Davy

Happy birthday Sampath! Hope you have a good one!

A year has gone by so fast. I remember creating this thread as if it was just a few weeks ago. Wish you a very happy birthday trinity! Have an awesome one!

Fair enough. My experience is quite different from what both Supra and The Don have experienced. The moment I started using aftermarket pads on my previous car, I got loads of brake dust. Further, the pads would wear out within 6 months or so. I went through two sets of pads within a year after which I decided to spend the money and go for a set of genuine pads. I didn't have a speck of brake dust since, and the pads were not changed up until the point I sold the car. However, I agree that some aftermarket pads are superior in quality to some OEM ones.

Hmmm... Not sure mate.

As soon as I saw the blackened front rims, I told my friend that it should be due to aftermarket pads. I've seen many WRXs of this model without the least bit of brake dust. That is why I immediately assumed that it should be bad pads. After my friend took the car for the first service, it was found that the car indeed was using a set of aftermarket pads. The mechanic had told him to change them. As for brake dust being normal, maybe up to a certain level but not excessive dust that makes the entire rim turn black. I might have mentioned this before, but I read that a large portion of brake dust is actually rotor material. So using good pads means that your rotors will last longer. As for repairing the kerbing, you're correct, it was masked by the plasti-dip and is barely visible. I believe labour charges here to repair them would be pretty much the same cost as buying a used rim in good condition.

Yes, you can use the same paint. Give it a good cleanup, sand it with 1200 grit water sandpaper and then spray away! 2 to 3 coats should do.

Saw this on Facebook. Looks like the location is Malabe.

Good job! Looks like the same should be done for the valve cover as well.

There was one in 2Fast 2Furious. The Gold one that crashed (but re-appeared later) during the first race. Edit: This one.

Well there are so many service stations around Kottawa. There is a Laugfs at Maharagama as well. As for the petrol leak, I wouldn't advise temporary solutions, but if it's at the top of the tank (not sure what you mean by "sensor"?), then maybe you can apply a bit of gasket maker to seal it off until you get it permanently fixed. Do it when the tank is almost empty so that the gasket maker doesn't get dissolved by petrol.

Pretty much any good service station will be able to a full service of the car because there is nothing special you need to consider when you service this type of car. Where do you live?

Welcome to the forum and congratulations on the car! That looks like a well kept Sunny (and it's a GL!). It seems to have been given some TLC recently, judging by how good that paint looks and the fact that the windscreen beadings look brand new. Old cars like this are pretty simple, thanks to the lack of complicated modern electronics which govern everything. Get a wheel alignment done and if the previous owner did not provide service records, you can get a full service done and check all fluid levels (engine oil, brake oil, transmission oil, coolant). If the engine idles rough or misses, you can get your carburettor cleaned up and tuned, spark plugs and contact points cleaned/replaced. Couldn't help but notice that you've got water draining to the floorboard. Windscreen beading leaking or wiper mechanism chamber is corroded? Latter is most common in vehicles of this age.

DIY hydrographic kits are available, but not large enough for rims. They're meant for stuff like dash trims and the like. So unless you have the equipment, applying hydrographics on rims is not really a DIY job I guess. And yes, we wanted to do this ourselves.

Very nice! You've got rear fog lights as well! I saw them on eBay and was thinking whether or not to get them. The double din conversion looks good. Did P3tco L@nka (or was it Adv@nce C@r Audio?) have the double din conversion kit as well? Or was it bought from eBay?

Thank you! Yeah, I should have taken a photo of the front rims before we pressure washed them. They actually looked like they were black. Probably aftermarket brake pads. Thanks and will do. I'm sure pressure washing would be okay. The 4 coats form a solid shell around the rim and is very hard to penetrate once it is fully dried up. So you will not have a problem washing or cleaning them. That's a valid question. He wanted to be able to strip the Pasti-Dip later. Painting would mean having to spray it again in silver. Thanks Hoonigan! I guess it's safe to say that we went for this option because it's much easier to grab a can of Plasti-Dip and spray it over the rims rather than going through the painful process of of heating, stretching and moulding a sheet of vinyl wrap. I agree that it's a cheaper option.

STEP 6: UNMASK THE BRAKES Carefully remove the garbage bag from the brakes. STEP 7: PEEL OFF OVERSPRAY FROM TYRE Nip the edge of the overspray with your finger and roll in the plasti-dip overspray and it will start to fold out. Carefully peel the plasti-dip all-round the edge of the rim. And you’re done. I’ll leave you gentlemen to decide if this looks like a good job or not. Thanks for reading. Comments are always welcome! * Optional steps

Hi Guys, It’s been some time since I did a DIY worth mentioning about. Not having a car of my own yet, so nothing really going on these days under the hood. A good friend of mine wanted to get his rims painted in matte black and (knowing what a grease monkey I am) asked me if I can pull it off. Naturally, I said yes. So here’s the car. It’s a2007 Subaru Impreza WRX with a 2.5L Turbo Intercooled engine. A little rocket I would say. The rims on the car were silver. Original colour had been white and the previous owner had painted the faces in silver. The front wheels were covered in brake dust, so cleaning them took a quite long time. The photo below was taken after we took the car to a car wash and pressure washed all four wheels and giving them a good scrub. Still you can see a lot of brake dust and grime. Thanks to the previous owner, there were some prominent scratches on the left side rims because they got too close to the curb. So this was the starting point. The rims were still really dirty (especially on the reverse side), so we decided to take off each rim and give them a good clean up. Most people apply plasti-dip while the rims are on the car by masking off the brake components using a garbage bag. That was our initial plan, but the amount of dirt and grime on the rim was too much and a thorough clean-up was necessary. Plus, covering the inside of the rim cannot be done 100% if you paint the rims while they’re still on the car. This is what you will need: - Grease and grime remover (oven cleaner or something similar) - Clean rags - A good brush (one with plastic bristles to prevent scratching the rims) - Masking tape - Gloves and masks - Plasti-dip (3 cans will be enough if you paint carefully – 4 coats per rim) - Garbage bag/bin liner STEP 1: CLEANING UP THE RIMS Start cleaning the reverse side first. Apply a liberal amount of grease and grime remover and scrub thoroughly using the brush. Make sure you cover all nooks and crannies. Rinse with water. Repeat the process until the rims are spotless. Repeat the same for the front side of the rim. After washing, wipe the rim dry. Saturate a small part of a rag using grease remover and wipe the rim with it one last time. This will ensure that the remaining water is evaporated soon because most grease removers have a small percentage of alcohol. Make sure the rims are dry before proceeding to the next step. Now the rims are ready to be plasti-dipped. STEP 2: PLASTI-DIP THE INNER WALL Apply one thick coat of plasti-dip on the inner wall of the rim. Let it dry for about 15 minutes. Apply a simiar second coat. Let it dry again for 15 minutes. You can work on the other wheels while one is drying up. Remember that you only need to cover the areas that can be seen from outside when the rim is installed onto the car. This is quite different from painting the rims. At this point, you have two options: 1. Mount the wheel onto the car and continue painting 2. Complete painting and mount the wheel after all coats have been applied We had to follow a combination of option 1 and 2 because we had only two jacks to keep the car on, and we had only about 6 hours to complete the job. If you decide to follow option2, you can read ahead and ignore the stuff specific for option 1. One thing to note if you follow option 2 is to spray over the wheel nuts (2 – 3 coats) after the wheels have been mounted. STEP 3: MOUNT THE WHEEL* Install the rim carefully, making sure you don’t touch the inside of the rim which was plasti-dipped. It should have dried up by now, but still might peel off if too much pressure is applied. STEP 4: MASK THE BRAKES* Grab one of the garbage bags and cover the brakes. Use masking tape to keep the garbage bag in place if necessary. Make sure the garbage bad does not touch the rim at all. If it does, the plasti-dip will peel off when we take off the garbage bag later. Crumple the garbage bag so that it could be inserted through the spokes of the rim and thread it around the rim. Don’t forget the valve stem and dust cap. Use masking tape to cover. STEP 5: PLASTI-DIP THE FRONT SIDE Apply the first coat. If the wheel is mounted onto the car, make sure you tilt the can at all possible angles and cover as much of the surface as possible. Allow to dry for 15 – 20 minutes. After 2 coats, move the car so that the wheels turn approximately 60 degrees. This way, you will see the spots you missed during the first two coats. If you're spraying on a removed rim, just spin the rim 60 degrees between coats. While spraying, make sure you spray the inner wall as well, through the spokes because we only sprayed 2 coats onto the reverse side. After 4 coats on the front side, you would have sprayed enough plasti-dip through the spokes to give a thick layer on the inner wall as well. Continued...

You still wouldn't have to worry about the ABS sensor issue. Just call the agents, give them the registration number of the car and ask them if the ABS issue has been rectified and if the car originally had the issue. They will probably give you the repair history as well, if you ask. EX owners on the forum will give you a good idea about the availability of spares outside UniMo.

Welcome to the forum! Answers to both your questions can be found if you do a search as instructed here.

Welcome to the forum! As far as I know, only the initial batches of the Lancer EX had this ABS sensor issue, and that too was repaired by the agent under warranty. So if you're going for a Lancer EX which was bought down before 2010 (Not sure if that is the actual year it was corrected out of the factory), you should check the service history of the car with the agents to get to know if the ABS sensor issue was actually repaired. For a new EX, you shouldn't worry about it. This was discussed on a few other Lancer EX threads as well.

Can you elaborate more on what kind of a sound this "creepy" sound is?

70R means that the height of your sidewall is 70% of the width of your tyre. So, by going for 185/70R14, your sidewall height will change by about 5% and it will result in a slight speed 'o meter (and thereby the ODO as well) change. 1. Refer to this link to get a good idea about what kind of a change you'll be looking at: https://www.tacomaworld.com/tirecalc?tires=175-70r14-185-70r14 2. Your tyres will not touch the wheel well because of a 7mm change. EDIT: Nevermind... just saw the attachment and the manufacturer has indeed specified that you can use both tyre sizes. You're all good. EDIT 2: Corrected a typo

This could be due to a worn out bearing on the 5th gear. Instead of replacing the entire gearbox, you might be able to take it apart and inspect the gearbox first (especially the 5th gear and the bearing). If the bearing is worn out, you can replace it and then everything should go back to normal. This would cost you a lot less.

I have a bit of a different view about the new site. Just sharing my opinion here. - I remember reading on this thread that the lack of the "buy" and "sell" buttons (like it was in the old site) is something bad. But if you really look at it, you can simply click on the "search" button which is identical to what the "buy" button did. Similarly, the "create ad" button in the new site is similar to what the "sell" button did. So this functionality is still there. - The format of the ad is pretty much the same as the previous site. So there's nothing new to get used to there apart from the new details that have been included. - The advanced and extended search filters (year, reg number, etc. etc) are optional. They can be left out blank if necessary, so this again makes the search kind of similar to the previous site (easy) in a way, but at the same time, giving some flexibility to a user who really wants to dig in to specifics. I really missed filtering ads based on the YOM and the price and the addition of those filters is just great! MADZ, Here are some issues I noticed after just a couple of minutes of playing around: - The "Advanced Options" link beneath the three radio buttons (beneath the Keyword Search text box), does nothing. It expands and collapses the three radio buttons alternatively. Not sure what the expected functionality is. (Just saw that this works fine in the search results page) - In the home page, "Car", "Van", "Bus" etc. are correctly referred to as "Vehicle Type" whereas in the search results page (search-results.html), they are referred to in the "Body Style" dropdown list which is entirely misleading. Body Style is something totally different that comes under Vehicle Type. For example, if you select "Car" as the "Vehicle Type", you should get "Sedan", "Coupe", "Convertible" etc. for "Body Style". - The "Any" dropdown list for the Price selection is redundant. It should be removed. When the user does not specify a price, "any" should be assumed. - The measurement unit for "Engine Capacity" should be stated in the label as "Engine Capcity (cc)". Users can easily enter 1.0 to 1.8 and the results would go blank because the system searches based on Cubic Centimetres. - The page refreshes when the "from" or "to" values are entered and tabbed out from the field. This is very irritating. The values should be submitted asynchronously (using AJAX maybe) so that the page doesn't keep refreshing when the user does the smallest refinement to the search parameters. - Clicking the "Clear" button on the search results page throws a 404 error. - If you enter a single quote in the "Registration No." field for example (yes, I was trying to break your database, lol ), the single quote characters are preceded by a backslash. I believe you guys do this to escape the single quote, but the end user shouldn't see this. In an ordinary scenario, no one would enter those characters, but just a cosmetic issue. - Any reason why each model list has the make as an option? For example, if you select Mitsubishi as the "Make", and check the "Model" dropdown list, you see an option that reads "Mitsubishi". Similar for Toyota and Mazda. That's all I checked. - When the browser window is restored to a smaller size, the pop up dialog shown when "Check Vin" is clicked (ad details page) can never be closed, because the close button goes under the top banner of the site. You need to scroll to the top of the page after the "Check Vin" dialog appears to re-create this. (Increasing the z-index of the div tag with ID "modal_mask" fixes this issue. It's currently set to 1 while the banner has a higher z-index) Hope this helps you resolve these issues. Keep up the good work! EDIT: The single quotes are preceded by a backslash and not a forward slash. My mistake.

Very nice (again the bodykit and spoiler)! We have green Demio twins on the forum. Saw an aftermarket bodykit for the Demio on eBay and it had the exact front bumper air dam that you've got. I'll definitely be bringing down a kit when I come to SL. It had a similar air dam for the rear bumper as well. Has yours got that too?