FunkySon

Jules means this thread here

Quoting Paul Jacobs: I assume you have the transmission tunnel carpeted? No carpet in an R500. Minor burns come as part of the package. Quoting Dave Jackson: We showed Oxted trimming the cockpit lining and they took up the idea and produced some very nice insulated carbon effect ( same as the R500 boot cover) stick on panels for the interior cockpit sides These are now available from Oxted Would be interested to know more. Any idea on price?

Pretty common problem that's still not fully resolved judging by my conversation with CC when I had my 500 serviced a few months back. If memory serves there are a few things that you can try to alleviate the problem: 1 heat reflective / insulating material on the inside of the transmission tunnel. 2 lag the primaries 3 carpet 4 You used to be able to get a fabric mesh replacement for the gear lever gaitor / hand brake which allows the hot air to escape from the transmission tunnel. Sadly carbon bits is no longer around. There's probably more if you search the old posts on here. Duncan

If memory serves you have to unbolt the calipers as the wing stay stops you from getting one of the retaining pins out. Duncan

My car was built around 2008 and it too suffered a broken needle with only a few thousand miles on the clock. Mine's one of a pair of press demonstrators and I know the sister car, which CC still have, suffered the same problem at much the same time. Service from Stack was very good and the unit was returned within a few weeks as good as new. In my case I wasn't charged even though the unit must have been over a year old. Not sure I believe the "bad batch" story. I think it's a case of TADTS sooner or later. Duncan

Quoting batteredoldsupersport: I always use a washer on a stud or nut, it's best practice. Also 3/8" into steel - it's not critical but 40lbft sounds about right, you won't go wrong with that. I used the 25lbft mentioned in this thread here The discs bolt to the hubs and they're ally, not steel.

I have one of these here in the garage that's been gathering dust for something like three years. Time to move it on I think. I bought it as a spare when I cut down the original to fit a longer Raceco silencer. When I eventually got round to attempting to put the old silencer back on I found that this decat pipe didn't fit as my primaries were slightly narrower (mine's a former CC engineering car and there are a few parts that were changed for production models). The outlet end has an outer diameter of 2.5 inches and the inlet pipes have an outer diameter of 2 inches. I'm looking for £150. The same would cost you £280 plus postage from CC. This has never been fitted to a car. I'm in the Sutton (Surrey) area so local pick up would save a good few quid in postage. Duncan

We should try to remedy that then. We need some good weather though. Duncan

Ah ... So that's who it was. Yellow with black stripes was me. Duncan

Quoting mav: The yellow one I had on loan, has intermittant, on and on fast... The yellow car was one of their engineering cars and some of the wiring is different to production R500s. I have that car now and every time it breaks I seem to find something else that's not standard. This may just be another example. Duncan

Quoting David Brown: Leaving legality asside, you could fit 2 off 13's to the back and a 15 & a 13 to the front and no LSD problem. Not as crazy as it seems. This is exactly what the manual for my porker instructs you to do if you get a rear puncture. Duncan

I replaced mine a couple of weeks back. The pads came in an AP box with PF7600D46-RS14B on the box. These are for Pagid's, of course. Duncan

I have both for my R500. Anecdotally the quieter airbox really seems to take the edge off the power higher up the rev range. If I can tell the difference then it's probably quite significant. I'm not local to you so hopefully someone a bit closer to hand will step forward to help out. If not then let me know and we'll see if we can work something out. Duncan

Poor MPG is very much heavy right foot in my case just as RJ says. Mrs FunkySon seems to be able to effortlessly get it into the 50s whereas I struggle to get much past 40 unless I'm on the motorway. The variable vanes on the turbo are supposed to seize up if you don't give it some revs occasionally - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Duncan

I have vag-com if anyone needs it to help diagnosis. The only issue I've had with the Golf's climatronic was the common cooling fan problem (fans pulse at high speed rather than being on constant low speed whilst a/c running). Fairly straight forward fix and it's been fine for years now (quickly touch wood). More than compensated for by the a/c on the other tintop. That goes wrong every year as it just isn't keen on keeping the gas in. Duncan

Steve, Have replied. Will try and get it in the post to you tomorrow. Sorry Lee - Steve has confirmed interest so it's heading down there I'm afraid. Duncan

I have a spare one in black - a legacy of an insurance claim 3 or 4 years ago. It says aero 300 on the box. No keys - they were stolen - but I understand from other postings on here in the past that these are available from Newton. If you're interested then Blatmail me details and I'll bung it in the post. Duncan

The nut will come undone easily I hope for you sake that that is the case. I had to take the alternator pulley off our VW Golf a couple of months ago. I bought the special tool you need but when I was hanging off it with a big long breaker bar giving it everything I did have my doubts. Best of luck. Duncan

If I remember it correctly springs and dampers are different between models but the basic suspension design is the same. The only exception is the R32. Any competent outfit should be able to do the alignment but I would suggest that you need one with the fancy laser jobbies that check everything so you know where you're at. Mine's a PD150 by the way. Less power but more torque than a 4mo. Similar boat anchor of an engine up front though. I also have the sports suspension which is probably identical to a 4mo. I get twice the mileage you're seeing from a set of fronts but that's still less than when these cars were new. Sounds like your experience is much the same as mine so my heart goes out to you. I kept costs down by doing most of it myself but it was still a hateful 18 months where it refused to drive properly. Works Ok now but I doubt if it will be long before I'm back in there. Duncan

Kev I've had similar problems with my mk4 Golf in that repeated alignments failed to sort out the suspension problems. If you make the basic assumption that the guys doing the alignment know what they're about then the conclusion that I came to was that, since the alignment is effectively a static test, then the suspension is moving about under load. You don't mention what mileage you've done but in my case most of the suspension components were completely knackered by about 60k miles. These things are built down to a price and they just don't last. What have you replaced so far? For me I've done front wishbones, top mounts, bearings, anti-roll bar bushes, drop links and all four dampers / struts. It's taken all of that, along with 5 alignments, to get it to drive straight without any odd tyre wear. The rubber bushes on the rear beam will need doing soon but that's a painful job so I've been putting it off (there's too much toe-in at the rear but at least it's even now). There isn't much alignment you can do on a Golf. You can do the tracking at the front and there's a tiny amount of camber adjustment where the ball joints bolt on but, other than that, I think you're into moving subframes to even things out left to right or adding shims. Personally, at the age it must be, I'd plump for most of the suspension being well past its best and overdue for replacement. Impreza's have a fundamentally different 4wd system to the haldex system in a Golf, by the way. The Golf system isn't full time 4wd as I understand it - it's 2wd for most of the time. Regards Duncan

Cap head bolts for front calipers are 3/8" I think

Just on to my third re-gas of the year and, touch wood, the place it's at now thinks they've found the leak. Car is currently being deconstructed into a thousand pieces to get to the evaporator. As has been said above £50 to 60 seems the going rate and having watched mobile guys do it in the past it does seem pretty good value to me. I steered clear of the Halfords cans. I guess it could work out ok if you only need a top up but if you've got a leak (and you probably have if its stopped working) then one can is probably not enough and two cans costs as much as you'll pay someone else to come out and re-gas it for you. Duncan

Nigel, I was told the same by CC but that was in response to me questioning the temperature when sitting in traffic. On track I'm in the 70-75 range for oil and 85-90 for water. Much more like marcos59 is seeing. Yours seem too high to me. Duncan

That's a bit disappointing to see it fail so early on. I hope you get it sorted without too much pain and expense. Duncan

Mike, If you don't mind me asking can you provide some context to the failure? I'd be very interested to know what caused it and how much track use your car has seen. My R500 has quite a few track miles under its belt now so I have a keen interest in whether these cars will require regular rebuilds along the same line as the K-series cars. Thanks Duncan