[car_overhaul] Roadspeed Revival

[feb 47]

Baz, I am up for such a trip!

 

Don't expect anything major from me as my skills are quite limited to say the least compared with what other forum members have been doing here but I thought of documenting anything that is being done to the car in a calendar form to keep the motivation going.

It will mostly be cosmetic stuff to bring it back to its glory.

 

In an attempt to prevent potential future leaks and trying to reduce aerodynamic noises above 160km/h (I am either too naive or have forgotten that a 205 is not the most quiet place to be) I thought of renewing all rubber seals with new ones.

 

Unfortunately the door ones are NLA but I managed to get hold of a new boot rubber seal.

 

A visit to my local scrapyard was fruitless as there was only one 3-door 205 and someone was faster than me in removing the wanted door seals.

 

Nevertheless, I managed to pick up a few missing plugs for the boot floor and some spare parts including a boot carpet, the hazard, demister and foglight switches, a 205 badge and a set of stalk switches as I know from my previous sorrento that when these fail they are very expensive to buy new.

 

Edited December 20, 2011 by feb

[Anthony 1,003]

The car has been back in my possession over the Xmas break, much to the bemusement of my neighbours - "I thought that you'd sold that one - or is that another one? I completely lose track with all your cars!"

 

Fivos (Feb) was in the UK again over Xmas visiting the inlaws and had arranged to leave the car with me for a few days so that I could fit a couple of additions that he had decided he would like since originally picking up the car back in October, namely power steering and an oil cooler.

 

The power steering didn't come as a big surprise to be honest and I had been slightly surprised that he hadn't asked for it to be fitted originally when I built the car given that he had it on his previous 205. The steering on the white 205 had always been a touch on the heavy side, although I personally had never had any issue with it and had used it as a daily driver and done numerous track days and 'Ring trips with it. Fivos had found it too heavy when loaded up on track and apparently his arms felt like he had done a session at the gym, and his petite wife struggled with the weight of the steering when parking and manuouvering at low speed.

 

Driving the old girl again (that's the car, not Fivos's wife!) giving him a lift to his inlaws felt good though, and the fact that the route took us across Sailsbury Plain meant that she was in her favourite habitat, devouring the twists and turns and despatching the various dawdlers along the way. It isn't the quickest 205 out there, but it's plenty quick enough to entertain and the whole package works wonderfully

 

PAS rack, lower column, reservoir and pipework

 

Christmas over with, I got on with retrofitting the power steering setup that I'd picked up from Cameron a few weeks previously. It's not too difficult a job to do retrospectively, but would have been MUCH quicker and easier to have done at the same time as fitting the engine as then you've easy access to the steering rack without needing to drop the subframe, fitting the pump takes minutes, and the pipework (particularly the high-pressure pipe) is far easier to do when there's not a mass of wiring and breather pipes in the way.

 

In summary, you need fit/change the following parts to retrofit PAS on an 8v engine:

 

• Power steering rack with ram
  
• Lower column / UJ for the PAS rack (different to non-PAS)
  
• PAS pump
  
• PAS reservoir
  
• High pressure pipe from pump to rack
  
• Low pressure pipe from reservior to pump
  
• Low pressure return pipe from rack to reservoir
  
• Alternator and pump mounting brackets (different to non-PAS)
  
• Tensioner arm (different to non-PAS, although the tensioner itself is the same)

 

All of the parts were sourced from the late, low(ish) mileage 205 Auto that Cameron was busy chopping up for his forthcoming double wishbone project, and thankfully he'd been good enough to keep all the bolts together with it which makes putting it all on another car so much easier!

 

PAS pump and brackets fitted, and pipework plumbed in

 

Installation was all fairly straight forward, firstly swapping the rack and UJ, then removing the alternator and original brackets before fitting the PAS specific brackets and pump, and lastly fitting the pipework. I did away with the cooling loop that normally sits under the passenger floorplan in the middle of the return pipe, as in my experience it is simply not needed on a lightweight car like a 205 and it's exposed position means that it would be easy to damage if you grounded out the car for any reason (eg bouncing over the curbs on a trackday).

 

All finished and Fivos's heavy steering woes banished!

 

Running PAS it seemed to benefit from slightly more agressive tracking than I usually run on non-PAS road cars, in this particular case it felt best with front set to zero toe (ie wheels pointing straight ahead) rather than the 10-15 minutes toe-in that I usually run. With it set to toe-in it feel distinctly vague around straight ahead and didn't seem to turn in as crisply as I like, but this was much improved with the toe-in removed.

 

I suspect a little toe-out would have been even better, but since this is primarily a road car, the resulting twitchiness on the motorway and tendancy to pick up ruts would have outweighed the benefits in my opinion.

 

There was still a small amount of vagueness around straight ahead, but this seems to be an issue that PAS racks suffer from to varying degrees - the so called "dead spot". This one wasn't terrible by any means, but it certainly much more noticeable than on some other PAS racks (including the Xsara VTS one fitted to my own car, and the de-PAS rack previously fitted to this car)

[Anthony 1,003]

Oil cooler installation next, and another day of cursing the garage being too cluttered to get a car in and having a deadline necessitating having to work outside in the rain in the middle of winter.

 

I personally didn't believe that an oil cooler was really needed, but Fivos was uncomfortable with the oil temperatures that he'd been seeing when doing the Nurburgring and the GP circuit - somewhere around the 100 degree mark. My personal opinion is that it's not an issue until you're hitting over 120-130 degrees and the oil pressure is starting to noticeably drop, but I had a small 7-row oil cooler that would be ideal for the engine and it was obviously worthwhile to Fivos just for peace of mind.

 

Again, installation is fairly straight forward. Once you've decided where you're going to install it (in this case behind the grill below the bumper) you need to take a grinder to the radiator cowling to give sufficient room, make up some suitable brackets (if none came with the cooler) and then mount it in place, perferably using rubber blocks to minimise vibration that can cause the cooler to fail.

 

 

As you can see, the brackets that I made from some scrap ~3mm aluminium offcuts aren't going to make anyone gasp in awe at the exquisite craftsmanship and beauty, but they're strong and functional which is the important point. The brackets attach both top and bottom of the cooler, and are then bolted via a pair of insulated rubber blocks to the cowling to minimise vibration. The pipes then run behind the valance and to the sandwich plate, well out of the way of the PAS pump/piping and still allowing easy access to the oil filter.

 

On the subject of which, a bit of a grumble - please when you change an oil filter, take heed of the instructions where it says to smear a little oil around the seal and do up hand tight only! The garage that had done an oil change since he'd picked the car up from me clearly had not done this, and thus the hardest part of the job was getting the oil filter off - to give you some idea, it broke the oil filter removal tool that I've been using for years, wouldn't shift with a screwdriver through the filter, and in the end I had to use the biggest pry bar I had hammered through the filter and then exploiting the mechanical leverage

 

 

I made some small cutouts on the back of the valance to give clearance for the oil cooler pipes, but once the valance was refitted to the car it was invisible unless you were lying on the floor - exactly as Fivos had wanted, a nice discrete installation rather than the in your face installs that seem to be popular on the Jap scene. With the grill removed, there is easy access to cover the cooler as needed during the winter (no oilstat on this setup)

 

All back together with no leaks after an oil and filter change, and the oil temperature was noticeably lower straight away - cruising on the motorway at 70mph and the needle didn't rise from the bottom of the gauge which is really a little cold, although of course once covered it will be fine in the winter and should be about right in the summer.

[Anthony 1,003]

Only other change was fitting a set of 14" 106 S2 Rallye steelies with nearly new Avon winter tyres that I'd picked up a week before Xmas from McDude

 

 

They're actually the wrong profile (185/65R14 rather than 185/60R14) but they fit fine without any rubbing, and mean that the car is now ready for the German winter where they tend to experience much more snow than here in the UK (or at least certainly Southern England where I am) and where winter tyres are all but a legal requirement to have.

 

Of course, winter tyres don't only give more grip on snow, but are far better suited than summer tyres were ambient temperatures are below 10 degree C or so. Certainly driving the car over the next couple of days showed that they gripped very well indeed, the taller sidewalls only giving the smallest reduction in turn-in crispness (but improving ride quality slightly to compensate)

 

As I write this, the old girl is no doubt back over on the European mainland where she'll probably roll over onto 178k miles on the autobahn and hopefully fit for going to 200k and beyond!

[Paul_13 212 1 Cars]

Nice write up and a good read

[jon.ford 3]

Just read entire thread very enjoyable tale

Jon

[cybernck 402 1 Cars]

Great work with nice and tidy upgrades .

 

Any further info on that flywheel?

[Anthony 1,003]

Any further info on that flywheel?

What do you need to know?

 

It's a TTV item for a standard 200mm clutch, has the 60-2 timing teeth, and is approximately 3.7kg

[cybernck 402 1 Cars]

What does it feel like, how well does it perform with standard engine management on and how much does it cost?

[Anthony 1,003]

I was worried at how it would behave on standard management, but it was near faultless frankly - idled exceptionally well indeed!

 

The throttle is much more responsive as you'd imagine, and a quick blip of the throttle makes the revs rapidly rise and fall again with the lack of inertia - it's not quite motorbike levels of responsively, but it's very, very noticeable compared to standard. I didn't drive this particular engine/gearbox with a standard flywheel so I can't compare directly, but it certainly seemed to accelerate with more vigour in the lower gears.

 

Only downside is that it's easier to stall if you try pulling away without many revs, but you quickly adapt to it.

 

I'm not 100% what the cost of it was as Feb bought it and I merely fitted it for him, but I believe that it was something like £250-300 all in - certainly wasn't cheap.

[feb 47]

The flywheel was £285 posted.

[Robsbc 0 1 Cars]

Enjoy the car Fivos my brother anb then my brother in law owned that car before being sold to Anthony. They never got the bug in modifying.

 

Rob

[feb 47]

Rob where have you been?!

Do you still have yours?

I might need some clues about cold start values as ever since I tweaked the map to cater for the different downpipe and petrol having bioethanol here the cold starts aren't the best (I have to hold the throttle for about one minute before the car is able to idle by itself and not stall). The problem is it is idling too rich when cold.

Low ambient temperatures don't help either.

Edited February 14, 2012 by feb

[Robsbc 0 1 Cars]

Yes i still have the car, 17 years of ownership.

 

My Emerald 1999 model ECU could not run an IACV and cold starts @ 0 to -10 degrees use to be a bitch. Things improved massively once I played around with settings and then got a garage in 2003. Every year I use to tweak the map cold start mapping settings when the temps dropped use to take a a week or so and you would not know if thimsg ahd improved unrtil the next day. I learnt to use my foot to hold the rev's up with the lack of IACV.

 

As the car was no longer a every day car and only being used in the summer from 2005 cold startin gwas never a big deal.

 

Rob

[feb 47]

Don't you love it when you manage to solve a "small" issue which makes driving a car daily really annoying?

 

That's how I felt today

 

The last couple of months the car had difficulties holding a steady idle when cold (you had to hold your foot on the throttle for a minute or two for it to be able to idle by itself) and warm idle would be around 1,500+ rpm.

 

Combined with a leaky backbox and GrpN engine mounts it made driving not a very pleasant experience.

 

Not being in the mood to start troubleshooting or getting my hands dirty thinking that the problem would be beyond my capabilities, I just kept driving the car being really annoyed nonetheless.

 

Since it was a relatively stress-free day at work and with the weather being nice I managed to pull my finger out and fit the new ECIA backbox that I bought a month or so ago.

 

Peugeot don't do the clamps anymore but you can get a better one (with 2 screws instead of 1) from any Renault dealer (tip given by my local exhaust place).

 

The car became a little quieter and the back end smartened up with a new shiny pipe.

 

Next was trying to sort out the idle.

 

Another issue I noticed lately -which became very apparent when I disabled closed loop- was the very rich mixtures during idle and partial throttle openings (AFR around 12).

 

I found this really strange but this is probably explained by what follows.

 

Not having any idea where to start from I had a look at the TPS calibration for a start.

 

I noticed that in live adjustments the TPS was at 240 raw (without pressing the throttle).

 

Under ECU Configuration->Throttle Position Sensor Calibration the TPS minimum was set to 246; I set it back to 240, updated the ECU configuration and started the car.

 

Tada!

The car started with a first turn on the key (it would take a few attempts when cold previously) and held a steady idle by itself after a few seconds (it was standing for 5h, ambient was 1C and coolant temperature 16C).

 

Anthony's efforts setting up the cold starts (it used to idle fine when I first picked up the car) did not go to waste afterall!

 

Happy with my "achievement" I kept driving around and with closed loop now enabled at partial throttle openings, warm idle is at around 1000 rpm or so.

 

The big test will be tomorrow morning now!

 

Not sure what "uncalibrated" the TPS, could it be problems with the communication between the laptop and ECU that I noticed in a few ocassions that corrupted it?

 

Sorting out the MC/servo next and looking forward to taking the old girl to Hockenheim later on this month!

Edited March 6, 2012 by feb

[Anthony 1,003]

Nice one Fivos

 

My guess would be that the TPS or throttle stop screw moved very fractionally for some reason, and all the idle control settings are based on the ECU having the correct values for the TPS being closed - if the ECU doesn't think the throttle is fully closed, it won't try to maintain the idle speed.

 

I knew that it couldn't be much that was causing the problem, as I'd spent a few days getting the cold start and idle spot on with it before you picked it up back in October, yet when I had it back over Christmas it was dreadful. Had I had a bit more time I'd have looked into it for you then and no doubt spotted the discrepancy, but I only just managed to get the jobs done that I was supposed to be!

[feb 47]

It is weird that the TPS raw in live adjustment when the throttle is not pressed changes.

 

This morning the TPS raw in live adjustment was again at 246 and weirdly enough the 'TPS min' under ECU Configuration->Throttle Position Sensor Calibration was also 246 (despite having updated the ECU configuration yesterday with 240)!

 

Does it take the minimum value from the live adjustment or what?

 

I am trying to get my head around this

 

Anyway the car started OK from cold and held a pretty steady idle rather than moving up and down as it used to previously.

 

I suspect the TPS moves/gets affected by the heat of the radiator or the TPS itself is at fault as when I sat stationary with air intake temperatures soaring at 46C (the air temp sensor is quite close to the TPS) the value of the TPS raw when the throttle is not pressed changed to 247.

Not a major difference I know , I suspect the TPS itself is at fault(?) since when pressing the gas pedal to the floor a few times with the engine off, when letting go it would fluctuate for a second or two until it stabilised to 246/247. Is this normal?

 

Anthony, I am sure you would but I also need to learn how to troubleshoot such things myself (it is quite fun as well when one has the time) so any hints or tips are welcome as I am trying to understand the logic behind this problem.

Edited March 7, 2012 by feb

[Anthony 1,003]

A difference of 1 (246 to 247) I wouldn't worry about personally, and is probably the result of heatsoak as you say. The fact that most 8v throttle bodies are getting somewhat on the tired side these days probably won't help much either - that one is/was pretty good and did seem to reliably close fully, but I've seen others that tend to stick slightly open and need a quick stab of the throttle to get them to close (the one on your old engine was like this)

 

The TPS itself should be fine - it tends to be very obvious when they're dying, as you get noticeable spikes and dead-spots at a given throttle position. I've got the trace saved somewhere still I think, but when the other TPS died on me coming back from mapping, that was momentarily dropping a good 50 odd points TPS value on cruise which in turn made it suddenly turn very lean and stumble/miss.

[feb 47]

Lately I heard some hissing while I was checking things under the bonnet and realised the expansion tank has cracked.

 

So I took advantage of today's bank holiday to replace it.

 

Parts needed were 1303 53 for a phase 1.5 expansion tank (bargain for 8€!) and 1306 85 for a new cap.

 

Old one out, you can see the crack below

 

Filthy tank, I was worried it would be oil but fortunately not, it's just crap; the coolant was fine.

The cap has seen better days

 

New one in place

 

The job wasn't difficult even for someone very novice like me, the only problem I have now is that the low level coolant light is always ON with the plug connected to the sensor but switches off when I disconnect the plug.

 

 

Could I have damaged the sensor?

 

I accidentally wetted the top part while filling it up with water through the little holes and then shook it but surely it is supposed to be immersed in water so I doubt this did any harm to it?

 

Any ideas before I order a new one? I sprayed some WD40 and played with the connector but no luck.

 

I have bled the system and the level is fine.

 

Thanks!

Edited May 17, 2012 by feb

[Anthony 1,003]

The sensors tend to get clogged up - flushing it through with clean water and some cleaning agent of sorts usually flushes out a load of gunge and the sensor is then fine again. I used to do it every couple of years, and kept the sensor working properly.

 

Sometimes I've found that it takes the sensor a while to register that the coolant level has been refilled, and thus the light on the dash stays on - normally seems to sort itself out after a few minutes though. It's usually worse when the sensor is clogged with gunge internally.

 

The sensor is very simple - when the coolant level is low, the circuit between the two wires is completed and the warning light on the dashboard illuminates. With the coolant level correct, the circuit is broken and the light goes out.

[feb 47]

There was some gunk inside as when I shook it it came out but filling it through the little holes and shaking it will take a while to clean it properly I suppose.

 

Is there a way to open up the sensor and clean it?

 

Should the light be OFF when the plug is disconnected?

[Anthony 1,003]

Is there a way to open up the sensor and clean it?

There's two different types that I've seen - one could be taken apart if you were careful, whereas the other type couldn't be as far as I could work out. I normally just left it to soak in a jam jar full of cleaner, periodically shaking the sensor and flushing it through, and repeating until no more gunge comes out.

 

Should the light be OFF when the plug is disconnected?

Yes, as the circuit is broken.

[welshpug 1,657]

bank holiday on a Thursday?

[feb 47]

I will give this a try Anthony, thanks!

 

Mei, we are not so lucky to get them transfered to the next Monday.

 

Everything's dead outside and all shops closed.

[Anthony 1,003]

If you get stuck, the level sensor is still available, but it's gone up significantly in price compared to a few years back - it's part number 130624 and it's listed as £34.85 inc VAT in the UK, so whatever that translates to locally for you.

 

Having said that, the expansion tank (130353) is listed as £36.53 and you seemingly paid less than a quarter of that!

 

Common on quite a few 205's in the scrappy too, not just earlier pre-Phase 2 GTi's - on non XU/XUD base models it is in the top of the radiator rather than in the expansion tank (which is a completely different design)