Been quite quiet for the last couple of weeks as the 8 has just been plodding along, doing sterling service shuttling me back and forth as my daily.
I did treat her to a quick clean (45m as opposed to my usual 2-4 hour spruce because it's still winter and it's just going to get filthy again) last weekend as it was absolutely disgusting, and was pleasantly surprised to find my wax from last year is still holding up! Shockingly, it actually DOES last 6 months. Not the best photo, but it's still beading like a champ. +1 to Meguiars Ultimate Liquid Wax.
I've also partly resolved my Australian display issue for the dash by using the SSD_13XX libraries (turns out Adafruit never bothered to make the rotate screen function work properly for SSD_1331... There's about 6 hours of my life I'll never get back, thanks guys
), but I'm now experiencing some weird screen corruption I wasn't before that I think is down to some ground/voltage thing on the board, so that's a new fresh hell to fight.
In more mechanical news I have a day on the ramp in Oxford booked in a couple of weekends time to get me fancy 'new' exhaust
and decat on in time for some good weather (I live in hope). I also need to investigate an odd rattle/bump I'm sometimes hearing from driver's front wheelwell as well (it only happens on certain sections of road, and everything vital seems secure
), and will probably change my gearbox oil while I'm at it as the thing is rattling up a storm in certain gears, and on long journeys it's driving me slightly insane, especially as my driver's amp/speaker is still a tad fooked.
Speaking of, the weird bassy rattle/buzz that I'm getting appears to only happen to it in certain circumstances, and if I turn the electrics off and on again it will disappear. Makes me think it's a loose electrical ground or an amp issue, but troubleshooting that means removing door cards etc., so is reserved for drier weather, when I'm planning on swapping out the head unit to fit a Grom and finally fitting my prototype dash anyway.
Does anyone/has anyone recreated the gauge fascia plates in the past? I don't mind cutting them up, but it'd be a lot neater if I could get the central rev gauge plate remade 'to spec' so it all looks neat and tidy. Never know if someone in here might be a magical CNC wizard, and I'd never know if I didn't ask.
Next month (13th March) is
our my 1 year anniversary with the car (READ: time to renew insurance and tax
) , so nothing special planned as with the Vectra off the road (and therefore my 8 mileage doubling) and wedding payments all done I can't afford to take it out anywhere nice.
85.5k miles and counting...