The TXD Turbot trouncer

[vulgalour]

The glass incident made me cringe >.<

[Dollywobbler]

Ouch! I somehow missed the gore first time through! Nasty. I took a slice out of one of my hands with a stanley blade many years ago. That didn't hurt and I still have a numb patch. Must have done some nerve damage!

[saintjamesy89]

Thanks for your kind words guys I've been able to use that hand more and more over the last two days, yesterday morning I couldn't do much , as every time I used the hand the skin would pull the stitches and it'd hurt quite a lot! I've not taken any pain killer this afternoon, and I can type with that hand now too. Which is good, as it's back to work tomorrow, I have had two quite relaxing days off, instead of doing loads of stuff. Did have to clean our house (tenants arrived today, all happy so far) left handed yesterday though, which was interesting!

On the BX front, i'm about to order two new tyres, tonight or tomorrow now I have a good steel wheel. Can't decide between conti eco 5's or michelin energy saver +. The conti's have slightly better reviews and ratings (B+B+69db) but michelin's are so very Citroen (C+B+70db) I think the conti's are a smidge cheaper too. What's the collective?

[mat_fenwick]

I'd go on ratings rather than name...

[mds141]

Toyo 'Proxes' have consistently good reviews.

[saintjamesy89]

Steve gets the Which? magazine which had a very interesting article on tyres, on top of the tests carried out for compulsory EU ratings thing they did all sorts of other stuff. Conti 5's outperformed michelins in all things wet (aquaplaning, braking, cornering speeds etc) but lasted 15000 miles less and were noisier than the michelins. In a wear test, they got 60,100 miles out of the michelins before they were below 1.6mm!

I think on a BX, that is quite a grippy system anyway, i'll go for the michelins as they last just so much longer, before I saw the mileage I was all set to go for the conti's.

[mat_fenwick]

I'll be lucky to get a quarter of that mileage out of my current set of Michelins! Yet on other cars driving similar speeds over the same roads, tyres last so much longer. Strange. On the subject of longevity, I'd ask yourself whether you still plan to have the car (or the wheels!) in 60k miles time?

[Dollywobbler]

What Mat says. I go for grip over longevity as I rarely keep a car longer than six months!

[saintjamesy89]

I feel very positive about this BX atm, really quite fond of it now I am doing more to/with it. When the welding is done and rust gone, it'll be a rather nice BX (not thinking about the paint as of yet). I bought 2 new michelins just now, costing £131.54 fitted black circles is a website i've used before, and haven't found a cheaper one yet. Not had a problem with their service either. Also just bought a pair of the BX-bargain-of-the-day discs and bidding on some rather cheap pads (if I don't get the for cheap, carparts4less have some good cheap ones too), i'll get some rear pads from cp4l and hopefully have the rear discs coming from wooscary. I can give all the calipers a good clean and grease, and check the handbrake cables/adjustment, so that should be that.

That'll be the brakes sorted, my next concern is the exhaust. The backbox is blowing in several places and gradually falling apart! It's not due an MOT till November so there's no rush, but in my reading around XUDT 'improving' it's been mentioned several times that a bigger bore, or even freer flowing exhaust on an XUDT will allow the turbo to spool up quite lower down the rev range, a 405 owner reported peak boost 800 rpm lower, which should make things quite easier and possibly more economical too.

My next question is, how do I go about this? I don't want a noisy(er) BX, a but more bass would be great, a friends TD 306 is quite bassy as standard, whereas on the TXD you can't really hear any exhaust note, all the noise is at the front. I don't want to go down the 'performance' exhaust route, as that'll be expensive and loud, could I use a system from another car - or maybe just the backbox etc? I'm assuming the system on there now is the biggest, most free flowing BX exhaust there is, it being a TD. Could I use a 2.1/2.5 td XM rear silencer and maybe middle pipe? I know the fixings would be different, but how hard can it be to weld a bracket or two in there for a fabricator/welding person?

Still need to do the water leak, but limited by my silly injured hand...

[mat_fenwick]

Something like this perhaps? Now replaced by this:

[saintjamesy89]

Hmm, i've seen this in you blog Mat. Has it made any difference in noise or engine behaviour? I would imagine it being more free flowing than a box but still is 180 degrees worth of angling about for the gas flow.

A BX TD standard system has 2 boxes a cross box and the rear box, I think. Could just one box be used in the same place as the cross box, a bigger one with a twin exit and perhaps bigger bore pipe all along the system

[citsncycles]

Dunno about with a turbo, but with an n/a engine losing the back box certainly helped Timex's performance. It didn't sound too bad either, although I notice it more now I have a cylinder head which doesn't have more cracks than an oil painting and has a straight camshaft fitted!

Incidentally, my info may be out of date, but I believe that by law you need at least one silencer fitted, but that a turbo counts as one, so you may be able to simply fit a straight pipe out the back!

[mat_fenwick]

I ran the straight pipe in 2009 and 2010, before reverting back to the standard system for the past few years. I can't compare the power of the straight pipe versus the 180 degree pipe, but both give less lag than the standard system. The straight pipe was a little noisy for my tastes, not that you could tell much difference inside the car but it sounded a bit chavvy from the outside.

I did read somewhere that every 90 degree bend in an exhaust system was equal to a surprisingly long length of straight pipe, so would expect the straight system to be significantly better. But I'm happy with the noise/performance trade off I have now

[saintjamesy89]

Hmm definitely food for thought chaps, thanks. It'd be interesting to chat with the local 'custom' exhaust place in Yeovil to see what they recommend.

When you say a right angle is the equivalent of a rather long straight section, is that in terms of flow resistance, or noise lessening?

On constructive news, had a good look at all the brakes on the TXD yesterday at the tech weekend. No pictures unfortunately as I got very greasy and didn't want to dirty the new camera! Both discs were borderline wear-wise but I replaced them anyway, drivers side pads were very close to the back plates (this is the side with the spring holding the handbrake mechanism off when the handbrake lever is down) hence the squealing, but the passenger side ones weren't too bad, but as I had new discs anyway I changed them. Barry showed me the tricks of the trade for doing changing the discs/pads with ease on the drivers side (center punch allied with a hammer makes removing those pad retaining clips very easy), and I then cracked on and did the passenger side. Only problems were corroded pad retaining plate not wanting to slot into the pads groove, but a quick session with Barry's grinder soon sorted that Allan (who i'm ashamed to not know his last name, but he does have an F reg 16v) who was in attendance, and a very interesting chap too, showed me how to auto adjust the handbrake -to much improvement. Previously the lever would travel hugely, now about half as much, which is still more than it should - but there is that spring on the drivers side which is probably causing the issues. Everything was greased and well lubricated. Also checked the rear brakes, both side's discs and pads had plenty of meat left on them, though they were dirty, they weren't dissimilar to the new ones in the box!

Other bits I did (apart from drinking coffee, dunking/dropping biscuits, chatting and driving Mark's XM (Cheers Mark!)) was to check under the washer bottles for rust, as I noticed succession occurring under there, complete with leaf litter, sprouting bird seed and even soil building up! The passenger side was a bit corroded, perhaps due to dodgy seam sealing as the drivers side had very decent seam seals with no corrosion - no holes though as of yet. I also tried to get the aftermarket temp gauge working properly again, but the bolt that was fixed to the top of the temp sender plug snapped off! Seems it was only glued/bonded onto the top, so now I really should get a new, functional sender and find a GTI/16V type temp dial plate for the instrument cluster.

Apart from the rust, I feel like this car is coming along nicely for what it is - a very cheap, average mileage tatty BX daily. Next job is sphere regass on wednesday, still need to do the water leak and now tempo sender too. Then there is the rust...

[mat_fenwick]

When you say a right angle is the equivalent of a rather long straight section, is that in terms of flow resistance, or noise lessening?

It was talking about resistance to gas flow, but certainly the bends take out a lot of noise compared to a straight pipe. I suppose better gas flow goes hand in hand with more noise...