MOT Update - 2 weeks to go!

The test looms near and wow there's a lot going on in Scoob world! - I've spent over £1000!!

Got about a fortnight to go now until the current MOT runs out, however I'll have to get the car back into Seaview Motors by next Friday (11 June) to qualify for a partial re-test, where they only check what the car failed on [and any other faults that have arisen this week will be ignored!]

Just over a week and I've sorted all but the few mechanical problems.

Heres the checklist so far :

1. N/S Headlamp Aim - The 98 model Scoob features electronic headlamp-leveling [for when you're towing a caravan] so the beam for my O/S headlamp can be raised with the flick of a switch. The N/S one is off a 94 Scoob though, with no fancy leveling and simply had to be raised the old-school way by shining the lights onto our garage door and adjusting the beam up manually with the ratchet behind the light-lens.

2. Number Plate Lights - Luckily the 'broken' one only needed a new bulb, the socket was just hiding away in the bumper so I replaced both bulbs with 'Heavy-Duty' 12v-5w mini-bulbs @ £3.99 from Halfords. The other socket had worked its way free of its mount so I just screwed it back up with a 10mm long self-tapper. Simples.

3. Foglamp Not Working - This got fiddly! We took the bulb out, which looked blackened so we chucked in a replacement to find this wouldn't work either. After much deliberation over whether the switch or wiring may be broken we reached for the Multimeter... I first downloaded some wiring diagrams for the rear lights and as my dad and I got our heads around them we discovered that the two wires that run to the Subaru fog-lamp were not connected to anything on the new twin-clusters. I chopped the wires from the fog-lamp on the new clusters and fed them directly through the connector and into the two terminals that had previously been blank. Hey presto! Instant fog-lamp! Its a great feeling to know I've finally given the car a fog-lamp it never had before, but weird how she sailed through her last 2 MOTs with these lights on - no mention of the friggin non-existent lamp! Dodgy!

4. ABS Warning Light On - I downloaded a "Diagnosis Checklist" for the ABS warning light - a whole 50 pages by itself!! We grabbed the multi-meter and managed to work through the major components [PCM control-module, power circuit, etc.] with no results. I've deduced it is probably one of the tiny ABS-sensors on the wheels, which are nigh-on impossible to replace, so for now I decided to just take the bulb out of the warning-light in the dash. Had to take the whole dash apart to get the gauge-binnacle out, but all in all the job took less than an hour.

5. O/S Steering Rack Boot Split - Found the part on a great site called JapaneseMotorSpares.co.uk, who have a superb stock of all those niggly, hard-to-find import parts. A pair of the boots cost £12 delivered and arrived the next day, absolute bargain, so I will have to get around to fitting the other one seeing as I have a spare. We got the boot on very easily in about 1 hour - I'll cover it in a post soon as.

6. N/S Rear Shock Absorber Leaking - I went a bit mad here. A pair of OEM [Kayaba Racing] rear shocks was the obvious direct replacement and cheap as chips @ £115 - but I didn't buy those. Instead I plumped for an entire adjustable coilover kit from JDM badboys Tein, which was a bit pricey @ £655, but you get what you pay for - these are the real deal!! Me and dad fitted the rear two on Sunday, but its a complete kit so the front ones will have to go on soon. Watch out for the post!

7. Emissions and Noise Excessive - This was the real problem-child. Quik-Fit, National, even large local stores like Chester Exhausts don't exactly shift many of these standard systems, so the cheapest price quote I could get for a full system, fitted while I sip coffee was £819. Ouch. The next option was to buy the OEM system separately and fit it myself. All I could find new was a real budget model 1st and 2nd cat @ £240 together, but still a rear pipe would be extra.

Scoobynet chums suggested I just shell out for a sports-cat for about £250 and have done with it, which will pass the MOT while hardly decreasing the power or noise. This originally seemed expensive to me, but after the OEM shit I guess not only is it the best value-for-money, but actually the cheapest option too lol. I tracked down a nice Prodrive 100cpi sports-cat that should fit straight onto my Peco centre-section... I hope, and its a bit below the average @ £235 delivered, although it is a used item - off a V4 STi Prodrive to be exact :) Hopefully this will get us through the test - I will have to hope it kills the noise a little bit or I'll have to buy a bung...

The deadline is Friday and the Prodrive cat still hasn't arrived so fingers crossed!