Grogee's spannering (Maestro, Avensis & Favorit). FAVORIT FAIL

[Matty]

14 minutes ago, grogee said:

Finally got around to tackling the air  intake extension yesterday. 

Yes, it's another collection of odds and sods, brackets and clips but there is method to the madness: the strut brace is supporting a couple of little rubber cotton reel things (like Mini gear shift mounts). These hold the clips around the aluminium pipe, and together with the silicone elbow the whole shebang can move and flex with the engine. 

My first attempt was a bit wonky...

... so tonight I cut the elbow down an inch or so to level the pipe. 

Can't give you any dyno numbers but it feels a bit more lively. 

Christ this thing is rapid, and it makes a proper race car bark at high revs. I drove it to swap over with the Maestro and it's stayed attached after some spirited driving, so I'm calling that a win. 

Can't beat a car you can play with. Bet it's top craic this 👌 

[grogee]

The Yota is in for MoT, supposedly now (1.30) but I can't see it happening on the CCTV in reception. 

I did a brief lights and wipers check this morning and I'm glad I did because one front sidelight and the rear foglight were out. Also reversing light although that's not a fail AFAIK. 

There is a creak/rattle coming through the car when I steer, I think it may be front or rear ARB bushes but I'm not certain. 

Also last year it failed on OSF ball joint which I changed, so I'm half expecting to need to change the NSF one this time round. 

-----UPDATE----

It passed, sort of. The headlight aim needed a tweak but they did it for a fiver (I think - bill was £55). 

So I've got 13m MoT to enjoy. It just won't die!!

As a special treat, I filled it up with 48.85 litres of delicious Sainsbury's DERV. Economy has dropped to 47mpg due to lots of urban driving around Birmingham with the AC on. 

Have a terrible picture of it parked behind my smoke tree. 

[grogee]

Did a bit more to the Maestro tonight. 

I fully intended to wash the Maestro and the Toyota after work but I ran out of steam after doing just one. 

Instead I decided to reverse flush the Maestro heater matrix while it was on the drive. A few weeks ago I noticed the heater was a bit weak so I'm guessing it might be a bit gummed up. 

I rigged up the hosepipe to force water in through the 'out' hose (oo-err). Basically it's colonic irrigation. 

I caught the water in a bucket and after a while I saw a small piece of what I think used to be wet and dry paper, maybe an inch square. That might have been the culprit, who knows? 

I haven't ran the new coolant through yet, I was too hungry so I'll do it tomorrow night. 

No pictures so have a shot of Isla Fisher instead. 

[grogee]

Last night I fired up the  'Stro to get the cooling juices circulated. Heater got nice and hot so that's an improvement. 

I was in the middle of reading the instructions for the electronic fan relay but by the time I'd started to figure out the wiring the 'otter switch' kicked in. So it's working after all. I just needed some balls to watch the temp gauge rise past 2/3rds. Fan kicked in, then temp needle went back to halfway. Verdict: it's fine, you fool. 

Like an idiot I started fitting a new throttle cable just before it got dark. 

I've not been able to source a proper 2.0EFI cable anywhere so I bought a 1.6 cable which looked pretty similar. 

On fitting it though, it became apparent why it's not suitable: it couldn't be adjusted to give the proper cable tension. 

No matter, a little bodgeneering will fix that - a little bracket to shift the cable stop nearer to the throttle butterfly.

Can be easily un-bodged if I happen to find the right cable, but only a hardened rivet counter would spot anything amiss. After all, BLARG didn't really concentrate much on underbonnet appearance - it's a swamp of wires, pipes and castings. 

[grogee]

Skoda time. I'd noticed the wipers would switch on the washers on full "speed" and thought that was sub-optimal if I got caught in a downpour. 

Picked this up for a reasonable price and it's NOS as well. 

Pretty easy to fit what with the Favorit interior being made out of Soviet Lego. Sadly it doesn't match the faded patina of the indicator stalk, but who cares? 

After that I did a full lights check ahead of MoT next week... They're all working at the moment, which is nice. 

I will explain to tester that it has a non standard engine and hope he measures the emissions based on a Polo GTI not a Favorit. I'm expecting fails on exhaust blow and possibly front suspension ball joints, but we shall see. 

[Yoss]

41 minutes ago, grogee said:

Skoda time. I'd noticed the wipers would switch on the washers on full "speed" and thought that was sub-optimal if I got caught in a downpour. 

Picked this up for a reasonable price and it's NOS as well. 

Pretty easy to fit what with the Favorit interior being made out of Soviet Lego. Sadly it doesn't match the faded patina of the indicator stalk, but who cares? 

After that I did a full lights check ahead of MoT next week... They're all working at the moment, which is nice. 

I will explain to tester that it has a non standard engine and hope he measures the emissions based on a Polo GTI not a Favorit. I'm expecting fails on exhaust blow and possibly front suspension ball joints, but we shall see. 

Have you fitted that yet? It looks decidedly brown in the second picture which mean it's for a mk1. The picture from the listing does look black though. 

The mk1 and 2 have slightly different features. The intermittent wipe on the mk1 is simple, one sweep every four seconds or so. The mk2 has this annoying adjustable timing whereby you flick it on, let it do one sweep then switch it off, wait until the required time then switch it on again and it will maintain that gap. But if you do a couple of individual wipes later on, without realising you have set the gap to about a minute and have to reset it again next time you use it. They carried this over to the Felicia too but I find it more annoying than useful. The fixed 4 second gap on the mk1 is much more user friendly. 

By the way I saw this yesterday. A Polo 6n2 GTI. One of these died to give your car its engine. 

These are probably rarer than a Favorit these days. 

[grogee]

2 minutes ago, Yoss said:

Have you fitted that yet? It looks decidedly brown in the second picture which mean it's for a mk1. The picture from the listing does look black though. 

The mk1 and 2 have slightly different features. The intermittent wipe on the mk1 is simple, one sweep every four seconds or so. The mk2 has this annoying adjustable timing whereby you flick it on, let it do one sweep then switch it off, wait until the required time then switch it on again and it will maintain that gap. But if you do a couple of individual wipes later on, without realising you have set the gap to about a minute and have to reset it again next time you use it. They carried this over to the Felicia too but I find it more annoying than useful. The fixed 4 second gap on the mk1 is much more user friendly. 

By the way I saw this yesterday. A Polo 6n2 GTI. One of these died to give your car its engine. 

These are probably rarer than a Favorit these days. 

It does look brown in the second pic, I think that's just weird lighting though as it's definitely black. 

I didn't know about the user-friendly* intermittent wipe function. 

The connections were all straight swap so I'm assuming it's the same as the one I took off, seems to work OK. 

Polo 6N2: can't remember the last time I saw a GTI one, they are definitely rare now. It was nice of the donor car to give up its engine, tis a rabid little thing. 

[Yoss]

Well now you know you can have hours of endless fun trying to set it. It's fine if you're on a clear straight road but there aren't many of those in Southampton and I'm usually trying to indicate/change gear/negotiate a roundabout at the same time. 

I've often wondered what those Polo GTIs are like. They might be marginally heavier than the Favorit but probably not much. You would imagine VW spent a little more on development than the guy who fitted it to our car and they might have smoothed out the power delivery a little bit. And you would imagine they have a few less rattles and squeaks. Much cooler than a Golf GTI simply for rarity value. 

[grogee]

4 hours ago, Yoss said:

I've often wondered what those Polo GTIs are like

Steady now

[JMotor]

6 hours ago, grogee said:

I will explain to tester that it has a non standard engine and hope he measures the emissions based on a Polo GTI not a Favorit. I'm expecting fails on exhaust blow and possibly front suspension ball joints, but we shall see. 

Emissions wise. Usually with stuff pre-2001 is done on what's older. Car or engine. So I reckon you'll be fine with that setup. 

Shall say it again. It's such a cool little car. The engine swap makes it that little more interesting.

[Yoss]

11 minutes ago, grogee said:

Steady now

Too late! 

I know they come in Škoda flavour but Mrs Yoss specifically wanted one in this colour. 

[grogee]

Skoda failed MoT on emissions... Bummer. 

Not worried about the rear wheel bearings, @Yoss says they're stock Favorit (or Felicia?) items and they're cheap as chips. I spotted the play when the car was on @Andyrew's lift and wondered if they were' in limits' or not. 

The emissions is a bigger problem though. Looks like 2nd idle test was close but no cigar. 

Should I:

1) Find a friendly tester. Suggestions on a postcard please, Northampton area. 

2) Stick some Cataclean in, give it an Italian, present for test smoking hot. (CO looks too high for this option) 

3) Buy a ghost MoT (believe it or not, this is my favoured option at the moment). 

Tester reckons a new catalyst isn't going to fix it, and in fact suggested Option 3 as a "fix". 

[Matty]

If he is suggesting option 3 then surely he is more than willing to bring a sub off the bench for the emissions part.

[Yoss]

I was lucky as I had option 1 available to me. I had shown him what I had done (I refitted the cat, it didn't have one when I bought it, a new temperature sensor, O2 sensor and cleaned out the K&N) so he decided to test it on the older regs. 

It did occur to me afterwards that I assume it has a MAF sensor but I never replaced that. I don't even know where it is or what it looks like but it's something to think about. 

[Yoss]

Also the wheel bearings might just need adjusting. Do they rumble or is it just free play? I replaced the offside one a couple of years ago. I guess it's all a moot point until the emissions are sorted. 

[grogee]

4 minutes ago, Yoss said:

Also the wheel bearings might just need adjusting. Do they rumble or is it just free play? I replaced the offside one a couple of years ago. I guess it's all a moot point until the emissions are sorted. 

Just free play, I didn't know they could be adjusted... That's old school. And good as it means I could get an easy win

[grogee]

1 hour ago, grogee said:

Just free play, I didn't know they could be adjusted... That's old school. And good as it means I could get an easy win

Nice

[Yoss]

1 hour ago, grogee said:

Just free play, I didn't know they could be adjusted... That's old school. And good as it means I could get an easy win

Take the little cap off the rear hub and you'll find something like this (this may not actually be a Favorit) 

Remove the split pin. Take that tin cover off (don't know it's actual name). That holds the hub nut on and stops it from moving. As you can see it is twelve sided so you can do the hub nut up half a flat at a time. Or you could undo  completely it and stuff some more grease in there.

You sort of only have to do it up hand tight. If you use a spanner it'll probably be too tight. Or you can do it up until the hub stops turning then back it off by probably one flat. It's all a bit trial and error and you can only really tell once the wheel is back on and spin it so sometimes you have to take the wheel on and off a couple of times. It can be a bit time consuming because of this but it's not hard. 

[Andyrew]

Had you beat the piss out the car before going in or was it cold? 

Did you get to have a look while the car was up on the MOT ramp? Any blows or holes in the exhaust? 

 

[Brigsy]

Option 1 gets my vote. The solution below

[Sigmund Fraud]

1 hour ago, Andyrew said:

Had you beat the piss out the car before going in or was it cold? 

The massive difference in CO between the two fast idle tests would suggest not...