[Car_Upgrade] 205 Rallye Mi16 Road/hillclimb Build

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Hi guys,

 

My name is Andrei, I'm 26, I'm from Romania and I'm an engineer. I've had my Peugeot for close to 2 and a half years now and thought it's time for it to have its own topic. It's been an absolute money pit, but also a source of great joy in the little time it's actually been working.

 

It's one of the 1000 1.9 Rallyes made for the German market, manufactures in 1990. Bought it with a knackered engine and replaced it straight away with an Mi16. My plan for the car was to do tarmac hillclimbing so I put in a bolt in cage and a bucket seat and harness and this is what it looked like shortly after I bought it. The hole in the bonnet is for the carbs. Bought the engine with no management and these kind of engines are extremely rare around here.

 

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Unfortunately the engine didn't last long and on one of those hairpins this happened:

 

 

 

Rather than try and rebuild the Mi16 I bought a cheap V6 and attempted a conversion:

But realised when the conversion was 90% done that there would be no way I could hillclimb that so decided to return to the Mi16.

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Managed to find a guy with a 405 Mi16 who wanted to sell the engine to replace it with a diesel. Bought it for the gearbox and management as it had been poorly rebuilt leaking oil out of every seal. Rebuilt my old Mi16 to standard spec except for decking the block and liners for 11:1 compression.

 

Was on a budget as always so I reused the piston rings. Engine had good compression before so didn't see why I should change them. I rebuilt the engine in my room between Christmas and New Years because it was too cold to work in the shed.

 

 

Before rebuilding the engine I decided that If I'm going to try and find some sponsors this year the car needs to look a bit better, so I stripped it, cleaned the rust, rust proofed it and resprayed it.

 

 

 

And bought some T16 decals from John Goodhand on here.

 

(This was a stage I did with the leaky Mi16 which I ended up destroying on that day.)

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Over the last two months I put the new engine in, fitted new tires (Hankook RS2s) and last weekend I took it for its first test drive. Nice and dusty after close to 5 months in storage:

 

 

 

Engine runs sweet, but a bit rich on cold idle (black smoke with petrol smell). Once it gets to temp it's perfectly fine, no smoke at all. Very pleased with my first engine rebuild.

 

Waiting for my new suspension, Gaz GHA fronts and Gaz Gold rears. They'll arrive in aprox 3 weeks. It's all I could afford at the moment, but will upgrade to Gold fronts or Bilsteins later this year. The suspension I have at the moment is rock hard and too low to work.

 

After this I'll get it MOTd and run the engine in and the plan for the summer is more hillcimbs and lots of weekend blasts over the Transfagarasan pass. Misty:

 

Clear:

 

And view from the bottom:

 

These are pictures I took last summer when I was there in the Focus. It's the same road that Jeremy, James and Hammond were on when in Romania. Getting goosebumps thinking about thrashing the Pug around those bends.

Edited March 23, 2011 by unariciflocos

[James504 12]

Love the car and the radar detector .

[mikeygulley 19 1 Cars]

That road looks amazing!!!! I like the car it looks great!

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Radar detectors are legal here and I just can't keep to the speed limit. For instance there's a straight patch of road from my place in the countryside to the city , four lanes, no people or houses near the road and the limit is 50 km/h. It's simply ridiculous. If I had to travel 4 km in a straight line doing 50 km/h (31 mph)I think I'd fall asleep in no time.

 

As for the road, the first and second pictures are taken somewhere at 1800 m altitude and the plain you see in the background is maybe at 300 m altitude. It's impossible to describe what you feel when you're actually there and no picture will ever do that scenery any justice.

 

And to quote Jeremy : "From above it looks like every great corner from every great racetrack in the world has been knitted together to create one unbroken grey river of automotive perfection."

Edited March 23, 2011 by unariciflocos

[shalmaneser 26]

Looks a great project, looking forward to some more updates!

[Alan77 78 1 Cars]

Very nice! I drove from Bucharest to Constanta and I was glad to be alive when I reached Constanta. The general standard of driving is shocking.

[jonnygoodhand 0]

Car looks great, Andrei.

 

I stumbled across the repeat of Top Gear the other day and was mesmorised by that road.

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Alan, I can't imagine how someone from a civilized country feels when driving here . Romanian drivers are the worst and they have absolutely no respect for anyone else. I'm from the North-West of Romania, where people are a bit more decent and civilized.

 

Jon, if you're ever around I can take you for a spin.

[Obey_R 23]

Photos of that road are currently on my wall - March in the Top Gear calender

Edited March 23, 2011 by Obey_R

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Over the weekend I did all the small things that have been piling up over time but couldn't be bothered to do them, so nothing interesting to report. Got my fans working again, cured a whining alternator, cured all the coolant leaks, got all lights and gauge in the dash back to normal operation and although they're all small jobs I'm quite chuffed and feel like I've done a lot.

 

Also did two things of which I'm proud of : I wired the fuel pump through the normally open contact in the main cutoff switch and wired the brown connector of the fans to a switch on the dash so that I can start the fans manually from inside the car at either half or full speed.

 

Had to take the cage out for the MOT and gave it a good wash. It's booked for the MOT tomorrow at 8, will have to see how it does. Wish me luck!

Edited March 27, 2011 by unariciflocos

[edbar 6]

Good luck with the mot Andrei, car looks great and very rare. That road looks incredible, bet the 205 will love a bit of that!

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Thanks, Ed. It will be a real pita, the Romanian MOT is really anal... Romanian law says you can't change the engine for one that is 40% more powerful than the original... but I am allowed to change the head and internals, so I'll say I kept the 8v block and changed everything else , which is legal.

 

I'm not allowed to have a cage, I need to have the full interior, all seat belts, can't move the battery... Let's just say tomorrow is a day when I'm glad there is corruption in Romania... I just hope to get some races this year so that I'll have the log book and I can register it as a race car.

 

The car will get absolutely NO abuse until I make my sump baffle, lost two engines to surge, won't let it happen again.

Edited March 27, 2011 by unariciflocos

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

MOTd until March 2013

 

Just need to take one of the three spare AFMs I have and try and sort the overfueling.

 

And status updates are uncool without a pic, so here it is:

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Had a rather embarrassing incident this morning driving to work, when I turned on the defrosting on the tailgate window, the rev counter started playing up and 500 meters further the engine cut out and wouldn't start. Didn't link the two at start and did a bit of under dash and under bonnet investigations while obstructing traffic. Then I turned off the defrosting so that it wouldn't kill my battery and the engine started straight away. I assume there's some kind of short somewhere .

 

Gave it some beans after that to compensate for the frustration. It looks so lovely in the company parking lot.

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Seems my first rebuilt didn't go quite so well.... I have small beads of coolant running down the front of the block from the head gasket. Does anyone know of an easy fix for this? Maybe radiator stop leak?

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Between working on the house got a bit of time to work on the car.

 

Got to the bottom of my 3000 rpm idle:

 

 

It was 500 km after the rebuild so I re-tightened the head bolts and broke one of the rocker cover studs... will have to tap that out and replace it.

 

Also took a compression test which didn't give the best results. I now know I shouldn't have reused the rings in my rebuild.

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[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Also got my new suspension, GHA fronts with 225 springs and Gold rears. Hope to save some money and upgrade the fronts by autumn.

 

[testamias 2]

I hope you and Dassy will be ready till summer for a Transfagarasan trip?

P.S. have you seen my post ?

http://forum.205gtidrivers.com/index.php?showtopic=129976

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

But before that we'll see each other at the Alba Hill-climb.

 

I may come to Bucharest later this week, I'll let you know the details and I want a passenger ride in the new beast!

 

Also let me know if you need some parts for the Honda from the States, i'm flying there next week.

Edited May 10, 2011 by unariciflocos

[testamias 2]

This is to nice to be true.

Mfactory will have on stock my 5.15 FD on 16th of may. If you'll be there is just perfect.

Keep in touch

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Replaced my tin sump with this contraption:

 

My attempt at curing oil surge, and it works! At least for me it does. Threw it around roundabouts (they're left turning here) and found some right hairpins and not once did the low pressure light come one.

 

It's a baffle plate with a high trap door and a tray with an incline that sens the oil to the pick-up via 3 holes in the baffle.

 

Unfortunately the low pressure light did come on a few times over the last weeks and that has led to one of my bearings being toast and two others showing obvious signs that they've started going. The one closest to the pump survived, but I'll change them all over the weekend.

Edited May 11, 2011 by unariciflocos

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Haven't updated this in quite a while. Car lost spark last year in August, changed 3 ECUs, 2Ign amps,but couldn't get it to start again. This gave me the motivation to build the loom for the VEMS ECU I had bought some months back. After a week knitting wires I managed to start the car and also took the opportunity to try out my DIY throttle bodies.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Cwf1n7Syi80

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-hWBN9Ck6xRs/T4sUW8mU42I/AAAAAAAABSU/4Zl6-fuXAm4/s640/IMG_20120415_191149.jpg

https://picasaweb.google.com/104089638710104374002/DropBox#5731697335215645538

 

The setup now is as follows:

-GSXR 750 throttle bodies, 50 mm tapered down to 42, mated to a cut down Mi16 manifold using 2 aluminum flanges.

-1 bank of standard injectors in the head and 1 bank of GSXR 230 cc injectors in the bodies which will run staged semi-sequential

-VEMS V3.7 ECU with built in O2 wide-band controller and Bosch O2 sensor, 8 injector outputs, 2 wasted spark ignition outputs, MAP sensing, TPS, IAT, CLT, launch control, shift light and in-car LCD display.

 

Still to be done:

-As soon as I get to the bottom of the screeching, which wasn't there last time I used the car, I will start mapping.

-Install a Peter Taylor Stage 2 cam on the inlet.

-Adjust the angle of the throttle bodies lower and fabricate trumpets and an air filter.

 

The hillclimb championship starts on the 22nd of April, however I'm not getting my hopes up that I'll make it. Will keep you posted with updates.

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Unfortunately the car had taken a second place for a few months because in a moment of utter stupidity I bought this:

 

but have now realized I like four wheels much more than two, so the Pug got some attention once more. After two engine rebuilds this spring/summer it's finally running and running fine in the above configuration. The Vems ECU is ace, did some closed loop tuning on the street since we don't have a rolling road around.

 

Some pictures from my last race:

 

The Hankook R S2 seem to wear out unbelievably fast, only put 2000 kms on them and they're past 50% tread wear. Granted the grip is incredible, but i was expecting at least 10k out of them.

 

Also seem to have cured my surge issues. After the oil light came on during the first two climbs, i filled up with oil util the upper mark on the stick, then put another liter in, problem solved. This is with just a baffle plate and a 6 bar spring, Motul 15w50 oil.

 

Would a mod please move this to Trackday/race/rally prep, I know it's not huge spec, but this is its purpose and this is what it's being used for.

Edited July 19, 2012 by unariciflocos