Hi all
I've been reading the forums for some time, and been told far too many times that I should get on here as a regular by the likes of DaveB, VRSy, joes_gti and I thought I'd finally make an appearance.
My Octavia started life with me in December '08 when I was looking around for a family car to replace my leggy PD130 Bora. I wanted something low-ish mileage, diesel and quattro and had my eye firmly on an A4 1.9TDI quattro. The problem is that they're rare and hold their money quite well and for £10k or so, I thought that there'd be better cars than a 6+ year old A4.
I test drove the Octavia at the beginning of December and after a couple of hours of deliberation I ended up buying it. It was relatively low mileage (30k) but not diesel and not quattro of course.
Factory options were minimal with Xenons (huge bonus), rear park assist and cruise control being the only options fitted. I set to work retrofitting the Maxidot cluster (Highline to those of the VW persuasion) and factory BT kit before looking at the tuning side of things.
Shortly afterwards I purchased a full Milltek with DP/cat, and a Neuspeed CAI and immediately Stage 2'd it. One diverter valve later (it was still running the original C revision, and the D revision had just come out) and it was running nicely putting out 262hp and 260hp on two different DD dynos.
I had a mega hankering for a set of BBS CHs and was just about to order a set from PW Motorsport when some became available quite locally to me, straight off a Mk5 GTI that was being traded in. A large wadge of cash changed hands and a set of absolutely perfect CHs were purchased! Which presented another problem.. the suspension.
Just before Le Mans last year I decided to drop some Eibach springs on it (the original Skoda Accessory ones) as it was still under warranty at the time, which the front dampers didn't take kindly to. On the way to Le Mans the dampers threw their toys out of the pram and spat all their oil up the side of my car, with the side effect of making the car feel like a boat to drive. Not nice! Two new dampers later and all was well again.
Then came the brakes. I ended up with a set of DaveB's finest and while I was in the North West at a mate's birthday party eating sausage sarnies with none other than Kenny Baker, we met up and did the deal. Within a couple of days they were on ready for the VW/Audi trackday at Castle Combe last July.
Fast forward to March this year and I decided to go for the HPFP upgrade and the car put out 271hp on the mobile dyno at GTI International:
The car is now on AP coilovers and Eibach ARBs and feels a lot better to drive. Not yet done a trackday on them so we'll see what they're like after a proper hammering.
I'll add some more pictures in here when I'm at work, as I'm on the wrong computer!
Current Spec:
2.0TFSI BWA engine
Remap - 271bhp
Autotech HPFP
Neuspeed CAI
Milltek TBE non-res
Porsche 996T front brakes, 350mm discs
S3/R32 310mm rear brakes
AP Coilovers
Eibach ARBs
