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Thought I would do an update on how the manual W8 Passat is going so far. In the month and a half I have had it, I've already done over 2500km! Since I am yet to find an undercover spot for it, I've been parking it at my house which has been bad for my wallet as I've been taking it out every other night for a cruise from the shore to Auckland CBD and back. It's really surprised me on how nice it is to drive. So far, not a ton of issues, but not trouble free either. My intermittent check engine light has become a permanent one and its fuel intake issue seems to be getting worse. W8 Passats have a highly sophisticated (over complicated) fuel tank setup. Volkswagen, in their wisdom, decided that because the Passat was getting a 4.0L W8 engine, it should have a bigger fuel tank capacity. Instead of making the fuel tank bigger, they decided it would be better to add a second 20L tank in the spare tyre well to compliment the standard 60L tank, and then have an internal fuel pump to pump fuel from the 20L tank to the 60L tank when required. This means the car has no less than 4 fuel level senders! The fuel tank also has its own control module which figures out combined fuel level of the two tanks which is then shown on the fuel gauge. The fuel gauge in my car does not work, most likely as a result of the fuel tank control module being faulty, or one or more of the fuel level senders not working. However, this wouldn't bother me if I could at least fill the car up. If I could fill it up I would just go 400-500km and then refuel. When I first got the car, if you didn't hold the pump at an angle, the pump would click off every litre. But if you had it at the right angle, fuel would go in just fine. However, over the last few weeks, unless you have the pump at an absolute dribble, the pump will click off every 30 cents or so, which means putting as little as $20 worth in takes about 5 minutes. Very, very annoying. It means I don't know how full my tank is because I can't just fill it up as the pump clicks off every second so I have no idea where the "top" is, and of course, my fuel gauge doesn't work! I stuck a borescope camera down the filler neck and it showed fuel seems to be sitting at the first bend which is in line with the top of the 60L tank. This would show that the car appears to be overfilled with fuel, yet I'll drive 200+km, and then still have trouble getting fuel into the car. Doing some reading online, I hypothesise the charcoal canister in my car is damaged. The charcoal canister breathes the fuel tank. What I think has happened is when the fuel gauge broke, one of the previous owners thought it would be a clever idea to fill the tank right to the top of the filler neck to hold as much fuel as possible. However, what this does is allow fuel to get into the breather line and turn the charcoal canister into a concrete-like substance, which means it won't be doing any breathing. In a normal Passat the charcoal canister is easy to get to, but of course, in a W8 it is sandwiched by the additional 20L tank, meaning you have to drop the whole fuel tank just to get to it! Currently I just go to the petrol station at night so I don't annoy too many people by being slow, put some music on and stand there for 15 minutes to put a bit of fuel in, and then work out how far I can go. My current plan to sort this is to try find the charcoal canister line so that I can vent the tank to atmosphere, and bypass VWs complicated system of sending the gases to the engine. Anyway, on to things that have been done, so far: A few days after my last post about the car I had it serviced. The oil looked alright but the previous owner couldn't remember when he had last changed it, and what oil he had put in it. The coolant looked pretty grotty so I was keen to have that flushed out. I took the car to Weissach Motors on the North Shore who are Porsche and VAG specialists, after my parents recommended it to me as they had done rear shock replacements on my mother's 911. The car got some Liqui Moly 5W-40 and had the cooling system flushed. Apparently, the reason the coolant looked grotty is Volkswagen used a material in the cooling system that does not like regular tap water, which over time makes coolant look bad as it degrades. Weissach Motors have a very slick email system which sent me a detailed inspection they had carried out on my car while it was there for service including photos of issues. A few things came up which I wanted to sort. Front CV boots were both split, with one leaking grease. Brake hoses had some cracking and there were some perished bushings in the front end. Hopefully next week the car will go in to have all this stuff sorted. I also had a nail in my front left tyre, so tyres jumped closer to the top of my "to-do" list, especially since the rears had un-even wear and pretty low tread anyway. The battery was also terrible so I replaced that with a Century one. One thing that I felt let down my Passat were the wheels. The factory BBS wheels are a cool looking wheel, but mine were in very, very bad shape. I took them to Wheel-Fix It, and since the centres were oxidising and all the lips were very curbed, to have them properly sorted they would need to be chemically stripped, which would cost close to $3K. They were so bad in fact, the guy said it would be best to find a new set and refurbish them instead. Considering I also needed new tyres, I started looking at a more affordable way to sort the wheels. I began searching for another set of W8 wheels, however seeing as W8s are quite rare, and to my knowledge the BBS wheels on W8s didn't go on any other Volkswagen, I couldn't find anything. I then thought about buying another W8 just for the wheels. I looked on Facebook Marketplace, hoping to find a very cheap W8 with somewhat decent wheels, however I couldn't find anything. I then had a look on trademe, and to my surprise I found a silver, NZ New auto W8 Passat, also with the rare Recaro interior, and with much tidier wheels wrapped in Bridgestone RE003s for sale at a dealer in Hamilton. It had been for sale for over 5 months so I drove to Hamilton with a mate and offered the dealer a fair amount (only about $1200 under asking price). I now had two silver NZ new W8s. We drove the cars home in tandem which must have confused other motorists seeing two; largely identical W8 Passats driving together. We swapped the wheels that night, and I was pretty happy with how it improved the look of the car. Driving both cars also made me realise how special the manual one is. They feel very different to each other. The auto is a nice cruiser but is way too laid back especially around town and very boring compared with the manual. The auto one went back on trademe that evening. Now that I had two W8s, I set about sorting a few things on my manual car, using bits from the auto one. My manual one was missing its boot gas struts, and had a faulty boot lock actuator, meaning you could only open the boot by putting the key in the lock. I swapped the gas struts and then the actuator. Of course the screws holding the actuator in place are located face up to the boot skin so you have to take the entire bracket holding the lock and plate lights off, and then squeeze the screw bit and a small ratchet in to get the actuator off. Got there in the end, and now I have a boot that opens by holding the button on the key. The button inside the car and the handle seem to intermittently work now when they feel like it. That night I took the car out to get some petrol as I was so pleased with how it was going, and was proud of how tidy the car was starting to look. Of course 3 minutes out from my house a tree branch fell down onto the car, leaving a nice dent in the bonnet which I will have to have pulled out. The bonnet is double skinned so will be a bit of a pain to sort as you can't get it from the inside. Was pretty pissed off. To cheer myself up a bit, I had my headlights polished and coated at Renew Car as they were yellowing and were faded in some areas. Car looks a bit fresher with polished headlights now. I also continued cleaning the interior. Did a wet-vac of the carpets which has helped remove the cigarette smell from the car, and I sorted out the peeling wood veneer trim with some 3M Outdoor Mounting Tape. So that just about covers what I have done to the W8 so far. Took it out for a few photos over the past couple days:

Went for its first WOF under my custody - I was wise to do this a month before it expired as I have quite a few things to address! Nothing too bad, so more a matter of re-shuffling the to-do list priorities: Play in both steering rack ends - all good as already have new tie-rod full assemblies ready to go Driver door hinge play - got a bad wobble - probably explains why I struggle to open that door when its jacked up! will repair the hinge pins / bushes - seems like a common issue for the inner bushes to break as many repair kits exist. Will also replace the 'door stop' while I'm in there as the door does not hold position on any kind incline and its a pain / makes the car feel cheap Power steering (hose?) leak - need to see if I need to replace the hose to the pump or just a clamp Drivers seat very wobbly - already knew I would be rebuilding this prior to re-upholstering - need to check what is loose / broken in the seat frame (hopefully not requiring welding) and will replace seat shocks and clean + lube it all while apart Nothing at all glamourous but will be really nice to have tight, accurate steering, solid, functional door hinges and a firm, safe drivers seat!

So last night I got round to doing something I’ve been meaning to for a long time - flashed the GDSMG2 module with the ‘255’ CSL binary using WinKFP. I also flashed the DME with the CSL SMG shifting and rev matching parameters and the clutch inertia parameters using BMW Flash and the ECUWorx MSS5X Binary Modification Tool. To provide stable supply to the battery I hooked the car up to our Subaru with jumper leads during the flashing process to minimise the bricking risk. I then flashed the GDSMG2 module first with WinKFP: Followed by taking a partial copy of the DME user data area, modifying it with the ECUWorx tool, and then flashing the modified binary back to the DME: The MSS5X Binary Modification Tool is great. So easy to use and such a time saver. I am completely confident in my ability to modify the binary by hand, but I spend a fair chunk of my time in the depths of software, so when it comes to extra-curricular car activities I was more than happy to spend $40 to save the time and mental effort that would be required. The flashing process went flawlessly for me, and I was all done in about 45 mins. For anyone doing it my advice is as follows: 1: Ensure that your programming platform is stable and working. I gave my hardware, OS cable, etc a good work out with INPA and ISTA first to get as much confidence as I could that the connection to the car seemed reliable. 2: Make sure you have a stable power supply. Either jumper to another (running) car, Or fork out for a supply mode charger. 3: Read up carefully on the process, make sure you know the steps and that you have everything in place, you don’t want to be messing around figuring stuff out when you’re in the middle of doing it. 4: Make sure you understand that flashing modules over OBDII is inherently risky, and that you can’t eliminate all risk. Make sure you can live with it going bad, and that you have a plan for how to resolve if you end up with a bricked module. So onto the CSL binary and DME updates themselves… Everyone says how much better the CSL binary is. I’ve heard lots about how it’s faster. To be honest I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it. The standard SMG software has always seemed pretty decent to me, and it’s plenty fast to begin with, so I wasn’t sure I wanted more speed and harshness. Oh how wrong I was. The CSL flash is a bit faster, but the real benefits are how much smoother it is shifting under acceleration, and how wonderful the rev matching is on downshifting. It’s a revelation. It significantly improves the SMG function, without taking away any of the character that makes the SMG special to begin with. Suffice to say this change will be sticking round on my car!

Jetski, I'd put money on it being a Jetski!! 😉

It will be part no 25117527252 ? Is also on my next import list for mine

Schmiedmann- got here in under a week too

I believe it is in-fact in km. Here is what has happened I reckon: If we look at the carjam, it is recorded in miles. However, the car has an un-natural jump of 70,000 miles (over 110,000km) from 2019 to 2021. Clearly this is a mistake. In 2019 it was at 115,601 miles or 186,041km. It then had its next WOF 18 months later in July 2021, indicating the car probably was not used, hence the WOF lapsed. In July 2021, it was recorded to have done 186,932 miles, but as we saw the screen is in kilometers, so was most likely switched to km prior to the WOF and then wrongly recorded. 186,932km is 116,154 miles which matches the timeline. July 2021: 116,154 miles October 2019: 115,601 miles Therefore I think it is most likely at 187,000km, the WOF inspector just didn't do the conversion after the screen metric was changed. Good looking car too, and decently priced especially with the detachable hardtop being included. Good on the dealer for being cautious though!

Is that why people want moon beams for them? Think they have the last set in existence! funnily enough I smashed up a set of the “jdm” black headlights only a month ago.

Car looks great, don't you just hate nature !!!

I thought it was a normal e30 thing to not be able to open doors when jacked up haha. Well mine and the few I've worked on in the past was the same

Heh, nothing like having a deadline to get stuff done!

I would be wary Last UK MOT milage record and milage records here all signal it is in miles, even though odometer says km 🙄

Don’t most people burn those?

Now you need a new plate ^^

km it is...not sure about the wheels but looks nice otherwise

Yesterday I was looking over my E34 which I hadn't driven in a couple weeks, and spotted some masking tape and half a can of gloss black plasti-dip. I decided I should mask off the front license plate filler, which was pretty battered from 370,000km of NZ's finest roads, to see if I could make it look any better. Didn't bother to do any prep work other than give the area a quick wipe with a rag and then began spraying. Took all the masking off this afternoon and it actually looks decent enough, and will be a good temporary fix until I can be bothered to order a new one.

Yeah all that can be removed then you just need a cap on the manifold nipple outlet

@Vass Welcome to the CarPro Cult Perl is amazing on tyres at 1:1 dilution for a beautiful black look without being greasy. Also great undiluted for exterior trims (E.g. shadowline trim etc). I'm a big fan of Hydro Lite as well. And Inside, Reset, Elixer, Fixer and Essence. Got some Clearcut and Ceriglass waiting to be put to work. Pretty packaging does not hurt either.

😂😂😂👌. Made my day!

200,000km is the break in period, not high ks Depends what service history is, my stock clutch lasted 230,000km etc. If hasnt had them done, you can expect at 230,000 - Sump gasket leak, rocker cover leaks, oil cooler leaks Waterpump (likely has been done by 230,000... mine was still going though) Suspension bushes shagged Guibos torn and centre hanger bearing sad Clutch and DMF Shifter bushes Diff bearings and seals Vanos solenoids dicky/coked up DISA valves rattly, particularly if - CCV failed and dumping oil into intake Nothing is particularly scary or expensive, and once done will go another 200,000+ km.

Sharks, poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders, ridiculous heat… or did you mean with the 130i..? Good luck with the move, I hope it works out well for you.

A bike rack, maybe

And repeat, then probably go to the red light district and top it off with a quick smoke..... WTF Netherlands, you crazy.

Pretty sure it's the Heritage Touring cars series in AU http://www.heritagetouringcars.com.au/ , which is absolutely wonderful to watch and terrifying. A true series based on use it for what it what built for racing, and we are lucky that there are owners who have taken to the spirit of it.

The 318i swapped to an n series motor.

Right, where are we up to... Still waiting on the engine back from the machine shop. Instead of the 3 weeks originally promised, it's now been two months and as far as I know, they still wouldn't have touched it either. Last I called them, was told they're still a couple of weeks away from getting to it, claiming covid sweeping through the shop as a justification/excuse. Not overly bothered by it though as I haven't made as much progress with any of the other missions as I'd hoped. Keep getting distracted and jumping from one thing to the next without addressing things in an orderly fashion. Luckily with tomorrow off, I'll sit down and make a proper priority list. First thing will be to finalise the list of needed parts and put a few orders in. Did tick off a couple of other items though with the help of some fellow Bimmersporters. Got a new clutch kit and flywheel, courtesy of @Eagle and a set of coils from @Kodachrome. Top guys, everything was as described and arrived quickly and securely. Also, got the first set of 193's sold and the other one wrapped in fresh new rubber. Still sitting in the garage, waiting to go onto the car at the moment. Got some Carpro DLUX (as well as some other goodies from Detail Depot) and want to try my hand at ceramic coating them before I subject them to road grime, will hopefully preserve the near-new look for a while longer. Apart from the flash stuff, the rusty old diff is cleaning up pretty nicely. Will still have a few more stabs at it with some brass brushes but looking noticeably less crusty already. Stripped the trailing arms down to the bare shell, will also get some brass brush treatment, a couple coats of black paint and then brand new bushes and bearings. Liberating the wheel hubs of all the bearing bits was a bit of a mission but got to try out the wee rotary tool I'd picked up from SCA. With help from @adro managed to figure out one of the reasons why my rear wipers don't work. The extended list of PO's botch jobs got another addition. He'd changed out the clock spring for some reason and of course replaced it with one off a sedan/coupe, the wiper lever on which you can only pull towards you to activate the front washers, but doesn't have the backwards push function that activates the rears. What it is vs. what it should be Turns out the trusty wee ti's also have a rear wiper (who'd have known) and have the same washer lever. Luckily there was one at the local Pick-A-Part so went an nabbed this crusty old thing. Gave it a good ol' clean, fitted it on, powered up aaaaand... a big fat nothing, with the added bonus of the front washers now also not working anymore 😄 Beautiful. I suspect it's still the sheared ground wire at the rear hatch. Really need to get that sorted already. But instead of doing that, I went out and bought this bloody thing... Shoot me.

I think the OBC is about right, I filled to the brim in Auckland, and then refilled with 1005 kms on the trip computer and it took 61.2 litres at the pump, though that was 90% highway driving. Its not xDrive, I think those average about 0.4 l/100 kms worse off for the 640d, at least according to the official data. Officially this will do 5.3 l/100 kms on the open road, but I think that would really would be a stretch. I'll look into wheels are some point, I think those Vossen wheels have been known to crack too. I like the colour too, I am sick of washing dark cars all the time!

Exciting morning for me yesterday - new wheels and tyres went on finally. Maxilite Alpina wheels in 16x7 ET28 and 16x8 ET28 with Yokohama AD08R's in 205/50 and 225/45. Absolutely stoked - wheels look fantastic and fitment is great, probably pushing it about as far as practical without rubbing / rolling. I am probably going to raise it 5-10mm all-round over Easter - it looks great but is a wee bit impractical at this height. The tyres look super aggressive as well and the car is feeling significantly more planted and turns much sharper without an obvious NVH impact (the 205/55/15's were old RE002's). Car has not been aligned but tracks much straighter, will be aligning once new control arms, CAB's and tie-rods go in soon - should be handling far better than I could ever exploit by then. Obligatory photoshoot.

I do like some of the comments, "it will cost you a lot of money!!!" No sh1t genius, its a 500 hp n/a V10 in a station wagon!

January '22 223,XXX km To take a break from the demolition job, I got onto installing the trunk trim bits I'd scavenged earlier. Not that it made an astronomical difference, but pretty satisfying none the less. Also helped get rid of a couple pesky squeaks & rattles as well as properly securing the side bit that the cargo cover latches onto, where the bolt hole had been ripped out. Afraid to put anything in the trunk now... The donor also came with some decent leather door cards, so those got a good clean and went straight onto the wagon. They looked tidier than the current ones, where the cloth part had gone all saggy, plus the numerous scuffs had been a real eye sore, most notably on the passenger door. The new door cards came with the added bonus of additional smaller speakers that I'll need to figure out how to wire in further down the line. No clue how that will work, but I'm sure future me will figure it out. The trim inserts will need a little going over with some fine sandpaper and a coat or two of paint to finish the look off. The wagon also got the front indicators off the donor that don't seem to be prone to moisture infiltration. Another little annoyance ticked off the list. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the donor car was becoming an increasingly sorry sight. More and more bits were coming off and getting sold or put away in storage, all engine cables getting tagged, all nuts and bolts going into separate sandwich bags and being labelled. Out came the subframe, and with the help of a mate, the engine soon followed. Love that green coolant, yum yum yum. Stripped the very last parts off the shell. Tried not to let anything go to waste, so kept everything from the windshield washer motor down to the brake booster and anything else I could lay my eyes on. Now all that was left was to figure out how to get the body out of the garage without any wheels on it... Ended up lifting the rear with an engine crane and rested the front rails onto a pole poked through a couple of spare wheels, creating a magnificent wee Batmobile. In the final couple of days, the last bunch of salvageable body panels went off to new homes, leaving the formerly glorious machine cutting a rather sad figure. Never nice seeing one of these get taken off the road, but at least the heart will live on in a new shell. R.I.P. 2002-2021 So, finally caught up, this is where things currently stand. The rear subframe is sitting on the floor, ready to be torn apart and put back together. The engine is up on the stand, awaiting the same treatment. The manual parts are in England, being loaded onto a pallet and going in for freight in the next couple of days. Can't wait. As for Barbara herself, she's still happily chugging along. Despite being a bit capricious at times, she's never left me fully stranded, to her great credit (knock on wood). With every bit of work going into it, she's feeling more and more my own and will be a whole different beast of a car by the end of year at the latest. Hopefully much sooner though. This has grown into a bigger project than anything I've ever undertaken before, by several orders of magnitude, and I'd be very keen to hear any sort of advice and guidance all you more knowledgeable folk might care to share. If you notice me going something dodgy or spouting some utter nonsense, by all means pull me up on it. I'm humble enough to admit I'm barely informed at best of times, and desperately clueless at others, so am very open to learning from people that have been there and done it before. I'm doing my best to research every step of the process before embarking on it, but if you do see me asking silly questions that have been addressed numerous times before, point me in the right direction and I'll eagerly do the due diligence. The goal with this process is to do as much as possible with my own two hands, and hopefully by the end of it, be left with a solid and reliable car to enjoy for years to come. Thanks for all the kind words and encouragement! Will do my best to keep it entertaining.

Hahah thanks mate, glad to provide amusement 😄

This thread is more interesting than most shows on netflix these days. following with interest!

December '21 222,XXX km One evening I took a drive down to Ashburton to have a look at a potential side project, a deregistered E91 320i going for cheap. Looked tidy enough but luckily it ended up selling to someone else before I had time to make the dumb plunge into the 4-cylinder world. Barbara here must have gotten jealous as on the way back she threw an engine code, the sassy bitch. P0174. Classic. To my knowledge, the DISA hadn't been refurbished, but then again could have been a whole handful of other culprits. The prospect of going on a wild goose chase for vacuum leaks didn't really appeal to me. Nor did chasing down the persistent clunk from the rear end. Then one day I discovered a line of coolant running down the crank and it just threw me over the edge. Everything else had been replaced by that point so it must have been one of the hard plastic lines under the intake manifold. Nope, not keen. So I did what any rational idiot would do when faced with another minor annoyance... ... I went out and bought a bloody parts car. Jokes aside, it had been a while in the making and not at all an impulsive decision. I'm sort of a 'demolish and rebuild' type of person, would much rather start from scratch and tackle everything in one go instead of playing whack-a-mole chasing down persistent issues. I settled on doing a full on assault on the engine, but if I was going to go down the full refurb rabbit hole, I figured it might as well be a 3L instead of a 2.5. I saw a few M54b30's listed on TradeMe for around $1,700, which seemed silly money for just the engine, so I started keeping an eye on Turners and Manheim damaged car auctions. Auckland had a few 330's come up, but quotes for transporting them down south came in at $2k and over so was a no go. Then when this fine specimen popped up locally, I knew it was the one. A 2002 330i with 160,XXX km on the clock, all up cost me a touch less than the asking price on the aforementioned engines alone, written off with side impact damage. The two doors took the brunt of the damage, with just a small dent in the B-pillar behind the door, which is what did it. Doesn't take much nowadays. Funnily enough, the previous owner reached out when he came across my part-out listing, so I got a nice insight into the car's backstory. The repair quote had apparently come in at $8k. Yikes! Luckily, we'd managed to get our own modest little place earlier in the year, so I now had my own decent-sized garage to mess around in where I wouldn't be driving any housemates up the wall with my lunacy. Getting a whole car meant that I could go for a full 330 conversion - engine, brakes, drivetrain, whole rear subframe with trailing arms and all. The plan is as follows: Rebuild engine with new seals, gaskets, new auxiliaries, rebuild DISA, VANOS, the works. Was tossing up whether to pull the head off or not but probably might as well. Have it checked for cracks and hardness, get it machined and honed. Probably change the piston rings, likely retrofit the M52TU ones. Still figuring out the full scope, but don't want to leave much to chance. The main thing I'm concerned about is the head bolts pulling the threads when reinstalling the head, which I've read might happen. Installing timeserts seems like a whole heap of mucking about that I'd rather avoid at all costs. I'll probably start a separate thread for the engine build itself as that's the biggest part of the project that I'm going to need tonnes of advice on, which would probably make this thread too convoluted with everything else that'll be happening. Refurb the whole rear subframe - already have a full kit of rear subframe bushes sitting in a box waiting to go on. Will probably clean everything up and spray paint to fight off rust and for general visual satisfaction. The one question I have is whether it's worth upgrading to poly or any other sort of aftermarket bushes even if for some individual components. The kit I already have is all OEM Lemförder and Meyle. Obviously this isn't going to be a competitive track car, just a daily driver / road trip tourer. Seeing how I go, might try my hand at a track day or two just for fun, but won't be seeing too much abuse. Opinions more than welcome. Was going to drop the auto box from the donor car to hopefully cure my limp mode disease, but after staring at it for a while, I went f**k it and shelled out for a ZF 5-speed manual from a fella in England as there's currently bugger all of them available in the country. Might as well make it a full on money pit. Getting a full conversion with full driveshaft and manual diff. Hoping it all comes through without any hiccups in the next few weeks/months. Refurb, paint the 330 brake callipers. Ideally want to rebuild the pistons with new rubber seals - if anyone knows the best place to get those, would be very much appreciated. I think I saw some on ECS a while ago go for something stupid like $50 USD each! Probably refurb the front running gear as well, control arms and such are still factory so long overdue a replacement. Still tossing up whether I need to do the rear subframe reinforcing plates or not. Would be sensible but I'm not sure how to make the logistics work. Would I need to take the car to a shop and pay the extra labour to remove and reinstall the subframe? Do I get a welder to come to me and f**k around with the car on jack stands? And how does this affect certification? Do I even need to get it reinforced if I won't be tracking the car? Whatever else will inevitably crop up, will tackle it as it comes. With the engine still in the car, I went ahead and did a compression and leak down test. The results were a bit all over the shop, sometimes retesting the same cylinder would give radically different results. Probably down to cheap-ish test equipment, but got some sort of gauge anyway. Cylinder 4 seemed the dodgiest one, but retesting the leak down on it the second time came out to 14% which fell in line with the rest of them. So heck knows. The engine still held compression fine, car was driveable, but not the freshest. From the outside too, the engine was in a bit of a state, leaking oil like a sieve. Not sure how that happened, but the oil return hose from the CCV to the dipstick had completely split and was pissing all over the place, drenching everything in the vicinity. Anyway, the slow dismantling continued whilst selling off bits to recoup some of the costs. The holiday break ended up being a staycation with me spending a better part of 2 weeks doing 12+ hour days in the garage. Bloody love it! Also, after being on the lookout ever since I'd gotten the car, I finally came across a tidy looking wagon being parted out at a local wrecker's, so I jumped on it and scavenged it for all sorts of boot trim bits that had been so hard to come by up to now, as well as nabbing some real tidy leather rear seats that are of course touring-specific. For just $100 I couldn't pass up. Those, along with leather door cards off the donor car, and I'm two seats shy of a full interior leather upgrade. By no means a priority but something I'm looking to do somewhere down the line. As a little treat, I bought myself a crappy wee Ford Laser as a cheap runaround, in anticipation for when the wagon will be out of action getting a heart transplant. Ugly little duckling with barely any clear coat left on it, but cheap on fuel and being a manual, I almost enjoy driving it more than the wagon itself hahah. Maybe this whole endeavour was a massive waste of time and money from the get go...

Ohh mate I feel ya! My missus has her Outback for that, tows alright being AWD and a 3L. Dread getting into it though, she cleans it about once a year at best, you can barely see the floor mats through all the hay, feels like a barn on wheels. Horse people ey...

Lol @Vass indeed it was screwed in. Removed screws with high hopes, but it is baked on 😕 Face tattoos lol

Bloody hell, was that thing screwed in there too? Will never understand why people do this type of sh*t. Akin to getting a tattoo on your forehead.