What have you done to your car today?

[Consumer974]

My "Lifetime DISA valves" turned up from the US - £60 in import duty.... They feel good quality- billet pin, drain plug, etc so they should last. I'm going to fit the top one myself tomorrow. Might tackle the lower one if I get chance but from what I understand, it's mostly the top, larger one that goes (mine definitely has! It's currently a DISA flap).

Just gonna dig behind the sofa to see I've got any pocket change for these: OEM 19" CSL wheels

Lifetime DISA spec (n52parts.com):

• Single Piece Billet Aluminum Rotating Pins with Torx shaped key
• 3D Printed PAHT-CF High Temperature Resistant Flaps
• Torx shaped axis slotted through entire flap. Impossible to round out!
• OEM style Flap turbulence grid
• 5mm drain plug in the event of oil intrusion
• Fully assembled using Aftermarket DISA electronics / shells
• Hand assembled with high temperature resistant lubricant on all moving parts

Looks good quality - my DISA (likely the original but in good shape) partially closes with my thumb over the hole creating a vacuum. Hopefully that’s fairly normal, otherwise I’ll be ordering these too - would be interested to hear how these ones behave fresh out the box with the same little test?

 

[danfrost89]

Which hole? I can't quite work out what ya mean. Out of the box, the flap is very fixed. Hardly any play in it at all and no sign of any hole other than the oil drain hole they've put into these.

 

[Commando_Rob]

Grey OE grills back on and Gold Alpina deco on front splitter on Alpina RS no284 oh and a plate change.

 

[danfrost89]

Had all the suspension, springs, bushes and front arms done - feels MUCH better - particularly at speed. Ride is slightly firmer (now on M Sport spec stuff as per factory spec) and with the 19" CSL's (only recently fitted) but for my purposes (weekend hooning / 2nd car), much better. A few more interior rattles now present themselves but I've got some of that anti-rattle tape to install this weekend (if the weather holds).

Also had braided brake lines (mainly 'cos existing ones were crusty) - no noticeable difference before and after.

Alignment to be done next.

 

[Lewis Benson]

I replaced the centre caps and wheel badges when I got my wheels refurbished, but I didn't change the wheel bolts until now:

 

[Bolle]

Reached the heart of the beast…

 

[GenZed]

just a little run
after doing busted light bulb

 

[rich1068]

Gave it a bit of TLC. First time since buying it. Scrubs up nicely

 

[danfrost89]

Did a few jobs today:

1. Fitted new upper DISA Valve - easy enough
2. Dropped spanner down in between the gap in slam panel. Couldn't have done it if I'd tried.
3. Removed front arch liner to retrieve spanner
4. Lanoguarded inner arch
5. Plastic welded cracked arched liner (was already cracked). Chose strength over neatness - don't judge me
6. Replaced all bolts and plastic clips in arch liner - one was in with a plasterboard screw plug! Put caps on nut heads to give 'em a better chance of not rusting up
7. Sized up carbon airbox - made the inner adaptor for sizing before committing to carbon - nearly there (some faffing as the carbon scoop is an odd shape so the backing plate needs the air filter hole off centre). Need an adaptor to match it up to MAF housing as I got that bit wrong.
8. Started work on the butterfly valve for sound resonator. Blew up the valve... Aliexpress is a lottery with some stuff

Took it for a good thrash around the local lanes. Now with ZS (zero sponges) I can no longer hear the rattly/zingy DISA over 5500rpm - result. Apparently it'll take ECU a while to register that the DISA is back but I'll get INPA setup this week with a bit of luck so I can clear the fault and see what else is going on. I'm a fan of ZS - should be even better with a few tweaks. The idea of the butterfly valve is that I can go from ZS to total block for motorway, etc. I've also bought another diaphragm off an MX5 (same sorta concept as the one on ours, just seeing if it sounds different).

New shocks, etc definitely firmer than previous non M-Sport shite but handling is much sharper - especially at speed. Seems to have levels where you can really feel the rear dig in if you get the revs right going into corners. Need my alignment sorting soon but infinitely better than it was. Front bushes were utterly buggered so it was looking for hedges over 60 on back lanes previously.

Getting an occasional 'knock' at tickover - AI reckons VANOS needs a clean-up. I'll research that and see what's what.

 

[Joël D.]

Upgraded my scratched piano black trim to Individual leather one. Next step is to clean the leather seats, they stick out, compared to the new leather on the dashboard now.

 

[Micke]

Gave the coupe a clean and filled the tank before the hibernation this evening.

 

[pp1600]

Still getting a intermittent crank sensor 'gap error' so after changing it from below the car last time... this time I removed all from up top.
Cleaned all the oxidation from the surrounding area first and hoping another new one will do the trick.
While every thing was out... de-greased everything within an inch of its life! and checked everything... only problem was the small DISA seal... missing a few sections. Is it worth changing ? no faults and car runs good otherwise......

 

[danfrost89]

Still getting a intermittent crank sensor 'gap error' so after changing it from below the car last time... this time I removed all from up top.
Cleaned all the oxidation from the surrounding area first and hoping another new one will do the trick.
While every thing was out... de-greased everything within an inch of its life! and checked everything... only problem was the small DISA seal... missing a few sections. Is it worth changing ? no faults and car runs good otherwise......

Personally I'd change it whilst it's out. We know OEM ones fail and the clones are generally shite - that's why I went for these 'lifetime DISAs' as at least they're handbuilt by someone that deals in them. I replaced my large one as it's easy and checked INPA just now (I'll post about it in a min) and it had registered a fault with it but not the lower one.

In my relatively limited experience, I've only seen the top ones fail (forums, youtube, etc) but I'd still replace but not sure I'd trust any of the cheap ones so if budget a factor and yours seems solid and is OEM then worth a go?

How many miles has it done?

 

[danfrost89]

I got INPA setup tonight and had a little session with it.

1. Windows 11 is shite. I'm a Mac person (well, a Unix person really but I use Mac) and going back to Windows felt like time travel. In a bad way.
2. INPA is fairly easy to setup if you know a little bit about tech
3. I bought a switchable K+DCAN which was obviously switched the wrong way
4. INPA is old and buggy - lots of it is in German (obvs)
5. My approach was to screen shot most of it, paste into AI and let it work it all out
6. I also used AI to work out if everything was ok and what to actually look for in the menus - it rightly told me to steer clear of some areas of the software
7. DME had a stored DISA code (2AAB / P14C2) as expected so I cleared that
8. VANOS, etc all checked out (full range, etc) so that saves a job
9. Water pump, etc all working as expected
10. So generally, a clean bill of health which isn't bad as I can't imagine it's been done for a fair while

My take on it - if there are more modern, off-the shelf options (Carly?) available then I'd do that as it's a bit of a s**t show trying to work out what's what if you're not technically minded.

I had three reasons for doing it really - a) to check if there was a fault code for DISA and b) check for other faults as I'm getting a couple of weird knocks c) to check VANOS.

So given everything electronic is ok, it seems my knocking is mechanical. I'm leaning toward engine mounts. I get a bit of a wobble/knock when I turn it off sometimes and a weirdly inconsistent knock when driving slowly.

Anyway, here's some of what you get in INPA (I took about 30 screenshots as baselines). AI translated it all and checked the values and all seems well:

 

[TriggerFish]

@danfrost89 , check out ISTA for a more modern alternative. The downside is that it's slower, and runs a massive local database, so eats disk space.

It also doesn't expose as much data on these older cars either, but it does solve point 4.

 

[danfrost89]

Thanks for that - I'll give ISTA a go next time. It's the Mrs' laptop that she barely uses so not too fussed about ruining it!