Dan's Leon Cupra 1.8L 20v Turbo...

[DanLikesTurbo]

Hello Seat fanatics! (Don't take that as an insult, I've just become one too!)

I'm starting this thread as like a history and tracker for the work I do to my car and the things I find out. Some of it is boring, some of it isn't. I'm not into heavy modding as I always like to be able to reverse any work I do, you know, just in case...

The car stats..
Car as standard: 2001 Seat Leon 1.8L 20v Turbo 180bhp
Shape: 5 door hatchback (pre-facelift)
Gears: 6. (reverse is in different place to where I'm used to!)
Date of first registration: 10th November 2001 (51 plate)
Date I bought it: 7th April 2008
Number of previous owners: 3
Paint code: 2424 Black Magic
Purchase price: £4500
Mileage: 48010
Boot space: enormous!
Damage 1: 5p size shopping trolley dent above rear right light cluster
Damage 2: A few stone chips across front bonnet and two above right wheel arch

Known mods at purchase..
Wheels: 17" Audi TT 9-spoke wheels
Stainless steel exhaust:
Alarm/Immobiliser: Selca Category 1
Cruise control: Seat Cruise Control system and stalk fitted
Interior: Nokia Car Kit (CARK-91)
Stereo: Kenwood CD Head unit, boot pre-wired for sub

Instructions from previous owner at purchase..
Oil: Always use Castrol GTX Magnatec - High Performance Oil
Fuel: Always use High Octane Fuel if can afford it (makes huge difference with turbo)
Spark Plugs: Bosch Platinum for cleaner spark
General: "Let car warm up for few mins before driving away especially if using turbo. Let car cool down for few mins after driving especially if been driving hard. Look after it!"

Pics of car at pick-up:

So far.... loving every millisecond of driving it!

 

[DanLikesTurbo]

Engine Light

Bad News
Driving it back from pick-up location, poodling along the motorway at no great speed, engine light comes on. Great, first day, first trip sitting on hard shoulder reading car book to work out what it could be. Bad omen!

Get it home, drive it to local garage plug in scanner machine, didn't get codes off the guy but he said there were two.
1) Cooling System Malfunction
2) ECU Failure or error - didn't like the sound of this one!

Got the codes cleared to see if they come back - 2 days later they did. Grrr!
Still got the light on now, 3 weeks later.

I did phone the previous owner up and asked him if he had any problems like this... he said that once he had the light come on, took it to his garage and they said it was something to do with the Lambda sensor, fixed it and he thought nothing more of it.

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[DanLikesTurbo]

Sorting out the Brakes

More bad news

Driving down the road about a week after buying it and hear a crumbling noise while braking. It got worse and worse. Drove to ATS for one of their Free brake checks....

Learnt two things:
1) Brake pad material had separated from the brake pad plate and had essentially broken up and fallen out. Needed new brake pads and the discs became scored, so they needed replacing too.

2) Brakes apparently weren't standard for my car. Not sure if this is true or not?!
Here's a pic of the old discs mounted on the car while up in the air at ATS...

Anyone know if these are standard?

Also to note is that the wear was much heavier on the drivers side than the passengers, but that both were in a pretty bad way.

ATS reconned that the brakes I should have on my car as standard weren't grooved or drilled and were only flat, so I said i'd investigate. I wasn't prepared to replace performance brakes with non-perf brakes, cos they'd obv been installed for a reason.... like the standard ones are crap, perhaps?!

I've got a mate called Kyle who is ace when it comes to sourcing parts, cos he can get them all at trade price through his job. He came over and took some measurements, photos etc and sent them off to EBC brakes to be matched.

They came back with the following:
- EBC Brakes Sport Disc Kit (GD 930) with 3GD design. (essentially dimpled and slotted which matched the existing brake discs)

- EBC Brakes Redstuff Ceramic Brake Pads (DP31330C)
(for cars above 200bhp)

Installation was a breeze thanks to a thread I found on this forum, and with the addition of some copper grease in the right places, should be even easier next time. The biggest problem was starting in the evening, losing the light and freezing my nuts off!

The nice thing about the new pads is that they are bright red on the back, and this shows through the alloy as I drive, although not as obv as the red brembos on the LCR, they still look nice. See...

Oh and the old brake discs + pads, yeah they were in a pretty bad way....

Close up of scoring

Back close up

Back of disc

Leftover of pad - yes that is the side which is supposed to have pad on it!

I can officially stop my car again - happy days!

Future mod consideration: painting the calipers red.

 

[DanLikesTurbo]

Removal of Nokia Car Kit

It turns out after some research, that the Nokia CARK-91 was expensive in it's day. There are even some phones still on the market that support it. Unfortunately my Nokia 6300 is not one of them and even with the supplied pop-port adaptor, it isn't compatible. Something to do with series-60 software or some crap??

Anyway, I didn't particularly want a useless phone cradle in my car, so I removed it. Not entirely though, because I was being lazy, so I cut the cables, taped them off and shoved them back behind the dash for now. To be removed at some point in the future when I can be bothered to take the glove box out and remove the brains of the system. (a.k.a. Small black box and microphone)

The cockpit looks so much better already.

 

[DanLikesTurbo]

Strange Flashing LED - possible removal

I thought it might be something to do with the Selca Alarm or immobiliser, but no, as it turns out, one of the previous owners have added a flashing LED to the dash. They've located it in on the left side of the autoleads fascia adaptor beside the head unit. I traced the cables and found a loose switch sitting in the little pen holder shelf under the steering wheel.

Now i'm no expert, but i'd say this is a pretty useless or at least pretty frustrating installation. If I was in a dodgy area, I suppose I could turn it on as an extra deterrent, but why oh why it wasn't connected up to the led on the immobilser touchpad i'll never know. At least then it would turn itself on when the car was locked up.

Oh for the simple life, press a button; windows close, immobiliser arms, alarm arms, mirrors fold in and stereo hides it's face. Maybe i'm dreaming....

Future mod idea: I'll probably be removing this entirely, or rewiring it without a manual switch.

 

[DanLikesTurbo]

Rear Wiper Modification

Ok, so with a lot of reading on this site in numerous different threads I decided to take the plunge and change the rear wiper. I needed a new blade anyway, so it seemed like a good opportunity to get it done.

I decided on the Skoda Fabia rear wiper as it looked better than the standard and I prefered it to the Aero design. I just think the back of the Leon looks big, chunky and muscley and the Aero was a bit weedy getting smaller at the end. The fabia wiper looks great!

Such a simple mod as well. Only one 13mm spanner needed to take the nut off!
£17.83 Total cost + 5 mins of my time.

Partnumber / Description / Cost
6Y9955707A Wiper Arm (Estate Model) = £10.16
6Y6955435 Trim (Hatchback Cap) = £1.53
6Y0955425 Rear Wiper Blade = £3.48
VAT = £2.66


My experience...
Allams Skoda in Epsom (Longmead Estate) were very helpful. They raised an eyebrow or two when I told them I wanted hatchback and estate parts, but understood when I told them what it was for.

I had a couple of problems...
Firstly, the wiper arm arrived without the spring and metal connection, which explains why it took a while to work out how to connect the cap! The parts guy even dared to question the knowledge of the forum users!

I told him it couldn't be right and that I wanted another one ordered in to see if it was different. He didn't mind this at all, as he was a little confused too.

That one arrived and the end was split...

but it did have the metal connection and spring, so I took them both and swapped the ends over..gently!

Like I said, one 13mm spanner and a little care was all it took. Here are the before and after shots...

Before..

After..

 

[DanLikesTurbo]

One downside to the new wiper

I can't remember if it did this with the standard wiper or not. It must have. There can't be any other way. ?

No explanation required really just look at where the water jet hits the wiper in these pics.

Makes a bit of a mess when you have screen cleaner which foams up a bit.

Oh well, still looks better than standard!

 

[skahigh]

Sounds to me like the previous owner knew full well about the engine lights but chose not to mention it. Bit coincidental for it to occurr on your first day of ownership I would be very worried about the ecu fault.

All the same, welcome to the club.

 

[DanLikesTurbo]

thanks mate. Yeah I think he probably knew, but what can I do? Sold as seen.

I'm intending to buy some equipment to do my own ECU checking and controlling, I believe this is called vag-com although despite finding a million threads about vag-com haven't actually found a price and link to buy it from. Will search some more.

The other option I've considered is a Scangauge 2 which is about £116 or thereabouts.
Either way am going to have to do something and soon, cos it's givig me sleepless nights worrying about the damage I might be doing by driving it!

I also wonder if the car has been remapped.... and hope that this will show up with vag-com.

 

[iainhome]

not had much luck with the car / wiper mate!

hope it gets better

I fitted the fabia wiper too and its great!

my next mod is custom-code remap to take it up to 225 BHP

maybe you can get a remap service to check your ecu?

 

[Chris3boro]

nice looking car, shame about the 'coincidental' problems you've had with it-guy surely knew about them.Hope it serves you well in the future though

 

[skahigh]

vag com is by a company call ross tech:

http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/index.html

you need a cable that can be bought from ross tech or cheap copies from ebay, the latter being circa 10-15 quid.

you can download vag com for free or purchase a license for the full version (well worth it). The license costs about £50 at the current exchange rate.