37.5k kms oil change

Still feeling muscle pain from extensive tourist walking throughout Jakarta, decided to wake up a little bit early to send the Pocong for its 37.5k kms oil change and replacing worn solid control arm bushes at Auto Reign. As usual, fresh 4.5-4.8 litres of Castrol Edge 5w40 oil poured in filtered with new VAG original oil filter (Part# 06A 115 561B). Everything is very much a routine job except we had some trouble with over tightened oil filter caused by Goh Brothers SC’s personnel. That took a while. Should it still jam that time, I swear to give them a thoroughly trash talk!

Unlike the Mk5 GTI, the guys have to take out the entire control arm assembly to replace the bushings with Seat Ibiza’s. Pretty complicated job, slightly expensive yes, and ½ day gone but I was at peace knowing these guys know what they’re doing. The whole job cost my credit card balance to up by RM405. And another good alignment & balancing from Consistent Distinction for RM63.

Fortunately, the end result is worth the pain. I can sense the acceleration & braking feels more decisive, you can floor the car 1st, 2nd, 3rd gear without having lunatic torque steer all the time. And according to Clement of Auto Reign, my clutch is still in good shape :)

Taking out the control arms is the first thing they do

Dog Bone, going to scout for solid rubber or PU based material as upgrade

After 1.5 solid hoursm both arms managed to extracted out

Worn stock bushes

The guys ingat-ingat lupa where to put the bolts into which holes

15 minutes to 3p.m. finally done, alignment & balancing next

Seems like I need to skim the rear rotors!

4G93 still ROCKS!

This has to be the most powerful 4G93 I've ever seen first hand. No mivec, forced induction, ITB goodies but punching out 191.5hp on wheels! And it can still hit 11-12k rpm with even more power! This sleeper beast already roaming in Gombak and Shah Alam. The only hints I can tell you is that the car is Satria GTi and is using Goodyear tyres. Pocong got to be really be discreet when going to these areas hehehe

Gran Tourismo 4

I’ve been addicted to GT4 lately and been yapping about it ever since (yeah I'm outdated hehehe). And yesterday managed to nailed Hachiroku 240hp on stock tyres on Nordschleife, plenty of room for improvement but still netting 8:12 secs :)

Stay tuned for vids of E46 M3 CSL’s 6:46secs on Nordschleife, 49secs on Tsukuba and Elise S2 111R dance on ice circuit !

Sound Bites on Lotus F1

The cat is already out of the bag as we speak. It turns out Lotus F1 Team errr sorry my mistake 1Malaysia F1 Team has just announced its drivers Jarno Trulli and Jacques Heikki Kovalainen while the Malaysian’s Fairuz Fauzy as test driver.

It may be a good news that at least Fairuz got the spot in the team just being a ‘tester’ giving him more mileage under his belt before having a crack at F1. But with test ban in place these days, test drivers are just well filling up the blanks with almost zero mileage of drives. I quote Mike Gascoyne’s statement “He has the talent but we don't want him to 'crash and burn' in the race because of his inexperience”. How can he get more experience by just filling up the blanks and now tell me why should this team branded as “1Malaysia F1 Team” and why it should be supported by Malaysians and why it has to be funded mostly by Malaysians’ conglomerate?

If you look at the stats, Fairuz has participated more formula series than Alex Yoong (touted to be Deputy Team Principal?) and this year finishing runner up beating the likes of Jaime Alguersuari, the Renault driver this year (and almost be certainly be on the second cockpit of Toro Rosso). He certainly deserves F1 seat more than Alex .What more convincing work he has to do now? At the age of 27, it’s now or never!

Of course, he doesn’t score that well in GP2/F3000 but let me give you stats to this argument. Michael Schumacher, Mika Hakkinen, Kimi Raikkonen, Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve and newly crowned Jenson Button did not even drive in any of these championships, and yet still became F1 champion. The only person who’s ever won GP2 and doing well in F1 is just Lewis Hamilton. Past GP2/F3000 champions like Björn Wirdheim, Bruno Junqueira and Jörg Müller didn’t even entered a single F1 race.

Well I may be short sighted in this case compared to Tony Fernandes and Mike Gascoyne but I surely think it’s not worth our massive investment. Oh before I forgot, they’re hiring more Malaysians people but let’s hope it’s just not filling up the blanks again. The chassis is designed by Litespeed anyway…

New Polo is European Car of the Year

This would explains why the new Polo is the European Car of the Year 2010 :)

Sound Bites on VW

The cat is already out of the bag, VW Cars Sdn Bhd no longer being anchor dealer for VW and has been replaced by FA Wagen. Just before anyone jumping in joy, I'm afraid to rant some bad news. The successor is just about the same as the old.

Just so happen that my rhd reading light button switch decided to be consistently on all the time, I've decided to visit FA Wagen's new 3S centre in Jalan 222, and since it's near to my office, naturally I'm intend to make appointments for this fixing either in January or February next year.

A lady SA came and told me that although it is a 3S centre for VW, they're only doing sales and car service and as for problems rectification, I've been asked to contact VGM directly. In other words, they don't want to. To my bloody surprise, she even got a cheek to ask me to come this coming Sunday to test drive Mk6 GTI and Toureg hoping to score some sales. Now why do I want to do that? To add more salts to my wound, last month, I've been given mary go-round by another SA lady about Scirocco test drive, two appointments have been cancelled, the last being VGM no longer giving potential customers test driving the car.

They're just too good I'd say. After the Pocong, I'm thinking R badge Hondas or even rwd shoebox Lotuses. Well, that's what I can afford than VW :)