#1: Project Becky - 206 1.4HDi Author: Squeakers, Location: EssexPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2022 11:16 pm ---- Hi all,
First post here and this is the story so far of my 206. The *fingers crossed* cheap, reliable, fun runabout for my first car.
The plan was to find a car for under £1000 that meet the criteria of:
- Cheap to run
- £30 or less to tax
- Good Condition
After a few months of searching, not finding much due to the spike of car prices due to the pandemic and viewing cars that were just in awful condition, I came across this pug in early Jan 2022.
93k miles, 3 owners, good condition, a majority of it's service history, meet the criteria.
So... I bought it.
I also happy to find a receipt for a full service with every filter changed and four new injectors in the handbook just 3000 miles ago when I got home, costing 60% of the cars value that I just paid.
It had 2 months MOT on it but it wasn't short because the seller thought it wouldn't pass but the fact he was emigrating to Canada and it was time to sell his daily.
There were a few things that needed to be done.
Here is the list:
- Replace corroded front springs before MOT (advisory on previous MOT)
- Sort and touch up it's few small areas of light surface rust (spot on bonnet, small areas on both wheel arches and some on the top of the hatch)
- Replace timing belt (no mention of replacement)
- Replace lower balljoint dust covers (nearside split)
- Replace broken bulbs (sidelights and reverse lights)
- Get some spare keys. (only got one basic key, would like spares and have remote central locking back)
Some more pictures now,
Split balljoint boot
And already the fun begins! All the front wheel bolts had been way overtightened and because of this the locking wheel has been stripped. Cue the process of trying to remove it.
Well that didn't work. So the new plan was to drill it out from the back. This required removing the lower balljoint and driveshaft. Getting the lowerball joint out, let alone in was an absolute nightmare due to the design of the wishbone. This part will definitely return...
The smaller hole was from the first drilling where it wasn't perfectly straight.
This was a success but it took alot of time considering this was just to get the wheel off! (my father holding locking wheel bolt)
Since I did not wish this to happen again, I replaced all the locking wheel bolts with standard bolts. Nobody is going to bother to steal a set of 14" wheels off a 16 year old Pug.
Now, time to replace the front springs.
Strut Removed.
Holding the strut with the new spring fitted
Removed the old ball joint dust cover
Replacement dust cover fitted.
Now, refitting the lower ball joint was a nightmare and we just couldn't do it. we ordered this tool off ebay just so we could have the leverage to pry the wishbone down low enough. (yes we did loosen the wishbone to help, image is from doing the other side)
But at least that nightmare was over (or so I thought )
New track rod ends.
New brake discs.
End Result (before wheelarch liner was refitted)
Next up, the alternator story...
I'm still a bit annoyed at myself for this one but in short, I spilt some water over the alternator while filling up the washer fluid. I dried it up the best I could and but when the car was started, there was lots of foul smelling smoke coming from the alternator even for 20 mins after the car was immediately shut off. Shortly after that, the car decided to do a complete electrical shut down and nothing would work after hours of trying to figure it out. The next morning, it was perfectly fine... (assuming the alternator's extreme death caused something for the car to shut itself down and needed time to reset itself, honestly no idea and never had any issues since)
I managed to get an alternator from another 1.4 HDi that was being broken, just a year older. What I didn't know until after I fitted it, it had a "solid pulley" on it while my old one had a "clutch pulley". This caused a weird belt noise that seemed to go away with time. The old one did not spin properly so it was definitely faulty.
Well that was now fixed.
Few other little things.
Replaced broken outdoor temperature sensor hiding in the mirror base
Fitted larger centre display and the trip computer wiper button.
That worked but now the audio stalk doesn't work but don't mind as can just use the buttons on the stereo unit instead.
New full size spare wheel to replace awful rusted space saver.
Adding slim black plate surrounded and replacing screws and screw covers
Oil and Filter change with fully synthetic after 5,000 miles (but 2 years ago)
Removing rear lights and cleaning behind to change the blown reverse light (but doing both lights) before and after cleaning.
When I mentioned about being happy the suspension nightmare was over, when she went for her MOT, it passed but the front top mounts need replacing as an advisory so the process has to be done all again. Lesson learned for the future to might as well do the top mounts while you are there for the sake of £25 for the pair of them.
Now, 4 months and 2000 miles into ownership, a new problem has been found during a long trip to Cornwall and back. The Clutch is slipping when dealing with higher stress/power situations. (eg going up steep hills in a fully loaded car and giving it too many beans or just giving it alot of throttle going up a hill but most situations, especially in town it doesn't really appear)
So that's now on the list of to do, probably in the summer. Along with the Timing belt and Top Mounts also. Others might have considered getting rid but I plan to keep it and sort these issues out and keep the car for at least the next couple years as a run about until I could afford to get maybe something a little more spicy but that's a way bit off.
My plans now are to get some spare keys made, get the timing belt, clutch and top mounts sorted
My long term plans include wanting to get some better wheels. I quite like the 15" scirocco wheels and maybe the 206 stock spoiler but nothing more in terms of exterior styling since it's not anything special.
That's the story so far, apologies if the post it is too long. I know it's far from the most interesting projects here but I hope you enjoyed the project so far.
Thank you.
#2: Re: Project Becky - 206 1.4HDi Author: 2v50, Location: Eastern ScotlandPosted: Sun Apr 24, 2022 3:09 pm ---- Nice work there - the balljoints are a pain but there is a nack to it. - I have a set of 4 of the centerless 15" scirocco's with new avon's on em I was thinking to sell as I'm getting rid of the CC and its getting sold on the awful black RR alloys it came on, feel free to pm - though you're likely better off looking on gumtree locally.
Not sure about the clutch on the HDI, don't see it being any more fun than doing one on the 1.6 16v!
The 206 stock spoiler would certainly look pretty good!
Looking forward to seeing more - keep thinking I should post all the daft stuff done to my own pugs!
#3: Re: Project Becky - 206 1.4HDi Author: Squeakers, Location: EssexPosted: Wed May 25, 2022 6:11 am ----
2v50 wrote:
Nice work there - the balljoints are a pain but there is a nack to it. - I have a set of 4 of the centerless 15" scirocco's with new avon's on em I was thinking to sell as I'm getting rid of the CC and its getting sold on the awful black RR alloys it came on, feel free to pm - though you're likely better off looking on gumtree locally.
Not sure about the clutch on the HDI, don't see it being any more fun than doing one on the 1.6 16v!
The 206 stock spoiler would certainly look pretty good!
Looking forward to seeing more - keep thinking I should post all the daft stuff done to my own pugs!
Hi there, thanks for the reply and apologies for the late response.
The clutch is not going to be fun but needs to be done eventually. Got all the parts waiting along with the new top mounts to do while the car is all apart.
In the meantime, I got the lexia/pp2000 and have done a few things using that. I made 2 new keys for the car myself with remote central locking along with the old original one and I'm very happy with since not having remote central locking was just a pain.
I've also added cruise control as well and programmed it with pp2000 and that works too so that is all well and good.
While I've had pp2000, there were no codes on the engine ECU when I first got it but just a few days ago, I've been getting an 'antipollution fault' and a check engine light and using pp2000, I've been able to diagnose it to a faulty MAP sensor (or atmospheric intake manifold sensor) since there was a code for that sensor and the live data shows it doesn't do anything and is stuck at it's maximum value. So just waiting for that to come in the post and hope that makes the fault go away.
Have been looking occasionally for some different wheels but not a priority. Strangely found some on a 207 being broken but apparently they have same centre bore, offset and bolt pattern but they were already sold unfortunately.
Hopefully an update in coming weeks or months when the car is all taken apart and off the road for a few days while the big job of the clutch is being done and I'll include pictures of some of things that'll been done in the last few months.
#4: Re: Project Becky - 206 1.4HDi Author: J206PUG, Location: UKPosted: Wed May 25, 2022 9:54 pm ---- Looking really nice, and a fab job of the works you completed. I do miss my 206
#5: Re: Project Becky - 206 1.4HDi Author: Squeakers, Location: EssexPosted: Fri Jun 17, 2022 10:19 pm ---- Hi everyone, just a quick update on some of things that I've done over last couple months.
- Making some spare keys
Bought 2 remote keys with the badge (unlike most the clones) off eBay from a surprisingly local business. (£9 each)
Bought PP2000/Lexia3 off AliExpress for programming the keys. (£50, but can be resold quite easily if I wished)
Had the keys cut to match the existing ones.
After this, I went to my local Peugeot dealer to get my immobilizer code (aka key pin or confidential code). They were actually very nice, was in and out of there fairly quickly and didn't cost a thing.
I set up the PP2000 on an old laptop with a virtual machine running windows xp for the quite old Peugeot program. I had quite a lot of difficultly just trying to get the bloody program to "activate" to let me use it. After a lot of digging online and help from old forum posts, turns out to be due to some poorly translated Chinese instructions which causes a typo on the version number that you are supposed to type in so you can activate it.
Typo fixed, entered the corrected version number and worked first time.
Afterwards, went through the menus, found the key programming part, entered my immobilizer code, programmed by 2 new keys and the original and now had 3 keys to start the car. Hooray!
To get the remote central locking to work, I had to change the batteries in the new remote keys as turns out they were dead, followed the procedure of holding lock button as you turn on the ignition and now had 2 keys to remotely unlock the car!
I am so happy to get this feature back as manually having to unlock the front doors to access the car was annoying.
- Adding Cruise control
I bought a basic peugeot cruise control stalk without the speed limiter (easier to install and don't have any use for it anyway)
As the ones without the limiter are rarer, they were going for quite a bit more than the limiter ones, £30 ish, that it was cheaper to buy one from Lithuania and send it here for about £20.
The stalk just plugs into the stalk area after removing the clip in blanking plate, cut the already embossed hole out of the wheel cowling and it's installed.
Then you need to go into PP2000, go to engine ecu and configuration and change cruise control from absent to present. And next go to the BSI and configuration and setting it to "cruise control 1 without limiter" worked for me despite showing option invaild, it works perfectly.
-Fitting a short-shifter / reducing gear change play
From even first test driving the car, the gearchange feels like you are rowing a boat, lots of play while in gear on the stick and difficult to get into some gears. Not a pleasurable experience.
I bought a fairly inexpensive (£8 haha) while beautifully made aluminium short shifter kit. It replaces the plastic ball and socket (suspect for play) and moves the fulcrum up to reduce the throw. I also bought a spare shift arm (which I'll get too while I unfortunately needed this later) and a nice new gear knob that the nicer 206s have.
This made the gear change very nice, the throw was still a bit more than other cars I've driven but it was a nice sweet spot for me and way less than before. Good throw, nice solid clunk when going into gear, lot less play.
Having read some other posts, the grub screws that the kit includes are a weak point that are known to have issues (which I suffered yesterday )
and making dimples for them to grip would help (they didn't for me)
One of the grub screws had slipped off the lever and had to bodge to make it home where I fitted the spare stock one I had until this issue was well and truly fixed.
- Antipollution Fault and engine management light.
Using PP2000, it told me it was the MAP sensor that was at fault. Confirmed with the live data. Replaced the sensor, cleared the code for good measure and haven't heard anything since. Nice easy cheap £10 fix.
- Changing door-checkstrap to remove annoying clicking
Simple as removing the door card, undoing 2 nuts and a torx screw and replacing the part. Old one was all floppy once removed unlike the new one. Took about 20 mins but didn't get around to it for a while but made quite a nice difference.
- Still to do:
Timing Belt (got kit, no history, will do similar time to clutch)
Clutch (slipping under heavy load, got kit, will do when car can be off the road for a week safely)
Top Mounts (complaining around tight bends, mot tester said steering was heavy due to it, will do while car apart while doing clutch)
Crankshaft pulley (common failure, very annoying/embrassing squealing while car while engine load is applied during low rev range so will hope a new pulley and aux belt will solve it. Will do with timing belt as has to come for that anyway. Have got the new one and looks a better design than original)
While still also looking for things to make it look less low spec and just nicer inside and out. Last edited by Squeakers on Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:51 pm; edited 1 time in total
#6: Re: Project Becky - 206 1.4HDi Author: 2v50, Location: Eastern ScotlandPosted: Tue Jun 21, 2022 3:25 pm ---- Great work there!
That short shifter looks great, now I want one...not actually driving either 206 now so maybe not a good investment just yet!
#7: Re: Project Becky - 206 1.4HDi Author: Sim, Location: West CountryPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2022 6:12 pm ---- Nice detailed thread, brings back many memories:)
Squeakers wrote:
Strangely found some on a 207 being broken but apparently they have same centre bore, offset and bolt pattern but they were already sold unfortunately.
Ended up with two sets of 207 alloys: 15" Monacos (currently sporting winter tyres) and 16" Canberras. Here you can spot a popular mod to sock GTi 180 with 17" Pitlanes. There's just something about the 207 line that fits (figuratively too:)
Quote::
I bought a basic peugeot cruise control stalk without the speed limiter (easier to install and don't have any use for it anyway)
Nice to see it worked a treat. On some Magneti Marelli ECUs like on a 180 cruise control might be locked to "inactive" and PP2000 can't flip it. Still pondering how to find some hardcore reverse engineer or at least who could reflash these uncommon modules..
Will post a thread about our 1.4 HDi road tax beater, which I'll sadly most likely try pass on to someone else. Many project threads exist of these here, with some engine mods too.
#8: Re: Project Becky - 206 1.4HDi Author: Squeakers, Location: EssexPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:46 pm ---- Thanks for the replies everyone.
Have seen a thread on here with a 206 with the Monaco wheels and it doesn't look too bad. I quite like the 17" Hockenheim alloys on the 207 but think they probably won't look right. Part of me starting looking at the 16" Nimrod (GTI 140) wheels but still want the 15" Scirocco alloys just to scratch my itch but either would look alot better than current set.
Think I got a bit lucky on the cruise control since the thread I was following had people saying they've never had it work on their 206 and others saying only worked on 55 plate onwards so just scrapped into making it work. Remember trying the wrong setting on the BSI and my dashboard becoming a Christmas tree, frightened me until I managed to fix it. Still only a cheap £30 tax beater as you say, not quite an enjoyable gti but makes life a bit easier on the longer trips.
Currently rocking around with the spare shift arm, wishing to have the short shifter back but just looking at it to make sure it's 100% reliable and not slip off while going up a hill like last time. If it happened miles away from home, wouldn't be very fun at all.
As I think the mechanical jobs that need doing will be done in the next month or two. Just thinking about sorting out some cosmetics as there are quite a few scratches that the t-cut didn't make disappear and might require the next step along to just make it look better, especially if I do get around to getting some nicer wheels to make it look less 16 year old low spec and closer to a tidy cleaner nicely spec one.
#9: October 2022 Update Author: Squeakers, Location: EssexPosted: Tue Oct 18, 2022 8:57 pm ---- October 2022 Update:
- Trying out LED's
Thought that I would have another attempt at some LED indicators and some LED Reverse lights while the rear lights are apart too. My old side indicators had gone all yellow and the plastic had crazed.
The Old
The New
They are pretty bright and made sure to get the non-dynamic ones as they only look good on wing mirror indicators. Still got them now and working great.
LED Indicators and Reverse Lights
I think they look good but the LED indicators bulbs worked for about a week and then started hyper flashing again like last time and when taking them out, they had got too hot and had fallen apart. Guess that's what you get with these Chinese bulbs.
Got some original orange coated filament bulbs and running those at the moment as don't get any hyper flashing ever and would prefer that.
Reverse Lights are lovely and light up what's behind you in the dark.
- ABS Light, lovely!
I've actually had this ABS fault appear in the background when I scanned my car with PP2000 in May but last month, the light decided to come on permanently.
Seeing it was the ABS Pump had me quite worried as I thought that they might be quite expensive. When reading online, I had read that on many forums that the ABS pump numbers needed to match and although there were plenty of cheap 206 ABS pumps on ebay, my particular part number was usually £100+
My specific code and symptoms were the actual ABS block being faulty, not the ABS controller/ECU which would usually have a dead speedo. I had seen
another forum where the ABS Controller could be separated from the block.
So this is what I did, got an ABS pump off ebay from a 2004 1.4 HDi, part number 9652342980 for £16! Took my ABS pump out with part number 9659136980 and proceeded to remove the 3 torx screws holding the 2 parts together and swapped the blocks over so that I had my existing ABS controller (no need to program too) and no more ABS Light as well as working abs on emergency stop. (Did reset code and test ABS pump in PP2000, old pump did not work on test on PP2000)
- Timing Belt and Water Pump
Something that I'm sure everybody here had to do. Case of draining coolent and removing wheel and wheel arch liner, aux belt, engine mount (jack engine up), upper and lower timing belt cover, timing belt and water pump and doing the reverse of removal. Did make sure to lock crankshaft and camshaft, mark new and old belts with white pen and be very thorough, as well replacing the tensioner, idler pulley, crankshaft pulley and aux belt too.
Look at the date code!
The most surprising aspect of this job was that the car still had its original 17 year old timing belt and aux belt. Both dated 05, 37th week. 100k miles and 17 years of service. I had hoped it had been changed before, in the 6 years of service history that the car is missing but apparently not, although the belt wasn't actually too bad, it still had minor cracking and some frays at the edges. Piece of mind that its been replaced now and the aux belt squealing has gone too, hooray!
- New alloys?
I picked up some 15" Siroccos from Kent for a reasonable price. It was nice to hear the seller telling me that my car was a pretty clean example but sad to hear of his one needing to be scraped due to rust and rear axel failure, but thankful he saved the wheels.
All four wheels had fairly new tyres with 6mm of tread at a cost of £20 a wheel so felt like a no-brainer for the tyres alone, especially since all other alloys I saw needed new tyres.
They did need refurbing but since this is a cheap car, decided to this process myself over the course of a few months when I had the time.
The Process:
Sand alloys with 400 grit to remove paint
Apply metal filler to deep kerbing
Sand away metal filler and make sure kerbing is gone
Mask and prime wheels
2-3 Coats of silver
2 Coats of clear lacquer
Also got some new centre caps and painted them with the same silver. And trying to sand these in the 40 degree heatwave wasn't a good idea either haha. In the end, they turned out pretty well, not perfect but pretty close.
Looking forward to fit these but going to wait for the clutch to be changed and use up the rest of the tyres on the current set of 14"s
- Future Plans and issues?
Get clutch changed, last major mechanical job left as well as doing the top mounts at same time.
Currently in the process of making the exhaust tip better, solved the incorrectly mounted backbox with some longer exhaust hangers so it no longer smacks the bumper when you start the car and now going to chop off the down facing nozzle and fit an OEM looking exhaust tip to match other 206s
Still hoping to get a replacement tailgate with spoiler or just the spoiler fitted as think that would go along well with the larger and wider wheels.
Wiper arm button has partly popped out (but still working) and rear wipers coming on with front wipers (since both happened as same time, assuming need new wiper arm but really don't want to make com2000 apart again so currently just pulled out rear wiper fuse)
Also going to fit my newly acquired 206 gti leather wheel that I found cheap on ebay in lovely condition but think I'm going save it for when the new alloys are on the car too.
Other than that, the car is going well getting daily driven still being fairly nippy to drive and get good mpg too.
I'm sure there are other minor things I have done but forgotten about. Just remembered that I also fitted new aero wipers but the online sizes of both 22" didn't really seem to make sense. So I fitted 22" for drivers side and 26" for passenger side. As they don't interfere, the larger passenger side fits great and gives some extra coverage. 22" for my drivers side seems to be an inch or two too big as it doesn't quite meet the edge of the windshield but it's a minor thing.
Thanks for following the thread and more to come, thank you.
#10: Re: Project Becky - 206 1.4HDi Author: Steve206, Location: UKPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2022 8:10 pm ---- Great to see the update!
#11: Re: Project Becky - 206 1.4HDi Author: Squeakers, Location: EssexPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2022 9:45 pm ---- Windscreen Wiper Mechanism Failure and Replacement
Last week, in the rain, the drivers side wiper just decided to stop working while the passenger wiper kept going. Usually, I would assume that the wipers are both working or both dead, not 1 is, 1 isn't. Tested the wipers from outside the car and hear a clonk from under the bonnet so went to investigate.
Yep, think I can see what the issue is.
Funnily enough, when researching how to remove the mechanism, found an old forum post mentioning a recall. Sure enough, it describes my exact issue. Some further digging said it affects cars built Dec 05 to June 06, mine being a Oct 05, wasn't in the recall window so doesn't appear as recalled on the gov website with my number plate so no new free replacement from peugeot for me then, didn't think they would bother on a 17 year old car with a recall posted 14 years ago so got on with the job as soon as I could as I do need them to work with the rain this week.
Quite filthy under the scuttle panel, removed mud and leaves but not a deep clean as wasn't much sunlight remaining and needed to get the job done. (try not to start job at 3pm in winter time)
What an absolute palava and faff that was to get out. Barely any room to get the bulk head bolt holding it on for a start, no room to move or wiggle the thing out, had to disassemble the intake system and struggled to get the new old in as there's a wiring harness that gets in the way of the bulkhead bracket.
There is the old broken part, and now to put in one from a scrapyard for £20
To add, while I was taking the intake apart, the turbo intake pipe had been previously broken in 2 and bodged with tape. New pipe is about £13, but also had to bodge with some tape for the meantime.
Wipers all back together and working as a pair again. Think I've put the passenger one back on a little too high but works fine with no issues in the meantime. Hopefully the car doesn't throw another 'little' issue at me for a while.
Plus a little bonus, hitting 100k last week. 6300 miles since started driving the car in early march.
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