[Senninha25]

Mine's got its' MOT equivalent coming in about 10 days and the windshield wiper water recipient is leaking. Not only that, the linkage that takes the water from said recipient to the wipers' water jets is broken, sending what's left of the water straight to the engine bay instead of the windshield, soaking the engine in the process. Now it's always a 2 minute-job to manually clean the windshield before having to go somewhere.

[James H]

Mine's got its' MOT equivalent coming in about 10 days and the windshield wiper water recipient is leaking. Not only that, the linkage that takes the water from said recipient to the wipers' water jets is broken, sending what's left of the water straight to the engine bay instead of the windshield, soaking the engine in the process. Now it's always a 2 minute-job to manually clean the windshield before having to go somewhere.

My friend did a similar thing deliberately. He re-routed his washer pipe onto his top-mount intercooler so he could keep the charge temperatures down when running the car on a drag strip!

My car has now passed it's MOT, but I'm £230 down from the whole experience

[Boboff]

I have a Grand Vitara 2 door Sports Convertible, it's 4 wheel drive, so with my small holding it is suitable for Logging, Dogging, and home visit hairdressing, which is nice.

I bought it in May, following lots of dry weather, and it has not stopped raining since.

[dimtimjim]

That cambelt hasn't been bad then - it's lasted 127,000 miles...

Turns out they are bent, poo... £350-400 all in to fix.

Sounds 'bout right...

Thank you Timothy

Its really no problem, you're pandering to my obsession. If it goes suck, squeeze, bang, blow - i'm all over it.... Eh, Yuds?!

[Yudster]

Yes. And you never clean up after yourself.

[MK Chris]

Ha, thanks Tim. It's costing £396 I think for new cambelt, new valves and new head gasket. £250 parts, £146 labour. Hoping it runs a fair bit more after that! What else is there to go wrong...? (He says touching wood).

I'm also told fuel consumption might be better with new valves, so that's a plus I guess.

[dimtimjim]

Possibly, a little... (based on your old valves being worn and allowing marginal losses).

And the maths isn't too bad either Big-T; If you'd been a good boy and had the cambelt changed every 60,000 like you should, you'd be about to have your second change - at £200 each, so a £400 bill now is about bang on £ wise.

[The Deadly]

As I have made clear before I know nothing about cars and was just wondering what I can do to my mini to improve engine performance? How much do these things cost etc?

[dimtimjim]

No 1 is a re-map. Your car has a 'brain' called an ECU. As this leaves the factory it is designed to be all things to all men and has certain tollerances built in - be average at everything but exel at nothing. It will always be possible to gain more power or more economy, or both, from a 'factory standard' ECU by a simple re-programming of how that brain thinks (variations to fuel/air mix at given RPM - I could go on but it gets quite technical).

These come in two forms: 1) a basic 'plug and play' which will be a standard map previously created for your type of car, but not specifically 'your' car. 2) a custom re-map, which'll involve your car spending a few hours on a rolling road to have the new map created specifically for your engine and your desired requirements.

Plug n play will be cheaper but yield lesser results, your looking at approx £300 or £500 for each respectively. My advice, do your research, a bad map will do more harm than good - beware cowboy tradesman doing it on the cheap. Expect anything from 10-25% more spunk for your money.

Next stage is to alter the cars ability to 'breathe'. As above, as a standard car it'll be held back to meet 'standardisation'. But, allowing the air to enter and exit your engine more freely will again result in more power. Budget £100 for taking the air in and £300+ (up to £1k) for air out (exhaust) modification. Expect anything from 2-15% more spunk for your money. These modifications will make certain engine characteristics louder - some see this as a good or even great thing. I don't recommend 'boomy' exhausts, they draw too much attention to you when giving it a boot-full.

Anything after that your being more serious and involving more £'s, although I can elaborate if required...

If planning on doing both, sort the breathing before a custom map, or the 'custom' bit will be outdated by the new ability to breathe. If going with 'off the shelf' map, don't change the breathing as it'll not be set up to take advantage of the improved breathing ability.

[The Deadly]

Ah very helpful thanks. Not as pricey as I imagined either. My mini is a lovely little car but it just needs a kick up the backside.

[DevilsDuck]

What sort of Mini did you go for Cooper or Cooper S?

[The Deadly]

It's a Cooper S. It often feels as though it has more in it than it's giving me.

[dimtimjim]

Soz, shoulda added, breathing mods will need to be notified to Insurance company as a 'modified vehicle' - check your insurance company will still cover you or be prepared to go elsewhere. Although the same is technically true of a re-map, there is nothing visibly altered on the vehicle, so denial is perfectly plausable...

[James H]

Cooper S gives you much more leeway as boosted cars respond so much better to tuning (for relative cost at least)

[R94N]

Could it be said that a re-map is a little bit like over-clocking a processor?

[James H]

Could it be said that a re-map is a little bit like over-clocking a processor?

Hmm, let me think of a decent way to explain this.

An off the shelf "chip" is the same as overclocking a CPU by just using the BIOSes own "easy overclock" menu.

Remapping is probably more equivalent to changing every single variable in overclocking, like CAS latency in the RAM, changing the core voltage etc etc and fine tuning it until you're getting the absolute most out of your current setup.

Hope that made sense! Car geekery crossed with PC geekery there!

[MK Chris]

£375 final bill - not too bad all things considered... pick it up tomorrow.

[dimtimjim]

£375 final bill

thats not too shabby, well done sir. Here's to the next 127,000...

[MK Chris]

Ha, I'm hoping to have saved up enough for a newer car by then... think I want a Focus. Had set my sights on an Astra or a Focus, but I know a few people with a Focus and they've all been very happy with them.

[ladbroke]

I had a Focus from new in 2000, up until 2011 when the cam belt went. My own mistake I should've got it changed! Most galling was the fact I'd only filled up with £70 of unleaded 20 miles before the cam belt went. Long story short, I stuck a screw driver through the petrol tank, and transfered the petrol into my wife's Focus, and Ebay'd it, getting £800. The repair bill was going to be around £700 so I was pleased. I bought a Seat Leon TDi, and I can honestly say it is the best car I've ever owned. It's plenty fast enough when I want it to be, and more importantly, it will do almost 700 miles on a tank of diesel. Set the cruise contol at 60mph and it will do 70mpg, which is great considering how many miles I now do. My wife works in vehicle leasing, and we've been lucky enough to be lent some fantastic cars from Lexus to VW to BMW, but considering I only paid £4k for the 56 plate Leon, it is remarkable value. BUY A SEAT LEON!

[Yudster]

See I love the look of the Leon and always wanted one, but I've been told the fuel economy is crap! I'm going to re-think, I'd like Leon.

[ladbroke]

The newer versions come with a 2.0 TDi engine, same as in the Audi A3, and it is more sophisticated than the 1.9 TDi in mine. Less agricultural sounding! On the flip side it has slightly worse fuel consumption I believe.

[MK Chris]

See I love the look of the Leon and always wanted one, but I've been told the fuel economy is crap! I'm going to re-think, I'd like Leon.

This. I want one too.

[The Deadly]

Anyone looking to get a new car should have a look at the new Kia Ceed. Very nice drive and relatively cheap to run.

[ladbroke]

I'm actually very impressed with Kia of late, they seem like they've really up'd their game. A friend has recently bought a Kia Sportage, and it looks great. They went from a Mercedes M-Class to the Kia, which is a considerable step down, but they said apart from the lack of extras that the M-Class had, they love it. Road tax is far cheaper than the Mercedes too.