What have you done to your car today?

Caporegime
Joined
29 Jul 2011
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36,343
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In acme's chair.
You aren't driving within the limitations of the car, you know full well how much power your car has, wait for a bigger gap lol

Or do as the Americans do, pull out, make the person behind slow down and don't have a care in the world.

In order to pull out into a gap that most cars would manage absolutely fine, I have to drop the clutch like its hot and try and make an imprint of the accelerator pedal in the floor. :p

I usually drive within the limitations of the car, this was just one of those times when I forgot how slow it was. lol
 
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Soldato
Joined
5 Oct 2009
Posts
13,824
Location
Spalding, Lincs
I've been busy tonight. Got my turbo and manifold back on, all plumbed in, intercooler pipework on etc. Made up new air filter pipework with 2.5" pipe as 3" pipe was too big and never properly fitted.

Done various other bits, starting to look a bit better again now.

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And this was the first start after sitting for 3 months and a load of work being done.. purring away like a kitten!

 
Associate
Joined
30 Jun 2007
Posts
2,361
Location
Norwich
Had the N/S/F coil break at some point, car has been driving fine but had an awful knocking at full lock appear last week. It had clearly been broken for longer than that! Got the shock out after much swearing and it was broken at bottom & top :eek:

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I'd always planned to keep it standard but refused to pay Renault prices for a pair of front springs & opted for a full set of Eibach Pro's for £170. Negligible drop & it's not quite so crashy.
 
Soldato
Joined
10 Oct 2006
Posts
3,563
I have just found the same with my MK5 Golf GTI, no noises but a front and rear spring broken along with two leaking shocks. The front spring fell to pieces as I took it out :eek: I was very surprised with VWs pricing new springs and shocks all round a little under £400 with new topmounts/bearings.
 
Associate
Joined
30 Jun 2007
Posts
2,361
Location
Norwich
I have just found the same with my MK5 Golf GTI, no noises but a front and rear spring broken along with two leaking shocks. The front spring fell to pieces as I took it out :eek: I was very surprised with VWs pricing new springs and shocks all round a little under £400 with new topmounts/bearings.

Renault were after £182 for just a pair of front springs, at that price they can jog on! Shocks are not so bad at £50 a corner & top mount kit is another £35 a side. Thankfully everything else cleaned up nicely it's just the exhaust that'll need doing at some point soon now.
 
Soldato
Joined
26 Feb 2009
Posts
14,814
Location
Exeter
Ordered some new logo center caps (wheels being refurbed for £200 in a week), a set of blinds for the rear windows and an android OE fit head unit. Expensive day
 
Man of Honour
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
159,534
an android OE fit head unit. Expensive day

I've absolutely no idea why people bother with these on VW group cars? I was pretty much forced down that route (Though went Windows CE not Android as the gimmicks wear off fast) because the OEM alternative was horrendously dated but you can retrofit the rather excellent RNS navigation system quite easily so why take the crap option :confused:

Nothing beats the OEM integration of an actual OEM device.
 
Soldato
Joined
26 Feb 2009
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14,814
Location
Exeter
[TW]Fox;28077000 said:
I've absolutely no idea why people bother with these on VW group cars? I was pretty much forced down that route (Though went Windows CE not Android as the gimmicks wear off fast) because the OEM alternative was horrendously dated but you can retrofit the rather excellent RNS navigation system quite easily so why take the crap option :confused:

Nothing beats the OEM integration of an actual OEM device.

I've spent a bit of time researching it and time will tell if it's the right choice. I ruled out the RNS Systems because Bluetooth is an expensive addon if the car doesn't already have it - my car would also need a new CANBUS gateway due to older ones causing battery drain when new stereos are connected. I also wanted a way of receiving non FM radio (DAB or Internet radio) and the DAB units are ridiculously expensive - I could end up spending 1/3rd of the cars value on it! Oh and you need another box (forget what it's called, glovebox media thingy) for iPod integration.

I was pretty much set on standard aftermarket, they still look half decent and apple CarPlay looks really useful. However, it's supposedly still pretty buggy and the fitting parts add up to a fair cost too.

So I thought I'd take a punt on one of these, the WinCE based one is quite well praised on briskoda for its CANBUS integration (climate, door open, reverse sensors etc). However mine doesn't have parking sensors or climate so the value of this is limited to showing which door is open. The interface looks clunky enough that it would drive me mad and adding apps isn't easy.

So that left the android unit, it looks like stock and android should mean it's not as clunky as the wince stuff. The main draw was the stuff I use in the car mainly can run natively on the unit - podcasts, spotify and Internet radio. I also have a Bluetooth obd reader so running torque on the unit itself will be a neat geeky gimmick :). This is the unit I opted for http://www.iceboxauto.com/skoda-octavia-ii-2007-2009-android-44-i005

It was £300 so it's not a huge gamble if it's crap, but if it does what I hope then it'll be significantly more useful to me than the OE kit that's available. Navigation is actually quite far down the list of important functionality for me - if I just wanted something to do nav and play CDs I'd probably agree with you but for my use its not as clear cut
 
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Man of Honour
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
159,534
So that left the android unit, it looks like stock and android should mean it's not as clunky as the wince stuff.

I might be out of date now as I've limited interest in these since I bought mine 3 years ago but it didn't used to work like.

The units are effectively two systems in one device - there is the radio side, which does your FM radio, CD, USB interface, etc etc and there is the Navigation side, which has either Windows CE or Android. You swap button the two with a button which presumably just swaps the monitor output to the other device.

The result of this is that there was absolutely no clunkyness whatsoever with Windows CE. Infact by the time you hit the 'Nav' button after putting your seatbelt on your preferred navigation application had autoloaded so you never even saw Windows CE. The clunkyness was therefore on the radio side, and present irrespective of whether you went Android or Windows CE.
 
Soldato
Joined
26 Feb 2009
Posts
14,814
Location
Exeter
[TW]Fox;28077107 said:
I might be out of date now as I've limited interest in these since I bought mine 3 years ago but it didn't used to work like.

The units are effectively two systems in one device - there is the radio side, which does your FM radio, CD, USB interface, etc etc and there is the Navigation side, which has either Windows CE or Android. You swap button the two with a button which presumably just swaps the monitor output to the other device.

The result of this is that there was absolutely no clunkyness whatsoever with Windows CE. Infact by the time you hit the 'Nav' button after putting your seatbelt on your preferred navigation application had autoloaded so you never even saw Windows CE. The clunkyness was therefore on the radio side, and present irrespective of whether you went Android or Windows CE.

The WinCE ones do work as you say, but the android ones these days are "pure android" - they boot straight to android and you use the android launcher to run every app.. Whether that's the media player, radio or navigation. The downside of this is the boot time but I can live with that. I'd probably not have gone the android route if they still worked like that. The great thing with this approach is if the included apps don't work the way I want then I can just download another from the play store
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Mar 2010
Posts
11,057
Location
Bucks
resprayed two of my tyres today with plastidip and fitted my new nuts.
Also tried to replace this since its an advisory and I can do it myself, but was solid. Any recommendations on making this easier to get off?
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Associate
Joined
26 Jul 2010
Posts
1,714
Location
Wiltshire
Plusgas penetrating oil will see to that

Fitted some new LED lights in my Transit work van, the pictures don't really show how much brighter the load area is now (taken just after I fitted them, at 19:00hrs tonight)

Before:

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After:

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