Pete Griff's 'Rado R32 - (Not quite!) Alive at last! :D

[Gamble 0]

Hello mate,

 

Glad you like it, was good to see you the other day. You had a late one then!? Sorry to hear about the breakdown. Dont forget about popping back down when its all totally finished to take me for a drive!

 

Chris (SWICT)

[pete_griff 0]

Hello mate,

 

Glad you like it, was good to see you the other day. You had a late one then!? Sorry to hear about the breakdown. Dont forget about popping back down when its all totally finished to take me for a drive!

 

Chris (SWICT)

 

 

howdy pal, thanks very much for all your efforts with helping to get the car all sorted; i really am chuffed to my balls with it now!

don't worry i'll be down once i've got it all sorted out (just for an idea of speediness - my friends' non-standard GT4 which you saw couldn't touch it - he was not amused and is now ordering a boost controller, decat and new ecu! :lol: ). i'll make sure (once i've got it all mopped, polished and waxed etc) i get some decent pics of it to put up on the SWICT website. naturally i'll refer as many people to you as possible as well :)

 

cheers again :D

[CrazyDave 0]

One of the cars in Germany had a loose rear caliper carrier while we pootled around. Quickly nipped up on the side of the road in a busy part of Osnabruk though. :)

 

LOL! Guess who :lol:

Looking good Pete, glad it's finally coming together.

[til2143 0]

Looking good Pete, love the box :)

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Yeah nice wheels, what are they....and more importantly, how heavy? LOL! :D

 

Loving the toolbox! Bought a 7 drawer roller cab and 9 drawer chest myself recently, from Machine Mart. Not in the same league as yours, but I love the organisation of them. Everything in their place!

I got fed up with having to tip my tool boxes on the floor to find anything and kepy buying tools I already had....but forgot I had because they were buried in the bottom of the crap plastic toolboxes!! And what tipped me over the edge was dropping a used oil filter into the toolbox, covering everthing in oil..... I'll leave the colour of my language to your imagination!

 

So is it running now then? What's with the AA van? Sorry, I shamefully admit I haven't been following your thread !

[WigsVR6 0]

Hi Pete read through the whole thread last night and im very impressed wish I had the skills that you have shown. It must have been frustrating, to say the least, getting over that final hurdle after completing the engine build and being in the hands of the wiring guru to get the job finished. Not that I'm dissing him in anyway.

Can I ask how does the engine sound in comparison to the 12v powerplant? Just that I've been in an Eos 3.2 and I wasn't that impressed it seemed to be toned down a little maybe due to more sound proofing.

Good luck with the car I'm sure you'll have loads of fun. :D :D Oh and :notworthy:

[pete_griff 0]

One of the cars in Germany had a loose rear caliper carrier while we pootled around. Quickly nipped up on the side of the road in a busy part of Osnabruk though. :)

 

LOL! Guess who :lol:

Looking good Pete, glad it's finally coming together.

Looking good Pete, love the box :)

 

thanks very much for the compliments gents - really pleased it's more or less all sorted now :)

 

just got the height/geometery left to sort and then start putting the glovebox etc back in and find/stop all annoying rattles.

 

 

Yeah nice wheels, what are they....and more importantly, how heavy? LOL! :D

 

Loving the toolbox! Bought a 7 drawer roller cab and 9 drawer chest myself recently, from Machine Mart. Not in the same league as yours, but I love the organisation of them. Everything in their place!

I got fed up with having to tip my tool boxes on the floor to find anything and kepy buying tools I already had....but forgot I had because they were buried in the bottom of the crap plastic toolboxes!! And what tipped me over the edge was dropping a used oil filter into the toolbox, covering everthing in oil..... I'll leave the colour of my language to your imagination!

 

So is it running now then? What's with the AA van? Sorry, I shamefully admit I haven't been following your thread !

 

wheels are ABT's, they are not the lightest unfortunately (9.6 Kg WO tyres), but hopefully they will clear my brembos without needing spacers...

i think they look nice, not as nice/classy/oem as the RX's, but nice nonetheless. they will do until i settle on another set that will clear brembos/are v light and that i like. i'm really fussy when it comes to wheels, so it might take me a while to find some that match all criteria.

i feel your pain regards tools! i have a stupid amount of kit now considering i don't use it to earn a living. it was soooooo frustrating with little bits of it all here/there and in all different boxes as you say. very pleased with my new box - worth every penny! :D

 

the story on the car now is that it's now back, working and more or less all sorted. the gearbox is now all sorted too (no thanks to a "hiccup" or two along the way; but i'll put that in my next post).

the RAC man came out the night i got the car back from having the wiring finally sorted - the car decided to shed one of the rear calipers!

as it stands though, it's very fast, very smooth and i'm very happy with it. it's still a bit of a handful as the camber etc is all over the place. the guy who did the tracking/camber at vw didn't do a single thing right and consequently (especially with the presence of the quaife) you have to keep a firm hand on the wheel to make sure the car doesn't leap off the road into the hedge!

hoping to get that sorted before too long...

 

 

 

Hi Pete read through the whole thread last night and im very impressed wish I had the skills that you have shown. It must have been frustrating, to say the least, getting over that final hurdle after completing the engine build and being in the hands of the wiring guru to get the job finished. Not that I'm dissing him in anyway.

Can I ask how does the engine sound in comparison to the 12v powerplant? Just that I've been in an Eos 3.2 and I wasn't that impressed it seemed to be toned down a little maybe due to more sound proofing.

Good luck with the car I'm sure you'll have loads of fun. :D :D Oh and :notworthy:

 

thanks very much, i'm really pleased with how it's turned out.

at idle the r32 is very noticably quieter than the 12v. that's about as far as it goes at the moment though. when pootling around it's still fairly quiet which is nice, but give it some beans and it really doesn't sound stock!

i'm going to put a cold air feed on the end of my bmc to try and qieten things down a bit, and also am considering another silencer in the exhaust.

it's by no means chav and i could easily live with it day to day if it comes to it, as it's still nice and quiet when you want it to be. make no mistake about full throttle though - people will know it's not stock straight away!

[pete_griff 0]

would kind of like some advice off you lot here actually - i had some issues with the place that sorted my gearbox.

 

i took them the gearbox in originally (on it's own out of the car) and said strip it down then give me a ring. basically i'm looking to replace anything that looks as though it's even a little worn and i want you to fit my quaife for me at the same time.

(bear in mind that at this point there was nothing wrong with the box; i just wanted it covered as a matter of course due to the r32 lump going in and wanted to keep reliability etc)

sure enough i got a phone call from them to say got the box apart, everything is perfect inside, so we'll just change the bearings and fit your diff for you. they did this and i picked it up the next day, cost me £300.

 

when i finally got everything sorted with the silly short shift on my car the day after i first got it back (a while ago now), it became obvious that 1st had a nasty rattle. i could get all the gears just fine, but first was persistently making a graunching noise. i took the whole car back to them and they said there's defo somehting amiss, bring it back to us when you can and we'll sort it for you.

admittedly a fair amount of time passed between then and now (probably 3 months), but i was on the phone to them reminding them amount it and who i was etc, so they definitely wouldn't have forgotten.

 

anyway, i took them the whole car about a week and a half ago now and said please sort it. they got the gearbox out of the car for me and found the problem (a cracked washer behind first gear). they then went on to say that they didn't touch the spindle with all the gears on and therefore it wasn't their fault! they would do the job for me, but they would be charging me. £200.

 

anyway, onto the best bit now.

i went up there one week previous as well the when i dropped the whole car off with them having arranged to take a courtesy car away as i would need it to get to work etc. i got f*cked off then as they said they had given the car to a pregnant woman in an emergency; consequently i wasted a trip from hereford to birmingham and back!

when i finally got up there again and dropped the car off properly (as described above) and got my hands on the courtesy car, it was a complete shed! a rover 400 turbo diesel with 150k on the clock.

i wasn't too bothered about this at the time as at the end of the day it would do what i wanted and i didn't have to put up with it for too long.

it defo needed a cv joint changing, drop links changing on both sides and/or ball joints. the tracking was also miles out and the car was generally in sh1t state.

i was driving it back up to them to collect the rado on thurday night when the head gasket blew! (and no i wasn't ramping it either - probably doing circa 75-80 the whole way) LOADS of white smoke bellowing out of the exhaust. pulled over and switched the ignition of. the fuel cut off valave obviously failed as the car continued to rev it's nuts off on the redline (diesels obviously working off compression, not like petrols which need sparks). this was bad as it had slowed the motorway (m50) to a crawl as nonone could see through the horrendously thick smoke. thinking i had to do something asap i lifted the bonnet with a view to crimping off a fuel line etc - anything to stop it! i didn't get the chance to touch anything on the car anyway.... just as i put the bonnet on the stay, the radiator exploded all over me!

as a result i now have some cracking burns (see grizzly photo's below) and am off work for a while.

 

i have been in touch with a solicitor to ask what my options are with regards to the garage, but i was wondering if anyone on here had any input that would be useful.

i'm really not one of the new "look at me and i'll sue you" generation, but the garage didn't do a single thing right for me and frankly their service/car/attitude all stinks. (what if the headgasket had gone on the pregnant woman who had the car before me?!)

[blue95 0]

That f******g sucks mate :shock: ....could have been a lot worse if it was bit higher. Surely the garage must have some legal obligation to provide people with a 'safe' courtesy car. Wonder what there insurance has to say

 

As for the gearbox, why didn't they spot the washer the first time round?

 

Personally, don't think nobody would blame you for suing there tits off!

[__Andy__ 0]

pete that is gnarly, im going through some crap with a garage at th moment but luckily i havent experienced any bodily harm. i hope you manage to get it all sorted...

[mic_VR 3]

Holy Sh1t! :shock: Sue them for everything you can, that is bloody disgraceful if they left you with a car that caused those kind of injuries let alone any other issues you have with them.

[Kevin Bacon 5]

wheels are ABT's, they are not the lightest unfortunately (9.6 Kg WO tyres), but hopefully they will clear my brembos without needing spacers...

 

Ah yeah, that's right, I remember now!

 

as it stands though, it's very fast, very smooth and i'm very happy with it.

 

Excellent, makes all the expense and work worthwhile doesn't it? :D

[pete_griff 0]

here are a couple of engine bay pics as it stands at the mo.

 

there are still a couple of things to do here - going for a braided fuel ine from the reg to the rail for safety and also going to sort a mounting bracket for my bmc so it doesn't rub on the coolant hose/washer bottle

 

pics below:

[dirtytorque 0]

An impressive car matey.

A credit to you.

[KADVR6 0]

i told you my views on the garage mate, bloody well sue them for as much as you can, just imagine what would have happened if all the water had gone on your face :gag:

 

a few grand i your back pocket from the insurance would not hurt.

[KipVR 1]

That really sucks with the garage mate and those burns look nasty, very very similar to mine I told you about but at least it wasn't your Corrado doing it to you. Did they actually fix the gearbox in the end? People like that don't deserve to be in business.

 

Your engine looks seriously good sat in the bay :clap: , just gets me really depressed making me wish mine was moving a bit faster but it's out of my hands really unless I take very drastic action which i don't want to do, I'm never buying a house without a garage ever again, and I can't wait to move. :(

[Toad 0]

:( That looks nasty. Sorry to hear you've had such a mare. :(

[coullstar 0]

Cars looking good. Well done on all the work. Real shame about the gearbox and your injuries. Sometimes you really think people dont give a shit about each other. Id sue and Im not one of those types either.

 

Funny you should say about the exhaust as Im looking to to the same.

[Kaz 0]

Mark mentioned to me earlier that you'd phoned and told him about the Rover incident - I must admit I didn't expect it to be that bad!

 

I hope the burns aren't too sore and that you're able to heal well, you've not had the best of luck recently have you!

 

PS (I hope this isn't too insensative) - do you mind if I pinch one or two pics of your completed engine bay for the SWICT website? I'm just about to update it and it would be nice to have them in the gallery.

 

Speedy recovery Pete!

 

Karen

[WigsVR6 0]

Sorry to hear what as happened to you. I came on here to get an update on your gearbox only to find out that you've suffered burns to your chest whilst trying to save their shed of a car from blowing up :shock: I hope you recover fully and quickley from this them pictures look nasty. I'd also sue them as well for your injuries surley if thats their loan car then it must be properly maintained with paper work to back this up.

 

Back to your car. It looks sweeeet the engine sits in that bay very nicely and I'm so jelous :D I'm getting ideas in my head that i shouldn't be thinking about

 

Get well soon Alan :D

[Toad 0]

Bonjour. Good to meet you today.

 

Just realised what's happening with the plenum chamber while pootling round on the tractor.

 

It's not expanding, it's simply going back to it's original size... The vaccum with the throttle butterfly closed is enough to sort of suck it flat, when you open the throttle it opens back up... Nice party trick... :)

[KipVR 1]

Cheers for popping over Pete, when you've got all the little niggles sorted it'll be an absolute dream to drive, I think the general feel and balance of of the car if feckin brilliant, it's going to be even better when the chassis set up has been done. Real credit to you chap. :D I'm real sad now mines not finished :(

[pete_griff 0]

Sorry to hear what as happened to you. I came on here to get an update on your gearbox only to find out that you've suffered burns to your chest whilst trying to save their shed of a car from blowing up :shock: I hope you recover fully and quickley from this them pictures look nasty. I'd also sue them as well for your injuries surley if thats their loan car then it must be properly maintained with paper work to back this up.

 

Back to your car. It looks sweeeet the engine sits in that bay very nicely and I'm so jelous :D I'm getting ideas in my head that i shouldn't be thinking about

 

Get well soon Alan :D

 

 

thanks very much for the encouraging words pal - most appreciated. i am starting to feel a little more human now, but i've got a bit to go yet before i can start doing "normal" things again.

 

glad you approve of the car - hope it inspires you to do your own. i haven't stoppped smiling since i've had it finished! :D

 

 

 

Bonjour. Good to meet you today.

 

Just realised what's happening with the plenum chamber while pootling round on the tractor.

 

It's not expanding, it's simply going back to it's original size... The vaccum with the throttle butterfly closed is enough to sort of suck it flat, when you open the throttle it opens back up... Nice party trick... :)

 

cheers pal good to meet you too finally!

 

i never thought of that with the plenum chamber - makes sense!

(i just hope it doesn't blow up/crack on me like the VW mechanics said they had seen happen :? )

 

 

 

Cheers for popping over Pete, when you've got all the little niggles sorted it'll be an absolute dream to drive, I think the general feel and balance of of the car if feckin brilliant, it's going to be even better when the chassis set up has been done. Real credit to you chap. :D I'm real sad now mines not finished :(

 

no worries pal - good to see you again, it's been a while.

 

really pleased you liked the car (as let's be honest you are a "bit" of a stickler!). it's really not done yet, but like you said, it should hopefully be somewhere near where it needs to be once i've gone over it and sorted all the final little bits.

looking forward to getting it corner weighted with Jon - can't wait to see what it handles like then! :twisted:

also i'll hopefully be healed by then; as it hurts to turn hard right at the moment due to my bigger side bolsters!

 

don't you worry about yours - it will be finished soon. and you have seen now that it's worth the wait! :D

[pete_griff 0]

i'm unbelievably pi$$ed off now - as i went to pull out of my dad's drive last night to go home, i noticed my car making an odd noise.

the noise more or less immediately got louder and has done so ever since - guess what the f*cing arsehole w*nker to$$pots at the earbox place still haven't done their job properly!

the gearbox is making a horrible racket (it's odd as well - it only makes the noise as you take your foot off the clutch pedal right at the top of the travel)

it sounds nice at quiet like it should even when the gears are going round when the clutch is engaged - only starts to make the noise once your foot comes right off the pedal.

it's far too noisy for it to be the thrust bearing or anything like that; it's making a right nasty graunchy rattle.

it's hard to describe, i've got no idea hat it could be, but needless to say the garage will be getting a nasty phone call from me tomorrow and will certainly not be touching the car again

 

 

NOT HAPPY :mad2: :bad-words:

[_leon_ 0]

sounds a right pita pete. looks superb other than the gbox issue! i would get the gearbox to stealth or where stormchargedvr6 had his box done (jmk?)