Didjeridave

Yeah, fitted a variable resistor in place of the regular four position dial & hooked up a £17 motor controller. That all worked fine. Bit of an effort for what it was worth, but finally solved the blowing wires. Can't say I ever got round to the faster motor, with it all functioning well enough, there just wasn't enough value in doing it!

Replacing all my brake line tomorrow night & need to pick up some tubing. Comes in 25ft lengths, and at a rough guess it's pretty much exactly that. Anyone done it & how much did you end up using? Putting HEL braided on at the same time Cheers, Dave.

They can get fairly noticeable before they would fail an mot. Moving off sloppiness could be engine mounts; check the lowers as there's not much meat to them. I always thought the mk2 MGZS racks were the only quicker ones, but there's been recent comments that it's actually that they were not always fitted at the factory due to a lack of stock, or something! There's a fair few out there & pretty cheap too.

Yes, if you've checked the inner & outer rod joints & they're fine, that does sound like a worn rack. Replace with an earlier integra rack which is adjustable to take up slop, or a MGZS rack is apparently faster. There's a few people on this forum recently who've had the same; check through some of the posts.

Get yourself to a sign makers. There's one in Sheffield I went to a few years back, I forget the name, but really anywhere will probably be clued up on this. The stuff they swore by was from the states & smells distinctly of oranges (d-limonene probably); might not even be available in this country. I was taking the decals of a bike & it dissolved the adhesive brilliantly & did nothing to the paint or plastic. Like you, I'd tried loads of things before with limited success. Sadly, I only have about 50ml in the jam jar, but it still works at treat! Sorry I can't be more exact, but it hopefully might point you in a good direction.

Depends, there's two parts to it really. You'll pass the emissions if your emissions are low enough, which is quite possible with a well tuned engine with no cat. A car that originally had a catalytic converter will fail if it's presented to an MOT without one (i.e. a decat), but then if you have a knocked-out cat, there is no way of telling of the internal condition of the cat; the MOT tester cannot take anything apart in the test to check such things. There are some decats out there that are the shape of cats but are actually straight throughs for this exact reason.

AFIK there's only one type of power steering fluid for hondas.

Scott, I'd certainly query the air turbulence idea for the cause of vibrations at particular frequencies/revs; turbulent flows create broadband noise & would reduce the chance of modal vibration; I'd not expect the air itself to be the driving force of the vibrations, more likely transmitting through the metal itself. Check welds, if they're starting to rot, they can make a hell of a racket; rotten, loose heatshield as above is another possibility, but if you've knocked out the inner cat meshes via the outer pipes then it's unlikely you've got it all out. If you've access to a welder, could you cut a panel out of the top side of the middle section of the cat, clear all the mesh out & then weld it back together? Or if not a welder, use some metal strip (large tin cans), jubilee clips or a riveter & a load of gun gum. It might sound rather 'scrapheap challenge' but I've put cars & bikes through MOTs with exhausts patched with tin cans. Actually, my bike went through its last MOT with a combination of whiskers & john smiths, although I enjoyed emptying the latter more Power steering fluid - stick to genuine honda. It's not that pricey, you don't need loads & while other fluids may be fine, mixing different fluids can cause issues.

I had Exhausts UK (Cobra) in Sheffield fit a custom stainless catback & I was very pleased with it... I say was, but now four and a half years later the backbox welds failed completely last month. However, they give a lifetime warranty & have replaced the whole backbox & a new centre section; no quibbles.

Second that, there's been a bit of a myth over the years about faster racks. The MGZS mark 1 has the same rack as the civics. You'll need a post-2004 mark 2 rack. Same goes for the DC racks, they're all almost exactly the same. It does sound like a worn rack to me. I put a 1992 Teg rack in mine which didn't cost the earth (£50 max) & as mentioned above, the slack can be taken up; I've just done this in the last month & it makes a massive improvement every time, although it does require a special 40mm spanner, about £25 from a honda dealer, unless you want to drop the subframe each time!

Not certain on that, but I believe 180 only. Did find another forum post that suggests no also: http://forums.mg-rover.org/showthread.php?t=516834 Actually, there's a MG ZS mark 2 rack on eBay now, actually a few, but most seem to say "fits MG ZS mk2", which the lower ratio racks will. Misleading methinks...?

Scott/H-Tune has always been great for me. Anyways, yes, P28, P30 or P72 can all be chipped or modified to run any map that may be needed for our Ms with all sensors/actuators running. With some, there's a little soldering needed; voltage feeds taken from elsewhere for solenoids etc. I've got a P30 running my MC2 fine with H-tune's fast road chip. Do think it's over-fuelled but sorting that with an ostrich 2, plx M300 wideband, Hulog, and (last remaining buy...!!) crome pro licence to datalog and autotune.

Adding to the list of responses that all say the same, but to confirm, I've put a DC2 rack in a couple of years back and it's exactly the same lock to lock. The only difference you'll get is more easily changed inner rods, but the only problem with the MB6/MC2 inner rods is that they're pretty tough to get off but not impossible. On the MG rack, yes, the mark 2 MGZS has a faster rack & everything I've seen and read suggests it goes in absolutely fine. Finding one is not easy; the mark 2's are rare & there's a ton of racks available from earlier MGs that will fit but are the same ratio as our Ms. Someone might be able to post up definite part numbers for the post-2004 mark 2 MGZS racks?? Anyways, reckon you're on the right track with alternative improvements. A fast rack on a front-engined car isn't going to help unless you've super sticky tyres or an equivalent lump of metal over the rear; the faster the steering ratio, the less precise control over the steering direction and the easier it is to oversteer, leading to lack of traction & an understeer situation in cornering. Adding stiffness with ARBs and braces is a good move. Poly'ing makes a big difference to stiffness and steering feedback, but be prepared for squeaks and suspension performance that deteriorates throughout an extended spirited drive; this is where rubber always wins & why after various tries with poly I went back to hardened rubber. Camber adjustment; definitely if dropping at all, even if only 15-20mm. And definitely, definitely get the geom sorted. I drove for months with mediocre geom, the tyre wear was awful as was the handling, even though it 'felt' better than stock was sooo much better after a proper setup.

I'm probably looking at one of these too, but just been quoted £274+VAT from my local Honda dealer. Anyone have any suggestions? Doesn't appear to be a Blueprint/refurb part available for the VTI.

Shouldn't matter to the ecu if you don't have the iab valves opening, signal will be there but just not used. Car will run but fuelling won't be optimum. With all those mods at once, I'd recon you'd need a remap, so a chipped P30/28/72 would suit well. The ecu's not a huge cost, but a good map is. Next best thing is a 'remote' map from somewhere like H-tune. That'll take your mods into account, but all engines are different.