Stuff you wish you hadn't bought for your Dub

I thought it might be fun, and faintly useful to have a thread detailing the the things you may have bought for your car and subsequently regretted.

Could be good for warning off people who might make drunken/foolish E-bay purchases etc.

I'll start off with two that conveniently fit in the same shot.

Solar battery charger - puts out a fraction of what's claimed by Maplin(?), and a sound charging system just doesn't need any help.

Dash heater, relabelled from "Ceramic Heater" as you can see. Wired up direct from battery (via meaty switch, and fuse) with thick cable, still makes more noise than hot air; utterly useless at clearing a windscreen, inside or out.



Will be removing the latter as it is just dead weight; anyone want it?

 

Petrol.

 

Center arm rest for the mk2 suposidly fits mk2 and 3 bolloks only if you dont move either seat or want to adjust it. Bought many things and forgot to put them on the car yet lol

 

Just about all the upgrade bits I got for the engine; GTi camshaft, Weber carb and other pointless miscellanies. Should have spent the money on suspension instead. Moral of the story, if you want to go fast, its not easy with EZ.
Start with something that was meant to have some beans.

 

Yeah I've wasted time on the EZ aswell, I'm swapping in a GTi now to counter the crap. I regret buying things to potentially upgrade it and it's just changed direction now.

 

private reg that i feel compelled to transfer from car to car - but has no real significance.

a collection of D90s, now i have lost all faith in adaptors - whenever i give it some beans (heat in the brakes etc) they come loose.

 

FK coilovers. They where expensive and they rusted.

 

Second hand alloys - always gonna be a gamble esp when they are 10 yrs plus old. Got some lovely looking refurbed mim 1900s. Got the balance checked at my local tyre place and found not one of them is straight......great. Putting up with it for now as they look great but not too thrilled to be driving on wobbly wheels.

D

 

seconded..... absolute rubbish

 

Just thought of another. The foam-covered cold-air hose that goes from airbox trumpet to wing fitting on carby cars. Old one was dropping bits of foam all over the air filter. After forking out for a new one from the stealers, I later discovered that with/without this somewhat costly item makes no appreciable difference to anything except induction noise. On a 1.6 this isn't a huge consideration...

 

I was going to get one of those demisters, which one was it so i can avoid it

I also bought one of those foam hoses for my 1.8 driver, then never fitted it, remembered i had it a couple of months ago when someone put up a wanted ad and it had fallen apart by itself!
Oh and the trickle charger, although mine was useful for the couple of months the car was off the road.

 

dear god where to start,

a weber chip for the digi engine, bought after i decided to go to mega squirt
a 8v power rohr also for digi engine bought after i decided to use ITB's
a brand new in box drivers side wing mirror despite having a spare set already

im going to stop now.

 

It was actually from Farnell, this one. 12A/150W. (Mk2 lighter socket's only rated at 10A, hence the separate wiring I put in). TBH they're all going to be much of a muchness, as they'll all be designed to plug into fag lighter sockets AFAIK. 150-ish watts just isn't enough grunt to produce any meaningful amount of warm air. Ye cannae change the laws of fuziks - I should've known better.

 

eibach pro street coilovers

biggest mistake ever

 

The alloys I got at the breakers because I hated my stock steels. I should of saved up and just bought a set of RS wheels off a BMW forum.

 

the set of 4 porsche 928 alloys i got off ebay, then went to pick them up, but being an idiot missed to fact that one of them had had a locking wheel nut drilled off, destroying one of the bolt seats. i then had to spend 3 months trying to find a single wheel at a sensible place to replace it as no-one wanted to split a set and porsche breakers are rip off merchants!

 

polished throttle body for pb 8v from ebay, I had a few beers seemed like a good idea and it was all shiney inside. cost me around 40 after delivery and its in the garage somewhere never fitted.

 

Lets see..

weber carb I paid 100 for. I had no idea what parts should come with it, etc. and bought it in the dark.. Turned out to be missing loads of things and had moss inside.. the d*ckhead seller just claimed "sold as seen" despite him claiming it'll work perfectly.

OMP Strut brace - Bought it, but didn't try fitting for a year. Just found out it doesn't reach over the Driver airbox!! Got in touch with seller who said "look at the pictures of the other braces on the website and pick one that looks like it'll fit your car." WTF!!

GSF plastic arches. No where near the same as I had on, despite the spec being correct.

And probably plenty more that I can't remember..

 

My mother bought me one of those 12V heater fans (don't ask). Better still, I think it may be a Woolworths one. I plugged it in once and so little warm air came out that I actually thought it was broken. So, err... it's actually probably working 'properly'?

 

I regret taking my old mk2 to Awesome. 565, i'm sure I woz robb'd But it was fixed and fast as ****.

550 quid on some design 90's, tyres and adaptors.