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Panic's Place Garage, Geldenhuys Street, Benoni (2026)

31/01/2024

HI there everybody. Yes sorry i have been awefull at posting anything, just so hectic in the day and then just hard to sit down at night and come up with what should be interesting instead of just boring stuff like servicing.
BUT I never ask for anything but this time I am looking. We are desperately in need of a cheapish laptop. Let’s say around R3k that can run our vcds diagnostic and tune programs. Just need a working battery and usb ports. If anybody has something sitting around that is not used please give me a shout. We had a little HP but it suddenly just died on us saying load an operating system. 🙈

21/07/2023

Well what a crazy again week or two. For anybody that comes here now and then they would have seen an Audi RS6 V10T that was here for a WHILE. It was in for a turbo upgrade and it all took some time. Gaby at fastec did the upgrade and it was just intake side hybrid. There isn’t really much else you can do locally as nobody we could find was willing to make and test a boring bar to do the exhaust housings as they form part of the exhaust manifolds. You can buy upgrades overseas but they range around R30k EURO which is simply scary.
Once we got the turbos back it was a case of finding a gap in the schedule where we could have that car on the lift for basically 4 days. I eventually got time to pull the engine off a stand and put it back on our scissors trolley to put it back together. The gearbox went in for a refresh at the same time and we changed the rear crank seal just because you are crazy not to while you are there. Having put the turbos back on and put the gearbox and motor back together we dragged the car back in the garage. These things are a major pain to work on. The packaging is SOO tight. There is a hundred things to connect back. There are lots of coolers and pipes and electrics to connect back up and the possibility for leaks are endless. So basically almost 30 hours of labour later and the oil system filled (they are dry sump) it was a case of cranking it and it fired right up. No major leaks either which is always a bonus. There were a few other things the owner wanted attended to like the interior blower fan which is also a massive pain in the construction to remove and change. All done we had to drive it to make sure all is well. It was un tuned so using just small partial throttle openings and it is just simply scary fast. My word just a little squeeze to pass a car and you are into double the legal limit before you even blink. He had it tuned in the week and peak of 910 nm (805 before) and 438 Kw on the wheels (358 before) is a handy little increase.
The other long term visitor here has been that A1 I mentioned last week. It ran a big end bearing. We finally found a motor, the customer saved enough and so we swapped them out. Put it all together and after a little bit of cranking she fired up and all is quiet again on the western front. Only slight complication was that the original alternator didn’t charge so we swapped it out for the one that came with the import motor. We had to fit a new clutch as it was toast and it would be a waste of time and money to put a done for clutch back in when you have it out. Engine also got serviced and new cambelt and pump put on because you just have no idea what KM it has done or age.
Anyways if anybody needs a set of good second hand Delphi injectors for an 1.6 tdi gimme a shout there is a set here. We started it with the ones that came with the import so we knows it works then fitted the new ones that was bought. Also the cylinder head is good and available. Turbo that came off the import motor also seems fine albeit a bit stiff to turn probably from just oldish oil. If anybody has any need for any of that let me know. Block of course and three rods are ok. Crank journal on no4 is damaged and so is the rod but there are 4 good pistons as well. Engine code CAYU. So if you have a crank and a rod you can put a motor together.
Currently we also have an influx of busses although they are so hard to work on. The one , a 2l TDI uses water for no good reason(no Leaks ) so we suspect the one issue that those motors suffer which is a cracked head. So head is off and at engineering for a pressure test.

Number two is a 2.5L 5 cylinder that is mixing oil and water and all the usual suspects was changed before which is the water pump and oil/water heat exchanger. So off comes that head too to look at the head gasket. It has done some 525K km.
The last one I went and picked up in witbank on Thursday – clutch gave up the ghost.
On the rescue V8 touareg front – we opened up the door panel and got the remaining piece of broken mirror mount off. I stripped the mirror bare and we gave it to a welding expert in the area. He welded it on and I’ll try to get the cable out on the weekend to re-attach all the wires and see if we can have the mirror back on over the weekend. It might also be sold. Had somebody here last week and he says he is taking it. Just need to finish it and he is currently in the USA to visit Oshkosh for some flying (massive bucket list item for me too but realistically will never happen) I can just be jealous.

20/07/2023

Sold

10/07/2023

Right So back from a few days in the cape and the cold followed us home I see. Anyways there is not a ton of news on the rescue V8 touareg but it has been for panel and paint and it is looking great. I haven't got many pics right currently but will try to go fetch it from the panel guy tomorrow if all goes to plan. Then it is either fix or replace that left mirror and then off to interior clean and polish and clean. I have to also put a new battery in which is sitting here ready to go.
Today we went to buy an engine for a little A1 tdi that has been sitting here for months and months. It is a little bit of a sad story / bad luck but also one of caution. Its trouble started with a failed injector that basically got stuck open. It was making a knocking noise but instead of sorting or stopping driving it immwdiately they kind of kept going till it wasn't running properly any more. When we got it it sounded just like a hydraulic knock you get from an injector spraying too much. We pulled the injectors and got them tested and that confirmed it was the case but that the other three was not great either. After saving up for a long time the owner was able to buy 4 new injectors but after we fitted them the motor was still knocking. I knew right away it was the worst case one never hope for in there cases and that is that that failed injector allowed either so much diesel into the oil that the lubrication was compromised or the hydraulic locking caused a big end bearing to take such a beating that it failed. Anyway we pulled the sump and yes no4 had run a bearing. Investigating rebuild cost it came out to around R50k ish. Complete motor from Japan auto trading for R29k. Kind of a no brainer. We will start it with the current injectors the engine came with then we will put in his new injectors. That way at least we can sell them knowing they are working hopefully make him some money back. Will try to get it swapped in the week. The cold really is not funny.

27/06/2023

A few weeks ago we got a touareg here that the owner was a little tired off as well. It had spent a considerable amount of time at another specialist in the northern suburbs for a boost related issue whom eventually gave up looking for it. On asking it appears that the turbo was changed and it looked quite clean so I take that happened. When it got here it woukd not boost at all and taking a drive with vcds plugged in I could see that the EGT sensor was not reading right but there were no faults as such. So the first thing I did was change the EGT sensor. And now we had boost. I was quite chuffed with myself. For about 5 minutes. Shortly after coming to the first stop street the requested boost dropped to 1600 hpa instead of the normal 2240. The turbo easily delivered that and it tracked the requested perfectly. Now what. Still no faults. I was getting a feeling here that maybe somebody deleted faults as apparently the ecu was also changed. Not knowing what was done I took the ecu to calvin (thanas jhb) to be flashed to stock. Back in the car but exactly the same thing. Boost for a while till you come to a stop or slow down.
Grrrrr. Just looking at lambda that also seems not great at times and the lambda temp sensor and egt sensor doesn’t agree so I also change the lambda. Aaand nope. That it ain’t either. I start digging in measuring blocks and stumble over two that I had kind of forgotten about, limitation factor EGT and limitation factor all combined. Drive it and they both start at 0.99 (basically 1) and then suddenly the all combined one falls to 0.69. Mm guess what. 2240 x 0,69 = 1546 which is my now requested boost. Ah gotcha. But what is making that go to 0.69?
I have a chat to thanas and he says log ALL the temps and thw barometric pressure. I go hunt for all the temps - outside air, intake, egt, lambda gas, before cat temp and last but not least fuel temp. Mm immediately I am looking at that one and with the car started for seconds it sits at 139 degrees. Outside air temp is 10, engine temp at that stage about 20. Mmm there is something fishy.
Sommer from the word go the boost is down. We reset and the two factors ar 0.99 for an monent and then it’s doen at 0.69 again. We unplug the fuel temp sensor and it defaults to 72 and BOOM we have boost. And it stays.
Back home I order a sensor and when I plug the new one it the fuel temp are reasonable readings of like 39 or so. Yeah ! We got it. Limitation factors now stays at 0.99 and just like that a months long mess about is solved. Sometimes it’s the simple ones that mess you around the worst.

27/06/2023

Right so bear with me a little bit. I am in cape town for a week so won’t post much about out rescue car but i have managed to sort the suspension before we left and currently it is at a good friend that is doing the panel and paint. I have driven it and it goes as well as those v8’s do. Mechanically it seems pretty solid. As the maintenance records suggested there are almost brand new brakes on and the waterpump was replaced. Adaptive cruise control works even which is a huge surprise.

24/06/2023

So here then as requested is the story of our latest rescue car. Basically every car we ever buy and sell is either almost destined for stripping or comes from a desperate owner that simply cannot see his way clear to continue with it in his life. This one is a 2015 year model Touareg 7P or series two or how Touareg people know them as T2. This is only the second well strictly speaking the third 7P we have bought to resell. The first was a 2011 also non R-line car that also had lots of cosmetic issues but was mostly good mechanically. That went to one of our customers in the Northern cape.
The second was a 2013 R-line which I bought literally the same day we delivered the one to the cape. This car was spotless and needed literally nothing. The owner was desperately looking for money to pay a biking trip they planned to Namibia. Steph saw it on facebook marketplace and we had a customer looking for one. The guy I had in mind for it then really rather wanted a 2015 onwards model ie. the facelift and while I was thinking he was crazy to not even look at this one he was quite insistent on a facelift. Anyway no hardship and I started advertising it but after driving it for two weeks just to make sure it’s Ok, I ended up keeping it for myself and rather sold off another 7L that we had at that stage. Most people that know me knows that car and I still have it and absolutely love the thing.
So two weeks ago I was speaking to a contact we had made at a dealership that sometimes have some things we are looking for. While we were talking about some parts and Touaregs he asked if I would know somebody that would be interested in a V8 7P. UHM yeah well I would. He says it’s been sitting there for 5 months – it has some cosmetic things and some mechanical issues and the customer has not accepted the last repair quote so it just sits there and they are looking to sell. We organize to see it the next day. On the way there he phones to say nope hang on don’t come he can’t get it opened. Battery has gone flat and he doesn’t have the door key. The remote won’t open it. We turn around and provisionally set the meet for the next day. An hour later he phones to say they managed and I can come look. We jump in the little V6 and shoot to the dealer. I had some pics that showed the outside damage which basically is marks and scratches on the front bumper. The one headlight LED is apparently dead (this is going to be an expensive one) the left door mirror is broken off(really expensive repair no2) and has a dent in the door left rear, left rear fender has a mark and the rear bumper is marked and bumped in a few places. The one wheel centre cap are missing and there is a bend at the bottom of the tailgate.
The biggest shock for me though is the inside. This poor thing was literally used like a bakkie. They have horses and it was used to drive around hay bales for the horses. I mean really? Who buys a Touareg to use as a bakkie? Anyways the boot area is an obvious disaster but the rest of the inside seems mainly OK.
I can see there has been some heavy items with sharp corners sitting on the back seat as there are pressure marks in the leather but I’m hoping with maybe some steam or something treatment they will come out. (challenge set for detail ease  ) The rear seats have basically not been used for people as far as I can see. For the rest the main reason it ended up at the dealer in the first place is that the air suspension is not working. I have a pretty good idea what it might be but the quote from the dealer appears to include two complete front struts and an air pump. That was the clincher for the customer and they were out. There is a comprehensive report on what was done in the past. The expensive things like water pump and new brake discs and pads all taken care of in the recent past.
Yes it has high km – 195k km but one thing you have to realize when talking Touaregs is that KM is not really a thing. Really not a thing to stare yourself blind against in any case. Yes I have had buyers walk away from really nice cars with high kms or they would not even come to look at it but it’s just because they really don’t understand what these cars can do. One thing I have always refused to do is fiddle odometers. There is in any case a well documented service history on record and in the book so that is that. A car is what it is and if people can’t judge it on what it is like instead of just looking at a number then they don’t really know cars anyway.
The repairs will basically be in the order of
1) get the suspension sorted and the car back on air. Not slammed on its bump stops.
2) Figure out if I can fix that left mirror. It came with the car broken mount and all but otherwise intact and with the cable cut off. Surprisingly there are 21 wires going into that mirror. Yes it is for basic mirror adjustment, camera, lane change control warning light, ground illumination, heater and dimming. Price on a complete mirror seems to be around R32k so let’s see if we can get away with not doing that.
3) All the surprise items that I have no clue about at this stage and there are always lots of these on cars that you could not really test drive.
4) Paint and body work repairs. This will include the dead LEDs in the headlight.
5) Service which will include all the oils and fluids – brake fluid and possibly coolant included.
6) interior clean – outside polish – and basic sale prep which is making sure it is roadworthy , has all its tools and already I know the jack is missing.
It is a highly specced car with a panoramic sunroof (I personally hate them) – adaptive cruise control (prone to be problematic for people that keep bumping the radar eyes in the bumper so I fully expect this not to work at this point) Lane change control and of course air suspension. 4 place aircon and RNS850 radio(the big Nav one) is sort of usually found in most v8s but I see it has little window blinds at the back which was also an option. Any case as we stand that is what I know and as we get on with it I’ll update with the progress the surprises, the disappointments which there will be. Obviously it is a business item and I will sort of keep track on repair costs here but I can’t disclose buying price for obvious reasons. We have to make a profit on this kind of thing otherwise it is pointless doing it. As much as we love resurrecting them it has to pay, we cannot do it for the love of it alone. So let’s see what this journey brings. Bear with me sometimes these things take months to get done depending on time available to work on it and of course cash flow  and sometimes just the will to work on it. Some cars as you get into it just breaks your willpower and then you have to just leave it alone a bit before you feel like working on it again. Oh yes of course after 5 months the battery is dead ish…

23/06/2023

Ok So here is a question. Most people know that we love buying unloved cars with issues to fix and sell. I basically never show how they arrive and mostly the reason for that is that I feel it might scare somebody away when it comes to sell time but maybe it's the wrong approach. At this very point we have the next poor stray that came into our life in the form of a 2015 7P V8. So facelift car but not an R-line. Still an extremely well specified car but that has been terribly unloved. It has actually been well looked after mechanically but the body work and interior is a bit of a shambles. So let's see what does people think. Show it how it is, the repair and resurrection journey till it is ready for sale or as we usually do keep it under wraps till I have it ready for sale.

23/06/2023

Today was an utterly hectic day. Won't even begin to go through it but I'll just put really two things here. We have an amarok here that obviously is a well used hard working vehicle and we had a long list of stuff to attend for the customer. One item was to see if we can change the roof lining. I could not see any reason for that except that it was terribly dirty , it looks like they had a bottle of coke explode and end up on the roof lining. Anyway so rather than change that I gave the vehicle to Detail Ease to have a go at the roof lining. Got a call this morning to say its ready.
To tell you i was amazed and blown away was mild. I really thought of them to just clean the roof but when I got there the entire interior was cleaned. This guy is decked out in canvas and fuzzy carpets and they did an excellent job of making this a really beautifully clean pleasant smelling car instead of a rough dusty bush bakkie. I never though to take before pictures because what I received was so way out of my expectation that I just really have to thank them or going way out of their way to do something stunning. Thanks guys really really appreciated and well done. Guys please support these guys and their products are also awesome. https://detailease.co.za/

Then one last thing. I swear I am going to write a book called 'The pollen filter, A lifetime saga' Yet another car for service today - this time a T5 combi bus. Undo the cover take off the pollen filter cover and all I am met with is leaves. Grab a mirror to see where it is stuck and - nothing. No pollen filter fitted. SIGH. Why is it that people do not understand what these things do and why they should really be there and replaced just now and then maybe. I hate shops that are really just too useless to do it. Can't think of any other good reason.
Have a great weekend.

22/06/2023

Anybody that owns a 7L series Touareg IE the ones known as T1 and its facelift – 2004 to 2009 will know the agony of driving these at night. Awesome cars as they are they have one serious shortcoming. As they got older the lights just became absolutely terrible. It is a combination of wiring getting older, Lenses getting contaminated and probably Ballasts getting lower on power on the Xenon versions. Even the pure halogen versions can help with a little better too.
For many years I simply had no answer for people when they ask how to improve and usually I would simply recommend fitting either light bars or spot lights which is an answer for when you want bright but no solution for dims. And what is worse when you come off bright when you have spots or bar is that then you are literally night blind and it’s even worse at that moment. A few weeks ago I started re-looking what options there are in LED. For Many Many years I have been against people fitting Xenon style globes in normal reflector style lights because they are forever focused wrong and simply scatter light everywhere and blinds people from the front. I was worried about all these LED globes possibly being the same but they are going into a light that is projector and that uses shutters to do dim control.
On top of that Touaregs are especially painful on wanting the right globes. If you put anything LED into them they complain because canbus checks resistance etc. Then I started seeing these apparently direct replacement globes for Xenon that retains the original wiring and its ballast. MMMM – then starting to look around I found a supplier or two on takealot. One of them at that stage had a 30% discount on it bringing it to around R1000 for a set and I was at the point where I was wanting to put new globes in that V6 I had just got running as they were two very different colored globes. I bit a huge bullet and ordered two sets for both my cars. One of my customers was also asking for whatever we can do to improve the light situation and Between the two of us we had already decided before this find to go with some spotlights.
The spots we went for was Hella Supernova and Kavi a good contact that owns autotechlight https://www.autotechlight.co.za/ supplied us with two sets of 6” supernovas. I ordered a number plate light mount plate from Max motorsport and armed with xenon to LED replacement globes and spots I set to work on these two cars.
The LED replacement for the xenon was as simple as pulling the lights out (oh yes If you don’t own a touareg – they have a simple lock system and you slide them out in seconds – it was an amazing feature of the early Touareg and the 4L series Q7)
Trying them out it was an amazing change. The normally yellowish and terrible xenons was now replaced by an awesome white light with good pe*******on and range. On their own that car was now usable at night where before I would literally refuse to drive that car at night.
Having bought the spots already and knowing we are going to Mozambique in august and we might have to drive at night one evening I set out to mount the spots too. The behind number plate mount made short work of supplying a way to mount them and with their pre-made harnass it took no time to mount the spots. MAN OH MAN. These things in conjunction with the led headlight made a massive difference. It’s daylight out there when you flick brights on now.
As promised the xenon LED replacement decoded correctly , used the existing xenon ballast as a direct plug and play replacement and they are awesome. If you own an old Touareg – just do it. Find a set and fit them you will not be sorry.
In the meantime I have also fitted the Hella H7 and H9 led replacement globes in Touaregs that has halogens and yes they are also canbus friendly and makes the same amazing difference to those style lights. These are available from a number of suppliers including goldwagen. The xenon to LED we have seemed to have suddenly used up all the local supply as I tried a few other places like bobshop and ended up with getting refunds and no globes. For now I have ordered a few sets from china but with shipping and import tax they were not as cheap as the stuff that was on takealot. Maybe they will restock soon.
I didn’t get too much ‘before’ pictures of the first cars we changed so hard to give you an idea of how massive the difference was but I did get some on a later car.

22/06/2023

This last week or two was thankfully mostly sort of basic maintenance and the odd failure but there was nothing that was driving me absolutely nuts so it was I suppose a bit of a boring time and not much to report really. We had a mk7 golf 1.4 tfsi with a customer reporting the car was overheating and he caught it early and not drive it. We went and picked it up from fourways. My guess was water pump and I ordered a pump and belt because we have seen this failure before.
When I stripped yes I found the same as before. The water pump starts leaking and the coolant that ends up on the little drive belt affect the rubber and then it eats the teeth off the belt and now the pump does not turn anymore. The pumps we get from goldwagen is the Borsehung make. They are OE suppliers to VW. Because they cannot actually have VW part numbers and badging on it when they supply to aftermarket they actually just grind it off. We often get people saying oh you must put the OE product on and then when you explain it is the same people often don’t believe. We have seen lots of people pay lot of extra money for a boring brown box. I will put up a couple of pictures to show.
Then there was a 924 Porsche that is entered in the 24 hours of lemons race in October. It was recently bought and at a track session it was very underpowered and misfiring. We stuck it on the dyno to see what we can see. Did two runs and we could see it very rich. It made a rather underwhelming 60 horsepower. I fiddled the fueling a bit on the warmup regulator and on the next run we got the misfire that they were talking about. It’s clearly a spark misfire and looking at the wiring and the coil and TP100 coil amplifier they looked a bit worn and old. Checking the rotor there also was about 5 mm play left right and that should not be. I ordered the goldwagen coil and distributor harnass that replaces these and a new coil, rotor and tp100. After changing these there was no more misfire and playing with timing I got to around 75 hp and the fueling looked more reasonable. But that is still short of what it should make. It has a cam Vernier pulley on and I loosen it and go to full re**rd on the Vernier. Power jumps to 80 hp and that is more ballpark. I try to find actual correct timing marks but they are rather dodgy. I jump the cam timing one tooth and set the Vernier back to it’s zero markings. Next runs come around to around 83 after re-fiddling the ignition timing and that is about it. No further adjustments yield more but 83 is about what we expect to see from these engines.
The last thing from last week we have a A3 2L TSI which is basically identical to golf5 GTI. Same BWA engine code. Car was dropped with a misfire. It was recently acquired by a nephew of one of our customers. We gave it a once over when he bought it and did some basic maintenance like gearbox oil and filter. It then went away and then we got a call that says he had some guy do a turbo change and they loaded a map and now it smokes and misfires. We do a compression test and cyl no4 has NO compression and the spark plug is a little melted away which is not normally good news. We pulled the motor and stripped and well yeah that piston is done for. Went lean and knocked and melted very nicely. I have said it a number of times before. Do some real research as to whom you get to load maps on your car. There as maps and there are maps and not every guy that can load a map actually knows about tuning a car or knows what to look at to keep them safe. Some remove the stuff that keeps them from self-destructing. We could see they fitted an aftermarket boost canister but the one pipe that controls the boost was actually pinched so it would have made huge boost. Normally there would be safety things in the maps that will either back off the throttle or open the dump valve to stop it from over boosting and I have my doubts that those were there and worked. I’ll get the ECU to the guys we trust and see what we can learn.
Tomorrow we should also get to hopefully finish a project that has been long overdue. We have an RS6 V10 A6 here that came for a turbo upgrade. The turbos came back from Fastec a few months ago but we just didn’t get to it. Friday last week with it being a holiday and with no interruptions I managed to dress the motor back in its turbo and put the gearbox back that was also refreshed. So if everything goes to plan it should all go back in tomorrow and it should be a running car again early next week.

11/06/2023

Oh yes I wanted to post this last week. We have seen some weird stuff in tyres and we do fix a fair amount of punctures but this one is one of the more interesting things we have pulled out of a tyre.
Part of a 6 size allen key

Panic's Place Garage

31/01/2024

21/07/2023

20/07/2023

10/07/2023

27/06/2023

27/06/2023

24/06/2023

23/06/2023

23/06/2023

22/06/2023

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11/06/2023

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Monday	08:00 - 17:00
Tuesday	08:00 - 17:00
Wednesday	08:00 - 17:00
Thursday	08:00 - 17:00
Friday	08:00 - 17:00
Saturday	08:00 - 17:00