Transporter

Transforming the transporter's looks. The front end of the T5 Transporter isn't a great thing to look at. It's not bad but it's not great either. The T5.1 sportline facelift looks pretty great which is probably why so many people face lift the T5's. It's a simple bolt of job but does cost a bit to do and that's before you even get to painting the thing. Another look to go for would be to convert the front end to a Caravelle style bumper either from a  Caravelle or Shuttle bus. The bonus of this approach is that I could find one already painted thus cutting costs a fair bit. The reason I did not to do either of these was that I wanted to do something a bit different. I had found a number of forum entries that inspired me to go and try some custom mods. Something I had not done before. A brief forey with the splitter on the right (it did not end well) got me started but it wasn't till quite a bit later till I got really stuck in. T...

It's August bank holiday Saturday, the RD250 race bike is ready for the dyno, strapped in the back and I am half way to the dyno when *BANG*. I loose drive and a low grinding noise tells me all is not well as I coste to a stop. Fuck stick. Some roadside deliberating got me thinking clutch but the padal felt fine and there wasn't any noise till I applied drive. A bit of forum bashing (it was a bank holiday so I had a while to wait) later and drive shaft kept coming up again and again. Once the AA guy rocked up he was convinced the duel mass flywheel had gone, hitched me up and towed me home.  The van sat nicely on 100,200 miles and a duel mass flywheel being rated for 100,000 did make it the prime suspect. A blown clutch was one thing but the duel mass was going to make things expensive. A bit of internet shopping had me looking around the £500 mark for the parts. The job shouldn't be out of my abilities and tooling wise I shouldn't be far off so I had a lo...

Braking bad to braking good With an MOT rapidly approaching I decided to clean up the lip on my brake discs. However on measuring I noticed that my rear discs were beyond their minimum limit and the fronts weren't far off either. Pretty frustrating when the pads are virtually new! I opted for Apec Discs  and Pads  as a cost effective but high quality replacement. The linked items are for the rears that I bought through eBay. The fronts I managed to get from Halfords. The new front discs came unprepared so I picked up a tin of heat resistant paint and sprayed the outside edge and hub to make them look a bit smarter and hopefully protect them over the long run. Any over run onto the disc surface isn't a problem as it will rub off anyway so there was no need for masking. The rear discs came prepainted and so I left them as they were for now. As the rear discs are smaller the mismatch in colour between front and rear doesn't really matter. I hope to...