Das Smaragd RS2+ Coupe

[John B]

Right front 996 upgrade

Now to the right hand side. I know what to do so this should be easy.....how wrong I was The caliper came off fine but the caliper carrier just would not budge despite being hit, lubricated, heated, sworn at

Eventually I had to hack the little boooger off, literally...and here are some of the tools to prove it

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Finally here is the prepared hub ready for installation some time later......you can see it had gone dark by then

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Here is a picture of the strut which incidentally shows the 1 x white/ 2 x blue/2 x yellow dots denoting it as an ABY spring for a car with A/C, which is the same as the stock RS2 spring and I think the hardest spring fitted to a stock S2 in terms of poundage. Note also the very rusty caps at the top of the strut housing. They would prove equally difficult to budge, some time later in the re-build.

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The rest of the installation went fine after this little hiccup

[macspring]

More please.

Thanks.

[John B]

January 2009 - HID installation

More please.

Thanks.

Ok then

December 2008 was a quiet month on the S2 except I bought myself a little Xmas pressie to cure another of the essential issues.....the lighting, which at best had been like holding a candle on a very windy night or navigating by moonlight.......no not that good really!

It was a mass of wires and looked pretty scary

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And had some naughty bits...

tn_DSC01197.JPG which are 55W

Anyway a quick trip to the Forum showed me the way with Greg's diagram etc.
http://www.s2forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16141 and all was fine. I actually drilled a hole in the bottom of my ellipsoid assembly to feed the wires in rather than use the black access cover as most instructions tell you to. I thought that water was less likely to ingress. Sorry no pictures of this but the transformation was night and day literally!

[John B]

February 2009 - Exhaust

Now onto one of the issues that I had put as advisory. Well on further inspection some parts of the crusty thing that was the original exhaust were giving way. Wet and salty roads had finally taken their toll.....

Hmmmm which exhaust shall I choose?

Well at this point I was still an S2 novice (still am really ) so I thought I better stick with a cat-back system rather than going for custom so even though places like MIJ performance looked great for a custom piece of kit I thought I should also go with a respected standard after-market supplier. Yes there were others like Scorpion but one name kept jumping out to say buy me, buy me and so I fell in love with the Milltek system.

Now don't you hate it when you have done the research, checked things out and got it into your head that you're getting something and then you can't get hold of one? Well that was the case for me.Yes everyone and his dog had the Avant version but the Coupe version......it was always "well we used to stock it" or "we sold the last one the other month" or "I've got an Avant one...."

Mr Reeve came to the rescue again and this was his last one in stock. Well they don't pack small and I think I used up his month's supply of cardboard packaging! It was like Christmas all over again when this heeeowwwge parcel turned up. I just had to unpack it and lay it all over the drive to take pictures....the neighbours must have thought we have a right one here!

This is what I received: -

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Since I was a newbie to exhaust my local garage installed it for not very much....thanks Paul and it sounded wonderful.....powerful but subtle.

[Anyway it's gone now - will be on mercskv8 's car soon.....hope you enjoy it , Mike]

[John B]

Milltek

.....just remembered. The Milltek for the Coupe is NLA in the catalogues but guess what the Avant is I did actually contact Milltek at the time (but it was 4 years ago) to see if they would do any more. They basically said yes they would: they still had the jigs......but minimum order would be 10. The other option they quoted was to visit them in Derbyshire and they would build one as a custom exhaust on the jig. This is worth checking out if you are desperate to have one of these quality pieces of kit.

HTH

JB

[Greg_S]

Excellent write up. Milteks have always looked like the least hassle for an upgraded exhaust system

[John B]

February 2009 - Rear Brakes

Excellent write up. Milteks have always looked like the least hassle for an upgraded exhaust system

Thanks Greg

Having upgraded the front brakes, I started to look at the back brakes as they looked like they needed a good service. Everything looked crusty but i found these shots and all the other I took useful as reference guides for when I got ideas about doing things on the car.....it was better than having to jack it up to get a squint.....hope you find them useful Also, I started to get ideas about replacing the stock items even at this stage

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Then I looked at the rear diff looks like we have a leak here on the rear diff lock mechanism. Also notice how far the drain plug had been tightened. That tapered plug should be a bit proud of the diff case and would prove a real PITA to remove later on

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Here's the standard S2 coupe rear strut setup (with a Whiteline RARB that came with the car): -

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....and finally a few more on the the rear brake caliper setup: -

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[John B]

February 2009 - Samco Hoses

February was also the month when my Samco hoses arrived from Paul (in Norn-Iron). I went for the full set of air and water hoses in blue. There's lots of information on the forum in how to fit these, so I am not going to repeat that here.

I did however bottle out fitting this part of the kit first time around

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The Samco kit of 4 hoses is two for the matrix and the two nasty boogers at/near the thermostat housing - under the water rail.

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The water manifold had been replaced recently at my local garage and when I was inspecting the handiwork (see above picture) I noticed this connector (see below): -

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I had joined up these hoses like this, with a small connector that had been present when I bought the car.

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It was only when I posted these pictures on the forum that I discovered that the turbo after-run pump was missing along with one of the rubber mounts

Can you believe that someone actually removed this component and then frigged a plastic connector to join up the hoses?

Anyway, the engine bay looked better courtesy of Samco......like this.....

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....but notice some blue / green splashes of what I would later get to know as G11 coolant onthe auxiliary radiator and the stained colour of the expansion tank..... a portent of things to come......

[John B]

March 2009 - Rear brake options

Well....the dark side had really got hold of me and I bought these for the rear : -

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Stuck a bung in the hydraulic hole: -

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and gave them a scrub: -

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Oh dear I bought some cheap discs to start measuring up.....

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[John B]

March 2009 - Rear brake caliper carriers

.....oooops I bought some RS2 front caliper carrier adaptors to try at the rear

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Mmmmmust resist!

Oh and I thought I had better buy one of the after-run pump holders to hold the pump that i had just bought.......the pump (made by Bosch) is also used in their washing machines

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[John B]

April 2009 - Radiator Replacement

April fool.....I was thinking that the coolant woes were over when I replaced the coolant inlet manifold and the hoses......nooooooo it was only just getting going

Anyway, another thing went west, being one of the plastic hose connections on the radiator, which looked original. So I got on the blower to my new "phone-a-friend", Mr Reeve to order a new Behr one, aux rad and some attachments.

Here is the usual shot of the radiator cover before seeing the hidden horrors that lurked beneath

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That auxiliary radiator was on its last legs! At this point I thought I did not want to delete this component and decided to keep it stock.

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I can't believe someone took the after-run pump off and joined the pipes up

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Here is a nice new Behr radiator

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And here is the relevant page from the good book (Mr B's finest!)

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[John B]

April 2009 - Radiator Replacement 2

That condenser does not look great but I'm not made of money and it's not summer so it's staying!

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The front slam panel was well-rusted on

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resistance is futile......and it succumbed to the spanner, not without a fight though

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The other side was easier

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Here is the aux rad in all its glory after taking the centre top mount off and slam panel off

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[John B]

April 2009 - Radiator Replacement 3

This is the slam panel with the little plastic wire holder for the bonnet release wire

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Time to drain the coolant

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Oh, that aux rad mount had actually split

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And this one was stuck

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....so had to be hacked off with a Stanley knife

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[John B]

April 2009 - Radiator Replacement 4

There are 5 bolts that hold the radiator fan onto the radiator IIRC and this bolt is easy to reach. The ones near the block are a right PITA to get to.

Have you noticed that actually most things are easy to maintain on the S2?.....most of the time spent is getting the bar stewards off in the first place. It's either rusty, covered in sh**e, impossible to access or usually all three

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This shot shows some of the bolts holding the condenser onto the radiator

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Here is the bottom bolt, which you can guarantee fits the criteria above because of where it is irrespective of an under tray. You can also see the bottom temperature sensor on this shot.

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This is the main connector for the radiator to the car and I replaced this rubber mount.

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Oh and I thought since I was draining out the coolant, I would also replace the two heater matrix pipes that I had previously bottled out on. Whoever thought to put the cross-brace right over the top of the top vent for the coolant system? Just shows that our cars for all their elegance were really a bit of a lash-up

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[John B]

April 2009 - Radiator Replacement 5

Great access to the bleed screw......!

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....and this end of the matrix pipe was not great either

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As for this little booger of a pipe, well there much swearing....you'll know if you have been there!

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At least the coolant manifold was new!

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Here's where the after-run pump should be!

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And a new Bosch pump - at this time I was still waiting on one of the rubber mounts and so did a lash-up myself!

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Here's the new main radiator being slid in gently.....keeping the caps on until i connect it up.

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....and from behind..

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No more pictures.....it was getting dark and the job went quite well with new parts!

That's all for tonight folks!