It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about the car, and with fairly good reason. Nothing interesting has happened with it. I’ve been doing the daily-driving thing, going to work and TAFE.

That is, until Monday just gone.

Rego time is coming up, and I wanted a few repairs made, just minor stuff, so I booked the car in at Autotech Engineering.

Unlike most places I’ve brought the car to, they went over it with a fine-toothed comb, and presented me with a list of everything they found wrong. While I was surprised at how big this list actually was, I knew about some of the issues, and previous places had not told me about them.

There we go, an instant +1 for Autotech Engineering.

With list in hand, I instructed them to fix everything except for the diff bushes and a light oil seep from the diff, and so they did. I also spoke to Spiro about my disappointment with the cars performance, and “dodgy gearbox”.

Spiro threw the car on the dyno before and after tuning. The before figure was 292rwkw, and after was 337rwkw (with 800nm of torque).

Ok, so I had a HEAP more power and torque, so I was going to be careful for a bit, and just roll the power on.

I was absolutely gob-smacked at the difference this tune made to the car. It is an animal! Previously I’d step on it, and it would happily accelerate and put a smile on my dial, if you know what I mean. After the new tune, you step on it, the front of the car lifts, there is an earth-shattering noise, and if you don’t get off the go-pedal quick, you’ll end up in one of Australia’s surrounding oceans.

Yes, yes, I know, I’m talking it up a bit, but it’s bloody quick.

Last night, I was standing at a set of lights, next to a friend in her car, and I decided I’d do just a little showing off. I got the car moving, then introduced the go-pedal to the firewall. The car leapt across the intersection in zero seconds flat, then went *KABOOM*.

Snapped a CV shaft.

It’s a shame the car broke so quickly (actually, I break it pretty quick after every round of upgrades), but it gives me an excuse to replace an other weak part with some better bits. The only weak bits now are the gearbox and conrods. Unfortunately the conrods require a full engine build, and that’s going to be somewhat pricey.

Spiro – You’re a fucking legend. You delivered me nothing less than what I asked for, and finally gave the car the safety check and repairs that every car deserves.
I’ll have to get back to you on how the fuel economy is now, though, because I’m spending much more time with my boot in it. I’ll let you know when things settle down a bit.