Be Excellent To Each Other

There's a chap on Briskoda.net who's nearly finished a 4wd 1.8t conversion of a Citigo which is aiming for 450bhp.

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/24 ... go/page-45

Jesus Christ. Is that with NOS, or just blown?

Just a substantial turbo, and internals built to cope with 550bhp. The full details are buried in the thread somewhere but there's a lot to wade through.

He's also just had an R32 Skyline rebuilt to about 500bhp spec, is getting a Yeti tuned up to 300ish as a track car to pass some time and has ordered a brand new GTS for delivery in a couple of months.

More money than sense, but it makes for interesting reading.

What a morning!

Mrs Chinny came home with a slow flat last night. Decided not to risk it so sent her to work in my car and I'd follow her in later (was going the same way).

Couldn't get the locking wheel nut off so opted to pump tyre. Only lost a few PSI in an hour so fine for the journey to the garage (about 10 miles).

Got 3 miles down the road and the tyre was totally flat. Still couldn't get the locking wheel nut off (just wouldn't grip) so had to phone Green Flag. Inspection revealed a rupture with a hole in it that I'd missed in the dark.

An hour later they turn up. He couldn't get it off either so I was towed to a garage who managed it with an air gun and mallet.

Ideally they wanted to sell me a new tyre except I'd ordered some via Black Circles at the weekend for fitting tomorrow. So I got the evil eye while they fitted the emergency spare. Bunged them all the notes I had on me "for a drink" and cleared off sharpish.

So chums the advice here is the next time a garage uses your locking wheel nut, when they return it to you make sure they haven't fucked it up.

Last car I just binned all mine and put normal ones on. I can't even remember the last time anyone I know had their wheels stolen.

When you get your car back from the garage (like you just have, Chinny) you should loosen all the wheel nuts using whatever method allows you to after the rock-apes at the garage have torque-wrenched the nut to 500ft/lbs, and then do them back up again using the wrench you have in your car.

NOBODY would want Mrs Chinnys alloys unless they are keen on the "distressed" look. I'm praying my nearly pristine alloys come back in one piece!

But we're flogging that car in 3 or so months so as long as we can muddle through. Her front tyres are now on the absolute wear limit and Black Circles had some Falkens which rated quite well but for only 80 quid a corner (rated B in two categories and C for fuel efficieny).

Phoned the Black Circles fitter and they were pretty cool about the worn adaptor. Reckon they will be OK if they are careful with it. Also thanked me for warning them I had tried to fix the tyre with foam (it was a last hope in the lay-by before I found the rupture).

Might well consider ordering up some plain nuts for my A3 though. Thing is who is even going to try and nick the wheels as thieves would expect the nut to be on there anyway. And I bet the thieves have a master set of nuts anyway.

While I was in the garage there was a guy with a shredded space saver and a BMW who had cracked an alloy. The roads are just so shit at the moment!

Guy from the recovery company said that cars with no spares or savers are now such a problem that some policies aren't covering them. They take your car to a "safe place" or a garage and leave you there. Said there was a BMW on the way to the airport last night and all he was allowed to do by "control" was leave the bloke to sleep in his car in a carpark.

So check your policy wording as well if you have a car with no spare or space saver.

Eighty pounds? Bloody hell.

When the guy arrived with the truck I felt a bit pathetic for not being able to get the wheel off. I felt better when he couldn't get the bloody thing off either!

Everything about changing wheels on a VAG is poor design from the jack nicknamed "The Widowmaker" by VAG owners, to the appalling design of the wheel nut. It's just stupid. You can't get enough torque onto those stupid little grooves in the nut with the tools they provide.

I'm having a set of four Goodyear Eagle F1s put on the Celica later, £70 a corner. Marvellous.

Might have been closer to 90. Equivalent performance with a bigger brand cost about 20 quid more.

Last time it went near a standard tyre fitters it was about £130 a corner,

The Audi tyres never seem to be cheap due to the width. The last time I had a distress tyre purchase the fitter shouted "R18 Porsche Fit" to his mate who was getting the tyres out. They were £120 a corner for some Korean brand but I had little choice due to being 250 miles from home at 4.30pm on a Saturday afternoon. To be fair aside from a drop in fuel consumption and the lack of rim protection they seem fine (which tallies with the reviews)

I thought you said that anyone who buys cheap tyres is a murderer? Apols if that was someone else.

Indeed it was probably me.

The ones going on Mrs Chinny's car have good EU test results for wet breaking (outperforming most of the competitors except the Dunlops). It's fuel economy they are shit at (but the car is being sold in 3 months). Falken are Japanese and are part owned by Dunlop

In my case I had no choice but to have 2 new front tyres. A choice of Triangle (a chinese ditch eater that has hilarious reviews and test results) or what the garage described as a "mid-range" Korean brand with a name I forget. I would have taken the Korean ones off if they had been crap but they have been fine (barring drop in fuel economy). Their test results were also respectable IIRC they came 14th out of the 50 tyres in the German test I was reading.

Hmm, clearly you're trying to kill her.

You want dangerous?

http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Tyre/Triangle/TR968.htm

You do have to worry about the chap who says that doing above 60mph is a nail biting experience, but he's kept them on for 45000 miles!

Also the chap that got them on the BMW he just bought and said "I thought the noise was a mechanical problem" which, of course, it could be.

He doesn't know what road noise is until he drives somewhere on off-road tyres, as various Beexers can confirm.

I'd probably have more faith in the cheapest tyres I could find than any consumer tyre review. Some load of morons waffling on about levels of understeer and feedback. I bet they'd be droning on about how amazing the grip was and how precise the steering felt if they had bought those same tyres becuase they got top marks in a test in one of their stupid car magazines.

I do wonder about some of the reviewers on there.

What did some of them expect when they purchased tyres a third of the price of a normal brand?

It was Triangles that were falling apart on the front of Mrs Chinny's mates van. Never seen tyres just a couple of years old fall apart like that. Dreadful things. She says you now can't hear the 'noise' you could hear before and that the ride feels smoother.

I've decided I want 10in wheels on the back, 275 tyres apparently. Between that and an lsd it should be able to cope with the post-remap 460 torques (not the massive number I said before, that was Nm).

Tyres are so fucking expensive in standard fit, even non-run-flat, it'll probably save money longterm. Just keep those rims for winters.

I'm skint for now though. Boo.

Mrs Chinny's A3 came with Accelera Alpha's on all 4 corners. Crikey they were harsh and noisy. When she first got the car I thought the rear wheel bearings were screwed they were so noisy at motorway speeds (I must add around town they were fine). One interesting thing is they picked up damage like nobodies business. Mrs Chinny does attract potholes/the kerb etc but none of the tyres since have suffered chunks coming out of the sidewalls like that.

My car makes a loud noise (sounds like engine growling, but it can't be) when on the straight or turning right at any speed, but it quietens right off when turning left around corners.

What's that likely to be? Tracking, tyres, CV joint?

Reavers.

Or a bearing.

It's Mimi. She likes left turns.

I should add it's nothing that was picked up in the MOT.

Arf.

It does sound like a bearing, but that should have been picked up in the MOT.

Jack the car up and hold the wheel at the bottom and the top and see if you can wobble it toward and away from you. If you can do so (more than a tiny bit), your bearings either need tightening up or replacing. If you can't move it at all it might be too tight, but that's less easy to tell.

More: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/h ... rings.html (although ignore the bit where it says 'If you have disc brakes: You have to remove the caliper to get at the bearings.' because that's certainly not the case in cars I've done it on).

I paid £25 for a tyre the other day and I thought that was expensive.

This is the car thread, not push bikes.

EU tyre labels are a bunch of shash anyway, there's no real "standard" for them, the manufacturers can more or less put whatever the hell they want on them from what I remember.

also, as has been mentioned, throw away your locking wheel nuts, nobody has stolen wheels since the eighties.

I will try this as soon as I can, thank you.

Falken tyres are great, they are a respectable make and the goto tyre of a lot of performance car people.

Beemer is back... And it still has the same error I've told them what is wrong, but obviously they know more than me...

Back it goes!

They are mostly ISO test methods using the same kit at each manufacturer and there is an agency that enforces tyre stuff on an EU level. So I imagine they'll be spot checks etc.

This website is blocked at work:

It's a threat of BADASS MUD BOGGIN'!

My old Evora is back up for sale again, I wonder if the boot still leaks.

My old M5 is back up for sale again, at the same dealership that I part-exed it to last January. It's gained 14K miles since I had it, lost it's warranty, and (apparently) has had a complete engine rebuild since I got rid of it.

Dealership are selling it for the same price they sold it in January.

Is a full engine rebuild a good or a bad thing? I'd view it as a good thing.

A bad thing for whoever paid for it and clearly isn't recouping the cost if it's on for the same price.

I wouldn't go anywhere near it. It's not like some restored classic where engine rebuilds are par for the course. Modern road cars which have done ordinary mileage shouldn't really be needing engine rebuilds. It's also such a complicated car that I could never be assured that it had been done properly enough.

The rebuild was done under the warranty, so it would have been done by a BMW M technician, but yeah - I wouldn't necessarily trust it either. The S85 engine in the M5/6 is supposed to be basically bulletproof when maintained properly.

Problem diagnosis:

So, Just started up my car, went down the hill and along to the junction, lifted foot off the accelerator and rather than going to idle, the engine kind of dropped off and stopped.

Wouldn't immediately start up again, but did so eventually on about the fourth attempt.

(Car is a standard 1997 era petrol engined manual thing.)

Any ideas?

make and model? When you were trying but the engine wasn't starting, was it just winding over or was it firing like it was trying to start?

What Wookie said - sounds like a fuelling problem.

I was thinking fuel but I wanted to find out did it keep running fine after Mr Dave got it running again? And how long for? It could have been a bad electrical connection and a coincidental timing. Or even a sticky idle control valve if its a ford...
*gets ahead of self*
we should wait to find out more...

I've got a funny feeling it's a Volvo, but I can't think why.