Miami Blue 205 Mi16

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

Err, never, never, and it has seats already

[allanallen 528 2 Cars]

Less of the MU HA HA HA s*it then thanks!

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

You only screamed at me a couple of times last time you were on the maps, AND I know left from right, don't know what you are moaning about!

[allanallen 528 2 Cars]

Blah blah blah!

Edited December 10, 2015 by allanallen

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

So heap of the week update!

Got hold of a PAS belt today, so tonight fitted and tensioned that and did the tracking.

So then time for maiden voyage! Well what a transformation. Before the car was nervous in turn in, didn't inspire confidence at all. The brakes despite being GTI6 with braided lines were again wooden at best.

With (now) new dampers, springs, wishbones, drop links, and track rods ends, and everything else now checked and known GOOD, it's how it ought to be. Front end is positive, turn in sharp and then when it settles and you start to lean on it there is a feeling of actual mechanical grip rather than the previous wishy washy feeling. Brakes now have something known as bite instead of feeling like pressing the pedal shoves a block of timber against the discs.

All in all glad I went to the effort. A few snags though, I need to get some longer hose for the low pressure return, and the large bore suction hose from reservoir to pump isn't really suitable and needs a mod.

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

Re-reading the last update, it would make more sense if I mentioned the front Mintex 1155 pads I fitted....!

 

Anyway in other news. Despite stripping the wiper spindles and un seizing them, I still wasn't happy with the wipers. Reason being the plastic spindle housings had worn badly but it was only the corrosion previously holding them in place. With the cleared away the wiper spindles were wanking about like a cock in a sock, resulting in pretty poor screen clearing.

So I ordered some bushes in and stripped the wiper linkage off the car again.

Stripped the spindles and lobbed the plastic housings in the mill machine chuck roughly square.

12mm end mill and I soon had round holes again.

 

Popped my bushes in, I only bored to just over bush depth so they cannot go anywhere once the spindle is fitted

 

Reassembled with a dollop of grease inside the plastic housing between the bushes. Hopefully these will last me out anyway! Certainly even on a dry screen when tested the spindles are now rock solid.

[welshpug 1,657]

nice progress Tom, I had a similar feeling to the drive lf a 309 a few years ago, was lowered far too much, a shot beam gmax dampers and poly bushes, added standard bushes and dampers with rebuilt axle and it was transformed.

 

top work on the spindles, got bushes ready to do mine, but I am lacking a mill! did you find much wear on the spindle shaft itself?

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

The spindles were a bit pitted from corrosion but otherwise ok. A quick spin in the lathe and some emery cloth soon had them back to good. The nylon housings wear out before the steel ever would. If you can hold them still you could do the same job in a drill press with an end mill I'm sure?

 

So next job was to sort the heater fan out, especially this time of year it's certainly required!

 

So I stripped out the rheostat and the fan itself. When it did briefly work it made the usual screeching noise.

First up the rheostat, the stupid spring contact looked really grotty and sure enough a clean up and a bit of careful bending to put a bit more tension on the job, a quick test showed it working, result.

Next off was the fan. Now I've seen the various write ups by folk but I'm not to keen on getting oil everywhere in the windings of the motor. So with a bit of careful linishing it's possible to take the motor totally to bits. I polished the shaft where it runs in the bushes, the really aren't a great design! Cleaned everything up and lubed up with some super duper Hi-Mol grease I bought for track cv joints!

Anyway back in one piece and tried it, God knows how as I put all the wiring back as it came apart but it was running backwards! Quick swap of the wiring in a connector block and soon sorted. All well and good apart from the battery by now was half dead, it was a second hand one to be fair so it has got me going but I may have to buy another soon.

Anyway went for a razz round the lanes and now I can see out the screen both inside (blower) and out (wipers)!!

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

Few more jobs tonight.

First off was an awkward and messy task of replacing the PAS return hose. When I fitted it no matter how I routed the rubber hose to the cooling loop it was too close to the exhaust as it was too short. So I bought a length of what I thought was suitable hose today and set about it. Power steering fluid bloody everywhere. Anyway after much struggling as my new hose was probably on the small side for the solid pipes I managed to get it sorted. Next was to redo the pump suction feed, again I used the hoses that came with it but despite trying a few iterations I couldn't get the reservoir to sit in a convenient place without kinking the rubber pipe and starving the pump. In the end chopping the pipe and joining the two ends together 180 deg rotated did the trick nicely.

So the next task was the air filter. When I got the car it wasn't running one! Reason being it had a K&N kit with a square inlet filter and plastic adaptor to the airflow meter. Well this had seen better days to put it politely. It was scrap.

 

So as usual being far too impatient to try and order one from K&N I set about some aluminium with the gardening tools.

 

Freehand flange. Not perfect but good enough!

 

Then folded a couple of sides and tigged a box up

 

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

Finally gobbed the two bits together, easier to weld the seams inside as AC TIG welding into a corner is harder to do neatly.

 

 

Feeling I'd accomplished something I decided the "custom made speaker mounts" in the front doors needed to go. Looked like someone had bastardised an old T shirt! I think the car must have had some pretty serious stereo gear in at some stage, there is amp wiring and RCA leads at the back of the stereo and running to under the rear seats. Certainly the car seems to have had an interesting past, lots of paperwork with it, it wore a private plate for quite a few years, and there is Skip Brown road speed papers in the history, so I wonder if at some time before the Mi it had a tuned 8v.

Anyway, yuk!

 

 

So I had a dig in my audio box as I thought I had some decent speakers and found some infinity components. Even better they fitted straight into the door apertures. Much better.

 

 

 

Then I had a root through the boxes in the garage loft and found a pair of standard grilles, even more lucky they fit over the speakers a treat.

 

 

So a job for another day will be to break into to speaker wiring and install the crossovers, then fit the tweeters.

[Juttie205 123 2 Cars]

where did you get the bushes for the wiper repair?

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

So I suppose overdue any update.

Over the Xmas period I had a day out round Derbyshire surveying points for a motor club scatter rally I organise. All was going well until I came round a corner to find The Great Lake of Matlock covering the road. Before I could slow down much I was ploughing into it. Anyway luckily it didn't take in any water, but about 1/2 a mile further on it started coughing and spluttering and as I pulled up at s junction cut out and refused to restart. Conveniently in a place with no mobile phone signal, arse! I managed to get the plug cover off, and found the plug holes with plenty of water down them. Annoying as I thought the cover would have stopped it.

So I had to get resourceful, I had no tools to speak of other than a large flat screwdriver. Ideally I'd have taken the plugs out but no tools. I considered sacrificing my jumper into rags but instead I had an A4 pad of lined paper, so rolled this into tubes and shoved it down the plug wells to soak up as much as I could. Whilst I was doing this I draped the leads over the hot exhaust manifold to dry!

Anyway after 15 min or so at this I managed to get her fired up. To cut a long tale short, I limped on 3/4cyl to some kind of civilisation and then called out the RAC. After a loooooong wait the patrol guy soon had it blasted out with compressed air and me on my way.

First outing in anger was a 12 car rally with Al on the maps. We compete in mainly local national b events in Allan's Proton but he drives and I navigate. Swapping roles has proved useful for us both.

The car did reasonably well, a limited slip diff would have been very useful, and the rear dampers struggled with the bumpier tarmac, but otherwise it did OK including apparently making blue flames on full attack up through the gearbox. Al did well in the maps, it was plot and bash which means the majority of route is plotted whilst on the move, it's hard even with experience. In the end I think we were 7th out of 12 cars, but had a good laugh.

It was mostly brown afterwards!

 

 

Typically though on pressing a 205 that had been dormant a good while back into action, a few issues have cropped up.

Front drivers side wheel bearing was dead, then the indicator stalk decided high beam was no more. Both now fixed, and I've clocked up about 700 miles in it so far.

[calvinhorse 870]

Which jumper was it?

[allanallen 528 2 Cars]

I like this car, it's what 205s are all about. Can I have it yet?? Please

[allye 530 3 Cars]

Which jumper was it?

Obviously a nice one otherwise it would have been given up for the greater good.

[calvinhorse 870]

Obviously a nice one otherwise it would have been given up for the greater good.

Tom does own some fine knitwear

[calvinhorse 870]

 

It was probably this one

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

Baa haa haa !

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

So with another 12 car looming I've had an hour innit this afternoon. The rear suspension was lacking on the last one, dampers in particular were not really up to the mark, we ended up pogoing along a couple of particularly bumpy bits.

So with a good selection of stock I decided my track day car had some Ledas to go on it once built so it could donate it's yellow Bilstein 1038's to the common good.

Set about changing them, it soon became apparent why it was terrible before, the GAZ rear adjustable dampers were set to fully soft! No wonder they weren't much cop!

Anyway I soon had the Billies on despite a hailstorm from no where giving me soggy trousers.

While I was feeling keen I decided that these stickers were fooling absolutely NOBODY so off they came. Satellite tracking my arse.

 

A quick squirt down the bumpiest bit of road I know locally and what a difference, rather than the back hopping and bouncing about off the stops now we have rear suspension with DAMPING, fancy that!

[allanallen 528 2 Cars]

I'm disgusted you removed the sticker!

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

I can have a root in the bin and save it for you Bert if you want it that much?!?!

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

So update time.

 

Well all the prep for the 12 car turned out to be a bit of a waste. We set off at a good rate of knots, Al did really well on the maps as it was plot and bash (plotting on the fly). Due to a bit of a wank club rule, even though I am no rally driver and Al is no rally navigator, we were put in the expert class, so started car 9 out of 10. The guy in car 10 was Alex who I have navigated for a few times, a very quick lad and on his home turf. Anyway we were pleased that over the 10 mile section he didn't catch us from a minute behind. Al did really well on the maps and managed to keep me going in the right direction whilst simultaneously plotting ahead to the control we were heading to.

With that competitive done it was time for a steady drive through a neutral section to get to the next comp section. And then issues started, namely a horrendous driveline shudder, inner cv issues. I seem to have s*it luck with shafts and hey presto here we were again. As I had a 45 min journey home I didn't really want to destroy it altogether so we had to call it a night early and I limped it home.

 

 

Quick PM and it seems the boot has got nipped which has started gradually spunking all its grease out. Annoyingly once it had all cooled down it drove me home at 70mph on the M1 good as gold. Ordered an SKF shaft from Mister Auto so soon had it back together.

 

So after that disappointment Curborough with the PSCUK was on the cards. Always a good day out, last year I took Pauls TT, the year before the MOP my white track car (RIP).

Anyway the car handles pretty well now with the suspension on it, but Al suggested a big rear bar might be a good idea, so I set about one I had in stock and shortened it to suit.

 

 

Took the car for a bit of a blast on the way to the March Derbyshire group meet and got a decent enough shot of the old shed.

 

 

So Curborough. Weather forecast was looking pretty poor, met up with a few of the Yorkshire Bastards for breakfast near the A38, as we were eating breakfast in the pub it was snowing outside! Not ideal.

The blue shed was on the trailer, I'd decided the Falken road tyres on the car weren't ideal for Curborough, not least when I looked at the date stamp on the rears when I had them off to change the rear ARB, 13 years old eeeek!

So I dragged a set of 888's out and popped them on for the day.

As it turned out the weather was really kind to us, a few short light showers, and then 1 isolated 5 min downpour mid afternoon, but otherwise fairly mild in the end even for Curborough which is usually a windswept place to say the least.

Took the car out for a run round, despite it "supposedly" having a sump baffle (I have not had the sump off myself) it annoyingly showed signs of oil starvation around the long top bend when attacked in a clockwise direction. I hate having to drive around the car but nothing I could really do on the day other than overfill the oil level slightly to give it a bit more to play wit. Because I was aware of it I was careful and went steady round that corner. No bottom end knocking, but the tappets got noisy a couple of times, not ideal. Even though I'd taken it on the trailer I didn't really want to rattle it to destruction so called it a day about 3pm and loaded it up.

Still had a good day out though, round the rest of the circuit it was pretty good for what it is.

 

 

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

So with winter weather looming, and motor club 12 car season also looming, put my laser away and dug out the Miami.

 

Few jobs to do

 

 

 

Quaife atb lsd and challenge spec front Bilsteins

 

 

 

I knew there was an issue with oil control despite there being receipts for "sump baffle". With it removed this is what I found. No wonder it was having problems. Terrible!

 

 

Made a simple jig to hold the pump in place to determine what to make

 

 

Then made a simple baffle before welding it into place.

 

 

Proof of the pudding is of course in the eating, so I have tested it thoroughly on a roundabout that I know would make the gauge dip before, now no problem, even on 888's and with the diff.

The car is also transformed as expected, the dampers are a bit fidgety at low speed, but iron out bumps and rough road like nothing I've ever used before, and are also excellent when pressing on a bit. Probably too hard I'd say for an everyday road car mind you, the B4's on it before are a good all rounder.

[petert 587]

What about long left handers?

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

They don't present as a problem, but then its a car used almost exclusively on the road. I considered an XU10 sump I have one, but I'm more concerned about the ground clearance aspect with the extra depth, it does do some club level 12 car road rallies so ground clearance is important at times.