Bigdaddycain

Let's chuck a couple of these in to set the scene...   All summered up?

Well, with any luck, that's the last we've seen of the gritters for a good few months, so it was time to put the ST alloys in to their "winter wheel" storage, and time to break out the shiny new polished face ST summer rims

Now i know the new wheels will soon have white corrosion streaks across the polished faces as soon as they get stonechipped and moisture creeps under the lacquer... Or will they?

I took the brand spanking new alloys straight over to the bodyshop... They flattenned off the new wheels, and applied many coats of fresh lacquer over the top... My thinking? Stones would have more layers of lacquer to break through to reach the polished surface underneath... Well, it might work!

We shall see...

Winter wheels on....





Summer wheels on....







Forgive the muck on the wheels, the tyres had just been mounted, so they were thick with tyre soap, oily fingerprints etc... plus the car was dirty as i'd used it for work...

They did look absolutely belting in the bright sun in the shop windows that i passed though...I'll give the fresh lacquer another week or so to fully cure before i give them a really detailed polish to remove the slight swirl marks left by the polishing mop...I swear i'll cry if i see a gritter truck now though!

Ok, i probably should have asked for some advice BEFORE i ordered this....

http://www.ebay.co.u...=item5ae1b1c784

...But i ordered it anyway!

My car is a 2005 (mk2 Estate), i realize the smooth rear wiper is for the mk1 estate... My query though... Has anybody fitted one of these to a mk2?

My other question... Anybody on here actually modified a mk2 focus estate car?

I've been out and measured my old ugly rear wiper, it's an inch and a half shorter, i checked the wiper sweep, and (if the measurements given are correct) Then the new smoothy shouldn't foul anything during a sweep... The stumbling block may be the actual fitting spigot for the rear wiper arm... If the spline is a different width, then all bets are off...I'll post back on here with my findings when the wiper arrives

I've got my car booked in with a local (ish) Tuner this coming tuesday for a re-map & K&N panel filter... My focus is the 2.0 TDCI with 136BHP. The chap reckons the re-map & filter should show somewhere in the region of 168BHP, plus a stack more torque

£280 all in (reduced from £340 all in) Fair price do you reckon? The fella said he keeps the old standard map and will re-instate if ever needed.

I was rummaging about in the garage today when i happened to find a decent sized left over strip of 3M Di-noc carbon film... So i whizzed off the mirror covers and chucked a bit on each one... (that saved me the job of re-painting them because of 180,000 miles worth of stonechips)

My car is Sea grey, and the carbon works pretty well with that colour i think!

Ok... I'm lay here, on the laptop, TV buzzing away in the background... Brew to my left hand side, TV remote to my right... !Removed! and the city has just popped on the TV, (what a thing to put on after Police interceptors!) Batteries have gone in the remote!

Should i.....

1/ Pull my cover off me, get up and work out how to manually change channel? (don't suggest switching the TV off, i've no idea how to do that).

2/ Throw something heavy at the TV in the hope that it breaks (or at least falls over)

3/ Commit suicide, thus not having to glance up every now and then when i hear a squeaky voice, and see a mature horse doing an impression of a human woman?