As you can see the new springs are now in place on the car.

Here’s the difference between the old and new springs from the front of the car.

The older spring is on the left in the above picture.

I can also attest to the fact that ride is much better. The car doesn’t ‘crash’ into bumps anymore, it takes them in its stride. However, it does now appear that the suspension warning light likes to come on regularly. Let’s see what time bring on that one.

I’m looking forward to taking the car out for a spin on the weekend through a few ‘twisties’ to see what the handling is like. The ride height has also been raised a bit, hopefully to overcome it smacking it’s nose.

I am also pleased to say that the heat shield over the exhaust was also cosmetically repaired as seen above. It was always an annoying eye sore when I looked at the engine. Now, no more! Yeah.

Also, one of my cooling fans had a blown fuse, which sort of explained why the car almost overheated in traffic on the way to get serviced. The fix is just to install upgraded fuses. Glad, that was checked and resolved. Would not have been nice to overheat in traffic again thanks to a blown fuse.

There still remain some outstanding items to address:

– the A/C mixing flap still doesn’t work, even though I sourced a replacement COG for it. Possibly a main controller unit issue but we’ll need a spare one of those to test before we can be sure.

– the suspension warning light seems to want to come on during start up and at random on a drive. Let’s give that one some time and see if there is pattern to why it’s doing that.

– even though the EVAP system has been thoroughly checked and a new charcoal cannister installed the car still smells a little ‘fuely’ after a drive. It has always been like that but I would have thought that a new charcoal cannister would have rectified that issue. I’ll need to do some more research to see what is normal when it comes to fuel smells after a drive.

– after the interior refurbished I can feel an airflow just below the handle of the drivers door. Seems to be coming from outside the car. Not a huge issue and I’ll need to have a closer look when a get a chance.

– as mentioned before the valve guides are going to need doing. The aim will be to take car of that around mid year.

However, all the belts and fluids have been done as well as the hydraulic tensioners, spark plugs, etc. as part of the engine out service. The ride feels much better now, so I just need to wait for the weekend to see what the handling is truly like.