Been a busy few weeks for me! Got under the car to have a good look over stuff, coilovers needed some urgent loving.
The rings on my dampers were slightly corroded

Bit fell off when I had the impact gun on the bolt holding the damper to the lower arm!
Rear topmounts were fully shot too

Rings cos £130 and I couldn't find topmounts so would have to call up tein and probably pay a small fortune.
Decided to screw that idea and went to machine shop. Got some topmounts and rings CNC'd

The guys in machine shop decided to use some aerospace grade aluminium and then i got them anodized so they will probably outlive me! Happy days.
This is what I got back from anodizing


Also cleaned up my dampers as they were very rusty and the threads were horrible so cleaned the threads out, sandblasted the body, primer filler and a bit of paint. Also put them on the dyno and they came back absolutely mint!

Next it was time to fit them back on the car!
The new setup

Set the height so that there was a tiny bit of preload in the springs, thinking it would sit at a nice height. Worked well for the rears but the front is MEGA slammed.
Got enough rake?

Excuse my friend in the car being an idiot... lol also not keeping it as is, I will raise the front a bit and maybe lower the rear a touch.
So all seemed good at this point. Went for a long test drive got everything hot and ran it for about an hour mainly crusing with a few hard blasts. Exhaust stopped smoking, car stopped stalling and coolant stopped draining. All sounded very nice too and very healthy.
Very happy! Until the day after. Turned it on after work and suddenly there is a HORRENDOUS noise from the engine. Looked under couldn't see anything obvious, it's like a very loud knock coming from the camshaft on the right. Sounds like a diesel... :S It did this on my test drive so I left it for a while and started it again and it went away so I assumed the power fc's shitty map retarded or advanced the timing too much for idle as it did seem to sound a wee bit better with some revs. Also, I replace a coilpack a few weeks ago with a post facelift model which seemed to be ok but noticed today it's actually not firing so I'm running 3 cylinders again...
Gonna see if I can find a proper pre facelift pack and see if it sorts out the noise. If so, I will be driving it daily for a week to give it a proper test and put some miles on it see if I have any issues. If that solves it, I will look at sorting out other little bits and bobs like the lights behind the center console and other little bits. Plus a front under tray.
Fingers crossed!