So over the winter I have a few bits I need to do on the zed to keep her at her best,
A week before the Jockland Hoon I gave her a service, spark plugs, engine oil, coolant, gear & diff oil. When changing the plugs I discovered that there was a small amount of oil leaking from the rocker covers into the sleeve for the no.1 & No.4 plugs. I spoke to ZMANALEX whilst on the hoon about this & he advised that the centre seals are part of the rocker cover & a new rocker cover would be required. So against his advice I ordered the replacement rocker cover gaskets (outer Seals), sub £20 delivered. With the intention to replace the outer rubber seals & make/repair the centre seals with a heat & oil resistant sealant rather than fork out for replacement rocker covers. So the last couple of evenings I got to work to repair the leaks.
Before I started, completely stock other than a panel filter, 06 velocity stack & plenum spacer.
Engine cover & strut bar removed
coolante drained, then upper & lower plenum removed
Then came the slightly trickier part of un fixing & moving the various coolant hoses & the main wiring loom to gain access to the rocker covers.
This in fact took more time than it did to actually remove, clean 7 replace the gaskets on both covers. Unfortunately I didn`t manage to get any pics of the covers off as it was getting a little late & I wasn`t going to get cleaned up just to take pictures.
Rocker covers fitted, torqued & cleaned, wiring loom & coolant hoses back in place
Re-fitted the lower plenum, cleaned & torqued. Then went to work on the upper plenum, fancied a colour change, Red So i prepped & sprayed the upper plenum Rosso Red (matt)
After putting it all back together bar the engine cover & strut brace I decided that I could see to much of the aluminium on the lower plenum so that needed painting to, also I thought it would look better with some lacquer
I also painted the strut bar but forgot to take pics
Lower plenum, installed once again
Then upper plenum installed
Strut brace, engine cover & intake installed
Finally the coolant was replaced & fired her up, All seems 0k, no signs of any leaks, in fact it feels alot quicker it must be the Rosso red paint, that must be worth 50hp
Next on my list are,
Replacing hinges on drivers door
Replacing Clutch & Flywheel (single or DMF)????
Finding a faulty airbag connection
Cleaning & sealing all ali parts under the car,
Under-sealing
Re-spraying the bonnet, bumper & wings
Removing & re-furbing Brembo callipers
Possible poly bushing
Doesn`t look like I`ll be spending much time with the better half this winter