[car_overhaul] Roadspeed Revival

[Anthony 1,003]

Fivos (Feb on the forum) had always loved the way that his old Skip Brown 205 GTi-S had driven and didn't want to stray from what he knew, and we discussed building something as close to that as we could on his (at the time) tight budget.

 

The initial plan was effectively a 1.9 GTi with a budget version of the SBC Phase 1 and 2 suspension kits, namely a full set of Bilsteins all round, a set of 20mm torsion bars and a 23mm rear ARB, finished off with a set of ZX trailing arms to give it the negative camber of the SBC setup. I'd put together a similar beam recently for Pete (2052006) that had worked very well, so I was confident that it would do exactly what Fivos wanted and just about squeeze home on budget.

 

It wouldn't be the quickest thing in the world, but it would handle and drive very well, and most of all be entertaining and grin-inducing as 205's do so well. Not only that, but it would give him a platform from which to build in the future as he saw fit.

 

Of course, that plan didn't last long once Fivos followed the example of his fellow Greek countrymen and promptly blew the budget out of the water before I'd even so much as lifted a spanner, but the idea was nice for the couple of days that it lasted. Seemingly with each day there was another email with news of another purchase or another idea, and very quickly it became clear that a budget immitation of his old car wasn't going to cut the mustard.

[Anthony 1,003]

Throught a combination of Fivos digging around and some well-timed sales on the forum, an ever growing collection of (mostly new) parts began building at my house to build it to the spec that he'd always wanted - a GTi-S Evolution if you like.

 

• SBC 1.9 8v Roadspeed 'S' engine running on Emerald K3 management
  
• SBC "Phase 1" Bilstein dampers and lowering springs
  
• SBC "Phase 2" rear beam with 20mm torsion and 23mm anti-roll bars, plus SBC negative camber kit.
  
• 1.9 gearbox with Quaife ATB differential
  
• Lightweight TTV flywheel
  
• Recaro seats from a Mitsubishi Evo 4
  
• Group N engine mounts and front suspension rubbers
  
• Group A rear beam mounts
  
• Silicon coolant hoses

"Budget" build indeed...

 

In the meantime whilst Fivos chopped and changed his mind on the finer details, I needed to get hold of all the parts needed to form the 1.9 GTi basis for the car. Given that I also needed a substancial number of parts for my black GTi to build that back up, I did what any sensible person that already had more cars than he did places to park them would do... proceeded to buy another 205

 

It was a J-reg 205 1.9 GTi in Sorrento that whilst it looked fine from a distance, had been crashed and poorly repaired at some point in the past, and as a result had two rusty front wings and substancial rust to the entire OSF corner (inc chassis leg), coupled with the usual Phase 2 lacquer issues on the roof. Mechanically however it was sound and the interior was largely in good order, and hence it was the perfect donor for the two 205's I was building.

[Anthony 1,003]

With the rusty carcass of the Sorrento taken away, it was time to make a start on building up the suspension

 

 

First up was building up a subframe ready to bolt on, with standard 205 GTi ARB, 205 GTi wishbones, quickshift, and a 205 PAS rack that had the ram removed to make it into a cheap quickrack as has been well documented previously, giving 3.2 turns lock-to-lock compared to 3.9 turns for the standard 205 GTi non-PAS rack.

 

Fivos had managed to acquire a set of SBC "Phase 1" Bilstein dampers and dual-rate lowering springs that were basically as new (reportedly covered only a few hundred miles) for a very good price, so I built these up ready to fit with a pair of new top mount bearings and a pair of BakerBM Group N top mount rubbers.

 

 

One thing that I did notice is that they were a slightly different damping rate to the dampers that I had which had come off Fivos's original GTi-S - the ones I had were 200/80, whereas these new ones were 200/100.

 

After replacing the broken captive nut in the offside chassis leg (thanks to Ed Cherry for the replacement!) which I'd been successfully putting off doing for years, the complete built up subframe assembly was jacked into place, followed by the built up struts and 1.9 GTi hubs, disks and calipers, finished off with a pair of high tensile wishbone clamp bolts that Baz had supplied.

 

 

Tracking done using the tracking guages that I'd recently picked up, and jobs a good 'un.

[Anthony 1,003]

Next up the seats, as they were in the house getting in the way and the half-leather interior already in the car I'd provisionally sold and needed removing anyway.

 

The seats were a set of Recaro's removed from a Mitsubishi Evo 4 which he'd had previously in his old 205 and wanted another set for this one. They very comfortable and supportive too, so a far better choice for a road car than many bucket seats (especially those at the cheaper end of the market) although these Recaro's don't come cheap, especially when you factor in the required adapters to replace the existing subframes and make them fit 205 5dr (non lift/tilt) subframes

 

 

The new subframes were simple enough to fit, which is more than can be said for fitting the seats into the car - it's not a difficult job as such, but there's very little space to work to get the two front bolts through the subframes and into the floorpan. Evntually though I got them tightened down and the seats were in.

 

 

Don't look too out of place with the Phase 2 cloth rear seats that I'd picked up either (the Recaro's are black despite looking distinctly grey in the above picture!).

[Anthony 1,003]

Focus turned to the Skip Brown 1.9 8v Roadspeed 'S' engine that I'd collected from Daz_C with a suspected head gasket failure owing to the water marks on the front of the block and that it was excessively pressurising the cooling system.

 

 

The engine had always seemed strong in Daz's car when coupled with a pair of twin-45's and it had shown up many a "superior" car at trackdays and the 'Ring - although how much of this was down to the engine and how much was down to Daz's commitment and heavy right foot was open to debate... my money is on the later!

 

The engine was stripped down to a short block and the head removed, and sure enough, there was clear evidence of a head gasket failure between #2 and #3 on both the head and on the gasket. Other than that and the fact that it had clearly been running a little on the rich side, it all looked to be in pretty good condition with no corrosion of any note and no snapped bolts or stripped threads.

 

 

 

The head was dropped down to Gardias Engine Services in Witney to be skimmed and cleaned ready for reassembly.

[JRL 14 1 Cars]

Forget Mi, gti6, 2.0l turbo, TT. it looks like 1.9 gti-s is all the rage...

[Anthony 1,003]

Head needed 9 thou skimming off in the end to bring it back true, but no problems otherwise and the head was collected next day.

 

 

 

Liner clearances all thankfully checked out as being in-spec, so it was on with putting the engine back together using the Motaquip head gasket and bolt set that I'd picked up (part number VHSB122) together with a new cambelt, tensioner and waterpump as you'd expect.

 

Also fitted was a new TTV 200mm flywheel with Motronic timing teeth - just 3.7kg, or to put it another way, not far off half the weight of the original ~7kg 1.9 GTi flywheel! New flywheel bolts from Peugeot were fitted as a matter of course.

 

 

To go with this, a set of refurbished 1.9 GTi injectors were fitted that I had done by Mad Professor on here and who I can't recommend enough. The injectors that I'd sent off had worked fine in the engine that they'd been removed from, but the report sheet I received back showed that the both flow and spray pattern had suffered over the years, but all of them came up perfectly after the cleaning cycle. The seals and filters were also replaced.

 

 

Engine built-up and just needing breathers and ignition componants prior to fitting.

 

[Anthony 1,003]

Gearbox wise, I'd picked up a rebuilt 1.9 GTi BE3 gearbox with a Quaife ATB differential fitted for a good price, that came with a set of uprated gear linkages as a nice bonus - I'd suggested to Fivos buying a set anyway given that most of the original gear linkages are worn these days and liable to pop-off at the most inopportune moment leaving you stirring a box full of neutrals.

 

 

A quick clean up and a new pair of driveshaft oil seals from Baz, and this was fitted to the engine ready to drop in.

[Anthony 1,003]

With the new engine ready to fit, it was time to haul out the old engine - the trusty 1.9 8v with a QEP fettled XU10 (big-valve) head that I'd been running for a few years and had impressed with its revvy power delivery and plentiful mid-range punch.

 

 

With the engine out, I was greeted with the usual utterly filthy engine bay - I have absolutely no idea how 205's get so filthy so quickly, but somehow they do. The engine bay had been spotlessly clean back in 2007 when I'd fitted the engine, and the engine hadn't leaked oil or been venting oil vapour to atmosphere... so where did all this muck come from?

 

Half way through cleaning which highlights just how bad it had got...

 

 

And much elbow grease later, it was clean once again - not that I expect it to stay that way of course...

 

 

The new engine was then dropped in, which was a quick and easy job being a straight 8v to 8v swap - just a few hours to go from an empty engine bay to a running engine.

 

 

As you can see, initially I decided to run the engine on the original Jetronic management to enable me to get some mileage on the engine and ensure that everything was good before converting it to Emerald. Also a complete set of silicon coolant hoses were fitted to get away from the potential risk of failure that would come with using the original 20 year old coolant pipes.

 

To me atleast, reliability is key to enjoyable 205 GTi ownership - you might have the fastest 205 on the planet, but if you can't trust it to get from A to B without the aid of a flatbed recovery truck and you can't drive it when you want because it constantly needs running repairs, then frankly it's pretty useless.

 

"To finish first, first you have to finish"

[Anthony 1,003]

Got the engine in and running shortly before Pugfest, so it seemed rude not to give it a wash and take it along...

 

 

I couldn't fault the engine at all and it didn't miss a beat nor use a drop of oil or water, just pulling strongly right round the tacho in a manner completely alien to a typical standard 1.9 8v engine. The lightweight flywheel made a massive difference as expected, the throttle reponse being instant and the engine so eager to pick up and rev.

 

Not only that, but surprisingly the idle was rock solid on Jetronic - I'd honestly been expecting the combination of a cammed engine on a plenum with a flywheel half the weight of the original to be pretty poor, but no, it would happily sit there ticking over at 900rpm in a way that the owners of most standard cars would be envious of!

 

What I was rather less impressed with however was the gearbox that had the noisiest, most whiney reverse gear known to man. I'm not talking just a little bit whiney as is pretty normal, but think more along the lines of a straight cut 'box full of ball bearings. The seller had apparently "forgotten" to mention that issue...

 

I was not a happy man, as if there's one job I hate, it's swapping gearboxes.

 

Big credit to Miles though who, despite the gearbox being out of its warranty period and me not even being the original buyer, agreed to sort it out for me free of charge. A good few people/companies could learn a lot from that sort of customer support frankly! Apparently, Peugeot were somewhat naughty and subtly changed the specs of the reverse gear cogs at some point in the production run but gave both the old and new cogs the same part number and no way of easily identifying them, and if you get a mis-matched set of cogs you get the problem that I've got as they don't quite mesh perfectly thus making a racket.

[Anthony 1,003]

Back from Pugfest and having swapped the gearbox over for a known-good spare that I had (moving the Quaife across first), I got on with building and fitting the new rear beam.

 

It was basically being built roughly to SBC "Phase 2" spec as follows:

 

• 205 width beam tube
  
• 20mm torsion bars
  
• 23mm anti-roll bar
  
• SBC negative camber kit fitted to standard 205 GTi trailing arms
  
• Bilstein rear dampers
  
• Group A solid beam mounts

All pretty standard stuff other than the SBC negative camber kit, that goes about things a very different way to the common way of adding negative camber to 205's by using the complete trailing arm from a ZX, 306 or Xsara. The SBC method is effectively a glorified bent stub axle matched to a wedge shaped spacer for the caliper bracket to keep it running true with the additional camber from the modified stub axle.

 

 

It's also adjustable to a degree to fine tune it and allow for any manufacting tolerances in either the kit or the trailing arms. This is done by loosening off the bolt that locks the stub axle in place, and then rotating the stub axle until you get the required geometry of 1 degree negative camber and 20 minutes toe-in.

 

The spacer brackets and slightly longer stub axles give the car a fractionally wider rear track too.

 

 

The beam was built up with new bearings and seals as you'd expect, and fitted with the uprated bars, dampers and negative camber kit. The torsion bars were set to a static unlaiden height of 302mm between shock centers to match the SBC lowering springs on the front

 

 

As with other SBC lowering springs that I've seen/fitted, these sit a little lower than their claimed 25mm drop and more like a realistic 35-40mm drop in my opinion when you consider that they not yet fully settled in the above picture.

 

The whole Phase 1 and 2 setup combined however - with the Bilstein dampers, springs, uprated torsion/anti-roll bars and negative camber kit - drives superbly and really is a very good setup for a road-going 205. Too soft for a dedicated trackday car no doubt, but on the road it firms up the ride and handling nicely whilst still leaving enough compliance that it soaks up the potholes and broken tarmac that litter the UK road network. It feels planted and inspires confidience, letting you turn-in and point the point the nose exactly where you want and retaining the throttle adjustability that makes the standard 205 GTi chassis so rewarding.

 

It's not cheap granted, but works very well and for that reason I've gone down exactly the same route on my other 205.

[allye 530 3 Cars]

So this was this 205 I was following up to Pugfest! I thought it couldn't be you because of the bucket seats etc!

[feb 47]

PMSL at some of your comments Anthony, almost choked my breakfast this morning

[Anthony 1,003]

A few weeks later with over a thousand trouble free miles covered since the engine and suspension work and a fresh 12 months MOT, it was time to get on with the final part of the project - the Emerald K3 conversion.

 

The ECU was 2nd hand but unused, and came with a loom that I'd built for the original owner for their aborted 205 2.0 Turbo build. As such, the loom didn't require too much work to adapt it to suit this car rather than having to scratch build it. It started life as a 405 2.0 8v wiring loom that I chopped off the original Magneti Marelli ECU plug, stripped out the wiring and connectors that I didn't need, and then wired it to the Emerald K-Series/MEMS type connector.

 

 

The result is nice self-contained loom that plugs straight into the original underdash plugs and unless you looked at the ECU plug would pass for OE - because it was originally an OE loom. In theory you could diagnose most of it using a 405 Haynes manual as most of the wire numbers would tie up, but clearly I'd not recommend doing that when Emerald wiring is straight forward enough that the Emerald wiring diagram tells you all that you need to know.

 

I also converted the tacho to work with Emerald directly, rather than going down the route of the tacho converter diodes - a solution that I'm really not keen on frankly given the problems with slow/inaccurate rev counters they can cause, not to mention the risk of a major misfire or even breakdown if it were to fail.

 

Getting the engine running didn't take too long, although longer than it should have given that the base map was miles out - don't get me wrong I didn't expect it to be even close to ideal, but when you have to over double the values in the fuel map to get it to fire and idle you know that you're in for a struggle. A struggle would describe getting it to run anything like correctly, but eventually, I managed to get it so that it would cold start spot-on, rev reasonably well when stationary and could be gingerly driven around the block although the fuel map was still way, way out.

 

Given that it was running and all the sensors reading correct, I gave Sandy a shout about mapping it. Being based in Cornwall he certainly wasn't the closest place to me, but if there was one person that I knew would do an excellent job and would get the most from it in terms of driveability and road-manners - which was Fivos's main reason for going down the Emerald route - it would be Sandy.

[Anthony 1,003]

A couple of weeks later I was heading down the M5 in the dark, rain and cold at some ungodly hour.

 

Since booking the mapping with Sandy, Fivos had dropped the bombshell on me that he was flying into the UK that weekend with the aim of picking the car up and driving the car back across Europe to South East Germany, which considering the mapping session was on Tuesday just a few days before hand didn't leave me much time to finish off the remaining jobs and put sufficient miles on the car to bring out any teething issues.

 

Nothing like a bit of pressure then!

 

I was driving down to Cornwall with a bit of a lash up of Emerald and Jetronic - Emerald was running the fuel pump and driving the tacho, whereas Jetronic and the clockwork dizzy was managing fuelling and ignition respectively. I had the wideband lambda and guage hooked up and I was surprised at how good the fuelling was on Jetronic considering how crude and simplistic it is together with the fact that it was fuelling a modified engine - generally it was cruising near enough stoichometric, leaning out a touch on light throttle, and richening up to low-mid 13's at WOT. Certainly explained why I'd been getting excellent fuel economy since fitting the engine, averaging 37mpg over the past couple of tanks.

 

One issue that had come to light on the journey down was the tacho that I'd converted was having "issues" shall we say. It was a random one that I'd had kicking around which had come as part of a box of random spares that I'd quickly converted, so it's quite possible that it was faulty before I'd adapted it. It's behaviour though was bizarre - it would read stable under cruise conditions (although far from accurate) but as soon as you accelerated, the rev counter would shoot upwards far quicker than the engine revs climbed, banging off the 8500rpm stop when you were probably doing half that... and then dropping down to next to nothing as soon as you let off the throttle and finally stablising again on cruise. Odd.

 

I eventually arrived to a wet and miserable Cornwall and the rolling road, and while I waited for Sandy I proceeded to remove the front bumper, valance and grill to improve airflow and cooling whilst the car was on the rolling road. Sandy arrived just as I was finishing removing the bumper, and quickly the car was strapped down and we did a quick power run with it still on Jetronic to get a baseline set of figures. Interestingly, with the car on the rollers, the fuel mixture was a bit richer than it had been on the road on the same gauge/sensor, showing down into the low 12 and high 11's AFR.

 

I set about swapping it over to run on Emerald while Sandy did the bacon butty run - he's good to his customers like that. Car fired up first turn of the key, sensors all looked good, and everything was ready to go for mapping.

 

Somehow, in the time it took to eat breakfast, the air temp sensor had dropped out. Checked the connections and any obvious damage/chaffing to the wiring, but no, the sensor had seemingly failed, and sure enough replacing it with a spare I'd bought with me and everything worked fine again.

 

Random failure number one.

 

Next Sandy did the basic checks and verified that the actual ignition timing tied up with what Emerald said. Checking it with a timing light it was a couple of degrees out, so corrected that on the laptop, re-checked and it was now 7 degrees out which seemed odd. Correct it again, rechecked, and it was now out in the other direction. Changing the timing on Emerald was inconsistently and sometimes almost randomly changing the timing as verified by the timing light, which seemingly made no sense and left us scratching our heads.

 

A quick wiring check revealed the problem, namely that I'd been a pillock and wired the crank sensor round the wrong way with the input (pin 1) wired through to the crank sensor ground on the ECU, and the ground on the sensor (pin 2) wired through to the input on the ECU. Popped the pins out and swapped them over, and the timing was then rock solid and consistant, eventually proving to just be 1 degree out from where it logically should be - not too bad for an aftermarket ECU and flywheel conbination.

 

What was obivously happening was that the with the wiring around the wrong way the ECU was having problems consistently picking up the teeth and where the trigger position on the tooth was, and hence as we were adjusting the static timing, it was sometimes triggering on the leading edge of the tooth, sometimes on the trailing edge, and sometimes on the middle of the tooth.

 

In my defence, my excuse for such a schoolboy error is that the last ECU loom I'd done was for a DTA E48, and on that, Bosch and Marelli sensors are wired differently for some reason and I had, incorrectly, assumed that was also the case on Emerald and wired it accordingly seeing as I was using the sensor originally from a Magneti Marelli management car. Still, my screw up corrected, Sandy cracked on with the mapping, starting with pretty much junking the base map and creating his own that was much closer to what was required.

 

A few hours passed as Sandy worked his magic, going through the various speed and load sites and taking his time explaining to me what he was doing each step of the way as the map slowly taking shape with the engine sounding sweeter and sweeter, eagerly picking up and revving in a manner that was completely alien to how it had been earlier that morning.

 

I completely forgot about getting any pictures, but I did snap a quick video as Sandy was starting on some of the higher speed/load sites - the sound quality as always is pretty poor on my phone, and certainly you cant really make out the courus of pop and bangs on overrun that was keeping me grinning like the village idiot...

 

 

Eventually Sandy was done with the mapping on the rollers, and after putting the front of the car back together, we went out on the road to tidy up any areas of the map that needed tweeking. Everything was going well for the first few miles, the car transformed compared to how I'd driven there a few hours previous, when as Sandy made an update to the map the car lost all power and I coasted to a halt at the side of the road, cursing under my breath with the hazard lights blinking away. Engine wouldn't start, ECU wouldn't communicate with the ECU, and we were miles from the rolling road.

 

A couple of minutes of poking and prodding around followed trying to work out what on earth had happened, when sure enough I found the issue - when I'd popped the two crank sensor pins out of the ECU plug earlier in the day, I'd obviously loosened the main ECU earth pin and this had worked its way loose causing the ECU to lose power, hence the lack of starting or laptop communication.

 

Plugging this back in, the laptop now talked to the ECU again, but the car wouldn't start - it whirred on the starter for a moment and then as it went to fire, the starter stopped dead. A look on the laptop showed all the sensors reading correctly, until I noticed out of the corner of my eye that it was trying to start at -56 degrees advance - evidentially the map had been corrupted when the ECU had lost power halfway through saving the updated map.

 

Reloaded the map file from the laptop, and engine started straight up. We were back in business... for all of about 10 seconds, when as I reversed a few feet back, the engine spluttered and cut out, once again refusing to start.

 

I suspect more expletives were muttered from me at this point, probably questioning the parentage of the Frenchman that had built the car.

 

Tried starting again when I noticed that I didn't hear the fuel pump prime - sure enough, cycling the ignition and was met with silence from the fuel pump despite hearing a click from the relay. Into the boot for a spare fuel pump relay, plug it in, and sure enough, fuel pump works again and the engine fires back up.

 

Random failure number two.

 

Back on the road after breaking down twice in the space of ten foot, Sandy continued tinkering as I drove wondering when the third part of my bad luck was going to strike. A few miles later on our way back, things were looking good and on a quite stretch of road I put my foot down and used the whole rev range through the gears - 1st... 2nd... 3rd... then at the top end of third just as I was about to grab 4th I felt the engine go flat and instinctly I let off the power, before gingerly re-applying power and it was obviously missing a cylinder or two.

 

More cursing under my breath I suspect as I stopped in a layby outside a farm and popped the bonnet. The problem was instantly apparent and completely my fault - I'd removed the retaining clips from the injector plugs previously to allow me to quickly swap from Jetronic to Emerald and back again, and had completely forgotten to refit them so the injector plug had simply worked its way loose.

 

Injector clips now back in place I slightly sheepishly got back in the car, started up and was just about to drive off when the farmer emerged so I wound down the window, assuming that he was just going to ask if we needed any assistance...

 

"I'm inside trying to milk cows, and you're frightening tits out of them with that noise!" moaned the irrate farmer.

 

Trying to apolgise and explain that we'd broken down proved fruitless as he was insistant that we were only there to frighten his cows, so off we gingerly drove, leaving him to it. Thankfully, there were no further mishaps and we made it back to the rolling road a little later than planned, where I dropped Sandy off after apologising profusely and turned for home wondering what further problems I was about to find in the next 180 miles.

 

Well, I didn't have to wait long. Heading out of Plymouth on the A38 sitting at a steady 70mph cruise, the car bucked, and a few seconds later, bucked again. Looking at the wideband, the mixure suddenly went super-lean before returning to normal, and so it repeated over the following few miles, steadily getting worse as I pondered my life expectancy were I to break down on an unlit, dark, wet and murky twisty dual carriageway.

 

To cut a long story short after checking the obvious, I dug out my laptop and had it logging on the passenger seat as I drove, and the cause became obvious - despite my foot being steady on the throttle, the TPS would occasionally spike downwards for a split second, causing the ECU to cut fuelling and the resulting bucking.

 

Random failure number three. FFS.

 

Stopping at a services not far from Exeter I once again rummaged in the box of spares and pulled out the spare TPS - glad of my utter pesimism that had led me to pack spares of just about everything in the first place. Halfway through swapping the TPS over a beat-up transit pulled in next to me and out stepped a group of pikeys... could my evening get any worse, sat here with a broken car and now surrounded by three pikeys looking the car over?

 

Once again pondering my life expectancy and whether breaking down on the dual carriageway would have been a better option, they started asking what the problem was and about the car - "here we go" I thought, wondering whether I was to be mugged, the car looted, or indeed bundled into the back of their van and caged up as their personal gimp.But no, after explaining that it was just a faulty engine sensor that I was in the middle of replacing and thanking them for asking whether I was OK, they turned and walked off towards the services. I still had my wallet, my laptop, the car hadn't been carted off to be weighed in for scrap (although frankly at that point they'd have been welcome to it!) and there wasn't a gag in sight. Result!

 

Not taking any chances, I fitted the TPS in double quick time, recalibrated the TPS in Emerald, and got on my way sharpish before they came back and asked "d'you like dags?"

 

Thankfully, that was the end of my drama for the night and the car didn't miss a beat the rest of the way back to Swindon. Just as well really, as by this point I'd been awake over 20 hours having had barely any sleep the night before, and was very quickly becoming tired and distinctly fed-up.

 

I think it's fair to assume that Lady luck certainly wasn't smiling on me that day....

 

Huge thanks to Sandy though who did a fantastic job with the mapping, and showed remarkable restraint and patience during our frequent "unscheduled stops" for which , once again, I apologise Certainly I'd have no hesitation at all recommending Sandy for mapping, and if and when I've got another car that needs mapping, certainly I'll be heading Cornwall bound again myself

[Paul_13 212 1 Cars]

Talk about s*itluck

[harryskid 193]

Know the feeling 205s can be a bugger after you leave Wilts. You think Devon and Cornwall are bad, you should try breaking down inSomerset!

[harryskid 193]

Anthony, i forgot to say that beam looks great, i should have asked you when mine needed doing.

[Anthony 1,003]

After the somewhat "eventful" previous evening, I had my work cut out to get the car finished and reliable before Fivos collected it four days later - I was determined not to cancel, but equally, there was no way that I was going to give him a car that I was anything less than 100% confident in.

 

First thing to do was to get the cold start and enrichment sorted as if that's wrong then the car will be no fun at all as a daily driver with winter approaching. It might sound obvious, but to get the cold start spot on you need the engine to be cold when you test it, and thus it's not the sort of thing that you can do on the rolling road.

 

To cut a long story short, it quickly became apparent that my plan of using a SAD to supply additonal air for cold start/running wasn't going to work quite how I'd envisioned - basically, I'd had it mapped using throttle position for load which works fine, but unfortunately the ECU has no way of measuring additional air flow from the SAD when it's open leading to it running horribly lean unless you masked it with excessive enrichment at low coolant temperatures.

 

I'd taken a chance on it as neither me nor Sandy quite knew how it was going to work out, but the evidence clearly was that it didn't in the current configuration. Had I had it mapped using a MAP sensor for load then chances are that it would have worked perfectly as then the ECU would have known about the addition air, but there was no way of doing that now without another remap.

 

At this point I threw caution to the wind and invoked Plan B which I had no idea how well it was going to work - I binned the SAD and ran it without any form of additional air at idle, which was asking a lot of a cammed engine on a plenum. Surprisingly however, it only took a few attempts to get it to idle very well and better than I could have hoped and better than it had any right to frankly. Stone cold starts needed a touch of throttle for a moment or two after starting, but otherwise, it would start and idle just fine, and was pretty much perfectly behaved when driving.

 

This all took place over a few days, but in that time I covered 300 miles odd and the car hadn't missed a beat, clearly happier now that it was away from Cornwall and whatever was in the air it didn't like. I still have no idea what I did to annoy the Gods so much that day to have that many random problems one after the other - I mean, whilst I can accept the wiring issues, to have two OE Bosch sensors fail within 20 miles along with the fuel pump relay?

 

I think Paul summed it up so well a couple of posts above - that's s**tluck.

[Anthony 1,003]

With the car now running well and Fivos committed to taking it away running on Emerald, I removed the Jetronic management and the rest of the surplus junk from the engine bay, which as you can see added up to a surprising amount! The existing thermostat housing was swapped for one from a Phase 2 405 1.8i to allow me to mount the coilpack properly as per an OE installation.

 

 

Whilst the loom was out to properly properly fix the dodgy ECU earth pin and tidy/remove a few bits of wiring (like the now redundant SAD heating circuit) I took the opportunity to add the wiring for a ICV (idle control valve) should it be deemed necessery to add one in the future to improve cold start further, but really, as it stands it doesn't need one other than for those first few moments when started from stone cold.

 

 

With the Jetronic junk removed, the engine bay was far tidier and free of clutter, almost minimalistic by comparison. The picture doesn't show it particularly well, but there's so much room under there and everything can be easily accessed now that most of the pipes and wiring have been junked.

[Anthony 1,003]

The day of collection came and as I drove down the M4 towards Reading to collect Fivos, I reflected on the six years that I'd owned the car and all the happy memories that it had given me, turning the mundane into something special in the way that a 205 seems to do without trying.

 

Over the years it had been a daily-driver, done trackdays and the 'Ring, doubled up as a van and pack horse, and spent periods parked up for months on end. No matter what though, it never let me down and never failed to put a smile on my face.

 

Fivos looking round the car, starting it up and getting behind the wheel for the first time was a sight to behold though, grinning from ear to ear and frankly behaving like a kid on Christmas morning. He'd not seen the car up until now other than in pictures, and had invested a lot of money in the car and I had been a little worried that he'd be disappointed in some way, that he'd been looking back with rose tinted glasses and that the reality wouldn't live upto that... but clearly, I need not have worried.

 

He loved it.

 

Signing over the V5 and seeing him drive off into the night I was sad to see it go as it's been a loyal companion over the years, but I know that it's going to a good home where it'll get the care that it deserves, but more than that, where it will get used and enjoyed as that is ultimately what these cars are there for - to be driven.

 

 

The Jalopy has a tough act to follow when it's finished and on the road.

 

Thanks for reading

[BusEngineer 7]

Excellent write up Anthony, thoroughly enjoyed reading that

[feb 47]

To be honest I was a bit apprehensive of the moment I would drive the car for the first time; although it was built into a similar spec to my old sorrento which was a setup that worked well and I liked, it was still slightly different and a new (to me) car.

 

One of the reasons I wanted to replicate my old sorrento's setup and build further on it is that it was a tried and tested solution that worked greatly as a package for a fast road and occasional track car.

I didn't want any new variables and since suspension is something very subjective and personal I wanted to stay with what I knew and liked.

 

Anthony has done a great job building the car proven by the (almost) 2,000 trouble free miles that I have done in a week including a trip to the Ring and the GP circuit (the latter is great fun where one can find the limits safely and is recommended).

 

I love the way the car drives and how tight it feels.

The only difference I have noticed compared with my sorrento is how stiffer the suspension feels (mostly the front), I don't know if this is due to the different damping of the front shocks as Anthony mentioned or the fact that they are almost new (only covered a few hundred miles when they were fitted whereas my old sorrento's ones had done 60k+ miles).

What this means in practice is that there is much less understeer on smooth tarmac (to the point where I really haven't seen the Quaife working more than a a few occasions on track) but on road undulations the car can "jump" and loose slight contact with the ground (the Quaife helps here).

 

In hairpins you just point and turn, the car will listen without skidding at all but the lack of power steering and having a PAS rack means your triceps will take the hit. Time to start going to the gym again

 

[Baz 421]

I'll miss WVN too, a lot of fond memories from a club trip/convoy from the West Country for a run around Devon & Cornwall to land's End, cleaning it up after Anthony's neglect, & MOT'ing it on a few occasions and having it to play in for a few weeks, chasing it about in a little 205 convoy hoon after meets/curry nights etc!, to just bimbling around the country on little missions with friends here and there! Good times!

 

Perhaps we can all meet up for a re-union some time? Perhaps in/around Europe on that trip we need to do?!!

Edited November 7, 2011 by Baz

[DanteICE 72]

Impressive write up Anthony. It has certainly inspired to progressive with my 205 now. I'm amazed at how good the evo bucket seats look in a 205....I might just make a note of that for later.

 

Geoff