The V8 Bike Bus
Discussion
Like most modern cars with plastic headlights the X5 was suffering from the usual dull headlight lenses so I refurbished them today.
From trying various different kits and products I've settled on using the Autoglym headlight restoration kit. It comes with a velcro backed drill attachment, various grades of sanding pad, a polishing waffle and plastic polishing compound. It works really well with my 18v DeWalt cordless drill, whose charger charges a battery quicker than the drill uses it, so as it goes flat you can just swap the cell for the charged one and keep going.
To do it properly takes quite a few hours and it's quite a messy job. The sanded plastic dust goes everywhere.
The finished results are worth it though.
I think the facelift Dynamic Xenons look great. Hopefully the lights will perform better too; As good as the Xenons are they're not a patch on the LEDs on modern cars.
Another job ticked off the list...
From trying various different kits and products I've settled on using the Autoglym headlight restoration kit. It comes with a velcro backed drill attachment, various grades of sanding pad, a polishing waffle and plastic polishing compound. It works really well with my 18v DeWalt cordless drill, whose charger charges a battery quicker than the drill uses it, so as it goes flat you can just swap the cell for the charged one and keep going.
To do it properly takes quite a few hours and it's quite a messy job. The sanded plastic dust goes everywhere.
The finished results are worth it though.
I think the facelift Dynamic Xenons look great. Hopefully the lights will perform better too; As good as the Xenons are they're not a patch on the LEDs on modern cars.
Another job ticked off the list...
Looks great and better than most efforts I see, patience is a virtue with this I think.
As for brightness, you may be on original bulbs so could try a new set or upgraded bulbs of some sort. I recently fitted OEM Xenon's to my wife's Octavia vRS with new bulbs and I also managed to remove the projectors and clean both sides of the lens as they were fairly dirty.
As for brightness, you may be on original bulbs so could try a new set or upgraded bulbs of some sort. I recently fitted OEM Xenon's to my wife's Octavia vRS with new bulbs and I also managed to remove the projectors and clean both sides of the lens as they were fairly dirty.
Love me the E53. My dad's had his 3.0i since new in 2003, and it's done 240,000 miles now. Strangely the only thing that left him stranded with that was the alternator too. Thank Christ the 4.8 doesn't use the stupid water cooled alternator like the 4.4.
His old battle bus is a strange colour compared to most. Pearl beige metallic.
His old battle bus is a strange colour compared to most. Pearl beige metallic.
The Bike Bus recently developed a misfire and threw the CEL on. I think it was then chucking fuel into the misfiring cylinder(s) and igniting it in the exhaust. In fact it chucked flames out the back and burnt the cycle carrier.
To sort it I went over to Owen Garages and fitted 8 new coilpacks and 8 new plugs. Faults cleared and haven't returned and it's running very sweetly now; In fact it's lost some of the gruff grumble and rocking it had that I liked. It sounds so crisp now though and pulls cleaner. Parts were over £400, it's great running cheap old cars.
It's now got a horrid rattle in the exhaust though. I think driving it with the misfire has burnt at least one of the cats out and bits of it are stuck in the exhaust. Going back to Owen garages tonight to use a ramp and get the exhaust opened up to investigate.
I stopped to collect dinner on the way back, quite liked this view from the food shop.
To sort it I went over to Owen Garages and fitted 8 new coilpacks and 8 new plugs. Faults cleared and haven't returned and it's running very sweetly now; In fact it's lost some of the gruff grumble and rocking it had that I liked. It sounds so crisp now though and pulls cleaner. Parts were over £400, it's great running cheap old cars.
It's now got a horrid rattle in the exhaust though. I think driving it with the misfire has burnt at least one of the cats out and bits of it are stuck in the exhaust. Going back to Owen garages tonight to use a ramp and get the exhaust opened up to investigate.
I stopped to collect dinner on the way back, quite liked this view from the food shop.
Thanks.
Max M4X WW said:
The rear camber looks fairly aggressive in that last photo!
Yeah, it's nowhewre near that negative. It's the picture! AW10 said:
What were your before and after ride heights in normal mode?
I have no idea I'm afraid, I didn't measure them. I've probably lowered it about 5" though.AW10 said:
I would be grateful if you could measure the ride height from the bottom edge of the rims to the wheelarch lip front and back - curious where it ended up. 5" seems rather a lot. Any issues getting the alignment correct?
From the top of each wheel rim to the plastic wheelarch trim the measurements are:Front: 3"
Rear: 4.5"
It became apparent that one of the cats had broken down and was blocking the exhaust from the near-side bank of the engine. As a temporary measure the cat was cut open, the debris removed and the 'inspection panel' welded back up.
It runs much better without the exhaust blockage and it's booked in to have both cats swapped for high-flow ones when it has the rest of the exhaust work done.
Recently the offside angel-eyes / halos stopped working. Interestingly the car turns the turn-signal on to act as a DLR when the halos aren't working. I inspected and found they'd been previously replaced withh LED ones. From the factory this age car wouldn't have had LEDs, but I prefer the crisper white light so replaced both sides with new white LEDs to make sure the colour matched.
The exhaust on this car sounds great, but there's not much induction noise. I've looked at carbon airboxes etc but nobody seems to make an off-the-shelf one for this car, plus I want to keep things looking OEM in the main, with subtle improvements where I think they'll add to the bus, OEM+ essentially. So I decided to modify the existing airbox by opening up the cold / dirty side of the box to allow more induction noise.
Done, it has slightly more of a bark on induction and looking in the bonnet still looks completely standard.
So I've carried on driving it about using it as my daily driver. It's a really good place to be, comfortable, a nice size, makes all the right noises and is quick enough to not be boring. The one big eyesore though was still the wheels.
I eventually found a place in West London that do exchange wheels. You drive to them, they have a set of refurbished wheels waiting and they swap your tyres onto your wheels and on to your car. They added a small surcharge to deal with the chrome nightmare mine were under the grey paint.
With that done it's all looking a bit less Birmingham gangster than it was when I bought it. There are still things to sort out, but it's getting there. To most people I want it to just look like a well-kept standard car, but to those that know, they'll spot that it sits better and has some subtle improvements. I gave it it's first proper clean and took some snaps of the progress.
Because of my past history of swapping cars every month, usually when I've just sorted them out everyone has assumed this means I'm obviously now selling it... However it still does exactly what I bought it for really well and I'm enjoying using it. So it's here to stay and I'll carry on with the improvements and it'll carry on working hauling bikes about.
It runs much better without the exhaust blockage and it's booked in to have both cats swapped for high-flow ones when it has the rest of the exhaust work done.
Recently the offside angel-eyes / halos stopped working. Interestingly the car turns the turn-signal on to act as a DLR when the halos aren't working. I inspected and found they'd been previously replaced withh LED ones. From the factory this age car wouldn't have had LEDs, but I prefer the crisper white light so replaced both sides with new white LEDs to make sure the colour matched.
The exhaust on this car sounds great, but there's not much induction noise. I've looked at carbon airboxes etc but nobody seems to make an off-the-shelf one for this car, plus I want to keep things looking OEM in the main, with subtle improvements where I think they'll add to the bus, OEM+ essentially. So I decided to modify the existing airbox by opening up the cold / dirty side of the box to allow more induction noise.
Done, it has slightly more of a bark on induction and looking in the bonnet still looks completely standard.
So I've carried on driving it about using it as my daily driver. It's a really good place to be, comfortable, a nice size, makes all the right noises and is quick enough to not be boring. The one big eyesore though was still the wheels.
I eventually found a place in West London that do exchange wheels. You drive to them, they have a set of refurbished wheels waiting and they swap your tyres onto your wheels and on to your car. They added a small surcharge to deal with the chrome nightmare mine were under the grey paint.
With that done it's all looking a bit less Birmingham gangster than it was when I bought it. There are still things to sort out, but it's getting there. To most people I want it to just look like a well-kept standard car, but to those that know, they'll spot that it sits better and has some subtle improvements. I gave it it's first proper clean and took some snaps of the progress.
Because of my past history of swapping cars every month, usually when I've just sorted them out everyone has assumed this means I'm obviously now selling it... However it still does exactly what I bought it for really well and I'm enjoying using it. So it's here to stay and I'll carry on with the improvements and it'll carry on working hauling bikes about.
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff