DieselMonte's 2012 Monte Carlo Project.

[DieselMonte]

17 hours ago, VanhireBoys said:

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  

 

 

Hopefully they'll not look too hard at the lack of a dpf/cat 

 

Calipers got high build primed:

 

 

Then sanded back and painted:

 

 

 

Got lazy and didnt bother masking off the piston and boot, doubt it'll make much odds.

 

Also got new discs and an abs sensor as one of them on the axle was damaged getting it off the car and the correct size heat shields ( not sure if they can be put on without needing to replace the wheel bearings.) Its basically ready to go into the car otherwise, end of next week is still when i'm aiming to have it done. 

[DieselMonte]

 

 

[AnnoyingPentium]

Ooooh that is awfy clean looking. I'm aptly green with envy.

[DieselMonte]

Axle is officially done. Mechanic had a lot of trouble fitting it, both the discs were rubbing on the carriers and the pads I had were too thick and the caliper would not go back far enough to take them. Very luckily I didn't get rid of the discs and pads I got with them, as they were the only ones that would work.

Got quite dirty so needed a deep wash when I got it home.

 

No clue how it got rust water over the top of it, certainly a new one for me.

 

Sprayed it down with iron remover to get as much of it off as I could before touching it.

Had to do 2 even 3 passes in some areas, and it seems to have etched into the roof slightly. It'll polish out easy but I'll do that another time.

 

Anyhow, some before and afters:

 

 

 

Currently I don't have my rarb on as its on the old axle which I still need to pick up. You'd know it was off, I think i'll sand it back down and paint it before it goes back on. I know its only cosmetic but its still shocking how quickly that rarb started to rust.

New polybushes are absolutely perfect so far. Car rides fine, no more harsh than it was before. 

Haven't driven the car much so the rear discs havent had the chance to clean off 100%. What I can say so far is that the handbrake is fantastic compared to the drums. Brakes feel really good in general, imagine they'll be even nicer after they settle.

[DieselMonte]

Got some larger spotlamps to replace the 3 inch ones I had before. These ones are 5 inch.

 

 

Much larger than the old ones naturally enough and it didn't take me long to wire them in.

 

 

 

 

Old ones were decent, but these ones are even better, far more light cast out, reaches more distance and spreads better. 

 

I had expected these to come a lot earlier, but it was a good "small" project to keep me busy as I've been too busy to get out to work on the mk1.

 

My RARB was on the old axle still so I wanted to paint it while it was off the car, got it sanded down, painted and ready to go and then as I said above, got too busy to go out and fit the thing until this evening.

 

Its purely cosmetic, but still very poor job on the powdercoat this came with (bought it brand new from whiteline)

 

Ground all back

 

Primed, then High Build primed.

 

Then was painted to match the calipers and finally fitted this evening.

Some rust on the shell, and marks on the axle from fitting that need looking to, but not enough time this evening.

 

Worth noting that I soaked the hardware in a vinegar bath to knock off any rust on them. Which worked very well.

 

These got a coat of hammerite before going on the car.

 

I'm glad to have it back on the car, immediately noticed the difference

[DieselMonte]

Did this a few weeks ago but never got around to updating the thread.

Ordered some stuff from creations motorsport for an upcoming project, and also ordered a short shifter while I was at it. Had ordered one before but shipping to Ireland post brexit meant it got returned to sender, and I got my money back. 

Pretty simple job to do and has done what it claimed and shortened the length between gears. Thought it was too short at first but after a few minutes it felt just right on the shortest setting.

Short shifter lacks the large weight so it feels a little more notchy than standard also. 

Also filled the bushes with tigerseal to stiffen things up further.

It did make a difference but didn't help some side to side slop I was feeling beforehand, but I found where the slop was coming from when I was doing this.

Something to fix in the future but not really an issue now. It feels great in spite of this.

Edit: Adding a video of Before and After

 

Now for this upcoming project, its an Intercooler. I got an intercooler in good shape off marketplace, and ordered some 90 degree reducer bends and joiners from creations motorsport to get it to join with the original piping.  

 

All it needs now is some good clamps

 

I don't want to start on this until the Mk1 is back on its wheels however, so this might not be done for a while. Also want to get a catch can to install at the same time, to keep the intercooler clean for as long as possible.

 

Aside from the above, I recently found out the Air Cons no longer blowing cold, and it needs 2 tyres again. 

Air cons probably just a regas as I don't think it was ever done. 10 years old this year so can't be too mad at it lasting so long. Tyres are going on the insides and are at the point where they'll be going to the back soon enough. Have 2 tyres ordered in and they'll be done sometime next week. Brightside is that it'll finally be 215/40 17 all around  now.

Edited 20 May, 2022 by DieselMonte

[DieselMonte]

2 Michelin Pilot Sports fitted yesterday

A lot of money for me to throw down on tyres but they have so far proved to be worth every penny.

Done 250 miles on them so far, the bulk of that from a parts run for the other fabia this evening. These tyres seem to have helped fuel economy quite a bit.

And another pointless photo of it at the services.

Will definitely be getting 2 more pilot sports when funds allow, cannot praise them enough.

[DieselMonte]

Went to a car meet this morning, bought a ticket thinking you had to pay for guest parking but no, I'd paid to be in the meet proper. 

Lot of cool stuff here

And then there was me in a standard looking skoda, should add I only saw another skoda at the meet, a newish nardo grey octavia vRS.

Definitely felt like a fish out of water but was fun nonetheless.

The polo beside me had absolutely HUGE brakes on the front, only had the solid 232s on the back though.

Lastly I got a Czech shot glass for donating to the dogs trust there. I think it's neat.

 

Apparantly there's another meet next Sunday, and this which I might go to for the hell of it.

 

 

Edited 29 May, 2022 by DieselMonte

[DieselMonte]

Not much on this

Just changed air filter again after checking it. Just under 6 months from when it was last done.

Was bugs and **** in it, which came out after slapping it against a kerb.

Really only bothered posting to keep track of it myself. 

[DieselMonte]

Another meet

This time someone other than me took photos of it.

 

Made an attempt at the intercooler, two bolts on either side of the bumper were being pricks and I ended up putting things back together. 

[DieselMonte]

Went to get air con regassed, no gas in the system but it did hold when they did a pressure test. However, compressor is not kicking on so that needs looking into. Don't think the compressors bad, but if it is I'm just gonna leave it.

[J.R.]

Probably the G65 modulating valve, might be the pressure transducer not reading the pressure.

 

If you have access to VCDS you can look for the compressor shut down code which may say something like low pressure if the sender is foutu.

 

If there is no shut down code and it shows the modulating valve being actuated and a corresponding compressor torque (which will be fantasy) but no cooling of the evaporator then its either the G65 valve, the pulley shear plate or stripped plines on the alloy hub.

[DieselMonte]

13 hours ago, J.R. said:

Probably the G65 modulating valve, might be the pressure transducer not reading the pressure.

 

If you have access to VCDS you can look for the compressor shut down code which may say something like low pressure if the sender is foutu.

 

If there is no shut down code and it shows the modulating valve being actuated and a corresponding compressor torque (which will be fantasy) but no cooling of the evaporator then its either the G65 valve, the pulley shear plate or stripped plines on the alloy hub.

I don't want to play parts roulette, but I might try changing the pressure switch first and seeing what's what then. They don't seem too expensive.

If that doesn't work I'll get it checked out next service. 

 

[J.R.]

If you cannot access VCDS its a relatively cheap thing to do as it is effectively a dry break coupling so you do not lose the refrigerant when swapping it out, access is usually tight though.

 

They were a common failure point on earlier cars, water would gather on top and corrode the housing releasing the crimped seal, a small amount of refrigerant would leak and corrode the terminals.

 

The modulating valve can be hot wired for test purposes, swapping that out loses all the system contents.

[DieselMonte]

Took a trip over to England for a few days.

Got the ferry from Belfast to Cairnryan

Slight detour up to Girvan

Then on to the Pennines, Made it there and the tank was still reading full (somehow)

Not long after I got there the gearstick went very slack forwards and backwards. Checked it next morning and

What happened was, the bolt on the short shifter backed off, so it was moving around where you're meant to adjust the throw. It was hanging in barely, but one bad bump and it was gone. Lucky the nut had just landed on top of the gearbox.

Not a big job, tightened the nut and it's fine.

Did quite a lot of driving, went up to  cauldron snout which was lovely, and did a fair bit of exploring the roads.

 

[AnnoyingPentium]

1 hour ago, DieselMonte said:

 

Yeah that'll be Howe's van then? The red Vanette I mean. Up for sale at the moment.

[Dungadungadun]

Your car is looking good in the pic, but check out that blue beauty :^)

[DieselMonte]

2 hours ago, AnnoyingPentium said:

 

Yeah that'll be Howe's van then? The red Vanette I mean. Up for sale at the moment.

That's the one! 

 

Continuing from earlier (I ran out of space for pictures)

I accidentally found myself doing hartside pass, amazing road. Got very foggy near the top which was fun.

Did quite a lot of driving over the weekend.

And back at the ferry

I covered just over 800 miles on this trip, loved every minute of it.

Overall a phenomenal trip, and I enjoyed every minute of it. 10/10 would go again.

 

Definitely revealed a load more stuff that needs doing to the car namely:

I need more power.

Gearing was not great for these roads, second was too low of a gear and third was too high. 

Also it proved a touch too stiff for these roads. 

And from other people driving it, I was told the steering wasn't great, same for changing gears. Having sat in and been passenger in their cars, I can totally see what they mean.

 

Intercooler and bigger turbo is next up for this. 

[AnnoyingPentium]

8 minutes ago, DieselMonte said:

That's the one! 

 

Thought it looked familiar! I know him through Auto****e.

[DieselMonte]

On 19/06/2022 at 20:52, Dungadungadun said:

Your car is looking good in the pic, but check out that blue beauty :^)

Was a pleasure meeting you m8, hope you can make Pub meet.

[DieselMonte]

Did the intercooler today. Fairly big job all things considered but If I had known what I know now it would have been a little quicker.

First thing I should say is that I was using a guide for an ibiza of the same platform as my car.

https://www.seatcupra.net/forums/resources/universal-intercooler-guide.13/

This proved very helpful except for when it got to mounting the intercooler, here it seemed my car differed from the ibiza quite a lot.

Wasn't too hard to get the bumper off, the two bolts on the inner wings are a pain however.

The guide I was following said to remove the entire front of the car (more or less) so I did.

Really, I didn't need to with how I mounted the intercooler to mine. I ended up drilling the crash bar and mounting it to that. Knowing what I know now, I would have saved well over an hour doing this.

Anyway this pic shows how little intercooler there is that. would have any airflow going through it on the car.

Now some side by side shots of the old and new intercoolers. 

New intercooler mounted in place (more or less)

I ended up basically cutting the bottom of the flimsy plastic that holds the rad pack in place to make it easier to run the intercooler piping.

Finished product. A lot more forward than the standard one. It looks a bit small under there but that's fine. Practically all of it is exposed to air going through it, so should do a much better job of keeping the intake temps nice and cool.

Drive home showed intake temps drastically reduced, where they would be 30+°c before, now they are 20°c. 

I still need to remount my spotlamps as I removed them before taking off the crash bar. 

Overall this job took me about 6 hours to do, not including breaks.

Well worth it seems, but definitely not a job for the faint hearted.

[DieselMonte]

The power steering on this has always been a little odd, I thought it was down to it being a monte carlo and thus probably on a different power steering coding than a normal fabia, and I was right, sort of.

I bought a (fake) vcds cable online and tried it out. It worked, flawlessly.

Anyways, this is what my monte was set to:

I tried most of the settings and settled on 10120, the setting for "sporty vehicles", 10110 is meant to be for "Heavy vehicles" so how it was set to that, I'll never know.

I believe a normal fabia will be set to 10140 or 10150. 

The "Sporty" setting I landed on feels a lot better than the setting it was on originally. Hard to describe, bit weightier than before, now steers like you'd expect a car like this to. I'm dead happy anyway and it means I now have VCDS at my disposal for whatever I might need it for. 

I had ordered more bits for the suspension to try make the steering better, needn't have bothered it seems but I'll do it all anyway.

[DieselMonte]

I've already posted most of this in a thread on the Mk2 forum but since I did it to this car, I may update here too.

When I did the short shifter I noticed a lot of slop in the shifter assembly

So after posting a thread on the main forum I got the part number for the bearing shell, and ordered it. It cost €11 and took about a week and a half to arrive. Part Number is 6Q0 711 699.

The old bearing needs to be broken to remove it, no other way I can see to do it. I used some screwdrivers to Jam into it and twist until it broke apart.

Be sure to swap over the black elastic band onto the new one, it doesn't come with one.

You need to get the knob off to replace the bearing, easy on my car as it uses a weird clip to secure the knob on. 

Cleaned the copperslip off and regreased with silicon grease.

Slip it down and push it over the ball first, then clip it into the shifter assembly. 

The finished result

 

It's fixed 99% of the slop on the shifter and I'm very happy with that. A new shifter is over 200 euro and you need to drop all underneath the car to change it.

This cost about €11 euro and took me about an hour. 

  

I've not had any time to go out and do any proper work to either of the cars lately, but I have been acquiring parts for both. 

[DieselMonte]

This happened the other week but posting anyway

I drove up a mountain.

For a car that's Polybushed and on coilovers, it did well getting up a rough dirt patch to get some of those photos.

Could see for Miles around.

[DieselMonte]

I ended up going on a Weekend trip to wicklow this weekend got by, but I had to make a few changes before that.

First, I swapped out the springs to the "heavy duty" ones I had from the mk1

Then I had to replace a drop link which had gone bad (already). 

And a cabin filter (Wasn't too long ago that it was changed either)

And a last minute fix, just before I left I got a crack in the windscreen that I wanted to fix before I left.

Fixed well enough to not stand out on the rest of the glass.