***NOW SOLD***

As per title, for sale is Campovolo Grey touch up pen.  Only used on a couple of stone chips on the bonnet.

£10 posted.

Don’t know how interested people are, but just thought I’d stick this up for people to have a gander… 


My OH collected his mk3 Focus RS a month ago after a 9 month wait.  It's not been a very nice journey and to be honest, I wouldn’t ever recommend buying a high performance Ford.  The Mustang had massive delays, and the RS has had the same.  Forgetting OH’s personal delays after the car failed to be built on original build date due to lack of parts, putting it back another month…  It’s home now, but not without its problems.  The paintwork is utterly terrible and it seems to be quite common on all of them.  Little dark patches underneath the clear coat so they can’t be polished out.  And how the hell this car got through PDI God only knows, with some ‘dings’ in the passenger door that he is still waiting to be rectified.  The dent man said it’s where the skin has been glued to the impact bars, so it will be easily sorted, but this should have been done before he picked the car up.  The dealer apparently didn’t even notice them – it was us that pointed out the blinking obvious when we collected it!

It’s been up on axle stands for half it's ownership  getting the wheels painted – was done once, but the silver didn’t adhere to the black properly so was flaking off.  They were sent back to be redone last weekend and should be home tonight to go back on.  So it’s only got 400 miles on it so far and not even been driven in proper anger yet.  As you can imagine, a 9 month wait for a car that has caused nothing but agony.  I just hope it’s all sorted soon so he can start enjoying the blinking thing and see what all the fuss is about!

From what we can tell so far, normal driving it's very quiet and you could forget you are in a hot hatch.  Stick it in Sport mode and the throttle response massively improves.  Definitely the mode to be in.  The suspension stays in normal mode when you switch driver mode to Sport, but another button pressed switches that into Sport aswell.  And you can certainly feel that change too.  The ride becomes a lot firmer and feels like you are bouncing along down the road.  Will be keeping that in normal mode for the main part!  Obviously Track, Drift and Launch control have yet to be tested, but I'm sure they will be once it's got some mileage on it!

It sounds great on cold start up, but that quickly quietens down after a minute or so which is a shame.  And the exhaust certainly pops and crackles nicely.  You do have to be pushing on quite hard to hear them, but OH and I have had fits of the giggles a few times now, like a pair of teenagers!  Ha ha!

Anyhow, we're in it for the long haul so hopefully things get better soon, and here's an arty shot to diffuse all the negativity!  Ha ha!!

Postponing till May to try and get more numbers.

Would the 14th or 21st be better for people??

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Hi all,

Just as a feeler, would anyone be interested in a Dyno Shootout day at all?

It would be at Hayes engineering in Erith, Kent, and £40 for a run with 2 printouts (usually BHP/Torque and BHP/AFR).  Bob’s wife usually puts on a sandwich lunch spread with tea/coffee, etc as well.

It would be on a Saturday and we’d need a minimum of at least 10 cars I think.  I’ve not spoken to Bob yet about dates as wanted to see what interest there was first.

For info:
http://www.hayesdynotech.co.uk/dyno.html

Who’d be interested?

Clare

I’ve been wanting to do a proper detail on my car for quite some time now.  After running with WetCoat on the car last winter due to its ease of application, my plan was to give CanCoat a try when the weather improved in March/April time.  However, I never got round to getting that done, and the combination of WetCoat, Bathe+ and Cure were still lasting well on the car so saw me through the summer no problems.  But I definitely wanted to give the car a good going over before winter hits in this year.  With time passing by thoughts change and reading up on other products, I also ended up changing my mind over what protection I wanted to use.  Aided by the CanCoat not working properly, I ended up purchasing some FK1000 Sealant and FK2685 Pink Wax.

So, full detail was done over a couple of days, but process was:

Citrus TFR
Snow foam
Rinse
Iron X
Rinse
Wash
Rinse
Clay
Wash
Rinse
Dry
DA Polish with very light cut (the car didn’t need much as its only 10 months old)
Panel Wipe
2 Coats of FK1000
Black trim coated with Dodo Juice Tyromania
2 Coats of FK2685

I know 2 coats of the Sealant would be plenty to get me through winter, and even using just this the paint looked lovely, but I wanted to add some wax on top to give it that bit of extra gloss.  And I was certainly right to do so.  Instantly after buffing off the wax the car looked amazing and the wax just made the paintwork feel even more slick to go with how shiny it looks.  Definitely glad I did those two coats, as it just finished the job off.  I’ve got the FK detailer too, but will try that out on my next wash.  I coated the wheels with GyeonRim the day I picked it up which still seems to be working well, but I may give them a coat of the FK1000 if I can in the next few weeks.

Campovolo Grey is not an easy colour to show off the paintwork, but here’s some pics of the finished car.






And some tasty reflections:

Now I’ve fitted my Milltek exhaust I am looking to sell my Monza backbox.  It is off of my Dec 2014 Competizione, having covered only 2500 miles.

Valve is working all fine, and never had any problems with that.  Some flaking to the pain however, but this seems to be usual on the Mild Steel Monza’s.

Looking for £350.

Ideally collection from Wickford in Essex.

Pictures:

Hi all,

I am looking to take my car to another dyno to compare the results I got at Hayes Engineering.  I know of AmD and they have run many Abarths without issues, but has anyone used any of the following companies:

Redline Tuning in Basildon: http://www.redlinetuning.co.uk/contact2.cfm
Track n Road in Rainham: http://www.tracknroad.com/
Thurston Engineering in Ongar: http://www.thurstonengineering.co.uk/rolling-road-diagnostics.php
JF Automotive in Maidstone (recommended by TMC, but are a bit far away): http://www.jfautomotive.co.uk/contact/

These are the ones I have found, but if anyone has any other recommendations that would be very welcome.

Thanks in advance

Clare

Hi,

Can anyone please tell me where the EOBD port is on the car? I want to measure my AFR while on the road but need to plug into the OBD port to do this.

Thanks in advance

Clare