McNab-Racing.co.uk

Decided 2019 is going to be the year of getting cars back on the road.

First a bit of history, after a period of not being used very much due to doing big miles, I put it back on the road in 2011.

Full service and fresh discs & pads, it passed its MOT in June 2011. I was planning on going back to using the car for weekend runs and track days. As it was overdue a cam belt change, that needed done and that’s where the fun began.

The previous garage who did a cam belt change had managed to over torque the bolts holding the tensioner in to the alloy head. With about 3 inches of clearance, there was no danger of being able to helicoil it in situ so the engine needed stripped and the head pulled.

With lots on, it ended up taking roughly ten months to sort the tensioner issue, so I got a months use out of it at either end of its MOT.

Also managed to create some other problems;

• There’s also something wrong with the oem boost gauge on the dash, it’s reading inverted, so cruising its reading positive boost and under load it’s reading vacuum or lower
• My mate’s M5 had the roof bricked and we fixed it in the workshop whilst my Celica was parked up. We didn’t dust sheet it when spraying though assuming it was far enough away. It wasn’t so it has a primer mist coat over most of the car

Now we’re in to mid 2012 and going back to racing removed all free time and free cash so it wound up parked in my flat’s underground car park for a few years. This turned out to be a remarkably dusty place to store it…

It then spent 2015 to early 2018 in a unit me and some mates shared. Still not getting used but at least it was in a place less dusty than the Sahara and not in the middle of a giant puddle.

Then came the Beast from the East, seemed like a good idea to get it back on the road. For 2 days it royally took the Micky out of all the pseudo off-roaders and everything else in my estate having no problems dealing with the 15 inches of snow we had.

Sadly it then started to live up to being an ST205, lovingly known in GT-Four circles as faffs, because the owners are always having to faff with something. In this case, the rear diff is seeping. So it’s been parked up again since the start of March.

Task list:

• Sort the paintwork and remove growth from driveway life
• Refurb the diff
• Refresh whichever suspension arm is clonking up front (it had them done not that long ago so bit annoying that one)
• Fix the leaky O2 sensor
• Get a wideband up it’s hoop to confirm the ECU doesn’t take its boost reading from the same sensor as the dash
• Caliper overhaul and disc skim
• New radiator (current one is browning on the top tank)
• Refurb whining charge cooler pump
• Re-do the ghetto gauge wiring (yeah that was me)

It was almost sunny. Well, the sun appeared twice in the afternoon so that was good enough to finish the job off.

Dried the car, Meguiars quick detailer’d all the panels, rain-x’d all the looking through glass, cleaned the inside of the windows with AutoSmart glass cleaner and hit the wheels with some AutoSmart tyre dressing.

Also gave the reverse camera a dose of rain-x so will be interesting to see how that holds up, whether it helps keep it clear at all.

I really do detest this time of year. Being a skier, it’s not really winter that does it, it’s winter in central Scotland. Cold, windy, wet and dark. Frosty, no problem. Snowing, sweet. Wet, windy and dull all the time, someone kill me.

Also, it’s a nightmare keeping the car clean. The roads are just grim; salt, grit, grime and all manner of other crap constantly being mixed with the rain and splattered all over the car. I’m coming to accept weekly washes are pretty much going to be required until, oh, June.

I don’t pretend to be a detailer, in fact, I’m only really just getting back in to washing my car after my E46. Towards the end, the cleaner it was the more you saw the rust creeping in and all the scars from the general public being clowns in car parks. So I largely didn’t bother, but I’m back to making an effort with the F32.

So here is today’s assembled arsenal:

Didn’t end up using half of it owing to the weather being true to form and having to alternate washing with hiding in the garage trying not to get washed away in the rain.

Car was last washed a couple of weeks ago so actually hasn’t faired too badly given the state of the roads.

Gave it an all over blast with the jet wash to start.

Just bought some Auto Finesse Iron Out to use on the wheels and decided to give the sides a dusting as well to see how much debris had landed on the sides. Also used Auto Finesse’s Citrus Power on the sides, front end and mirror caps since they pick up the most grime.

New Halfords special wheelbrush (lower) was really good, there’s not a lot of clearance between the MSport Plus callipers and the wheels but it got in there. Old Halfords wheel brush (top) really is crap, the wire bends with the faintest hint of pressure, only use it for the lip of the rim and the face of the spokes and it’ll be getting replaced for even those duties.

The Iron Out works brilliantly, the trigger bottle is terrible. It may sound daft but I genuinely don’t get how they expect you to use it. If you have the top of the bottle in the pad of your hand allowing 2 fingers on the trigger, you end up dousing your fingers. If you move your hand further down and use just the one, it rotates around as you squirt making it really awkward to control where the spray is going. It also really needs a fast finger on the trigger to get it to spray rather than squirt.

Pretty horrific amount of grime from just 2 wheels, change of rinse water for the other 2!

Slightly surprised at the debris on the sides, really didn’t think it would show up much. Still, blasted that and the Citrus Power off (also, great product but also a great spray bottle on that one) then rain stopped play for a bit.

Didn’t get any pics of the rest of the wash really due to having to dart about getting it done when weather permitted. The Karcher do-hicky isn’t bad for what it is (a tenner out of B&Q a while back) but it’s not really anything like a proper snow foam. The rain was kind enough to assist rinsing it off. Then it got a 2 bucket wash, I must invest in bigger buckets with grit guards.

Again, pretty horrific amount of muck despite the car not looking that bad from 10ft away

Rain and light conspired to bring things to an end at that point so hopefully the weather is half decent tomorrow morning for cleaning the windows inside, Rain-Xing the windows outside and giving the door shuts a once over.

I also need to invest some time in the tailpipes