john-w

Sounds like a bad movie plot from one of those dodgy SyFy channel films.

Just tagging onto this thread for my own reasons, sorry to hijack but it's completely related. I read that Unit 18 (found on here) are doing the Oscarli custom remap, which was written by Richard Washbrook. If someone could correct me if I'm wrong, but Richard wrote the codes for the Revo maps? Anyway, Unit 18 do it for £250 (according to prices listed from August '10) so it might be worth a drive and save some money? I currently have the Whiteline RARB and can fully recommend this. It did wonders for the handling, even on the middle setting. I plan to change it to the hardest come summer! I have heard the Jabba one is better, but to be fair, I have never, nor plan to, race my car on a track!

For last year I clocked up 11.5k miles with an average of 46.1mpg - Using the "Road Trip" app for iPhone. Mixed driving gives me roughly 400 miles on a tank although I have been clocking as little as 350 miles recently. I'm blaming that on the weather! The most I've ever recorded is 470 miles on a tank, but the previous year I managed to get from Derby to Edinburgh and back on a single tank, roughly 560 miles!

Just checked mine as I'm sure it was bigger, and it is in fact 19mm - 3/4" Not sure if it was "too" big in this instance then but the pipe fit over the breather pipe and I only needed a cable tie to hold it in place.

I believe it was this stuff - Not exactly that one, but the same "type" of pipe. It wasn't too small or too large. I was careful to make sure of that. It was the same diameter as the pipe that came off the crankcase. I still have the small piece I used temporarily in the car if you want me to get the exact details of the stuff, but it'll have to be tomorrow. I appreciate we've all had cold weather, but from the people I've seen using washing machine waste pipes I'm pretty confident that my pipe was far more insulated than that stuff!

Is it a puff of blue smoke, or white smoke though? The frozen engine was something else that went wrong.. The elephant mod was a definite cause of this whole escapade with the oil!

Ste, No, no smell of oil at all. Even at idle I can stick my face to the exhaust and not smell anything out of the ordinary.. I don't do that too often though, don't worry! I have a couple of axle stands so I'll look into your suggestion, thanks for that! Mark, From my understanding it was just oil vapour that would come through the pipe, so unless condensation had built up in the pipe somehow and mixed with the oil then I have no idea.

Evening folks, I'm not exactly a massive contributor here and I am certainly no mechanic, so please, bare with me on this one as it is more a fatherly "word of advice" from one to another. It's long, I'm not lecturing anyone but I have certainly learnt from this. I've had my Fabia vRS for just over two years now and I can honestly say it's been a love hate relationship, but, mechanically it has been perfect, up until I screwed everything up. For those of you who know, it's all related to the "elephant" mod. After reading posts from numerous people, looking at plenty of pictures and even planning a catch can of my own, I went ahead and took off the pipe that comes from the top of the crank case and used a nice, thick rubber pipe (from Halfords, which I believe is used for a fuel pipe of some sort?) and ran it from the crankcase and down past the cabin firewall. I had done this last summer and much to my surprise saw a big different in the MPG on my dashboard display, albeit I don't think it actually made any difference. I use the Road Trip app for iPhone and log it that way and it's usually pretty consistent, so if anyone is thinking of doing this modification for economy, then don't bother. At best it perhaps increased fresh air flow, but in my opinion I would have been better off with a better air filter. So, everyone by now is aware of the shocking winter we've had. Everything was running peachy until I was driving to work one day and had to stop for a set of traffic lights. A dingy looking van pulled up beside me followed by a nice thick blue smoke cloud. To my surprise, the blue smoke was coming from my car. In utter shock I drove it another mile to work and then parked it for at least 8 hours. I couldn't see what was wrong with it, nothing was obvious under the bonnet and after leaving it for 5 minutes, started it up again and nothing happened. I left it, carried on with my usual day and drove it to my parents to get my dad to help me look over it. On the way there it started to blue smoke terribly out the rear end, but thankfully it was only a mile away. The cause? The elephant mod. Despite all the rubbish weather in the build up to christmas, it hit me smack bang on the 23rd, halfway through all the crappy weather. The entire length of the pipe had frozen internally, forcing whatever was trying to get OUT of the crankcase BACK into it. I took the pipe off and re-fit a short rubber pipe from the crankcase back into where it originally went and ran it for a short while, idling, but nothing happened. I braved it, and drove home. Again, a set of traffic lights were about to become my worst enemy as blue smoke billowed out the back. I couldn't just turn the engine off, I was on a busy road and was forced to drive forward, but changing gear from 1st to 2nd saw the car redline itself and stick to it. At worst it stayed there for 2 seconds before I switched off the ignition and rolled it up a kerb. It would't start after that and the engine struggled to turn over. I left it, admitted defeat and called the AA. It took them an hour to arrive and by which point the engine would start when he prompted me to give it a quick try. It ticked over, but I didn't want to risk it. Diagnosis? Frozen engine and oil forced through the turbo due to a build up of whatever **** couldn't escape my crankcase. Yes, it's my own fault, I know that. I should have checked my coolant. I did, in a sense. It looked pink to me. Really pink in fact, but, it didn't matter, the concentration was rubbish and was totally wrong. The frozen engine was news to me and the AA chap said more damage could have occurred if I hadn't been so lucky. My dad and I spent the next two days with the car in his garage defrosting with a heater. We drained the entire system, did a nice 50/50 mix and ran it for about 45 minutes to pull it all through. I drove it home, nothing went wrong, everything was fine. Story over? No, not quite. Every single time the car is left overnight, or for a long period, i.e. 8-9 hours, it gives me a nice puff of blue smoke on startup. What's more is it struggles to fire up whenever it's cold (glow-plugs I'm guessing, I hope anyway!). I've ran some Forté Seal Conditioner and Oil Fortifier through it and I'm now 200 miles further than when I put it in. Difference? Not much, although it started flawlessly the other day, mid morning, after being left for about 12 hours overnight. No smoke, no struggle. This morning was different however. It didn't struggle, but it did smoke. It isn't using oil either, so it can't be the oil stem seals surely? I've learnt my lesson and I'm checking it daily, every morning, before I start the car and on flat ground. It doesn't appear to have used ANY oil at all and that's since christmas eve. I'm going to try an engine flush in case the pressure in the crankcase was so high that it forced a load through into the combustion chamber. I don't know. We'll see. I've learnt my lesson from this. Don't be complacent; simple as that. Do your checks. If you do a mod, be aware of the risks (which I'd seen people had the mod in as low as -10c before, albeit perhaps for not such a long time as we have had this winter). If anyone has any advice I'd massively appreciate it. I haven't the money at the moment to have the engine apart for what may well be residual oil that had built up somewhere. If you read it all, thanks. I've needed to vent this somewhere and where else better than where someone could find this helpful and potentially help prevent problems for other people. - John

Well, the good news is is that you have a pretty good upload speed. The bad news is is that your actual, potential download speed, and the speed at which your router is connected at is not fantastic. The noise on the line is actually about the same as mine so it won't be that that is causing you any problems, but there's actually nothing more you can do to increase your speeds unfortunately. What do BT promise in terms of speed for your line? A chap I spoke to at BT when I signed up told me to complain on several occasions if I had trouble with my connection speed and they would eventually either adjust the pricing of my package or sort something else out. I take it cable is not an option in your area?

The connection speed is generally on the first page you see on the Belkin router, I think anyway. Otherwise, there will be a "Status" option on the left somewhere. Otherwise, try all the options until you see a Download/Upload speed indicator. It'll look like http://www.grimroper.com/photos/Router%20Stats.jpg You're mainly interested in the Downstream / Upstream data rate figures, but, if you tell us your Noise Margin for the downstream & upstream that'll be helpful too in working out how best to try and improve your service.

Just curious, what speed does your router say you're connected at? If it's connected at a FASTER speed than what you can currently receive, you need to talk to BT about increasing your IP Profile. I did this and it worked a treat. My neighbours can barely get 1mb and that's how my connection started out, but after noticing my Home Hub was connected at 2.8mb I phoned them and complained about increasing my IP Profile and ever since I've not seen anything less than a 2mb connection. Defo worth a look!

Who are you with for your Broadband?

Just unplug cable no. 3 in the master phone plug on the wall, the orange one if you can't make out the numbers. All this does is carry power for the older style telephones to assist them in "ringing".. Made a difference to me, and saved me £10. Also, if you're with BT then use the BT Speedtester to see what your IP Profile is. At the same time, check what your actual connection speed to your exchange is via your router and then compare this with your IP Profile. They may well be throttling you!

£300 is a fair price to be honest. Had my done through a friend so all I paid was "mates rates" and the parts so it was a little cheaper than that.. But should anything go wrong, I dunno how long we'll stay friends for, lol

Haha, epic. You have PM!