Old blog entries:

12th Sept

One of the cars now has a name...
My son informed me the gti6 is called 'The Monster' because it's black, lives in the dark (the garage) and makes loud roaring noises.

When I asked him what he thought about me transplanting The Monster's engine into the cab, he said 'Scary!'

'Nuff said I guess

The Monster won't be making loud roaring noises soon though, probably more like a tinny 'woofle' - I've bought a cheap pattern part gti6 back box off Ebay to quieten it down a bit whilst I'm testing it. Wonder what he'll call it then?

Need to sort the gti6's flashing airbag light. Think I'll do a cambelt swap first though before spending any time on non-engine jobs though, and then I'd need to swap over the cab's wheels so I can give it a trial run through the MOT.

Oh, and engine will need a good clean and polish so it looks as good as the one in the Cab. .



10th Sept - fiddling with the cab
Fitted the round headed mist washer jets (£6.99 from Ebay) to the cab - perfect!

Removed the spare wheel and carrier. Noticed the jack was so rusty it'd probably fall to bits if it was used! Added a can of Tyreweld to the toolkit and made sure I'd got AA membership details in the glovebox - a lot lighter and a whole lot more effective than that rusty wheel and knackered jack

Found two nice single gauge metal rust traps near the rear bumper (car MUST be made of good steel if they haven't fallen to bits yet - on a 70's/80's Lancia they'd have dissolved before it left the factory!) with large rubber-mounted weights behind them. Could think of no earthly use for them except to stop resonance (they can't be for handling - putting the weight that far back would make handling worse and they can't be to even out weight distribution or put load on the rear wheels - the heavy hood does that anyway) so took them out. Tested the car - still seems to handle and emergency stop fine, so they can't have been for anything vital. Made an immediate difference to performance too; time to look into lightening it methinks...

Compression tested the gti6 engine - exactly 220psi on all four cylinders (6 cranks for each cylinder, plugs out, cold) so looking good Found it had a nasty misfire when accelerating under load (which obviously isn't to do with compression) so took the plugs out, and found one was submerged in oil! No signs of leakage anywhere so guess someone must have been a bit careless last time they put oil in it. Replaced thwe plugs and one failing coil pack. Also bled cooling system, topped it up, ran it to 90 degrees, cooled it and undid the rad cap. Got a slight 'suck' rather than 'blow' so looks like it's not pressurising the cooling system thank goodness!

Checked out gti6 exhaust - looks like it's only the extra-loud 'performance' back box which is causing the excessive noise, but it'd cost £250 from my local exhaust dealer to replace! That, the cracked windscreen and 3 bald tyres all discourage me from MOTing it, but a neighbour said, upon seeing the car for the first time, "What are you breaking that for? It's a dead tidy car!", which makes me wibble about it's impending doom once again...

4th Sept - Mist jets outside and inside cab!
Fitted the round headed Xsara mist jets which I ordered from Ebay for £6.99 inc p&p. A doddle to fit, and work much better than the original windscreen washers.

I'm not quite so happy with the interior 'mist jets' though - I left the heater turned on for the first time today, and got a little cloud of fog coming out of the centre vents, which disappeared as soon as I turned the heater back to cold. It didn't smell like oil burning off the manifold (another issue, which I think I fixed), so I suspect the heater matrix may be on the way out.

Looks like another job to add to the list :/

1st Sep - 1.5 hours spent on gti6, when I should have been sleeping

Replaced the ICV, cleaned the throttle body and MAP sensor, and replaced throttle cable with the supplied spare. It's running pretty well now Looks like the neglected K&N air filter was probably responsible for a lot of oily muck in the throttle body, so that'll definitely be going in the bin.

Also fully checked out the nooks and crannies in the car - it's still got original Peugeot mats hidden underneath fancy GTI6 ones, so that's some more useful little bits for the Cab. Oh, and found about £5 worth of loose change so I'm starting to claw back the car's price already

29th Aug - The 306 gti6 donor arrived today.
First impressions were 'oh, this is definitely a scrapper' because the front valence, bonnet and windscreen are severely stonechipped. However, the rest of the car seems to be in excellent condition - the interior is near immaculate, the alarms, etc all work, as do both keys, the gearchange isn't at all sloppy and the engine revs with the delightful ease I'd have expected.

The engine fault (such as it was) turned out to be a disconnected coolant temperature sensor (the connector locking wire was missing; it must have vibrated apart) so as soon as I'd reconnected that and fitted a decent battery, the car revved to life on the 3rd try! It is running very rich and it does have a slight idle issue (no worse than my cab though) so I might well have a look at the icv and lambda sensor / exhaust. On the subject of the exhaust, it is incredibly loud even for an after-market straight through job, so whatever happens that'll be going!

However it doesn't have any service history at all and the ratty-looking front end does detract from the car's appearance quite a bit, so an engine swap is still very much on the cards. This is all assuming my partner & son don't decide they like a black gti6 with air con more than a china blue cabriolet, but I still much prefer the cab's looks.

I think I'll try to get it through an MOT so I can thoroughly check it out over the next month or so (I'll have to pinch the cab's wheels to replace the gti6's near-bald front tyres for a start) since as yet I don't have anything but a very basic idea of the car's mechanical condition. This'll be once I've sorted the ICV, Lambda Sensor and replaced the cambelt (no service history, so it could be living on borrowed time), and is all assuming it is in MOT-able condition.

Assuming I do go ahead with the engine swap, I'll be taking as much of the electrics as I can since I'm a little concerned the melted wire in the door-body loom may have caused damage further back, I couldn't fully repair all the Clifford alarm wiring loom butchery, and it'll be VERY nice to have a working alarm at last I'll also be trying to rescue at least 2 of the alloys since they're less 'kerbed' than the cab's, and rescuing the brakes. I'm not sure if there's any advantage in fitting a 306 gti suspension to a cab though.


28th Aug - More horrors!

Front window slowness sorted and all winder mechanisms greased. Found the nearside door is different to the offside one (suspect it's a pattern part replacement) and that the driver's door loom had snapped through over-use like it would on a well-used saloon.

Despite the good paintwork and interior, this car really has had a lot of use (my exact thoughts were 'What a bodged bucket of bits!', and I suspect the 90k it's done has mostly been 'London miles' (it spent most of it's life in north London) so would really be much higher if you could somehow measure the extra wear and tear of driving around the capital. From previous experience (I've lived in or around London for quite a few years) I know even newish low-mileage cars from central London can be in pretty diabolical condition mechanically, so I'd probably have steered clear of this cab if I'd noticed where the previous owner lived.

In London, cars spend a lot of time sitting in traffic jams with the engines running (more engine wear and chance of overheating), do lots of 1st->neutral->1st changes in traffic jams (leading to worn gear linkages, etc), go over lots of speed bumps and kerbs (more suspension wear) and are far more likely to have been involved in an accident or broken into (hence the heavy 'london weighting' for car insurance).

Eagerly awaiting the arrival of the donor 306 gti6 tomorrow, just hope it's not in better condition than the cab or the two might swap places!

25/08/14 - GTi6 donor found

It's a Ph2 so just right model. It's not running properly, but seems like a MAP sensor fault rather than anything more serious. Interior looks excellent and the alloys are great (shame about the tyres), but no service history and no MOT. Thought it was worth a flutter, and got it for just over £300 off Ebay. It's going to cost a fortune to bring back here though - the car will have to be transported from just outside Bristol!

19/08/2014 - Agh, it's a tapper!

I replaced the clutch cable with a new one from Eurocarparts, which instantly snapped. I've now re-oiled and refitted the original (well under an hour's work) and everything seems fine for the moment. Looks like yet another case of a Eurocarparts bit not being up to the job, so I made sure I got a refund.

The oil flush didn't shift the valve 'tick' and neither did giving the engine a good workout. Instead of fixing the valve tick, the radiator dumped it's rusty brown contents onto my drive when I got back. There wasn't any anti-freeze in the system, but there was a massive airlock. I'm just hoping that's the result of a careless rad refill, and not the signs of a fresh head gasket failure.

Also, when I went to fix the oil leak (which was caused by a leaking camshaft cover) I discovered the camshaft cover gasket hadn't been changed when the head gasket was replaced, and to compensate they'd over-tightened the bolts so much they'd stripped the threads! I'm now starting to wonder whether some baboon's given the head bolts a similar treatment...

One thing's for sure - I definitely paid Retroclassica over the odds for the car considering it's many faults. I've paid over double what I could have got the car for privately in this sort of condition, and as far as I can tell got nothing in return except for good valet and a really amateurish head gasket replacement!

I'm going to thrash the car as much as possible over the next few days to see if the airlock returns, or the valve knock gets worse. If it does, guess I'll either be looking for a better Ph2 china blue (weirdly I like the fake wood console) so I can make one good from two and flog this one on Ebay, or a rough 306 gti6 / Xsara VTS to steal the engine from. It'd be pointless doing all the work of fitting another xu10j4r just to get the engine into the same state it should have been in already, and I figure it won't be worth the bother of trying to sort the existing engine's head problems (assuming things do get worse) because I'd expect to find the head cracked or otherwise damaged, probably damaged valves / guides and maybe totally stuffed threads in the block.

Edit: Yes, the head's definitely stuffed - the cooling system was pressurized this evening even though I've only driven it 20 miles since bleeding it.


05/08/2014 - Stuff to do

First post in the blog, when I thought I'd only got a few little jobs to do

Remove the Clifford alarm before it drives me crazy
Stop intemittently flashing indicators (removed broken Peugeot alarm)
Investigate / Sort out oil leak from camshaft cover - Not realistically fixable - I'll have to bodge this for the time being
Replace clutch cable - Eurocarparts replacement no good, so greased original
Replace worn serpentine belt and clean pulleys
Investigate slight chittering noise when turning left at low speed - was the spare wheel carrier
Investigate slight ticking noise (1 tick per revolution, hope it's nothing serious!) - looks like it is...
Clean up idle control valve - made no difference, misfire is caused by coolant leaking into the cylinder
Service - brake pads / discs, air filter, etc
Top up oil in roof hydraulic system
Replace broken fabric tensioners - cab specific part, keeps the inside of the mk2/3 roof from looking ratty
Perform engine running mod via handbrake switch - cab specific, stops the power hood draining your battery
Sort fake yawn if still present - cab specific, fixes the problem where the roof stops working when d lid is closing
Clean interior and 'feed' leather
Replace worn gear selector linkages
Remove factory alarm (can't stop the indicators randomly flashing whilst I'm driving)
Sort out electrical fault with front windows
Grease all window winder mechanisms

18th Sept - Stubborn monster

Looks like the rust's got into the GTi6's engine bay too - the bolts holding the rounded cover over the left hand engine mount were so rusty they just snapped as soon as I touched them with a socket.

Just as well I'm doing the cambelt though - it looks new enough, but it's so loose there's almost 8cm of free play between the two camshaft sprockets! How it never lunched it's valves is a mystery...

I then spent the rest of the day struggling to undo the crankshaft sprocket nut, which was so completely covered in Loctite it had oozed out and stuck the washer to the sprocket! It eventually gave way, after making extremely unpleasant sounds which made me think I was breaking teeth off the ring gear...

That's as far as I got though - for some reason the numpties I bought the new sprocket off decided a part for a 1988 Renault Espace was an 'equivalent part' to an xu10 sprocket, even though the only thing they have in common is that they're both round. After several angry emails and sending them pictures of the two parts (and photographs of the vehicles, just to emphasize the difference) they're finally sending me the right part.

Meh, sorry, haven't been on here for an age (got distracted by other things) so didn't notice this reply

Guess you've probably got the figures by now, but could have a dig around for them again next time I've got a spare moment.

I've abandoned the 'lightening the cab' work for two big reasons:

As I started to strip the cab down I noticed it had hidden, unreported accident damage and a shady patch in it's history besides the butchered wiring loom and mangled engine

I started to get more and more distracted by other cabs and trying to rescue the donor '6 even though it was plainly never going to drive again

So I ended up scrapping the dodgy cab rather than lightening it any more, and replaced it with a bog-standard Ph3 green cab, which needed a little tidying, etc. That's now gone, and I've got a tired Roland Garros cab coming soon, which will be getting the '6 conversion but definitely will not be losing it's hood