230BHP Dad Wagon

[DriverTom]

 

Apologies for the filthy lens, they're squeaky clean on the inside and covered in bugs on the outside 😬

Edited 2 October, 2019 by DriverTom

[DriverTom]

Hopefully I'll get the opportunity to install the headlights soon, now it's dark when I leave the house it's jumped up the list of jobs to do. In the interim I bought some springs and changed out the boot gas struts, so now the boot opens on the key fob 😁

 

 

Edited 8 October, 2019 by DriverTom

[DriverTom]

Bumper off and lights are in 😁

 

 

 

 

[DriverTom]

You.might be able to see the Darkside FMIC and hard pipe kit as well as a cheeky Mocal oil cooler hung from the front crossmember.

 

Also the indicators work and with no hyperflashing either! 

 

[shyVRS245]

15 minutes ago, DriverTom said:

You.might be able to see the Darkside FMIC and hard pipe kit as well as a cheeky Mocal oil cooler hung from the front crossmember.

 

Also the indicators work and with no hyperflashing either! 

 

Your number plate is illegal but you probably know that anyway.

[DriverTom]

That's why I added the plate holders, was becoming a pain to unstick them every year 😆

[DriverTom]

Now THESE are the headlights the Fabia should have been built with. The still need a little tweaking but overall I'm chuffed to bits!

 

Low beam only, check out that crisp cut off!

 

 

[DriverTom]

And some high beam action.

 

 

And here's a shot from setting up the aiming.

 

[Lofty]

Wow, they make the Mk1 vRS Factory Xenons look like candles in a jam jar!

 

Looking at your headlight build pics, you mentioned an E55 glassfibre part, do you mean Mercedes E55??

 

👍🏻👍🏻

[DriverTom]

10 hours ago, Lofty said:

Wow, they make the Mk1 vRS Factory Xenons look like candles in a jam jar!

 

Looking at your headlight build pics, you mentioned an E55 glassfibre part, do you mean Mercedes E55??

 

👍🏻👍🏻

The E55 is the part number of the original/rubbish Hella projectors. The glass fibre part came from The Retrofit Source as part of their retroquik kit. It takes the bolt pattern of the Morimoto DS2 5.0 projectors and converts it to the E55 bolt pattern inside the headlight housing. It made installation very straight forward and also ensures the projectors are correctly aligned in the rotational axis. The bonus is that the original adjusters and leveling motor all work as normal.

 

They aren't the cheapest kits and I know that there are copies available on Alibaba that apparently come from the same factory. I didn't want the worry of saving a few quid only to have a unit fail after being installed (pulling the lights, splitting the lenses etc).

 

After researching for ages I'm not aware of a better performing RHD projector that would go in without tons of additional fabrication work.

Here's a few pics from the marketing bluff that helped seal the deal 👍

 

 

 

 

[DriverTom]

Having googled around for a minute it looks like the MK1 Fabia Xenon's might well be Hella E55 units Lofty. Ripe for an upgrade! 😉

[Lofty]

7 minutes ago, DriverTom said:

Having googled around for a minute it looks like the MK1 Fabia Xenon's might well be Hella E55 units Lofty. Ripe for an upgrade! 😉

 

Awesome info. I'm thinking of headlights in my Black MK1 vRS daily as that has factory xenons but the output is crap. As this is the only car I actually drive at night/winter I need to do something with them to make it better as at present they are woeful at best.

 

Cheers for the links.

[Dark_Hero]

Fantastic project so far. Top work on the lighting mod  

[DriverTom]

Dug this out of the glovebox today 😁😁

 

The little GTB1756 is still going strong!

 

 

 

 

Edited 11 October, 2019 by DriverTom

[Dark_Hero]

Nice graph there with decent power

[RobLarby]

Lol just had a read and saw the WGMotorparts business card in the HEL lines, I made those lines at work haha

 

Small world

[DriverTom]

11 hours ago, RobLarby said:

Lol just had a read and saw the WGMotorparts business card in the HEL lines, I made those lines at work haha

 

Small world

Good man Rob! I knew they felt like a top quality hose😁

[DriverTom]

The chrome bits are now in a bucket of bleach being stripped before they receive some nice gloss black paint.

 

[DriverTom]

Grabbed 5 minutes today to swap over the rear badge as the original had corroded at the edges. Not much else done recently, I've got the 120,000 mile service coming up next month so will be sorting a load of the little things out that need doing.

 

[DriverTom]

Did the big service yesterday including a full refresh of the rear brakes. I had quite the shopping list of parts turn up at work much to the amusement of my colleagues!

 

In no particular order I bought;

Brembo discs

New red carriers

Red VRS calipers

DS2500 pads

Dot 4 brake fluid

 

 

Not many pics as I was filthy and covered in brake grime🤣

 

 

 

[DriverTom]

I also fitted the Sharan helper springs to the handbrake mechanism just because I've had a set kicking around for ages.

 

 

And the DS2500S😁

 

[Mexico75]

Never mind close up picks of brake pads, where's the de dchromed front end? Thats what I want to see lol

[DriverTom]

Whilst we're all stuck at home I had time to sort out a few things that I've been meaning to do with the Fabia. 

 

First thing on the list was upgrading the road runner horn to something with a little more grunt. I've had a pair of Fiam twin tones sat in the shed for ages so bumper off and bolted these in with the supplied brackets. I need some more spade terminals before I can wire them up but I'm hopeful they are less embarrassing than the stock noise maker.

 

 

I had to tweak them over so they didn't touch the bumper when it was slaved back on.

 

I also trimmed some the ribs out of the bumper to stop a slight rub on the intercooler.

Edited 28 March, 2020 by DriverTom

[DriverTom]

I had an intermittent problem with the high beam on the RH head light. Tested the wiring and there was nothing wrong there, the only option was to split the headlight again. Not ideal, but I want my high beam back!! 

 

 

Had some lunch whilst troubleshooting and it turned out to be the plug was cracked on the projector, fortunately Morimoto warranty is excellent so they shipped me another free of charge. 

 

Swapping the fibreglass adapter over to the new unit.

 

 

 

[DriverTom]

Whilst the headlight was on the operating table I added some additional wiring and a plug break to support some future upgrades. I've got a set of led fogs with a DRL that needs a signal to switch on and I want to add some rally spots at some point in the future. 

 

 

It's starting to get busy in there!!

 

 

And a waterproof plug for good measure 👍