MountainBikeMike's Skodaru

**BrashDaniels** · 21-01-2014, 08:14 AM

Originally Posted by MountainBikeMike

Hey guys, bit of an update. After 10 hours of swearing and hurting, I'd finally done the timing belt change myself

When I bought the car dad and I looked up the specs for its change, and were certain it had to be done at 160-180k km. That ended up being for Europe, so we were wrong. I panicked, having already driven 118k km, it was almost 20,000km overdue. So I got to it straight away before the Winton FunDay.

For anyone else game enough to save the dough and learn a sh17load about their engine: GLHF!

I don't think I could have pulled that off without Dad and a lot more swearing - Well Done - and congrats to the missus for not divorcing you in the process. Awesome thread

**woofy** · 21-01-2014, 01:42 PM

My Dad and I came to the conclusion a long time ago when I was 16 and went to work on my first car, that we should never work on a car together again and that from now on, anything bigger or complicated is left to Mechanics to curse at and I'll just do the small stuff. It has worked for us ever since!

**Lucas_R** · 21-01-2014, 02:20 PM

Well done on the timing belt change Mike - big job for someone who has never done it before. Kudos.

**Martin** · 21-01-2014, 10:30 PM

Great effort

(I also have my 350Z in pieces - learning lots)

Love the photo of the lady in the tyres

Matti's wheels actually look good from a distance in those photos

**MountainBikeMike** · 22-01-2014, 09:13 PM

So today is another mod day. I finally got around to installing the $15 repco boost guage I've had sitting around for about 4 months. Back when I got it I made a fibreglass/carbon bay for it, which was cool as, but it didn't turn out that well because it was way to sticky with the resin, and also ended up with a bad fit.

Anyway I found inspiration from Jon doing a few installs for his mate, so I finally got to it. I might make another fibreglass one again one day, but for now this one sits nicely in the groove under the tacho.

So firstly I connected the vacuum hose to the other port where the diverter valve blow-back connects to the intake manifold, and routed it under the intake, and behind the battery, through the firewall (drilled its own hole there so it never gets pinched), and up to the top-dash. Will get an engine pic tomorrow.

I sat the sender unit here.

Opened this little part

Carefully drilled a little hole here and fed the wires from the gauge that I headshrinked in black through.

And drilled here to make some extra clearance for the cables. This is the section underneath the window that covers the top of the steering column.

Then I soldered the sender and gauge red power wires on to the amp-on wire that I just pinch in to one of the fuse slots.

I also wrapped the gauge back and sides in black tape to protect the window from scratching, and dull down the flashy appearance a bit. I stuck the gauge down with 3M clear sticky gel stuff, the stuff that comes on various packaging, it sticks well and peels easily. Here's what the finished job looks like.