herisites

You were one of the lucky ones then as some chains have gone at as little as 70k miles!

If you get the clutch done you may as well get the timing chains. If a garage charges an extra £300-£400 on top of clutch to do the chains they are ripping you off quite frankly. Me and Kev (cheesewire) done my timing chains the other week and its just the gearbox taking off and putting on thats the hard part, the chains themselves were easy to do.

Well some peopl reckon that the chains will start to get noisy before anything goes, i was naive and believed that and mine then became a class example of how untrue that statement is. Me and Kev took mine apart and my upper tensioner was really bad and my guides were cracked etc so basically rhey could have gone at any time, and i had just put a supercharger on it :shock:

Yes i believe so mate, best off asking kev if you havent already as he got them for me.

Exactly my point, beaten to it :lol:

Well a lot of people say around 100k which is probably a good idea. Mine were on 142k before i done them, they didnt make a noise and my car always ran smooth and got good figures on the rolling road, but when we took them apart my upper tensioner was totally fcuked and my guides were cracked so it was on borrowed time! Its seriously not that hard a job to do, as long as you have the tools (think the only 'special' tool needed is something to lock the cams in position for the timing and a clutch alignment tool although me and kev done it by eye :lol:) then its just basically undoing bolts and removing things, remove gearbox (bitch!) and so on. Its just very time consuming, i took my gearbox off myself one weekend which took ages and then me and kev done the chains another day which took us all day but we ran into few niggly problems like lost bolts etc and the gearbox was the hardest part, then its time consuming putting everything back together.

The chains aint that hard a job to do, just time consuming, the hardest part is getting the gearbox off and on but once its off the chains are easy, just fiddly with all the timing marks. You can get new chain kits from the states very cheap as well so can save a LOT of money by doing it yourself than getting a garage to do it.

Make sure you use plenty of silicon sealant when you put the new pump in as well to help it seal properly.

Really?? Thats handy to know as the level is right at the bottom of the reservoir. Im just a bit worried though as when i prime the charger with the pump in the oil line it feels as if its pumping some air through so got a feeling its just that tad bit too low!

Ok then mate fair enough, its your ... hold on its my car isn't it :lol: nah its not as if i dont trust your decisions mate you do whatever is best!! Before March 14th?? Blimey pressure's on then lol, need to get the bloody traction oil sorted as well!! ARGH!!

Blimey i thought i was in a rave when i saw that pic :shock: started the whole 'big fish, little fish, cardboard box' routine then realised it was just UBER bright calipers :lol:

Soz forgot to update the thread! It went OK as Kev said, not great just OK lol, had few little niggly problems like some lost bolts (always happens :roll:) so had to pop out and get some and getting the gearbox back on was a PITA as expected. The chains themselves were a piece of pizzle to do really, just the stripping down and mainly the gearbox thats the hard work, the chains part was just fiddly due to making sure all the timing is correct which it is now, had some queries about my intermediate pulley though which was 90 degrees out :shock: but me and Kev couldnt think for the life of us why it mattered as it just turns the oil pump, but Kev rang Vince who gave some really long winded geeky reason for it so we put it right anyway :lol: I was left to put it all back together though due to time constraints but i was ok with it, got it done over this weekend gone so its all back together, yippee! But cant start her up yet though as my sodding supercharger traction oil decided to leak out whilst the charger was off the car (bloody £75 worth!!) so need to get some more of that and then i can run the charger and me and Kev just then need to set it up properly with the BEGI, MAF clamp and LC-1 wideband AFR controller. Wont be long now :D

No worries mate, i was happy to help! Glad you can notice the difference after all that work :lol: will feel even better once the tracking is done, mine did! Roll on the rears hey :( :lol:

Ok mate no worries. Bring lots of tools with you friday, we have a lot but there's always a tool i dont have or cant find so if you bring some we may get round that :lol:

Will they be going on at the weekend mate?

Check out http://www.detailingworld.co.uk if you havent already been on there, thats all i used to learn and i have done quite a few cars now including some high priced BMW's etc and had great results. There are guides on how to use the polisher, which pad and polish combos to do etc. Basically you want to get a scrap panel from a scrappy or an old car to practise on first, get a selection of pads for example the megs ones which are a dark red one for heavy cutting, a yellow one for general polishing and a peach one for finishing. Then get some polishes ranging from a heavy cut to a finishing polish for example menzerna power gloss (heavy cut), Intensive polish (medium cut) and final finish (low cut/finishing) or the megs range (#80, #83 etc) and just practise with different pad and polish combos starting from the lowest cut polish on the softest pad and working your way up (that is what you do on a car to test how to polish the paint as some paints are soft, like japanese cars generally, and would only require a finishing polish where as other paints are hard as hell, like volkswagen!!!, so would need a medium/heavy cut polish).

Yep exactly one of them. The difference between the orange and blue is that the orange has the 'slow start' function which is a good feature but iirc thats the part that fails on these where as the blue which doesnt have the slow start is fairly reliable. I have the blue one, and obviously you just start on a slow speed and then work up as apposed to putting it on the paint and turning it on full speed straight away.

Its a rotary one looking at it so wont be an orbital. Tbh though a rotary isn't that hard to use and its not easy to burn through paint unless you use a really aggressive compound polish and sit there with the polisher on high speed on a certain spot for ages. I started on a rotary and still use one now and never had any problems, ok they are a bit of a handful at first but you soon get used to them and they are quicker than orbitals at getting results. This one looks like its up to the job and at a good price too. The one i got is a Silverline which i think was about £50, used it loads and it still works fine and gets good results.

Looking good jon, looking forward to seeing the progress on this one. Give me a shout if you need any help restoring the paint ;)

I wish i had done a course like that instead of the schitty computing one im doing now :(

Yeah just a bit mate!! Missed driving it so much :( i still wont afford to be able to drive it often when its done but i will be able to use it now and then which will do, the main reason for getting it running is that we are moving soon so need to be able to get move it :lol:

Tell me about it :cry: I am a student though so i still wont be able to afford to run it even if i get it fixed :lol: You're a student? :shock: :shock: :shock: How did you pay for the blackberry? I was working for a year on work placement whilst living at home ;) sold my old car, bought the vr then with all my wages for almost a year and a half i ran it, insured it, and spent money on renewing worn parts, upgrading other parts and finally the supercharger. I started back at my final year at uni in October and since then the car has been sat in my garage whilst i have gradually been rebuilding the engine and just generally dossing about being poor like most students :lol:

:lol: thats not a bad idea, im sure we could find a few there's that many around!! Hmm not sure about high pressure fuel hose, i got the thick stuff from halfords which is plumbed into my reg at the moment but thats it, tbh though if we are chopping and changing it about then no doubt i will need some more.

Tell me about it :cry: I am a student though so i still wont be able to afford to run it even if i get it fixed :lol:

Right im going to ask everyone who likes me and my car and wants it back on the road to cross fingers, legs, toes, eyes and anything else for me this weekend and HOPEFULLY she will be up and running again after a LONG and depressing winter in the garage with the engine in bits :( Kev is coming back on saturday and we are doing my timing chains as we have done the head gasket already (using metal spacer gasket and ARP head and conrod bolts) so its just chains and then we can put it all back together and set the charger up properly! I had to take the gearbox off by myself this weekend just gone and boy was that a bitch of a job :shock: but glad i did it first as it would of took up a lot of time with Kev that will be needed to do chains and set the charger up! So expect an update this weekend and a VERY happy owner once again :D :D she's going to be getting the clean of a lifetime as its covered in an inch of dust at the minute :lol: