racingbrett

One new pedal box and a new clutch, that pedal is scarily light now got to plan for discs which are corroded and a new exhaust next, seems someone has done some tin pot welding and blasted holes in the pipework then covered it with putty, should last me a bit yet though. Fingers crossed were getting to the end of new car niggles.

Ok I'm cursed, back into the garage today to have a few things sorted/checked over and an dub part cable fitted, 5 mins after picking the car up and the clutch has crept, just make it back to the garage as I loose the ability to select gear. add to the list a new pedal box, not a massive split but enough that its creeping the clutch out slowly as its used until you take the "slack" out the split and theres also a question over the clutch and if its to stiff with the plastic collar on the cable breaking and the pedal box going at 44k, new pedal box on the way and will look into the clutch once that's in.

The nightmare got more real lol. Day after it was delivered the mil light came on, another miss fire issue, she went into the garage I use and they replaced the coil and the water temp sender which had a dodgy connection, a week later and another missfire, only this one was really noticeable, back to my local garage and we discovered it was a miss fire on the new coil the seller replaced, when we switched the coil over to another cylinder the fault cleared and hasnt come back (had the two remaining older coils replaced at the same time). Five days on from that my clutch failed, the plastic collar (engine bay pedal side) had literally collapsed, replaced that and had a nightmare with the "first line" clutch cable, the plastic chunk in the middle that clips onto the firewall was actually rubber and wouldnt stay in, as it dropped out the tension on the cable would alter and id loose clutch (now cable tied on) the rubber/metal fittings on the clutch side were just poor to say the best, the metal cup kept pushing through the rubber end washer as the tolerance between the two was just to close, 5 stops in a 30 mile journey to readjust, luckily the old cable was still in the back of the car so in the end I stripped of the old fittings and swapped them onto the new cable, a much better clutch action now and so far so good. Also found splits in the brittle plastic vacuum pipe that lead to the master cylinder, for now there patched up with self amalgamating tape, once there replaced if its still there I need to look into a small idle issue that sees the revs bounce 3-4 times between 500-1000 that only happens after driving (cant be repeated while stationary by revving), when coming to a stop on a junction. Clean car, but a bit of a nightmare.

That'll be the problem there then. cable is still intact.

So 3 weeks of ownership and 5 break downs, 3 miss fires for which I now have all new coils and a new water temp sender (oddly the new one the garage fitted before i purchased was at fault for one of the miss fires, but this cleared when we swapped the coil to another cylinder). Worse is 2 recovery's not a good start to lupo ownership. So this time I was approaching an island there was a pop and a thlunk and the clutch pedal went totally slack, luckily I was between gears. The break down man checked cable and seemed to think it was ok, checked the pedal box and that was fine then went back to the cable messed around with it a bit and declared the cable had gone, he pointed to a black oblong chunk fixed to the middle of the bulkhead and said that the self adjuster ratchet in there had gone. This has confused me a little as most replacement cables don't seem to have that part and as far as I can tell my 1.4 75bhp shouldn't have an auto adjuster in any case so what gives :/ Its going to be a driveway job as although I have warranty a 100 mile round trip to get it fixed just isnt worth it, any tips or tricks to make it easier on me? or is it simple in any case? Many thanks Brett

Some good photos through this post, figured Id share. I tend to shoot mostly macro, with some landscape and wildlife stuff, this little guy was around 3mm.

I've mentioned my other cars in different places so thought id show them of a little. First up is the 1969 mk1 capri its an auto 1600gt xlr all original with 44k miles on the clock, currently mid way through a full restoration so she isnt looking pretty at the moment but here is a before image (still looking not to bad) Next up is a rear engined GTM Rossa this was a bit of an impulse buy of ebay, a good price but so much had been bodged it became my nightmare car, currently gets parked up over the winter and without fail she needs a new brake and clutch master cylinder each summer, no matter what I do, where I park her or how I cover her they always jam up solid, if there was room in the car I'd go with a pedal box but at 6ft2 its tight as it is, She runs on a mix of mini/ metro gear, mostly mini with metro turbo brakes up front, She has a 1380 med built bottom end, omega pistons, heavily worked head, mild cam, lcb with a custom exhaust (lovely sound) and a dellorto 45 dhla. never been on the rollers so I couldnt say what she is making, tuning was done by the old seat of the pants method, I dare say more could be had with a proper rr session.

Modern day tuning isn't what it once was but modern day engineering is also way more advanced which usually means the gains to be had are smaller or limited by the fact that heads for example have less excess in them or more exotic materials meaning they are harder to open. I agree it would be interesting to see what could be done, but that's something for someone with money to throw away and time to spare as there would be trial and error involved in finding the best shapes and smoothing. Silver, you may be a fan of my mini based gtm rossa, 1380 med built block, omega pistons, mild cam road/rally head and a 45 dhla.

I'm pretty new to lupo's myself, can't really comment on tuning potential other than to say there doesn't seem to be much. As far as more power it is usually always cheaper (initial outlay/running costs) to swap the car for one with a bigger engine, assuming it was available with a bigger engine, in your case I'd check insurance costs and go with a 1.4, I've had my 1.4 a few weeks now and I was actually surprised at just how nippy it is, certainly more so than the 2.0 td Citroen I swapped from.

How low can you go? This question isn't asked in the usual sense though, I'm not after "crazy mad lows" and who cares about the consequences, been there and done that with an old style beetle that scraped its belly over every speed bump. My question is how low can you go before speed bumps require you to crawl over them? I'm looking to lower with one goal in mind, performance, less body role and tighter cornering, to hold more speed through a corner. Speed bumps round here are plentiful and the square type, General traffic speed over them is 20mph if you line it up right, I'm not looking to crawl over them, so just how low can I go without having to slow below say 10-15 mph. The car is currently on stock 13" steels, knowing what I know I don't plan to go huge or for massive wides, nowadays suspension geometry and tyres sizes are set up for best results from factory while keeping comfort (harshness) in mind, going wider can actually mean less rubber in contact with the ground due to the scrub radius, larger diameters will also have an effect similar to reducing power (the weight of the wheel is pushed further out from the centre so takes more effort to spin up) with that in mind my intention is to compromise with some 14" mk3 golf steels, these will allow me to run a lower profile for less side wall flex while running a standard design size tyre but wider than I currently am. Now it's been a while since I modded cars, coil overs used to cost a fortune and were for track cars allowing you to fine tune for each circuit, if I understand it right this is still really the case with one exception, there are cheaper kits around for those that care about style over performance and there are mid priced kits which are still directed at style but utilise better materials. My personal thought here is that for a road car where the aim is to improve handling regardless of whether I fill the arches or not that a decent shock such as bilsteins and a pre set spring will give the best results, am I wrong?

Since this thread isnt too old, is the switch replaceable or is it a whole lock mechanism jobby, finally got the car last night, drove 2 meters this morning and the fault light flicked on, got that sorted local with new coils and a water temp sender, but now the interior light isnt trigering from the drivers door, was working until this evening and its just packed in, after the nightmare iv had getting this car I know i should be able to get it done under the warranty but really dont want to drive it all the way to chesterfield if its an easy cheap job.

You really cant make this up, they rebuilt the head and the owner of the garage I bought it from delivered the car today, only half a mile from my house it developed a miss fire on cylinder 3 so its gone back with him to be fixed yet again , fingers crossed its just a plug or coil, anything more and i may be looking for another lupo. On inspection the new cam belt that broke wore extrememly quick from one side until it was so thin it simply snapped, the garage that fitted it are still claiming it wasnt them at fault and that it must be faulty goods, hard one to judge really as it sounds like something obviously wasnt alligned right, which could be a faulty part or poor fitting, but thats a battle for him, the garage and the parts supplier. Edit.. coil pack changed and its on its way back

No ones posted here in a while so figured id bump it with my mug. Gritty BnW makes me look way older.

7 bent valves and no report on the pistons as yet, garage and parts supplier are blaming each other (trader supplied the part to the garage) seems they came to a deal though so Monday the head is being stripped and rebuilt assuming of course there is no damage to the pistons or bores. As a side note if your getting a garage to do the work it's usually better to get them to supply the parts as well, there are usually no guarantees over the Labour if the place doesn't supply the part and it will turn into a battle of pass the blame which can be hard to prove either way.

Well I got the phone call yesterday to say the cambelts, water pump, exhaust and rear light were all done and that I could collect the car, have to say I was impressed, very roomy inside, decent amount of power for a 1.4 (when I remembered I wasnt driving a diesel anymore and took the revs higher), nice throaty sound to the exhaust, it was all fun and games for 44 miles at which point the car lost all power and I coasted into a layby 16 miles from home , Cant fault the seller over it as he has been more than helpful, 5 hours waiting for the recovery truck wasnt so good, the fact they then ofloaded it at there depo and waited until 10 in the evening to deliver it to the guy waiting at the garage (he still got there to collect it), despite telling me they were taking it straight there was just bang out of order, turns out the inner cam belt is no longer with us despite being brand new it shredded itself into oblivion, I now have to wait and see what other damage it may have caused but the seller has assured me even if it needs a whole new engine they will fix it and get it sorted. The capri has also suffered a bit of a set back as iv had to source some more panels, nothing to majour, lead loading should be started next week and with a bit of luck it may make it into the spray booth by the end of next week, should be a ton of photos with it as well as the guy is doing plenty of before and after to show all the work done on it, out of interest if people would like to see this one where abouts should i make a thread for a non lupo project car?