richm

one of my rears came adrift, it stayed in position as it's trapped as far as falling out is concerned, but judging by the rusty backplate it had been like it quite a while. I found it whilst investigating an increasingly noticeable "jingling" noise . This was a mintex pad.

it does sound from what you say that there is some issue, but don't underestimate the effect that crap fuel can have - when I bought mine it was very flat, I put some 97SUL into an empty tank and the difference was immediate! Dealers will probably use the cheapest UL they can get and if it's sat there a good while too then it could be pretty poor.

thanks Lee, nice one!

same downpipe as I have, although I cut the resonator out and replaced with a sports Cat. The outlet is 2.5" diameter so will be too large to fit the 2" standard system directly. IIRC mine came with a stepped adapter piece that could have been used for matching. I have a milltek 2.5" system at the same time so straight sleeve is all I needed. You may also find the front lambda sensor cable exit sits very close to the subframe as the engine moves under acceleration. If you haven't already I would reccomend an uprated dogbone engine-steady bush to stop the downpipe whacking the top of the rack with excess engine movement allowed by the standard bush.

So, has anyone got a spare wiper motor they want to sell now? Needs to not leak washer fluid like mine does! lol. Cheers Rich

May be worth you having a word with Bill at Badger5, he's doing some good work with K03 hybrids on his Lupo testbed :-) http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=304931

totally agree, bkr7e are perfectly good, I have done many thousands of varied and hard miles on these, don't get taken in by the fancy advertising

12.6 fully loaded at idle is OK, provided the voltage does not progressively fall with time (ie the alternator is supporting the load without discharging the battery)

regarding the arrow - are the pistons two different sizes? If so then the calipers should be mounted so that the smaller piston leads the larger with respect to disc rotation. This often coincides with the arrow marking indicating disc rotation direction

thatr looks very much like the one I have - the vibration you get will be the pipe rattling on the steering rack heatshield as the engine rocks when you pull away. I cut my heatshield either side of the pipe and bent that portion down against the rack for extra clearance. If you don't have one already, you will almost certainly need a stiffer than standard dogbone bush that locates the bottom of the engine/gearbox, otherwise there ius just too much movement in the engine for the clearance available.

The graph posted has no reference to the applicatioon or conditions, so has little relevance. It is important to have an indication of how much work the cooler is doing (ie what horsepower/airflow it is supporting, and boost pressure for example) and the temperature reduction achieved between inlet and outlet. Also the important thing to know is the SUSTAINED cooling ability, which is a proper measure of the capacity of the intercooler , rather than a short-term single run starting from a relatively cool starting point. Temperature logs need to be measured over a number of back to back runs or over a sustained period of high output running, to get heat soaked into the system. A cooler with a large thermal mass may appear to give good cooling performance on a short test period until it heats up, but won't neccesarily be able to sustain a satisfactory cooling performance once the heat has soaked in, and temperature recovery to reduce the core to ambient once unloaded may well be slow. This is generally where the difference between a good and bad core will show up. I am genuinely interested in your log results for the large SMIC, but please let's have some figures rather than "it feels good" etc.

yea from those guys that will be a chinese one

http://www.crturbos.co.uk/ can't recommend these guys enough, fast efficient honest service with no bull****. They will offer a choice of exchange, new or refurb your own with very quick turnaround

?? not sure what you want me to say? everything I said still stands.. you possibly have a damaged front lambda sensor which is upsetting the fuelling, get some diagnostic kit on and read the target and actual lambda data (block 031) and compare with readings from an independent lambda meter or gas analyser at the tailpipe.

delete.. double post..

the rear O2 sensor has no impact on fueling, it is there purely for monitoring cat performance. On standard software it is very unusual not to have the MIL light on due to the rear sensor not having a cat in front of it.. There is the possibility of the turbine end turbo seal letting a bit of oil through now the exhaust backpressure has been reduced, the backpressure assists the seal in keeping oil in, although a good condition seal is unlikely to be an issue. Hard to see why the fueling should be drastically altered due to cat removal, apart from the reduced backpressure altering the base fueling a tad due to freeing up the turbine flow, under light cruise condition the front lambda sensor should pull that back in.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/3-Leg-Oil-Filter-Wrench-Removal-Tool-Socket-Adapter-/270718757783?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item3f08186b97 there is practically no spin-on oil filter that will not be easily removed with this tool, easily the simplest solution for filter removal even in restricted space

another good cheap option with wide heat range is the Ford/Motorcraft AGPS071C (Ford finis number 1120834), these are good for anything from shopping to 450bhp monsters. These are favourites with the Cosworth community with big horsepower who aren't getting hoodwinked by the Iridium glitter.. They are equally suitable for 1.8T in any state of tune. Approx. £10 a set and available by walking into your nearest Ford dealer if you need some in a hurry

Have a chat with Bill at Badger5, he has spent a lot of time developing and chosing components for his 2-piece conversions, and they work properly, good value too in the scheme of things

it will be the same apart from the tailpipes needing to be extended, as the Bora one will be shorter. You may need to juggle with the rear box mount a bit.

30bhp transmission loss is more realistic - surprising how much difference tyre pressures make though for example

looks like the one I have, fits fine, been on my car for some 4 years now. I did actually weld a sports cat into mine in place of the expansion box. Only thing you may need to do is bash down the steering rack heatshield a bit for some clearance.

Have to agree - but hopefully the extra engine capacity may help to drop the boost threshold to a sensible level, and if 340bhp is the target then may also get away with a fairly small exhaust housing, as long as it keeps away from surge in midrange. The GT30 we have on the TT does nothing below 3800rpm and 1.6bar at 4600rpm but then holds onto that all the way to 7800 redline - this is fine for race use but would be horrible to drive on the road. It will need a careful balancing act to get the right exhaust housing size to get the boost early enough but without surge and exhaust restriction at high rpm. Look forward to seeing the results!

By all means try it, I'm a great believer in learning by your own work and experience, but honestly that SMIC will not be sufficient if you are running a GT30 at anything near it's potential.. take no notice what its "rated" at, they will have dreamt up a suitable number. We race a 1.8T TT with GT30 (makes something over 400bhp) and use a big front mount developed for Dialynx by Pace, and it isn't sufficient to maintain sensible inlet temperatures under sustained use. The sidemount is probably a fairly big chunk of aluminium and have a fair heatSINK capacity and will show acceptable resaults for short squirts of performance until it heatsoaks, but with sustained power demand it will soon heat up and take ages to recover..

don't worry about it, a small amount will soon burn off and disappear