The car is nearly ready to be MOT'd! After taking some time off to finish my final exams I managed to put in enough time to get the car ready.
Back to car pictures...
First things first, finished off new brakes and pads. Probably could have got the old rotors skimmed but for piece of mind and all that it made sense to chuck new discs in. I thought a disc and pad change would be pretty simple...until finding that the disc retention screw became seized resulting in a trip to halfords to ask for a bolt extractor. Needless to say most of the people there had no idea they even sold them. Useless!
As you can see, I tried everything to get the thing out before resorting to an extractor set and nothing worked.
Next the issue was compressing the calipers. One in particular refused to compress. In the end a C clamp saw to it that it worked.
Whilst down there, I decided to put back the arch liner to find the fixing point was broken. Of course, nothing that drilling a hole and some zip ties won't fix.
Set the car back on 4 wheels and that was that job sorted.
As part of all my cars, I always upgrade the earthing straps from the engine block to the chassis and the battery negative to the chassis.
Given the application, an extra run of 4 gauge would suffice. Running 0 gauge, as beneficial as it is, felt a little overkill. With that said, there are plans to run a smaller battery and relocate it so a 0 gauge earth may be sufficient when the time comes.
Given that surprisingly enough the factory strap was in good condition, I ran this to the shock tower to keep it slightly shorter than it would otherwise have been.
And with the cover back on, everything looks nice and clean.
The battery also saw another earthing strap in addition to the oem one.
The earth upgrade along with a decent charge of the battery saw the voltage recover from 13.5v to 14.08v.
Another minor job that needed to be taken care off for the MOT purpose was the hid kit which was (badly) fitted by the previous owner.
The 55w 4300k kit clearly drew way too much current from the factory wiring given the + terminal was black and melted (not to mention it got incredibly hot).
At least now it will pass MOT with no issues there and no unnecessary attention from police etc. Win win.
Although a 323i with a single pipe from the front to the back, it came with a Supersprint exhaust.That (along with a lot of the car) had seen better days...
A dab of autosol with some elbow grease saw the tips polish up quite nicely. At some point I'd like to swap the exhaust for a 328i variant. Dual pipe front and back allows for more flow and factoring in the m50 manifold due to be fitted at some point, it would help boost the pony count a little!
And an interior shot for the fun of it. (Also removed the headlining as it wasn't that essential, no pictures though)
All that remains now is to get the rear spring fixed (potentially eyeing up new coilovers) and get the old girl insured, mot'd
