VW Caddy mk2 (Felicia) Pick-Up

[pinjon]

The first time I was trying to get the felicia spedo out I broke the clips holding it in place. I now what a pain it can be removing it.

When you make a system to make your life easier it usually starts working by itself. 

 

Regarding the AGU inlet I know it has large ports. I know there were large/small ports 1.8t heads dont't know engine codes which is which. Just read somewhere audi TT's and I saw an ibiza cupra once with the throttle body on the other side. Don't know if it was original or tuned.

 

What you two are doing it's absolutely crazy!  (in a good way)

Can't belive the felicia chasis can withstand the power/torque nu99et18 has put in to it.

You wrote that yours (Tom's before)  felicia was starting to fall apart. If I remember right he made some modifications/reinforcements on the front axle.

Is Caddy made stronger beeing a diesel before his heart transplant?

[pinjon]

I don't want to write much about the posibility of running 1.6 AFH on AGU ecu with a turbo here. If I decide to do anything that way I will open a project here to not contaminate this thread.

If you sort the missing sensors on the AFH out and start with very low boost just to see it working, than you can strenghten the internals. Not an easy/cheap project if you want to do it right. But who want's an easy job anyway. Somebody who want's an 1.8t in a felicia not for sure. 

 

[Bete Noir]

4 hours ago, pinjon said:

You wrote that yours (Tom's before)  felicia was starting to fall apart. If I remember right he made some modifications/reinforcements on the front axle.

Is Caddy made stronger being a diesel before his heart transplant?

 

The Felicia body shell is not now as strong as it ought to be. The sills are rotten, but I do not think Tom did them when he did the work on the car. As far as I know, the front end strengthening that he did was limited to the running gear rather than the body shell. When JKM were doing the transplant, they checked the front of the Caddy shell over and repaired anything that was not 100%. 

[Bete Noir]

During one of the many recent rainy days, I was looking for a task to keep me occupied when I could not get outside to work on the cars. I decided to take apart the speedo cluster from my Felicia 1.8T, as the digital clock had only ever worked intermittently. I suspected it could be a dry solder joint, which could be an easy fix and give me a handy spare. I did not find a dry joint, instead I found that the area of the PCB around the clock circuit appeared to be damaged. The effort involved in sorting that did not justify the benefit, so I had another idea…

 

A while back I bought an OMP digital boost gauge off eBay. It had apparently been discontinued, so it was pretty cheap, and it struck me as something I may have a use for in the future. The gauge display looked a similar size to the Felicia digital clock display, so I decided to have a go at replacing the clock with the boost gauge.

 

The boost gauge was comprised of two boxes, one containing the sensor, and the other holding the LED display plus the driver circuitry. The display proved to be a perfect push fit into the Felicia clock bezel, although the display box was obviously far too long to fit between the bezel and the PCB.

 

When I prised the display box apart, I found that the display was attached to the circuit board via 13 resistors and one wire link, all of which were soldered at both ends.

 

I cut the display end of the case to length so it would fit between the clock bezel and the PCB.

 

The resistors and wire link were all de-soldered from the display board, and as I did not have any suitably fine wire to re-connect the two circuits I separated the cores from a length of CD changer cable and, as I did not have 14 different colours to tell them apart, I used coloured heatshrink. Once all the connections were made at the display end, I fed the wires through the hole in the PCB where the clock illumination bulb normally goes, and re-attached the clock  bezel to the PCB, with the boost gauge display inside it. I then started to solder the interconnecting wires to the resistors on the driver board. This was the point at which I wondered why I had ever thought this was a good idea!

 

After an hour or so of peering through a magnifier to see what I was doing, I had all of the connections made.

 

Much to my relief, when I then connected a 12v supply to the boost gauge, the display all worked as it should.

 

So that I could get the wires through the rear cover of the speedo cluster, I cut the cover from the edge, through a screw hole, and onto the hole originally for the clock illumination bulb. The exposed end of the circuitry is protected inside plastic, and the driver box is cable tied to the rear cover.

 

I wired a couple of 3-way Superseal connectors, one for between the driver box and the sensor, and the other to connect to ignition 12v, earth and display illumination spliced-in to the vehicle loom.

 

All fitted and working.

Edited 8 April, 2018 by Bete Noir
correct links

[Bete Noir]

On 22/03/2018 at 15:47, pinjon said:

Just be carefull that someone angry doesn't push you offroad instead of losing a drag race with a caddy truck. 

 

 

This has proved to be scarily prophetic 

 

I went for an overtake that would have been unlikely had the Caddy been standard, but should have been straightforward with the 1.8T performance. Sadly, the bloke I was overtaking took offence, and gave me a little nudge on the NSR corner.

I was only doing about 50mph, but I got spun into a barrier at the side of the road. I will not be posting a photo of the front end damage on here, as I do not want to be reminded of it in the future, but suffice to say it is not pretty.

 

When Sussex Police showed-up, I asked them to look at the above tyre marks on the Caddy rear bodywork, which could only have happened if the other driver had turned toward me, and the plod's initial response was that it was paint transfer, in fact he said it was red paint transfer! This observation was made worse by the fact that the other car was not actually red . Even after I told him to look again, and he conceded that the marks were from a tyre, he was still reluctant to accept the likelihood of what I told him. He and I will be speaking again.

 

Meanwhile, the Caddy is back to the bodyshop Monday to be restored to its former glory 

[Hyphons]

Nightmare mate, get yourself a dashcam, a worthy investment, hopefully the caddy will be back on the road soon

[Bete Noir]

I had considered getting a dashcam before this, and I like the idea, but as I have three cars I drive regularly, and knowing that I would never be bothered to swap the dashcam about from car to car every time, I decided against. In this instance, I am not sure whether it would have helped anyway. If the dashcam was attached to the front screen, even if it recorded both front and rear, would it have had the field of view to catch the rear corner of my Caddy?

[pinjon]

F* ****!

Sorry didn't see it before was a little busy.

There are some crazy people on the road for sure, but hitting someone in that way it's absolutely crazy! You end offroad 100%! The guy has to have some killer instinct to do that!

 

Im sorry for you and the car. Hope you were/are ok.

 

Probably a dash cam would't catch him...maybe a little bit but not enought for the police. I don't know in UK but here is against the law to record somebody even if it's damaging your property. Crazy but that's how it is.

Maybe a youtube video would do better than police. At least that's what i can say about their comment - not really reasuring.. You could have hurt yourself really bad if some more speed was involved...

 

Hope it gets solved in a good way.

[Bete Noir]

This is in the wrong order chronologically, but since it ended in a significant mod...

 

When my son took the Caddy out for the first time since the engine transplant. He had only been driving it for about 20 minutes when it cut-out on him. When I saw his name come up on my phone, I feared the worst, so I was actually relieved to be told he had broken-down rather than having pranged it. I need to have more faith in him J. When I got to him, the Caddy started straight away, but it only ran for a few minutes before it cut-out again, and so it went on. I called the AA, but by the time the van showed-up the Caddy started and ran fine, so the AA guy just followed me the couple of miles home.

 

When I came to investigate the fault, I discovered that my VCDS laptop could not communicate with the ECU, so I was forced to try to fault find blind. I concluded it was probably an electrical component, and tried swapping-out the ignition amplifier, amongst other things. Nothing I did made any difference to the symptoms of the fault, and actually when it did run it had deteriorated to the extent that it was struggling to rev, and smoking badly like it was over-fueling. I suspected the problem may be with the ECU, but unsurprisingly I had no handy spare, and I did not want to buy one based only on my guesswork, so the Caddy went on the back of a truck to JKM.

 

Jim could not get the ECU to communicate either, whether in the pick-up or on the bench, so he advised that a replacement ECU was the right way to go. I found a seller on eBay who had a good reputation for selling gently (my word not his) re-mapped ECUs, so I ordered one, which arrived at JKM two days later. Once it was fitted, the Caddy ran fine, without signs of over-fueling or cutting-out.

[Bete Noir]

Anyone who read my Felicia pick-up thread will know I am a fan of additional gauges to let me know more of what is going-on under the bonnet. When I wired oil temperature, oil pressure and voltmeter gauges into the Felicia I just used the obvious individual insulated crimp terminals we all know and love. They did the job perfectly well, but I am OCD about my wiring, and I wanted to do a more professional job this time.

 

I have several sets of VDO gauges and the associated loom that would have been used to connect them in the Audi 80 or contemporary VWs, but neither the Caddy nor my Ibizas have the connectors in their standard loom to allow the gauge loom to plug in. So, I looked at the part number of the connectors (1x 6-way, 1x 2-way) on the Audi loom, and asked various VAG parts people if they could supply the corresponding plugs. No. Obsolete. Couldn’t even give me part numbers.

 

After much searching I found a website with a really comprehensive connector reference section. It was not in English, so I had to trawl through pages of pictures to find what I was after. Eventually I found part numbers for both plugs. After that, it wasn’t hard to find suppliers who could each supply one of the plug types, but they came without terminals. After further searching I found two more suppliers who could each supply one of the types of terminals required. Three weeks later, the parts had arrived from all over Europe.

 

The gauge loom includes the cigarette lighter, so my plan was to unplug the standard cigarette light connector, and add the new loom between that connector on the standard loom and the cigarette lighter socket. This picture shows the Audi gauge loom, with its cigarette lighter socket connector towards the right, next to the Caddy cigarette lighter socket on the right.

 

The Caddy cigarette lighter socket connector was then soldered onto the gauge loom.

 

The battery 12v, earth, and instrument illumination wires that had previously connected to the Caddy cigarette lighter socket were then fitted to the appropriate pins of the new 6-way plug, along with an ignition switched 12v.

 

The gauge sender signal wires were then wired to the new 2-way plug, and from there it was plug and play.

 

After it was all tested and working, the wiring was wrapped in loom tape for a more professional finish.

 

Under the bonnet I used the oil filter sandwich plate from the Felicia pick-up, which had oil pressure and temperature senders fitted already. A 3-way Superseal connector was used to connect these to the signal wires and earth.

 

The plan was to fit the same gauges as I had used in my Felicia pick-up, but despite frenzied searching I could not find them. Instead I fitted another set of gauges which are intended for one of my Ibizas.

 

Although the gauges had been positioned under the dash in the previous pick-up, and had been fine there, I am not really happy with it in this one. Swapping the locations of the gauges and the head unit may be in order.

[Bete Noir]

The standard brakes were never going to be sufficient to handle the increased performance, and it was always my intention to rob the appropriate parts from the Felicia 1.8T. TeflonTom wrote-up the conversion on the Felicia thread, so I will not replicate it here.

 

When I removed the rear wheels I found both 25mm and 5mm spacers fitted. The original bolts for the 25mm spacers had evidently gone missing at some point, and the bolts that had been used to replace them did not quite sit flush with the wheel mating face. I definitely should have noticed that when I had the wheels off previously!

 

 

I sourced some bolts with shorter heads to use when the 25mm spacers were re-fitted (after the photo was taken). The 5mm spacers did not go back on.

 

[Bete Noir]

The front brakes were a bit more complicated to upgrade. Again, most of the hard work had been done in uprating the brakes on the Felicia 1.8T, and I only had to swap the bits over. The brakes going on are Golf G60 discs (again, same as mk2 Ibiza GTi parts) with Mondeo ATE callipers. The Mondeo calliper mountings line-up with those on the Caddy hub carrier, but the carrier has to be machined to take the larger M12 bolts. The hub carriers I took off the Felicia had this done, and had been fitted with mk1 Ford Focus coilovers. These coilovers are nasty FK units, and will be swapped at some point, but for now they are on the Caddy.

 

Pictured below are the ‘standard’ front upright and brake, and the replacement with the larger disc and the coilover.

 

 

The difference in size between the discs is not that obvious in that photo, but when you see the comparison between the pads it is more striking. The standard pad is at top left, and the other four are the EBC Yellowstuff pads I am using in the Mondeo callipers.

 

 

Front upright in place, complete with nice shiny (and shorter-headed) new spacer bolts.

 

[Bete Noir]

As I mentioned previously, with the extra gauges being mounted under the centre of the dashboard, they were very hard to read. The easiest one to see was the one farthest away, which was the voltmeter, and was therefore the least critical of the three. Both the oil temperature and oil pressure gauges spent too much time at the lower end of the scale, for different reasons, so there was clearly room for improvement.

 

The oil temperature gauge was always reading at the lower end of the scale because its range was 60-170˚C, meaning that the normal reading of around 90˚C was close to the bottom. This was easily rectified by fitting a gauge with a range of 50-150˚C.

 

Having never had the oil pressure warning light showing, I had never worried about the reading on the  oil pressure gauge, even though it was towards the bottom of the scale. I had to swap out the oil filter sandwich plate because the O-ring had started to leak, and whilst it was out I also swapped the oil pressure sender. I had bought a 0-5bar sender, suspecting that the one that was fitted would be a 0-10bar item, and so it proved. Ironically, now that I have fitted a sender which provides an accurate pressure indication, I have swapped the gauge for one that has no numerical scale, simply because aesthetically it was a better match for the other two gauges I was now using.

 

Having finally located the gauges from my Felicia pick-up, the voltmeter was swapped for the one from that set. The order of the gauges was also reversed, so left to right is now oil pressure, oil temperature, voltmeter.

 

I bought a DIN mounting box to put the gauges in the radio slot, but the box is going to need some Dremel work before it will fit. As a temporary solution until I have the time and inclination to sort that, I used the same gauge panel as had been mounted under the dash, but hung it on the bar at the top of the radio slot, held in by the ash tray and 12V socket.

 

 

The head unit in the Caddy is a fairly ancient Sony CD player. It hardly ever gets used, so the quality of it is not a priority for me. I had a box specifically for mounting a head unit under a dashboard, but it was too wide for the centre part of the Caddy dash. I struggled for a while to find a solution, before I had a brainwave. The box that the head unit cage fits into is held into place by two screws up from under the dash into spire clips (U-nuts) on the bottom of the box. By turning the box upside-down under the dashboard, I could put the same screws through the holes in the dash from inside the head unit slot, and screw them into the spire clips now on top of the head unit box. I will put some sort of centre console around / under it at some point, but it does not look bad as it is.

[Bete Noir]

After the prang I had in April, the front end had been looking very sorry for itself. My preferred bodyshop managed to fit it in to get it looking more Caddy-shaped and get me back on the road, but it had to go back for paint a couple of months later. As well as painting the panels that had been damaged in the crash, they also tidied-up a few other bits that were looking tired, painted the mirror covers which were previously a different grey, and painted the front and rear bumpers in gloss black. The former owner had matched the bumpers to the grey of the bodywork, but like a lot of the visual changes he had made, that was not to my taste. I considered doing the bumpers satin black, but decided to go the whole hog and go for full gloss. I am really pleased that I did.

 

 

 

 

 

[Bete Noir]

Engine cooling has always been an issue on the Caddy since the 1.8T transplant. It is not that surprising, as it now generates more than three times the power it came out of the factory with, and the associated increase in heat generation was never going to be insignificant. When the same engine was in the Felicia, the coolant temperature gauge generally sat just above the ‘normal’ mark, but quickly went up in traffic unless the radiator fans were switched-on.

 

The thermostatic switch for the fans had never worked reliably, and manual over-ride had been wired to the HRW switch and tell-tale, and I replicated this in the Caddy. During the transplant the radiator fan circuit in the Caddy had been modified to be a hybrid of the petrol (single speed fan, no relay) and diesel (two stage fan, relay switching) such that it operates both fans at a single speed, switched via the relay. With the new circuit in place in the Caddy, I succeeded in getting the thermostatic switch to activate the fans, and realised that it also illuminated the dashboard tell-tale when it did so, which I like.

 

After the transplant into the Caddy, the coolant temperature gauge would go up pretty quickly after start-up to settle at about 100˚C, where it would stay during normal driving. In traffic it would shoot up from there towards the red if unchecked by the fans, although they would bring it back down to an indicated 100˚C pretty quickly. Despite showing some high temperatures at times, I rarely saw the tell-tale indicating that the thermostatic switch had kicked-in, and I never saw (or smelled, heard) symptoms of over-heating. I concluded that the coolant temperature gauge circuit was not indicating correctly, and embarked in trying to work-out why.

 

In unmodified cars, a problem such as this is usually caused by a component failure. This is also likely in a modified car, but it is also possible that components which were not designed to work together are individually operating as they should, but are not working together properly so that their operation is not having the desired effect. Once I started reading-up on the various specifications of coolant temperature senders fitted to VAG cars, and some of the problems this has caused after modifications, I decided that what I was seeing was a similar issue.

 

This is probably well known to many on here, but the VAG 4-pin temperature sender is two separate sensors, both of which vary resistance with temperature independently. One pair of pins provides engine temperature to the ECU, while the other pair of pins are those which drive the coolant temperature gauge. The resistance of the two sensors is not necessarily the same at any given temperature. It may have been more straightforward for the engine swappers among us if VAG had fitted two separate senders, but they did not. As the engine was running well, it appeared that the ECU half of the sender was doing what it should, but the gauge half was not.

 

I spent ages experimenting with various senders in pans of water which I heated and cooled whilst I measured resistances,

 

... with temperature gauges which I fed from variable resistors,

 

... and with various Felicia/Caddy looms which I buzzed-through trying to find a phantom resistor which I had read somewhere was in some models and not others.

 

After all this, my conclusions were...    sadly inconclusive . I was pretty sure that I needed to add a resistor into the gauge circuit, in series with the sender, to get the gauge to read accurately, but I was struggling to work-out the value of resistor I needed. Searching online to find what resistance values others had used I came across a thread about someone experiencing similar problems after he had fitted a 1.8T. He had asked for advice about what resistor he needed, and someone had pointed him in the direction of the temperature sender fitted to the mk2 Golf GTi 8V, which apparently has the correct characteristics for the 1.8T ECU and the older temperature gauges. That sounded worth a try, especially as I had one of those senders in my garage. Two minutes later, the mk2 Golf sender was fitted in the Caddy, which then started and ran fine (positive indication #1) and had the coolant temperature gauge settling on the ‘normal’ marking (around 90˚C).

 

Success! In this instance, if I had tried mindlessly swapping parts rather than trying to be clever and methodical about it, I would have got to the answer much more quickly.

[Bete Noir]

I was not a fan of the aftermarket steering wheel that was in the Caddy when I bought it, but it took me ages to make-up my mind as to what I wanted to replace it with. I had a Momo suede rally wheel in the Felicia 1.8T, but that wheel was more suited to a track car. I considered fitting one of the various styles of wheel available on the Felicia / Caddy range, but none of them that I have tried have been that nice to use. After a prolonged period of indecision reminiscent of my partner in a shoe shop, I decided I wanted a three spoke leather wheel like the one fitted in the mk4 Golf GTi. Little did I know this would open up a world of small spline / large spline confusion.

 

This was the old wheel, pictured during some earlier dashboard experimentation, and without its rubber centre cover.

 

I bought a Golf wheel off eBay, and ordered an adaptor to allow the (large spline) wheel to fit the (small spline) Caddy steering column. When I removed the old wheel, and went to slide the adaptor onto the column, it would not fit. I tried easing it on with a little coppergrease, and I tried decreasingly gentle levels of persuasion, but it was not happening. The old wheel went back on, and I went back to the drawing board (well to the internet, actually).

 

I found threads about the spline adaptors on a number of VAG forums, and a few of them said that they can be difficult to fit onto the column, as they are a tight fit, so some force may be required. That convinced me that I had not been sufficiently determined, so when I got the chance a week or so later, I removed the old wheel to try again. This time I tried persuading the adaptor into place using a hammer and a brass drift. It was still not happening. By this point I was confused and frustrated. I think of myself as being an experienced amateur mechanic, but swapping a steering wheel was defeating me.

 

In desperation, I resorted to counting the splines on the steering column and the inside of the adaptor. Given that I am long-sighted, this was no easy task, and I failed to determine exactly how many splines each part had, but I did convince myself they were not the same. I then started wondering whether the Caddy column was evidence of its pre-VAG Skoda origins, and was not ‘standard’ VAG small splines at all. This theory was only disproved after I had done some experimenting with steering columns and wheels from my SEAT Ibizas, which demonstrated that the Caddy column splines were the same as those on the Ibiza. So, I ordered another spline adaptor.

 

When the second spline adaptor arrived, I tested it on a Felicia steering column I had in the garage, and then on the Golf wheel, and confirmed that it fitted both of them before I attempted to fit it into the Caddy. When the opportunity came to fit it, my son was doing it whilst I was working on something else. He removed the old wheel (yet again), but then called me over as the adaptor would not fit onto the column. I had a moment or two of confusion and panic before I realised that there was already a spline adaptor on the column! The old wheel had been fitted using a spline adaptor, but on all of the numerous occasions I had removed that wheel (probably 10-12 times for various jobs) the adaptor had always come off with the wheel, so I had never noticed it. After all the confusion and messing about trying to source the correct adaptor, I had one all along, but I only found-out when I had found the solution anyway.

 

Finally I was able to get the Golf wheel fitted, and the look and feel of it makes the effort worthwhile.

 

 

I still do not know what the story is with the first spline adaptor I bought. It does not fit any steering column I have, although the outer splines are the VAG large splines pattern. I have stashed it in the ‘just in case’ box in my garage, where it is far from alone.

 

Much as I am happy with the new steering wheel, fitting it had an unfortunate consequence. The centre of the Golf wheel is larger than the old wheel and this makes it difficult to see the bottom row of dashboard warning lamps when the wheel is in some positions. The camera angle in the photo makes this look much worse than it is, and I am not worried about seeing the hazard warning, brake fluid level, alternator, or handbrake lamps all the time, due to the nature of what they are telling me, but if the oil pressure warning lamp comes on I want to know about it immediately. It would not have been that hard to rearrange (and re-wire) the warning lamps in the instrument cluster, but I decided to go another route.

 

The replacement oil pressure sender I fitted had an oil pressure switch incorporated, which I had not initially connected. I now ran a wire from this sender terminal to a second oil pressure lamp which I fitted into a switch blank in the centre of the dashboard. This second lamp is a very bright 10mm LED which I had previously used in the Felicia 1.8T, and which you cannot miss if it illuminates. I like the peace of mind which comes from knowing I have two independent oil pressure warning circuits (plus the gauge!).

 

The steering wheel centre horn push on the old wheel was unreliable, so I had wired a second horn button into the dash. This remains in use as I have not (yet) connected the horn push on the Golf wheel.

 

The picture shows the LED oil pressure warning lamp, the horn button, and the HRW switch wired as a radiator fan over-ride, all resplendent with symbols I bought from Vehicle Wiring Products many years ago.

 

[Bete Noir]

Ever since the engine transplant, there has been a slight oil leak from around the area of the oil filter housing. I had never seen the oil level drop noticeably, but there were always a few spots on the ground wherever the Caddy had been parked. JKM had noticed it, and had replaced the washer on the oil pressure switch, which improved things but proved not to be a complete cure.

It was very difficult to see where the oil was coming from, not helped by the lack of space around the engine, but it appeared that the leak was from the oil seal at the top of the sandwich plate between the filter and housing. I had bought the sandwich plate used, as I mentioned in a previous post, and it was not a great quality part. The oil seal in particular was fairly unsubstantial, as can be seen in the picture. 
 

This sandwich plate went in the aluminium bin at the local dump, and I replaced it with a new part, which had a single more substantial oil seal rather than the two O-rings which had hardened and flattened with age. When I swapped the oil pressure sender and switch over I applied a couple of drops of thread sealer as an extra precaution. With the new sandwich plate fitted, the oil leak was further reduced, but maddeningly still not to zero.

The part that now came under suspicion was the oil seal between the oil filter housing and the heat exchanger. I bought a replacement and swapped it over, but when I re-fitted the sandwich plate the oil O-ring was not located properly. I only found this out when it was all back together and I started the engine, which resulted in a large pool of oil growing on the driveway. Not one of my better moments! The O-ring was damaged where I had tightened the sandwich plate with the O-ring incorrectly located. There was some swearing when I realised what I had done. I could not find a replacement O-ring without buying yet another sandwich plate, so this time I decided to buy a high quality sandwich plate for which replacement O-rings are available separately. Mocal have always had a very good reputation for oil coolers and related parts, and after a bit of searching I found a Mocal sandwich plate from Merlin Motorsport 
 

The O-ring on this one is a substantial part, and spares are available separately. I do not plan to use lower quality sandwich plates on any of my cars in the future.

With everything back together, complete with the Mocal sandwich plate, things were definitely improved again, but still I was seeing a couple of spots of oil where the Caddy had been parked, and they still seemed to be emanating from the area of the oil filter housing. On a hunch, and because I could not think of a more plausible explanation, I removed the standard oil pressure switch again. The sealing washer had been replaced previously, as mentioned above, but when I took it off I could see that this washer, an aluminium part, did not look in great shape. I re-fitted the switch with a replacement copper washer and, finally, no more oil leak.
 

[Bete Noir]

Having tinted sunstrips on my cars has become a habit since I first had one put on my Evo VIII almost 15 years ago. It was not my plan to have one in the Caddy, for aesthetic reasons, because a sunstrip can look a bit ‘scene’, whereas I am aiming for a more classic look. I relented for practical reasons i.e. I have got so used to having a dark strip at the top of my windscreen that it felt wrong (and sunny) without one.

 

I took the Caddy to South Coast Tints in Southampton, who have always done a fantastic job, and I am similarly pleased with the outcome this time.

 

 

 

Edited 4 January, 2019 by Bete Noir

[Twed]

Help needed I’m trying to find a pair of rear inner wheel arches with strut mounts for a 2000 pick up any pointers I’m sick of looking 

[Bete Noir]

Five minutes spent on a rudimentary search will tell you they have been obsolete for years. 

 

If you are hoping someone has some stashed I suggest you ask the question in the relevant place on the forum. 

[Bete Noir]

I had never been keen on having the cone air filter sitting in the midst of all the heat under the bonnet, and it had always been my intention to improve on this arrangement. The obvious thing to do is to relocate the screenwash reservoir, thus freeing space in the NSF corner of the engine compartment. This gets the filter further away from the hot engine, and gives the potential for a cold air feed through the front panel. The standard screenwash reservoir is specifically shaped for the location it usually occupies, and does not lend itself to being anywhere else. Instead I used a smaller (1.2l) "universal" washer bottle which is a more regular shape, and has roughly the same cross-section as the car's battery, meaning that the bottle can be located alongside the battery pretty easily. With the screenwash reservoir out of the way, I initially tried fitting a mk4 Golf / mk3 Ibiza airbox, but it was obvious that was not going to work, so I fitted the longer air filter pipe which had been on the Caddy when I bought it, which conveniently locates the air filter right behind the front panel, and adjacent to the inner wing. I still plan to replace the air filter with a better quality one, and to add ducting to encourage more cool air through the handy circular hole in the front panel, but what I have now at least gives some chance of feeding the engine with cool air, where there was no chance previously.

 

Before:

 

After:

 

[Bete Noir]

When I fitted the coilovers, my original intention was to check the rest of the suspension and replace as necessary, but it became one of those jobs done with time pressure to get it back together, so I did the minimum knowing I would have further items to attend to later. Recently the front end had started making some unusual and slightly worrying creaking / clunking noises when changing direction, which I took to be indicative of the front top mounts being shot. At this point I faced one of the challenges of modified cars, especially those which you have not built yourself. That challenge was not knowing what parts I needed, especially since in TeflonTom's Felicia 1.8T build thread he mentioned needing to find some top mounts to work with the Focus coilovers, but he did not mention what solution he came to. One solution would have been to dismantle the Caddy suspension, then attempt to identify the parts I removed. My approach was a bit less intelligent. As well as the Caddy, I own mk2 SEAT Ibizas and a mk1 Octavia RS, so I bought top mounts for both of them as well as Caddy parts, on the basis that I would hopefully find something to fit the Caddy, and the other parts would get used eventually anyway. Along with new CV joint gaiters, suspension bushes and wishbones (for later use) I gathered an impressive box of bits (rather than a box of impressive bits, sadly) waiting to be fitted.

 

As it turned-out, the standard Caddy parts were what I fitted. Seen side-by-side, it is evident that the replacement (Febi Bilstein) parts are a slightly different profile to the ones taken off, so the strut top will sit a little (<10mm) lower with the replacements fitted. This will increase the ride height correspondingly, but as the sump is showing signs of having had a few bashes, this is no bad thing. I can always adjust it out with the coilovers if it looks too much.

 

With the old parts removed, the top mount bushes themselves did not look too bad, but the bearings were a different story. I do not know how much work these bearings really do, but these were seized solid so they were only really acting as thick washers. Whether or not they were the source of the untoward noises, clearly they needed replacing.

[Checker]

Hi been looking at your Skoda pickup disk conversion just wondering what hubs you used thanks

[Bete Noir]

16 hours ago, Checker said:

Hi been looking at your Skoda pickup disk conversion just wondering what hubs you used thanks

 

I am pretty sure they are mk3 Golf hubs, although 6N Polo or mk2 Ibiza parts will also do the job

Edited 8 May, 2019 by Bete Noir

[Checker]

Hi how big of a job was the 1.8 20v conversion what gearbox did you use and can the standard Felicia clocks be used thanks