So, suspension issues sorted (aside from the ESP issue which is still unsolved) I could finally enjoy the car.... unfortunately not.
You may have seen that when my car went for mapping, one of the oil cooler pipes had come off and the car spat out all its oil onto R Tech's dyno.
The cause of this was cheap jubilee clips, which were replaced and all was good.
I thought that was the end of it - how wrong I was....
Had a job in London for work. On the way to the clients my undertray comes off on the motorway, had to rip it off on the hard shoulder and shove it in the back.
Few days later I am driving back home from London on the M1 late (around 8pm). The traffic was pretty heavy so not going much above 60ish. Finally it gets a bit clear so decide to put my foot down a bit. All is going well - car picks up speed great.
A few seconds later the red oil light is on the dash
Not sure what to do, I am in the outside lane doing 80ish, for a few seconds I think it is a sensor
problem and hope the light will go out, it doesn't.
Decide to pull over, I see a sign for Watford Gap service station, so slow the car down and pull into the service station. The oil light has been on for no more than a minute.
As I leave the motorway the engine starts to make a tapping sound, I dip the clutch to drop the revs, the noise stops. Stop the car and open the bonnet - oil everywhere
I have no tools in the car. It is pitch black and pretty cold. Go over to the petrol station to buy some oil and wipes to clean up the mess.
Borrowed a screwdriver off some random guy in the car park and using my mobile phone as a light manage to get the pipe back on. It hard as oil is EVERYWHERE and my hand are covered, despite my best efforts to clean up the mess.
Before starting the car I disconnected the injectors and cranked the engine a few times to ensure oil reached all the places it needs to get to. Then connect the injectors back up and try to start the car.
The car turns over but won't fire up. Check all the wiring, plugs etc. No difference
Called my dad to come and rescue me, told him to bring his OBD2 code reader (cheap £30 ebay thing). About an hour later he arrives. Scan the car, few codes relating to fuel injector something came up, cleared them and the car fired up straight away
Drove home very slowly. Engine sounded fine - thank god.
Following morning I had a look at the bay - it is a real mess. I cleaned and degreased as much as I could. The pipe came off at the sandwich plate connection again. This meant oil fit the fans and radiator first. I lost around 4 litres of oil in total.
Damn lucky the engine doesn't seem to be damaged. Lucky I was right by a service station.
So what caused the pipe to come off this time?
I realised that I had used a cable tie to secure the pipe to the slam panel, but the pipe was held too tight, not giving itself enough room to move and the engine moves. Eventually this forces the pipe to come off from the connection with the sandwich plate.
Also the fittings on the cooler itself are not that great - probably OK for NA engine but not for turbo cars running high boost.
So even though I was confident that the
problem would be solved by simply removing the cable tie - I ordered some aeroquip hose and fittings, which went on this past weekend.
The aeroquip fittings are a very hard to get onto the hose, lots of heat and oil and force is required to get them on, all very reassuring!
Also the fittings are a bit bigger than the old ones, which means I could not get the top bumper trim to fit:
Looks a bit ugly, my fault for having such a large cooler in the first place. I need to get a custom bumper bar made up which will allow the cooler to sit lower. In the meantime I am just glad to have pipes which I know won't come off.
There are some side effects of this whole episode. Firstly oil is lodged between the front panel, fans and radiator. Everytime I drive the car and the fans come on more oil gets flicked into the engine bay. This was quite annoying at first, thought it was still leaking.
This has started to stop now, most of the oil has come out but I have been constantly cleaning the bay for a while.
As I mentioned earlier, oil got EVERYWHERE, when I took the air filter off I noticed a pool of oil in the metal joiner between the filter and MAF. Gave the filter a good clean (twice).
So if the filter got oily, and the joiner between the filter and MAF got oily, guess what else got oily?? Yep the MAF.......
Took it off and had a look, oil was all over the sensor. I had just replaced the MAF with a brand new OEM one before it got mapped - they are not cheap.
And the inevitable happened, car started to overboost and engine light came on. Error code P0102 MAF circuit low input.
I have cleaned the sensor and housing using electric contact cleaner. Sensor comes off using a security torx size T25.
Since I have cleaned the sensor the engine light has not come on - but the car still overboosts to 25 and sometimes even 28PSI. I think I may need to replace the MAF again, despite this one only doing around 500 miles or so
And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse - my clutch has started slipping
It does it in 3rd gear at around 5k or so. This is when the car is overboosting at its highest level (nearly 30 PSI).
I also think the clutch may have been contaminated with oil, it is very possible considering the amount of oil the engine spat out.
The SMF setup I am running is not great. Main issue (apart from the slipping) is the noise I get from the flywheel - it is pretty annoying. The fluidampr pulley hasn't stopped the noise at all - although there are no vibrations whatsoever.
I wish I had bought the Awesome Gti SMF kit - but I bought the Fidanza SMF and Sachs clutch kit a while ago, before the Awesome kit even came out. So I am stuck with it.
Hopefully once I sort out the overboost issue it will stop slipping - could do without having to spend another £600 right now