My Car History Mini, Celica, VX220, Audi S4....

[danyeates]

Hi,

I was transferring photos onto my new iMac and came across a lot of old car photos which I thought you might like to see. I'm just coming up to 25 but I think I've had an interesting car history already!

My first car was a black 1980 Mini 998cc convertible (conversion) I had the interior retrimmed in cream vinyl with Cobra bucket seats! Cost me £250 and was a mess. I spent a lot of time and money on it and ended up selling it for around £1,500 if I remember rightly!



Next was a fire damaged Mini Cooper 1275 carb. I put in new seats, dash board, roof lining and had it resprayed. I also replaced all the brightwork. I paid £700 for it and sold it for just over £2k.







I also had a mk4 Golf 1.6 SE whilst I had the Cooper which I used to commute to Southampton Uni from Ringwood, Hampshire as I didn't want to put loads of miles on the Mini. It isn't worth posting a photo up here though! It made driving the Mini extra special though!

Next I bought a Celica. This was a really great car which I loved driving. I owned this throughout my last couple of years at uni whilst working every spare minute I had to afford it!!! These photos were taken on a Pistonheads run to Hayling Island.





More to follow shortly.....

[danyeates]

I then bought a crash damaged Vauxhall VX220. Very low mileage, I think only around 7,000 on the clock. It was 2001 with a private plate. Stunning car that my dad and I rebuilt and I subsequently drove for a few months before selling to build another, and another. My dad rebuilt a VX220 Turbo which is currently tuned to stage 3 with a charge cooler.







My favourite in a very rare colour....





I then needed to free up some money and I was paying my dad back each month for borrowing a bit of money to buy to VX220 so I sold it and bought a Vauxhall Astra convertible. I didn't enjoy this car particularly! Bit of a bland drive and the gearbox decided to throw bits of the diff out the side resulting in a complete new gearbox being fitted! Even so it was very comfortable and looked pretty good. The fully automated electric roof was good and it was nice to have 4 seats again!





Then last year my girlfriend and I bought a RIB so we wanted something to tow and that would carry all our camping equipment and bikes. My girlfriend had a mk3 MR2 at the time so that was completely impractical. So I needed a practical, big, fast four wheel drive car. The choice for me was a simple one. A B5 Audi S4. 2.7L Bi-Turbo Quattro!!!







More to follow.......

Edited by danyeates on Thursday 11th February 21:37

[danyeates]

And finally the S4 in the colour I really wanted! slightly newer, 2000 and remapped with a custom remap from MRC Tuning. Running 260hp at the wheels and around 320-330hp at the crank. RS4 brakes, H&R coilovers, 19" RS6 replica wheels, RS4 rear spoiler, Recaro interior and Bose.

















If anyone wants anymore photos or information of any of the cars let me know and I'll post them up. I didn't want to bore you!!

[dr_rallye]

That last S4 is a stunner, good choice

[maximus4]

Ive owned a B5 S4 for 3 years now and I dont think I will ever sell it. MRC custom remap is a must

[JonLock]

s4 is mint mate love it

[danyeates]

maximus4 said:

Ive owned a B5 S4 for 3 years now and I dont think I will ever sell it. MRC custom remap is a must

Cool! I did consider selling it a little while ago as we need something a bit more economical for towing, but I'm not sure if I will now!

Thanks for all the kind comments!

[Mini1275]

Nice collection of cars matey . Especially the minis!.

[danyeates]

Mini1275 said:

Nice collection of cars matey . Especially the minis!.

Thanks! Thought you might like those.

I might try and upload a few of the rebuild photos at some point. I wasn't into photography back then so I haven't got many and they're not that good. The black one was a state when I got it! Torn (red!) roof, brown velour seats! Brown carpet, lovely!

[soad]

Nice cars there - personally love that 1980 Mini 998cc convertible! Looks great.

Nice boat too.

[danyeates]

soad said:

Nice cars there - personally love that 1980 Mini 998cc convertible! Looks great.

Nice boat too.

Cheers. Well, I was at school/6th form! You need something that stands and draws a crowd at school, that's what school is all about! The Mini certainly stood out from the crowd of the usual Novas, Corsas, Fiestas, AX's and the likes. My mate had a brand new Mini Cooper Sport, one of the last 500 made, another friend had a 1970something Mini Clubman in Orange with a genuine 22,000 miles on the clock. It was mint, and another friend had a fibreglass Domino bodied Mini, 1380. We had a row of Mini's in the car park - Mini parking only.

The boat is an Avon Adventure 580, Yamaha F150, it now has a matching rear bench seat too. I work for the largest Avon RIB dealer so I built it after work in my spare time. Very pleased with it and plan to get some real use out of it this year

Edited by danyeates on Friday 12th February 10:47

[Rich135]

Beautiful S4 - I want!!

[Dr Imran T]

How is the S4 to live with? is it expensive to insure/run/service? it should be quick with all that power but I assume they are a pretty heavy beast.

Do they handle well? could you throw it on track or are they too heavy/unsuitable?

I have always had a soft spot of the B5 variant. Excellent value too..

[danyeates]

Dr Imran T said:

How is the S4 to live with? is it expensive to insure/run/service? it should be quick with all that power but I assume they are a pretty heavy beast.

Do they handle well? could you throw it on track or are they too heavy/unsuitable?

I have always had a soft spot of the B5 variant. Excellent value too..

Lots of questions!

It is quite pricey to run, yes. I live 5 miles from work so it's not an ideal car for the job as it's hardly warmed up by the time I arrive. It also isn't that good on fuel for short runs, I average 18mpg day to day. I live in the New Forest so that's pretty much all 30, 40 and the odd 60mph road. My old S4 would do 30mpg on a motorway, but I'm not sure that this one will. I've not really used my new one much to be honest, it's only done 2000 miles since August! I've owned it since October. We usually use my girlfriend's MR2 for day to day use as we work and live together.

It is quick, VERY quick! A LOT quicker than you would think. It's not acutally that heavy. That's the thing is it only weighs 1,500kg, which isn't that much anymore when you compare it to a lot of new cars. Spec is supposed to be 5.7-5.9 seconds 0-60mph (depending on where you look) and it's limited to 155mph.

MRC Tuning claim that with their custom remap it would do 170mph, and I believe them! It's doing less than 3000RPM at 70mph and redlines at 7000RPM (although I haven't taken into account wind resistance etc I admit). The strange thing is, although 6th is geared really high, it's still perfectly happy doing 50mph. Other 6 speed cars I've used you hardly ever use 6th as it's labouring all the time. 0-60mph on mine has to be low 5's, but where it really excels is through 3rd gear. You can do 30-125mph in 3rd and the pull is quite amazing. Because you're running what is essentially two 3 cylinder engines with a small-ish turbo on each, the lag is very little and the power is very linear for a turbo engined car.

I haven't tracked it yet but I would have thought it would be very competitive and very good fun. It does handle well, mine is on 19's and coilovers so it's a very hard ride. Mine is also one of the last B5's so it has traction control, stability control, active yaw control etc so it has all the toys if you need them which really means you can go as quick as you like round corners! It's absolutely awesome in the snow, it accelerates like nothing else with the traction control turned on, it's just stopping that's the problem! I would say they are perfect for the track. They're not actually that big, especially compared to newer hatchbacks which seem to be getting bigger and bigger. It's a very low car too, I can see it in my works car park and the roof line is lower than a 2001 Seat Leon Cupra that it's parked next to. Plenty of guys on AudiSRS track them and some are dedicated track cars.

I think one of the main attractions of the cars is that they are easy to modify and 500hp is quite within reach. The only problem is reliability. My last S4 needed a new MAF, EGT sender, coolant sender, a boost leak and a vacuum leak fixing in my year of ownership so I was lucky really. This one I have had since October time and it's so far needed a new ABS module (£1035 from Audi!!!) Luckily I've managed to find a used one on ebay for £100 - Result. Also I've changed a couple of the multi-link suspension control arms (£100 for 2 of those).

You would need to make sure that the bushes and ball joints have been changed on a car approaching 100k, also the clutches won't last for too much longer and turbos can fail at any time at around that mileage if it hasn't been warmed up and cooled down properly. Turbos are where the main costs are and requires the engine to be removed to replace them. This could add up to over £3k but it's a good opportunity to upgrade to RS4 or RS6 turbos for that 400hp+ figure. They will also need the cambelt changing at 80k I think. This is quite a big job and the cams are usually found to have wear. My car had a major service, cambelt, waterpump, new cams etc at MRC Tuning early last year and that cost the previous owner £3k!

They are good value. My first one cost me next to nothing and luckily it turned out to be a good one. You can pick up a pre-facelift for around £4k if you wanted to but be ready to spend a bit on it. I decided to buy a facelift version that had been well looked after. One like mine with loads of options in a desirable spec would set you back at least £7 I would say.

Edited by danyeates on Friday 12th February 13:48

Edited by danyeates on Friday 12th February 13:49

Edited by danyeates on Friday 12th February 13:50

Edited by danyeates on Friday 12th February 13:51

[danyeates]

Rich135 said:

Beautiful S4 - I want!!

Thanks! There's more photos here: http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/gassing/topic.asp?h=0... (they're all about the same though!)

[Max M4X WW]

Latest S4 is really nice, I like them a LOT but as you say expensive to run/maintain.

I/We will be looking at a car with the other half to replace both of ours soon - My other half really likes these but I'm looking at E39 540's as I feel the N/A V8 will be cheaper to maintain.

[ecain63]

Nice collection of cars there mate. The final S4 is lovely, looks like a minter. My only grip would be that it probably would look better without the RS4 decals on the brakes. You dont need them mate, in fact it actually makes the car look worse for having them. The S4 is a blinding car, yours especially, keep it as an S4 and love it for being an S4.

[danyeates]

ecain63 said:

Nice collection of cars there mate. The final S4 is lovely, looks like a minter. My only grip would be that it probably would look better without the RS4 decals on the brakes. You dont need them mate, in fact it actually makes the car look worse for having them. The S4 is a blinding car, yours especially, keep it as an S4 and love it for being an S4.

I do love it as an S4, I still have the S4 rear badge, although the front is debadged.

The only reason it has RS4 on the front brakes is because they are RS4 brakes! It's just how they came. I'm actually in the process of removing the ABS pump module so the whole system will need to be re-bled so I think I might take the front calipers off and repaint them as they're getting a bit scruffy. I was thinking blue - any opinions?

[ecain63]

Porsche yellow mate, with black bolts. Cant go wrong.

[Dr Imran T]

danyeates said:

Dr Imran T said:

How is the S4 to live with? is it expensive to insure/run/service? it should be quick with all that power but I assume they are a pretty heavy beast.

Do they handle well? could you throw it on track or are they too heavy/unsuitable?

I have always had a soft spot of the B5 variant. Excellent value too..

Lots of questions!

It is quite pricey to run, yes. I live 5 miles from work so it's not an ideal car for the job as it's hardly warmed up by the time I arrive. It also isn't that good on fuel for short runs, I average 18mpg day to day. I live in the New Forest so that's pretty much all 30, 40 and the odd 60mph road. My old S4 would do 30mpg on a motorway, but I'm not sure that this one will. I've not really used my new one much to be honest, it's only done 2000 miles since August! I've owned it since October. We usually use my girlfriend's MR2 for day to day use as we work and live together.

It is quick, VERY quick! A LOT quicker than you would think. It's not acutally that heavy. That's the thing is it only weighs 1,500kg, which isn't that much anymore when you compare it to a lot of new cars. Spec is supposed to be 5.7-5.9 seconds 0-60mph (depending on where you look) and it's limited to 155mph.

MRC Tuning claim that with their custom remap it would do 170mph, and I believe them! It's doing less than 3000RPM at 70mph and redlines at 7000RPM (although I haven't taken into account wind resistance etc I admit). The strange thing is, although 6th is geared really high, it's still perfectly happy doing 50mph. Other 6 speed cars I've used you hardly ever use 6th as it's labouring all the time. 0-60mph on mine has to be low 5's, but where it really excels is through 3rd gear. You can do 30-125mph in 3rd and the pull is quite amazing. Because you're running what is essentially two 3 cylinder engines with a small-ish turbo on each, the lag is very little and the power is very linear for a turbo engined car.

I haven't tracked it yet but I would have thought it would be very competitive and very good fun. It does handle well, mine is on 19's and coilovers so it's a very hard ride. Mine is also one of the last B5's so it has traction control, stability control, active yaw control etc so it has all the toys if you need them which really means you can go as quick as you like round corners! It's absolutely awesome in the snow, it accelerates like nothing else with the traction control turned on, it's just stopping that's the problem! I would say they are perfect for the track. They're not actually that big, especially compared to newer hatchbacks which seem to be getting bigger and bigger. It's a very low car too, I can see it in my works car park and the roof line is lower than a 2001 Seat Leon Cupra that it's parked next to. Plenty of guys on AudiSRS track them and some are dedicated track cars.

I think one of the main attractions of the cars is that they are easy to modify and 500hp is quite within reach. The only problem is reliability. My last S4 needed a new MAF, EGT sender, coolant sender, a boost leak and a vacuum leak fixing in my year of ownership so I was lucky really. This one I have had since October time and it's so far needed a new ABS module (£1035 from Audi!!!) Luckily I've managed to find a used one on ebay for £100 - Result. Also I've changed a couple of the multi-link suspension control arms (£100 for 2 of those).

You would need to make sure that the bushes and ball joints have been changed on a car approaching 100k, also the clutches won't last for too much longer and turbos can fail at any time at around that mileage if it hasn't been warmed up and cooled down properly. Turbos are where the main costs are and requires the engine to be removed to replace them. This could add up to over £3k but it's a good opportunity to upgrade to RS4 or RS6 turbos for that 400hp+ figure. They will also need the cambelt changing at 80k I think. This is quite a big job and the cams are usually found to have wear. My car had a major service, cambelt, waterpump, new cams etc at MRC Tuning early last year and that cost the previous owner £3k!

They are good value. My first one cost me next to nothing and luckily it turned out to be a good one. You can pick up a pre-facelift for around £4k if you wanted to but be ready to spend a bit on it. I decided to buy a facelift version that had been well looked after. One like mine with loads of options in a desirable spec would set you back at least £7 I would say.

Edited by danyeates on Friday 12th February 13:48

Edited by danyeates on Friday 12th February 13:49

Edited by danyeates on Friday 12th February 13:50

Edited by danyeates on Friday 12th February 13:51

wow - great reply. Certainly a car worth taking note of. I really like them, very subtle indeed. I am with you on the size, compared to all the modern stuff they are rather compact.

I think the Remap sounds like a must have mod too

cheers