Following on from my newbie thread, for those who missed it, hello!
I'll start with my car history, which is rather varied. You'll hopefully notice my camera skills have improved dramatically along the way
I've been car mad for as long as I can remember and had my first car bought a month before my 17th birthday, with my first driving lesson at 9am on my birthday! keen or what eh? The first car is obviously an important purchase for most, and I wanted something different from the usual corsa/clio/saxo that the majority pick. This meant going for a slightly older car. I ended up with a 1.8 Ford Focus, which compared to the 1.0's usually found in 17 year olds cars, was a rocket ship! This car got the 'boyracer treatment'. A K&N induction kit, wheels, and an anti-social exhaust
Being 10 years old at the time though, it was costing me far to much to keep it on the road, there was barely a week went past that it didn't need something replaced. So away it went, to be replaced by a 1.6 Honda Civic Sport. This wasn't any faster than the Focus, but was much more reliable, it needed for nothing the entire time I owned it. I was fairly skint during the time I had it though, so short of an AEM induction kit, and some engine painting, it didn't really get much done to it.
I always felt this car needed much more power though. The fastest car I could afford to insure at 19 was a Mini Cooper S. It's not to everyones taste, and I never heard the end of the hairdresser car jokes. But it was fantastic. By this point, I was out of college and had a full time job, meaning there was enough pennies to mod it a lot more. During the time I had it, it got a dave.f custom induction kit, a Milltek cat-back exhaust, MeisterR fully adjustable coilovers, which I had a one off prototype set of as I was helping to develop them, Adjustable rear camber arms, Brembo calipers up front and an immaculate set of BBS RX's in 17"
It handled better than a go kart, stopped like you'd hit a wall, and screamed like crazy with the supercharger and exhaust wailing. It was awesome to drive, but my commute to work is mainly through the city centre. This made the stiff suspension and woeful mpg tiresome at best, so off it went to be replaced with the Golf GTI.
Before buying the Golf, I looked at a few cars, ST focus, DC5 Integra, another Mini etc, but none of them matched the refinement and experience of the Golf. I ended up with a 54 reg red one. It's on 60,000 miles, which is higher than I'd ideally wanted, but is still low for the age. It's fairly well specced, with full leather heated seats, apparently they are quite rare? The only things I've noticed that are missing is the xenons and cruise control, which I can live without.
The garage did me an amazing deal. They gave it a service, including changing the timing belt and everything else involved with that service. They also had the wheels refurbed and brand new tyre fitted at each corner. Fair enough they are only budget tyres, but they'll more than do for now, and to be honest, they don't seem that bad so far.
What have I changed so far? I spent all of yesterday working on it, so it's had the nokia handfree system removed, I've fitted the scangauge out of the Mini, which is a device that plugs into the obd port and reads all the information you could possibly want. It can also be used as a code reader. I've also dewipered it, fitted my dubmeister metal plates and gave it a good clean, but it'll need a fair amount of work on the paint once the weathers better.
What does it need? Well as you've probably noticed the exhaust needs a lot of work! I was at it with the sandpaper last night as it's beyond polish haha It's almost back to silver now, but is still a bit manky. The car in general is far to quite and refined for my liking, so an induction kit and downpipe/exhaust will be bought. Advice on these would be greatly appreciated. It handles fairly well for a standard car, but could do with being a bit lower, so coilovers will be bought Billstein/KW will be the order here. Then at somepoint new wheels, probably BBS as I'm a fanboy
Thats all for now, and to those of you who have stuck with me this long, thanks, and sorry for rambling on
