was, surprisingly for me, a bloody good buy. Zero rot, i performed some well documented mechanical repairs on it and got it in pretty decent shape. I then sold it for 800 quid, almost doubling my money on the curse word. This bangernomics game was going well.
So, 800 quid to gamble again. In came what i regarded as "low hanging fruit". Buy another MX5. This time it had the 1.8 lump, LSD, hard top and leather. Other bits and bobs were included such as exhaust and alloys. An easy sale.
Also, a useless car for practicality. I tarted it up a bit, popped an advert up on the first sniff of sunshine, and sold it onto an 18 year old lad from here.
By this point i was, give or take, £600 up in my game of bangernomics, with a year of technically free motoring into the bargain. Time for the end game.
£600 budget, strict long-term criteria of massive practicality, minimal running costs, and comfort for the daily commute. There was only one logical choice....
B5 Passat. I had one before many moons ago and loved it. Run it on anything, torquey, comfy on long runs, sturdy, and feels like a Golf.
Got it for £630 on eBay with a years ticket and 6 months tax. Extra bonus points for it being located in Perth. So, off to break it to the wife that i have bought car number 71. Fairly comprehensive discussion on my car addiction, before the idea to sate the purchase with an overnight stay in Pitlochry in some fancy hotel. I think i have found the ticket to many daft car purchases in future... include them in short breaks!
First impressions were OK. No history of any belt change, which made for some bullet-sweating on the drive home (150k on the clock.... surely its had a belt change once, right??), a clunk on turning, a clunk from the rear, interior stinking of dog, but otherwise all was well! The biggest issue on the drive was a weak radio antenna and no ipod connectivity on the Kenwood. Even that was cured when we found a local market selling CDs...
..and the dog scent sated with my first purchase for the beast...
Got her home event free. One particular bonus point was this:
The mighty fabled Towbar has returned. All the practicality! So how does it fair in the harsh light of post purchase reality? Well, as you may have spotted, it has a *touch* of rust...
..made worse by the lack of sill trim on that part. Front wings are less crusty but still blistering. This will be a long term thing to solve, but there were more pressing things that needed attention. That belt for a start.
One of the impressive things i like about these Passats is the DIY tricks you have for maintenance. They designed this well, unlike the B8 which i had before that just.... wasn't. I expressed my thoughts on that one before... but one point was they took the transverse engine from the newer VW stuff, rather than the Audi design used in this model...
Due to the longitude engine pressing so close to the slam panel, they made the front end completely detachable...
...like so...
Which makes doing a timing belt an absolute hoot! That said, it makes changing the aux belt tricky when its on...
While I'm here waxing lyrical about the merits of B5's... see that lower spar running across the front of the car that supports the front of the engine?That's also the turbo boost line from turbo to inter-cooler.. Utter. Genius.
So, belts on, its not going to Hari Kiri. Whats next? Clunks....
So there was a front and rear clunk. Knowing this is the trailing arm rear axle version of the Passat (quattro's get IRS) this should be a dawdle. Up with the rear to see what i expected to be a perished shock bush or something.... I found this:
Yep, the aluminium topmount for the shocks *should* have 2 lugs bolting it to the chassis. This was the lightweight edition. 2 rear topmounts ordered and i forgot about it. No point going any further, right? Uh, wrong. Made a mistake here. Once I actually tried splitting the topmount from the shock, It wouldn't part. After much banging I faced the fact that i was going to have to chop it to save the shock. Once half dissected I knew otherwise....
wibblepoo. That will be 2 rear shocks on order too. Luckily GSF had an offer on 2 rears for £50 quid. Unfortunately this meant ordering from GSF, and 3 weeks later I finally tracked down the delivery they sent to some random company in Aberdeen. I'm still injecting venom to the negative feedback to be left.
So, all built up:
(Yes, i know the bumpstops are not on in this picture. They are in real life...)
And that was the rear clunk fixed!
OK, front clunk to address and we should be good to go, daily driver with no fears of sudden breakdowns.
So, front end up, and i found more than one clunk. For those in the know, the B5 Audi / VW suspension is a work of genius, designed to alter the scrub radius and improve handling. Well, on paper. In real life, its an overcomplicated riot to work on, a far departure from traditional McPherson Strut.
I found an upper control arm (half a wishbone, basically) on one side with a dead balljoint, a tie bar, and a lower control arm were humped. Ugh, if one is gone, the rest cant be far behind. That and the fact that the total bill for those parts was basically the same as a master set... enter the weekend killer:
Every consumable suspension joint for the front of a B5.
The top control arms had to be removed with the strut....
Then refitted and torqued up with weight on the axle. These bushes are so stiff that you need to have road-weight on them before torquing or they will pull against themselves and wear out quicker.
Oh aye, see that bolt that holds the balljoints into the top of the hub? 2 balljoints, 1 bolt.. All the seizes.
The lower arms were slightly easier...
So thats where I'm at. Dove her into work this morning...
...and it feels fine. Nice and quiet, sturdy, no clunks. Will need to sort the tracking to be on the safe side, but its not radically out.
I did attack the interior with a bucket, sponge and water-sucking vax. 3 times. It smells a lot better.
The rust... remains. i can live with that though for the immediate future, especially when there is so much room for activities...
