[car_overhaul] Project Jalopy

[Anthony 1,003]

It's nice to see a project thread written up so well with alot of pictures. What are you planing to use it for after?

Somewhere dry and comfortable to sit while I admire the trail of broken engine parts littering the carriageway behind me and wait for the breakdown recovery truck?

 

I jest of course (well, mostly - previous 205 16v experience hasn't always been particularly successful!) and it's being built as an enjoyable road-going 205 that will be just as happy being daily-driven (which I intend to do) as it is tackling Alpine mountain passes or indulging in the odd trackday - although I should stress that it's certianly not being built as a trackday car as to do so would significantly compromise it for road use.

 

My aim is to take what's great about a 205 GTi and improve upon it with more modern and less compromised componants, hopefully without losing sight of exactly what made a 205 so much fun in the first place as I feel many modified examples do. For the most part I'm confident that it will succeed in that aim perfectly, and the only part that I'm slightly dubious of is the GTi-6 engine - on paper it should fit the bill perfectly with a combination of modern engine mangement, a nice increase in power/torque and hopefully power delivery and character in keeping with the ethos of the car... but until it's done and on the road, it's hard to know.

 

Looking good Ant.

 

As for the manifold, in all respect to my local manifold guy, it was a combination of my and his hectic work load that put a delay on things. Not to worry though, all has been sorted and a 205 16v will be laying 11's shortly in Wiltshire

 

James was tlking about knocking up a adaptor plate for the servo, so would be intresting to know your spacing distances

Cheers Al, much appreciated

 

With regards James's idea, given how variable the shells are it's probably the sort of thing that really needs to be checked and measured on his own car, as it's entirely possible what works and fits on mine wouldn't his and vice-versa.

[Anthony 1,003]

Having picked up the bits and pieces for the fuel lines this week, I got them fitted whilst the engine was still sat in the bay, meaning another job done whilst waiting for the manifold and silicon hoses.

 

GTi-6 fuel rails use different size feed and return connections - 10mm for the feed, and 8mm for the return - which is different to 1.9 Mi16's that used 8mm for both. Sourcing the fuel hose itself is simple enough once you allow for the fact that it is still generally sold in imperial sizes, so 3/8" for 10mm hose and 5/16" for 8mm hose, and any motor factor will have it on the shelf - just be sure to get injection rated hose as carb fuel line isn't rated for the higher fuel pressure (circa 3 bar) that injection uses.

 

Connecting the larger 10mm hose to the fuel filter requires a different banjo fitting if like me you're retaining the original 205 GTi fuel filter, as the standard banjo is something in the region of 6mm. I had been told that you couldn't get banjos with 10mm tails that would fit the GTi filter, and that you should just use an 8mm one (as you would for an Mi16) and clamp the pipe down tightly over it which had been proven to work, but I really wasn't happy or comfortable with that idea - as longer term members will possibly remember, there was a spate of members cars catching fire a few years ago from fuel leaks and I really didn't want my 205 to go the same way after all this work.

 

Looking through a few other GTi-6 builds it looked like other people had run 8mm pipe from the fuel filter, and then had a 8-10mm adapter to join to the 10mm hose from the fuel rail - much better, but I would still rather minimise the number of joins and therefore potential fuel leaks in the engine bay.

 

Thankfully, it turned out that the advice was wrong and you can get the correct banjos to allow you to run 10mm pipe straight from the fuel filter - you need a 12mm banjo with a 10mm tail, and these are available cheap enough on eBay, complete with bolt and two replacement copper crush washers.

 

No issue with the 8mm hose, as that goes straight over and clamps down onto the hard fuel lines at the bottom of the bulkhead just as it did on the 8v.

 

 

I ran the hoses down so that I could secure them to the clip that previously held the 8v loom to hold them out of the way of the bonnet strut, although I'm in two minds whether to run it like that or to cut the hose a little shorter and run it straight across level with the strut top as per the original fuel lines. My original intention had been to run them through the gap underneath the engine mount rubber mounting cradle, but it didn't fit very well and was too close to the PAS pump pulley for my liking given how much the hose was likely to move around whilst driving.

 

With the fuel hoses done, I was basically out of things that I could do with the engine still in place, so it was removed - with no exhaust manifold and no coolant plumbed in, it took less than 15 minutes to dismantle the front of the car, removing the radiator, cowling, clutch and throttle cable, fuel lines and battery tray, and then whip the engine straight out of the top - much to the amazement of my neighbours kids that were watching.

 

Indeed, I ended up sitting there talking to them for the next 15-20 minutes with them asking how it worked and what all the different parts did. Sharp too, as despite only being 7 or 8, he'd already guessed without me saying anything that I wasn't removing the engine because it was broken, but because I was fitting a bigger one to make it faster - a pair of petrolheads in the making I'm sure

 

Oh, and one to no doubt amuse a few of the iron-block haterz...

 

Kid1: "How much does the engine weight? Would I be able to lift it?"

Me: "The engine is very heavy - it weighs more than me and both of you two put together!"

Kid2: "Oh. Does it weigh as much as my house then?"

Me: *chuckles* "No, it's not quite that heavy"

[Anthony 1,003]

Take one nasty looking spare key and the central locking keyfob

 

 

Prepare by cutting to shape with a dremel and drilling a small hole for the retaining screw, finishing off by garnishing with a set of 1.9 GTi keyrings

 

 

Et volia, a modern OE combined key and central locking fob for zero cost - a finishing touch for a still very unfinished car

[Cameron 16]

Nice!

 

Big mistake saying "finishing touch" though!

[Anthony 1,003]

Don't worry Cam, I think we all know that there's no such thing as a "finished" 205 anyway - they're merely occasionally on the road in between bouts of being unfinished and in pieces...

[Andy_C 50]

Looking good mate. This report is one I always keep an eye out for, if for no other reason than to make sure that your recently discovered fetish for making stuff shiny is only a temporary bout of insanity

Edited November 20, 2011 by Andy_C

[kyepan 291]

I think we all know that there's no such thing as a "finished" 205 anyway - they're merely occasionally on the road in between bouts of being unfinished and in pieces...

Could not have said it better myself.

[Edp 67 3 Cars]

Great thread Anthony and brilliant attention to detail!

[Anthony 1,003]

Unfortunately the pictures that I took along the way whilst slotting the shell to move the whole pedal box assembly up and across didn't come out.

 

It's easy enough to do, although there is several additional bits that need to be cut in addition to just slotting the mounting holes. The top part of the pedal box will foul on the top of the cutout in the shell with almost any movement, so that needs to be addressed, and the bottom of the cutout where the metal is folded inwards needs to be straightened/cut slightly to allow the pedal box to bolt up squarely.

 

As mentioned earlier, you're limited as to how much the pedal box will move owing to the proximity of the servo to the underside of the scuttle panel, and also the side of the pedal box to the edge of the recess. I've moved it as much as I can, with the servo being a whisker away from the (lightly massaged) scuttle panel, and the edge of the pedal box being against the edge of the recess.

 

I'd estimate that it's moved in the region of about 6-7mm vertically and around 4-5mm horizontally.

 

The end result was a partial success, having gone from this...

 

 

... to this:

 

 

As you can see, there's now adequate clearance vertically and there's a small amount of clearance horizontally, which is a significantly improvement over being wedged hard against it as it was previously. There's still not enough clearance there to run as-is without getting feedback through the pedals/shell as the engine moves under hard cornering, but it's certainly heading in the right direction. Thanks to Surgie and Welshpug for suggesting it.

 

The engine goes in and out very easily now too, rather than having to force and manhandle it.

 

I've reattached the pedal box using some large penny washers on the rear side rather than just the nuts to spread the load, as I was concerned that over time with juts the small nuts you'd slowly bend and deform the shell, risking eventually pushing the whole pedal box through the bulkhead. A strengthing plate (like fitted to 205 rally cars) would be another slightly less ghetto looking way of doing this.

[Toddy 7]

Anthony - You can drill and increase the diameter of the hole in the drivers side engine mount to allow the engine to move closer to the inner wing, doing this also allows you to adjust the engine mount (forwards/backwards) to not rest on the engine mount buffers to give a much improved vibration free idle.

 

HTH

[damien 22 1 Cars]

could you not trim some of the m/c? just afew MM so it clears the cam cover

ive been toying with the idea for afew days but cant find anything on it on the forum

[Anthony 1,003]

Anthony - You can drill and increase the diameter of the hole in the drivers side engine mount to allow the engine to move closer to the inner wing, doing this also allows you to adjust the engine mount (forwards/backwards) to not rest on the engine mount buffers to give a much improved vibration free idle.

That's basically along the lines of what I was planning to do next, namely to slot the engine mount arm to allow it to move over a touch further.

 

The buffers on mine I've already spaced so that they're almost but not quite touching the arm, which should be about right in terms of stopping the engine flailing around but minimising vibration at idle and throttle transitions.

 

could you not trim some of the m/c? just afew MM so it clears the cam cover

ive been toying with the idea for afew days but cant find anything on it on the forum

Yes you can trim the side of the MC and is something that others have done.

 

If it comes to it then it's what I'll probably end up doing in conjunction with the above arm mod.

 

Wherever possible however I prefer not to modify parts that you might end up needing to replace in an emergency away from home, especially given that I go over to Germany etc on a fairly frequent basis and I can imagine trying to find someone to start modifying parts to allow them to fit when you can't speak the language would be a touch tricky. I can order beer, currywurst and chips and call someone a big fat ape in German ("grosser fetter affe" in case you're wondering), but none of those things are likely to assist me in getting car parts modified

 

Not only that, but I can't personally see an average mechanic being too happy about grinding away parts of a master cylinder given that they'd end up partly liable if it failed a few miles up the road and I ploughed through a bus stop full of children.

 

Won't someone think of the children?!

[Anthony 1,003]

Engine and box back out again (I'm getting extremely well versed at doing this now!) to get the gearbox ready, since I had just bolted it on incomplete in order to mock up the engine for sorting cable lengths, clearance issues etc.

 

 

First up was fitting the 16 x 63 (3.93) crownwheel to the Quaife differential, and then dropping the diff into the gearbox and refitting the final drive cover. All straight forward enough, using a little threadlock and sealant where required, with the torque settings listed in the Haynes manual.

 

 

Next was fitting the hybrid electro-mechanical speedo drive needed for a GTi-6 conversion, as this provides both a mechanical drive for the 205 speedo cable and an electrical output for the GTi-6 ECU. These are found on some Phase 1 106 and 306 models, or are often on eBay for not a huge amount of money.

 

You need to swap over and use the original speedo drive cog (red) and not the one from the donor car if you bought it second hand, otherwise you'll likely throw the speedo accuracy well out.

 

A new pair of driveshaft oil seals that I'd picked up off Baz a while back were fitted at the same time.

 

 

Lastly was looking into the poor clutch pedal action that I had when the gearbox was fitted to the previous 205, where the pedal felt normal for the first two thirds of the pedal travel, but awful on the last third - sticking, jerking, and very difficult to smoothly engage the clutch as a result given that the stickiness was right around the biting point. This made things "interesting" with a 3.6kg flywheel and Jetronic management...

 

My initial suspicion was that it had the wrong clutch fork bushes fitted, given that most 205 gearboxes use the earlier yellow type and this had the later white type in - there is only a few millimetres difference between them, but it can cause all manner of release bearing issues. However, when I collected the box from Miles after having the reverse cogs and final drive swapped, he confirmed that it was the correct setup as he'd fitted the later fork when it was originally rebuilt.

 

The actual issue turned out to be much simpler and was staring me in the face - turns out that the new clutch arm that had been fitted (I'm assuming during the original rebuild) was fouling the gearbox casing on the last part of its travel. This wasn't immediately obvious when the gearbox was seperate to the engine as the arm hitting the angled section of the casing just effortlessly lifted the fork upwards as you pulled it back, but of course with the release bearing fitted and the gearbox bolted to the gearbox, the fork was no longer able to easily move, and every time you pressed the clutch pedal, it was dragging the arm against the casing and trying to bend/distort as well as move the release bearing where it couldn't go.

 

I haven't got one to hand to compare it to, but I'm guessing that the clutch arm is actually the later pull-type clutch type, as it's a distinctly different shape and style to the usual push-type clutch arm. The angle grinder came out to play, and ground away the part of the arm that was fouling the casing - it's not immediately obvious in the above photo, but the now nicely curved part used to be much squarer and rolled downwards, hence hitting the casing. With the offending section of arm removed, it now should work perfectly.

[allye 530 3 Cars]

That reminds me of the 'fun' I had with clutch arms

 

I only put my engine in once will be dropping at some point though to do a couple job.

[Anthony 1,003]

With the weather becoming ever-more wintery as each day passes and still not having the reangled manifold or GTi-6 specific coolant hoses that I need to progress the build, I decided to shelve the GTi-6 conversion for the time being and temporarily revert back to the original plan of fitting the Skip Brown 1.9 8v engine.

 

"Not another change of direction!" I hear you cry.

 

The GTi-6 conversion I'll carry on with in the spring when it starts to warm up a little and it's not getting dark mid-afternoon, by which time I should have all the required parts and all the little niggles with the rest of the car should be ironed out. This does also have the advantage of giving me a benchmark to compare the GTi-6 engine against, in terms of performance and power delivery, and how it impacts other areas of the car such as handling.

 

I'd removed the SBC engine about 15 months ago or so, and so despite the cambelt not having done that many miles, it make sense to replace it as a matter of course given that I already had the parts anyway and it's so easy when the engine is out of the car (well, 8v's are easy in the car - but you know what I mean).

 

Atleast, that should have been the case, but I'd seemingly underestimated the utter level of bodgery used by the Subaru garage that had last changed the belt. Even getting the crank pulley bolt undone proved difficult, in the end having to resort to using a 24" breaker bar, an extension slipped over the end of that, and still jumping, swinging and yanking at it for 5 minutes before the bolt finally came free. From what I can work out, they had covered it in heavy duty threadlock and bashed it on as tight as they possibly could with a windy gun to that point that it had caused the end of the crank nose to flare.

 

Not only that, but they'd evidentially lost/broken part of the belt cover and bolts that held it in place too.

 

The next thing that threw me was trying to turn the engine over so that the timing holes lined up, they were nowhere even nearly close - with the crank lined up, the cam was a good 40 degrees out. Now, given that the engine had previously run fine and pulled fairly strongly it was clear that it couldn't really be that far out, so I investigated further...

 

 

Fivos had mentioned something about wondering if the cam timing was correct after the Subaru garage had changed the cambelt because of the different pinning, but I'd forgotten about it until I removed the cam pulley and then it all made sense. As you can see, clearly what SBC chose to do is rather than using a vernier, they've drilled five possible holes for the timing dowel that I assume are all offset by a couple of degrees of so, making for a slightly crude way of altering the cam timing. Looking at the pulley, it was obvious why the timing holes didn't line up, but it also looks to confirm that the dowel hasn't been moved since it was original built by Skip Brown, suggesting that the cam timing is correct (or atleast as they set it).

 

With a new belt fitted and everything back together with a new belt cover, the crank nose dressed to allow the pulley to easily slide back on, and another crank pulley bolt (given I didn't really trust that one with how much it appeared to have been over-torqued) I turned my attentions to the other niggles that the engine had had.

 

Firstly replacing the oil pressure gauge sender, as I'd long suspected the one fitted to be faulty given that it never displayed over about 3.8 bar regardless of oil temperature - cold oil at idle would be 3.8 bar, cold oil at 4000rpm+ would be 3.8 bar, and hot oil at 4000rpm+ would be... yes, you've guessed it, 3.8 bar. The only time that it ever dropped was idle or low revs when hot.

 

It is possible that the sensor isn't faulty I guess, but certainly its behaviour looks highly suspicious.

 

The rear coolant distribution block I swapped from the plastic to the earlier alloy type to suit the hose kit that Stew had sent me - I can only assume that he was having an off day, as he sent me a Phase 2 kit as he was meant to, but with an earlier style lower hose. Not a major issue given that I'm running an 8v for the moment, but obviously it'll need to be swapped before putting the '6 in seeing as they also use the smaller diameter Phase 2 hose.

 

Next up was the dipstick, which had broken off where it bolts to the head near the exhuast manifold. To remove the dipstick on an 8v you need to remove the exhaust manifold, which I did fine, only to discover that one of the exhaust ports looks much cleaner and lighter in colour that the other three, which were distinctly sooty looking as you'd expect. Checking the spark plugs showed that the cylinder in question did look a touch more lean, so I guessed that the injectors were probably beginning to clog up and not spray/flow properly. I had fitted the freshly cleaned set that Mark (Mad_Professor) had done for me into Feb's new engine, but I still had another set that hadn't done a huge number of miles since being cleaned and thus I fitted them at the same time.

 

Things turned farsical at this point when I stupidly tried to take a short cut and swap the injectors over without removing the inlet manifold. I know better than to do that, but for some reason I did it anyway, and sure enough, two of the four injectors came out with their pintle caps nowhere to be seen. Off the inlet manifold came and the first cap was sat on the back of the closed valve which was good, and the second... well, the valve wasn't closed on that cylinder. My heart sank as getting something non-magnetic out of the cylinder would not be easy..

 

Thankfully, somehow I was lucky enough that the valve wasn't quite fully open, and the cap was sat teetering on the edge of the valve hidden behind the short side radius. A few attempts to fish it out failed, as did attempting to suck it out with the hoover, and thus I ended up very gingerly backing the cam off and closing the valve whilst the cap wobbled and rocked, threatening to fall into the chamber. Thankfully it didn't.

 

Note to self - don't be so lazy as to not just remove the inlet manifold in the first place!

 

Crisis averted and the new injectors fitted, I continued my new found tartish ways and cleaned the engine of the usual oily gunge that 8v's seem to attract, together with as much of the alloy corrosion that I could, and the end result looks pretty good and certainly more than presentable.

 

 

Last thing to do was to refit another PAS mount, pump and bracket together with a new belt, ready to connect up to the Xsara VTS PAS rack that it's fitted to the car, et volia - an awful lot of messing around for an engine that was meant to be just a quick swap to get the car running.

 

(and yes, that huge pile of clutter in the background that I need to sort out is a big part of the reason why the car is still not in the garage! )

[damien 22 1 Cars]

i hate them pins in the clutch arms... once they go in they never come out without a fight!!!

[Anthony 1,003]

To go with the 8v engine of course you need an 8v loom, and I couldn't help but to turn my attention to tidying that up somewhat - although this time in the name of reliability and serviceability rather than cosmetics.

 

Like most 8v looms these days, this particular one had seen better days - broken connectors, tatty sensor/starter loom that still ran through the dreaded brown multiplug of doom, and the cable covering having disintegrated in places leaving the wiring exposed to heat and chaffing damage.

 

 

First up, the dreaded brown multiplug that's the underlying cause of many starting, gauge and warning light problems as the unsealed connector slowly corrodes away, causing poor or intermittent connectivity. The very best thing that you can do to any 8v in terms of electrical reliability is to get shot frankly.

 

The biggest issue is that you'll find the cable itself is corroded for several inches back from the plug, and this is no good for anything - you can't crimp down on it as it's liable to be a bad connection, you can't solder on it as the solder won't take, and often if the corrosion is bad enough then there's barely more than a few strands of copper wire left anyway. To do it properly, you need to cut it right back until you find good clean wire, which will mean stripping the loom part back.

 

 

In this case, it was about 6-8" worth that needed to be cut out, which wasn't too bad - many need well over a foot removing, hence why it's often easier to just strip the sensor loom out completely and start again. No need to in this case though - the two water temperature sensor and the oil temperature sensor wire were extended (keeping the same original wire colour for easier trouble shooting) and the two oil pressure, the alternator and starter solenoid wires were all long enough to just need re-terminating as appropriate (a ring terminal on the starter solenoid wire as I'll be using a late model starter). Proper ratchet crimps help massively here, as those cheap 99p ones really don't do a very good job (and as for people doing them with pliers...)

 

As you can see, I'm on the soldering side of the fence when it comes to joining wires together - some will argue that is the correct way of doing things, and others will claim the opposite and that you must use crimps. My attitude is that soldering only has two potential downsides (assuming you can solder properly of course!), namely that you need good clean wire for the solder to adhere properly, and that the solder joint can prove to be brittle and snap if the loom is inproperly supported and allowed to continuously flex the joint. Both correct of course, but both issues that are very easy to overcome and prevent.

 

The advantage of solder of course excellent electrical conductivity, a joint that is mechanically very strong, and one that is barely any wider than the original wiring, which is important if there's multiple wires that need joining in close proximity to one another.

 

 

Next up was fixing the broken connectors, which on this loom consisted of the blue ECU temp sensor (this is seemingly always broken on Jetronic looms), the black SAD power feed, and the white reverse plug. There's simple two ways of sorting this problem - either extract the pins from the connectors and fit them into new connectors, or to chop the old connector, wiring and pins off and fit a replacement - I did the later as the pins were a little dubious looking as well.

 

The remains of an old XU7JP4 loom donated three suitable plugs and lengths of wire, all colour coded to the original and all the much better JPT style connectors with the easy push release catch. Again, the process was much the same - chop back a foot or so of wire so that you've got good clean wire, twist and solder the wires together, and cover with heatshrink.

 

 

Sensor wiring I tend to cover with braided covering to provide protection against chaffing and give the wire a small amount of additional support, plus it gives the loom a nice professional look. Thing to remember with that braided covering is that you need to seal the ends, otherwise it tends to unravel itself in double-quick time.

 

As you can see, I've routed the sensor wiring along with the other loom wires, rather than seperately as it was as standard - it's tidier that way and is how all later looms were done. I never have understood why Peugeot did it the way they did on 205 looms, as other than the oil temperature wire, all the sensor wiring is easily accessable and can be unplugged in seconds, so why have that (and that only) on a seperate plug that meant you could leave it attached to the engine?

 

Mind you, nowhere near as bad as Citroen on the BX 16v loom - just about every part of it is joined together with multiplugs and whilst they don't seem to fare too badly in a BX, after a few years in a harsh 205 engine bay they're often a complete nightmare.

 

 

The finished loom after replacing the damaged covering, looking 100% better than it did previously, and should prove far more reliable in operation too. Clearly it's not up to the standard of a full replacement loom with all new plugs and wire throughout, but for a couple of hours work it's a massive improvement over what it was

[Baz 421]

Anthony is a wiring loom GOD!!

[feb 47]

Anthony, how can you tell that the timing dowel hasn't been moved since the engine was built originally?

You can tell I have not much idea about these things (indeed I was worried that they used a different hole).

Edited December 10, 2011 by feb

[Fox 3]

Anthony, as usual very nice work! Don't suppose for extra bonus points you fancy labeling all the connector locations on the photo above?

[feb 47]

It also explains why the reverse's light didn't work! Very detailed work (as usual).

[Anthony 1,003]

Anthony, how can you tell that the timing dowel hasn't been moved since the engine was built originally?

You can tell I have not much idea about these things (indeed I was worried that they used a different hole).

It's not as easy to tell on the above photo as it is when it's in front of you, but if the dowel had been moved I would have expected to see tale-tale marks on the drilled pulley holes (which I don't) and I would expect to see an impression left from the end of the cam in two different places, rather than just one (which can be seen in the picture)

 

Anthony, as usual very nice work! Don't suppose for extra bonus points you fancy labeling all the connector locations on the photo above?

Since you asked so nicely...

 

 

Hopefully that's what you're after

 

It also explains why the reverse's light didn't work! Very detailed work (as usual).

Actually, this isn't the original loom from your old car - from memory that was left in there when I sold it to Andy

 

This is the loom from the Sorrento I broke earlier this year that provided the interior and some mechanical parts for the Jalopy and where many of the 1.9 specific parts on your 205 came from (wishbones, driveshafts, gearbox etc)

[harryskid 193]

Have you sorted out your speedo cable ?

[Anthony 1,003]

Have you sorted out your speedo cable ?

On this temporary 8v install the speedo cable is very straight forward, as you just use the standard 205 cable. The extra height of the speedo drive does make the cable sit a little closer to the near side of the exhaust manifold though compared to using the original 205 speedo drive, but nothing that should cause any issues.

 

What to do when the GTi-6 is fitted I'll come back to in the spring when I revisit the conversion, as it was impossible to tell whether I would need a longer speedo cable (as I suspect I will) without having the manifold fitted to the car, which I don't yet have (although it is now finished and I should have it next week)

[welshpug 1,661]

a 205 one will work and can be clipped away from the manifold, but I think I';d me bore comfortable using a longer one and routing it a little higher up the bulkhead.