Ross's Diamond Black Bora 1.8T Sport.

Cupra Ross

Breaks things............
May 15, 2005
1,380
1
Edinburgh, Scotland
After selling my 5th Leon 1.8T last year, I was getting the hankering for another 1.8T. This came up on UK MKiVs and I swapped my Golf TDi for it.

I've put a lot of work into it so far. The car was absolutely filthy inside and out when I got it but I thought there was the makings of a good car lying underneath all of the grime. The car itself is a Bora 1.8T Sport with heated cream leather Recaros, APR Stage 2 map, Milltek turbo back exhaust with 200 cell sports cat, ECS Stage 1 clutch and flywheel, AP Coilovers, Forge 007p, Carbonio CAI and various small mods.

My first job was to clean all of the grime from dirty hands and feet out of the interior. This involved shampooing the carpets and cleaning the interior surfaces with solvent cleaner and then dressing them, then cleaning and conditioning the leather with Gliptones products. This process took about 2 days. I then removed the "twin halo angel eye" headlamps that were on the car and replaced them with standard items, I can see where I'm going in the dark now. Next up was the fitting of my US Spec 18" R32 alloys (VW Omanyt) and Toyo Proxes-4 tyres. I picked up a 3 button flip key courtesy of ebay, swapped the transponder over with one from the spare conventional key and programmed the remote central locking by myself. Timpsons cut the blade for £5 so it made for a total cost of £32.50 compared to the £160 VW wanted for a new key, cutting and programming.

I then turned my attentions to things of a mechanical nature. The K&N cone on the end of the Carbonio hadn't been cleaned since it was installed 2 years ago so that came off for a thorough clean and a Powertec SL1 pleated stainless mesh induction kit was fitted whilst the Carbonio was being cleaned. I love the sound of the Carbonio, there is nothing else quite like it. I changed the oil, oil filter, air filter and pollen filter and in doing so realised that some buffoon had thought it a good idea to attempt to tighten the sump plug to hand tight plus 15 turns, stripping the thread out of the sump drain in the process. I finally fitted a new sump yesterday.

On doing some logging, I noticed that the car was not performing as it should have been. With some help from DPJ and others, I deduced that this was due to the engine running lean and pulling back on the boost as a result. I fitted a new MAF, fuel filter, thermostat and coolant temperature sensor and reset the ECU flash ROM to allow it to forget its fuel trim settings. The car pulls much better now recording a figure of 180g/s over the MAF, this equates to about 230bhp which is about right for the mods and state of tune the car is running.

I still have lots of jobs to do on the car, I'm not 100% happy with the way the APR map produces its power so I'm looking at some custom mapping options to get the car running the way I want. My last Cupra was stronger at lower revs and with the Bora having an ECS clutch and flywheel, it could certainly handle a more agressive power delivery at lower revs. The APR map is very smooth but its not as punchy at the bottom of the rev range as the Jabba Custom map I had on my last 1.8T, R Tech and a local tuner with years in the business are looking good to me at the moment. Failing that, I'll be making the trip south to Peterborough and Jabba's premises.

The previous owner had an Oettinger spoiler on the car. This had rubbed and has left some paint damage on the bootlid and rear quarters, this will be my next job. I want it done properly so I've had a quote from a respected spray painter locally. £300 is steep but worth it for a quality job that will last.

I'll update the thread as I go along, here are some photos in the meantime. All comments welcome:



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Cupra Ross

Breaks things............
May 15, 2005
1,380
1
Edinburgh, Scotland
:yes: nice car. The photos don't do the work on the seats justice. They're lovely.

Many thanks Dave, a wee bit of work to go into them yet but at least they are the correct cream colour now instead of a grime covered chocolate brown :help:

I had some time to clean it up and apply some Carlack-68 sealant yesterday after I got the rest of the mechanical bits done. Its made a big difference, the metallic flake is really sparkling through now. I'm going to service and reverse the Forge 007P tomorrow, dotting the I s and crossing the T s. :D

I'll get the coilover spanner back to you tomorrow if you PM me your address. Thanks for the use of it. Any joy on your starter motor yet?
 

lyceum

Guest
sweet man.

The alloys look awesome and the interior is pure class, very modern looking still.
 

Tartan58

Ex Seat Owner!!
Apr 10, 2008
204
0
Edinburgh
Very nice indeed - not a huge fan of the Vora in standard form but love them modded like yours.
Only thing I'd say is loose the turbo badge from the boot, apart from that it's spot on!

As for Toledo with a SOH bypass, I know which would make me smile more (much as I love my old faithful!)
 

Cupra Ross

Breaks things............
May 15, 2005
1,380
1
Edinburgh, Scotland
well nice car mate

Thanks for saying so mate.

Very nice indeed - not a huge fan of the Vora in standard form but love them modded like yours.
Only thing I'd say is loose the turbo badge from the boot, apart from that it's spot on!

As for Toledo with a SOH bypass, I know which would make me smile more (much as I love my old faithful!)

Thanks mate, the Bora is quite bland in standard form but I agree that they can look very nice when lowered and with bigger wheels etc. I love the interior of the Bora, its a bit more refined than the Leon/Toledo interior and slightly different from the materials used in the Golf.

The "turbo" badge is a legacy of the halfwit who owned the car before me. I got shot of my machine polisher a while back and I don't want to remove the badge and be left with a big silhouette of it, christ only knows what he used to stick it on. The boot lit is going to be re-sprayed shortly so the badge will be coming off for that.

Very nice Ross....I got the Jabba stage 2 and it certainly comes in with a bang unlike the APR :cartman:

I can relate to that Adam, the Jabba map I had on my last Leon was superb, very aggressive with the boost though. I think I'm almost sorted with the APR map, I still have a few bits and bobs to change to get the best out of it but it is a very smooth map. Its probably a little bit stronger than the Jabba map at the top end of the rev range but I imagine this is down to the amount of heat that the Jabba map must generate with the amount of boost it requests at low revs. I have CFs of zero across the board with the APR map, Jabba was 3-4 and sometimes 5, I think purely as a result of how aggressive that map was down low.

There's definitely some timing advance to be had on the APR map on the car's current setup. If I can get V-Tune to talk to the ECU, I reckon I could extract another 10bhp out of it with timing advance alone.

I noticed that the Turbo to intercooler hose is a bit past its best so I'm going to replace all of the turbo hoses with silicone shortly. SFS ones if I can get them at a good price.
 

gezmeister

I need a derv!!
Apr 1, 2008
2,172
0
Norwich
Nice car mate. Just a quick question - you say that it was running lean, so you reset the ecu flash rom? Would this work on mine also? Mine is reading fuel trim bank 1 running too rich. If so, how do you do it? Feel free to PM me to keep this question from cluttering up your RR :D
 

Cupra Ross

Breaks things............
May 15, 2005
1,380
1
Edinburgh, Scotland
Re: A Toledo with a sense of humour bypass......

A bit of work done yesterday and today. I still wasn't happy with the seats, especially the passenger one. No amount of rubbing with a cloth and cleaner would get rid of the ingrained dirt. Here is a before picture:

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As you can see, not pretty. I had been very gentle with them as I didn't want to damage the surface of the leather but enough was enough. Armed with a tub of baby wipes, a bottle of Gliptone gentle Leather cleaner, a stiff bristled brush, a bottle of Gliptone Liquid Leather Conditioner and some microfibre cloths, I set about vigorously scrubbing the dirt out of the leather. 3 hours of work but I think the difference speaks for itself, I'm really happy with how they've come up:

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I also got a quote to have the boot lid and both rear quarters smoothed and re-sprayed along with ultra touch scratch resistant lacquer yesterday so I've booked the car in for next wednesday to have its rear end sorted out ;)
 

Cupra Ross

Breaks things............
May 15, 2005
1,380
1
Edinburgh, Scotland
After a couple of weeks of nightmare running problems, my car has had a raft of new parts and is now running A1.

My car was pulling back on boost and was very stuttery between 3000rpm and 4500rpm, it just didn't want to go at all and it was showing as running lean on VAG-COM. It was dropping requested boost and the wastegate duty cycle was very low. It was getting worse to the stage that the car was shuddering on full throttle and wouldn't go over 3500rpm in 4th gear. The boost fluctuations and forced closing of the throttle butterfly also caused my charge pipe to pancake pipe hose to pop out of its clamp.

I changed the pump today and the old one looked very dirty inside the fuel supply port. The return port was clean as a whistle so I assume that almost 8 years of fuel delivery was as much as the original pump could manage.

No bad thing but I've replaced the following items on the car in the last 2 weeks trying to get to the bottom of this:

MAF sensor
Coolant temperature sensor
Thermostat
Injector o-rings and manifold inserts
Turbo Intake Pipe (fitted a forge one)
Boost hoses (4-ply red silicone)
Fuel filter
Front (pre-cat) Lambda Sensor

I changed the intake manifolf and throttle body just for good measure. A dent on the wallet for all this kit but they won't need replaced again any time soon so its all good news.

The final part to be swapped was the fuel pump and this was the root of all the problems. I fitted a PWM direct swap fuel pump that is designed for the 225bhp BAM engined cars and my Bora is now absolutely flying. No more fuel starvation, boost pull or stuttery power delivery. Power comes in smooth as silk and strong as an Ox. Happy days!
 

Cupra Ross

Breaks things............
May 15, 2005
1,380
1
Edinburgh, Scotland
Todays work was the following:

Charge pipe to pancake pipe hose, o-ring and clamps changed for new genuine VW items.
N249 bypass re-fitted.
Forge 007P reversed and now has a lovely chirp.

She is driving brilliantly now :D
 

ather`s

EXEO Sport & mk2 IBIZA
Sep 7, 2008
2,059
0
mansfield, notts
As you can see, not pretty. I had been very gentle with them as I didn't want to damage the surface of the leather but enough was enough. Armed with a tub of baby wipes, a bottle of Gliptone gentle Leather cleaner, a stiff bristled brush, a bottle of Gliptone Liquid Leather Conditioner and some microfibre cloths, I set about vigorously scrubbing the dirt out of the leather. 3 hours of work but I think the difference speaks for itself, I'm really happy with how they've come up:



makes you wonder why people let them get in that state in the 1st place! top marks for cleaning them up chap, they look loads better. always have liked the booted golf. nice looking motor !
 

Cupra Ross

Breaks things............
May 15, 2005
1,380
1
Edinburgh, Scotland
makes you wonder why people let them get in that state in the 1st place! top marks for cleaning them up chap, they look loads better. always have liked the booted golf. nice looking motor !

I don't understand their mentality either mate, filthy interior points to poor personal hygiene if you ask me. What is is they say? Cleanliness is next to Godliness?

Thanks for your kind comments.
 
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