Leon - 29/08/13 Poly Resin, Adjustable top mounts, Canards....

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New bonnet catch and I was missing a stud on the far right of the inlet manifold, so bought a set of these

Forgot I had this, carbon fiber coil pack cover. Gave it a quick clean and its come up really well from sitting in the garage for months!

ordered some blue anodised bolts for the carbon cover, coil packs, braided hoses and hose coupler, so a few bits going on next week

 

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So got a few bits done on the car tonight

Phenolic gasket reinstalled. Now I didn't intend to put this back on, but I knew the far left stuf was missing. There is two studs on the left and right that hold the manifold on and the rest are bolts. So to do the job properly I had to remove the whole inlet manifold to get this stud in. What a fecking pain in the ass.

While it was off I couldn't reinstall the OEM gasket as it was foobarred and bent taking it off, so I thought I would reinstall the phenolic gasket again. WOW, what a ball ache. Because the gasket is so thick you literally have less than 1mm of thread left on the bolts to grip and screw in, which simply wasn't happening. For some reason I had a pack of bran new longer bolts. Where they came from I have no idea, but they were a god send

Gasket

Two types of OEM bolts. The longer bolt with 2mm more on the thread really is the difference with the bolts tightening and just turning

Part number for anyone interested

I then replaced the bonnet catch. For the first time in 6 months the bonnet now closes nicely

I then replaced the grill as the badget was fecked and snapped with a badgeless grill

I bought some braided hosing to replace the old hosing, as well as two hose couples too keep them tidy. Here is the cut and ready

I had some hose end tidiers, but on the old braided hoses they are much thinner and the new ones are much thicker, so these do not fit and I will have to order some new ones

I then got on with some more resistor crimping and tidying away the old cabling

 

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Installed the new fuel lines

Thought I would opt for a bit of colour and went for the green hose finishers

Just waiting on some piping from Forge, 90 degree pipe joiners so I can relocate the DV and thats pretty much it until next Friday....

 

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so went out for a test drive and it was blody lucky I did really

just turning into my estate and I literally heard a "ping", then the car would not move at all. I first thought the brakes had jammed on.

Rung the AA, and I had already taken the wheel off etc, so a nice easy job for him, tools out and ready also for him

He diagnosed the issue quickly and the track rod had snapped clean from the ball joint. The car would not move because one wheel was going in one direction and the other wheel was going in a different direction. With a bit of muscle, the AA guy manually turning the wheel as I drove the car slowly we got her parked up

 

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So I drove over to Nicks to pickup a set of lower arms and wheel hubs, top man! saves the car sitting on axle stands for months on end, and means its easier to do a straight swap when the time comes

How I got them:

Spent an hour cleaning them tonight

de-greasing

First scrub down with a wire brush and picking the old paint off with a screw driver, a bit to go yet

These are going to need quite a bit of work to get like new again

Thanks to a few members off Edition today, they pointed out a 30% sale on euro car parts, so ordered two new lower ball joints and two new wheel bearings

Next up is to scrape all the sound deadening out of the leon, take the roof lining out and as much weight as possible....potentially the air con as well as that weighs a ton

 

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Bought some of this today....not cheap but will make it easier and get the job done

and here's a picture of her next to my mates R5 before she was SORN

 

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Been trying out the rust stuff today, it's actually really good, and has really stripped the rust off with very little work

still some discoloration, but it has stripped the rust and some paint right back. I am going to leave it on over night, then clean it off tomorrow. Pretty much done and ready for painting then

This was one of the worst arms. A lot of rust has been stripped but still a way to go yet

 

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few bits arrived

ordered some snow foam as well to clean the rear arches as I will be sealing these, shortly and ordered some butyl as well to sort out the leaky doors

 

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in progress

Hubs are still to be started

 

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Bought these from AKS Tuning as well, OEM+ coolant and washer caps in black, look awesome. One problem with spraying the washer cap is the paint cracks when you bend the fixing point back onto the bottle. This doesn't happen with this washer caps as the actual plastic is black

Coolant

Washer

Snow foam turned up also, so I can prep the arches and sills and get sealing these before the cold properly sets in

 

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Had a fairly productive evening tonight

Gave the arms a final coat of paint tonight, all done. Just need to drill out the bushes ready for the new polybush ones

Then I got onto the black sound deadening, was quite therapeutic doing this actually

To the side of the footwell

Then the spare wheel well

A good 5kg of this stuff already, and got the whole of the footwells to go which is very thick, so a good 15-20kg I reckon of weight to come

Got a shot of the engine bay, very dirty and bogging looking, nothing pretty about it

 

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cracked on with working on the car.....now with nights drawing in quicker, back to working in the dark

Sound deadening removed from under the rear seats

Removed the drivers seat, and cracked on with removing more sound deadening

First half gone

full bag already of sound deadening, good 10kg's already

 

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Up in the air again

Spot the difference and what is missing....

Dirty arch

Cleaned guard

During clean

Spotted three spots of rust, so I am glad I started this job now

Lower arms all done

Arch now sealed and left to dry

 

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Decided to start tidying the interior up, and get rid of the old glue left over from the sound deadening

Before

After

Rear patches tidied up

spare wheel well (still a bit to sort)

Made a brief start on the drivers side

Before

After

Roof lining, grab handles, interior lights and plastic side pillars removed

 

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The car was absolutely full of water, I knew it had a leak but didn't realise it was this bad....and we have had some pretty torrential rain

Luckily I left some big cloths in there to soak up the water....I literally squeezed out two pints worth of water from them!

The water is pouring in from the pollen filter housing. I removed this last night, and the seals around the pollen filter were soaked. So I resealed these and I need to reseal the plastic cover against the windscreen, but ran out of sealant

Apologies for the poop quality

So the evening started off like this

Pollen housing...minging

Screwed seals around the pollen filter housing

Now resealed, so hopefully this will hold out for a while. Doing the rest of the sealant tonight


I finally got round to sealing the last wheel arch.

During cleaning

Sealed

Next up is finally crack on with reconditioning the hubs, removing all the old sealant glue, relocate the battery and start to design my custom housing to enclose the air filter.....

 

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Got most of the old glue off from the sound deadening

Pulled off the passenger cover tonight...trying to find the source of the leak...and losing some more weight from the car

Before

After

Before

After

 

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Going to sand the paint down, fix the snapped stud in preparation for carbon dipping

Wheel arch refitted for the last arch which was sealed

Finally got round to adding the last resistor to the removed SAI, so the error code stops coming up (Thanks to Mylo again for making this up for me)

tidied it away since the pic.

Sorry Bill....but I have rebuilt it since

Old Vs new pollen filter

Hopefully sealed the leak...but still don't think I have properly, as yet again the cloths on the passenger floor were absolutely soaking

 

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These arrived

 

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Looks awesome buddy. Hope mine can turn out similar!

 

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3" Downpipe and decat off Nick

Silica Gel, to soak up the moisture, as still got a small leak, and water collects on the inside of the roof (no roof lining)...also with it sitting around so much it never gets warm to dry up the moisture, so this will have to do for the mean time

First set of polybushes arrived also