My Black Magic VR6

[Lukey. 381]

I've got a load of new genuine parts, and finally got them all to do the one big fluids out job, new aux water pump, main water pump, hoses and oil cooler. The aux water pump had had it but the other two I have replaced as they are 98,000 miles and 15 years old now. But the main water pump had a smashed vane on the impeller so had to get them to replace it. bah.

So far I'm at new aux water pump and hoses with new proper solid and rolled banded clips installed, and new aux water pump bushes. The old aux pump was not working, and I have no idea for how long it hasn't been working.

Samco Samco everywhere

And my remaining box of goodies

New water pump

Oil cooler and O-rings

Which I will be applying black sealer to each side, as per the bentley manual instructions

And some good old synta and a fresh filter

[Lukey. 381]

New water pump and oil cooler are now on and upon inspection it was a good move, the old water pump had a broken impeller but I managed to get all the plastic out so that was good.

I then flushed out the block from the back to get any debris out and noticed the water was slightly rainbowy so I bucket tested the oil cooler and it was leaking. The coolant has stayed a nice pinky purple now, so not a gasket issue, phew, fingers crossed, before it was going muddy red brown and left slime in the expansion tank.

New pulley and bolts with the new water pump

Nice new oil cooler with fresh O-rings, the original seals had gone like hard liquorice and it had a super slow drip leak, no more leaks

Final bonus is they are exchange parts so got a load of money off the new parts.

[Lukey. 381]

I've sprayed my new coolant cap up but its not getting fitted yet until I can go to a scrapyard and get some more of the under bonnet quilt clips as it droops down in places and scuffed the last coolant cap up.

So its waiting on the window sill for the solvents to evaporate and getting the clips

The Samco aux water pump hose was touching on the bottom rad hose clip and will obviously cause some rubbing over time.

So I've coated the clip in black silicone and it feels like its going to solve the problem

It does the job of acting as a bushing between the hose and clip

[bungy 2]

Won't silicon against the hose accelerate the wear?

[Lukey. 381]

How's that mate? My thinking was that it's rubbery so will flex with any slight movement, the hose clip has the worm teeth on it and it was just gonna end up sawin through the hose, genuinely asking, if you think theres a better way tell me.

I did google it an it seems that other people found that with samco hose they were rubbing like this.

The other thing I thought was to cut an old hose up and wrap it round the samco but thought this might cause the same problem of rubbing through the samco too.

[Lukey. 381]

With these constant niggles and with the crappy weather not being able to give the VR a clean for quite a while I was starting to lose the love, but as the cycle always goes, all the niggles (for now) are sorted and she's nice and clean again and I can feel the love coming back

[cornishvr6 52]

Liking the progress and attention to detail in this thread, keep up the good work

[bungy 2]

The hose clip has the worm teeth on it and it was just gonna end up sawin through the hose

Covering the teeth will definitely help in the short term but can the issue not be solved. Might be worth asking Samco and sending the bottom picture of yours. It is worth an e-mail. Not criticizing, just trying to help.

[Lukey. 381]

Yea I know mate and all suggestions are welcome, I'm gonna see if I can think of anything else. I thought about silicone grease because that stuff is super slippery, but then you've got the problem of dust and dirt creating a nice rubbing compound.

Ideally id obviously like there to be a gap there, I may slack off all the nearby clips and see if I can manipulate the hoses to create one.

[bungy 2]

It might be that the hose was cut too short when trimmed.

[Lukey. 381]

Compared to the oem hose it's identical, but the samco is nearly twice as thick, but you'd think they accounted for that

[hvr6 88]

looking lovely Luke

[Lukey. 381]

Cheers I've been p!ssin about with the hoses and managed to manipulate them so that they don't touch now, I'll keep my eye on it and see if it stays like that

[Lukey. 381]

I topped up the underseal on the whole chassis today, awful stuff, I never want to do that again my life.

[Lukey. 381]

This week I got round to fitting the undertray I got like 2 years ago for a bargain tenner.

First I drilled the original mounting holes on the subframe from 4mm to 6mm to fit big enough bolts and washers that would hold the tray in place, then I fixed bolts onto the subframe using liquid metal epoxy giving me captured fixings on the top side.

Looks a bit of a mess but epoxy is always messy and it's normally covered up by the tray anyway.

For the gearbox side fixing the hole in the tray was much bigger than it should be, so I used washers to hold the surrounding area then wound 2 little nuts onto the mounting post.

I reshaped the tray to suit, which involved cutting away the rear left corner.

I secured the front of this side with a right angle piece of the tray that was removed, then by fastening it to the side shield. As always stainless screws and washers throughout.

And I've ended up with a lovely sealed underside

Next job I think is to de grease and repaint the sump now I've had a good look at it hehe.

[Lukey. 381]

I think I'm on a big protection mission at the moment so carried on with these jobs this weekend, which began with removing the front arch plastics and masking up all areas, then waxoyling the front and rear full arches.

I got the sump all cleaned up and painted, looks a million times better now.

I also checked the tank straps and thought they could do with a bit of TLC, I was going to try and remove them but on inspection thought id do more damage than good so I cleaned them up and painted them in situ, they look much better too now.

I also fitted these handbrake torsion springs as the handbrake can sometimes drag and I have to simply push the lever gently with a finger to release it, so the springs now do this for me. They needed ever so slight modification for me to be sure they will stay in place.

Also the resonance dampers lock them in place too.

[Lukey. 381]

Gave the battery tray a heavy coating of paint and replaced the bolts and washers with stainless cos they were a right bugger to get off.

[Pearsy47 1]

bloody hell mr OCD lol looking good tho bat trays always need a good coating !! your vr is looking well mint !! keep it up fella !

[Lukey. 381]

lol when I said heavy I meant it, but thought meh its always hidden and the theory of thicker coat therefore more protection lol

[Lukey. 381]

My interior light had gone bananas and would flash on off on off 24/7 and I tracked the fault to the controller chip on the board in the light, £2 off eBay later and I picked up another and fitted the full board and problem fixed :-d

[Lukey. 381]

Got a rear fogs only headlight switch as I removed my front fogs, while I was at it I modded the lighting to match the rest of the dash now, with lime green neon light wire and super white switch illumination. There's not much room inside the case to play with and packaging it all took some time but I'm happy with the end result, even illumination of all icons instead of bright and dark spots.

From this

To this

To match this

Also found a mint condition 5dr GL with electric everything and had the electric window regulators out of it for a song, good to have spares, I wanted to take the seats as they have base tilt aswell but found out there's no way I could scavenge the parts onto my recaros, shame.

[Lukey. 381]

This came in the post today

[VIW28 29]

Nice! Where'd you get that??

[Lukey. 381]

It came up on German ebay. They do R32 ones too.

[VIW28 29]

Ooo! Might have to invest !