This Evening I Have Mostly Been...

[Anthony 1,003]

This evening I have mostly been stripping a "good condition 309 GTi rear beam, no camber, squeaks, knocks etc"...

 

• Both trailing arm shafts knackered, worn through the outer bearings and ovalled the tube
  
• Neither rear torsion bar held in at either end, with both offset washers/torx bolts and stud/nuts missing
  
• The screw-in end caps that the stud sits against had been mauled on both ends with a 5p sized hole in it
  
• One torsion bar has been smacked with a hammer so much that it's completely mullared the end, the once M8 sized hole now being more like M4 thanks to the metal bending and deforming so much
  
• They'd fitted grease nipples, only instead of putting them in the tube where they'd be possibly useful, they fitted them in the trailing arms for some bizarre reason
  
• Odd rear trailing arms fitted
  
• Odd rear dampers fitted
  
• Neither rear damper bolt had been copper greased, so both were siezed into the trailing arms
  
• Both ARB endplate bolts were loose
  
• One rear caliper had a broken casting
  
• One brake line was loose where it screwed into the caliper
  
• The bracket where the caliper flexi and solid brake pipe meet was missing on both sides, so the brake line just flapped around
  
• The brake pipe / handbrake cable bracket on both sides had been fitted the wrong way round, one having been cut it half for reasons unknown. The brake pipes weren't clipped to it either
  

Possibly more too - that's just what I can remember off the top of my head from the partial stripdown I've done.

 

The shafts being dead I expected as that's par for the course on any 205/309 (and increasingly, 306/Xsara) beam, but the amount of ovalling says to me that there's no way that the beam wasn't showing any camber.

 

The rest of it I despair at frankly, I really do - whilst I've seen most of those issues previously, never before all on the same beam! I cannot believe that someone lashed that up, took a step back and thought to themselves that it was a good job, assembled correctly, was safe and would last. Surely even the most mechanically inept person would realise that was a liability and not built properly, or am I giving people far too much credit?

 

KNOW YOUR LIMITS! If you don't think that you've got the ability, experience or tools to do something, then seek help, either getting someone who knows what they're doing to do the job, or atleast getting them to cast their eye over your work to check that it isn't a liability and likely to cause an accident.

 

What's more scary is that the car it came from has apparently had lots of work done to it, including a 16v conversion - if they've made this much of a hash-up of the beam, I really don't want to see how bad the engine conversion is...

[Sandy 191]

Aargh.

[All Praise The GTI 3]

bloody hell thats both shocking and scary!!

[SurGie 54]

Thats well bad, its bizarre that the car never crashed due to this, putting the grease nipples in the arm is really stupid.

[jeremy 70]

Sorry to hear all your bad news, but on a more positive note could you give me an idea on the value of a second hand 309 gti rear beam with no history, as seriously considering breaking my Goodwood as have no time to get it back and running?

[Flozman 4]

Nice, to be fair I havent got a effin clue about the torsion bar froggie rubbish so mine may look like that after im finished.

[Simes 248 2 Cars]

This evening I have mostly been stripping a "good condition 309 GTi rear beam, no camber, squeaks, knocks etc"...

 

[*]They'd fitted grease nipples, only instead of putting them in the tube where they'd be possibly useful, they fitted them in the trailing arms for some bizarre

 

WTF?!

[welshpug 1,657]

maybe they saw it done to a 106 beam and thought they do ti too? (106 beams are backwards, shaft in the crossmember, bearings in the trailing arm)

 

other than that, erm

 

come across a few very dead beams that were meant to be "good" but none this bad.

 

hope it didnt cost you too much!

[Rob Turbo 3]

[*]They'd fitted grease nipples, only instead of putting them in the tube where they'd be possibly useful, they fitted them in the trailing arms for some bizarre reason

 

 

Probably seen them there on a 106/saxo and thought it was where they should be on everything else!

[harryskid 193]

I know how you must feel, i paid a so called mechanic to install my vts into my rally car and as you know it never ran right and the new guy i've got to help has uncovered a list of bodges he did. Some of them verged on been down right dangerous.

My biggest regret is i'll never get back the £600 he charged me. I wish he had said at the beginning he was not capable of taking the job on and only capable of every day mechanics. Also he runs a race car but never finishes a race because of break downs, now i know why. Its because of the shoddy bodges he does. Another thing was he had no excuse as any bits needed i sourced and any technical advice need i found for him, i gave him pages of down loads about the conversion. I'll never let him near my car again and will never recommend to people again. Being a heating engineer lots of my clients some times ask if i can recommend a good garage, hes not on my list anymore. I can do some of the work myself and when i ran a twin cam escort i did most of my own work but on the pug i find things harder, so as i want a competive rally car i need to use a mechanic, also i am kept busy with my job fitting and repairing boilers. So yes people should know their limits and if they can not do the job properly they should leave it alone!

[Anthony 1,003]

I had forgotten about 106/Saxo beams (as I dislike them with a passion and won't get involved with rebuilding them) but it doesn't make sense, assuming that they were fitted at the same time that the beam was taken apart as it would be blatently obvious that it wouldn't work.

 

Of course, it should have been obvious that the rest of it wasn't right either....

[Flozman 4]

Never Underestimate the Stupidity of Stupidity.

[Alastairh 47]

• Neither rear torsion bar held in at either end, with both offset washers/torx bolts and stud/nuts missing
  
• Both ARB endplate bolts were loose
  

 

This really concerns me

[pug_ham 244 3 Cars]

That's shocking but iirc Nathanlgd's 309 beam was like this to a similar extent.

 

The car was on stands iirc when I got there & according to Nathan it showed no sign of camber but once I got it apart it wasn't much different for wear than you describe but at least all the bolts etc holding it together were there.

 

I've got two 205 beams that have never been apart to strip sometime, hope they aren't this bad but they move freely with no noises.

Nice, to be fair I havent got a effin clue about the torsion bar froggie rubbish so mine may look like that after im finished.

In that case you'd be better having it refurbished by someone else who'll do it right imo, if you aren't capable of doing the job properly then don't bother trying & ending up a dangerous rear beam.

KNOW YOUR LIMITS! If you don't think that you've got the ability, experience or tools to do something, then seek help, either getting someone who knows what they're doing to do the job, or atleast getting them to cast their eye over your work to check that it isn't a liability and likely to cause an accident.

+1.

 

Graham.