Your fleet running reports

[Sundayjumper]

Started off trying to do the oil change...

Bring it round here some time. Easy job !

[scotta]

Winter tyres fitted to the F-Pace.

Disco's ran Pirelli Scorpions which were M&S marked, but not snowflaked. Good enough. These are the first proper winters I have ever fitted to one of our own cars....

Got 275/40/22's in place of stoopid oem 265/40/22. Saved £500 in doing so.

Now - do I colour in just the "Vredstein" or the "Wintrac" too?

vREDstein with red in red.

[JonMad]

Pela pump.

Interesting. I’ve not even looked yet to see whether the filter is accessible from above.

Thanks for the offer Steve, I’ll drop you a message.

[Sundayjumper]

Wifey set off for her mum’s earlier and the car started stalling, then threw up a load of warning lights. She limped it home and has taken the Egg instead.

Initial Googling for B7 Passat stalling problems is pointing towards the high pressure fuel pump. A £600 part

I’ll have a closer look later. If it turns out to be that pump, then the Passat will have cost more to run this year than the Aston !

<keeps fingers firmly crossed for rest of December>

[JLv3.0]

Try needing two of them. And an in-tank pump.

[Foz]

911 been sitting about 9 days so thought would take it out for a spin, queue the central locking not opening and key fob seemingly non responsive, nowt, assumed battery drain, walked away and took the merc, Fucking old Shitters FTL.

[Sundayjumper]

911 been sitting about 9 days so thought would take it out for a spin, queue the central locking not opening and key fob seemingly non responsive, nowt, assumed battery drain, walked away and took the merc, Fucking old Shitters FTL.

They deliberately go to sleep after a few days.

Put key in door lock. Turn key to unlock. Press fob to deactivate alarm. Continue as normal.

[Foz]

911 been sitting about 9 days so thought would take it out for a spin, queue the central locking not opening and key fob seemingly non responsive, nowt, assumed battery drain, walked away and took the merc, Fucking old Shitters FTL.

They deliberately go to sleep after a few days.

Put key in door lock. Turn key to unlock. Press fob to deactivate alarm. Continue as normal.

Ooh! Never knew that!

[integrale_evo]

Black b and c pillar trims fitted plus rear doorcards. Refitting them all is quite a bit trickier than removing the old ones

Fitted the parking sensors, drilled a hole for the wiring to pass through and mounted the control box, just need to figure out the wiring which looks pretty simple from a couple of online guides.

[Sundayjumper]

Thinking through the engine swap between the two Compacts it occurred to me it's a good opportunity to have a look at the clutch(es). Both cars are over 100k miles and are quite possibly still on their original items.

But Evonomics intervened and I've ordered a lightweight flywheel & uprated clutch before looking at either of the cars

I've taken a bit of a flyer with a s/h unit from the US, a UUC flywheel & uprated 240mm Sachs clutch (over the 228mm standard unit). Overkill for ~130bhp but with any luck this means it'll cope with loads of abuse and I'll never need to touch it again.

[ste]

E30 clutch used to be the way to go for a cheap lightweight upgrade. I ran one and E30 SMF on my M52 car and it handled that with ease. Would definitely be fine on a 4 pot.

Isn’t fitting a bigger one counter-productive if you’re trying to make it more responsive?

[ste]

In fact, is the 318 even 228mm as standard and not 215mm? In E36s, 240mm was only on the M3s wasn’t it?

[V8Granite]

There is a weird incestuous swapping that goes on with BMW parts which cannot be trusted

Dave!

[ste]

It’s fucking ace though, it all fits together like Lego.

I went down a Google / ETK wormhole yesterday wondering about putting an S62, manual box and RWD drivetrain into an e53. Obviously found videos of someone in Russia who’d already done it drifting circles in a carpark.

[Sundayjumper]

Isn’t fitting a bigger one counter-productive if you’re trying to make it more responsive?

It’s a UUC aluminum (sic) flywheel like this:



It’s about one-third the weight of the stock item, so even with a (marginally) larger clutch the net weight will be quite a bit less than before.

[integrale_evo]

Dual mass as standard on the ti too, I'm swapping the solid one from my 316i at some point ( same as e30 m40 flywheel )

And yes, a job that's about a millionty easier with the engine and gearbox sat in front of you so well worth doing now and hopefully not again for a while.

[ste]

Sure I'm familiar with them, but it's a bigger diameter and rotational force is a complex thing, think longer lever moving a mass or the cart on the outside of the waltzers v the guy stood in the middle. UUC also do that flywheel in a smaller size.

Bigger clutch and flywheel just like bigger brakes and bigger wheels should be done as a last resort when you've met the performance envelope of the existing sized thing when building a race car. They're areas where small is always better as it increases the virtuous circle of smaller / lighter = less energy to speed up or slow down. Make them smaller and they have less work to do.

The original 215mm clutch was probably spec'd for 60k miles of daily use. If you absolutely felt compelled to spend money, you could have gone smaller with a 5.5" (~140mm) race clutch.

[ste]

...you then you get into weird harmonics and stress issues though possibly and need the rotating assembly balanced. But then I'm remembering it's a 130bhp engine that probably revs to 6k so none of this really matters, and everybody likes buying shiny stuff.

[Sundayjumper]

I also have some eggs. Can you give me advice on how to suck them ?

[ste]

Ask your brother, he's an expert I hear?