My Peugeot 205 GTI

Group A rear beam mounts fitted. Good!

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Bloody great hole in the crossmember that appeared when I dropped the spare wheel cage. Bad!

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That's my next Saturday morning accounted for then :rolleyes:
The rear crossmember where the beam mounts sit doesn't look in brilliant health either, but I've given it a thorough prodding and it's not even close to perforating. Still needs a good clean and paint to prevent further rot. I swear this thing was parked under the sea or something.
 
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Keep up the sterling work. Great to see someone putting the time in on something like this. You enjoying it properly yet or in the honeymoon period still? :D
 
Lopéz said:
Please, I'd be interested.
Click to expand...

Forgot I didn't get back to you on this one. They performed very well, day started out sopping wet and dried out in the afternoon so went in all conditions. Pretty strong grip in the wet conditions, enough to nearly pick the inside front up off the ground. Nice and progressive on the limit, no nasty surprises. No communication through the wheel though. I couldn't say whether that was down to the car or the tyre though, but it also had a similar numb feel on the previous P6000.
 
Cheers for the feedback.

Today's job. Bleurgh. Common rot spot on these. Not particularly neat but it will never be seen by anyone except me and the MOT tester from underneath.

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It'll get painted up tomorrow.
 
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Rotten crossmember patched, that was an interesting job. Welding under the car, on my back, with a big floodlight so that I could see what I was doing.
Got molten spatter down my sleeve and now have a nice big burn on my arm, oh and the underseal inside the crossmember cavity kept catching fire.

Other than that it went swimmingly. To cheer myself up I gave it a quick hoover:

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And fitted a new gearstick gaiter:

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Next up, blowing exhaust manifold. I'm missing a stud, which has sheared off. People on the owner's forum have used Loctite 5920 to seal manifolds with missing studs before so I've got some before I resort to taking the engine out to redrill it, but I'm not holding out a huge amount of hope.
 
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It's always fun wire brushing bits of burning underseal off a car. I remember the red one you had because you changed the headlight units to new ones which made them look really bright.
 
Yup! It has a lot of electrical issues, broken glass, a few other problems....

Crossmember patched on the black one. Not my finest hour but it's seam welded and solid. Now I need to drop the rear beam, grind the floor back and epoxy mastic the lot. The seam sealer is a temporary measure really.

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Good stuff, cutting and welding old rusty tin is a proper chore, the none fun side of tinkering with cars. On the mini, I'll be bare metal priming with electrox then putting epoxy mastic on top of that.
 
Sick of my boot looking like terrible things had happened inside it:

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Situation (nearly) remedied.

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I want to replace the side carpet and paint the boot slam panel, but it's too cold really for painting at the moment.
 
Snapped a driveshaft on the way home from work last week. Changed into second, floored it, BANG, rumble, no drive.

Considering the shafts in these are pretty weak that's the first one I've ever had let go. Kate towed me home and I got to work.

Driveshaft had snapped off at the hub on the driver's side:

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It's supposed to be part of that:

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What should have been an easy job was made very difficult by 2 nuts. The long shaft on the 205 passes through an intermediate bearing which is set in the same casting as the lower rear engine mount. There are 2 11mm nuts (well, they were 11mm once upon a time) that secure two long bolts in the shape of hockey sticks which hold the shaft in place (not that it needs holding - it siezes into the intermediate bearing with no help from anyone)

In the end I had to take the whole lot out - shaft and engine mount and replace it with the engine mount from the red car, the shaft was completely wedged in to the bearing, and the 11mm bolts rounded to nothing.

Hateful job!
 
Yeah they aren't exactly robust I must say.

Grovelling round under the car doing the driveshaft was miserable work, so whenever I have to do something miserable I balance it out by doing something more pleasant.

So, I repaired my courtesy lights which weren't working (the plunger switches were corroded internally, replaced them with universal ones)

Next, I gave the carpet a good scrub.

Then I fitted footwell lights - I have used cathodes to do this in the past but they're a bit fragile, so I used those cheap LED strips you can get on Ebay for a quid - red to match the carpet.

Quite pleased with the final result:

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The light isn't quite as intense as the picture makes it look. It's just a nice subtle red glow.
 
How having a light by your feet makes you a "Chav" I'm not sure, but thanks for your concern.
 
I've had footwell lights for years! Since I had my Mondeo which was around 7 years ago now. It works in the same way as backlighting your television, reduces eye strain and tiredness.

Looks nice too.
 
Do you have them linked up to the interior light circuit or on their own?

I think they look good. Not like they're blue or anything ;) I'd have no problems fitting white LED strips to the footwells of my car.

Nice work Leon. Car looks good. Do you plan to finish the red 205 or has it become a donor for this one?

I feel your pain with snapped driveshafts. I did this about 18 months ago.

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The shafts tend to rust under the rubber vibration damper causing it to weaken. Is where your shaft snapped a common failure point?
 
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