DieselMonte's 2012 Monte Carlo Project.

[DieselMonte]

Had to do a bit of work on the rear drums on this yesterday, felt the back brakes werent working as they should, as if one of them was working harder than the other.

Took off both drums and had a look,

Nothing looked obviously broken except for the spring that holds the shoes on being missing on one side. I think I broke that taking the drum off, replaced it with one from the mk1.

Drums look pretty chewed up, I cleaned them up a little, scuffed up the drums and the shoes to try get some more life out of them. Pretty deep grooves in them and I dont think thats how they should be. Fair lip on the outside of the drum too, not great.

Backed off the little adjuster wedge on both sides and checked to make sure the handbrake lever was moving freely before putting back on the drums. 

Put all back on and let the drums adjust themselves back up. Seems to be braking a bit better. 

Edit:

Brakes feel much better than before, pedal feel too. Handbrake is also much much better at holding the car. Guess these drums arent great at self adjusting so I'll need to keep an eye on them. 

Edited 4 January, 2022 by DieselMonte

[DieselMonte]

When I was in getting bits for the mk1 I saw this can of "stuff" and thought i'd pick it up for a laugh, was only a fiver. Obviously been sitting on the shelves for a while though. 

Directions say to spray it into the intake while the cars running, after the maf so as to not dirty it. I chose to spray it through the pipe that connects the ccv to the intake. Wasnt hard to use, spray half the can, let it run through as the car runs for a few minutes then spray the rest in. You're meant to have the car running at 2000-2500 rpm as you spray it in, didnt have anyone to help so I sprayed it then and then held the engine around that rpm.

Plenty of smoke coming out once I ran this stuff through, kept the revs up until the smoke started to tail off then just let it idle for a while. Gave it a good hard run after.

Unbelievably this can of ****e has made a difference. I've noticed the car feels a bit quicker than before, seems fuel economys up a bit too. 

If the engine doesnt fall out in the next while I think I can call this one a success.

[AnnoyingPentium]

1 minute ago, DieselMonte said:

Plenty of smoke coming out once I ran this stuff through, kept the revs up until the smoke started to tail off then just let it idle for a while. Gave it a good hard run after.

Unbelievably this can of ****e has made a difference. I've noticed the car feels a bit quicker than before, seems fuel economys up a bit too. 

If the engine doesnt fall out in the next while I think I can call this one a success.

Watching with great intent, DM. Seems like my wee yin could benefit from such a thing, if I can find it.

[DieselMonte]

Lot of work done today, decided to put my diy mounts into this car in the end.

Since I had to disconnect the battery to do that I took the time to finally fix the drivers side seatbelt.

Foam that lays under the seatbelt reel had gone rotten and disintegrated so I took it out.

Oddly you can see into the sill on this car from the seatbelt reel area, cant do that in the mk1 atleast not mine. Nice to know the cavity wax thats in the sills is still there.

Back together, was easy enough to do.

Then I moved onto the mounts. Drivers side went on straight away, Didnt notice much more vibration to the other mount I had on it.

Gearbox mount got done also, looks like the one I put on not too long ago was cracking up already.

Went straight on, also adjusted the shifter linkages again and regreased everything associated with that.

Noticed the difference straight away with this mount, more vibrations but not quite as boneshaking as I was led to believe it would be. And it should lessen after a few miles. Only really notice it on idle. Havent driven it much so i'll edit the comment to say how much of a difference there is.

Lastly, since the airbox was out and apart I replaced the airfilter again.

Only been a few months since I changed it, changed again anyways.

[DieselMonte]

Very happy with the mounts. So much nicer changing gears and a lot less drama putting my foot down. Slightly more vibrations but not crazy especially this being a diesel. 

 

Wanted to give the car a proper clean and polish as I might be taking it on a long trip in a few weeks so want it looking smart for it.

White hides the dirt pretty well, but in person it was rotten.

Took it out to use the pressure washer as it has a strong mix of TFR in it.

Exhausts looking grimy

Took it home and left it for the night.

Jacked up the car one side at a time to wash the arches out, and give the drums a coat of paint.

Drums looked rough, just gave them another coat of metallic grey after I was done with the arches and let them dry.

Arches cleaned up nicely. Didn't need to be perfect I was more worried about getting some mud off of everything.

That arch cover cracked on the bottom some time last year, think it happened over a bad speed bump near my house. Weirdly this was when it was on standard suspension so not low by any stretch.

No proper after pics but the fronts cleaned up well too.

Brakes got a bit of love too.

Not much of an after pic lol. Hindsight tells me I should have gave them a coat of paint to freshen them up, still came up well however.

Bucket was brown by the time I was done.

Swapped wheels front to back as I didn't want the fronts running any lower. Gave them a deep clean while they were off too.

Rears are like new, You'd hope they would be considering they're only on the car from the start of November.

Wheels on I backed it into the garage and got to work.

At this point I just wanted to get the car done so theres not many photos here.

What I did was:

-Polish the exhaust before touching the paint.

-Wipe down the car again to get any dust off it.

-Detar the paintwork (Including the door jambs)

-Went around the car with Meguiars ultimate compound.

-Wiped the car down to remove any extra compound I had a hard time buffing off.

-Moved onto polishing the whole car with Meguiars ultimate polish.

-Again wiped the car down to remove any excess polish. Always have a hard time with buffing the megs ultimate stuff, but its what i'm used to.

-Went around and gave it a coat of Poorboys world White diamond and Black hole glaze where appropriate.

-Finished the car off with Collinite 845, never tried it so wanted to see if it lived up to the hype.

Was told that it only takes a tiny amount of it to do a whole car so I changed the cap to one off of an empty bottle of meguiars ultimate liquid wax.

Helped me limit how much I put on. It is astonishing how little of this stuff you need. Put it on thin and its a breeze to buff off too.

Car came out great.

Some before and afters:

Rear:

Wheel:

(Since I swapped them front to back the drivers front now has the roughest wheel out of the ones I painted.)

 

So far I've been very impressed with the Collinite, It takes very little to do a car so it'll last forever, its much cheaper than my previous favourite Meguiars Ultimate liquid wax. It went on and buffed off much easier than the Turtlewax hardshell paste wax which is what I most recently used. It beads better than anything else I've used and apparantly it'll last for a long time too.

Supposedly combining collinite with menzerna powerlock is meant to make it last even longer and give it even more gloss. Nonetheless just the collinite has done a superb job.

Edited 31 March, 2022 by DieselMonte

[DieselMonte]

Found this yesterday

Its not "too" bad but obviously needs fixed. Seems the darkside emblems helping the crack hold together.

Taking this on a rather long trip next week and I don't know if I can get it fixed it time so it'll have to hold on for a while longer.

 

[DieselMonte]

Got 2 tyres, went up north and got them for £50 each fitted. Obviously at that price they're not anything special, but I didn't want to go on this road trip on the winters. Lately they've felt very poor and on the motorway they made the car feel awfully nervous for lack of a better word, so they wouldn't do.

So I took the worst 2 tyres and got new tyres fitted, they are "RoadMarch Prime UHP 08" tyres. Tread looks identical to the tread on the Grenlanders that have gone to the back axle of the car. Still, they're B rated for wet weather so they can't be "too" bad.

As we know these cars have a 205/40 R17 tyre as standard. When I showed the tyre man the wheels the first thing he said was that they were undersized. He thought someone had put 205/40s on and I had to open the fuel door to show that those are the original fitment for this car. Now as I found out a while ago on this forum the sister cars in the ibiza and the polo got 215/40 tyres as standard, which is incidentally what the tyre man thought should be standard on a fabia too, being the same car and all underneath. I intended on keeping them 205/40 but he didnt stock that size at all, furthermore he only had the one type of tyre in 215/40 which is what I got. Those have gone to the front.

 

Its very hard to picture but looking at the 205/40s (top) and the 215/40s (bottom) in person you can see just how much better the 215s fit on these rims. 

 

On the car you wouldn't notice the difference front and back. I'll still have to get matching tyres eventually but somehow I don't think it will make the car fall apart in the meantime.

Put a few hundred miles on them so they're properly scrubbed in before I go off on this trip. I really can't complain for the cost of them, rides well, plenty of grip and its not pulling to the left as much as the old tyres used to make it who knows why. 

Have a few things to do still before I go, small silly stuff really. But in all i'll have over 1000 miles of driving in the space of a few days so I want it as good as possible before I go. 

Edited 31 March, 2022 by DieselMonte

[DieselMonte]

Got it as ready as it will ever be now

Had to change the foglight bulbs back to normal ones as one of the yellow bulbs blew out and I can't get a yellow one in time.

Also changed the aerial (temporarily) to a longer "whip" aerial I've borrowed from the Matrix.

Vs:

No real reason, just wanted to.

Then I did a bit of a bodge by getting a 2 socket adapter for the cigarette lighter in the dash. So I can power the dashcam and charge my phone in its mount.

Finished product:

Then I put in one of the winter wheels to use as a spare, filled the box with tools and other bits too.

Lastly I did another bodge by wrapping the downpipe with some exhaust wrap I had laying about. Amazingly it has muffled most if not all of the noise from the crack on the downpipe. Not ideal and I'm not exactly proud of it but it'll do for now.

All thats left now is to wash it and pack some luggage.

 

[AnnoyingPentium]

I think I'll bring my car over for some wiring work, DM!

[DieselMonte]

15 minutes ago, AnnoyingPentium said:

I think I'll bring my car over for some wiring work, DM!

I'll be in your neck of the woods for a few hours come thursday, I can come to you 

[AnnoyingPentium]

45 minutes ago, DieselMonte said:

I'll be in your neck of the woods for a few hours come thursday, I can come to you 

 

Ach that'd have been ideal had I been off Thursday. Unfortunately life dictates otherwise.

 

... plus you'd need more than a day for all the wiring. You'd have a fit if you saw it.

Edited 25 January, 2022 by AnnoyingPentium

[DieselMonte]

Didn't get taking it on a trip, **** happens.

 

Was getting poor mpg, then noticed one of my drums had changed colour. So I jacked it up and had a look.

Funny it picks the whole back up when its being lifted.

Second jack supporting the other side now, no weight over the back axle so 2 jacks are fine to hold it. Only a month since I had these apart so no trouble getting the drums off.

Cleaned them up and scuffed the drums and shoes a bit. Really pushed to get a disc axle as 8 don't want to mess about with replacing the drum assembly on this and I don't want to deal with anymore silly issues from these.

Still not ideal.

Brakes are working better and it feels a bit bettet to drive. Obviously fuel economy should be noticeably improved too.

Before I even got out to do this I felt a clunk going over a speedbump

Power steering pumps fallen off again, but its due for a service within the next week so I intend on having the pump and the downpipe sorted then. Might need to bodge it again before then though.

Won't be a cheap visit to the mechanics I suspect.

After that next thing has to be a disc axle, sick of messing about with drums at this point.

[DieselMonte]

Bodged the pump this evening, washed it first to try clean off some of the power steering fluid from underneath, and it was filthy anyways even though I washed it sunday.

Much better

Pump simply fell off again, hoped I managed to tighten the clip enough before. Guess not.

Got it back up into place easy enough atleast, used a bottle jack like so.

Held it up like that and wrapped a lot of cable ties around it to try and brace it, keep it in place for a bit longer.

"Finished" product. Obviously degreased all before I put the arch back on.

Atleast the pumps ok and it does hold fluid so it should just need someone to properly tighten the clamp.

Chasing a few potential leads for a disc axle.

Early days but heres hoping.

[DieselMonte]

Bit of an empty post.

-Have been non stop hunting for disc axles and have come up with nothing still. 

-Downpipe is still in bits but should be getting fixed very soon.

Other than that:

Was due for service so I asked them to tighten the clip on the power steering pump while it was in getting serviced. So hopefully I won't need to worry about it falling off again.

I ended up removing the brace and reinstalling all the trim around the boot, as I didnt want to cut and hack the trim to make it fit around the brace.

Boots creaky once again and I can feel the difference in the car, but aside from the creaky arse the car is a lot quieter. 

The handbrake cables wouldn't stretch any further so I did a hack job and used a load of washers to try get more tension on the cable. It works for now.

 

I gave the MAF a good clean with electrical contact cleaner yesterday, as I felt the car wasn't running quite as well as it could be, and given I get a P0101 code on occasion I figured cleaning the MAF would do no harm. As I was finishing up, by pure luck I found the source of a noise I had been hearing on and off for quite a while.

https://youtube.com/shorts/-AFncBlzCRI?feature=share

The N75 valve is the source of that noise.

Is not throwing any codes but given the noise its making I've ordered a replacement. Seems this helps control boost, so I think theres a good chance putting in a new one will make the car run better again.

Cleaning the MAF does seem to have made the car pull a bit nicer.

I don't have pictures for this last part but I removed the grille and cleaned up the cuts I made in it to give the airbox a better feed of cold air. I'll try post up pics of the grille again.

 

[DieselMonte]

Done some boring maintenence this evening, namely cleaning out the intercooler piping and cleaning the map sensor. 

Turbo side was pretty dry, considering I don't think its ever had the piping taken off before.

Intake side of the intercooler was a little bit oily but not near as bad as I feared.

Map sensor, Cleaned it in situ with a lot of electrical spray cleaner. Torx bits holding the map sensor on were very crusty so I left them alone.

 

 

All cleaned up fine, seems to run nicer after the map sensors been cleaned out, probably a placebo but I'll not complain

Have a fair few parts on order for this, some I'll have in a few days, others have been pushed back to next week. 

Have to wonder how much new intercooler pipes are, maybe I could get some silicone joiners and cut them to length? 

Edited 31 March, 2022 by DieselMonte

[DieselMonte]

Made a move and got a disc rear axle, not from a newer ibiza like I had wanted but from a mk1 vRS instead. 

Had to clean it off, pretty crusty but was going mad trying to find anything else.

Scuffed some of the easier to reach bits down. Soaked the beam in rust remover before I left.

And got the calipers and discs off, they came off much easier than I thought they would. Wheel bearings are smooth as butter so not going to change them.

Left carriers on as the bolts on them are very crusty, so they're soaking in wd40 overnight.

Brake shields are pretty crusty and it looks like I can't get them off without pulling the wheel bearings.

One of the calipers has a perished boot so I'll need to order a refurb kit for them.

Have rear beam bushes, discs, pads, handbrake cables, etc got so don't really have much more to order.

[DieselMonte]

Parts came in, so I now have new discs, pads and handbrake cables for the rear beam.

Also got another N75:

Bit of junk on the ports of the old one, so good thing I changed it.

New Boot struts because why not:

New Drop Links:

And Changed the D bushes to PSB ones:

[AnnoyingPentium]

Good work!

[DieselMonte]

Took it out for a run and immediately noticed a difference, pulling far better than before and handlings much sharper. 

Did not realise how bad the old stuff was until I changed it.

D bushes were annoying to do because of the driveshafts being in the way but i'm glad I stuck in and did them also, I had both rubber and polyurethane ones got but went poly in the end, hopefully will last the life of the car. Really like how PSB stuff is usually black and so looks standard.

[DieselMonte]

More progress in the beam, soaked it in rust remover gel for a few days, reapplying every once in a while. That left me with this:

I pressure washed the gel off, and scuffed it down with steel wool, wire brushes and a sanding pad on my polisher. Once it was at this stage I gave it a heavy coat of kurust and left it.

Which turned into this:

 

Also had the bolts soaking in vinegar for a while, turned them from looking like this:

To this:

To this:

And after a coat of Stonechip, This:

Will be soon primed then coated in paint.

Need to remove the bushes before then and they are fighting me. Atleast the new ones will go in easy.

[DieselMonte]

Bushings out finally, and I was able to use the holes for the buhes to hang the rear beam up to make it easier to paint.

 

 

Then got a coat of Primer on it.

 

 

And a coat of Hammerite Hammered black this evening.

 

 

Its come out pretty well, seems to match the wheels almost perfectly which is cool.

 

 

Needs a second coat of hammerite, and the bushes pushed in and thats the beam pretty much done. After that I can focus on the brakes.

[DieselMonte]

Lot of progress done since:

The axle has turned out very nice compared to what it was before, should keep looking fresh for a while yet.

 

I managed to find a set of 256mm rear brakes, full set up including discs and pads. Had to ship them over from England, but I got them.

Pads look to be the same as the new pads I bought for the 232mm setup, so I think I should get new discs and put all the new stuff on instead of using these discs and pads (even though they seem to have very little wear on them).

Had new 232mm discs bought, but they won't be needed. 

 

Side by side of the 232mm standard rear discs vs the 256mm setup.

 

And test fitted to the axle:

 

Calipers are silver which I wouldn't mind, but the fronts are green so the rears need to be painted to match. So I scuffed all down and etch primed them.

I had a can of the correct shade (Pantone 348) green mixed up, should match the fronts well.

Noticed the calipers have helper springs already fitted, seems these help keep handbrakes from sticking on.

Getting pretty good with a spray can.

 

Also got the polybushes in, they went in with little fuss, got them started in with my hands and tapped them through with a rubber mallet.

 

Aiming to have it in end of next week, should be doable.

[AnnoyingPentium]

Good work here, very impressed at the level of effort going into this. All you need is a rear disc conversion for the vRSDI now.

[DieselMonte]

55 minutes ago, AnnoyingPentium said:

Good work here, very impressed at the level of effort going into this. All you need is a rear disc conversion for the vRSDI now.

Technically I now have most of what would be needed to convert it to discs, since it has the mounts for a set of calipers.

[VanhireBoys]

Great work there DM ! Its great to see that the like of yourself and Ryan aren't phased by electrics and mechanical. 

 

The NCT inspector will need sunglasses to go under the Monte