right, been skulking around on this forum for a while now and since i've just bought a new car i thought it a perfect opportunity to make a post!
the story starts a couple of weeks ago as i was getting sick of driving my '82 bike carbed polo in the increasingly worse weather. an old college friend of mine was selling his slammed mazda and at £200 i figured even if it was completely rotten we could break it and still be okay. so, early one saturday morning (and i mean really early) me and my housemate set off for milton keynes with 200 notes and an MOT back in leamington at 10... this is the sight that greeted us when we got there, did i mention it was slammed??
all in all looked quite good for £200 so after abit of catching up and paperwork sorting we headed for home with an hour to get to the MOT centre... could be tight!
the car drove pretty well all the way home, no stereo though... and it felt like the rear shocks were shot... oh well, could be worse i told myself
arrived at the mot almost bang on 10 and parked up next to my mate, we'd had a conversation on the way there about how small his E30 is compared to modern cars, its huge next to this!!
yep, still incredibly slammed...
we went and had breakfast while we waited for it to fail, and fail it did!
needless to say, the MOT tester wasnt too impressed with the ride height, or the condition of the front ball joints and marked the car unsafe for use on the road (oh god what have i bought!)
we headed home and cue'd the music!
i set about adjusting the coilovers first and was pleasantly surprised by them!
bit of a more respectable ride height i think (the dent has been taken out of the wheel now btw!)
however, i only managed to get the drivers rear and passengers front done that day, the others were seized... great.
sunday i set about servicing it, (failed emissions as well, all fun and games) also nicked the plugs from the polo since its engines only done ~2000 miles. no pics of this because, well, its boring
but here's a pic of said polo, i'll try and get a thread up for that too
had a lunch break helping my housemate break into his car (he 'fixed' his central locking the day before and his car had deadlocked itself overnight and not even the key could get him in!)
eventually, he figured out how to get in the boot with the key, so in through the ski flap!!
spent the rest of the day freeing up the front tein, removing the rear one and fixing little bits like the horn and number plate (was cable tied on!)
monday was spent finishing off the service and freeing up the last tein (at last!)
got that back on and adjusted the dampers, fronts were set to 0 (stiff) and the rears wound all the way out (soft) no blown dampers after all! set them to 8 front and 10 rear for now. quick pic of the fixed ride height
also ordered the ball joints and got 1 fitted, leaving 1 ball joint and a locking nut to do tuesday morning before the retest... well, i got the ball joint done and asked the mot tester to kindly fit a split pin for me!
finally got it through the MOT 3 days later and £80 lighter, put 6 months tax on it and drove home for christmas, breathing a sigh of relief!!
so it turns out i found a real bargain, rather than the rust bucket i was expecting! it drives excellently, loving the quick, precise steering and although maybe a tad underpowered, i find it much more enjoyable than my polo (which is S3 levels of quick but with awful handling...)
still a couple of issues to sort out, first the drivers sill keeps filling up (which i guess is the drain tube for the roof?) and it has a laserline alarm/immobiliser/central locking that doesnt work with the door key. and you cant activate it with the fob thing because it thinks you're stealing the car when you open the door, which gets annoying. also the ariel is broken so the boot gets quite damp.
anyway, here it is parked outside my dads, still not washed due to the awful weather!
the story starts a couple of weeks ago as i was getting sick of driving my '82 bike carbed polo in the increasingly worse weather. an old college friend of mine was selling his slammed mazda and at £200 i figured even if it was completely rotten we could break it and still be okay. so, early one saturday morning (and i mean really early) me and my housemate set off for milton keynes with 200 notes and an MOT back in leamington at 10... this is the sight that greeted us when we got there, did i mention it was slammed??
all in all looked quite good for £200 so after abit of catching up and paperwork sorting we headed for home with an hour to get to the MOT centre... could be tight!
the car drove pretty well all the way home, no stereo though... and it felt like the rear shocks were shot... oh well, could be worse i told myself
arrived at the mot almost bang on 10 and parked up next to my mate, we'd had a conversation on the way there about how small his E30 is compared to modern cars, its huge next to this!!
yep, still incredibly slammed...
we went and had breakfast while we waited for it to fail, and fail it did!
needless to say, the MOT tester wasnt too impressed with the ride height, or the condition of the front ball joints and marked the car unsafe for use on the road (oh god what have i bought!)
we headed home and cue'd the music!
i set about adjusting the coilovers first and was pleasantly surprised by them!
bit of a more respectable ride height i think (the dent has been taken out of the wheel now btw!)
however, i only managed to get the drivers rear and passengers front done that day, the others were seized... great.
sunday i set about servicing it, (failed emissions as well, all fun and games) also nicked the plugs from the polo since its engines only done ~2000 miles. no pics of this because, well, its boring
but here's a pic of said polo, i'll try and get a thread up for that too
had a lunch break helping my housemate break into his car (he 'fixed' his central locking the day before and his car had deadlocked itself overnight and not even the key could get him in!)
eventually, he figured out how to get in the boot with the key, so in through the ski flap!!
spent the rest of the day freeing up the front tein, removing the rear one and fixing little bits like the horn and number plate (was cable tied on!)
monday was spent finishing off the service and freeing up the last tein (at last!)
got that back on and adjusted the dampers, fronts were set to 0 (stiff) and the rears wound all the way out (soft) no blown dampers after all! set them to 8 front and 10 rear for now. quick pic of the fixed ride height
also ordered the ball joints and got 1 fitted, leaving 1 ball joint and a locking nut to do tuesday morning before the retest... well, i got the ball joint done and asked the mot tester to kindly fit a split pin for me!
finally got it through the MOT 3 days later and £80 lighter, put 6 months tax on it and drove home for christmas, breathing a sigh of relief!!
so it turns out i found a real bargain, rather than the rust bucket i was expecting! it drives excellently, loving the quick, precise steering and although maybe a tad underpowered, i find it much more enjoyable than my polo (which is S3 levels of quick but with awful handling...)
still a couple of issues to sort out, first the drivers sill keeps filling up (which i guess is the drain tube for the roof?) and it has a laserline alarm/immobiliser/central locking that doesnt work with the door key. and you cant activate it with the fob thing because it thinks you're stealing the car when you open the door, which gets annoying. also the ariel is broken so the boot gets quite damp.
anyway, here it is parked outside my dads, still not washed due to the awful weather!
