Thought I may as well throw this up here for folk to have a look, this is somewhat of an "ongoing" project for many years that has suddenly been pushed back into life.
Grab a coffee and try not to fall asleep, this is a long one.
Years ago I had a road rally Peugeot 205 GTi that a friend and I built together over a period of months. It was an excellent learning exercise for us both - we had initially considered ourselves to be competent spannermen and we soon learned this wasn't true when we came to overcoming new obstacles. Still, the car got built, we learned a hell of a lot and in the end, after a few events, I bought out Wayne's half of the car.
Unfortunately my Golf road car died about this time and I had to press the Peugeot into daily service - the miles took their toll, it got dented by people trying to break into it, the bonnet pins got left open by me (whoops) which sent the bonnet slamming into the screen, someone bricked one of the windows trying to steal it, I hit a sheep and tore off the valance, and then to really finish things off a lack of oil cooler plus some dubious quality oil led to the bottom end giving up. The immobiliser/alarm packing in just added insult to injury.
So, thoroughly disheartened with it I parked the car up in a garage and proceeded to do odd jobs to it, kidding myself that one day I'd get it sorted properly, but it was never really going to happen. The shell was battered and I didn't have the tools or motivation to do an engine swap. So it sat there, gathered dust and went manky.
Fast forward a couple of years and I'm getting itchy to do a project again - but I can't really justify starting something anew when I have all this unfinished business to sort out with the Peugeot. So after a reality check and re-evaluation of the black car I realise the only way to get it sorted is to transport the rally bits into a new car. Otherwise I'll just tread water forever.
So, I get onto Adtrader, and buy the first one I go to see. A 1 owner F reg 1.6 with no sunroof and no electric pack for £295. The car is sound apart from 4 worn tyres which I'll be replacing anyway, and a crack in the screen. So I buy it on the spot and now the fun part begins.....
So with 2 vehicles I have 2 basic jobs to do - strip what's useful out of the old car and get the new car ready to receive the donor parts.
So, I get down the garage and start ripping off anything useful from the old car. Glass, lights, bumpers, bootlid, cylinder head, bodykit, brakes, suspension - they all have to come off. Then there's the roll cage of course, but that can wait until the shell is outside so I can have room and light to work.
So, I start with the seats. These are Sparco Sprint, probably the most popular budget seat in Europe. Unfortunately, they're absolutely filthy and generally looking a bit sorry for themselves:
Moral of the story? Don't buy red seats no matter how ace they look. In the near future I might replace them with black seats, but for now these will do the job just fine, so I douse them in 1001 Stainbuster and give them a thorough jetwashing.
Not perfect, but a huge improvement! The pictures really don't show just how filthy they were.
After getting the seats and mounts out of the old car I now have a bit more space to work in. You can see how surface rust has pickled up all over the cage - OMP cages are notoriously badly finished and we should have rubbed it down better before painting it in the first place - and used a heck of a lot more paint! Once it's out, it gets rubbed back to clean steel, etch primed and then given substantial coats of Diamond White which should provide a good contrast to the red paint and trim.
You'll notice the cage has no door bars (that's the removable diagonal on the floor) - we ran out of cash in the original build, so the cage will have them when it goes in the new car. The rusty "feet" that weld do the body will need cutting out of the old shell - best way to do this is cut a larger than necessary area out of the floor and then you can grind off the excess easily before rubbing them back down, welding them into the new shell and painting them with some nice thick hammerite.
The harnesses need a clean but are otherwise fine, although I'd like to upgrade to 4 points instead of 3 (we couldn't get 4's at the time and we had an event that week so had to compromise) I'm not bothering with 3" FIA belts as the car won't be RAC logbooked and well, you have to draw the line somewhere.
I must admit I'll miss the old car, but just look at it:
Next up - battery in the boot.
Firstly, here is the standard 205 GTi engine bay
What I want is to move the battery into the boot to free up some space and help a touch with the weight distribution.
With the battery gone, you can move the airflow meter and fit an induction kit where it won't just suck warm air from the manifold (which is at the back on 205's)
So first things first - get rid of the piping and airbox.
Nice pile of useless bits:
After this was sorted, I removed the battery, then the airflow meter (which will later be repositioned. I also removed all the now pointless bracketry for the meter, it all helps neaten things up.
205 GTi's have two main live points to the battery. As on nearly every one I've seen, this one was knackered and fell off in my hand. So, new terminal, new wire (the thick red cable on the left)
I then got out the cable ties and sticky pads and ran the cable up the inner wing. Alongside it, I ran a second cable which will be connected to the starter itself
You can see the old battery tray here on the left which has a coating of rust. I'll grind that off with a flapwheel and give it a dose of red hammerite to protect it.
So, here's the bay as it stands - no battery, and for now no airflow meter (need to do some jiggery pokery with the old induction pipes to get it back on)
Battery box, extinguisher (one of three, lol) safety stickers, mudflaps, a bit more battery cable.
Solved my wiring distribution problem with a battery-through-bulkhead connector. This is basically a huge insulated bolt that will allow me to take as many positive feeds as I want to from the engine bay or inside the car. Perfect.
I got some decent sized bolts and washers, and carefully drilled the mountings for the box.
All fitted up, and I have to say I'm quite happy with it. It needs to come out again at a later stage to replace the boot lining so I didn't bother bolting everything up tightly.
Nice rust-free floorpan with no cracks or splits, all hiding under about 300 tons of sound deadening. So, starting at the back, I ripped it all up
And ended up with a nice refuse sack full of minging, heavy material. Now the floor was nice and clean to work with I began laying the cable through the car - under the seats and down the exhaust tunnel, all cable tied in place:
then drilled a big hole in the bulkhead for my battery-through-bulkhead connector. Not the ideal location to be honest, but it's nice and out of the way and won't get disturbed.
With this in place, I ran the cables from the starter and fuel pump relay down to it, bolted them up and insulated the terminals. So now I have cable going from the bay into the cabin, and from the battery into the cabin. Just need to join it all up at the centre console now using the battery cut off switch.
Here's the new look engine bay - note the new power cables running down the passenger side inner wing, airflow meter relocated running parallel to the radiator and slam panel, OMP strut brace and er, the fact that none of the engine breather hoses are connected up yet
I then drilled a big hole in the bulkhead for my battery-through-bulkhead connector. Not the ideal location to be honest, but it's nice and out of the way and won't get disturbed
First set of bonnet pins (these eventually broke) I chose OMP ones - I normally go for the captive pin type but fancied giving these classic style ones a whirl:
They come with a lovely anodised alloy pin, but ignore that because OMP use anodising so thin you only have to swear at it and it wears through. So I'll probably sand the heads back to bare alloy or it'll look scruffy.
First off, decide where on the slam panel you want the pins. The closer to the corner the better, but remember you have to have space under where you are drilling for the pin to bolt! When a spot was picked, I made a cross of tape on each side to drill the pilot holes.
After drilling the pilot holes, I needed to enlarge them slightly with a file (ok, I cheated and pushed my drill sideways whilst in the hole, but this will eventually wreck your drill and will snap thinner drillbits. I use a cheap B&Q drill so I don't care.)
When the hole was large enough, I slotted in the pin, and placed the locknuts on either end of it. No need to worry about the height level just yet.
So now I needed a corresponding hole in the bonnet. Easiest way to do this is put a blob of grease or something on the top of the pins and then drop the bonnet. The grease will mark the bonnet and you know where to drill. Handy eh?
Now I had 2 black blobs under my bonnet. So, I firstly drilled through - the bonnet is double skinned here:
And then enlarged the holes until the pins fit through comfortably. This is a slow process, you have to keep stopping and checking so you don't make a massive gaping hole and wreck the bonnet.
Eventually, the pins poked through comfortably
Now I adjusted the height and alignment of the pins using the 2 nuts above and below the slam panel until they sat at the correct height.
The rest was easy. Just placed the round panels over the pins and drilled 3 small holes for the self tapping screws. After that, I looped the slider ties round and slid the pins into place.
New headlamp time - Here are the tarnished old lights:
And the spangly new ones:
Freshens the looks of the car, improves lighting no end - £40 well spent I think.
Then disaster strikes, I run it low on oil and knacker the bottom end bearings.
So I whipped em out as a temporary fix and put in a new set. What a tedious job, the sump is the worst bit by far, the rest isn't too bad just repetitive and messy.
Considering the engine has done 200,000 miles with no rebuilds etc they aren't as bad as I expected. :blink:
Before you know it, it all goes wrong yet again
SEPTEMBER
Big life changes. I quit my job, get a new job in the Midlands and buy a house. I hastily pack what I can but I don't have a trailer etc so can't really bring my cars up to the Midlands at this time
JANUARY
I sell my Mondeo and spend the money on a Supra which I promptly blow up. Luckily I am given a free Civic so at least I can still get to work - the Civic lives on as PROJECT PANDAMONIUM
FEBRUARY
Supra does not fit in my garage. So I have to work on it outside, which is demoralising because it's cold and raining.
In the mean time the woman I am renting the garage from back in Wales chucks a mental with no warning. She wants both my red 205 GTI and my black spares car (which still has a cage in it) gone - ASAP or else she's phoning a scrap wagon to take them away.
.
.
.
Luckily a good mate can store the 205 in Wales for me but I still need to go back there to get it started and give him the keys etc.
Then I need to cut the cage out of the black car and remove as much stuff as I can from the rented garage, cram it all in the Civic/Mondeo and cart it back to Wales.
So, back to Wales again.
Decided that the first thing to do would be to put a battery on the 205 and see if it would fire - I hadn't touched it since May so I wasn't overly confident.
Fair play, it fired and ran smoothly after barely half a second of cranking. Not bad at all!
Aside from soft tyres and a bit of mould on the leather steering wheel it was all well so I locked it up and started on the garage clearance.
Decided first job would be to oust the cage. OMP roll cage in the 205 is a 2 piece affair. The rear half cage with rollhoop, and the front cage which is a windscreen bar and the 2 arms that run down the A-pillar and post.
The rear cage mounts by bolting onto the rear beam bolts, and bolting to 2 large steel plates that are welded to the floor/sill near the seatbelt mounting point. The half joins at the top using 2 sleeves secured with allen head bolts, and at the bottom in the kickwell where it bolts to 2 more of those welded in steel plates.
So, firstly I undid the sleeves, which are supposed to just slip off. Ha! The drivers side came off quickly but the passenger side needed driving off with a hammer and chisel. It eventually relented though and I moved onto the feet.
Next I tackled the lower mounting "feet". I removed the bolts and begun to cut through the thick welds holding the feet to the floor, to free them from the floorpan. I used 2 metal cutting wheels for this and very nearly needed a third! When the welds were cut through I belted the feet with a lump hammer and they slid out.
Next step was to lever the 2 rear beam mounting points off, not easy as you have to force each tube up about 2" when it really doesn't want to go. I eventually decided a crow bar was the tool for the job, but couldn't find one so a pickaxe had to suffice! It was at this point I remembered that 3 of us fitted the cage, so maybe I was being over-ambitious trying to remove it on my own. Nevertheless I carried on and got both rear mounts to come off.
I then levered the front mountings away from the A post and *ping* the whole cage came loose in 2 parts.
Success!
Also picked up a nice low miler 1.9 engine....
Back to Wales a few months later for one last time to get the cars ready for moving. Woman really has run out of patience now and I have been officially evicted!
First things first, the red 205. Been parked for some time now, so I didn't know how this would go. Turned the ignition half a turn and it burst into life. Result! Didn't even need to charge the battery.
So I drove it out of the garden to free the brakes off, at this point it had 3 flat tyres and brambles growing through the doors etc which was quickly sorted. Took it for a highly illegal test drive up and down the road and it still goes just fine, everything works as it should.
So with the red car out of the way it was time to extract the black car. This thing has not been outside since 2002 I think!
HEAVE-HO Mr Volvo!
Note Drift-Spec/JDM/Race/Track Day front wheel on aforementioned Silver Dream Machine. The left rear wheel of the 205 had siezed and was dragging instead of rolling and I was having to tow at an angle because of the garden wall.....
Like a rotten tooth - extracted. Under the cold light of day the condition of the shell was surprising - better than I remembered, anyway
That red oxide primer has been on there years and the rust hasn't come through which is pretty impressive. The rust patch above the primer is pretty nasty though.
I managed to pull it out a bit further than this, then drove the Volvo into the garage and pushed the 205 right up to the edge of the garden, which drew some bemused looks from the local halfwits.
The roll cage was already out, so with the really hard work already done, I jacked the car up and salvaged what I could. The bottom balljoint nuts had both rusted and rounded so I couldn't save the hubs or wishbones which was annoying, but I managed to get the front struts off. I didn't bother with the calipers because 1.6 calipers are curse word.
Then, working dangerously with the car supported on a single trolley jack, in torrential driving wind and rain, I slid under the car and went to undo the rear axle mounts, only to find that they had rotted and broken in half and didn't need undoing anyway. Common 205 failing pint and cheap to fix luckily! The other beam mounts were already undone from taking the cage out, so if I snipped the handbrake cables and brake pipes the axle should drop down, right?
Wrong. I'd forgotton the GTI has a hefty metal bracket that loops round the forward torsion bar and bolts to the body. No way was the bolt coming off so back under the car for a good 15 solid minutes angle grinder action. Access was terrible and I ended up cutting through the exhaust too just to get to it.
Anyway, with that final clamp cut, down came the axle with a thud.
Success! 1 bare shell. The doors are knackered and not worth saving, I'd have liked to keep the tailgate but I just don't have the space captain
Engine and box in this one are knackered and not worth saving
Alas poor 205, I knew it well. I crammed all the spares (and the cage) into the red 205 and reversed it into the garage ready to be collected and brought to the Midlands.
One week later....
It's here
Initial thoughts:
Err, my garage is tiny
Err, my garage is full of curse word and a car
Where the hell am I going to put everything
French cars might not rot too badly compared to British cars, but that doesn't seem to stop the fasteners corroding. Every trim bolt/nut so far has been welded together with rust.
So I cut the buggers off with a grinder/drill/hacksaw and ordered a big tub of stainless allen head nuts and bolts to replace them with.
Strip down begins:
Nasty hole in the inner wing, old accident damage. That will need a decent plate from the other side.
Bloody bumpers never come off.... kids, do not use grinders and cameras at the same time, it's dangerous
Getting there....
Ordered some Bilt-Hamber Hydrate 80 to treat my rusty patches in the engine bay. I'll wire wheel them back to metal, give them a coat of DeOx Gel, then coat in Hydrate 80 primer. After the local repairs are done the whole engine bay can have a coat of high build 2 pack primer followed by a topcoat of Diamond White.
Anyone sprayed 2 pack at home? I'm going to give my electric HVLP gun a whirl, not tried it out yet. It's a proper Apollo Spraymate, not a cheapo fence spraying thing
I know all about safety precautions to be taken with it, what I need really is feedback on the actual use of the stuff - ie spray settings, how best to mix it, etc.
I removed the radiator, alternator, inlet manifold, AFM, throttle body, all the engine wiring loom and some hoses so the engine is *almost* ready to come off it's mountings
Next step? Err, dunno Probably pop off the gear linkage, then undo the exhaust manifold, rad hoses behind the engine and loosen off the mounts. Oh and take out the driveshafts. Then the engine will be ready to pull I think.
Lovely carbon goodness, mmmmmm
For switch mounting and little bits like that
Pressed alloy plates
As all my wheelarch clips are broken I am going for the bolt-on look which I've always wanted to do to a 205, using 20 of these:
Stainlessness is next to Godliness
One driveshaft out:
Applied some Bilt-Hamber Hydrate80 rust converter/barrier to the front panel after a vigorous session with a knotted wire wheel on a grinder
Battery tray now off, need to pop off the gear linkages, disconnect rear hoses and separate the manifold from the downpipe. Unfortunately the securing bolts for this have rounded, I've got through one with a grinder but the other is a LOT harder to get to
Then the other driveshaft - Undo the 2 11mm nuts that hold in the intermediate bearing, undo hub nut, split balljoint and lower the arm same as the other side, then use hammer and drift to knock it out. Piece of the proverbial
Then, use a 13mm spanner and lever off the gear linkage rods.
After this was done I decided to unbolt the top engine mount again on the driver side.
This meant I could lean the engine forward a bit and cut out the bolt that holds the manifold to the downpipe (the first bolt was cut off a while ago, this one required more room to get the grinder in)
Whoops-a-daisy
Forgot that would happen
Sensing that I had reached somewhat of a "Point Of No Return", as the car was sticking out the garage doors with a half fitted engine, I decided I'd better carry on.
So, unbolt the last engine mount
And disconnect the speedo drive
Lets the engine sit flat on the floor
So, jack the car up, high as it will go, rock the engine backwards, and slide that sucker outta there
One knackered 1.6 XU engine. Never raced or rallied.
Leaving me with this. Ta da!
Need to strip and clean out that bay next. The majority of work has been degreasing - cleaning down an oily engine bay is horrible work, fiddly, tedious, messy and smelly. I'm sure I can still taste Gunk this morning.
Been removing bits as I go, still undecided as to what I'm doing about the petrol pipe system - it's cumbersome and bulky and I want to bin it and replace with an inline filter, but I need to check if I can still make a sufficiently fuel-tight connection to the injector rail first.
Anyway, here's where I'm at so far.
Before:
After:
Still got loads to do, but it's incredibly boring so I've taken a break
If you stayed awake through all that drivel, well done
Want the bay totally bare and ready for primer by next week if all goes to plan
Grab a coffee and try not to fall asleep, this is a long one.
Years ago I had a road rally Peugeot 205 GTi that a friend and I built together over a period of months. It was an excellent learning exercise for us both - we had initially considered ourselves to be competent spannermen and we soon learned this wasn't true when we came to overcoming new obstacles. Still, the car got built, we learned a hell of a lot and in the end, after a few events, I bought out Wayne's half of the car.
Unfortunately my Golf road car died about this time and I had to press the Peugeot into daily service - the miles took their toll, it got dented by people trying to break into it, the bonnet pins got left open by me (whoops) which sent the bonnet slamming into the screen, someone bricked one of the windows trying to steal it, I hit a sheep and tore off the valance, and then to really finish things off a lack of oil cooler plus some dubious quality oil led to the bottom end giving up. The immobiliser/alarm packing in just added insult to injury.
So, thoroughly disheartened with it I parked the car up in a garage and proceeded to do odd jobs to it, kidding myself that one day I'd get it sorted properly, but it was never really going to happen. The shell was battered and I didn't have the tools or motivation to do an engine swap. So it sat there, gathered dust and went manky.
Fast forward a couple of years and I'm getting itchy to do a project again - but I can't really justify starting something anew when I have all this unfinished business to sort out with the Peugeot. So after a reality check and re-evaluation of the black car I realise the only way to get it sorted is to transport the rally bits into a new car. Otherwise I'll just tread water forever.
So, I get onto Adtrader, and buy the first one I go to see. A 1 owner F reg 1.6 with no sunroof and no electric pack for £295. The car is sound apart from 4 worn tyres which I'll be replacing anyway, and a crack in the screen. So I buy it on the spot and now the fun part begins.....
So with 2 vehicles I have 2 basic jobs to do - strip what's useful out of the old car and get the new car ready to receive the donor parts.
So, I get down the garage and start ripping off anything useful from the old car. Glass, lights, bumpers, bootlid, cylinder head, bodykit, brakes, suspension - they all have to come off. Then there's the roll cage of course, but that can wait until the shell is outside so I can have room and light to work.
So, I start with the seats. These are Sparco Sprint, probably the most popular budget seat in Europe. Unfortunately, they're absolutely filthy and generally looking a bit sorry for themselves:
Moral of the story? Don't buy red seats no matter how ace they look. In the near future I might replace them with black seats, but for now these will do the job just fine, so I douse them in 1001 Stainbuster and give them a thorough jetwashing.
Not perfect, but a huge improvement! The pictures really don't show just how filthy they were.
After getting the seats and mounts out of the old car I now have a bit more space to work in. You can see how surface rust has pickled up all over the cage - OMP cages are notoriously badly finished and we should have rubbed it down better before painting it in the first place - and used a heck of a lot more paint! Once it's out, it gets rubbed back to clean steel, etch primed and then given substantial coats of Diamond White which should provide a good contrast to the red paint and trim.
You'll notice the cage has no door bars (that's the removable diagonal on the floor) - we ran out of cash in the original build, so the cage will have them when it goes in the new car. The rusty "feet" that weld do the body will need cutting out of the old shell - best way to do this is cut a larger than necessary area out of the floor and then you can grind off the excess easily before rubbing them back down, welding them into the new shell and painting them with some nice thick hammerite.
The harnesses need a clean but are otherwise fine, although I'd like to upgrade to 4 points instead of 3 (we couldn't get 4's at the time and we had an event that week so had to compromise) I'm not bothering with 3" FIA belts as the car won't be RAC logbooked and well, you have to draw the line somewhere.
I must admit I'll miss the old car, but just look at it:
Next up - battery in the boot.
Firstly, here is the standard 205 GTi engine bay
What I want is to move the battery into the boot to free up some space and help a touch with the weight distribution.
With the battery gone, you can move the airflow meter and fit an induction kit where it won't just suck warm air from the manifold (which is at the back on 205's)
So first things first - get rid of the piping and airbox.
Nice pile of useless bits:
After this was sorted, I removed the battery, then the airflow meter (which will later be repositioned. I also removed all the now pointless bracketry for the meter, it all helps neaten things up.
205 GTi's have two main live points to the battery. As on nearly every one I've seen, this one was knackered and fell off in my hand. So, new terminal, new wire (the thick red cable on the left)
I then got out the cable ties and sticky pads and ran the cable up the inner wing. Alongside it, I ran a second cable which will be connected to the starter itself
You can see the old battery tray here on the left which has a coating of rust. I'll grind that off with a flapwheel and give it a dose of red hammerite to protect it.
So, here's the bay as it stands - no battery, and for now no airflow meter (need to do some jiggery pokery with the old induction pipes to get it back on)
Battery box, extinguisher (one of three, lol) safety stickers, mudflaps, a bit more battery cable.
Solved my wiring distribution problem with a battery-through-bulkhead connector. This is basically a huge insulated bolt that will allow me to take as many positive feeds as I want to from the engine bay or inside the car. Perfect.
I got some decent sized bolts and washers, and carefully drilled the mountings for the box.
All fitted up, and I have to say I'm quite happy with it. It needs to come out again at a later stage to replace the boot lining so I didn't bother bolting everything up tightly.
Nice rust-free floorpan with no cracks or splits, all hiding under about 300 tons of sound deadening. So, starting at the back, I ripped it all up
And ended up with a nice refuse sack full of minging, heavy material. Now the floor was nice and clean to work with I began laying the cable through the car - under the seats and down the exhaust tunnel, all cable tied in place:
then drilled a big hole in the bulkhead for my battery-through-bulkhead connector. Not the ideal location to be honest, but it's nice and out of the way and won't get disturbed.
With this in place, I ran the cables from the starter and fuel pump relay down to it, bolted them up and insulated the terminals. So now I have cable going from the bay into the cabin, and from the battery into the cabin. Just need to join it all up at the centre console now using the battery cut off switch.
Here's the new look engine bay - note the new power cables running down the passenger side inner wing, airflow meter relocated running parallel to the radiator and slam panel, OMP strut brace and er, the fact that none of the engine breather hoses are connected up yet
I then drilled a big hole in the bulkhead for my battery-through-bulkhead connector. Not the ideal location to be honest, but it's nice and out of the way and won't get disturbed
First set of bonnet pins (these eventually broke) I chose OMP ones - I normally go for the captive pin type but fancied giving these classic style ones a whirl:
They come with a lovely anodised alloy pin, but ignore that because OMP use anodising so thin you only have to swear at it and it wears through. So I'll probably sand the heads back to bare alloy or it'll look scruffy.
First off, decide where on the slam panel you want the pins. The closer to the corner the better, but remember you have to have space under where you are drilling for the pin to bolt! When a spot was picked, I made a cross of tape on each side to drill the pilot holes.
After drilling the pilot holes, I needed to enlarge them slightly with a file (ok, I cheated and pushed my drill sideways whilst in the hole, but this will eventually wreck your drill and will snap thinner drillbits. I use a cheap B&Q drill so I don't care.)
When the hole was large enough, I slotted in the pin, and placed the locknuts on either end of it. No need to worry about the height level just yet.
So now I needed a corresponding hole in the bonnet. Easiest way to do this is put a blob of grease or something on the top of the pins and then drop the bonnet. The grease will mark the bonnet and you know where to drill. Handy eh?
Now I had 2 black blobs under my bonnet. So, I firstly drilled through - the bonnet is double skinned here:
And then enlarged the holes until the pins fit through comfortably. This is a slow process, you have to keep stopping and checking so you don't make a massive gaping hole and wreck the bonnet.
Eventually, the pins poked through comfortably
Now I adjusted the height and alignment of the pins using the 2 nuts above and below the slam panel until they sat at the correct height.
The rest was easy. Just placed the round panels over the pins and drilled 3 small holes for the self tapping screws. After that, I looped the slider ties round and slid the pins into place.
New headlamp time - Here are the tarnished old lights:
And the spangly new ones:
Freshens the looks of the car, improves lighting no end - £40 well spent I think.
Then disaster strikes, I run it low on oil and knacker the bottom end bearings.
So I whipped em out as a temporary fix and put in a new set. What a tedious job, the sump is the worst bit by far, the rest isn't too bad just repetitive and messy.
Considering the engine has done 200,000 miles with no rebuilds etc they aren't as bad as I expected. :blink:
Before you know it, it all goes wrong yet again
SEPTEMBER
Big life changes. I quit my job, get a new job in the Midlands and buy a house. I hastily pack what I can but I don't have a trailer etc so can't really bring my cars up to the Midlands at this time
JANUARY
I sell my Mondeo and spend the money on a Supra which I promptly blow up. Luckily I am given a free Civic so at least I can still get to work - the Civic lives on as PROJECT PANDAMONIUM
FEBRUARY
Supra does not fit in my garage. So I have to work on it outside, which is demoralising because it's cold and raining.
In the mean time the woman I am renting the garage from back in Wales chucks a mental with no warning. She wants both my red 205 GTI and my black spares car (which still has a cage in it) gone - ASAP or else she's phoning a scrap wagon to take them away.
...Luckily a good mate can store the 205 in Wales for me but I still need to go back there to get it started and give him the keys etc.
Then I need to cut the cage out of the black car and remove as much stuff as I can from the rented garage, cram it all in the Civic/Mondeo and cart it back to Wales.
So, back to Wales again.
Decided that the first thing to do would be to put a battery on the 205 and see if it would fire - I hadn't touched it since May so I wasn't overly confident.
Fair play, it fired and ran smoothly after barely half a second of cranking. Not bad at all!
Aside from soft tyres and a bit of mould on the leather steering wheel it was all well so I locked it up and started on the garage clearance.
Decided first job would be to oust the cage. OMP roll cage in the 205 is a 2 piece affair. The rear half cage with rollhoop, and the front cage which is a windscreen bar and the 2 arms that run down the A-pillar and post.
The rear cage mounts by bolting onto the rear beam bolts, and bolting to 2 large steel plates that are welded to the floor/sill near the seatbelt mounting point. The half joins at the top using 2 sleeves secured with allen head bolts, and at the bottom in the kickwell where it bolts to 2 more of those welded in steel plates.
So, firstly I undid the sleeves, which are supposed to just slip off. Ha! The drivers side came off quickly but the passenger side needed driving off with a hammer and chisel. It eventually relented though and I moved onto the feet.
Next I tackled the lower mounting "feet". I removed the bolts and begun to cut through the thick welds holding the feet to the floor, to free them from the floorpan. I used 2 metal cutting wheels for this and very nearly needed a third! When the welds were cut through I belted the feet with a lump hammer and they slid out.
Next step was to lever the 2 rear beam mounting points off, not easy as you have to force each tube up about 2" when it really doesn't want to go. I eventually decided a crow bar was the tool for the job, but couldn't find one so a pickaxe had to suffice! It was at this point I remembered that 3 of us fitted the cage, so maybe I was being over-ambitious trying to remove it on my own. Nevertheless I carried on and got both rear mounts to come off.
I then levered the front mountings away from the A post and *ping* the whole cage came loose in 2 parts.
Success!
Also picked up a nice low miler 1.9 engine....
Back to Wales a few months later for one last time to get the cars ready for moving. Woman really has run out of patience now and I have been officially evicted!
First things first, the red 205. Been parked for some time now, so I didn't know how this would go. Turned the ignition half a turn and it burst into life. Result! Didn't even need to charge the battery.
So I drove it out of the garden to free the brakes off, at this point it had 3 flat tyres and brambles growing through the doors etc which was quickly sorted. Took it for a highly illegal test drive up and down the road and it still goes just fine, everything works as it should.
So with the red car out of the way it was time to extract the black car. This thing has not been outside since 2002 I think!
HEAVE-HO Mr Volvo!
Note Drift-Spec/JDM/Race/Track Day front wheel on aforementioned Silver Dream Machine. The left rear wheel of the 205 had siezed and was dragging instead of rolling and I was having to tow at an angle because of the garden wall.....
Like a rotten tooth - extracted. Under the cold light of day the condition of the shell was surprising - better than I remembered, anyway
That red oxide primer has been on there years and the rust hasn't come through which is pretty impressive. The rust patch above the primer is pretty nasty though.
I managed to pull it out a bit further than this, then drove the Volvo into the garage and pushed the 205 right up to the edge of the garden, which drew some bemused looks from the local halfwits.
The roll cage was already out, so with the really hard work already done, I jacked the car up and salvaged what I could. The bottom balljoint nuts had both rusted and rounded so I couldn't save the hubs or wishbones which was annoying, but I managed to get the front struts off. I didn't bother with the calipers because 1.6 calipers are curse word.
Then, working dangerously with the car supported on a single trolley jack, in torrential driving wind and rain, I slid under the car and went to undo the rear axle mounts, only to find that they had rotted and broken in half and didn't need undoing anyway. Common 205 failing pint and cheap to fix luckily! The other beam mounts were already undone from taking the cage out, so if I snipped the handbrake cables and brake pipes the axle should drop down, right?
Wrong. I'd forgotton the GTI has a hefty metal bracket that loops round the forward torsion bar and bolts to the body. No way was the bolt coming off so back under the car for a good 15 solid minutes angle grinder action. Access was terrible and I ended up cutting through the exhaust too just to get to it.
Anyway, with that final clamp cut, down came the axle with a thud.
Success! 1 bare shell. The doors are knackered and not worth saving, I'd have liked to keep the tailgate but I just don't have the space captain
Engine and box in this one are knackered and not worth saving
Alas poor 205, I knew it well. I crammed all the spares (and the cage) into the red 205 and reversed it into the garage ready to be collected and brought to the Midlands.
One week later....
It's here
Initial thoughts:
Err, my garage is tiny
Err, my garage is full of curse word and a car
Where the hell am I going to put everything
French cars might not rot too badly compared to British cars, but that doesn't seem to stop the fasteners corroding. Every trim bolt/nut so far has been welded together with rust.
So I cut the buggers off with a grinder/drill/hacksaw and ordered a big tub of stainless allen head nuts and bolts to replace them with.
Strip down begins:
Nasty hole in the inner wing, old accident damage. That will need a decent plate from the other side.
Bloody bumpers never come off.... kids, do not use grinders and cameras at the same time, it's dangerous
Getting there....
Ordered some Bilt-Hamber Hydrate 80 to treat my rusty patches in the engine bay. I'll wire wheel them back to metal, give them a coat of DeOx Gel, then coat in Hydrate 80 primer. After the local repairs are done the whole engine bay can have a coat of high build 2 pack primer followed by a topcoat of Diamond White.
Anyone sprayed 2 pack at home? I'm going to give my electric HVLP gun a whirl, not tried it out yet. It's a proper Apollo Spraymate, not a cheapo fence spraying thing
I know all about safety precautions to be taken with it, what I need really is feedback on the actual use of the stuff - ie spray settings, how best to mix it, etc.
I removed the radiator, alternator, inlet manifold, AFM, throttle body, all the engine wiring loom and some hoses so the engine is *almost* ready to come off it's mountings
Next step? Err, dunno Probably pop off the gear linkage, then undo the exhaust manifold, rad hoses behind the engine and loosen off the mounts. Oh and take out the driveshafts. Then the engine will be ready to pull I think.
Lovely carbon goodness, mmmmmm
For switch mounting and little bits like that
Pressed alloy plates
As all my wheelarch clips are broken I am going for the bolt-on look which I've always wanted to do to a 205, using 20 of these:
Stainlessness is next to Godliness
One driveshaft out:
Applied some Bilt-Hamber Hydrate80 rust converter/barrier to the front panel after a vigorous session with a knotted wire wheel on a grinder
Battery tray now off, need to pop off the gear linkages, disconnect rear hoses and separate the manifold from the downpipe. Unfortunately the securing bolts for this have rounded, I've got through one with a grinder but the other is a LOT harder to get to
Then the other driveshaft - Undo the 2 11mm nuts that hold in the intermediate bearing, undo hub nut, split balljoint and lower the arm same as the other side, then use hammer and drift to knock it out. Piece of the proverbial
Then, use a 13mm spanner and lever off the gear linkage rods.
After this was done I decided to unbolt the top engine mount again on the driver side.
This meant I could lean the engine forward a bit and cut out the bolt that holds the manifold to the downpipe (the first bolt was cut off a while ago, this one required more room to get the grinder in)
Whoops-a-daisy
Forgot that would happen
Sensing that I had reached somewhat of a "Point Of No Return", as the car was sticking out the garage doors with a half fitted engine, I decided I'd better carry on.
So, unbolt the last engine mount
And disconnect the speedo drive
Lets the engine sit flat on the floor
So, jack the car up, high as it will go, rock the engine backwards, and slide that sucker outta there
One knackered 1.6 XU engine. Never raced or rallied.
Leaving me with this. Ta da!
Need to strip and clean out that bay next. The majority of work has been degreasing - cleaning down an oily engine bay is horrible work, fiddly, tedious, messy and smelly. I'm sure I can still taste Gunk this morning.
Been removing bits as I go, still undecided as to what I'm doing about the petrol pipe system - it's cumbersome and bulky and I want to bin it and replace with an inline filter, but I need to check if I can still make a sufficiently fuel-tight connection to the injector rail first.
Anyway, here's where I'm at so far.
Before:
After:
Still got loads to do, but it's incredibly boring so I've taken a break
If you stayed awake through all that drivel, well done
Want the bay totally bare and ready for primer by next week if all goes to plan
out to the garage!!! There's a healthy pile of bits to go on it now though!! Keep up the good work!
