And so it begins!

[LEELEE81]

Thought I'd start a tread on for my car as I quite like following progress on other peoples projects and getting ideas and so on,oh and the pretty pictures that normally come with them

Bought the car a few weeks ago from a dealer in East London,probably not the best of ideas but it seemed the right car,the right colour and the right Interiour. So the first job was to get the cambelt changed after phoning around and talking to a few garages I decided to go with AMD in Woking being not to far from me and after talking to Simon on the phone I was confident it was going to be be done probably.

After the front end was stripped one big concern sprung up the coolant was almost clean enough to drink so after the new cambelt,tensioners,water pump,thermostat and coolant sensor had been changed and the car was up and running it was time to find the leak! After being put under pressure over night a very very small one was found on the rad but the worring one is the one that couldn't be pinpointed. Without antifreeze being in the system it hasn't left any trails to follow its somewhere over the back left hand side of the engine coolant can be seen dripping once the engin is cooling down rather than went the system is at operating pressure. Both Simon and Graham have been all over the thing with mirrors borescope and all sorts but just can't track it down. So the decision was made to use the car keeping a close eye one the coolant with the hope that once the car has been used the antifreeze with leave a snail trail straight to the spring! Hopefully anyway.

Really happy with the service I received at AMD they gave the car a thorough looking over from underneath and given me a short list of things to do on the car going forward on top of the things I want to do of course. The car will be going back a few weeks after I start using it to find that leak.

Things to do then
Water leak
Outer CV boot on the OS front
Calipers to be refinished (Being a painter I'll enjoy that)
Front discs and pads very soon
Wheels to be fully refurbished
Fully paint correction/machine polish and apply a ceramic type coating
Possibly paint all the aluminium parts satin black with the exception of the mirrors going colour coded


Today the brakes came off





As you can see someone has taken to the pad retaining pins rather aggressively at some point and actually bent one of the pins!

I'll keep the pictures coming as I make progress

Hope you enjoy

Lee

[Shoppinit]

Don't colour code the mirrors. That would be sad. At least, if you do, then buy some boggo A6 surrounds and keep the Alu ones for when you change your mind.

Those calipers look nasty. Hopefully you'll be able to work your magic on them.

When you say it was clean, did you mean clear like water? Wouldn't surprise me if the coolant was very clean, but if it's water then that's a bit of a concern. Can't you get UV tracers to put in coolant?

Bonus: Hotchkiss ARBs

[IanH755]

H&R coilovers too (red height adjuster)?

[LEELEE81]

Yeah I'll be getting some standard A6 mirror covers if I go ahead with the blacking. To be honest I've refurbished far worse calipers in the past so these will come up a treat! I'm just trying to make my mind up on the colour at the moment,they will be going a matte finish like the ones here


I'm torn between the red pearl or a burnt orange pearl both go well with the blue but we'll see I may even just do them a nice grey

Yep Hotchkiss ABR's and H&R coilovers,must say it goes round a corner well! The uv ink would be a great idea I'll get on the case ASAP as its really the only thing that is worrying me about the car.

[bam_bam]

Grey or orange on the callipers, I like the idea of the latter.

AMD in Woking?! Are these the guys that aren't affiliated with the mob in AmD Essex?

[LEELEE81]

Must say I'm leaning towards the orange,I'll do a few spayouts and go from there.

Yep AMD in Woking seemed really professional and very knowledgeable so far I take it you've had issues with AMD in Essex then?

[Shoppinit]

Dunno, orange calipers screams out "Saxo vts fanboy". Grey or black FTW.

[LEELEE81]

Thought that myself but after looking around its not the case I quite like them. It'll be a burnt orange rather than the bright in your face type

[Mɐʇʇ]

Assuming you definately mean the rear LHS of the engine (exactly where do the drops appear - dripping on the sump or the gearbox?), here's a few places to check:
1. 2 hose unions that go to the bulkhead at the rear of the engine in the middle of the V (air cleaner removed)
2. LHS turbo inlet & outlet - one's on the inner side of the turbo, 1 on the outer. Reckon seeing the inner might be a bit tricky, without dropping the @rse end of the subframe a bit.
3. Big black metal pipe that crosses over the back of the engine - goes into a union on the cylinder head - check the union/o-ring.

Dunno how you checked it, but I use a rad pressure test kit plugged in to my compressor - just make sure you keep the pressure safe. IIRC most systems should hold about 15psi but you can turn it up a little bit more if you're chasing/testing an intermittent leak.

A common place to leak is the Oil->Water cooler, but that shows up (usually, unless the leak has run round the edge of the sump) on the RHS mid way forward on the sump.

...but the worring one is the one that couldn't be pinpointed. Without antifreeze being in the system it hasn't left any trails to follow its somewhere over the back left hand side of the engine coolant can be seen dripping once the engin is cooling down rather than went the system is at operating pressure.

[Mɐʇʇ]

Oh - do you replace the seals in the calipers when you shotblast & paint them?

[LEELEE81]

Thanks very much for that little list I'll set about looking over it myself. AMD put it under pressure and did the looking so I'm going to do some looking myself from what I can see it's not as far back as the turbo though.

As for the calipers the Pistons and seals all look in good condition so the surface with the pistons will be masked off during the blasting then prepped buy hand,the rears are very clean so again will be prepped by hand. Rather than using Stickers the logos will be airbrushed on and all lacquered in allowing me to use a nice dark metallic grey rather than a white or black.

I'll put pictures up of the whole process.

[neilparf]

AMD in Woking?! Are these the guys that aren't affiliated with the mob in AmD Essex?

Same company, two different locations.

Woking HQ and Essex to service 'the other side of the 'M25'...

http://amdtechnik.com/

Callipers - have to be Grey for me...

[LEELEE81]

Some I've done in the past on my old DC5 about 4 years ago now




Oh and some K sports off a friends Evo 8


No stickers all paint

[neilparf]

Nice. Great masking and no bleed!

You should do a forum service for caliper painting!

[LEELEE81]

I've kinda gone down that route before with the MLR lot got fed up with people constantly wanting everything for nothing. I know they are only calipers but I like things right and unfortunately people are just not willing to pay the little extra. I wouldn't put a set price on them either.

I'll do mine and see how much interest I get and go from there as the guys on here might appreciate quality over quantity