T5 gone. D5 purchased!

[kmosimanekgosi]

The car is awesome but the previous owner did not care much about it. Imagine that the car is a D5, what a waste. But i am thinking the engine is still smooth.

[a lex]

I have managed to tick a few more things off the list:

-Grom IPD3 iPod interface finally installed and working - it needed a replacement cable as the original was faulty. After a bit of dremelling and skinned knuckles I have managed to install it quite neatly in the centre console. I have become very, very good at getting the centre console to pieces, but in defence of Volvo (for once) they made it quite easy.



-Carpet mats do a good job of lifting the interior.







-Ive given the exterior its first complete correction/polish. The difference is quite remarkable, virtually all of the 'muddy' marks in the paint work have gone



The current fleet together; with my attention on the Volvo and Mini lately this was the first time the Alfa was out of the garage in over 2 weeks, despite the 28c weather

[getcarter1972]

great fun watching you give her the tlc she deserves

[a lex]

Just completed a trip down to Tuscany in the D5

2,219 miles covered on this trip - nearly 6k miles since I bought it 7 weeks ago (not bad huh!). Total spend so far remains the iPod adapter, some cleaning equipment and 1L of pentosin PAS fluid.

I cant believe how well the old bus lapped the trip up. It was ABUSED the whole week. 800 miles down to Tuscany, 500 miles around the houses during the week, and 800 home again.

I set the cruise at between 80-110mph on the Autobahn (had one brief flit up to 130mph, but im not sure it really appreciated me doing this :hehe - Autostrada cruise was about 85mph.

The place we stayed at was up a big hill, and it spent most of the week in 3rd gear, accelerating from one hairpin to the next in 35-40c heat. Airco to the max the whole time, loaded up, generally getting a caning.

We managed to drive through a couple of horrendous pot holes, nay chasms on the Tuscan country roads - im really glad we werent there in the Spider as it would have meant mechanical disaster - Volvo took it in its stride though.

The idea of doing an 'economy' run went out the window in the first 20mins on the Autobahn - however even with the above driving style I managed a true 41.3mpg over the 2k miles (OBC showing 48.3) - damn pleased with that.

View from our hotel on Lake Lucerne (trip down), bloody lovely:



Next morning the COOLEST guy in the world motors across the lake in this wonderful contraption, had a coffee and croissant on the hotel terrace and §§§§§§ed off again. Massive jealousy!



1/2 way up the Gotthard (notice the Z8):




And then a train came by (surprised the hell out of me!)



At the top!





View down the valley, direction Lugano and Italia!



Our gaff for the week:







The hottest day was 39c in the shade - it was so hot walking the streets in Florence we had to give up and retreat back to the pool (must have been 45-50c in the sun).



Saw load of these



and lots of pristine 1980s Fiat Pandas, which I think are immensely cool

We did the trip back via Zurich (took the tunnel this time). What a fantastic place Switzerland is (if you are mega-rich), as our piggy bank was getting low we found it to be annoyingly expensive! Cant argue with the awesome road infrastructure though, its simply magnificent.

[MisterC1501]

Lovely holiday snaps.......but I notice you still have the car on an English plate. Will you have to re-register? It may be worth replacing the interior seats rather than trying to rescue the leather.........quite a few on ebay.........not that distance is an object now you have a diesel!!

[a lex]

Been a while since I updated the thread.

She is about to turn 164k miles now.

I was in England last week and took the opportunity for a bit of 'mechanical tourism' as apposed to the medical tourism you hear a lot about !!

VolTech in Hull did the following:

-New rear discs and h/brake shoes.
-All belts and tensioners
-Extensive diagnostics and fault finding. Basically a pre-MOT plus we checked all the engine mouts, drop links etc and did a smoke test on the intake to make sure it was all air tight.
-Mounted my new towbar.

Result of the pre-MOT was that all it needs is a new dust cover on the ball joint. All other tests came back OK and we cleared 2 1/2 pages of old errors out of the ECU with VIDA.

VolTech were really, really good and ill be going back there in the future. All in cost for the above was 550GBP.

245 for the belts/tensioners.
150 for the rear discs and h/brake
55 to mount the towbar
The rest was in the pre-MOT and fault finding stuff.

Hopefully set up for a few easy miles now and I can finally pull my trailer to get rid of my garden waste!!

The towbar was a bargain 80quid delivered from eBay brand new (Bosal). Good quality too.