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Besmitten!


Hal Mercier
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I collected my new to me little white 2010 Aygo today!  The vendors, a youngish Portuguese couple, bought it new, for Mme to drive. Early this year she was given a company car, and the idea was their son was destined to take it over. Hence in Feb the new suspension, new alloy wheels and tyres.  Seems he then decided dad was going to help him restore a Mk 3 Golf instead. Poor decision but lucky for me!

The car is totally immaculate, showroom clean inside and out, and when I asked if it had the usual leaky rear end, I was told it had, but no more.

The 3rd  brake light and the bumpstops were responsible, so siliconed and now it's 100% fixed.

I've hears reviewers bitching about "the gearbox" by which they meant selection wasn't to their liking.

On this one, it's a really good box, I was pleasantly surprised, half expecting either stiffness through the gate, or rubbery vagueness, but it's as good as an Imp based racer. Nicer than an Elise.

I found the front brakes surprisingly noisy....thought I'd picked up grit in them initially, but I think it's more likely lack of acoustic insulation.

I started with 2 bars on the fuel gauge and 125km later we stuck 29€ worth in the car we'd arrived in, a Mondeo 1600 TD, but the Aygo still showed 2 bars. Later it dropped to one, and was flashing, so I put 10 litres in, and it then went to 4 bars.

This is meaningless of course, but encouraging.

Tomorrow I'll fill it, zero the trip (I now know how to) and then see how much it takes to brim full in a few days time.

It's a very base spec, has split rear seat, but almost zero electronics, no bad thing, no aircon, no bad thing with 60bhp, and no GPS. Irritatingly it has no glove box door....can this be retrofitted?

For me, it's a modern Fiat 500, or Mini-Cooper (S?) in concept, and feel. Eco-fun!

I really am seriously impressed and now just need to control myself to keep it as that, and not go bananas and turn it into a blown Yoshimura TT.

 

Calm....calm....think Zen....

 

Watch this space....;~ ))

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yes you can get a glove box door for the aygo. Would like to see piccies please x

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I will be doing a pictorial record of the errr....'conversion' from sweet innocent little eco-fun car to the full Yoshimura spec as I go along. The trouble being that at the moment we are bumping along the bottom of the weather/temperature fishtank...it was -4°C yesterday when we set off.

As this alleged conversion is a very much tongue-in-cheek effort on my part it involves messing about with the aesthetics and that means paint....which unless I can get the car through the front door may prove hard work. I have no way of heating the 'garage' which is probably 600 or more cubic meters of space to heat.

Here it is now in pre Yoshi form...as collected yesterday. Needs a very minimal makeover. Max spend threshold 25 euros. Nothing irreversible.....and I, as a doddering old git, should be able to find it easily in the Also carpark.

 

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Enjoy your new car, sound like you got a good'un. The basic no frills approach on these cars is a plus for me, got ours for my Mum, she came from a very old car, so I wanted a simple easy to drive car for her with improved safety features, which these cars do perfectly. 

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....in the Also carpark.  Er, what I typed was Aldi but the letters are next to each other on a French keyboard so I guess a typo.☹️

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Lovely, my first Aygo was a white one too. I had it with the MMT auto gear box as I can only drive automatic cars, and it wasn't too bad. But if you're happy with a manual, I've heard its a good gearbox.

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Hi

I love it...so cute. I look forward to seeing her develop into that sporty look!

Best of luck.

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Believe it or not I'm in the process of discussing an actual real-life Yoshimura TT with Yoshimura. As you probably know, they tend to do tuning work and development on bike engines, but why not?

My cunning plan is a TTS blower, Yoshi exhaust and maybe engine development bits to go with the blower kit, and Fiat Abarth 500 ish graphics etc. The Abarth 500 had to have its boot lid wedged open for cooling purposes but it was an air-cooled engine.

 

While searching for the paint colour code, I found a weight sticker which seems to show the S1 3 door was only 695kg....wet? Dry? No idea. Must be the lightest variant though.

No glove-box lid! That's why....

Anything could happen! The new Cooper BMC collaboration equivalent.

You read it here first.

Isn't the internet wunnerful!

 

But first things first. The paint and graphics! Of course!

Yay! Watch this space...

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Here's the starting point...the 1960s Fiat 500 Abarth.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

This is a bit of an uphill struggle. I am having to remove each wheel, bring it in the kitchen, give it a scrubbing in the shower room next to the kitchen, let it dry in front of the woodburner as i don't have compressed air in the kitchen and it's way to cold in the barn:garage. It was below zero this morning, and the stove was slow to heat up.

Rub each wheel down, using wet'n'dry used wet, and soap. Rinse off. Allow to dry again.

Spend a long time getting the tyre masked as well as possible, never as good or as easy as painting naked wheels...in fact if I'm being frank, a PITA.

Put wheel face down on a revolving stool in the shower room, so the noxious fumes aren't in the kitchen where I more or less live during cold weather.

 

Primer inside of wheel. Wave a hot air paint stripper around so it stays warm enough to avoid 'blooming', that foggy, matt surface caused by humidity and cold in the air....

When dry, leave till ready for colour coat.

Hit it with colour coat, as much as necessary for total coverage and no dry areas. With the heat gun, it's possible to get a gloss surface all over.

I can actually paint properly but under the circumstances a rattlecan job is the only way to do this.

Best practice is strip the tyres off and take the wheels to be stove enameled, though some people seem to prefer powder-coat.

I'm not one of them, I've seen too much bad PC peeling off things. Once it's chipped, water will creep along under the plastic skin....disaster. Stove enamel is very hard, and if it is chipped the water will not get under the rest of it.

Damage stays confined.

Pity I left the camera at my wife's place. Will take some 'after' shots later.

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Meanwhile....

I wanted to do an oilchange. It didn't need it in terms of distance but had the wrong oil in it, and as I have a stock of Amsoil 0W20, which is THE recommended oil for an Aygo engine I thought I'd stick some in.

First problem was removing the oil filler cap...which had apparently been fitted by a gorilla on steroids. I had to use a large hammer and a wooden drift and even then it wasn't easy.

I reckoned the drain plug would be even worse and I wasn't wrong.....I had to use a 1m tube on the ratchet handle.

Then of course I couldn't find my collection of oil filter removal straps, chains, and sockets....somewhere in the unsorted contents of the old 'garage' which was 160m², twice the size of this one. Bought a new strap type. Even this as tight as I could get it, slipped....

Borrowed a cunning tool from a garage guy, a retracting three armed thing. This turned out to be too big but as I'd accidentally left the new Aygo 65mm filter in a car he's repairing it didn't matter. Collected it today, got the old one off with a struggle, using Mole grips on the knob of the strap tool, and so should have it all buttoned up soon.

Only two wheels left to paint!

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I wonder why the actual amount of oil you are supposed to put in after a change with filter replaced is not mentioned in the owner's manual?

I ask, as it's not a great idea to accidentally put too much in......I put about 3.7 quarts in, then ran the engine to fill the filter, and it seemed to be on the full mark....but of course it's almost impossible to actually see new w20 on the stick.

How difficult would it be to put the figures in the book? One for 'without filter change', one with.

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  • 1 month later...

I am now able to find the thing in a giant car-park!

I was very glad it had some red bits the other day, I was in totally the wrong part of a carpark, saw the red from 3 rows across the park.

 

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