iain_ogston

I've got an old style megane. 110bhp, so not fast but good enough for the queues on way to work. Mega cheap to insure and 38mpg. 80k miles and not one problem (except for the spring which broke two weeks ago - but thats just wear and tear)

sambas.

My car is making a terrible rattling sound (much like a heatshield rattle) under decceleration especially in 4th and 5th gears, although 3rd vibrates too. Suspect is the gearbox, although it's all fine when sitting at constant speed or accelerating. Last week it was in the garage and they replaced the secondary output shaft and a distorted woodruff key on 5th but this doesn't seem to have been the problem at all, since the sound is now louder and much more noticable over the last day. In fifth it bucks like a bronco as the engine slows to under 2500rpm. Any gearbox experts got any ideas what this could really be? (last piece of work seems to have been redundant) I'll be phoning the garage on Thursday to see what's going on.

och well my gearbox sounds like a bag of spanners so car is going to be in bits again. Might check out the next one.

Now my scoob is rebuilt I am interested in seeing some figures for it. Where's the nearest Rolling Road folks would recommend? (I'm near Aberdeen)

Wow 320 miles. That's a long way. No way I could achieve that, I'd have to freewheel downhill or push the last 100 lol. Trouble is I *love* to hear the whine of the turbo and feel the acceleration, so it's hard to stop booting it up to above 1 bar pulling away from every junction and roundabout. To me, that's the fun in owning a modified scoob. 18 MPG is the payback for the way I drive I guess.

Cheers for that! I'm pretty happy then. If a standardish WRX is making 23 then 18 on a modded car isn't bad at all. I have a spreadsheet too, since car clocks up km and I buy litres of petrol, MPG requires a bit of thought lol

Right, the results are in. My car officially does 18mpg after its rebuild on plain old optimax. Thats just under 200 miles to a tank, but I'm not too light on the right foot, sustaining anywhere between 1.2 and 1.5 bar under acceleration depending on gear/load. It's an RA gearbox so runs at quite high revs on the dualler. Is this figure good or bad? I've no markers to compare this against so would like real world figures for standard STIs please, running optimax.

Nice! Same sort of stuff I've got on my motor. What make is the flywheel and what weight is it? Mine is the Sti motorsport one and I think it's 5.4 kg

pmsl the text to speech bit is superb. nae censorship either, speaks pretty much anything. Few mates getting told to buy new motors by a chimp, class.

yes you need plenty of that to mod

I was where you are (starting to modify lightly) two & 1/2 years ago. Here's my experience..... If you want to do the car in stages it is possible to do some things. I did the straighforward mods on mine in stages over two years. Started out with induction (every Jap car's first mod!), then plugs/fuelling (plugs, motorsport pump, rails & pressure regulator), then exhaust pipes (centre/up/down), then equal length headers. Sort out air/fuel before modifying exhaust significantly was the advice I got, to avoid fuelling issues. At this point I had a car which was great fun to drive and sounded awesome under load but suffered from some of the problems mentioned - slight boost spike under spool up etc. I thought I would stop there. But I didn't - so I got a new clutch. But I wanted more and didn't want to wait. So along came a new STI6 short engine, big injectors, ECU (Apexi) and boost controller (AVC-r), upgraded internals, gaskets and head studs, polished and ported everything, motorsport flywheel, gearbox rebuild etc. blah etc. list goes on. Custom remapped on the road and runs like a dream. It's got 2 computer thingies I can fiddle with if I'm sitting in a queue. Total entertainment value. Am I finished? who knows. Bank balance suggests I am BUT the warnings given here are correct. Upgrades CHANGE your car's characteristics. A totally decat exhaust has wildly different performance to a standard system. The ECU really needs changed to an Apexi or similar so that the car can be tuned to the parts fitted. The great things about an Apexi ECU (or similar) is that when you upgrade more parts, then you can get the map changed - it's a process towards a goal.

There are loads of scoobs in and around aberdeen. I've noticed a particular influx of older classics as earlier models now cost peanuts from JDM auctions. Plenty of importers near or in NE scotland. Go to inverurie town centre any evening and witness minimum of 5 doing the local "circuit" (NAE me, I prefer the open road)

I was driving about with sidelights on for about a week. HOWEVER! I'm nae that dumb, my switch had actually failed and locked on (even when off).

where is it?

2.42 a litre!!! 45 litres = 109 quid no thanks twice weekly. Tank of optimax 45 litres @ 97p = 44 quid. Plus a couple of bottles of octane booster ???? less.

When my RA had the original WRX RA engine in it, and I fitted decat pipes and headers, boost went from peaking at 0.9 bar (factory ECU limit setting) to just under 1.1 bar (going by my greddy gauge) so I'd assume the increase in boost is normal with an exhaust upgrade. Decreased back pressure meaning boost spikes before the ECU gets it under control.

If you've got the cash (400 quid) you could get official STI flaps. These are the dogs. The go right round under the arches at the front and protect the entire inner area, unlike some narrow after market examples where front and back flaps are roughly the same width. The alloy brackets are an easy fit since they are subaru parts. I might post some pics of mine once I get my car back (probably later today)

I've never purchased a car from IndyCars (although he imported mine) or traded in a car there and have no idea of the prices charged for vehicles - My comments were purely facutal about servicing provided which I've found to be excellent. I can tell you from my regular visits to the showroom that all the cars for sale are tip top condition though. m555Rae >> second hand Jap imports with supposed low mileage (how come the Japanese never use there cars???) Well that's easy - the FAQ on any import site will tell you why. Japanese roads are a nightmare (congestion, tolls etc) and their MOT equivalent is very strict and costly. Hence well maintained older cars with low miles are common as muck. And they aren't rusty cos Japan doesn't salt the roads. There are loads of import sites on the net showing selections of older vehicles with low miles. Russell >> Kemnay! local to me and very handy. When you moving?

thats a bummer. my car goes there for all it's work. labour is sensible (30 an hour) and he's got a massive warehouse of used parts if you can't stretch to new bits when something goes wrong. The owner also spent a lot of time with me discussing exactly what I wanted from my car before it's recent rebuild. I've never had any problems in 3 years of using them, and my new engine is absolutely fantastic (his mechanic is excellent, spent ages porting my heads to get them spot on)

Ac!d,. have you had a bad experience at Indy Cars?

Filled up this afternoon Properllor garage in Bucksburn. 96.9p, no sign of a shortage. However, the Shell on North Anderson Dive was dry of Optimax as early as Wednesday evening this week so there is definitely a problem.

car looks sweet! nice morettes.

I spent a lot of time discussing practicality and reliability versus performance with my local engine builder before my car had it's recent rebuild. The options on offer stretched up to 450 bhp, and my main criteria were that I wanted a car that was amazingly quick, but which I could take to work every day without it blowing the engine. The standard STi engine is very strong and has lighter forged pistons than are standard on a WRX. That's why I replaced my WRX 95 block with an STI6 short engine. A few more internal tweaks such as upgraded bottom end bearings, cams and lifters means the engine revs higher but does it safely. An upgraded oil pump has been fitted to ensure the engine gets a good supply. The heads have also been fully ported to allow increased gas flow, and they are held on with upgraded studs and high performance metal head gaskets, which also have the benefit of altering the compression ratio slightly. However, there's no point in upgrading anything in the engine until the ancillaries are correct. Sort out the exhaust system - equal length headers, decat up/downpipe and centre section, combined with a high performance back box. You need this to allow the engine to breathe properly. If you're going to remap with increased boost you probably want to upgrade your fuel pump (I needed to cos of the age of my car), fit a fuel rail pressure stabiliser and bigger injectors (which can be fully utilised as part of the remap). Once you get to bigger power your clutch will struggle too. You'll need minimum of an organic clutch (rated to about 400Nm) and it's worth changing the flywheel when you're in there for something like an STI motorsport 5kg version - I found the flywheel makes a huge difference to the characteristics of the engine, making it much more responsive (both through the revs and you get a bigger drop off between gears, which is useful with a close ratio box like my RA) If you're getting an Apexi ECU then it will monitor knock for you and the check engine light flashes when it detects the onset of knock, so you can retard the ignition timing a bitty to avoid engine damage. Basically you need to speak to your local expert and set a target - what power do you want to run at the end of the day? Every part you fit to your car will then be based on that target and this means the car will run higher bhp but it won't suffer reliability problems since it's been done properly.

Not sure my equal length headers made the car "quieter" (ported exhaust system combined with full decat up/down/centre pipes, jap back box) <4000 RPM - less "scooby signature" boxer note, slightly more puttering/backfire on deceleration - quieter around the culdesac perhaps. 4000RPM to 8000RPM on the road- sit yer lug next to a Ducati 999 superbike (ear defenders on). Lots of pops and bangs on way down under braking/gear change. You get the idea