Today I did something to my car (volume 2)

cletus wrote: »

The moment you realise the motor factors gave you the wrong sized rotor...

And the moment after that when you realise it's a brake disc on this side of the Atlantic :pac:

There's a good argument about slide pin grease on the previous page, spilling over onto this one, actually!

I apologise in advance this is long winded and embedding images isnt my thing :pac::pac:
Recently the head unit in the car was acting up i was unable to mute turn it up or down or even switch it off common problem on a4's of this age. Sourced a second hand unit from ebay for under 40 euro so decided to take a gamble and have a go putting it in myself.


First off removed the top bezel surrounding the display screen comes off with a quick pull
Most awkard part next the bloody centre vents didnt have the correct tool so a long phase tester was used Set the vents to the centre position and you can see a hole middle way that you have to pry on to release the vents. Exact same on opposite side When this is removed you now see the top 2 8mm bolts that secure the head unit in place




After that the ac controls at the bottom just pull out revealing the last two 8mm bolts undo them and the unit can be removed after disconnecting the two plugs on the back
Simple i thought out with the old and in with the newer one, connected all the cable and powered on the unit turned on switched the controls fine great says I but not quite no sound out of the unit.
Quick google later and im introduced to Audi component Protection the repacemnt is still locked to the old car feck it anyway:(.This can only be reomeved by Audi themselves or someone with Odis software

Time for a quick cup of tea before throwing in the towel.
Took a complete gamble on the next bt
While inside having the tea i was looking at how the unit was built and assembled so thought to myself




Two t15's on either side then two locking tabs on top

This then releases the head fascia from the double din unit after a small bit of brute force

The tiny red ribbon cable is the last thing that holds the fascia to the back piece disconnected that and voila the fascia can be removed .

Did the same on the original unit and swapped the replacement fascia unit to my old unit said a few prayers got out the holy water reassembled and tried it out

Result!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:D:
I now have a fully functioning stereo again Well so far anyway

This post took me longer to do than the job

cletus wrote: »

Driving to work yesterday morning, I had the passenger window down trying to hear the noise better. It slowly dawns on me the grinding noise is coming from the front...

Turns out the friction surface of one of the front pads was gone completely, looks like it sheared off completely. The other pad was only worn about half way

Thats a good result, Easy fix and you know your back brakes are as good as they can be short of a rebuild.

There's always a positive.

Not much but I changed the rubber on the rear wiper blade.
Cost a fiver for new rubber I had to cut to size.
The old rubber was hanging off in parts so really needed it done.

Loving the Volkswagen life now lads. I had a bit of an issue, very minor in the scheme of things but something I've had to do to no car before.

After driving on a rainy day, the inner tail lights would be full of condensation. Made the car look kind of crap but it'd dry out after a day or two.

I popped off the lamps, removed the little flaps on the inner boot lid cover and undid the two "tenmil sohkets", actually 8mm,





Less than perfect foam gaskets on the back of the lamps,



Cleaned out the lamp housing,





New gaskets for the lamps,



Found this little knub on the corner of the lamp hand been chaifing the body on both corners, so touched up the damage while I was there,



Chaifed corner (same on both sides),



And touched up,



And if you want to see an after pic, just look at the before

Standard stuff on European cars, I'm sure :pac:

Fitted new front brake pads on 09 focus. Old ones weren't too bad just squeaking alot and wrecking my head.

Changed a leaking coolant hose from heater matrix to oil cooler,was alot easier than I taught.

Also changed air filter and pollen filter,pollen filter was about of a pain to change.

The seatbelt butler is easily fixed by buying new units (about €40 each). The old ones just pull out and you can push the new ones in. Also note that when the seatbelts themselves get old they get less stiff. You can solve this by applying starch and ironing them where the handover thing meets them.

Managed to get the roof on my mk1 mx5
I'd been putting it off for weeks because bolts were sheared and coming out from the body (so I couldn't easily take them out).

Took my father and I about 3 hours, we had to grind down the bolts we could.. drill them out and then try and fit a bolt from the inside through whatever gap was nearby.
We ended up using bits of wire to pull the bolts into place so we could get a vice grips onto it to finally stick the bolts on.

I don't know if that even makes sense but the roof is now on.

Wise Old Elf wrote: »

Oil and filter change today.
1.4 mk1 focus.
Old oil and filter out and off clean as a whistle.
New filter on, 3l of new oil in, start the car to level it out and top up the oil, oil pressure light didn't go out as expected, new oil all over the drive way :mad:
Had sand in the shed so threw that out over the spill and cleaned it up, will power wash tomorrow.

The new filter looks like it has a dodgy thread and didn't seal properly. Had to put the old one back on, and it went on no problem. Car takes about 3.5 l so had to buy another 1l in a local petrol station to bring it up to a reasonable level.

So today, I did a basic oil change on my car and spilled a load of new oil on my drive

So you will have to do it all again once you get more oil and another filter....


Oh how BB as that must have felt....

This was annoying me...



So found the culprit and replaced it. (Lear TMS module). BMW charge €500 for the part. Ebay for 80€. Others would advise that you need to remove either bumper or inner arch liner. In effect, you don't even have to remove the wheel. Just jack her up and its a 10min job. No coding required. Plug & play.



Also, didn't like the start-up animation on the iDrive screen so change it to this with Bimmercode, along with changing start/stop to OFF as a default.



One final thing, no pics, but the boot was an issue opening up from the rear. Fob and button inside car worked fine. Disconnected the mechanism from the boot and noticed that the contact with the microswitch was gapped a little too much, resulting in failed contact - 2 minute fix inserting a small filler piece to reduce the travel distance.

Bought it a few weeks ago. M-Sport with paddle shift and widescreen.

Handy thing to use on a new car alright. Biggest thing for me was setting the start/stop to remember what setting it is in rather than defaulting to on each journey.

Small gimmicky stuff then I put on too then was digital speedo, door LEDs on in reverse, folding mirrors on lock. The car came with folding mirrors on lock so presume previous owner coded it. It was useful for me to disable this in winter with frost etc and have it back on now. Also enabled closing the boot from the button in the cabin, factory default is to only open. Probably health and safety reason for that.

You drive in sport mode all the time? I never touch that mode.
Occasionally, and maybe before an overtake I'll knock the gear stick to the left to put the box in sport.

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

Yep, always sport mode with the gearbox in sport also. I might use comfort on a bad road and ECOPro on the motorway but apart from that it's always sport.

Sport mode all the way. Did you code in the M Sport animation ? Looks very nice indeed. Also, rather than disable stop/start, I just have It defaulting to off at startup. Must look into the bimmerlink app. He should really give purchasers a discount for getting both!