Tyre Puncture Repair

A couple of months ago my dad spotted a screw in my n/s front tyre [why is it dads are so gifted at spotting stuff like that?! I bet he put it there!], but the tyre hadn't lost air so I soldiered on. Several weeks ago I checked the pressure again and it was down to about 15psi so I re-inflated it to 30psi and checked again a week later. The pressure had only dropped a few psi over the week, but I decided to act on it this weekend, rather than just keep on pumping it up.

A mate of mine recently had a tyre on his Vectra repaired for just £5 at a small tyre-centre in Wallasey, near where I work. I doubt I'd find time on my lunch break to get it done and its a 7 mile drive for me otherwise, so I decided to head to good old National where I bought the tyres as its only round the corner, although I didn't realise I'd end up paying nearly 4 times as much.

National did a repair on my dad's A4 estate not 2 years ago for a tenner, but today it set me back a cool £17.50 - Ouch! At least the tyre is fixed and to be fair to National they have 3 branches within 3 miles of where I live and the last few times I've been the service has been very quick - I had my Scooby keys back today in 10 minutes flat, so I guess you get what you pay for. http://www.national.co.uk

General Update + Insurance

Dismayingly there's just nothing new in Scoob world lately. Life is being an expensive ride at the moment and the colder weather makes it too daunting to do any serious mechanical work or painting of the underside, which I wanted to do before winter really. The car is also running brilliantly at the moment so there's nothing thats screaming out to be done. I have managed to sort out a few small, but niggly, faults though and re-insured the car without paying the astronomical amount Elephant wanted for my renewal...

INSURANCE:
I'd already paid for a year on my Beemer at just shy of £400 a few months before the Scooby arrived, so Elephant.co.uk agreed to change my policy over to the Subaru for the same amount again, making the premium total £804. When I received my renewal quote this year though they wanted £1145, nearly another 4 ton more again! I rang them saying I'd found a cheaper quote as I have done before and asked them to get the price down a bit, but they were having none of it this time and could only get it down to £999. I've been with Elephant for 5 years and I like the yellow envelopes you know, but they didn't even seem bothered about keeping my custom so I hit up CompareTheMarket.com again and got a very nice quote of £714 from a new upstart company called 1st Central, which, for fully-comp, with a 27 yr-old driver on a Group 17 car, is very, very good. The customer reviews for 1st Central are a mixed bag - they're not very nice if you crash and it's your fault apparently, especially if you were drunk [duhhh!] - but I thought for that saving it couldn't hurt to try them so lets see how we get on!

BOOT-LEAK:

During the incredible bout of wet-weather we had earlier in the month I noticed a damp patch of carpet in the boot-install. I took out the spare-wheel to find a small paddling-pool in the wheel-well. At first we thought it was coming through the boot-lid seal so I began taping sections up to track the leak with no success. After a couple of scans round the forums though I discovered its a common problem with after-market lights, like my Morette LED ones, where they haven't been bolted in tight enough. I'd only checked that the bolts were finger-tight before and when I got a spanner on them I found that they were all pitifully loose and took some turns to get them graunched. I should have clocked onto this much earlier as its becoming clear that the lad who bolted all these parts on before my time was a bit of an animal, with his roof-scoop held on with bathroom sealant and whatnot. Anyway, the wet weather has now returned, but I'm glad to say the leak hasn't and the spare-wheel well is now dry as a bone. Piece of cake!

LOOSE FRONT SIDE-LIGHT CLUSTER:

I replaced the n/s bulb and snapped the plastic-bracket that holds the top of the corner-cluster in place while screwing it in. Ever since then the cluster has wobbled about and often needs pushing back into place. There isn't much to stick tape on to so I've just left it for months, but with nothing better to do on the car I've painstakingly drilled a hole through the back of light-lens itself to provide somewhere to get a cable-tie through to hold it in and its now as sturdy as the other bolted side - you'd never know.

Fixing the Subwoofers

FINALLY! After four months I've discovered what was making my subs work so strangely! This is definitely worth noting as it is likely a very common problem and could stop you needing to replace your subs/amp if you have the same symptoms.

FAULT FINDING:
I took the system out of the boot while fitting the coilovers and when I put them back in they were almost inaudible. Everything appeared to be working so I fiddled with the settings on the head-unit for a few days, but they were so quiet I didn't even notice the fuse had blown at some point. I replaced it, but they kept on blowing after a few days so I checked all the wiring for splits where the metal could be touching the car somewhere. They were all fine.I thought itcould be an earth problem, but if the black cable isn't grounded properly then the amp wouldn't turn on at all. I then checked and re-checked the remote cable from the head-unit to the amp, as this was a horrible problem I had with the system in my Escort, but it all just looked hunky dory. The speakers were moving too, wildly back and forth from one extreme to another, so they were definitely getting a signal.

As for the sound, most of my passengers were convinced I was losing my mind, as the Infinity Kappa's in the doors are pretty bass heavy as is, and kept telling me nothing was wrong. After a couple of busy months though, lugging round a small person's weight of subs and replacing fuses every 5 minutes, I just had to get to the bottom of the quiet running or get rid of the install altogether.

I'd checked and re-checked everything, so the problem had to be inside the components themselves. If a circuit had gone somewhere in the amp then I'd have to buy a new one, but luckily [i guess] the problem was inside the sub box. I guess it must have been stored somewhere damp before I bought it, plus the Scoob's boot and my porch probably weren't much better, because the wiring on the back of the speaker-terminals had started to really corrode in some way. I don't know if you can quite see in the photo, but it's a white powdery crud that covered the brass terminals and was starting to move up the copper cable inside the plastic sheath. I only know of aluminium corroding in this way, never copper, brass or gold-plated bits, so I suppose it might have been some alloy in the solder[?] It was the joins that held the worst of it and when I was checking one wire the crumbly solder broke straight off. Idon't know how the difference between these corroded wires working and breaking was sosudden, because it looks like they've been rotting for a while, but at least it's an easy fix and peace of mind at last!

FIX:

I cut the cables off a good cm past the end of the corrosion, stripped the ends and, instead of soldering them back on, I crimped on some new gold-plated spade-sockets, £3.99 at Halfords, but at least I know this won't happen again. I then took the brass spade-connectors off the terminal, burned the solder off them on the cooker and gave them a good rub with emery, before wiping any trace of the corrosion off everything. I hooked up the new spades and wrapped them in a nice piece of heat-shrink. As soon as I turned the head-unit on the bass was back! YES!

Bolting down the Passenger Footrest

The alloy-plate in the passenger-footwell has become an annoyance as people always seem to find a way to kick it around and wedge it under the seat so its time to fix it in place. I've been hesitating because I'm reluctant to start drilling holes and screwing through the cabin-floor in case I hit something like wiring or a fuel-line, but it turns out that floor carries on flat to the engine-firewall and the bit the slopes up for the footrest is just a thin steel false-floor.

I think it's worth noting in case I decide to remove the heavy false-floor later and completely replace it with my slimline alloy job when I decide to get the weight down. It's only held in place by 4 bolts and I don't think it stiffens the body enough for the softer metal not to work just as well. For now though I've just plonked the alloy over the top. I took one bolt out from each side of the false-floor and fixed down the alloy-plate through the existing holes with 2 more allen-head alloy bolts. I countersunk the holes in the alloy-plate, but the heads are quite deep so they only fit flush to the bumps not the plate itself.

360° Spirit-Level in Engine Bay

The skip at work really has yielded some great items to fab-up car parts from, as well things like lightweight-alloy bolts [just like the ones available from Demon Tweeks, £5.99 for 5!] to build them with. This trick multi-directional spirit-level was no exception - it's basically a circular spirit-level with a ring in the centre so the bubble is level in every direction. I couldn't see it thrown away, so I've fixed it in place next to the intercooler to add a neat little instrument to the engine-bay...

It's handy to have for finding some level ground to check oil/fluid levels properly or work on the car, but most importantly it's ideal for making sure each of the four coilover-shocks are set at the same levels for balancing the car's suspension! In theory it should work a charm, so I'll have to get the front two TEIN shocks on asap... I know I keep saying this.

I found a nice place for it on the right intercooler-bracket, got the car on a flat piece of ground and, with the help of a normal spirit-level, found the right angle to mount it level. It's set in an aluminium-bracket so I had space to put a small self-tapping screw through it into the intercooler-bracket. I finished with lashings of ally-tape to stop it from tilting, as even the slightest movement will misalign the bubble.

I'll have to re-calibrate the position of the spirit-level again when I get the front coilovers on and all four corners will need to be set to the absolute bottom so the car is completely flat, but it'll make it so much easier to get the balance right when lifting the car later! Techy!

Update + BMW M1 'Art Car' Birthday Cake!!

Where has the year gone?! It's rolled round to October already, but at least that means it's my birthday!!

I've finally got a whole two weeks off work, but I've been on holiday in the Scilly Isles for a bit [where there are no Scoobys sadly] and too busy partying to focus much on the car. I have found time to iron out a few small problems that have been doing my head in, like the faulty subs, and neatened up some of the detailing [which I'll cover soon], but I still haven't motivated myself to finish off my carbon wind-diffuser and anything else exciting will mean spending money - and that ugly old thing called insurance is about to rear it's head in a couple of weeks so I'll have to get saving hard again and see what I can achieve before Xmas hits...

For now enjoy this birthday cake that my good friend Chidge made for me. OK, so it's not shaped like a WRX, but it is a rather spectacular rendition of the awesome BMW M1 supercar from the late 70's. The more astute among you will notice that its not just any M1, but is in fact the famous 'Art Car', with the paint-job done by Andy Warhol himself for one of his exhibitions [http://www.bmwdrives.com/artcars/bmw-artcars-warhol.php]. A brilliant car-geek-cake and a very thoughtful birthday gift!!

Can't even tell which is which!!