DieselMonte

I had my handbrake checked and set for my cars NCT and not 4 months later would it not hold on a hill. I live in a very hilly area so it goes out of spec very fast. Atleast the cables were near enough even so it wasnt much work for me to tighten them up. I set it to the 4 clicks you're meant to and its come up one or 2 since then. On an unrelated note the handbrake on my car is ****e for handbrake turns, so I havent done any since.

Lidl had those battery testers in the other week. I got one, they're a good job for checking batteries and alternators, only cost a few pound too. Maybe the new battery was dodgy? Touch wood its ok for you now.

See if you can reset the throttle.These have an electric throttle. I think it involves removing power from the battery for a while and then reconnecting it. My car would stutter just at 2k rpms. removed the vacuum line for the egr and its not done it since. How is your battery and alternator. If the battery is really low on charge you can lose throttle. Happened to me before. Most likely it is the tps like Sepulchrave mentioned. Doubt it will be very expensive from a breakers.

Got some foglight tint on ebay for cheap. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/262621985443 Arrived pretty fast so I washed the car and put them on. In hindsight I shouldve tried to tint the foglights on my mk1 first. The big wide foglight housings on this car made it a massive pain in the ass to do. I kept creasing it just under the DRL bulb because of the curve in it. So I learned to start from there and it came out perfect on the other foglamp. Its easiest to take out the foglamps on this, its a matter of a few clips and 10 seconds of work per side. It came out kind of crap at first on the drivers side but the passengers side is damn near perfect. Some pics of the before and after. I think it looks good. Some of the imperfections on the drivers side arent as obvious now, I always use the foglights so I imagine the heat from them helped stick the tint better. The good thing about getting a roll of tint is that I have enough left over to do my mk1. I even was able to use the excess from tinting these foglights to tint another set on another car, 3 cars in total and I would've had enough to do 1 or 2 more except that I wasted some figuring out how to do it. Overall, I'm happy with the results. I use the foglights always when driving to help spot hazards (namely potholes) and I could swear that the yellow contrasts against the potholes better than the standard white beam. I imagine the yellow beam is a bit less harsh on oncoming drivers too so its a win for everyone.

mrgf is right. My car squeaked the whole way through town this morning and got quieter as It was driven. My cars got standard bushes afaik so they are probably past their best at this point.

Did not know that. I'll keep it in mind, thanks.

Love that colour. What benefits do the TT ball joints have over the standard unit? And do you have a link for where to get them? I'm planning to renew some of the bushes soon so if I can fit better parts at the same time I can kill two birds with one stone.

I figured it was a stretch, don't know what the sensor its scanning from is doing then. Should probably make a second set of gauges for it then.

Yep! thats why I felt I should mention it. It goes back to 0 psi when I'm actually driving so I can only guess its reading vacuum but thats a stretch. It seems to read accurate for my mk2 though so ymmv. I usually just have it open for water temp, intake temp and voltage anyway. I just have the boost gauge there to fill up the screen and only use it as a guide and as a heads up for any trouble codes. What miles are on your car? If it has high miles and wasnt driven very hard it could either be a worn turbo or it could just need some dipetane and some very hard driving. Diesels do tend to like being driven hard every now and then. If your car is driving fine and isnt smoking much then you're most likely fine.

Set the whiteline to its stiffer setting, feels good. A part of me was hoping i'd be able to get it to oversteer a bit going into corners but no luck. Even my mk1 is happy to slide about with ease. It hasnt even got a handbrake let alone any suspension mods. Its not the tyres either as both cars have crappy toledo tl1000 tyres on the back. I think a part of it is the fact that my monte carlo has bigger brakes on the front and the same size drums on the rear, so the brake bias is pushed further to the front. Dont get me wrong it handles great but its a bit of a shock when I can slide my mk1 around like Ken Block and not have so much as a hint of oversteer in my stiffer, better kept monte carlo. Even still, this car would beat my mk1 anywhere except for a field.

Is it a tracker that goes into the obd port? Its a plug above the footwell area. If its one of those then Usually it has a sleep mode. Smarter fm transmitters and aux transmitters might have their own sleep modes but they use very little power anyways, I just take it out as a precaution. I have an obdII reader that I keep in my monte carlo all the time, I never take it out. It hasnt drained the battery as it has a sleep mode. It is honestly a non-issue. Edit: You'd be surprised what trouble you can get into with 60 hp.

Had some foglight trouble earlier but they now work. Gave the car a test run around the farm today and it goes like stink. Its happy to slide around on the concrete with a bit of persuasion. The handbrake warning light came flashing on and gave me a fright. I think I just knocked the switch on the handbrake loose when I was installing the seats last day. Got the car filthy driving around though. It was already dirtied from sitting up but now it looks like its after coming from a Welsh rally stage. Another pic of the seats. They are comfortable and suit the car ok. The flash makes them and the carpet look filthy but they look great in person. I took off one of the vrs wheels to use as a spare on my Monte Carlo but I nearly prefer the extra space that the weird foam box that it has instead of a spare wheel kit. Until I can find a proper spare wheel kit I may leave the vRS wheels on this car. As a final note, the bonnet catch has completely freed up. I can pull it and release the bonnet by hand now which is nice. Still need to route it back into the car as it currently rests on the Wiper panel.

Gasket looks A-ok. For the moment I have some zip ties holding the Connection tight. Its holding but next time i'm taking the bumper off I'll try get it fitting proper.

Hi all, I've been trying in vain to reconnect the passengers side foglight but it wont sit right no matter what I try. I only had the front off trying to get the other foglight wired up. This one was plugged in and working fine before and if I hold the connection together it'll work but it wont sit far enough to hold together on its own. What should I do? Its a vrs bumper on my non vrs 2001 fabia but I imagine there should be no difference in the connectors.

I did some testing with my 1.6tdi fabia. From 50 to 80 mph in 4th it peaked at 14.6 psi and trailed off to around 13.3 psi during this run. My car is a 105 hp model for reference. Again this was using torque and I have it set to calculate boost from the MAF ( as thats what my car has). More than likely your cars fine. You could run some premium diesel through it and see if it makes a difference.

Are you using torque? Is it set to read from the map sensor? I know it can be set to read for maf or map signal for boost. Torque works well to read boost in my Monte Carlo but with my mk1 fabia (which is an sdi mind) it reads 36 psi at idle! A 1.4 tdi would not have a big turbo in anycase and a manufacturer wouldnt set it to run max boost from the factory. Odds are if its running good then its probably fine.

Classic insurance is what I was banking on getting. Insurance for my monte carlo is up soon so I need to get it sorted first before I can think about getting this insured. The way things are, the Nox alone for a mk1 vrs would be atleast 4 times as much as I'll have in this car to make it roadworthy. That said I think all in im under 500 euro into this car including the cost of the car itself. On top of that I found it had the timing belt done not long before I got it so I know its been well maintained before me getting it.

Before I put the seats in I decided to give the plastic trim a clean to see if I could use them. To my surprise, they cleaned up very well. Some soapy water and a scrub brush took the dirt off of the panels easily. You can see in the previous post how nice the panels look. Might put some dressing on them next day to see if I can get them looking even better.

Good progress today. Seats are done and back in the car. Drivers seat looks great, passengers side is just ok. In anycase they are much nicer than the worn out standard seats. My camera is very unforgiving with those interior pics, but I still think they look good in there. On another note I got the drivers foglight working, the crimp connectors I used were ****e so I scavenged some wiring from an old gate sensor and used that wiring to extend the wires. Passengers foglight wont sit in its connector right so thats a job to figure out another day.

What was it if you dont mind me asking? Blocked cat?

On my 2001 fabia the gauges will freeze similar to that when the battery gets very low. They work fine every other time but I think the car cuts power to it and every other electrical item in the car to try and keep the engine running.

If you want bluetooth you can get one of those fm transmitters. I've got two that I got off of aliexpress a few years ago and they still work great now. I use them in both fabias. Only thing is you should disconnect them when you leave the car as the cigarette lighter is always on in these cars.

Thats a facelift car so they will fit. Monte carlos are a projector headlight though so you might have to do some research there. I'm sure someones done it before. You can paint the inside of them black for the same effect, i'm pretty sure thats what 32kofdata did to his car. Nice car btw.

Thanks for the advice on the gauges. I only ever had them on the old dash, never got to installing them then. NCT is still a ways off, but not as far off as it once was. I dont have an airbag module for the airbags so I cant fool it using resistors because it isnt there. I dont know if I could pass NCT with no power steering even though it doesnt bother me, airbag lights obviously a fail too. Apparently you can pass the NCT with no rear seats provided the seatbelt hardware is out too,it just gives an advisory for rear seats being missing. I know I need front springs, a cv joint, and some tyres to atleast have a fighting chance of passing but again thats a far way off.

Both seats finished and drying a bit before I put them in. I have the Plastics to clean up still, not sure whether or not I'll keep the underseat storage for the Monte Carlo or put it back in this. Drivers seat took a third of the time to do and came out much better than the passengers if i'm honest. If anyone is reading this to see how its done I can only advise to get a good set of pliers that can reach in and snip the hogrings off, then just use good quality zipties in their place. This way its a much easier job. Excited to see how they look in the car when they're in properly.