I love my b , I love the way it looks , I love the way it drives , I love the interior of the car , I love the comfy leather seats , I love the quirky door handles , I love the sound of the induction kit , I love the way the exhaust 'steam' rises from the twin exhausts on cold mornings , I love just staring at the lines , I love the fact its left hand drive and I love the fact that its individual - but I f*****g hate the totally f*****g s**t quality of the crappy components FIAT insisted on putting the car together with........... why oh why did they build every metal component out of Insta-rust?
Yesterday I nipped up to see the nice Mr Doogal (top chap! ) and relieve him of the downpipe from his b (RIP) and replace the split downpipe on mine. This should have been a 1 1/2 hour job at most but oh f*****g no, every f*****g metal component I needed to unscrew was rusted beyond recognition. :bang:
It started when I unscrewed the bolts on the flange (great word) that joins the downpipe with the manifold - 2 out of the 4 bolts were rusted so badly at the mainfold when I put a socket on them they sheared clean off with virtually no pressure........aagghh
It didn't stop there though :shakehead , when I tried to separate the CAT from the downpipe I found that the insta-rust bolts used to hold the CAT and pipe together had rusted to half their size so had to be cut off - no chance of doing that insitu so I had to part the CAT from the mid box - guess what? more f*****g insta-rust components in the shape of an exhaust bracket that I had to f*****g cut off as well. The only way to part the CAT from the downpipe was with a hacksaw.......although by this point I was ready to use a f*****g big hammer on it......
So, there was no chance of drilling the snapped bolts on the manifold in place so I had to remove the manifold, to do that I had to remove the heatshield and rad fan - also held on by insta-rust bolts...............
FFS - all I wanted to do was a simple job - I now have a couple of hours drilling ahead of me tomorrow in order to get the snapped bolts out of the manifold and then another couple of hours of putting it all back together again - all 'cos f*****g insta-rust f*****g nuts and bolts.......
Rant over - for now.................
Yesterday I nipped up to see the nice Mr Doogal (top chap! ) and relieve him of the downpipe from his b (RIP) and replace the split downpipe on mine. This should have been a 1 1/2 hour job at most but oh f*****g no, every f*****g metal component I needed to unscrew was rusted beyond recognition. :bang:
It started when I unscrewed the bolts on the flange (great word) that joins the downpipe with the manifold - 2 out of the 4 bolts were rusted so badly at the mainfold when I put a socket on them they sheared clean off with virtually no pressure........aagghh
It didn't stop there though :shakehead , when I tried to separate the CAT from the downpipe I found that the insta-rust bolts used to hold the CAT and pipe together had rusted to half their size so had to be cut off - no chance of doing that insitu so I had to part the CAT from the mid box - guess what? more f*****g insta-rust components in the shape of an exhaust bracket that I had to f*****g cut off as well. The only way to part the CAT from the downpipe was with a hacksaw.......although by this point I was ready to use a f*****g big hammer on it......
So, there was no chance of drilling the snapped bolts on the manifold in place so I had to remove the manifold, to do that I had to remove the heatshield and rad fan - also held on by insta-rust bolts...............
FFS - all I wanted to do was a simple job - I now have a couple of hours drilling ahead of me tomorrow in order to get the snapped bolts out of the manifold and then another couple of hours of putting it all back together again - all 'cos f*****g insta-rust f*****g nuts and bolts.......
Rant over - for now.................