Re: The clio's replacement...
So, over the winter I put on winter tyres and ran about in the car as per normal and a knocking on the nearside suspension developed. Just before Christmas I had the upper ball joint replaced at a cost of just over £300 :dead: However, this only made it knock slightly less which meant the bottom ball joint was knackered too, and that one is £300 for the part alone. Nuts.
With it being christmas I couldn't afford to do it and so I left it knocking until last week when I had bought a new lower arm, some new ARB bushes and a new o/s CV Joint and inner CV boot as there was some knocking/clicking when turning left from the o/s. I figured while I'm doing this I should invest in some new summer tyres and treat myself to a power upgrade:
shiny decat:
boost tap
boost gauge:
All for a low low price of £85, and according to a specialist (although I'm skeptical) this should be me very close to the 300hp mark
I also got some Hankook V12 tyres, I didn't want to pay for Michelin/Conti's etc and certainly wasn't paying the seemingly expensive prices for Toyo's or Advans as I dont rate them as a performance tyres.
I had heard rumours about Hankooks so after checking on tyretest.com and seeing they got a good score for grip in dry and wet I bought them. They did not disapoint they are reigning in the 250+hp of the car no problems and have plenty of grip through the corners, this is true in both the dry and surprisingly good in the wet too.
The winter tyres are dead, due to the play in the ball joints the inner edges were bald but then according to the mechanic who did the suspension for me, the front wheel was hanging by its last thread!!
I have finally managed to get my number plates sorted from the DVLA which has been a right f**k about, I originally went to do it in Feb when I sold the 172 ffs. So front number plate now looks much tidier, although I am considering a vinyl front plate so I'm not covering any of the vents, we'll see..
With my new sticky tyres and more power I decided today that I was going to go up over the top roads (Jackson Heights for the locals) and finally give the car a good run to compare to the clio and other cars in the past, what with this being the 1st decent day with safe suspension that I've had chance too since buying the car...
All was going good, the car was surprisingly quick and was gripping very well despite being a little bit softer than previous cars, and then nightmare, the suspension is quite soft and the car bottomed out at 60mph... it hit the floor f**king hard, hard enough to knock a switch out of the dash and turn the radio off. Oh ohhh. I pulled over and had a look to make sure that its not pissing oil out or anything and I thought I'd got off ok, it looked like it just hit the subframe and all looked straight. phew
Back to the spirited drive, its not all ok. The car has about half a second of hesitation between 4-5k revs now that it didn't have 10 minutes ago, and when stationary theres an awful rattling sound at 4k revs. I've come back home and from what I can see it shouldn't have hit the exhaust although I think that may be the culprit, I hope that is something cheap although I will be annoyed if its the 4 day old decat. Thankfully its booked in at a specialist on tuesday so they can fettle and heat wrap the charge cooler to help it cope with the extra boost. I'll ask them to have a look and make sure I've not killed anything..
Maybe I should look to some stiffer springs too, although I really didn't want another lowered hard riding car again until the 200SX is ready to rock. I'll mull it over depending on the damage I've done today :dapprove:
