Just bought an S40...again

[RollingThunder]

Thanks Kev. Its not a colour that I would have chosen tbh, I much prefer the blue of our old S40, but I just couldn't walk away from this one, it was in such a fantastic condition, and that history... a mythical unicorn

I'll be honest with you, the rear passengers wouldn't thank you if they had to sit behind you. I'm a shorty as is my wife, so our rear passengers have plenty of leg room, but if you put a six footer in the front... nah


I did a few more little jobs tonight. Replaced the headlamp bulbs with some Osram NightBreakers that I had in the garage, replaced a blown tail light, a blown side indicator lamp (those mirror covers are a nightmare to remove!), fitted my mobile phone holder and finally fitted my VOC sticker in the windscreen.

I'll get some new tyres soon and will get the cambelt replaced in a month or two, then the jobs thereafter will be 'desirable' rather than 'necessary' -

- fit my Pure Highway 600 DAB/phone adapter
- sand/polish the dull headlamp covers
- replace the 'cloudy' headlamp glass dome lens with clear ones

So thats it, the S40 is now officially our daily!

[RollingThunder]

I ordered the clear dome lens headlamp units on April 4th and they arrived a few days later - really good service. I fitted those the following weekend and while they did help, the pitting and clouding of the outer plastic covers still caused far too much light scatter, so this last weekend I pulled the headlamps out agan and polished those outer covers.

I'd bought a Holts Headlamp Restoration Kit, but I quickly abandoned it as the sanding disc backing plate was too rigid, and that caused the disc to keep grabbing and digging into the plastic due to the compound curves. Luckily I have a couple of biscuit tins full of bodyshop wet n dry sanding paper from decades ago so I reverted to using that. Startd with 600 grit, then 800, 1000, 2000, 2500 and finally 3000. After the 3000 grit I was shocked to find the covers still scratched to hell - they were now a flat grey!

So I went back to the 800 and went through all the stages again... and had the same final result At this point I thought I'd completely cocked the job up, but for some reason I tried the polishing paste that came with the kit... eureka! That got rid of all the grey finish, and while the covers still don't look like new, they're a heck of a lot better than they were, so I'm calling that a win. The first one took an hour to do, with the second one taking considerably less time as I didn't do the job twice lol.



Pretty good eh? The performance of the headlights is now much much better and I get a nice crisp cut-off line in the beam.

So that was one job down.

While I don't think the S40 is a theft risk, certainly not a 2.4i, I am getting quite attached to the car and that olive oil green colour is really growing on me, so I'd be quite annoyed if someone stole it. I'm a firm believer in having a tracker fitted, so I spent the next few hours hiding my tracker. Its buried deep in the car, thats all I will say Tick, another job done.

Finally, I've ordered some new tyres. I'm confused as to why the car has a mix of oddball cheapo tyres fitted - it certainly doesn't fit with the previous (only) owner's service history - I have a receipt from a decade ago for a set of Continental tyres, so why the car has this mix now is a mystery. I can only assume they were due for replacement and the garage that bought the car off her fitted whatever they could find lol.

So when I had a flash sale offer of 15% off fitted tyres from TyresOnTheDrive - which beat anything else I could find, I placed the order. I've gone for some Pirelli Centaro P7 C2s in 215/45x17. I was going to fit Goodyear Vector 4 Seasons which is what I have on my 850R (and I'm happy with), however I saw this review which shocked me https://www.tyrereviews.com/Article/...-Tyre-Test.htm

So I decided to revert to summer tyres lol. The Pirelli did well in this test, https://www.tyrereviews.com/Article/...-Tyre-Test.htm and what got my attention was his comment that 'this is an enjoyable tyre to drive'. Now I've found the S40 to be a great handling car and I didn't want to spoil that by fitting a vague steering tyre, so I'm trying the Pirellis. I've never had Pirelli tyres before, so fingers crossed!

My other concern is the size I've ordered - 215/45x17. I asked on this forum if anyone was running that size and I got a resounding silence lol. But other forums have lots of people running 215 and even 225 tyres, so I'm hoping they'll be ok.

I'm having them fitted on Wednesday anyway, so I should be able to feedback on them at the weekend.