jars' 2005 Fabia vRS

[grr666]

Phwooooar! A picture of Jays big shiny black? stalk.... ummmmm Nurse!

Happy trails mate.

[grr666]

Have you washed that dirty old tractor yet?

[Titanium_Man]

No.... that delivery note wasn't my Snowfoam and had to pop down to Devon to pick our camper up today

I am chomping at the bit to get her up to scratch, doing me head in

[Titanium_Man]

After ordering my Autobrite Snowfoam lance to be delivered to Garry's house at the start of the month whilst I was abroad, it was finally delivered this morning 

 

 

 

When we first started the process of buying a house, top of the list was a garage for moi, and my better half chose the location  :sun:

 

After getting my car to it's current state of tune, I started work on my little man cave to get it how I wanted it.... the aim is to be able to jet/snowfoam/hand wash the car outside and clay/detail/polish inside with the storage for all my tools, cleaning gear and random bits and pieces needing to not get in the way. Thankfully, the Fabia is not a particularly big car, which has made things a little easier as the modern built houses don't have a particularly large footprint, meaning a fairly small garage. But it's all mine   Had it agreed with the good lady that it will be used as a garage and not to be filled with carp

 

After moving in last July, it naturally took a while to be allowed to sort through what had been allowed to build up and over that period, have had a couple of sort throughs and ended up making a start back at the end of March/April. 

 

 

One Staurday afternoon I re-arranged our stuff to allow for the much needed brightening up of the walls and made a start....

 

 

 

 

During the painting, I had the first part of my garage tap install done.... 

 

The plan is to take a feed off the pipework in the utility room just inside the house and put the tap just inside the door in the garage like this expertly produced illustration demonstrates

RL]

 

Grr666 wasn't able to do the job in one hit as he had his own priorities, so I cracked on with the painting, eventually finishing two weeks after starting and a good 85 litres of paint and it was done

 

 

 

 

 

Decided once it was done I was going to empty everything and give it a good sweep and hose down....

 

 

 

 

Quickly sized up a free table/storage unit

 

 

... and put together another freebie

 

and duly filled it up

 

It's been like this for a few weeks until I went on a quick holiday in Tenerife and returned home to this being installed.. 

 

 

 

 

 

Great workmanship by grr666 as always, this man takes pride in his work and it shows   A few more bits and pieces to do like install more lights and wall sockets as there is only one!

 

Need to do a final tip run, put a couple of things in storage over this weekend and my cave shall be put to use..... 

[Titanium_Man]

As I had finally got pretty much all the major components for a decent clean, I woke this morning, checked the weather report and that my good lady was still going out for the day and evening and did a much needed tip run. Once I was back I quickly set myself up for the first part.... a jet wash, snowfoam and hand wash, door shuts and will see what time it was

 

 

Once I had a slurp of the good stuff I cracked on with the jet-washing, but wasn't long before I hit my only problem for the day (apart from starting waaaaaay too late )

 

 

Within 5 minutes of firing up the new Nilfisk, it was pulsing then all of a sudden, splash Took me about half an hour to sort the mess out.... 

 

Anyway, after sorting that, I got to it. After the first got with the jet washer I could already see the improvement 

 

 

 

As you can see, she had a fair bit of built up crap...

 

... and this was what was blasted out of the windows 

 

yuk!

 

Then I got the new toy out 

 

 

... initially having a few teething problems getting the right amount of foam, but got it sorted pretty quickly

 

 

Then out came the tough stuff.... 

 

Tardis doing it''s thing....

 

 

It is fair to say that there is a fair bit of tar splattered down the side, so had a couple of bashes at it, then gave her another jet-wash and snow foam 

 

... and finally put my hand to her... two bucket method of course

 

the difference a good hand wash makes...

 

I stopped for a couple of hours as I had not eaten and was 8pm and once done, I moved into my cave and got on with claying her.. 

 

... very surprisingly, there wasn't much coming off... this was the worse bit, coming off the rear, as expected, but again, still not that much :wonder:

 

 

I've now finished for the evening, putting the clay down with 3/4's done and it being 11:45... there's always another day... 

[grr666]

What happened to the hose mate?

Nowt to do with me I hope, was there a hole in the hose?

Or wasn't it clipped on the tap properly? 

[Titanium_Man]

Nah it was all me It wasn't clipped on properly I reckon. One thing I would say, my hose is too long, far too long. 

[grr666]

Bragging again... :p

[Titanium_Man]

[Titanium_Man]

Now I've found time to update.... 

 

After putting down the clay at nearly midnight, I had yet another late start :p Just can't beat a good bit of tv and a coffee in in bed

 

Looking out my dining room balcony, I can understand why some of my neighbours would be scratching their head looking at my car having seen me spend (just) a few hours cleaning her the day before

 

 

The soapy water that I used to help lubricate the Bilt-Hamber car clay has made a bit of a mess, but I know what's going on and started where I finished on Sunday night. Very quickly I noticed the difference in how quickly the clay was picking up the crap and I put it down to the higher temperature of my hands and therefore how warm I could get the clay, although I got a little carried away with my lubrication

 

 

... and despite several hand washes, jet washes snow foaming and a couple of times round with the Tardis, I was still in a bit of a mess

 

but it didn't last long

 

Slightly off topic.. I've come up with a way of explaining it to those who don't why you would clay your car.... the way I see it some women cleanse their skin before they go to bed, I cleanse my paintwork when I clean my car

 

back on topic...

 

Once I had finished with that, I set about my exhaust

 

 

 

 

... and with a bit of wire wool and some AG Metal Polish, it looked 10x better

 

 

One product that I always have in my arsenal is T-Cut and I have it for one reason only...

 

Although I haven't removed 100% of the paint it does look much better than it did, although there are small scratches to the wheel arch.

 

The clouds were coming in and it looked like it was going to rain so decided to move inside and decided to take a stanley knife to my 50 meter hose to make it easier each time whilst I was at it ....

 

I now have a gleaming car   I've only managed to put 1 coat of Poorboys Diamond Glaze for now as I need to make up for the last 10 months my missus has been doing all the housework, washing etc and earn my keep by washing hers, but I'll be at it again soon enough ....

 

 

 

 

 

And ate a well deserved pizza

[Titanium_Man]

... and the final two photos..

 

One of the night I polished it

 

... and the next morning ...

[Dark_Hero]

Looks awesome Jay

[Titanium_Man]

Thanks, Charlie.

I'm very happy with how clean the paintwork is, spent bloody ages sorting it It does however show up all the soft scratches, chips and generally how a 9 year old car would look without a re-spray :wonder:

That said, she's pretty swirl free surprisingly given when I last machine polished her

[tmwarner]

Great progress Jay! Looking really good.

Hoping to properly clay and polish mine tomorrow depending on the weather.

[Titanium_Man]

Cheer dude

Feels good to have a clean car doesn't it!?

[DanHam]

Looks good Jay!

You need to buy that Helix in the FS section, get the most out of that turbo. I'm so jealous :(

[Titanium_Man]

Cheers Dan. Taking a look ....

[Titanium_Man]

Hmmm .... :think:

[grr666]

Double Hmmmm  :think:

[Titanium_Man]

I'm having trouble paying 500 notes for a 3rd hand clutch with an unknown lifespan... Could it be cheaper in the long run to just but a new one? Or am I overthinking it??

[grr666]

I wouldn't say you are mate. 

People fit these clutches so they CAN rag their cars. 

It's probably had a hard life already.

I wouldn't personally, the labour alone is gonna be a few bob,

if I was going to do it then it would have to be new.  

[Toxicvrs]

I agree with grr666 the whole reason why someone would buy an uprated clutch is to put more power into the vehicle and hammer it so it has probably already had a hard life I'd imagine when you're spending that much on labour etc I'd just say get it done new first time and then you don't have to worry about it!

[Titanium_Man]

That was exactly my thinking guys... Cheers

[Titanium_Man]

So I woke up on Sunday morning knowing that my missus had the TV booked in all day for 3 weeks worth of Hollyoaks :clap:  

 

There were a few things on the list of things that I could tackle, but settled with trying to install the coming home light kit put together by Korban. It's been sat in what is left of my mods basket...

 

 

Out came this...

 

 

... quickly removed the interior light, fuse cover and pillar trim

 

You can see I nearly broke the pillar trim  

 

Once this was all sorted I got on with preparing the light unit ..

 

I twisted the wires around the metal bit and and soldered it all together... 

 

 

Not the best job but given I haven't soldered anything since school, I'm happy :P

 

The magical bit

 

Once this was finished it was back down to me man cave to route all the cables and fix the Light Sensor in place. Fairly easy to do, although I am a little anxious about putting the pillar trim back as I can't decide on the best approach.... answers on a postcard please

 

I simply pulled down the headlining where it meets the windscreen after poking it as far right as I could through the small hole left by the light and pulled the wire out

 

A little bit of house keeping  

[Titanium_Man]

At this point I had a big clumpy sensor in my hands with about 8 wires with a little black box attached and it was obvious it all wasn't going to fit in the hole above the fuses. I had a brew and a think decided ended on removing these two wires with little black box from the electrics board ....

 

.....which allowed me to route just the two wires back from behind the fusebox and leave the PITA black box deep in the dash. Sorry, no pictures of this bit :(

 

I then had all the room I needed to place the main bit of the kit and route the sensor up to the windscreen..

 

Then it was time to test my connections and see if it all worked 

 

Awesome

 

Time to crack on.....

 

By this point I had already removed the headlight switch from the dash and was faced with this...

 

I knew I had to connect the new wires to the old and Korban's thread for this kit didn't help me that much 'cos I'm a bit thick I did receive these with the kit... 

 

 

... but I didn't know what they were and I knew I needed to remove the wires from the block but didn't know how :p So I put it to the faithful Briskoda people where I was quickly shown I needed a tool that I didn't have, but an alternative was suggested..

 

 

So I followed all the awesome advice I was given and tried to remove the pins from the block....

 

So after a painful hour or so trying to get the pin out, Korban came along and asked if I had received the Scotch Loc connectors? I had no idea what he meant, so rather than looking stupid, I quickly YouTube'd it and realised what I perhaps should have been doing with what he had sent me   The thread I started actually continued a little and there was a suggestion that these are not all that safe?! Will take that with a pinch of salt for now and decide what I want to do about them when the correct tool arrives through the post!

 

The first, nerve wracking wire to cut

 

 

... but once I got over that, it was soon done

 

 

Wrapped it all in insulation tape I connected it all up and put the light switch back in it's place to test the lights actually worked...and they did!

 

So now I have Coming Home Lights, awesomely put together by Korban, kudos to you mate, top work as we have all come to expect and it's a great little feature

 

So, you wanna see it work?? 

 

This was filmed at about 9:30 last night

 

and this was at gone midnight