[Car_Overhaul] An Idiots Adventures. 205 Destruction

[mowflow 67]

Update time. It feels like a very long time since the last update so am surprised it was only October.

 

So, with the rear of the car sorted I moved onto the front. I knew at least one wing was gubbed, there was a bit of rust on the near side (i need to google these terms every time) chassis leg and a bit of a hole in the floor near the front of the handbrake caused by the hole for the self taper that fixes the handbrake surround just rusting out. I learned at least one lesson with the back end though. Don't strip all the undersell until you've fixed the known holes. Cleaning all the steel and leaving it exposed the last time was stupid.

 

So front end off

 

From reading here I expected the headlight panel to be partly made of brown dust and I wasn't disappointed.

 

Of particular note is the hole near the tow eye. I'm positive there was a bit of an accident with this side at some point. The outer wing panel is definitely original but it has been off at some point as it had weird spot welds near the headlight and it's had a crap paint job. There was also a bit of welding near that tow eye which was so crap it actually gave me confidence in my own welding. The wheel arch and back of that panel had also been covered in some sticky black s*ite which had been useless at preventing rust hence the inner wing being a mess.

 

The dodgy repair

 

Welds drilled out and crusty panel binned.

 

The offside wing wasn't bad. Bad enough to merit cutting some of it out though.

 

 

 

Unfortunately I still haven't taken any pics of this side repaired but it is repaired, i promise.

 

Then the near side which was a wee bit more involved. The return on the end of both bits along with a fair bit more of it had been blown away by a pie of the finger and a gentle breeze.

 

 

The rot spread pretty far and the addition of that ladle shaped indent under the washer bottle persuaded me to just cut the lot out. Cut it, made a template out the cornflakes box, transferred it to steel and made a panel that sort of fitted. I should probably have checked but i really hope the ladle shaped bit didn't have an important purpose. if it does it will be hammer time.

 

 

 

The vertical part of the inner wing was also pretty bad and I didn't really fancy trying to make the bowl bit at the end. So before melting that other bit in I posted a cry for help and Juttie205 kindly supplied a healthy replacement panel left over from his Dimma project (my next born will be named juttie205 in return). So it was safe to cut it all out.

 

 

At this point I stood back, looked at my handy work and started to doubt my sanity. Being someone that does nothing even remotely like this for a living (or at any other point in my life) I started to think about possible future pitfalls with the repairs. Mainly wings sticking out 2 inches with bolt holes not lining up and boss eyed headlights. I should probably have just drilled all the spots out on everything here and replace the whole lot as full panels but I didn't fancy trying to source all the panels and for some odd reason I'm better (less awful) at but welds than I am at spot welds.

 

I cut the needed part for the new panel with a big overlap and bolted it on with the outer wing to ensure it lined up at the end. I thought I was pretty bloody clever coming up with this.

 

I then cut through the 2 panels with them bolted and clamped together. Unfortunately the panels must all have shrunk when i left it for a few days because when I went back to start welding it this panel was about 1cm to short. Fortunately enough to bridge with weld using a copper plate. I took a pic of this but i'm not showing it as the bridging welds look awful, they cleaned up well though.

 

So this side all got welded up

 

So with that all done it was on with the sensory depravation gear and back under the car for some hot grinder action

 

This update was long over due. I'm a fair bit on from this now with the front half of the car all cleaned off underneath now. The gearbox is out and everything is off the bulkhead to give it a proper clean. The headlight panel was welded on last weekend and i'm hoping to get the first coats on the underside this weekend. Pics of all that soon.

[rallyeash 155]

fair play, good work too!

[shooter mcgavin 37]

Looking good mate. Remember I have lots of spares kicking around just now.

Im sure I have a 1.6 rear beam, drove fine but haven't stripped it so unsure of tube condition.

[mowflow 67]

Cheers, just got a cheap base model beam tube delivered this week. Do you still have the bearing puller you made? I can get most of the parts but can't figure what to use for the puller part that fits inside the beam to catch the bearing.

[shooter mcgavin 37]

I'm sure I do but will have to look it out, not seen it since I done mine.

[shooter mcgavin 37]

I don't envy you at all doing the underside on the ground. Great job!

[mowflow 67]

Good god! 6 months since I last updated this. Apologies for this being so long yet again. I'm a waffler and I guess if i updated more regularly it wouldn't be so bad.

I’m afraid this update is going to be rather disappointing for 2 reasons.

1. I started a new job in April and as such have less time to fanny around with the car. At best i manage about 3 hours maximum a week. And when that time is split 20 minutes trying to figure out what a part is and where it goes, 2 hour actually making progress, 20 minutes just standing staring into space with my mouth open and 20 minutes trying to wash chemicals/bits of metal out of my eyes or running around screaming looking for plasters. progress is slow.

2. My new work were stupid enough to send me to Paris for a week equipped with a company credit card. As you do I used it to get blind drunk the first night I was there, took a trip to the seedier side of town and ended up getting my phone taken by a pick pocket. WTF has this got to do with the car you may ask. Well, I had all my photos on my phone (not backed up). The most worrying thing about this is that I had been taking pictures of every plug, wire and hose as I was removing them so i could reference it as i put it back together. This means I’m going to be asking a lot of stupid questions over the next while.

Anyway, onto what’s been done.

Stone chipping

The underside and arches are all now fully coated with Upol gravitex. It's given a nice OE finish despite it being the first time I used a compressor and only discovering that you could adjust the pressure 2 weeks after doing the job. I now have a full collection of Jackson Pollock style tools and 2 matching bikes.

Engine bay and interior painting

The engine bay is all painted up. Unfortunately I don’t have the space to remove the engine so i had to get creative. I’d removed the gearbox as i wanted to sort an oil leak in that area. With the subframe and all that s*it off this meant the engine was only on the one mount. I rigged up a load of blocks and props like you'd see on an indian building site and unbolted the remaining mount. I then just lifted the car up clear of the engine without moving anything. Sadly those interesting pics were on the nicked phone.

Interior floor is also all painted up (same goes for pics here). I’m using the car as a shed at the moment so pics don’t exactly show this at it’s best.

Gearbox

I took the box out so i could replace the input shaft oil seal. I'm guessing it was leaking because the bell housing was full of oil that smelt like ale hangover farts. Didn’t realise you had to get the clutch fork off for this and not realising you could punch the pin out i decided it was best to just get the grinder out and destroy a perfectly good fork. While i was in there i removed the clutch (which was relatively new) and the flywheel to replace the crankshaft oil seal. I don’t think this needed done as that area was clean(ish) and dry(ish), I did it anyway so sods law says it’ll now pish oil everywhere.

Corner truly turned

last weekend was a benchmark for me as i finally reunited the gearbox with the engine. The engine itself still looks pretty manky in the pics. I know it looks weird next to the overly painted up gearbox but after several days cleaning crap off the block i decided it was as clean as it was ever going to be without fully stripping it and getting it blasted. My only source of cleaning was elbow grease, a job lot of Astonish and a steam cleaner i stole of my mum. As it still wasn't clinically clean i figured i wouldn't get a good long lasting paint finish and patchy flakey paint would look worse than it's natural, cleaned up finish. I decided the same for the head and also the thermostat housing and the bit that goes above that (so clueless i have to look at pics in the haynes manual to find out WTF things are).

The engine bay is in no way done (obviously since half of it is still lying on the floor). Still got more cleaning, painting, plating and polishing to do. Not to mention tidying up my dreaded loom. Expect lots of pictures of that saying "what does this plug into" in the near future.

I've started putting other bits on such as the fuel filler, fuel lines (which after reading about the nut and olive costing £150 I decided to "preserve" my relatively good old ones). Few wee bits in the bay including the pedal box and that big round thing that bolts onto it. I got a local guy to make me up some polished cupro nicel brake lines (I know but when i added up buying the materials and a decent flaring tool this worked out cheaper). I plan on getting the big front to back pipe shaped and on soon so i can get the tank back in, then it will be beam time just to balance the cars weight on the stands.

Plating/general tarting

I was given a home plating kit by my dad who had found it in a box of motorcycle bits he’d robbed from someone. Unfortunately the yellow passivate had burst open and destroyed half the stuff including the instructions. I managed to source all the chemicals via the internet but as a result I’m probably on a CIA watch list now. I followed instructions found on an Alfa forum that seemed to have been translated from another language so i just made a lot of it up.

Possibly unsurprisingly I’ve had mixed results with the plating due to a number of factors. Using the wrong power supply, not getting the bits clean enough, leaving bits in too long etc. Most of the bolts and small brackets have turned out ok but i couldn’t be arsed doing all the washers so just ordered a load of new stainless ones along with BZP flanged nuts for all the small non stress/heat critical areas.

I've been making further use of that steam cleaner and job lot of Astonish on various other bits so have all the beam bits, sub frame and lots of other wee bits and pieces all painted up. I was going to Powder coat some of these parts but after talking about it with a local fabricator who was doing some railings at my house he said it's generally not brilliant. it made sense that long term if accessible bits were painted it would be easier for me to do any necessary touching up in future to keep them good rather than having to strip everything to recoat. Could be misguided but hey ho, it's done now.

Onwards

Lots of stuff still to do but it feels like the corner has been turned now and having a lot of the parts all sitting looking like new ready to go back together makes a difference. It feels like it's really been 6 months of prep.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far.

Nice OE orange peel look by sheer dumb luck more than anything else

Sparkly interior now being used as a shed

Engine kind of sort of in and a few replated/cleaned bits

Box in. I bolted this all together last night and put a new mount in. Can anyone tell me what size nuts I need for the mount? Are they regular sizes/threads which ones were nyloc?

I had trouble with the clutch fork arm pin fouling the box as it turned. I solved it by managing to squeeze a dremel into the are and taking the tip off the pin. now the box is in i see the arm wouldn't even have went round that far anyway. Bugger!

A nice blurry picture of some successfully plated parts

[Bogsye 22]

Great stuff - looks like good progress. I seem to have the opposite in that I have a load of photos on my phone but no progress!

 

Tried the parts plating too - your's looks good, although mine did too until the 'balance' of the electolyte went all to cock and the later results looked more like your Jackson Pollock tool set. On the flip side if I ever get into tropical fish, I've got half the gear now to get started.

[mowflow 67]

And so another 10 months go by with this thing still on axle stands.

I do have a valid excuse. It’s been a difficult 10 months for us. Just 8 days after my last update we took my 3 year old son to the docs thinking he had a viral infection. 12 hours later we were being admitted to Yorkhill Childrens hospital after being sat down in a room and told they were pretty sure he had Leukaemia. Turned out they were right so we’ve spent much of the last year in hospital putting our son through various things we’d wished we’d never know about let alone have to do. It’s going to be a long road with another 2.5 years of treatment to go but we are now on the maintenance stage which is a little easier on Nathan. He’s even getting his hair back now which regrettably means I’m the only baldy in the house again.

So yeah, the car. In 10 months i’ve probably done about the same amount as someone like MrFirepro would do in an afternoon. And i’ll apologies now for the lack of “work in progress” type pics.

So I sacked the home plating off. The home kit is just too limiting to small parts and the results are too mixed. Following some threads on here I sent a box of grime off to a man down south, within a week he called and asked for a birthday card stuffed with some notes an odd way for a millennial such as myself to conduct business but hey ho. Pic below of most of the bits I sent off. Sadly I never laid it all out and took a pic on their return as i was too excited.

So things done:

Beam parts painted and put back together using big hammers. I’ve probably ruined all the new bearing etc doing this as in my mind, shiny new parts that are all greased up should just glide together effortlessly. I wanted to put this back together at a 30mm lowered height so I made several failed attempts at making a dummy shock using junk found in the garage. In the end I just used a piece of iron bar that i cut out of our garden gate (wife was chuffed about that) with 2 holes at what i believe is the correct distance (think it was 315mm but don’t quote me on that). As expected it was a bit shonky and i’ll be amazed if the car doesn’t sit like a drunken sailor when it eventually gets down on the ground.

Beam is now on the car with some 306 GTi6 Bilstein B4s and BBM solid rear mounts. Hopefully it’s noticeable that I’m using new nyloc nuts which i sourced with yellow plating. I decided to replace washers and non stressed fixings (mainly all the m6 and m8 flanged nuts) with stainless.

The front subframe and steering rack was stripped down, cleaned, Deox C, hydrate 80, painted, rebuilt, screwed back together and reattached to the car. Again, failed to photograph before putting it on the car. I’ve replaced all the engine mounts with Febi Bilstein jobs but have replaced the fork bush with one of the BBM nylon jobs. I want the car the feel slightly tighter but as it will just be for Sunday B road fun I don’t really want to be vibrating and crashing about the road. not sure how this set up will be.

So as I was nearing my goal of getting the car down on it’s own 4 wheels I decided it would be a good idea to forget all about the running gear and turn my attention to the engine bay.

I sold the grotty MX5 which was part of the reason for wanting the 205 on it’s wheels and out of the garage. Plus I am suffering from increasing paranoia that the engine will be seized solid when I eventually go to turn the key. Foolishly I’ve decided not to strip the engine right down because… well, I want to drive this thing one day. I sent the injectors off for refurb, changed the timing belt (which i initially installed upside down and back to front) replaced the water pump, replaced crank and a few other oil seals, new mounts, inlet gasket and a few other bits and pieces which i can’t remember.

Was desperate to get some of these shiny bits back together for a look

Most bits back where they should be and starting to replace all the hoses. Got the silicone breather hoses from BBM and have the rubber water pipes currently on the way.

I’ve had nightmares about the wiring. My ineptitude at a lot of stuff is well documented here but I tend to avoid electrical stuff because i’ve heard it can kill you. I did try to extend the lead on a lamp once, an event that ended badly when i decided to strip a wire using my teeth. Sadly i never had the sense to unplug or even switch off the other end which was still plugged into the wall.

Everything appeared to work when I removed it and I only broke a few connections when I removed it. I still didn’t trust it or my ability to do a few crimp connections, especially when one was the battery + to shunt box thingy connection. After asking for advice here I sent the old looms to Miles and he sorted them out for me. He was even kind enough to attach idiot labels to every plug for me. A huge help but I still spend a hell of a lot of time trying to work out simple stuff that normal people just know. Such as, no, the battery “-“ does not connect to the “+”…. took me about 3 hours of searching through photos and threads on here to work out where it does actually go (still not sure i’ve got it right).

So that’s where i am now. I’m currently trying to plug all the connections back in inside the car. Took lots of pics to help me work this out but as usual i’ve missed 1 or 2 bits so am going to be posting more questions stating the obvious as I currently have empty slots on the fuse board and spare plugs on the loom that don’t fit those empty slots.

Thanks for getting this far.

[Anthony 1,003]

Sorry to hear about your son, but hopefully the worst is over now and glad to hear that he's on the mend

 

205 is looking good though and it's always encouraging to see it (slowly) coming back together again.

 

One thing I did spot is that there looks to be a seal/cover missing off the top of the steering rack, just below where the lower column clamps on. I think it's more a dust cover than anything, but probably best fitting it if you have it somewhere in the mountain of parts that's likely piled up awaiting refitting.

 

Who did the plating btw and roughly what did they charge, as I've got another load that needs doing and the last place that I used, whilst the results were good, were quite expensive and lost several parts (largish bits, not just the odd nut or bolt which would be more understandable)?

[mowflow 67]

Thanks Anthony, and thanks for your help with the parts you've supplied so far.

 

Are you talking about a seal/cover that goes over the point where the big oily bit comes out the top of the steering rack? I noticed a cover on here on a pic on someone else thread but i never had one on mine. I will need to try to source one.

 

I used this guy for the plating http://www.electroplateuk.co.uk All the stuff you see in the first pics plus the sump and a few other bolts and brackets not pictured cost £30. A few people on here recommended him and I'm very happy with the work. You probably won't have the most reassuring conversation with the guy on the phone as he just said to me to pop in or just send the stuff in the post and he'd take a look. He was friendly but was shouting over a machine and didn't seem to want to know much about what I was sending. He didn't lose a single nut, took him about a week or so to call back (this time a more friendly chat) and say my stuff was boxed up and ready if i wanted to send a courier. I sent a courier and he requested I send payment by just sticking cash in the post. Old school.

[Anthony 1,003]

Yeah that's the seal I'm talking about. As said, I think it's more a dust cover than anything, but with the amount of muck and grime that tends to end up in that area on 205's it's probably best having it there fitted.

 

Thanks for the recommendation on the plating - I've seen the company name mentioned on here before by a couple of other members and the pricing certainly sounds pretty reasonable to me. I'll certainly give them a shot for the next batch of bits

[Bogsye 22]

Glad to hear your son is on the mend - that sounds a very stressful period.

 

Progress looks excellent on the car. Really putting my complete lack of progress to shame. Need to find the motivation to do the hideous underseal stripping... A task list is what I need ....

 

On the flip side, son no.2 is 6 months old, so that's another pair of hands on the way for the fiddly reassembly jobs!

 

Brian

[Juttie205 123 2 Cars]

The plating price never seems to change no matter how much you give him its allways £30 but top guy and quick turnaround i recommend them to everyone.

[mowflow 67]

I'll try using this thread like its intended and start asking my dumb questions here to see if I get a reply. Try to keep the rest of the forum tidy.

 

I'm currently putting all the plumbing back in and can't figure some of the hoses.

1. The hoses from the top of the expansion tank. The on on the left goes to the front of the car then across to the drivers side to top of radiator. Where does the one on the right hand side go? I'm guessing bottom of throttle body or the tap thingy next to thermostat.

2. I have a short S shaped hose (about a foot long) where does this go? My best gues is its actually this that goes on that wee tap thingy and other end to left hand tube underside of throttle body?

 

Can anyone confirm please?

 

Other question. Pipe from the back of the SAD goes to one of the pipes on the air inlet right? Pipe on the front goes to the front bottom of the inlet manifold?

[Telf 224 2 Cars]

Hi mate- if you look under Articles - Engine related - SAD there is a diagram of where the SAD pipes go