Author Topic: Rich's Royal Blue G40 - J8AVJ  (Read 19347 times)

Offline Rich_Royal

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Re: Rich's Royal Blue G40 - J8AVJ
« Reply #15 on: October 04, 2015, 03:21:16 pm »
Thanks, I'm not the first by a long way to smooth the outlet but I really struggled to find any reference photos of them done on the internet so just did what I thought was right.

There was nothing wrong with the gutters but the car had been repainted before I bought it and the rubber trims that cover the gutters were missing. They serve no real purpose, I suppose they are just there to soften the edges but I don't like things like that to be missing because it makes the car feel incomplete to me so I've replaced them, I realise the photos aren't very clear.

In other news, I've managed to buy some 14x6.5 BBS RZ's from Austria, silver centers with polished lips which is exactly what I was looking for so hopefully they will turn up in a couple of weeks.

Offline Rich_Royal

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Re: Rich's Royal Blue G40 - J8AVJ
« Reply #16 on: October 26, 2015, 04:59:00 pm »
Got my new wheels sorted a couple of weeks ago and decided to get some up to date pictures today. I'm pretty happy with them now they are on the car, although I wasn't too sure how they were going to look after I'd got the tyres fitted, I was worried the sidewalls were too tall...It's a fine line with these cars between looking decent and looking like a rollerskate.







Wheels are BBS RZ 14x6.5, ET30 and tyres are 165/55/14 for reference, I'd looked all over the net before buying the tyres and struggled to find any decent photos so these maybe these will help someone looking in the future.

I'm also thinking about selling my 14" BBS RA's on as I can't see me using them again in the future. If anyone is interested send me a PM, I'm looking for around £200, they have 195/45 Toyo Proxies on with loads of tread left and all wheels are straight although one has a slight flat spot on the outer lip from memory.

Thanks.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2016, 06:43:47 pm by Rich_Royal »

Offline Rich_Royal

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Re: Rich's Royal Blue G40 - J8AVJ
« Reply #17 on: March 25, 2016, 05:23:38 pm »
Very small update,

I changed the oil today and finally got around to fitting my new wing mirrors which I bought a few weeks ago. My original mirrors were loose and flapped about a bit, and the wire adjusters were useless so I bought a new set from GSF half expecting them to be reproduction standard ones, however when they turned up they were totally different to the original ones. I've seen these on a white G40 at a few shows and just assumed they were old mk2 shape ones but after a bit of research they just appear to be generic aftermarket ones sold mainly through GSF.

I wasn't entirely sure about them at first because I wanted to keep the car looking as stock as I could but realistically the car is so far from stock I decided it doesn't really bother me and now they are on I think I actually prefer them over the standard ones, although I realise they aren't that dramatically different anyway and most people won't even notice.





Not got much else planned for it this year, I'm going to finish tidying up the bay and I'm going to try and make some sort of lid for the spare wheel-well as I don't have one and it's annoying having a saggy boot carpet, other than that I'll hopefully be driving to a few shows with it over summer.

Offline physicsfool

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Re: Rich's Royal Blue G40 - J8AVJ
« Reply #18 on: April 05, 2016, 11:23:42 am »
Mate that looks champion. The wheels fit it really well.

Offline Rich_Royal

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Re: Rich's Royal Blue G40 - J8AVJ
« Reply #19 on: April 16, 2016, 07:56:18 pm »
I made a cool discovery the other day and thought I'd post it up here,

My car is obviously on a private plate and when I was buying the car last year I ran a HPI check on it which gave me the original registration plate of J472 GNH, I never intended to swap it back so I more or less forgot about it...then the other day I went on ebay and under my suggested items was an old G40 article that someone had saved from VW Motoring (Nov. 1991) and the featured car was a Royal Blue G40 with the plate J472 GNH. I must have looked at the ebay advert two or three more times before I realised the plate looked familiar and sure enough when I checked my HPI report it matched my car.

I bought the article for a couple of quid and have uploaded it for anyone that might be interested;

https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1607/25861126314_c583517ab2_b.jpg

https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1547/25861124914_029951d39b_b.jpg

https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1487/26466004735_c5c8d741ed_b.jpg

I just thought it was cool to see the car when it was practically brand new.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2016, 08:00:58 pm by Rich_Royal »

Offline benh999

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Re: Rich's Royal Blue G40 - J8AVJ
« Reply #20 on: April 17, 2016, 08:39:21 am »
Rich, what size is your rear "supercharged" badge? 135mm or 200mm?

 Cheers,

Ben :)

Offline Rich_Royal

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Re: Rich's Royal Blue G40 - J8AVJ
« Reply #21 on: April 19, 2016, 07:54:08 pm »
200mm  ;)

Offline Rich_Royal

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Re: Rich's Royal Blue G40 - J8AVJ
« Reply #22 on: May 08, 2016, 08:10:22 am »
Just done another small job done I've been considering for a while, bought and retro fitted a splitter from a Skoda Fabia, only cost £15 and I've seen them on a couple of other Polo's so I had a decent idea of how it was going to look. I took a few pictures for anyone that might be interested. It's longer than the polo bumper so you need to trim the ends off once it's fitted, also I did plan on using pop rivets but I forgot how thick the bumper plastic was and couldn't find any rivets deep enough so ended up using some self tapping skrews from Halfords.









Some before and after ones,









I'm pretty happy with the result but I think having a colour coded bumper helps, perhaps if the bumper was full textured it might make it look too deep with that much plastic? who knows..


Offline Rich_Royal

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Re: Rich's Royal Blue G40 - J8AVJ
« Reply #23 on: July 10, 2016, 09:20:36 am »
Small update,

After a lot of thinking I decided to get a set of TA coilovers from Germany, they only cost me £335 delivered which I thought was worth the risk plus they come ready to fit instead of having to have your old hub carriers welded onto a set of threads for 3 times the cost.

I realise it seems stupid to go from Bilsteins to these but they actually ride really well and I personally found the Bilsteins too soft, plus I never plan on driving the car on a track or anything like that so it doesn't matter too much. The quality isn't fantastic but they aren't bad either, I bought new hubs and bearings and pressed them in myself and with Matts help got them all fitted in half a day. I didn't bother taking any pictures of the process but here are a couple of how it sits now. The whole point was to get rid of the front arch gap which I've managed to do, so I'm happy enough.

I also got a new chip from PPP through their ebay page, went from the 04 to the 05, I know those guys are on here so if you're reading this thanks for the quick delivery, the car seems to run much smoother now and idles a lot better on start up from cold.





cheers.

Offline Rich_Royal

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Re: Rich's Royal Blue G40 - J8AVJ
« Reply #24 on: November 13, 2022, 12:55:24 pm »
For the few that still check here regularly, I still have this and have been meaning to post an update for a while so here it is...

Not much has changed, mainly just general maintenance and it no longer lives at my parents house as I now have my own garage.

The car still doesn't get used as much as I would like, me and Matt (Jester) did a full service on it at the start of this year (cambelt, charger belt, WP, plugs, refreshed the fuel system, oil/filter etc) as I was intending to start driving it more but then I found that the sills had rotted through in the front on both sides so have just had it parked up all year trying to find someone to repair it.

I finally managed to get the sills done a few weeks ago along with the bottom of the doors which had always had an issue since I bought it (bubbling below the plastic moulding and the bottom of the doors had also started to rust through), it cost me quite a lot more than I would have liked to pay so once again, I just parked it in the garage and didn't really want to look at it.

Yesterday we finally had a dry, clear day so I took it out for the first proper run in months and was reminded of why I haven't been able to sell this thing, even though I have considered it multiple times, the car absolutely flies and is so much fun to drive even on the crappy roads we have round here at the moment.

MOT is due a week tomorrow so I'm hoping there is nothing major needed, then it will probably go back in the garage until spring. Not really got any future plans but I have been debating putting the original plate back on for ages so might finally get that sorted.

Here are the most recent photos I have of it, 3 were taken when I got the tyres changed 2 years ago (finally managed to find some 175/50/14's) and then one from the Rallye meet at OCD last year where they actually gave me a little trophy!  ;D









I'm not on FB or anything like that but I'd be up for a G40 meet some time in the future if anyone fancys one.

Cheers all -Rich.