Your fleet running reports

[Explosive Newt]

Tesla due an MOT in a couple of months. Looks like the only servicing recommended is changing the cabin air filters, which hopefully seems to be a DIY job.
Decided to pay off the finance early, which will save me about £650 over the next 15 months.

A DIY job in which you’ll lose all your dignity. Hanging upside down in the drivers footwell, arse spread across the pavement, brake pedal in your face. After a multitude of swearing you’ll eventually get all the clips off only to be met by the dreaded torx screw securing the cabin filter lid. The final boss. Eventually you get it out, swap the filters but now you have to get the torx screw back in. After 10 minutes of trying and fingers very sore you question yourself. What wrong path did you take in life that put you down this road? Why am I being punished like this?

Right. It's £71 for a mobile tech to do it, so I'll be doing that then.

[Mito Man]

Was looking at headlight restoration kits as the usual polishing trick doesn't work long term without having a proper UV coat. Found a Projectfarm video testing them and just went to the end for the results. Bought this as it was easily available in the UK but still came from across the pond and got stuck in customs for a week. Can't remember if it came first or second https://www.cerakote.co.uk/shop/cerakot ... ation-kit/
It's the absolute bollocks, the lights looks better than new. Don't even look like plastic anymore but glass. And hopefully with the "lifetime warranty" it should last a good few years.
Just thought it's worth a mention.

[mik]

Aside, but someone on the Lotus forum was talking about Cerakote oven-cure finishes. Reckons they are very robust.

[Swervin_Mervin]

Timely, as I plan to do mine this weekend. I bought the AG kit, as I've never had need to do this before. Will be interesting to see how well it lasts.

[integrale_evo]

Hmm, tempting but also sceptical.

I did the mercs at the weekend. No before as I forgot, but I’d only done the inner at this point.


Just some meguires foam cut compound on a foam pad on a drill, literally 30 seconds ‘work’



Will probably be about a year before they get that bad again and I have to spend a couple of minutes doing them all again.

They’re usually worse the first time you do them as you get patches of failed, failing, and ok original coating. Once it’s sanded off they don’t last as long but it’s also very quick and easy to polish them up.

[Mito Man]

The problem with just polishing is that on some headlights without the UV coat they end up getting lots of tiny cracks which go right the way through so it's worth slapping some sort of UV protection on

[Swervin_Mervin]

The problem with just polishing is that on some headlights without the UV coat they end up getting lots of tiny cracks which go right the way through so it's worth slapping some sort of UV protection on

I suspect mine might already have suffered that fate. If the kit doesn't work fully then I'll go back to considering new lamp units. Only one side available from Valeo for a while now though in the halogen fitment.

[integrale_evo]

I was going to get some new lenses for the x5, they’re available for sensible money.

However the originals are glued on and removing them is a pretty tedious and destructive job. I occasionally look for a spare pair to do and then swap over, but haven’t actually bought anything yet

[Mito Man]

The problem with just polishing is that on some headlights without the UV coat they end up getting lots of tiny cracks which go right the way through so it's worth slapping some sort of UV protection on

I suspect mine might already have suffered that fate. If the kit doesn't work fully then I'll go back to considering new lamp units. Only one side available from Valeo for a while now though in the halogen fitment.

When I was looking a few weeks ago I found a few professional places that would swap the lenses (I didn’t fancy DIY like Harry mentions). Still pricey, circa £200 per unit and you’d have your car off the road for however long the turnaround time is, but still significantly cheaper than new units I imagine.

[Gavster]

The Ateca continued it’s faultless role as a piece of white goods and sailed through it’s MOT with a fanfare, dancers and a red arrows fly-by.

[jamcg]

Whose young ones had a Corsa? I’ve got a roof rack from my old Corsa lying around, any good to anyone before it gets put out for the Scrapman, sick of getting messed about on facebook

[Carlos]

My son has had a.Cupra Leon PHEV with 204bhp for 2 and half months and he'd blocked me in on the drive today. Beer run needed I took it for a spin, slightly damp conditions but really nippy and quite fun although it felt quite a handful with the TC frequently flashing.

Check tyres at home, bald, pretty much on wear markers at 2500 miles!

[Swervin_Mervin]

Just done 2 passes with 800 grade on the drill and it hasn't touched the main part of the lens. And still covered in these marks



What do we think? Hairline fractures in the plastic or the paper just not rough enough?

[Mito Man]

Hmm the kit i used had 2000 and 3000 grit bit that still got most the chips out and the rest got covered up by the coating.
Is it super smooth/slick to the touch now?
At this point there’s nothing to lose so keep going

[Swervin_Mervin]

It's in the top coat. Where it has gone through that top coat those marks are gone and the plastic has clouded. I think they're just heavily pitted or there are micro abrasions in that top coat. But it's tough.

Going to nip out and get some 400 grit. Might as well keep going now

Although I have just spotted some flaking on the reflector so this may be futile in the long run

[integrale_evo]

Yep, if it’s chipped the coating there’s not really anything you can do other than go more aggressive and work your way up, just have faith it will come good in the end!

[mik]

Front pads & discs on mrs mik’s E-Tron today. Hadn’t tackled them before, so I left myself extra time : knowing the 6-pot design was very different to other mult-pot calipers I’ve worked on. [All previous experience is with the Brembo-style multi-pots, with two pins holding the pads in place – remove these to allow pads to be removed (whilst leaving calipers in situ if you are doing pads only) – bobs your uncle. Yeah sticking/corroding pins are a fairly major problem with this design (if you don’t keep the interfaces greased), but fuck me Audi’s solution feels pretty complex!]

Calipers need to come off fully even if you aren’t doing the discs, as the pads are held captive inside them on sliding channels. Guides clip in and are replaced with every pad change – a bit like many sliding single-piston calipers. I was glad I'd bought the specialist socket for the calliper bolts, as the workaround many other use is to remove the caliper carrier bolts. Access to them is trickier though. and they torqued to 200nm, so this becomes a pain.

The caliper has some solid brake lines coming off it – which feed into flexis further inboard, but even after you’ve removed the hose guides from the upright, you need to be really careful when manipulating it in order to avoid bending/damaging one of the solid pipes.

All pots pushed back in easily, but fitting the new pads in required a technique I haven’t yet mastered. I got better, but even the last one felt like it went in with luck as much as skill. You seem to need to apply force in 18 different directions simultaneously.

Both original discs both needed several wallops with the 2kg lump hammer to get them off the hub. Mallet did nothing. At 375x36mm these rotors are a “new record” for me. Even bigger than the VXR8 fronts. They are heavy!

I went with OEM pads and MTec discs. They have a decent rep and given that discs get such an easy time on an EV, I didn’t really fancy paying OEM prices. I was aware that the MTech items don’t come handed, so in theory the vanes etc on one disc aren’t running in the optimal direction, but I reckoned this was OK as It’s not our driving car. Originals rotors had loads of meat on them, but despite me actively switching off regen and doing a hard stop every time I drive the car – the surfaces looked gruesome and no amount of Italian tuneup braking would clean them up.

Went with “c-hook” surface design and paid a smidge extra for black anti-corrosion coating. It’s worn off the pad contact areas almost immediately of course, but the other surfaces remain covered.





Before caliper refit.


After bedding-in run

[jamcg]

I hear the small wheel appreciation society doesn’t approve of those disks

[mik]

I think you are right.

If anyone is interested : uchoob short showing how the pads go in the calipers. Q7 rather than ETron but similar design. (Access to carrier bolts is better on Q7 for some reason (edit: cos the length of rigid brake pipe is shorter and doesn't turn back on itself)).

[Mito Man]

Funnily enough I did the X5 brakes last weekend. Front right disc took 20 minutes of hammering to get off. I started to get concerned as I was knocking chunks of iron off and was rapidly running out of disc to hit.
Tesla performance brakes are the same style as the Etron. They bridge the back of the caliper to reduce flex, on smaller pads it's not an issue and they use pins.