Rainbird's LCR

Yeah I had a bit of a look through those too. Figured I'd try it out and see - so far no sign of any flex etc but will keep an eye on them and report back

Rob; Soon. Got a busy few weeks coming up but perhaps mid-late March (though I'm away on and off then too!)

Shall check the work diary tomorrow and get an idea of when might be doable. Perhaps a drive up to the moors/somewhere scenic for a few photos, food/drink and a good old chinwag.

Edit: Ooh, just spotted we're on Page 2 now. Maybe I post too much waffle...

Have a photo to stop things looking bland, chaps. Was playing with caliper colours as I think Im going to go with yellow - not my car unfortunately just the first one online I could photoshop. Should have my aero wipers on this week (off the old car again, just not got round to fitting!) and wheels will be going back to silver when I get the chance too so shooooooould look something like this:

I have toys to fit...





80mm B5 v3 TIP and 25/28mm Neuspeed ARBs. Paint's a bit tatty on the rARB but otherwise spot on and will firm things up nicely.

A friend has generously offered to powder coat the ARBs for me which is extremely decent of him. Just need to wait a week or so until it's convenient and job's a good'un

<double post, balls!>

Finally got round to fitting my new TIP, though as soon as I reached the point of no return it started to chuck it down - typical!

New vs old:



Turbo has clearly seen better days, though there's no play in the thing so not too concerned for now. It can stay put until I decide whether or not to give in to hybrid temptation



Seriously need to clear up a load of the untidy wires and hoses at some point, plus spray the plastics on the filter...



Also spotted these beauties. Were next to the tartan sprays...

We'll see...

Dropped the bars off for powder earlier - picking them up tomorrow and hopefully get them fitted before heading up to Curborough next week

I did indeed - assuming the weather is reasonable enough tomorrow I'll throw up an update tomorrow afternoon.

Today was PCV simplification day for the Leon. Unfortunately due to abysmal weather and hose clips being an utter nuisance it took me far longer to get this done than it should have so I didn't actually get around to what I was hoping to achieve today - the simple task of fitting the rear ARB.

Off with the front trim for access to all the crap beneath.



Started pulling hoses off - all nice and gunky full of shite:



Snapped a hose:



Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing as it made it easier to pull out this lot:



With everything out, this went in place instead (well, after a slight reconfig of hose lengths to make it sit a little nicer):



Bunged up the now superflous connections on the TIP and under the inlet manifold:



Done.



Whilst I was doing the above, I intermittently also did things with sprays and newspaper.

Masked, primed, sprayed, done.





All back together and good to go. Haven't driven the car properly yet but it ran fine so I'm assuming I've not severed the brake servo lines or anything silly - if it doesn't try to kill me tonight I'll hopefully get a chance to finally throw on the rARB tomorrow

Well, a quick test drive and a bit of logging revealed that the PCV delete had been entirely...

...unsuccessful. Great.

Still down on power, I unplugged the MAF and went for a spin. No real difference, so all fingers pointing that way for a cause. Will get into town and grab a new one from Euro and see how that helps. Fingers crossed.

Headed to ECP and picked up a new MAF. Changed them over in the car park, got some cash back for dropping in the old one and went for a spin.



No. Bloody. Joy.

Seriously unimpressed, so figured screw it, lets just do the coils and plugs to be on the safe side. I was pretty sure this wasn't the case as there wasn't any form of misfire or lumpiness but it was one more thing I wanted to get done anyway so no harm there.

Will replace plugs with some NGKs when I can, but these will be fine for now. TFSI coils.





Old plugs had a little oil on. Will eed to do the gaskets at some point to help eliminate this.



Went for a spin, still no love as expected. Not particularly handy as I had a bit of a day out planned with the car the following day (more on that later...)

Gave the local dealer a shout to see if I could pick up a new MAF direct from them. Unfortunately they had nothing in stock and it would take a few days which wouldn't be seen enough for the day I needed it. This side of things wasn't overly inspiring either...



Time for something calm and not so mechanical to chill me back out again.

I had a set of aero wipers kept back from my old car. They're actually Mk4 Golf wipers which hang about an inch too far off the passenger side of the screen when fully retracted.

Not a major issue - last time I just fitted them so they were angled a little high and the issue was sorted, though it didn't look quite so clean as I'd like. To rectify this I wanted to hack the passenger arm apart and move the mount an inch or so down the arm towards the pivot. This is a little more effort than simply trimming the blade like a lot of people seem to do, but will be a permanent fix rather than having to do it each time the blades are renewed.

Off with the end, shortened the arm, into position and epoxied in:

Still need to sand them back and spray them up to properly finish them off but they're spot on in terms of placement and function.







The other option, of course, is to go one step ahead of all the cool kids and dewiper the front end...



Car back together again, all set for tomorrow's fun

Well, play day.

A group of us from a biking forum booked out Curborough Sprint Track for the day - worked out being absolutely brilliant!

At £650 for the day, we split it amongst around 12 of us making it extremely reasonable for what it was. There was a great mix of cars - a pair of LCRs, Jardo's 1.8t Mk2, two Clio 172/182s, a collection of MX5s, Saab, few family estates! Really cool collection and the diverse group made for a decent load of fun with no real pressure.

A selection of photos from some of the lads there:























Cannot wait to get back on track, already hooked! Hopefully net time I'll have a working MAF and we'll get times down a little more - sub 1min for the way we were timing on the day would be nice and I reckon it's on. We weren't using the "usual" timing for some unknown reason so can't compare to any other times out there. Ah well!

If anyone out there is thinking about having a go on track, do it! So much fun and totally addictive. Major withdrawal symptoms...

I was meant to be collecting a load of parts on the way home (Pro4 mani, exhaust etc) but the seller bailed at the last minute. Denied. New MAF should be here tomorrow though and may have placed a cheeky bid on a Cobra DP and sports cat earlier and won. That'll help free things up a little.

Also managed to make up some new droplinks and get the rARB fitted this evening. I say fitted, but it seems the seller sent me not only buggered droplinks and snapped clamps - douche. Working on that though. Held in place for 24 hours to save having to remove/refit and will get a proper mount on there tomorrow too:



http://i1333.photobucket.com/albums/w633/lukerainbird/20150316_164337_zpsvsormnfn.jpgv

[img]http://i1333.photobucket.com/albums/w633/lukerainbird/20150316_172831_zpsiohpfo2n.jpg

Yeah the wraps are just holding the bar in place for 24 hours to save me removing everything again last night - only moved the car far enough to tuck it out of the way again so the car stayed completely flat etc. Screw ever taking it out for a drive like that.

I had a ~19mm Whiteline bar on my old Leon Cupra and it made a world of difference, so I'm expecting this to be another level again. Have bolted it up on the middle setting but that may be a little overkill until I get the front bar on too at a later date - may have to pop it onto the softest to keep things a little more balanced.

Boost issue will HOPEFULLY be sorted by a new OEM MAF this evening - I've been tracking the driver all day haha. Her name is Sally and she's currently 8 parcels away. Somewhat worryingly you can see exactly where the van is constantly - I know exactly which houses she's been to this morning!

If you're down this way definitely say - there's a fair few of us locally so we could easily get something sorted I'm sure. Unfortunately my car looks far nicer in photos from afar than in real life, but I've not had a chance to get the paintwork properly sorted yet due to work and rubbish weather. Hopefully that should change soon and I'll be able to give it some love!

Cheers for the comments - You say "so much detail" but I'm aware it's probably a little too much for some. The thread ifs mainly for me to keep as a reference of the progress, but it would be nice to have a little more discussion in here I suppose

Just spotted your thread - no pictures as I'm at work and it's all blocked but shall have a proper look this eve - sounds pretty sweet!

Fingers crossed this sorts the power issue out.