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Hi there rMurph. How's it going, are you smoking tyres yet?

Bookmarked.

Well done, a lovely looking original Bug.

A little running report after covering a 1000 miles over the last month. No photos just waffle!!!

The car is pulling like a train with 7 psi boost at only 2500 rpm, just over 10 psi @ max rev's. Fuel trims are good, ST staying around 0% and LT at -5.5%. Inlet air temps are o.k., usually 8C/45F above ambient off boost and anywhere between 15-25C/59-74F above ambient on boost. The new  I.C.and the CAI are no doubt helping but the 100% larger I.C. that I had previously installed produced better IAT's (at a loss of some boost pressure). I still reckon a 50% larger I.C. than stock would be ideal.

Handling, is better than ever, the larger A/R/B's have made a bigger difference than I first realized. There's less intervention from the ASR, less flashing of yellow lights on the dash which is nice. Still, I've noticed the Yoko Advan Sport's are wearing fairly quickly on the rear, they'll need to be replaced in the next couple of thousand miles.
The ride height is still slightly higher prior to replacing the rear suspension bushes, and the shocks set one click softer. I'll revisit adjusting height but it will do for the next few months, probably go to 2 nib front and 3 nib rear spring insulators rather than the 3 front & 4 rear currently fitted. There's now 2 degrees front camber with 1.5 rear. No doubt the suspension setup could be improved upon but it would need somebody that knows what they're doing unlike me!  So, I'll live with the way things are now - ignorance can be bliss!

In the other news while checking for any noises from the front of the engine - like a little timing chain wear (not urgent as its very minor at this stage) but that will end up being a major job for me. S/C out, head off, manifolds off ,front cover off and loads of other stuff. I'll overhaul the S/C at the same time and get the head cleaned up too along with fitting a new water pump etc. Deffo going to be a winter project.

Anyway, I checked the belt tensioners, idler, water pump, alternator, fan clutch and PAS pump. All were good, no worn bearings except for the alternator, it had seen better days. Time to change it, I had look around for an off the shelf replacement which became bewildering with massive differences in prices. Luckily, my local repair guy offered to fully recon it at a reasonable cost.

Other than all the waffle above the car is running good, all engine parameters are within spec, the induction noise from the new CAI is slightly louder but only marginally, happy with that. The overall handling is great even if it's slightly less comfortable on poorer/bumpy road surfaces, a trade off I'm more than happy to make. There's a better steering feel too, it's more alive.

The bad news is, I hit some road debris at high speed, don't know what it was but it sure made a loud bang under the car, on inspection it damaged one of the cats (twin cats side by side) which causes  a rattle on cold start up - really annoying. So, I'll need to sort that out. The easiest/best route at the moment seems to be, get the damaged cat cut out and have a Magnaflow universal cat welded in. The again, this could be an opportunity to have a de-cat pipe made up, loose a little weight (down pipe & cats weigh in at 10.5kg) while possibly gaining a little power. We'll see..

On eBay: SUZUKI ALTO SZ4 1.0 PETROL LOW MILES 26,400 2012 62 PLATE PARKING SENSORS, CAT S £1350.

Yeah, ambers for the win.

     +1.

Looks great, really clean too.

I remember a dealer in Greenford, West London selling the exact same spec cars back in the late 90's and all of them sat higher compared to the Euro spec models. He always had a good few at any one time and seemed to sell them fairly quickly.

I just happened to be on the Frost site today and had a quick look at their primer products. If you've got an hour or tow  to spare... I'm not too sure but this could be a case of 'less is more' !