sepulchrave

Nasty, I'm amazed that didn't affect engine performance or flag up the engine check light on the dash.

Your sills should be wet, that proves the door is draining properly instead of filling up with water.

It won't start on two out of three cylinders. More worryingly though the timing might have slipped if it's a 1.2 3 cylinder.

Coil pack issues are the most likely culprit, change the spark plugs while you're at it.

As @KenONeill states the cat makes no difference to soot, you're thinking of a DPF. You have a bad remap or a 'tuning box' which mucks about with the fuel temperature sensor.

You have dislodged pipe somewhere, probably on the low pressure side of the intake.

What do you mean "the box is toast", it's just a box containing some solenoids, you mean one of the solenoids is toast? Check for vacuum leaks first.

It's easy if you take the bumper off, nearly impossible if you don't.

Errr, not really, he fooled the nagware briefly by accident but the ACTUAL latency isn't technically poor, the nagware is lying. The actual latency is the same whether you're using a fake interface or the genuine one.

Poor latency is standard, it's because you're not using a genuine interface and the software is nagging you.

You don't need to test it, the ECU already checks it hundreds of times every second, if there were a problem on the high pressure side of the intake the engine would be in limp mode and your dashboard would be lit up like a Christmas tree.

That's a vacuum pipe so you need to fix any air leaks properly.

It definitely has a belt pretensioner.

I think you should fix the car before fitting upgraded bits, that SMIC is a like for like swap so I'm unclear why you're bothering. You'll have fault codes stored so that's the best place to start.

I wouldn't, it could be hydraulic rather than the clutch itself, wait for it to get worse, the symptoms are too vague now.

Since you've already established that the PCM has no stored faults then you can safely ignore the engine for now. The Marelli ECU goes to sleep very quickly when the engine is stopped so you may need to cycle the ignition or start the engine to communicate with it.

If your car makes in excess of 300 bhp then a 3" exhaust starts to make sense. Otherwise you're farting in a wind tunnel.

It works under windows 10 as well.

It doesn't, but there is a fuel temperature sensor which can also affect cold starting. I wouldn't expect the glow plugs to be on very long in this mild weather and it wouldn't really affect starting, only exhaust smoke production. So I think you may be barking up the wrong tree.

Blimey, the safety police will be here checking that you didn't run when you moved them!

Yes, the Rivnut setting tool I used was of the lazy tongs type, that was for M8 Rivnuts, IIRC the strut stud is M6 which will be difficult to set with that hand tool, the longevity of the installation will be ok because the load is radial and is only half the weight of the tailgate. The theorycrafters have already written the tailgate off so any repair is an improvement on that.

No good deed goes unpunished.

This is absolutely extraordinary, I must be the only person here who has actually USED Rivnuts and I can categorically tell you that they are plenty strong enough because the bolt you wind into the set Rivnut actually tightens the fixing clamping it even harder.

https://www.halfords.com/tools/hand-tools/all-hand-tools/laser-nut-riveter-and-40-nut-rivets-221900.html?istCompanyId=b8708c57-7a02-4cf6-b2c0-dc36b54a327e&istFeedId=367c5610-f937-4c81-8609-f84582324cd6&istItemId=xitlprlxl&istBid=t&_$ja=tsid:|cid:11902546034|agid:113456751337|tid:pla-331014970735|crid:487900199209|nw:u|rnd:10635378374133621841|dvc:m|adp:|mt:|loc:1006787&gclid=CjwKCAjwwsmLBhACEiwANq-tXHrB3JAJyGicMlHSKMkNdDQtPuWT6GIs00iPO5kK9A-OGb8tXIsf9hoC7IEQAvD_BwE I'm not saying this is the best choice, only that it is a possible solution, you need to check thread sizes and you may need to cut the rivnut down a little, I would also coat the rivnut in superglue gel before final fitting to help prevent it spinning when you wind the ball in.

I don't know which Rivnuts you've been using but they work exactly like a pop rivetter and require no access to the back, otherwise why would I make such a stupid suggestion?