Sunday, February 11, 2007

Cambelt change done -

So finally I got the cambelt done. It was within the 60k miles replacement schedule but alas outwith the 5 year mandatory change. So after checking with my usual garage they were quoting 440GBPounds plus parts and I’m like, er no. So after checking on the usual forums the OC came up trumps in the form of Peter at Sbits. So a wee jaunt down to his place last Monday night and everything was set.

Early next morning Peter started on the car and by 3:30pm the car was all back together again and everything was set to go. I was lucky as only the belt needed changing and thus the total cost was a very reasonable 236GBPounds all in. Even with the 70GBPounds of petrol I spent getting there and back it was still a massively cheaper option than having it done locally.

Thanks again go to Peter for putting me up at his house and then getting the work done on time and answering my (sometimes irrelevant) questions throughout the day.

Peter also identified the alt belt as being slack hence the squealing when cold and the odd chuffing noise from that area when the engine was running. On rebuild this has been fixed and no more squeals and funnily enough the battery seems to be getting charged better. Top dog for sure.

On another note Peter also identified the strange chatter type noise I was getting on throttle lift off. Turned out when we were testing a VTA dump valve, on re-fitting the original re-circ valve we put the VTV on the wrong way. For info, B faces the passenger side and A faces, er the drivers side. Now no more chatter but the original farting noise on lift off. Wonderful.

Top work and heartily recommended.



On another note, some company called Turborevs decided to post on my blog with what amounts to an advert for their business. Now that hacked me off cause they never asked but the info they put on the comment clearly indicated they knew nothing about MR2 turbos. Then in a fit of even more stupidity they managed to word the advert incorrectly giving the impression their products were better than the std unit fitted by Toyota. So in light of their rudeness and inaccuracy I have removed their comment but hey, you still get a mention so don’t greet ok!

Should you wish to place an advert on my rambling blog then please feel free to ask me first. If I agree to your text then I may include it on the title page, for a small fee of course ;-))

Saturday, February 03, 2007

pah! Pipex are total pish -

so much so that after 4 odd years with them I have told them to shove their account and I'm going with a company called Force9. Never heard of them but their speeds seem consistent and the price is good too.

Got some info from DSL Zone and Force9 came out pretty good. I'm on a monthly contract so if it goes pearshaped then I can bog off easy enough. Scary thing is the speeds that some ISP's are getting are pretty low considering they are advertising their services as upto 8MB. Some very dodgy advertising if those speed tests are to be believed.

So, at some time on the near future I will be offline for a few days while the ISP's sort themselves out. After this time I'll need to find a hosting service so I can have my website independent of the ISP cause all me links are gonna die when Pipex go phut.

On car news, finally washed it this afternoon and boy did it look good. So I decided to polish the old thing as well. My usual crappy standard but boy oh boy does the car look fabby. I'm gonna try and add some coats of polish if the weather stays dry over the next couple of days.

The car also gets the cambelt done on Tuesday so I'm looking forward to that being over with. Means I can feel safe when booting the stuffing out of the old girl. Dry roads would also be nice too. Roll on summer eh?

Take it easy out there