OV9

Does look great. RWD switchable to 4WD or low ratio 4WD?

They are incredibly capable, I followed one quite easily and was wondering what the fuss was about. Till we hit a section where it drove over it and I sank down to my front axle

Less than 1 ton I think the model before was ?

Dave!

JonMad wrote: ↑Wed Apr 29, 2020 10:30 am Does look great. RWD switchable to 4WD or low ratio 4WD?

That's right - there's no centre diff so you can't use 4WD on the road. It has automatic locking front hubs; they operate by vaccum and lock when you put it in 4wd, so the front driveshafts and diff aren't turning in normal use, saving a bit of fuel.

Yep, about a ton I believe, Dave. I got in, assumed the mirrors were manually adjustable and wound the window down to push the mirror by hand. Only after I'd driven a couple of miles did I notice the electric mirror switch. That's just unnecessary weight!

Galaxy being collected for repair tomorrow, so I emptied it of detritus and gave it a cursory hoover, but it is looking a bit forlorn. Be interesting to see how much they replace. As a minimum I'd expect the rear bumper, boot and possibly one of the parking sensors.

The N/S mirror that I was going to replace never showed up, so got a refund. Will start looking for a replacement again.

Galaxy has been collected. The hire car gods have left me a 68 plate five door Mini Cooper.

Having waited over two weeks for it to arrive I finally replaced the window cable on the Touareg. PITA job not helped by the cheap aftermarket parts being so badly made. I ended up doing a mix & match job because some of the original, worn, 15 year-old parts were still a better fit than the new ones !

My mate’s Lexus-Lotus should be ready to collect from the paint shop this weekend. This is how it looked when we dropped it off, it should now be a very lovely candy red.

is it still going to be Manuel?

Yep.

Next job is trimming the interior. He’s been working on this for at least five years though, I think we’re still a few years away from actually being on the road !

Balls. Love the ExcelSE. Mates dad got one new when I was at Uni - I was so jealous. Mate never drove it, but his younger brother was a bit wild and apparently took it to school (uninsured) when his parents were away. I was even more jealous.

Coolant was very low in the 997 so topped up with a litre of shell coolant to get it closer to the minimum. Then ordered another litre of OE coolant from Design 911.

Annoyingly what turned up was brown/orange not pink like the stuff in the car already.

From a quick google it looks like they’re different in additive make up (presumably the colouring serving a quick identifying purpose) and it seems it’s not advisable to mix.

TL;DR I’ve now got £10 of opened OEM coolant that is useless to me. Free to a good home if anyone has a Porsche running standard coolant and you want to collect!

Sundayjumper wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2020 1:00 pm My mate’s Lexus-Lotus

Toyota UZ engine? That would be lovely if they fit.
There's an f40 replica with a 1uz and two turbos that has been in all manner of races down here since the 90s. Here it is, not looking particularly comfortable, in a hillclimb:

Peterlplp wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 2:06 pm Toyota UZ engine? That would be lovely if they fit.

Err, dunno. I’m not clued up on Jap stuff ! It’s a V8 from a Soarer IIRC. It fits quite nicely, it’s all in and running already, just needs a very slight mod to the bonnet. Here’s a pre-body shop pic. They were going to fabricate a subtle bulge to cover it. I’ve not seen the finished job yet.

The 1UZ-FE I’m the Soarer is a nice engine but a bit detuned as standard, around 260bhp depending on version. They’re hard to get decent power from N/A because they were designed for little cams and need a lot of head work to really flow properly.

Luckily, they’re really strong so all of this can be overcome with boost, and lots of it (6 bolt main bearings).

Having said that, 260bhp in that Lotus will be a lot of fun.

Aye, 1UZ.

Sundayjumper wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 2:27 pm They were going to fabricate a subtle bulge to cover it.

Nice.
I'd be tempted to bodge louvered slats between the raised bits behind the lights, just notching them underneath for the protruding engine. Like the tasteful s110/s12 super silhouette race cars:

Yesterday whilst going to London on the motorway a Passat in front lost its undertray, then a Transit went over it and it broke into 4 bits, then it hit the car. At the same time the car blew a DRL and gave an error message, it was quite a thud so maybe it broke it. Forgot about it till I noticed the scuff marks and a deep scratch highlighted by the sun today.

Bit of polishing and some hand job action later


As for the bulb looking on YouTube it’s as simple as popping open the bonnet and removing a cover on the back of the light
No need to remove the wheel, the arch liner, the front number and the headlight
Sounds too easy.

Which of the many cars in your household is it?

6 series I think.

No that’s the M5 from yesterday, I grabbed a lift to London as I needed to collect some documents from my flat. Can’t drive the 6 series as it has some major alignment and tyre wear issues. The 6 series is the car with a crap headlight design which requires the front end to be disassembled, hence my surprise that the 5 series with much the same chassis actually has a decent design.

Cleaned up the distributor cap on the 300E, hoping it'll cure the bad running problems I've been having for a while. Was pretty awful in there so should make some difference.

Best of all however was that a difficult to access hex bolt was actually pretty easy in the end with a long extension and u/j