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I suppose it's time for a bit of an update. Not much has been done with the car since the new rad went in. It's still working fine. Had a trip to the NEC and back with no issues whatsoever, so here's hoping the cooling issues I have had since I got the car are now gone..... Back in October I got the winter wheels out of storage for a quick respray. They had not been on the car for two years and 3 were very flat (more of that later). This made the bin bag masking very easy They came up quite well, went for a dark grey/gunmetal finish this time. White was a silly choice for winters First weekend in December came the time to fit them. This happened on the first locking wheel nut yes, that's the key broken, with bits of broken locker still stuck in it. After many phone calls I found a new to me great little tyre place in Mansfield who very matter of factly removed all 4 lockers and replaced with standard wheel nuts for 6 quid a wheel. I got on and dropped the wheels on the following day It soon became obvious though that the three that were flat would not hold air. I was having to pump them up every day and despite a large amount of hope they didn't get any better. Back to Glenns Low Cost Tyres last Saturday and got them taken off, alloys cleaned up and tyres re-sealed, balanced etc for £14.95 a wheel. These guys really are my new go-to tyre place. Nothing phases them, they have a calm "no problem" attitude and charge very reasonably. In hindsight I should have just got them to remove the tyres and I could then have cleaned the rims up myself and resprayed without having to use 4 bin bags. Oh well, bring on the snow. Tyres are Avon WV7 which I'd recommend to anyone for winter tyres.
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Dec 30, 2022 14:14:05 GMT
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Santa brought me some new speakers this Christmas. About time too as the rears were very poor and the fronts not much better. Clearly the 20 year old paper cones etc were past their best. Now they were supposed to be a drop in replacement from Bass Junkies, fronts supplied with adaptors etc. Yeah right. Thought I'd tackle the fronts first, so off with the door card and out with the speaker Here’s the new speaker fitted to its adaptor, looks right yes? Erm, no. Mounting holes are way out. Good job I have a pillar drill… So fronts all fitted and sounding good, on to the rears. Door card off and I was greeted with 4 hole fixing speakers fitted to adaptors. Great, the new ones should just drop in right? Our survey said uh uh looks like the stock speakers are 4” and I’ve got another pair of 5.25”. Did some digging and although Scosche do 4” (HD4004) they are only available in the USA. Bigger is better anyway, so make them fit! the hole in the door was not big enough to allow the new speakers to sit flush with the door panel, though about cutting metal but decided to make up some spacers instead. I got some random bits of tut from the workshop and cast 8 spacers using hot glue new fixing holes drilled and speakers secured in place using the supplied self tappers. The clips supplied served as washers to stop the heads of the screws pulling through the mounting brackets finally I added some duct tape to seal the gap between the door panel and the speakers I can now turn the Android head unit up to max without the speakers crying out in pain 😂
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So as I've said on Matt88's topic forum.retro-rides.org/thread/223501/uk2000-impreza-turbo-gc8-fixedthe Bugeye is off the road for a couple of weeks, it's popped a hard coolant line that means inlet manifold off etc - not for me to do and my preferred Impreza expert can't fit me in until February. Thankfully the boss has let me use the pool fiesta to commute It's going to be expensive, parts are pretty cheap but there's going to be one heck of a labour bill ...... Might get him to swap the nearside front coilover spring while he has the car too.
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So car is safely with QED Automotive, drove it there (about 8 miles) with no issues. Mike's going to strip off the manifold and pressure test the cooling system to see where the leak is and take it from there.
More time in the Diesel Fiesta ........
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Feb 17, 2023 13:51:40 GMT
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Not much of an update, car is still at QED. Mike tried to save me money by just replacing the two hoses that come from the water pump, but no, my initial suspicions were right, one of the two steel pipes has sprung a leak.
As the inlet manifold has to come off, so it does not need to be done again, I have ordered all new steel pipes and rubber hoses that go under it - get the lot changed while we are at it. I've also ordered a new stock turbo inlet as Mat88 discovered they tend to disintegrate at the turbo end when disturbed.
Over 200 quid down so far and Mike's labour bill will be a lot more .......
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Feb 22, 2023 10:21:55 GMT
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Things progressed yesterday, Mike took delivery of the order from ICP and then did this to my baby I hope he remembers where all this lot go when it comes time to put it back together
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Apr 13, 2023 11:06:26 GMT
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Well, the good news is I have the Impreza back. The coolant leak situation did escalate slightly though. When Mike pressure tested the system to prove the new steel pipes from the water pump he discovered a small leak from one of the cross pipe to head seals. here's the state of the O ring grooves before he got to work and after cleaning up. Note he also flushed out the insides of the heads as much as he could The O rings were like solid plastic too and one bolt snapped off in the head when taking off the cross pipe. So more parts ordered and another week's delay but finally it was back together. Then the car developed an odd rattle/clicking noise, especially when turning left. Yep, nearside front driveshaft outer CV shot. After yet another order to ICP and a trip to the local garage (they could handle a simple job like a driveshaft swap) the car was once more back on the road. If only they had not windy gunned the wheel nuts on. Summer wheels are back on now after a trip to Glenn's Tyres in Mansfield to get the stuck nuts removed - why oh why do mechanics gun up wheel nuts? Looks no different for approx £1000 in parts and labour does it
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Not much of an update, but the other day one of the new rear speakers started buzzing with very deep bass, so I suspected that the speaker had either worked loose or was catching the back face of the door card. Time do do something better than my heath robinson glue gun spacer arrangement. I took one of the original speaker mounts and traced the shape of the front flange onto paper. I did this so that what I ended up with would be sure to fit in the door without fouling anything. This was scanned in Then I edited it in good old MS Paint to make a solid shape, ok I lost a couple of mounting holes but they would be put back later This image was imported into MS Builder and extruded to a thickness of 5mm, holes re-cut and 4 hole fixings added for the speaker including recesses for M3.5 nuts. The central opening was also made bigger to suit the body of the larger speaker. My good friend Matt Jarvis then printed them in high temperature PLA+ and inserted the nuts while the plastic was still warm. This made sure a good snug fit. Just got to wait for them to be posted from Grantham and I can get them fitted. The original glue gun spacers were 8mm thick, so the 3mm reduced height should give a bit of clearance on the inside of the door card and bolting the speaker to the adaptor should give a good solid vibration free mounting. I love 3D printing
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Apr 25, 2023 11:08:26 GMT
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Got the rings They look about right compared to the original adaptor, just need some time to whip a door card off and bolt one up to see if my maths was right
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First go at fitting Not bad, but I'd forgotten that the stock 3 hole fixings sit proud of the door panel, so the ring does not sit flush. There's still not enough clearance for the door card to sit down right. I'll get a big file out and make some notches in the underside of the ring to clear the raised fixings. Once I get the dimensions sorted I'll update the 3D model.
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Apr 29, 2023 16:54:36 GMT
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2.5mm recesses made behind the 3 hole fixings and all is well Here’s the adaptor ring fitted to the door, gaffa tape is just sticking the plastic down where I stupidly trimmed it back earlier. And here’s the speaker screwed into place Good news is the door card sits back over it too 😁🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🥳🎉
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Here's the revised 3D model should I ever need them again ....
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Wow, how long since the last update? back in August I stupidly backed into a parked car, doing this to Bugs and so started the long and torrid saga of trying to get it fixed. Now, I am insured with Adrian Flux on a modified car policy, so they should get this sorted no problems yes? No, the policy was farmed out to AXA who don't know a modified car from a coffee cup. They immediately went down the total loss route and even said that someone was coming round to take my car away! I told them to stick their claim where the sun don't shine and resolved to get the car fixed myself. Got a quote for £1500 from a local bodyshop which included completely respraying the rear bumper that badly needed it anyway. A few weeks later I got an email from AXA to do a survey about how my claim had gone. I let then have both barrels. A phone call then happened from a nice lady at AXA wanting to follow up.... she said email her the quote and they would have another look. Which I did. They referred the damage to a third party assessor, who after receiving all the info again from me, Said it was a total loss, as the bodyshop had increased their quote to £3500 as it was now an insurance job. I told them to stick the claim where the sun don't shine. Assessor then agreed to send out an engineer to actually have a look at my car. To be fair, he was decent, knew what he was looking at and left after about 15 minutes. After chasing up the assessors, who told me that the claim had been approved and questioned why AXA had not been back to me I finally got my car booked into the bodyshop at the end of October. It really should not have been that hard. Can't see me staying with Flux/AXA next year.
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thebaron
Europe
Over the river, heading out of town
Posts: 1,636
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Dec 13, 2023 15:54:23 GMT
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Sorry to hear about the saga but glad the end result looks so good!
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