Tom5190's Daily Mileage Muncher

[tom5190]

Hi All,

I thought it may be worthwhile to start one of these off as it could end up getting quite interesting.

This week I've purchased a 2008 1.9Cdti Exclusiv. I've literally got no idea what the Exclusiv means, I've never owned a Vauxhall & I've never owned a diesel. My reason for buying this car is simple, save money.

I've came from this, a 310hp money pit Audi S3, which was costing me around £100 a week in fuel & house deposit levels of money on parts & maintenance. It’s been a fun car to own and it’s given me around 30 brilliant laps on the ring along with being my daily car for 4 years, so I’ve got nothing to grumble about, but I do need to buy a property now. (I'm 28!)

DSC07075 by T.walker5190, on Flickr

13-14h-IMG_3487 by T.walker5190, on Flickr

So the Vectra....

It cost me £1350, which seemed to be a decent price. It’s done just over 80,000 miles & the previous owner has had a clutch & timing belt kit fit in the last 6 months. It also had 8 months MOT. Here it is:

file2 by T.walker5190, on Flickr

file by T.walker5190, on Flickr

file1 by T.walker5190, on Flickr

file3 by T.walker5190, on Flickr

First impressions of the car are good, I've bought it to be my daily, I do around 60 miles a day & I need a car that can cope with that. It has been recently serviced but I’m going to do the following on the car next week:

Pads & discs front & rear (they're pretty worn)
Oil & filter change

I’m also looking to install an OEM SatNav unit into the car. I'm not sure how easy that is to do in these, everything like that was sort of plug & play in the Audi so I’m hoping its similar in this but that’s something I’m here to find out.

The interesting parts that i previously referred to will be this... The car will be making a trip to the Nurburgring, granted not with any laps in mind but I may throw it on there for ****s and giggles. It will also be making a trip over to Le Mans next summer. I've got no intentions to modify the car, but I've also never owned a car and not modified it so I guess time will tell with that one.

I expect to be putting around 30-40,000 miles per year on this & hopefully keeping it for 4-5 years..... I'll update when something changes!

[Joe-Hindle]

No way! Thought I recognised the name from SaxP! Welcome dude! Car looks clean

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

[tom5190]

No way! Thought I recognised the name from SaxP! Welcome dude! Car looks clean

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

Joe! Now then mate hows tricks?

I've already purchased H&R Springs for this in the last 10 mins since that post

[Joe-Hindle]

Joe! Now then mate hows tricks?

I've already purchased H&R Springs for this in the last 10 mins since that post

I'm good mate, daddy cool now how're you doing?

Haha! That doesn't surprise me I'm on the hunt for a CDTi at the minute, my 1.8 isn't cutting the mustard!

Looking forward to seeing the progress on this!

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[tom5190]

I'm good thanks mate, just got the dreaded house deposit to save and im hoping this thing can remain my daily for a while. Ill be in the market for something else in a year or 2 but im hoping to keep whatever it is that i get as a weekend car & carry on running this.

Is there 2 different CDTi models? I've just done some digging and noticed 2 different power figures. If so, whats the difference?

[Joe-Hindle]

Ahh yeah, that's what we're trying to do, got some bill paying to do first though (ahhh)

They came in a 120 and a 150 iirc. Think yours will be a 120 buddy

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[soulman]

@Teapot on here can give your car a nice little boost of power ,drop him a pm some time.

[tom5190]

So its exactly 1 month since I bought this car, I've covered just over 2000 miles in it. So far I do really like the car for what it is, I am quite suprised at how comfortable its been and its really easy to get some decent MPG from it. At the moment im seeing 600 miles to £73 of fuel which is less than half of what i was paying in the S3! It is horrendously slow though but there's not much I'll be doing about that I can't imagine.

I've noticed a few niggles with the car, the cruise control drops out every now and then which is annoying. The gearbox is a little louder than it should be I think. That cup holder in the centre is a terrible design you can't make 2-4-6 gear if there's a normal sized coffee in the front slot & the rear ash tray is broken. The standard wheel was really tatty & i had a crack in one of the rear lights, I also had a snapped spring which is why ive replaced some parts. I'm kind of approaching it with an upgrade rather than replace mentality, one of the droplinks was goosed when i was pulling the struts off too.

So since i got the car I've done the following:

Oil & filter change
Oil flush
2 x Fuel treatments (in-tank)
Rear SRI lights
AP Lowering springs (-40mmF/-30mmR)
2 x front OEM Droplinks
SRI Steering wheel
Front OEM Brembo discs & pagid pads
Rear OEM Brembo discs & pagid pads
Removed all of the bike stickers

It was valeted before i got it, the inside had some seriously worrying amounts of that black dash stuff on it so the whole thing was shiney & greasy haha. I had a few spare hours so I've given it a quick wash. When i was drying it I noticed the paint work feels like sand paper & there are loads of tar deposits all over. Again i know its supposed to be an A to B car but I think ill give it a proper going over next month & get a rotary on it with a few decent layers of wax.

Anyway heres a few pictures along the way:

Parts:
Untitled by T.walker5190, on Flickr

Untitled by T.walker5190, on Flickr

Untitled by T.walker5190, on Flickr

Untitled by T.walker5190, on Flickr

Untitled by T.walker5190, on Flickr

After a clean:

DSC09158 by T.walker5190, on Flickr

DSC09140 by T.walker5190, on Flickr

DSC09137 by T.walker5190, on Flickr

DSC09132 by T.walker5190, on Flickr

DSC09165 by T.walker5190, on Flickr

It needs a few more things really, I'm going to drop the gearbox oil and see whats going on there, the air-con could do with a re-gas & the tracking needs doing really. I've bought a rear chrome strip to color code as i think they look stupid & I'm on the look out for a CD70 Navi. In an attempt to remove more of the chrome I'm going to stick some spare gloss black wrap that i have on the small chrome strips under the windows & see what that looks like. I'll also probably stick some fresh plates without screws on there & de-wiper the rear. The aftermarket mats are useless aswell so i might find some OEM ones.

I was contemplating SRI front lights & tinting the indicators along with bottom sections of the rears but I do quite like the original headlights so I'm not so sure on that yet. Unless there's some way to install OEM HID's which are black.

[Morty1977]

Hi pal i have a black exclusiv and was thinking Of gloss wrapping my rear chrome strip in black is it easy to do and what's the best stuff to use?

[tom5190]

Wrapping is pretty simple but I have done a fair bit of it.

I think wrapping the rear strip would be pretty easy, however I’m not sure what the gloss black would look like directly on top of your paint. It might stick out a fair bit.

ill drop a link to the site I usually use