McCheung
Buy & Sell Member
Hi all,
Would have posted sooner but wanted to make sure the car was on the road first
Finally decide to call it the Firefly Project. Here was the runner ups names:
1. Project Firefly (cos its small and black with rear LED lights)
2. Iisha project (Eye-E-sha: Just cos I think it’s a cool name, was a princess from a series from the old Dungeons and dragon cartoon)
3. Oren-Iishi project (character from kill bill, Japanese and kicks ass)
4. Black hole project (The amount of money I’ve sunk into it already lol)
Saga to date:
Bought the car on 9th of November 2009, it was that loud the first thing I did was to replace the mid/back exhaust system from AAS Performance in Newcastle. This actually made the noise more bearable but there was still the manifold and down pipe that need looking at on a later date. Only had it for a week and hardly used it. I was on my way to Manchester on the 16th Nov 09 and then to take it to a local garage my mate recommended getting a full service on the car while I was down in Manchester. After 100 miles of usages the engine blew. The recovery service said I had to get the car towed within 10miles of the nearest garage and wouldn’t take it to Manchester. So after arriving at where they suggested in Rippon near Leeds… the place was boarded up and closed down LOL. So instead of admitting their mistake they said “Ok you can take Mr Cheung Vehicle to Manchester.” So that saved me from being stranded 70miles from my destination. The first garage I went to said it was scrapped as theirs no compression on cylinder no.4 and would only change the engine over if I could get one from a scrappy, even then he said there’s no guarantee that’ll it’ll run after he puts it in. So really it sounds like he didn’t really want to touch it. Called around 4-5 scrappy and no one had a k11 1.4 coilpack engine as they are fairly rare. This really put me off. As I didn’t have time to run around looking for an engine as I have to work.
So I was about to trade it in and get a Civic type R instead, for the hassle free of finance. And posted on here to sell any parts I could ASAP. Then Frank suggested that it’s just the head gasket so ended up getting a second opinion from Kristian from K-Kustom who said the same as frank. Lucky for me K-Kustom was just down the road from Manchester near Wigan. After opening the engine block the head gasket was gone and so was about 3mm chunk off the bottom block from cylinder 3 to 4. By this point I was without the car for about 2 weeks and a wacked engine.
Onto plan B manage to get a k11 1.4 coilpack engine 36k on the clock from Peter (k6pfs, top bloke), tried to get £5 off the engine and delivery as I needed the fiver for my lunch, but wouldn’t budge. So you could say he took my lunch money the bully LOL paid him and got the engine within 2 days. Kristian dropped the engine in on the 5thth of Dec 09 and it was running sweet. Finally got my car on the road after 4 weeks.
Drove the car for a week and the engine was tip top like new, but the manifold was loud and sounded great… except at 2500 rpm on any gear the down pipe was rubbing on the lower struts and the vibrating noise was so loud people thought I was trying to race them even though I was only doing 2.5k rpm on 5th at 60mph… LOL. Other issue was the vibration was travelling all the way up the steering column and could feel it on the steering wheel.
downpipe:
Kristian suggested www.humphrisoxford.co.uk so I called Mathew Humphris and he sorted me out with a mild steel janspeed manifold for next day delivery and he even thrown in some free stickers which Kristian nicked one to plaster on is window at his workshop.
So back to K-Kustom at the weekend 12th dec 09 as the only thing holding the exhaust up was the rear bracket and the front of the manifold, oh and the front lower struts that it was vibrating on. So now Janspeed manifold and down pipe + a mid/rear custom exhaust with silencer and some roar at when I kick it. No vibration on the steering and the car runs like a F’n DREAM!!!
So for now that’s the last of the mechanical work as the rest of the car was fine when Kristian check it out when it was on the ramp. So I’ll be tinkering on with the inside next week when I’m off on holiday for xmas still plenty to do but at least I have Project Firefly back on track.
Big massive Special thanks to Kristian from K-Kustom for getting the project back on the road at a decent respectable price I would so recommend him to anyone that needs mechanical/body work done to their car.
Also thanks to Peter for supplying the mint condition k11 1.4 coilpack engine.
And to Mathew Humphris for the Janspeed manifold and stickers
Exhaust before:
Exhaust after:
Car the day I got it:
Final note:
Must Admit it all turned out for the better in the end as I've got Project Firefly back on the road. I've learned more about cars in the past month than in 20 years of driving them. The best part of all of this is I found Kristian whos gonna be doing all the work on all my car in future
Cheers for reading
Chi
Would have posted sooner but wanted to make sure the car was on the road first
Finally decide to call it the Firefly Project. Here was the runner ups names:
1. Project Firefly (cos its small and black with rear LED lights)
2. Iisha project (Eye-E-sha: Just cos I think it’s a cool name, was a princess from a series from the old Dungeons and dragon cartoon)
3. Oren-Iishi project (character from kill bill, Japanese and kicks ass)
4. Black hole project (The amount of money I’ve sunk into it already lol)
Saga to date:
Bought the car on 9th of November 2009, it was that loud the first thing I did was to replace the mid/back exhaust system from AAS Performance in Newcastle. This actually made the noise more bearable but there was still the manifold and down pipe that need looking at on a later date. Only had it for a week and hardly used it. I was on my way to Manchester on the 16th Nov 09 and then to take it to a local garage my mate recommended getting a full service on the car while I was down in Manchester. After 100 miles of usages the engine blew. The recovery service said I had to get the car towed within 10miles of the nearest garage and wouldn’t take it to Manchester. So after arriving at where they suggested in Rippon near Leeds… the place was boarded up and closed down LOL. So instead of admitting their mistake they said “Ok you can take Mr Cheung Vehicle to Manchester.” So that saved me from being stranded 70miles from my destination. The first garage I went to said it was scrapped as theirs no compression on cylinder no.4 and would only change the engine over if I could get one from a scrappy, even then he said there’s no guarantee that’ll it’ll run after he puts it in. So really it sounds like he didn’t really want to touch it. Called around 4-5 scrappy and no one had a k11 1.4 coilpack engine as they are fairly rare. This really put me off. As I didn’t have time to run around looking for an engine as I have to work.
So I was about to trade it in and get a Civic type R instead, for the hassle free of finance. And posted on here to sell any parts I could ASAP. Then Frank suggested that it’s just the head gasket so ended up getting a second opinion from Kristian from K-Kustom who said the same as frank. Lucky for me K-Kustom was just down the road from Manchester near Wigan. After opening the engine block the head gasket was gone and so was about 3mm chunk off the bottom block from cylinder 3 to 4. By this point I was without the car for about 2 weeks and a wacked engine.
Onto plan B manage to get a k11 1.4 coilpack engine 36k on the clock from Peter (k6pfs, top bloke), tried to get £5 off the engine and delivery as I needed the fiver for my lunch, but wouldn’t budge. So you could say he took my lunch money the bully LOL
paid him and got the engine within 2 days. Kristian dropped the engine in on the 5thth of Dec 09 and it was running sweet. Finally got my car on the road after 4 weeks.Drove the car for a week and the engine was tip top like new, but the manifold was loud and sounded great… except at 2500 rpm on any gear the down pipe was rubbing on the lower struts and the vibrating noise was so loud people thought I was trying to race them even though I was only doing 2.5k rpm on 5th at 60mph… LOL. Other issue was the vibration was travelling all the way up the steering column and could feel it on the steering wheel.
downpipe:
Kristian suggested www.humphrisoxford.co.uk so I called Mathew Humphris and he sorted me out with a mild steel janspeed manifold for next day delivery and he even thrown in some free stickers which Kristian nicked one to plaster on is window at his workshop
. So back to K-Kustom at the weekend 12th dec 09 as the only thing holding the exhaust up was the rear bracket and the front of the manifold, oh and the front lower struts that it was vibrating on. So now Janspeed manifold and down pipe + a mid/rear custom exhaust with silencer and some roar at when I kick it. No vibration on the steering and the car runs like a F’n DREAM!!!
So for now that’s the last of the mechanical work as the rest of the car was fine when Kristian check it out when it was on the ramp. So I’ll be tinkering on with the inside next week when I’m off on holiday for xmas
still plenty to do but at least I have Project Firefly back on track.Big massive Special thanks to Kristian from K-Kustom for getting the project back on the road at a decent respectable price I would so recommend him to anyone that needs mechanical/body work done to their car.
Also thanks to Peter for supplying the mint condition k11 1.4 coilpack engine.
And to Mathew Humphris for the Janspeed manifold and stickers
Exhaust before:
Exhaust after:
Car the day I got it:
Final note:
Must Admit it all turned out for the better in the end as I've got Project Firefly back on the road. I've learned more about cars in the past month than in 20 years of driving them. The best part of all of this is I found Kristian whos gonna be doing all the work on all my car in future
Cheers for reading
Chi
