trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

I've had the car for almost 4 years and been on PF for a good while, one of my favorite bits of PF is looking at the restorations rebuilds and projects that people have going, many of the things I see inspire me and help me decide what to do to my own car. With this in mind I've decided to start a thread of my own.

The only pics I have of the car when I first bought it are the ones on the advert so I have scanned them in, and there not great quality.



the car was stage 1 had a new t3 with 360thrust brand new gearbox from ford, lowered on standard shocks and was siting on new bk 17" alloys
engine bay had only a k&n pannel filter dump valve and strut brace otherwise standard. The car also had a mongoose exhaust, full service history and every mot from new, the top end was a bit tired and it used a bit of oil, more than it should have for a 92k car.

The first things I had done where to get it de locked and remove a few spots of rust that where appearing

bootlid under spoiler


delocked doors


next thing on the list was new brakes all round as the disks that where on it where well past there sell by date

I opted for ebc all round, reds frony and greens back with grooved and spotted disks, they where a great improvement on the knackered standard stuff

the next things to get done where a secs monitor and some gauges to keep an eye on the essencials The carbon wasnt there at the time but I dont have any older pics


next on the list was a change of colour from red to blue for the rocker cover and some blue silicon hoses and some alloy tanks a carbon cam belt cover and a breather system


next was some koni shocks and polly bushes, did all the bushes except the rear arms which is as I understand a bit of a bonus as the standard bushes are better for the rear arms.

ford fair 2003


after this I was very bored of the 17psi that I was running so decided stage 3 was the way forward, I bought a set of greens a 3 bar map sensor a stage 3 chip and an rs500 cooler all from ebay!

The car lasted just under a year on the 23psi I was running it, and then on the way back from ford fair playing with a TVR it kind of melted!

Dan

Nice thread and pics Trev!

Whats happened with the car in the last 4 years then since FF 2003?

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

having just bought a house the car was unfortunately not the top of the list for financial outlay so I cleard all the rubbish out of the garage put the car in there pulled the head of to find a big melted mess, I then closed the garage door and left the car there for about a year!

I started looking at the car again in about august 2005 pulled the rest of the engine out and stripped it down ready for some attention.



I send the block crank and head to be bored ground and re built, it turned out the head had 8 bent exhaust valves and absolutely knackered guides on account of the bent valves, hence why it used a bit of oil

after receiving the bits back and having my wallet raped by woodford for a load of other bits I re built the engine myself








as part of the build the engine was ballanced and I fitted all arp bolts in the bottom end and group A gasket with standard bolts, the head and inlet manifold where also lightly ported by me under the guidence of someone who knows what there doing.

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

I then spent a bit of time cleaning up the engine bay and getting the last bits and bobs required for getting the engine back in





After a good bit of effort the engine was just about back in





once it was in I set about connecting everything up and getting ready to get it running, unfortunately once everything was ready and the battery had a nice charge I found out that the alarm had decided to die over the year and a half that the car had been sat. I then spent some time removing the alarm and voila got the car started















on only 3 cylinders

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

after lots of messing about I discovered that one of the brand new cam followers I had fitted was jammed solid fully open stopping the valve from shutting giving number 3 cylinder no compression, once this was fixed I set about fitting a new alarm, lots of fun wiring I then set about getting an mot and running the car in, however after my first 500 miles and an oil change it was apparent that the car was still tapping more than it should be I then went through a month or 2 stage of changing tappets one at a time trying to shut it up, after a while of this i was starting to get pissed off I also changed the wheels at this stage, the bk's had started to de lacker and I was offered a straight swap for the ones I have now.

at about this time the turbo also started to let go was getting lots of smoke out of the exhaust, however as a high point I was able to use the car as my wedding transport which I really wanted to do so was pleased that the car was at least working although tapping and smoking





Im the bold one on the right

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

once I was back from the honeymoon and recovered from the shock of being married I set back to work on the car, I eventually found that the tapping was due to air in the tappets due to a leak in the oil pickup pipe causing the oil pump to suck in air as well as oil hence filling the tappets with air bubbles and causing tapping, also probebly leading to the premature death of my turbo, however no other lasting damage was sustained, having checked the mains and big ends etc. The turbo was replaced with another t3 and the car completed the rest of the running in.

Not long after all this I started helping Rich (B9KOS) to do his car which had been out for a lot longer than mine! Most of my attention was spent doing this as he's to lazy to do it on his own, on the plus side as he was upping his spec I did get some good handmedowns although they werent free. I got a nice t34 turbo and various other little bits and bobs. I also opted to change my chip as I was always suspect that my previous one may have had a part to play in the meltdown so when me and rich visited Stu & Kenny @ MSD to get B9KOS live mapped I bought a new closed loop chip from stu. We also had a bit of a talk about voltage and fuel pumps. On my return I was all ready to fit the chip but first had to get a lambda boss welded into my downpipe, Rich had this done for me and also had an egt boss put in just in case. I also fitted an 044 pump and fully re wired it, I also noticed at this stage that my voltage was less than healthey at the ecu, this resulted in making myself a new engine loom and sorting out the wiring on the battery.

old loom


battery distribution fuse box


new loom

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

once the loom was back in and the ecu voltage was up to an acceptable but still to be remidied 13.7v I had to put the car through another MOT. With this out the way I actually used that car a few times, however the handling was less than good suffering major understeer at the slightest sniff of a corner and the brakes just didnt feel up to the now half decent stage 3 perofrmance of the car 27psi spike 25psi held.

Never the less the next purchase ended up being an MSD wasted spark driver which I fitted myself






Obviously I also fitted the coil pack (thanks cosrush) the leads (another handmedown from B9KOS one that I still owe him for ) and the amps etc leaving my engine bay looking somethig like this

tt2304x4

good work trev about time you started your own thread

Richie.

iTrader: (5)

As Chris says about time you got your own post going instead of clogging my post up with pics of your bufty mobile

Good to see the changes the car has gone though and i can also see where i've been a bad influence on you

Dan

Awesome work Trev!

Answer's my question anyway!

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

Thanks chris

The next thig on the list was to sort the handling or at least start, I did some shims from Rainbum (Thanks Mike) and changed all the tyres from ultra crap pikey bald ones to falken 512's on the back and 452's on the front, this made almost no difference to the understeer problem after consulting the understeer god who is B9KOS we decided the front of my car had got lower and it was a shaft trying to pull out snagging and causing the wheel to jurk that was causing the understeer, i got some new -25mm (thanks JTECHSAFF) fitted them and voila fixed, or at least much better it was then time to think about some brakes, I went through the old what do I do who do I buy from, new or secondhand etc etc but Rich said he was going to bum me unless I bought some brand new AP's and not being that way inclined (unlike him) I though I better buy the brakes





unfortunately because of my wheels I have had to fit some spacers to clear the brakes, 16mm ones, on each side it equates to me having et25 wheels lol it does however seem to have made the car handle even better.

the front brakes where followed almost imediately by some rearbrakes (thanks Jaycos)



which unfortunately didnt fit but where soon swapped with B9KOS for his 305mm rears so it all worked out lovely

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

next on the list was to do another few bits in the engine bay, I really didnt like the breather I had as it looked very unballanced, luckily for me a tank came up just at the right time, once again big thanks to that bloke that keeps bothering me B9KOS, this time he bought the tank and then made and had some -12 fittings welded on, at this stage we are almost even for the 6 months work I did on his car so we fitted the mirror image breather and I think it looks much better

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

Im working on answering it dan lol it's a lot of work doing a thread like this

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

the best thing about your thread is the pics of my car where is this bad influance stuff then?

KSA-Cossie

iTrader: (4)

Nice wee thread trev,looks really nice in the pics m8,keep the updates coming fella.

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

The next thing on the list was to continue the handling improvement so Adjustable tca's where purchased along with some xr4x4 driveshafts (thanks tt2304x4), these are not fitted yet though, a job for a future weekend, also in the handling department some solid rear beam mounts are on the cards very soon and in the future a beam from Danny B.



after this the next thing to arrive was some new gauges

JTECH James

iTrader: (13)

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

Obviously being excited like a kid at christmas I fitted them

Puss2

iTrader: (5)

Loving it

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

next on the interiour side of things, Im collecting a 92 spec dash on tuesday and theres a stack rev counter in the post as mine goes right off the end and my secs recall say 8200 so im not very sure what its revving to!!

thats just about it for the minute, I have other parts to fit, like a fuel rail with -6, aftermarket regulator rs500 splitter etc etc but ill save it for when I have pics.

here are some pics of my car pretty much current state, and some shonky thing that seems to follow me round trying to get past is in some of them

JTECH James

iTrader: (13)

what about the mullit mate?

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

yes james is correct its obvious that im going to kill my box at some stage, especially as some siemens injectors and mabe a t4 are on the cards so I will at some time in the future be gracing marcos door and pulling my pants down to the tune of 3K

Richie.

iTrader: (5)

You've put your prices up

marco polo

iTrader: (1)

hi trev

the car looks cool mate , coming along nicely

MaxCos

top work m8

MAX

Bungle

Looks lovely this car does mate fair play to you for doing it your self

Alan s1

FPMSL

Great read keep all the good work up

Twins

iTrader: (18)

Nash

iTrader: (3)

Good read Trev and really nicely done.

KSA-Cossie

iTrader: (4)

FPMSL

Charlie Chalk

iTrader: (1)

Lovely car

Dan

Nah didnt mean it like that Trev! I asked what was next but hadn't let you post the rest of the thread yet!

Car looks sweet now mate and with a bloody good spec!

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

did a few little bits today, took the drivers side wheel arch liner out, mmm lovely and clean in there no nasty supprises, anyway the reason for taking it out was to bolt the ignition amp brackets solidly to the inner wing as they had kind of been scralling about unearthed also to take the map sensor braket off the inner wing as my map sensors are now located on the strut brace one for use and one for spare just in case! Next job in the engine bay is to tidy up the SPA gauge wiring heat wrap the breather pipes and make a heat shield for the brake master cylinder area.

CosRush

Stunning Trev

Im amazed you found the time what with doing Richie's as well

I especially like this pic (except for the car in the background which ive removed ), nice backshot, moody clouds (which i darkened ), that is an excellent picture

Richie.

iTrader: (5)

Mine broke down during the those pics


Nice edit of the picture though Jared Trev loves that pic but hated that other car being there

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

thanks Jared you have much more skill than me when it comes to photoshop, was annoying having the other car there, and was funny that rich broke down

CosRush

Sticky.

iTrader: (4)

Great right up Trev

Lovely car mate, kep the updates coming

trevCOSS

iTrader: (6)

Little update.

I got home from work today to be greeted by a little box, containing my new rev counter





Its only the base model one, I did look at getting the st700 but the only thing it does that I dont already have with my spa's and secs is speed and I didnt want to get rid of my standard rev counter and speedo, as I have nothing else to put in there so I went for the pikey option and im just going to replace the standard rev counter . Next thing is to collect my 92 spec dash and then I can rip it all out, replace the main feeds from the battery to the fuse box and fit the rev counter.

rsfido_1989

car looks perfect in the top pics on pg1!