[car_overhaul] Project Jalopy

[Sandy 191]

Excellent write up Anthony

[Anthony 1,003]

The man from the Ministry.... he says YES!

 

Passed first time, with three advisories - the oil leak mentioned above, the front numberplate being cracked, and one of the rear brake disks being a touch pitted. First two I knew about anyway, and the later in minor enough that I suspect most testers wouldn't have mentioned it.

 

The emissions test amused me somewhat, and I wondered initially if they'd given me the wrong print out - despite the hotter cam, crude Jetronic management and the AFM no doubt flapping around like a barn door in the wind with the lolloping idle, it would have sailed through a CAT test with a mere 0.17% CO and 35 ppm HC

[bluesleeper 3]

I remember years ago when my 205 last had an mot! The tester thought his machine had broken as the old girl was pumping out similar figures to yours

He had to test it on another car first to make sure it was still working then tried mine again and got better readings still as she had warmed up by then!

[Anthony 1,003]

The Jalopy's Mi16 powered twin joined the fleet last month

 

 

I put the car together for a friend a couple of years back and he's barely driven it since, and with his first child due later this year that was unlikely to change. He offered it to me for a price that meant that despite neither having the need nor arguably space for it, temptation won out over practical sensibilities.

 

Neighbour despair level: Rising...

[Anthony 1,003]

4000 miles under its belt, and the Jalopy suffered its breakdown of sorts this week when it decided it didn't want to start.

 

It had started fine that morning and driven to work without issue, but popping out at lunchtime it gave no life whatsoever from the starter when turning the key, just the faint whirring behind from the fuel pump. Checked all the obvious connections and everything looked fine, so off I trotted back to the office to lay my hands on a hammer to give the starter solenoid a whack. By the time I returned 10 minutes later however, the starter decided that it wanted to work, clearly fearful of the sight of a disgruntled Anthony with a hammer.

 

Despite starting fine repeatedly and getting me home without issue, I figured that the starter was likely on its way out given the symptoms so decided to swap it over with a known good spare. The old starter was a high output (1.2KW) Bosch starter that had been removed from a Xsara VTS which are generally reliable, but it is still a 10+ year old part in the harsh confines of a 205 engine bay. I swapped it for the usual slimline Valeo item that most people use.

 

Put everything back together again, reconnect the battery, turn the key and.... nothing. Hmmm.

 

The immobiliser appeared to be working and there was clearly power getting to the starter solenoid wire as the fuel pump relay engaged when you turn the key (on Jetronic 205's, the tachymetric relay engages either when there is voltage on the starter solenoid wire or when there is a pulse from the coil) and the starter solenoid wiring was replaced and a new terminal installed when I did the loom. A quick check with the multimeter showed the problem - with the key turned to crank, there was only 5v getting to the starter solenoid, clearly not enough to trigger the solenoid and engage the starter, but enough to trigger the fuel pump relay.

 

Started back tracking through the wiring and eventually traced the issue to somewhere inside the car between the ignition barrel and the fuseboard. Further testing suggested that the newly installed immobiliser wasn't the issue, but shortly afterwards it started working again, and has continued working since, making diagnosing the fault difficult. My best guess is that the ignition switch is beginning to die, and as such I've put a spare in the car so that if/when the fault reoccurs, I can quickly plug it in under the dash and see if that fixes it.

 

There's little as frustrating as trying to trace intermittent electrical gremlins...

 

With the car running again for the time being, I turned my attentions to sorting out a couple of other annoyances that have been bugging me. Firstly, replacing the standard (and probably 20 year old original) gearbox mount out with a spare Group N one in a bid to banish the remaining driveline shunt that was still present despite having a Group N rear mount and the new standard top mount with packed out buffers. This seems to have done the job, and certainly drive line shunt is much reduced as is feedback/movement through the gearlever when you hit a bump (which suggested that the gearbox was moving and in turn the gear rods). There has been little noticeable increase in NVH either which is good.

 

Secondly, the idle, which whilst very good normally, was starting to get very grumpy when sat in traffic for lengthy periods now that the weather has warmed up. Heading down to Ace Cafe on Monday me and Paul_13 were taking bets on whether it was going to cut out on us as we queued on the A40, as the idle was dropping lower and lower with the combination of heat soak and electrical load from the cooling fan - to its credit it didn't, despite the idle speed dropping down to 600rpm and becoming as lumpy as you'd expect given the uprated cam.

 

(well, that's not quite true - it didn't cut out in the traffic on the A40, but instead decided to do so at Ace Cafe whilst shuffling the car back and forth to where they wanted me to park it - to a chorus of jeers from the people stood watching. Thanks car, there's nothing like making me look like a newb with no clutch control )

 

Again, this was fairly easily addressed by properly cleaning out the throttle body and richening up the mixture a touch given how lean it was at tickover judging from last months MOT. As luck had it, a broken down HGV in the middle of the M4 this evening at rush hour gave the perfect test with the resulting queues, and it is certainly a significant improvement.

 

As a side note, the fuel economy of this car still amazes me - 39mpg from the last tank (378 miles to 44 litres)

[chipstick 382 1 Cars]

Helpfully, the 306 GTi-6 that I recently broke had an 205 style engine mount

 

I'm intrigued by this point. I have a couple of spare 306 top engine mounts in good condition, and was tempted to pop one on the 205.

 

Is it that there are a few of types of 306 mount - with one type being compatible?

[Anthony 1,003]

Proper OE 306/Xsara mounts are too wide to fit a 205 from what I've seen, but the new mount that was fitted to the 306 I had was a 205 style one hence it was perfect. Check the diameter of the mounts you've got and compare it to the 205 one - if they're the same then it'll fit, but if it is a fair bit wider, then it won't.

 

Edit - Just looked back at the photo, and the part number on the new mount is 1844.42 which corresponds with the part number Peugeot give for a 205 top mount - although I'm not sure whether or not it is an genuine OE mount or whether aftermarket suppliers use the same part number. That part number is also used on some 106, 306, 309, and 405 models - the 306's listed as using it are lower spec ones with either the 1.8 8v XU7 engine, or the 1.6 8v TU5 engine.

Edited June 22, 2012 by Anthony

[feb 47]

As a side note, the fuel economy of this car still amazes me - 39mpg from the last tank (378 miles to 44 litres)

 

That's amazing! What is your average distance trip? I assume you don't do many short trips (i.e. <6 miles) or cold starts?

My average journey is 6-8 miles and I only get ~240 miles out of a tank until the light starts flickering!

That's 27mpg given the conditions, still better than the 18mpg my Forester does in the same conditions but I was expecting more.

I think you should pack a Jetronic configuration in the boot for me when you visit Germany

The main "problem" is that on very light throttle openings the AFR is around 14.2 despite working in closed loop. I think the problem lies in the accuracy/sensitivity of the TPS as the only means to control load.

 

On idle though it will be 14.7.

 

Ditto, SUL in Germany contains up to 5% ethanol and I have seen deviations in fuel consumption between German and UK fuels but this alone wouldn't explain the huge differences above.

 

I agree about intermittent electrical problems, my collegue and I must have disturbed the cables/brown multi plugs under the dash when replacing the servo which has caused me similar issues.

You are a patient man though!

Edited June 23, 2012 by feb

[Anthony 1,003]

My journey to work is a 75 mile round trip, on a mix of A and B roads and, depending which route I take, the motorway.

 

It does get used for shorter journeys as and when, but doesn't get used for regular short journeys which always helps with economy.

 

I know full well that your car is capable of more than you're currently achieving through, so it has to be something to do with either your journeys or your driving style, Certainly when I had the car over Christmas it was getting quite reasonable economy - not the levels above sure, but it was in excess of 300 miles to the tank from what I recall and I wouldn't expect much beyond that in the middle of winter.

[Anthony 1,003]

With Pugfest next weekend, I figured that I ought to sort out some of the cosmetics on the car given that it does look somewhat tired and unloved. It really needs the attentions of a bodyshop and a full respray before it will ever be truly tidy given the amount of car park induced dents and scratches that it's picked up in the 20 years since it rolled off the production line, not to mention that it's suffering from the usual Phase 2 lacquer issues on the roof, but I figure that with the faded bumpers and trim sorted and a little shine polished back into the paint it will look passable.

 

 

I started off removing the old trim which was straight forward enough, with just a few broken clips and the usual rusted away metal retainers that is about par for the course. The rear bumper I had already plasticared a few weeks back, and I was in two minds whether to do the front one in situ or whether to remove it - the fact that I spotted some grot on the front panel from the NSF wheel arch made my mind up though as that needed to be investigated, and so began the usual fight that is removing an original bumper - I wasn't so lucky as I was with the rear, and only one of the bumper bolts undid with the other three shearing.

 

 

The grot didn't turn out to be too bad, and seems to be confined to an area about the size of a cigarette packet at the bottom of the front panel on the nearside. The rest of the panel is otherwise pretty good, as is the offside front panel, which is always nice to see given the state those panels are in on some 205's out there. The rust did pass the unscientific screwdriver poke test, but it's severe enough that it is going to need to be cut out and fresh metal welded in at some point in the foreseeable future.

 

It was about at this point that I was reminded why I don't have any want for a mint 205 by an almighty bang and the car shaking. I got up expecting to find my neighbours car embedded in the back (a few people on here have witnessed my neighbours driving and will fully appreciate why I instantly assumed that she'd managed to hit my car - certainly as it stands it is about the only thing she hasn't hit since I've lived here!) but instead I found a child in a crumpled heap. Apparently he'd been cycling along and "hadn't seen the car" meaning that he rode straight into the back of it, despite it having not moved in a couple of days, it being parked on my driveway and him asking me questions about it just 20 minutes previous

 

I despair sometimes I really do, although seemingly no harm done to either car or child...

 

 

Given that one of the rear quarter badges was a faded Phase 1 grey item, I decided that since I was replacing it I would take the opportunity to finally badge it up accurately given that it is to all intents and purposes a 1.9 GTi now - the only 1.6 specific parts left on the car is the brake compensator and the single front-rear brake line, which I personally prefer over the failure prone 1.9 brake compensator setup anyway.

 

After cleaning off the 20 years worth of grime that was behind where the old trim had been, refitting the freshly plasticared trim was straight forward enough as thankfully I had a handful of new and good used metal clips to hand - which were all waxoyl'd prior to fitting to give them a fighting chance of not rusting away in 5 minutes - and some plastic clips to replace the couple that I broke. Refitting the bumper and valance took a couple of goes to get it sat straight and level, but I got there in the end and it's worth taking the time to get right.

 

 

Vast improvement over how it was previously I'd say

[cheesegrater 43 1 Cars]

If you wish to borrow my welder you are more than welcome.

[Anthony 1,003]

Very kind... but does the offer of loan of the welder come with a Tom included to teach me how to use it properly?

 

Rather shamefully, welding is one area that I don't really know what I'm doing as I've never been taught and don't really know enough of the theory/basics to stand a hope of doing it to a passable standard. I can manage to tack things in place with a bit of trial and error, but welding patches in on thin French tin is unlikely to be entirely successful without a little guidance - but I'm certainly willing to give it a go and learn.

[cheesegrater 43 1 Cars]

I suppose so... let me know when you want to do it and ill see if I'm working!

[Anthony 1,003]

The cosmetic improvements were finished off with a new pair of numberplates and unfaded "Peugeot" and "205" badges for the rear panel just in time for Pugfest.

 

 

The front numberplate had been cracked for ages thanks to the local kids playing football, and the rear badges had faded/worn badly, between them adding to the somewhat ratty look the car had. With the new plate and badges it instantly looked better, particularly coupled with the plasticare'd trim.

 

The intermittent starting issue continues to puzzle however and doesn't - on the face of it - appear to make any sense.

• With the car as-is it randomly won't start from cold - just hear the fuel pump run but nothing from the starter. Bypassing the ignition barrel and underdash wiring and "hot-wiring" the starter on the fusebox by bridging the appropriate pins would reliably start the car. Once it had started, it would start off the key thereafter until the car was left for several hours.
  
• Unplugging the existing ignition barrel/switch and plugging in another occasionally helped (and may have merely been coincidental) but generally showed the same fault - thus seemingly ruling out the ignition barrel/switch as to being the issue.
  
• Plugging the ignition barrel straight into the fusebox would reliably start the car and did so for over a week, suggesting that the fusebox, immobiliser and engine bay wiring are fine, and pointed the finger at the wiring that runs from the fusebox to the ignition barrel and back as being at fault since the original ignition barrel had been ruled out.
  
• I replaced that length of wiring today and... still the same problem. Resistance on all six wires showed as 0.00 ohms when tested and all the pins on the connectors are good, so seems highly unlikely that is the cause of the fault or that it could be causing any noteworthy voltage loss.
  

Figure that one out?!

 

The only logically explaination that I can come up with is that there's multiple minor losses throughout the starter circuit, and that whilst each one is insignificant on its own, when you add them all together it's enough that there's no longer sufficient voltage to reliably trigger the solenoid. Once the solenoid has been triggered once to remove any initial stickiness, and even more so when the battery has had a little boost from the alternator, it then works fine for several hours.

 

The intermittent nature of the fault is making a headache to diagnose, as you're never quite sure when it's going to give grief, and when it does, it will start working before you've managed to pin point the fault. I'm tempted to put a nearly flat battery on the car, as hopefully between the low battery voltage and the underlying issue it will mean that the starter won't work for long enough for me to actually get to the bottom of it once and for all.

 

Otherwise, I could just fit a starter relay which would undoubtedly work, but I don't like masking underlying issues with fixes like that. I'm a firm believer in fixing the underlying fault and not merely the symptom, just that in this case, the cause is proving somewhat illusive...

[cheesegrater 43 1 Cars]

Have you checked the return side of the circuit? Could be an return breaking down. Have you also tried and new starter motor? When it does it can you repeat it again but have a DMM at the solenoid end to check voltage?

[Toddy 7]

I had all those problems with a intermittent starter, replaced the starter motor and this cured it.Would like to know why though!

[welshpug 1,661]

do you not even get the clunk from the starter?

 

I'm getting that from a small bodied starter that I fitted in place of a 6 year old remanufactured large bodied unit in hope of fixing it! the ignition barrel is a similar age to the starter, wiring loom is mostly the ZX mp3.1 so much better nick than the 205 one.

[feb 47]

 

It looks mint Anthony great work!

Edited July 8, 2012 by feb

[Anthony 1,003]

I've replaced the starter and battery already, the brown multiplug o'doom was removed before fitting the loom, and the main earth and power feeds/connections are fine.

 

The fault is definitely something to do with the starter solenoid wiring somewhere in the car, just the intermittent nature makes it a pig to find - it started first turn of the key this morning when I went to go and have a look. I just need it not to work for long enough that I can buzz through the various connections with a multimeter until I find where the volt drop is / where the volt drops are.

 

Edit: just swapped the battery for one that had been sat around for ages and had discharged to just 12.2v (a fully charged battery should show around 12.7v) and still it started first turn of the key, albeit with the starter turning over quite slowly as you'd expect.

Edited July 8, 2012 by Anthony

[cheesegrater 43 1 Cars]

What kind of resistences are you getting anyway? Just because the DMM beep's doesn't mean it has low resistence, that circuit is relatively low amps is it not? Any resistence will have an effect.

[Stephen W 12 1 Cars]

I had the exact same starting problem on my 306 dturbo. I tried a new starter, battery, ignition switch, bypassed the starter trigger wire but one minute it would start then the next it wouldnt. I cleaned all the earths and ran two new earths but it was just do random.

In the end I ran a new starter relay in the engine bay using the original trigger wire and a live feed from the battery and it's been great ever since.

There must be a break or bad contact but finding it is a whole new story!

[Anthony 1,003]

Starting issue reared its ugly head for long enough to do some proper checks, and the results were interesting...

• Main power feed into fusebox (ignition off) = 12.64v
  
• Main power feed into fusebox (ignition on) = 12.30v
  
• Main power feed into fusebox (key turned to crank, starter not turning) = 11.10v
  
• Ignition barrel in (key turned to crank, starter not turning) = 10.56v
  
• Ignition barrel out (key turned to crank, starter not turning) = 9.78v
  
• Fuse box in from ignition barrel (key turned to crank, starter not turning) = 8.89v
  
• Fuse box out to brown multiplug (key turned to crank, starter not turning) = 8.87v
  
• Brown multiplug in from fuse box (key turned to crank, starter not turning) = 7.78v

Down to 7.78 volts and that's not actually got out of the interior of the car yet!

 

I didn't have another pair of hands to be able to check what the voltage was to the back of the starter solenoid whilst the key was held in crank, but it seems reasonable to assume from the amount of voltage drop seen elsewhere that it would be 7 volts or less. I'm not entirely sure what voltage the solenoid needs to engage reliably as clearly it will be less than 12 volt, but it seems reasonable to assume that 6 or 7 volts really isn't sufficient.

 

I was hoping for a single, sizeable voltage drop somewhere that would make for a straight forward fix, but seemingly there's lots of smaller losses that add up to a sizeable drop and - ultimately - resulting in the starter not reliably working. However, it does explain why connecting the ignition barrel directly to the fuse box made it work as that cut out a chunk of the voltage loss.

 

Still, identifying the issue is half way to fixing it...

 

 

Away from tracking down starting issues, I finally got around to fitting the OMP strut brace. Thankfully, unlike the first one I tried, this one actually fits and allows the bonnet to close properly.

 

Spotted some moisture inside one of the headlights after driving back from work in near monsoon conditions on Friday, thanks to the usual issue where the sealant between the lens and reflector breaks down and allows the lens to start coming away. Replaced both headlights with a pair of newish Valeo items, but of course, a shiny pair of headlights makes the old indicators look distinctly faded... so replaced them with a newish pair as well.

[Anthony 1,003]

I had the exact same starting problem on my 306 dturbo. I tried a new starter, battery, ignition switch, bypassed the starter trigger wire but one minute it would start then the next it wouldnt. I cleaned all the earths and ran two new earths but it was just do random.

In the end I ran a new starter relay in the engine bay using the original trigger wire and a live feed from the battery and it's been great ever since.

There must be a break or bad contact but finding it is a whole new story!

 

That's what I'll do if it comes to it, as there's no doubt that it will work given how little voltage you need to trigger the relay, and the relay then supplying the starter solenoid with near battery voltage rather than a few volts down after it has gone back and forth through the car and engine bay.

 

I'm just the sort that would prefer to get to the bottom of the issue with the standard wiring if at all possible, given that undiagnosed faults covered over have a habit of coming back to bite you, but the findings above are certainly steering me towards the simple relay solution....

[Stephen W 12 1 Cars]

I know what you mean, if it worth doing its worth doing properly. I just spent the best part of 6 months on and off trying different parts and ran all the tests you have described but to no avail.

 

It's when I passed the car on to my girlfriend that made me try the relay. She stalled in the middle of a busy roundabout and the car wouldn't start!

Enough was enough and touch wood its been ok to this day.

Stephen

[Anthony 1,003]

So the lottery of "will it, won't it start?" was growing tiring and I set about fixing it.

 

Went with a simple relay setup to get the car sorted for now and to prove that it does fix the issue, and I'll wire up a proper relay setup later that would pass for OE with the relay located in the relay box and wiring all running in with the rest of the loom.

 

For those of you not particularly electronically minded, a relay is simple device where a low current feed switches a high current feed. In this particular case, I'm using the original 205 starter wiring as the low current feed to switch a high current feed from the battery to trigger the solenoid.

 

 

For this temporary fix, I just cut a relay and length of wire from a 306 and terminated the ends with the appropriate ring terminals.

 

Red wire - high current feed from the battery (this should really be fused!)

Yellow wire - switched high current wire to the starter solenoid

Cream wire - low current switching wire that connects to the original starter solenoid wiring

Green wire - earth to complete the circuit for the low current side of the circuit

 

Fitting was straight forward enough, but a spanner was thrown in the works when I came to start the car.

 

Turned the key to crank, relay clicked and the starter turned over instantly, but upon releasing the key, the starter carried on turning until I switched off the ignition. It would do this repeatedly, sometimes even engaging the starter motor when the ignition was switched on before even turning the key to crank.

 

Bizarre as I was sure that I had wired it up properly, and indeed, double-checking it was correct - so why was it doing this?

 

My initial thought was that the tachymetric relay was somehow back-feeding the starter wire, as that has a feed from the starter solenoid wire in addition to an ignition feed, and would obviously be running whilst the engine was cranking. Unplugging the tachymetric relay stopped the starter running after the key was released which looked to back up my suspicions. So I removed the starter solenoid wire from the relay and.... the starter still kept running with the key released

 

At this point I remembered an oddity on Jetronic looms and what is a mistake in the Haynes manual, in that the SAD does not earth to a conventional earth as shown in the Haynes wiring diagram, but actually earths through... yup, the starter solenoid wiring. Sure enough, unplug the SAD and the starter works perfectly.

 

FFS.

 

Once I worked out it was the SAD, it all became clear. The positive feed for the SAD is supplied by the tachymetric relay - hence the starter worked with the tachymetric relay unplugged - and is earthed through the starter solenoid wiring as mentioned. Normally, that works fine, but since the relay needs so little voltage/current to switch, that SAD earth was actually triggering the relay and making the starter run.

 

I dunno... first I have a starter that won't work when I turn the key, and now I've got one that works even when I'm not turning the key. You've got to laugh really, haven't you?

 

For the moment, I've left the SAD unplugged which should work reasonably well with the current summer weather, but will need sorting sooner rather than later as once it starts to cool down the SAD will never close without the assistance of the electrical heating element.

 

The easiest fix is to just wire the SAD as per the Haynes manual, and earth it to a proper earth instead of the starter solenoid. Of course, to do that properly means pulling the loom out and stripping it down... or if I really push the boat out I could even pull my finger out and finally do the GTi-6 conversion that I've had on the cards since the beginning.