Peugeot 106GTI - The Blown Banana

A fun day of crap weather and a long trek to Nottingham to have a browse over a supercharged Sundance yellow 106 gti. The car wasn't as well looked after as I would have expected for a car of only five years age, visually its quite poor however seems to be mechanically sound. A little bartering and discussing and I paid what I felt was a fair price. A discount was already arranged due to the clutch being shot so a delicate drive home down the M1 was to follow without exceeding 4000 rpm as that's when it would let slip. basically the whole ride home was off boost, seemed pretty smooth with no rattles or clonks.

After getting the car home it was just starting to get dark so decided not to do anything that evening. The following day I washed the car to discover how bad the paint was. The left side of the car needs repainting as does the bonnet with some filler repairs. I made a quick list of parts to purchase from the A5 french car salvage and set off with torx bits and spanners. After a little searching and some more bartering I returned with some standard back light clusters, a tidy un-molested parcel shelf, some hinges for the rear bench and seats, some rear seatbelt buckles, a rear view mirror and to top it off a drivers side heater vent as it was missing its control.

I then started to clay the car and did the boot and offside rear quarter panel. A bit of a polish and wax and it comes up a treat. Will do the rest of the car on and off when time permits whilst waiting for the new OMP fast road paddle clutch to turn up. Check out the beading, not bad.

Ok so the first clutch turns up and doesn't fit as they changed the flywheel for the late ones. A helix race/rally clutch is now on order, whilst waiting for that to turn up I thought I would sort out the wiring a bit as it was a bit messy. Found some bad examples of how not to wire including this live feed to a relay. The wire is completely melted! Haynes isn't proving much help identifying wires either. and one cheeky shot of the blower with the headlight removed.

Helix clutch turned up... compared to the cooked old clutch. Note the extra rivets on the friction plate and the thicker heavy duty pressure plate. Didn't take long to fit, made an alignment tool on the lathe whilst waiting for the clutch so put it to use to make the whole job a bit less hit and miss.

With the clutch done it was time for a little more tidying of the engine bay. A Diesel 106 header tank rescued from A5 salvage did the job spot on and freed up LOADS of space where the other tank was dubiously located. After doing this I moved the Rotrex oil tank forward a bit to make room. Then I got stuck into the wiring and relocated the Omex back into the engine bay and fitted the relays and fuses neatly back into the fuse box and to the outside of it. All looking a bit smart now. Also the radiator fan now works again

A bit of a wasted day today. Got to play around with the engine management to try and get the lambda sensor to work. It gave a few readings then went dead so I presume the sensor is dead. will pick a new one up from the breakers and try that methinks. set the idle to use scatter spark and its now idling at 900 rpm or there abouts, will try and get the idle running off the stepper motor soon to improve it. also set a cold redline of 4500rpm.

I found out the clutch is slipping because the gearbox has blown the input oil seal. I've ordered a new seal along with driveshaft seals, a flywheel cover guard and some new rear discs and pads as I was having a quick look under the rear and found this. hmm no wonder it was squeaking a bit ;)

Just a few pictures of the bodywork that needs fixing at some point as well

Hmm this is what a £400 clutch looks like after it gets wasted in 300 miles due to oil pissing out of the gearbox input shaft seal. I cleaned up the clutch cover and refitted it with the original friction plate for now and a new input shaft seal. If this works I will probably get a gearbox rebuild bearing kit and a limited slip differential. The following photo is of the rear discs and pads. Just a little worn eh? new ones are fitted now so not much left to do before the mot hopefully.

A bit of an MOT prep sesh going on and I'm still struggling to get the emissions down, will have to try removing the boost pipe and seeing what happens. Anyways I fitted some standard headlights, made them fit around the blower and not only are they light the road better but its a little more sleeper and less chav dare I say it. also repaired the washer bottle for now with some fibre glass reinforced filler and fitted the horn using some apocalyptically big tie wrap for now. Decided to paint the front callipers whilst the wheels were off and also remove the rear interior to dry inside whilst I look for the leak. Found the nearside rear light cluster was filling up with water and overflowing into the boot, siliconed up for now. Piks bellow with one of it next to what will be a truly fast car when James gets his act together and sorts out the carbs ;)

The final mot push to get ready involves sorting out the collapsed rear beam. The bearing surface on the drivers side was well buggered and must have been eating away for some time. I managed to get hold of what looks like a low mileage 1.1 beam from French car salvage. Stripped it right down to the bare beam and bashed the bushes out too ready for my Powerflex ones, a 23mm Halfords socket is the perfect drift for the job. Painted the beam yellow and the beam mounts black. All going well at the moment. The torsion bars would NOT budge out of my original arms though (I had to remove the arms with the bars in them!) To get the bars out I stood them upright on a block of wood with the arm at the top supported by the old man. I then proceeded to heat up the arm around the torsion bar and then bash the arm down off the bar using a hefty copper mallet. With the bars out I cleaned all the splines with a triangular file and a wire brush.

A little bit more work done now with the new bearings in the radius arms, grease nipples and a drain hole fitted to allow grease to be pumped in pushing the old stuff out. Powerflex bushes tapped into the beam and that bolted to the car. Set the height to the wheel arches from the top of the discs from side to side to match and then double checked by measuring the distances between the shock mounts. A bit of trouble from the anti roll bar ensued with the end plates not lining up but it turns out the bar has offset splines like the torsion bars so rotating the caps around it until they lined up on a flat surface did the job. All fitted with the torsion bar splines coated in copper grease and the ARB ends coated with good quality grease.

Waiting on the new Bilstein B8 sprint shocks and Apex springs turn up as the front has some rusty lowering springs and I've no idea what dodgy shocks are under the boots but the rear had "Peter Maiden Component, sport up rated units" which are fooked and look really cheap and nasty. Whilst waiting I decided to de-lock the passenger door as its the best way to sort out a buggered smashed in lock from a break in attempt. I took the interior door card out and welded a small piece of galvanised steel plate in there, from the outside. Then ground the weld back and after a good clean got some polyester filler on the job. A bit messy as I added a little bit too much hardener and it went off to quick but will sand down nice with a few more light skims then some paint should do the job.

A few little updates, Started to shave the alcatara to get rid of the bobbles, also removed the rest of the interior, fitted my rainbow components and started dash removal to get to the damn heater matrix

After doing another few shifts at work I've got time to work on it again. Now the heater matrix is back in with the dash all refitted. RCAs for amp also neatly tucked away behind the dash, cleaned and shampooed the carpet, refitted the boot with the sub wired in in the middle of the boot for now. Whilst waiting for the interior to dry out ive removed the exhaust and cut a section out and welded the cat in along with cutting the 3" tip off ready for some 2" stainless tube to go on the end. Finally before finishing for the night I sat and finished shaving the front two seats whilst watching mad max on the box with a beer. The piks below show the interior minus the dash and heater box, the new plenum chamber to inlet manifold seals (previous owner had not replaced and they were covered with silicone and the multitude of socket extensions required to get to the rear plenum chamber bolts from under the car.

With the remapping session coming up and my new shocks in the garage I fitted the rears whilst the exhaust was off for work. With the exhaust off to weld a 200 cell sports cat on I also sorted out 2" exhaust tip which smartens up the rear and makes it even more subtle... just need to try and hide that intercooler too now ;)

Today I took the car to ATSPEED Racing in Rayleigh and after Colin worked his magic its mental! gone from 170bhp at the wheels to 186bhp, combined with road legal emissions, less fuel usage and more throttle response its mint!

Here is a video of it doing a power run at 186bhp :)

Failed another mot which is slightly annoying really. when it was being mapped the AFR seemed good so im not sure why it has such a high CO reading. Colin did me a rough map on his computer that might lean it off enough to get it through the mot and ive got a laptop here that I can play around with. At a loss I decided to polish the door lock with some wire wool and autosol for some cheap thrills! also a pik I found of the start of turning the inlet restrictors