Back on the Road

Car all put back together on Friday. I didn’t finish until the early hours due to some complications. Two of the bumper mounting brackets had bolts seized in them, the bolts came out eventually, but destroyed the fittings in the process. I had some of the right kind of things, but they had to be tapped to fit. One of my major pet hates is rusty bits and pieces, especially nuts and bolts. I’ve replaced all of the none load bearing fixings with alloy bolts and some of the 8.8 bolts that I’ve had to fettle with titanium ones.

Then just at the end of it all as I was fitting the last of the front wheels, I noticed that the brake disc was moving on the hub – the reason being both of the fixing bolts had been sheared off. Drilled the broken bolt threads out and retapped them and put some new bolts in. Quite an annoying discovery but one that was reasonably easy to sort out.

Test drive went okay last night, but it was wet and in all honesty the car is a bit full on in the wet. Torque steering is apparent in pretty much every gear and it’ll wheel spin under heavy acceleration even in 4th. At least with no PAS or traction control you can feel what the car’s doing. I’m wondering if the Yokohama S Drives are part of the problem when it’s damp.

I’m also concerned that something’s not right in the suspension. It’s pretty clunky over uneven surfaces. I think it’s something more than the shock and spring rate setup – I was used to the firm ride in the Audi. Something isn’t right, but I don’t think the heavy Speedlines with the 15R195/45s are helping much either. The exhaust rattle became worse over the course of a day out today and I’m sure it’s started blowing a bit too, so I suspect some of the fixings are loose. On a minor point I notice that the front OS speaker isn’t working so I need to look into that too. More investigations to follow…

I found the legendary Skip Brown Cars garage today. I took the scenic route to Wales via Wrexham and headed on to Demon Tweeks. They have probably the best range of car seats anywhere that you can drop in and check that things fit you. I’m sold on the Corbeau Pro Series, but I could barely get into the standard with seats with my thighs, so I’ll be going for the extra wide ones…