Thursday, April 28, 2005

Oooh.. Presents for me =)

oooh, look what turned up for the little pug in the post this morning! A pair of Philips Blue Vision Ultra H4 bulbs. And also included in the package was a set of W5W sidelight bulbs! YAY!...

After consulting the people over on the PGAC forum, i decided to pay a visit to Powerbulbs.co.uk! I purchased the set for £18 at lunchtime yesterday, and they were deliverd to my office this morning! Very pleased with the service from Powerbulbs!... I should get the chance to fit these today, which im looking forward to, as tomorrow evening, im off to Suffolk, and no doubt, i'll be driving in the dark at some point! My existing bulbs, the "Elta" bulbs i blogged about a few months back really are useless in the dark, and do not light up the road at all! And they also give off a rather naff yellow tint.

According to pictures ive seen of cars with the Philips bulbs in, they give off a nice white / blue tint so im looking forward to that! As said, i should be fitting them today, and taking them for a nice leisurely test tomorrow (15o+ miles), so expect a report of sorts next week sometime!

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

I can see clearly now...

Sunday morning saw me heading over to see my dad. He had in his possesion, 2 brand spanking new headlights for the 106. Got to his place, had the obligatory cup of tea, and then got to work on the pug. Unfortunatly, no camera was available, as i 'forgot' to charge it up!. My bad!

First step was to remove the old headlights. Starting on the drivers side, we started by assessing the clips, and how the headlights were held on. Luckily though, the drivers side light was only held on by 1 clip as i managed to break the others when i had a little accident 6 months back. It seemed as if the headlights had a small plastic clip which clipped onto some 'nubs' on the bodywork, so a bit of excess strength, we managed to prise the headlight off of the car and almost taking the indicator with us! We didnt realise that the indicator is clipped onto the headlight.

Eventually, we removed the headlight from the car, got the new headlight, and transferred the bulbs over to the new unit, and then clipped it straight back in!.. Not a problem, and it's as sturdy as an ox!... Superb!

Next up was the passanger side. Not a problem there, removed the headlight as before, switched the bulbs and went to put it back on!.. Problem now was that one of the clips wasn't holding on to the nub. So out come the pliers, and we squeezed this metal clip (which looked like a paperclip) to make a tighter connection. This appeared to be tooo tight, so we loosened it a smidge, and got it all back together!

So now i have 2 quality, shiny, brand new headlights. The old ones have been lodged in the bin, and i can now focus on finding somewhere that stocks the Philips bluevision Ultra bulbs which i am after!

On a sidenote, Marlboro Red cigarettes are truly shocking... but that's not for here!

Friday, April 22, 2005

Result!

After mentioning a few months back about the need of a set of new headlights, i think im on a right result here!... My dad phoned me on wednesday evening. He said "What car is it you've got? a 206?" to which i replied that no, i had a 106, and it was an M-reg 1995. I asked him why he wanted to know, and he told me that there wasn't a reason, he was curious!... So i assumed that he was looking into why my car seems to have a few flat spots in the rev range!

Well last night he phoned me up and said he has got 2 new headlights for me!... "Back of the net".. He had told his mate who is a mechanic by trade, and his mate was able to sort me out a set! So i asked my dad how much they cost and he said "im not telling you".. So i asked him how much he wanted for them to which he replied "dont worry about it"... Wooo!

I shall be picking those up at the weekend & fitting them to the car, obviously taking pictures along the way for this site!.

Also at the weekend, im meeting up with a few friends of mine who i haven't seen in aaaages!. One of them drive's a kitted up Renault Clio, 17" alloys, full bodykit and a lot of ICE. He has told me he is getting TV Screens fitted in the back of his head rests soon! He's also getting a custom cooling air intake sorted for his engine bay, which is being designed by K-Tec Racing (i think!). On the Clios (like some pug's), the air filter sits behind the engine, so the air filter is sucking in hot air rather than cold air! This is no good as the engine requires dense cold air to run properly! It can still run on hot air, but it doesn't run as well as it should!... So i think i will be looking into something similar! Re-locating my air filter to the front of the engine, to aid in coool air!

Im still in two minds what to do about the car though... so far, i've come up with 3 different ideas.
1) Save up, sell the 106 & purchase a 106 GTi.
2) Save up, sell the 106 & purchase an XSi / Rallye (love the look of the Mk1's) and maybe drop a 16v GTi engine in there..
3) Save up, keep my car, cut rear arches to accomodate 15" alloys, replace existing 1.4 engine with a 16v 1.6 Gti engine. Sort suspension & brakes, source an XSi kit to go on the arches etc

Either way, i want a 16v GTi engine in my car!... Whether it's my 106 that is sitting outside looking rather dirty (found an unmade road the other day so thought id 'rally it up' a bit) or i purchase an XSi and shoe-horn a 16v in there.. or just be done with it and buy a GTi!... It's a difficult decision. Dont get me wrong, i love my 106, but unfortunatly, it's got to the stage where things are starting to go wrong with it. It seems like every other week, im replacing bits & peices! Maybe i'll look for a knackered 106 XSi, and then work on that at the weekends. Learn abit more about mechanics and such forth!.. I can see it now.. Get an non-running XSi for cheap. Dump the engine. Clean the car up, replacing parts as i go! Fit the 16v, drop it and turn it into a right little street sleeper!... Im a fan of the phrase, "a wolf in sheeps clothing". Maybe tune the 16v engine upto about 150bhp!... oooh.. it's starting to come together! maybe it'll happen.. maybe not, but here's hoping (and dreaming)!

Monday, April 18, 2005

Sooo many pipes. What to do...

After the "Engine outlet to heater Matrix" pipe sprung a leak a week ago, i've been driving rather steadily 'just-in-case' it goes again, but on saturday, we set to work getting the old hose off, and replacing it with the new hose from Pug. I picked up the hose on Thursday, £15 lighter, i had a rather bendy black hose, with black braiding around the middle. I assume this is to stop the heat getting to the rubber pipe as it runs around the engine, and very close to the engine block!

Anywho, Saturday afternoon, i phoned up my dad, and he agreed to help me replace it! Top man!

Got to my dad's house about 3ish, and we got to work about half hour later. Had to let the engine cool down slightly! Popped the bonnet, and had a look to see what was what, what went were and how we were gonna replace this hose.

First up, we had to remove the air filter, the housing, and the box which bridges the air filter & fuel injection housing. This gave us a fair bit more room, but still not overly adequate, as the hose runs right through the centre of the engine space, looping over pipes, under brake bits and then into the heater matrix at the back of the engine bay!.. Half hour later, we had removed all the bits we needed to! Thankfully!

Next up was removing the akward clips that Peugeot like to use on the pipes throughout the engine bay! They couldn't be easy and use Jubilee clips all the way through, noooo, they have to use these stupid clips which you need a strong pair of mole-grips or similar to remove! And in a small car, with not a lot of access room, trying to remove these clips is a mission in it's self!

We got the first clip off fairly easily, after grazing some knuckles on the radiator fan and what not. Removing the hose provided some wet t-shirts as the water poured out of the hose. Time for another cuppa, whilst we let the water supside, and the pressure to calm down!

Next up was getting the clip off on the other end of the Hose. Which proved slightly more difficult. There was an identical hose going from the heater matrix into something else, which just happened to be sitting on top of the pipe we wanted to replace. So we had to remove that first, with more grazed knuckles and what-not, we finally managed to remove that with the good ol' mole grips. Then onto the hose we WANTED to remove. The clip for this was twisted around the other way and extremely difficult to get to as it seemed that everything was in the way! After removing more pipes and what not, we finally got the old hose off, and was soon after thrown in the dustbin! Time to get the new hose on!

Reconnecting it was easier said than done. We started from the back of the engine, and got the new pipe on after much deliberation, thinking about how it was going to be done etc. As said, the small 106 engine bay hindered us on our project. But eventually, we got the end of the hose on! And whilst we were working at the back of the engine bay, we re-fitted the inlet pipe i spoke of earlier. Re-adjusting the clips so they were easily accesible for future works! HA! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it Peugeot!

Finally, we got the hose fitted both ends, with some difficultly, but all was done in the end. My dad popped in to the house to get the kettle on, and told me to carry on putting everything back on!.. Not one for hanging around, i proceeded to get it all back on in record time. Dad came out 5 mins later and asked how i was getting on, and i told him i had done it all!. He didnt seem to believe me, and proceeded to check it over, but it had all been done correctly! All pipes back on, everything screwed down and perfectly sorted... i think!

Once we had bled the water system,filled it up and sorted all that out, our efforts turned to the back of the car, where one of my brake lights had blown (again), this is the 5th time since owning the car!... However, my dodgy memory failed me again, and i couldnt even remember what side of the car had gone, let alone what bulb, but with a bit of help, all was sorted!

I guess it's a good thing that all these problems keep happening on the car as im learning a lot on how to fix bits & peices, replacing bit after bit is allowing me to gain a certain amount of knowledge on engine's and give me a bit of an insight into mechanical engineering... I did cover half of this in my college course, but that was 6 years ago, i cant be expected to remember all of it! lol!

The only other problem with the car was Friday night / Saturday Morning. "H" was out with her Girlfriends unwinding after a stressful week! She txt me about 1am askin if i wanted to join her and her friends, so i thought why not!. Jumped in the car and drove the short journey between our place and where she was. Only takes 4 mins tops in the car!... Halfway there, i noticed the car was slightly pulling to the left.. I thought it was all in my mind. When i got to her friends house, 4 mins later, i had to literally hold the steering wheel at an angle to get it to drive in a straight line!.. Pulled up at her friends, and found a flat tyre.. oh joy! So i popped in, had a drink or too, said hello, and then went out to change my tyre... i must of looked rather dodgy changing a tyre on my car at 3 in the morning in a residents car parking bay! But 10 mins later, all was fixed, and the car was up & running again!.. Wooo!

Until next time... The Pug is fully functional!

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

oooh, Smoke, that's not good!

Yup, more problems... Last thursday (07/04), i was driving home from work. This particular day was nice and sunny, i had the windows open, sunroof open, tunes on the stereo, and i was enjoying the weather. Stopped in traffic, checked my mobile, and there was a txt from "H" (My Girlfriend) asking to pick her up from work! Not a problem i thought. Started replying to say i was on my way, looked up to see if the traffic had moved yet, and i noticed a lot of smoke coming from underneath the bonnet... now at this point, i was slightly worried, pulled the car tothe side of the road, cut the engine and jumped out!.

Upon further inspection under the bonnot, it wasn't actually smoke, but steam. One of the water hoses had split and there was water spouting out all over the radiator, which was creating the steam. Luckily enough, i had pulled over outside a Kwik Fit.

Popped in there to see if they had some thick sticky tape to cover the hole so i could at least get home, and they said no, best place was a shop just up the road, but didnt advise me to drive the car due to the risk of the engine blowing up. "Sod it" i thought, they close at 5:30, and it was 5:20. It's a 15 min walk, or a 3 min drive. So jumped in the car, took the back roads to avoid the traffic, got to the shop and asked the old guy inside

me: "Hello mate, i've split a water pipe in my car, it's a peugeot 106, and it's leaking water all over the place. Do you have a replacement?"
Old man: "what sort of car is it?"
me: Peugeot 106
Old man: What sort of pipe is it?
me: Water pipe, coming from a box of sorts which is connected to the radiator, and it leads round the back of the engine, i cant seem to see where it goes
Old man: So it's a water pipe you say?
me: Yup!
Old man: Do you know what it's called?
me: No
Old man: Cant help you then!
me: My car's parked outside, can you have a quick look?
Old man: No, im about to close
me: It'll take you 2 minutes!
Old man: Sorry, cant help!

Sod that, so walked out.. sat in the car and pondered... i phoned my dad, he said he might have some tape at home, and if i could get the car there, he would have a look!... Sooo, i decided to get the car home as fast as possible without risking the engine... Took as many backroads as i could remember, and as luck would have it, i drove past my local peugeot parts dept. Pulled in but they were shut, however, one of the garage doors were open. I poked my head in, and there were still a few guys hangin around. Spoke to one of them, and he told me that the pipe would need replacing at a cost of £15. But labour would be about 2 hours, and Pug charge £79+vat an hour labour.. sooo, to replace a hose, would cost me around £200!. LOL!

Said thank you (politly), jumped back in the car and got back to my dads where he looked at it. The hole was near the top of the pipe, so we pulled the pipe off, cut out the offending section, and replaced the pipe!... Took all of 15 minutes, and has been ok since then. I have already ordered a new hose from Pug, and will be fitting that at the weekend... and the pipe was called an "engine outlet to heater matrix" according to my Haynes manual!

Oh the joy's of owning a Peugeot. Seriously, i wouldn't have it any other way!

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

No More Oil!... Yippee!

Fitted the new rocker cover gasket at the weekend!. Seems to have stopped the oil leak which had left oil under the car everywhere i parked!.. Job done & Sorted!

Also found out what the rattling was in my boot. Everytime i went over a speed hump or opened / closed my boot, something metallic was rattling! So pulled off the plastic covering on the boot, and found the lock support bracket!.. So my rear lock rattles a bit now, but nowhere near as annoying as it was!

Also got my dad to look at the dodgy alarm & the hazard indicator problems i've been having.. no luck there though :(, may require a trip to Peugeot!

Until next time!...