Ben's Black Mk2 2.0 16v Project

[Judderi]

22 Sep 06

Good News or Bad news 1st?

Bad 1st. On my way to work yesterday this happened!




I was already suspicious of that hose but it seemed to be OK till now. It burst just by Middlesbrough Football Stadium so i had to walk into middlesbrough and get the bus home. Can you believe how much the bus costs now a days! The same journey used to cost me 50p when i was young and its not £3.30! Anyway i nicked the wifes car and went to the breakers yard where i knew there was a valver. He let me have the hose for £1 which i though was a bargain! It turned out that it was a little shorter than the original so a bit of copper pipe was needed. Thankfully i had come prepared and brought some with me! So a new hose and some new pink coolant later all was fixed. Only cost about £7 in total.




Oh by the way its the coolant hose that comes off the side of the head and goes to the heater matrix.


Because i needed to get it fixed i took the day off work, i don't know how thats going to work cos i don't have any holidays left! Hopefully they will just forget about it. So with the rest of the day free i decided to get some more jobs done and had quite a productive day. 1st i checked that i had the correct adaptors on each wheel as i though i may have put 30s on the front instead of 25's, but it turns out all of them are 30's, so thats OK then.

I then got side tracked a little when i found a bit of usefull looking hose that fell off the wifes rover. It was the cold air feed but its mine now! Ha ha! I cut a bit off the airbox and secured the hose in place like so.






And at the front i used another bit of hose thingy i had in my bits box to create the intake.




I thought it was a bit flimsy and looked a bit scew if so used some more plastic hosing i had to create an insert. So it all now looks like so.




With that done i can now re attach the side part of the airbox to quieten down things a bit. Ive kinda gone off the whole induction roar noise. Just makes me feel like a chav.

Next up i decided to have another bash at setting the ignition timing. At 1st i didn't really have a clue what to do, i didn't understand all this 6 degrees nonsense. After asking a few questions i realized that 6 degrees was the big notch cut into the flywheel. So i found some white touch up paint in my bits draw and marked up the flywheel groove for another go. I ran the engine at idle with the ecu vacuum pipe disconnected then shone the timing light into the hole. No matter where i rotated the dizzy the marks where no where to be seen. The bolts for the dizzy can go in 1 of 2 holes to allow for more rotation in either direction so i moved the bolts into the other 2 holes. This allowed me to rotate the dizzy some more. So i shone the light in again and rotated some more. Then voila! the marks appeared and lined up! As soon as the marks lined up the engine started to idle much higher so i adjusted the idle screw to match. Now the engine revs soo much free'er and has allot more power. The timing must have been a mile out! So I'm dead chuffed now, cant wait till tomorrow to get it RR tuned!

Now that i was on a roll i started looking for the cause of the squeal. Burnt fingers n ear later i found it to be the gasket between the lower and upper intake manifold. So i happy with that, it will just need splitting and re sealing with some silicone. Gonna do this tonight.

I also plumbed up all my LPG system which I'm going to test this lunch time so that the tuners can set up the LPG properly for me.

Even though i hurt my back doing all of this I'm much happier with the car now and a smile is returning back to my face. 

[Judderi]

26 Sep 06

I got the car Rolling Road tuned at the weekend. All went well. The only thing not quite right was the fact that id put the dizzy cap on upside down. Hey its an easy mistake! What bhp is it i hear you scream? Well i don't really know, because the road is as old as the hills and cannot give power graphs or bhp readouts at the flywheel. Also with it being a new engine and only done 400 miles still running on the run in oil he didn't want to take it past 5k revs as the run in oil will not provide enough lube after this point. They are buying a new road in December so will no doubt have to make a visit then. I do have some figures but i doubt they are a true reflection of the power. Running my 16" wheels i got 110bhp at 5k revs. I have however driven the car all the way to the red line a couple of times and there is much more power on tap after 5k. All in all I'm happy with the results, i may have lost a little bottom end torque but have gained a hell of allot of extra top end power. Its no boost monster but its certainly no slouch!

So whats next now i have finished the engine rebuild? Well my wife and child deserve my full attention from now on at a weekend. So its going to be slow going from here on in. Ive still got lots i want to do but this will happen slowly over the years. The paint needs attention in a few areas which will get sorted when i save up the funds. But mainly the next item on the agenda is the In Car Entertainment (ICE). This has already been purchased and started so here is what you will be see'ing for the foreseeable future.

Basically I'm installing a PC in my car for music, DVDs, sat nav and hands free phone controll as well as other bits and pieces like web browsing and CD ripping. It will be touch screen controlled and linked to my amps via a head unit which I'm keeping simply for the radio. Ive already fitten the 7" touch screen in the lower center console like so.




Ive also ran the main 0 Gage wire from the battery to the rear of the car.




Then the other night i made a start at mounting the main brains and power supply of the PC in the dash undertray. Basically Ive got to fit this lot.




In here




Plenty of cutting and adjustments later its in!










If your thinking I'm dead clever doing all of this well I'm not really. The clever one is Ally who is kindly doing all the software side of things for me. Thanks. Ally used to frequent this forum but has recently moved over to the dark side of the Dub Marines. Apparently you need to be special to be a member! Yeah, special as in licks the window at the back of the bus me thinks! 

[Judderi]

28 Sep 06

BOLLOX! PAS pump died on me last night. I was driving when i heard a steam train kinda noise. Then i noticed smoke pouring out the rear of the car. Me 1st thoughts were that the new engine had gone but all seemed ok in that department and the motor was idling fine. So i stopped at my parents house which i was passing and had a look. It looks like a seal or bearing has gone on the pas pump and all the fluid has drained away causing it to grind and bind up smoking as it hit the exhaust. It sounds really rough now as if the fluid has been replaced by grit. I had noticed that the steering seemed heavier than usual after the rebuild but just put it down to being used to the newer mx5 ive been driving. Anyhow its not the end of the world and an easy part to replace. Hopefully the local scrappy with the valver in ive been using will let me have the pump at a good price. A job for the weekend! As well as fitting a handbrake cable on the wifes car. Then its party time saturday night, im gonna be a pirate. Yarrrrrrrrrrr!

[Judderi]

03 Oct 06

Well it turns out that the PAS pump dying may have been a blessing in disguise! I was holding back on buying my road tax as there was only a week left in the month and there was no way i was paying for a months worth of tax i wouldn't get. As the golf was broken i used the MX5 to go to work in. Low and behold on my way home there was a tax camera van and about 4 police cars at the next junction pulling all the tax evaders over! How lucky was that! 

Anyway i managed to get a PAS pump from a local independent VW specialist who were breaking their 8v loan car for £35. It came off without any major problems. Mine however had a seized hydraulic line which took a bit of persuading but i got there in the end. 1 bonus was that the new pump had an extra bracket that i was missing to secure the pump and I'm allot happier with its fit now. But i think i may have dropped a Bullock! I think Ive put gearbox oil in by mistake. Ive got that many bottles of stuff since the rebuild its easy to get confused. I knew the fluid was in a round bottle and was green in colour. But i put the round green bottle of fluid in without thinking. I think the fluid was green also. To be honest it seems fine but i will flush it and re fill with the correct fluid anyway. I did also take some pics but my phone is totally buggered since my little girl sucked it to death and i cant get the pictures off. Oh hold on ill try bluetoothing them!


Ta DA!


Bare pump




Extra bracket that i didn't have.




The bracket hold either side of this mount.




The pressure line i had problems getting off. In the end i got the larger nut undone and span the whole pump to remove it. I had to remove the other brackets in order to spin the pump.






It was well and truly seized!

[Judderi]

05 Oct 06

I'm not having much luck with my PAS lately. Last night the belt snapped! Fortunately i had an old 1 in my bits box. So while there i though i better check what the fluid i filled up with was. Turns out it is actually power steering fluid just not VW's own. I must have bought it months ago when i bought all the gaskets n stuff from GSF. But as Ive been advised to use only the VW stuff as other stuff can kill the pump i decided to flush it out and fill up with the genuine stuff. Easy job really, just undo the the jubilee clip holding the bottom hose. Drop the hose into a bucket then turn the pump by hand to pump all the fluid out.

The VW stuff is on the left in the white bottle

[Judderi]

12 October 2006

More woes! Things are not going very well for me this month, after finding out that I'm being made redundant in December things have just gone from bad to worse. Then to top it all off i had another break down this morning on the way to work. No biggie but still annoying as i had to turn round and head back home to my parents and pick up the mx5 to use meaning i had to sit in the same traffic jam twice. Anyway it was just the alternator securing bolt had worked loose and dropped off meaning the alternator dropped and stopped spinning. Easy fix once i get the replacement parts. It will be going on with lock tight glue this time! I guess its time i gave the whole motor a check over for loose bolts n stuff. Oh Ive also done 1k miles now so will be dumping the run in oil for some syntha silver and a new filter. Once done I'm gonna be taking it to the red line to see what it can do!





Maybe the mystery bolt that fell off in the beginning was this bolt?