When testing the car up the road before I took it for an MOT, an enormous hole blew out of the exhaust just after the cat on the right bank of cylinders, it sounded absolutely awful so the first job was to change the exhaust, luckily I had bought a good exhaust which I always intended to put on, so I took it to my mechanic mate who fitted it for me, took us about 2 1/2 hours though, it was a right swine!
Here's the hole in the exhaust:
And here's some weird writing on the catalyst core:
According to a mate who works for an exhaust engineering firm, the writing on the core is how the manufacturer identifies the substrate before it has been put in a cat 'housing'.
On the way to the garage to get the exhaust fitted I found that the brakes required a full service. I had to strip them down to the bare caliper and removed each seal, the front seals got replaced along with one piston as one of the 4 dust seals was completely gone which make the drivers side front caliper stick on on the way to get the exhaust replaced! However the rear calipers just required a seal removal, seal seat clean, and relube as they went back together. It rolls really well now so I'd say it was a good idea to do - the fuel economy is better than most people say it should be on the Soarer forums, it's certainly not 'good' economy at 16MPG from my first tank, but I've been razzing about in it a fair bit so I can't complain really!
So, most jobs I had done have had a good impact on the car, however there are still some issues (of course):
The rear suspension struts I had re-gassed, but it appears that the gas has leaked out again, doh! My plan here is to get a kit together to re-gas the struts myself, I've already acquired a nitrogen regulator, £300+ brand new, but we bought it off eBay for £56 delivered - nice! As it's a 105 bar regulator, I'm wondering whether I could use it to re-gas spheres too. It looks like a bottle of nitrogen isn't too expensive either:
http://www.refrigerantgases.co.uk/shop/ ... duct_id=42
The upshot of this is, the suspension is quite bouncy - sometimes. It's unusual because it's not always a rough ride, but when it is, it's just like a Citroen on service low, usually occurs at very very low speeds. However at speed it normally behaves itself and rides very very well.
There's a squeak from the steering, and a clonk which moves the steering wheel after a lot of steering input, which makes me think the steering UJ needs greasing, at least I hope that's all it is..
There was quite a bad knock from the offside rear suspension, I'd previously replaced an upper wishbone there because one of the bushings was stuffed so that was my first port of call, to access the bolts holding the wishbone on you have to lower the rear subframe down, which is when we realised one of the main bolts was totally loose. Sure enough that was the cause of the noise!
Next - During the servicing of the brake calipers, two o-rings (Toyota call them bushings) on the end of the slider pins failed. I didn't note down exactly which ones had failed as I expected them to be a tenner for all 8, but they're £5 each plus VAT, so I need to investigate which are the ones that have failed and replace just those. The problem that these bushings cause are that when you reverse and brake, the brakes shift about and clang one way, then do the opposite when going forward. It's fine if you don't change direction, but that's hardly ideal.
The suspension geometry appears to need setting up, certainly the tracking both front and rear, as the car seems to tramline an awful lot.
And yesterday the car decided to cut out completely, the tab holding an igniter connector tight had failed and the connector popped out, easy to get it going again but not ideal!
I think that's it for now, I hope to get a video of it rounding some corners soon and I'll post them up!
