Obviously the weather is super rubbish this month and I couldn’t fit the intercooler yet, so I set along doing some smaller jobs.

First of all I made a custom stainless steel power pipe. Very easy, very cheap and very good looking. Basically I bought a 2″ stainless steel pipe, cut it down to length with a Dremel and polished it, then used silicon hoses to join the various parts.

If I am to do it again, I will probably choose an alloy pipe rather than a stainless steel pipe though, as aluminium alloy is much easier to work with – mainly in cutting and polishing.

Also you can see I replaced the breather pipe with a silicon hose too. It is just a long-legged 25mm hose… I don’t understand how some companies can charge over £15 for this – I bought it for about £6.

I also found something sitting in the garage that has been long forgotten about… a pair of Securon harness with rear release buckles. I bought them short after I bought the seats, but I was too lazy to remove the seats to fit them. Well this month seeing as I couldn’t do much else, I fitted them.

They are of 3-point mounting, and really strong and comfortable. The main reason I bought these is because these have “rear release buckles”, so I can quickly disconnect them and make the rear seats usable – a very nice feature indeed.

The F23 gearbox design means that getting into 1st, 3rd and 5th gears are quite slow (especially 5th!). So I got myself a short-shifter to compensate for this.

At first use, it seemed rather strange to use… but after a few days I got used to it and it is now very nice and natural. When I drive a standard car I feel the gear stick is way too long now!

The only problem is that the shortshifter doesn’t need lifting up to get to the reverse gear, which is a concern. I will probably sort it out next month. Another problem is that it is in purple, but who cares anyway.

I also got a local garage to fit a Blueflame cat-back exhaust for me, which is long overdue!

When I first got the car, I thought this would be one of the very first things I do… who would have thought it has taken me so long. But anyway, it is really quiet at low rew, very similar to the OE setup (which is good), but at high it sounds quite sporty, plus it looks quite good too. Another good (?) thing is the dump valve now sounds louder. Oh and gear change somehow has become smoother too!

Hopefully I can get on with the intercooler next month…