Your car? Pretty car...

Seen as I had a few hours spare I thought I'd give the motor a bit of a cleaning. Very pleased with the results as you can see from the picture below:


This was achieved with a whole load of Meguiars kit.
The steps I followed are:

1. Washed with "Gold Class Car Wash Shampoo and Conditioner"
2. Clay the car with "Quik Clay Detailing System"
3. Clean the paintwork with "Deep Crystal Paint Cleaner"
4. Polished with "Deep Crystal Polish"
5. Finally waxed with "Deep Crystal Carnauba Wax"

In total it took me 3 hours and a lot of elbow grease, definitely thinking about investing in good polishing machine. But I've got a good shine on the paintwork and a lot of small scuffs and light scratches have gone, which is good.

Alarm Problem

Well, it finally gave up the ghost, since I've had the Chimaera the alarm has been more and more hit and miss whether it would unlock the car or not, until it just got unusable and therefore so was the car.

So I gave Carl Baker a call at Car & Bike Installations Ltd. We came to the decision that the best way to solve the problem was to send the alarm unit down to Carl and for him to code two new fobs to it, seen as the alarm couldn't be put in to "program a new fob" mode with the dodgy fob I had.

First I needed to remove the alarm unit, this involved lifting the dash on the left hand side, so I removed the two screws that hold the "glove compartment" under the dash and removing the two nuts and washers that hold that side of the dash on.

Now to remove the unit; I propped up the dash with a spanner so I get to the alarm unit, easily identified by the red M99T sticker on it, just a matter of carefully removing the connections from the back: the two white blocks locked by clips and the three smaller connectors below them.


So the unit got sent off to Carl and a couple of days later I got it back :)

Refitted it and all is well again! Two new shiny fobs and a car I can use again!

New cup warmer :)

...well nearly. Just fitted the new exhaust heat shield from Steve Heath Engineering Ltd. So simple to do, just needed two open ended spanners, 10mm and 13mm. Loosened 2 of the bolts that hold on the PAS pump, slide on the shield, tighten them up. Job done.

Here's the result:
This now protects the swirl pot, serp belt and otter switch from the heat of the exhausts :)

Time to wrap up...

Well the winter months are here so it's time to put the TVR to bed for a while, on with it's hat and attach the accumate battery conditioner. I regularly start it up and move it around just to make sure things are still working...

...also there's a new "everyday" car on the scene! Gone is the SEAT Leon and I'm back is an Audi A3! (Had a S3 before the Leon)


I went for the snappily named A3 2.0T FSI S Line DSG, which means it has the flappy paddle gearbox. So far so good.