Pressed Metal Plates

Plates and surrounds fitted. Cleaner, neater, and legal!

We have reception!

The radio issues are now sorted. Following on from the 'why are things never easy?' posts, it seems I was right, it was never going to be an easy fix...

As radio reception was fine in Keighley (where the head unit was fitted) but not in Skipton (where we live), it made sense to go to a local specialist rather than back to Halfords. So it was a trip to Car Radio Skipton where the very helpful and informative staff went through a process of elimination to find the fault.

Head unit out, check for signal booster. Fine.

Change to a new booster, still no reception.

Put new aerial on new booster, reception.

The faulty part just had to be the wiring from aerial on roof to back of head unit - joy!

We left them to it. Two hours later and we're back, everything working perfectly. OEM aerial, booster and wiring (plus 30 minutes of labour) and VAT came to just short of £90. All of a sudden the bargain stereo has become not so much of a bargain!

Trim decisions...

Leave the bump-strips on:

Or take them off?

Can't make my mind up - any preference?

Spring time

At last, almost time to fit some parts that aren't to replace broken bits or someone else's bodge.

First up, a set of 40mm lowering springs bought from eBay:

These won't be on for a couple of weeks, so in the mean time I'll be fitting up a nice set of UK-legal pressed plates and German dealer surrounds:

Will update with fresh pics in due course.

Why can't things be easy? Part two...

Now it's the wipers!

One of the first things we changes when we got the Lupo home were the wiper blades; scratchy, screechy and not really doing their job. This is one area where I feel you get what you pay for, so I always go for Bosch. Silent, efficient and long lasting.

If only the wiper arms were any good!

It seems the springs that hold the arm down to the glass have all the gusto of a job-seeking chav. The passenger-side wipes really well... onto the driver's side which doesn't! Yet another problem to solve.

On another positive note, we had a good day at Dubfreeze yesterday and it was nice to get close up to some Lupo inspiration. We also picked up some UK-legal pressed metal number plates and tasty Berlin dealer surrounds - hopefully fitting these at the weekend - weather permitting.

Why can't things be easy?

So we've done a full week's worth of commuting in the car. No problems to speak of at all. The only real downside has been the stereo - radio reception around these parts isn't great but for us to have no radio at all in Skipton is a bit out of the ordinary.

We bought the car with a fairly average Sony headunit in place:

I've never been a big fan of Sony's in-car stuff, it tends to be a bit brash-looking and the red lighting didn't really do the Lupo's blue lighting and favours. Plus the surround wouldn't stay attached to the cradle and sound quality was pretty poor.

So far, this is exactly the same situation as the van; a pretty standard VDO head unit with poor sound quality that we later replaced with a Kenwood unit.

Time for a new head unit then! Remembering this is budget-motoring we had to find a bargain - and we did. Halfords had an end-of-line Kenwood head unit with iPod USB and aux in for only £82.00, reduced from £199.99. Sold!

A fairly straightforward swap-over you'd think?

Not so. It seems our little Lupo may have been the victim of crime - it doesn't take Miss Marple to work out that wires behind the Sony unit were not that of the ISO connector that left the factory - somewhere down the line everything had been hastily snipped!

We also noticed that the aerial connector had never been connected - hence the lack of radio reception. Just over an hour and the we-fit man at Halfords had grafted on a new ISO block and installed the Kenwood unit - great stuff! Or so we thought...

As we drive back into Skipton the little RDS logo flickers and disappears into a crescendo of white-noise - me thinks our aerial issues may be further down the wire. The stereo in the van gives a perfect signal in Skipton! Frustrating to say the least...

Any ideas on how to cure this would be gratefully received (pardon the pun).

PS: On a happier note I am pleased to say the sound quality is much improved over the Sony unit.

Back home again

Back on the driveway again and this time in a slightly more useable state. God bless small cars and cheap replacement parts!

I've used Aire Valley Workshop since we had the Lupo GTI, they're all ex-volkswagen service staff who realised when working for the local VW dealership that people were walking away from VW's labour charge and looking for an independent. They're good guys that can be trusted - this says a lot when you're looking for a good mechanic.

As for Allen Car Sales in Heywood (yep, I'm naming and shaming), this is their idea of an 'immaculate' car:

OSF Bottom Arm bush worn - replaced
OS Drive shaft inner bolts - fitted incorrectly, replaced
Leaking gearbox seal (a common weak-point on Lupos) - replace and levels topped up
Throttle body cleaned out
Oil breather and oil pressure switch - replaced
All four tyres replaced - as mentioned in previous post, the fronts and rears where different profiles, one front had a bulge, one rear had a cracking sidewall. It made sense just to change the lot.
Check and adjust tracking
New front discs and pads
Clean and adjust rear brakes
Clutch cable - wrong one fitted, now replaced
Adjust handbrake
New door trim clip (another Lupo weak-point)
There was also a bit of welding work to the notorious pedal-box (yet another Lupo weak-point).

Aire Valley were also kind enough to take this in as a 'hospital' job, working on it between other jobs, and as such I don't think they've charge every minute of labour.

I'm annoyed I didn't spot some of these things when buying the car, but as they said at the garage, they would have missed the same things. So if you can, when buying a cheap car, take a mechanic - or better still get the car up on a ramp.

Needless to say, the budget for lowering and wheels has now disappeared for a while.

So we're good to go. The daily commute starts next Tuesday - I'll report back soon on how things are going.

I hate buying cars!

For the second time now I've heard the line 'I'm not sure how they've got this through an MOT' when having a newly purchased car checked-over by a garage I trust.

And it's beginning to get a bit annoying.

I fully understand that buying vehicles down at the 'budget' end of the spectrum means taking a little bit of a gamble. And I'm also aware that I'm no mechanic and there's only so much checking of a vehicle I can do before purchase. But where do these little two-bit, back street garages get off selling cars that turn out to be barely road-worthy to people that don't have much in the way of spare income to repair them?

And relax...

At this point I have to tell myself the positives: low-mileage, good body and paint, cheap. If I wanted a car without 'issues' I would've paid more.

I'm not going to dwell on negative stuff: new pads fitted, yet brake discs at end of life, wrong clutch cable fitted, two tyres with incorrect profile (I'm annoyed I didn't spot this) and a host of other little bodge-jobs seemingly to get the car through a test.

So that's my word of warning kids - a car can be un-roadworthy the minute it leaves a testing station. DO NOT take an MOT certificate as some kind of guarantee that you'll have 12 months of trouble-free motoring...

...and (as much as I don't want to tar them all with the same brush) never, ever, trust a car dealer.