When you buy a used car you generally don't get any true indication of how it has been treated. It looks worse than it is I guess as a function of the camera. Neither the camshaft or a cam follower have any wear when I ran my finger over them (scientific I know...)
I don't want to do a flush. I'll just run synthetic oil from here on in, and if there are cleaning abilities in running synthetic oil then the engine will clean itself after a while... :D
I've always done 5k-km oil changes anyway - seems to work as far as keeping the engines going...
Thanks for the kind words - will keep going as time permits!
I think I'll go with the PSS9s eventually. The car came with AC Schnitzer lowering springs and while being a little on the soft side it suits daily driving perfectly!
Spot on - the bulged on the side pretty soon after I got them (second hand...) so I've put the R-S3s on. Amazing tyre. Quiet and grip really well, even cutting through standing water/rain! Nothing like what I was expecting. My daily commute involves DUKE, Penchala and LDP and I can confirm that they are really quite grippy. Done about 500km on them...
Thanks!
Hey Tom - been a while. Lots of things have changed on the car since that drive :)
While I have used CRC engine flush before with no side effects, I just don't see the necessity on this car. Mileage is low, cams and followers have no appreciable wear, no sludge etc.
===
So after the engine bay was painted and the car started again began the labour of love to get the rest of the car painted. This was completely crazy. The car had all sorts of places where paint should not have been, and all sorts of places where paint should have been where it wasn't! LOL
I have always been picky with paint jobs - this time I went with Veng Cheong Spraying Works in Old Town PJ, and Cheong himself committed to doing a complete strip of the car to get it right. By complete strip I mean bumpers, lights, trim pieces full interior, door cards, door hinges, wheels, wiring etc.
So the journey started...
The bumpers were slwwly chipped at and sanded past the Hellrot (Red) paint, past the original Estoril Blue through to the plastic primer (which still stuck to the plastic very well and was difficult to remove!)
Each bumper took about a day or so to clean all the paint off, done cheerfully by this fellow.
Beginning the tear down - all sideglass out at this stage, sideskirts, door handles, trim, lights and so on.
Here you can see the dents in the bonnet which couldn't be removed by the paintless dent repair guys...
Having stripped the car down, the paint was slowly sanded back past the red, past any old filler, then past the Estoril. This takes quite a while and makes a terrible mess! In this shot you can also see how poorly the old clearcoat of the Hellrot paint adhered to the primer - it simply peeled off with a scraper onto the floor before the random orbital was used to remove the rest of it.
Here you can see why a full strip is necessary and where the red paint didn't get in the nooks and crannies.
Thanks for reading, keep the comments coming!