Ok, so here is another instalment of the Peugeot 205 GTI "Bulkhead Forwards" restoration that I'm carrying out.

Having taken the decision to carry out a thorough restoration job on the front suspension, front bodywork, engine bay and engine I have been busy with the strip down, body repair and a major engine restoration. (Which are all covered in the last few blog entries). Now it's time to get on with cleaning and restoring some more components. 

First up is the Gearbox, as you can see in this picture and the ones below cosmetically it's in quite a state. However when I drove the car about 250 miles home after buying it, there were no untoward signs of any major issues. It was quite and all the gears selected easily without any baulking etc. It clearly has a few oil weeps, but the majority of the oily grime has come from the various failed breather hoses and a failed rear crank seal on the engine, which have all been addressed by fitting new parts during the engine work.

So I took the decision not to carry out a major gearbox overhaul, instead I limited myself to giving it a thorough clean and paint, and some new seals, namely the input shaft seal, the two driveshaft seals and the gear selector seals, all of which could be carried out without splitting the casing.

After cleaning I stripped off the 5th Gear end cover and the mounting plates for blasting and painting. 

I gave the outer surface of the casing a coat of Eastwoods "Aluma Blast" paint, which I have to say was very easy to apply evenly and gave a real "As Cast" finish. I will report on it's durability once the car has done some miles. But on a different project I did use it on a friends differential casing. He then found the fill plug was completely seized so applied heat to the painted casing around the plug using a blow-torch. The plug was freed and to my amazement the paint didn't blemish at all! So it's already passed the heat test.

Here's the finished Gearbox, if you click on the pictures to enlarge them, you will be able to compare the painted outer surface with the unpainted surface on the inside of the clutch housing.

I also restored the drive shafts with new gaiters and grease, and a new link-shaft bearing (which was very tired, to the extent that I'm surprised it wasn't making a noise).

My next port of call was to start working to restore the other components within the engine compartment. one of those being the pedal box, brake master cylinder and servo assembly. I'm afraid my camera has corrupted the 'before' pictures, so I can only show you the end result, before and after re-assembly. 

Other than cleaning and painting the only work was to fit a service kit (containing all the rubber parts) to the master cylinder.

And here it is installed in the nice shiny engine bay! Along with a cleaned up De-Gas bottle. That I put through the dish washer (but please don't tell my wife!).

In the first picture you can also see that I have stripped the protective covering from the wiring harness, this is because on close inspection I found a few places with rather worrying damage, so I wanted to give it all a very careful checkover and and clean up before making the necessary repairs. 

And so that's another instalment, I hope you have found it interesting.
Next time I will run through the restoration and assembly of the rest of the engine bay parts, and the front suspension work. 

Here's a teezer of what's to come...

Thanks for your time!

Hi again. Here is the story of my Peugeot 1.9 205 GTI "XU9JA" engine restoration. In the previous blog entries I have taken you through the engine removal and the first part of the engine bay restoration. Now for the meet of the job, the engine work.
Having stripped the whole engine to basic components, the first job is always to clean and inspect everything, some of this is done visually, as with the bearings, and some is done by measurement, the rings, thrust washers and crank journals etc.
What I found was the engine was in basically very good condition for it's age (approx 90,000 miles), but the various components that are designed to wear over time were all at least half way through their usefull life, and so, for this to be a comprehensive re-build, to last the car for another lifetime, those parts needed to be replaced.
So the crank, pistons, rods, piston liners, block, head, valves and the drive sprockets were all perfectly capable of being reused. The bearing liners (big end and mains), rings, every seal and gasket and the drive belts, along with most of the external hoses, and other servicable items, water-pump, thermostat etc all had to be replaced.
While carrying out the process of finding the most cost effective sources for all the parts, I degreased all the Aluminium parts and sent them away for Aqua Blasting, the results of which i have to say surpassed my expectation.
Here's the Cylinder Block "Before" and "After" Pictures

And here's the cleaned Cylinder Head, note the Cam Journals haven't been Aqua-Blasted, I protected these by clamping a piece of rubber hose into them before sending the head away, I wanted to be sure they weren't damaged as the cam runs in the head parent metal. As it turns out the blasting process is so gentle that I could have probably not worried. Look into the clean exhaust port and you can clearly see the original casting joint split line, it really did bring everything up just link new. 

Well almost, it also uncovered a little bit of corrosion on the head flame face - if you click on the 2nd pick to enlarg it, you can see what i mean - some of the damage was very close to the gasket sealing beads, so I decided to take the cautious approach and have the head skimmed. I only had a minimum amount of metal removed (0.2mm) so as not to increase the compression ratio significantly. 

A compression ratio increase allows the engine to run with a more advance spark for increased power, but this goes hand in hand with the need to run higher octane fuel. My plan is to have the car as a daily driver, so I didn't wish to go down the "tuned" route at the expense of having to fill the car with Super all the time.

Also while the block was away being cleaned I got on with the job of re-honeing the cylinder liners, in the 'before' picture on the left you can clearly see the vertical lines of bore wear, I used a "Flexi-Hone' tool to re-hone the bores and give then a nice nutral finish with the marks at approximately 45 degrees to the line of the piston stroke, this type of finish is designed to hold a film of oil on the bore surface when the engine is operating, to lubricate the rings as they slide up and down.

Here's the "Flexi-Hone" Tool, which simply mounts into a hand drill chuck, and a liner gently held in the vice ready for work to begin.

Once the Ally parts returned from cleaning, it was time for re-assembly to begin in ernest.

One part that has a bad reputation on 205 GTI ("XU") engines (both 1.6 and 1.9), is the very small section 'o' rings that seal the bottom of the liner into the block. These are very critical as a failure will see all the coolant leaking from the block water jacket into the oil sump, and the first time you will know it's happened will either be when the engine overheats through lack of coolant or when the bearings destroy themselves because they are being lubricated by an emulsified mess of mixed oil and coolant. They are notorious for leaking after major engine work, but that's almost always because the work has been done while trying not to disturb the liners or the seals, once disturbed it's impossible to know if the o'rings have broken or if some dirt has gone across the seal. So I would have to advise that it's much better to bite the bullet and remove the liners, do a very thorough job of cleaning everything, and ALWAYS build with new 'o' rings. I help the initial seal, and help hold them in place on the liner with a light smear of LM grease. Using these rules and this method I have not had a problem.

In the Pictures below you can also see the process of checking the gap dimension on the new piston rings, if they are too tight they can be adjusted by carefully filing the ends with a needle file, fortunately for me all the new parts were inside the spec limits.

With the bottom end comming together, next up was the head re-assembly, which basically means lapping and then fitting the valves, springs and collets. I had checked the valve stems and seats for wear and although not in as-new condition, they were not worn enough the justify the expense of replacing them.

Valve lapping is simply the process for 're-seating' the valves into the head to make sure they seal the combustion chamber perfectly. A grinding paste is added between the valve and the seat and the valve is rotated to grind the seat and valve into a matched pair.

In the right hand picture below you can also see the head face after the skimming process, there is still some evidence of corrosion damage but now it's nowhere near the gasket sealing bead paths.

With the top and bottom ends build, the next step was to fit them together, not forgetting the little in-line oil filter that sits in the lubrication feed to the head. It's job is important if somewhat short lived, it's simply there to catch any dirt that's trapped in the block oil galleries during the engine build process and it mainly protects the cam bearings, which as mentioned before run the the parent metal of the head and have a very close running clearance. Once the engine has run for a few cycles, the normal Oil Filter does the job of ensuring only clean oil enters the lubrication system, and the little in-line filter is relegated to the role of passenger!

Now the job becomes a little less serious, but just as satisfying, dressing the engine with the Oil Pump, Primary Drive, Mounting Brackets, Covers, Manifolds and then then Fuel System and Throttle Body and even the Air Filter. 
Having had such a great result with the Aluminimum Aqua Blasting, I went down the road of having all the steel parts shot-blasted and powder-coated, which set them off a treat too. 

This is a nice little detail before and after pair, showing how far I have come, sometimes it's very satisfying to look back! (I took this to make sure I got the coolant sensors back in the right place (I'm glad I did because I clearly got it wrong at the first attempt!)

And there we have it, the fully restored engine, ready for installation. But before that can happen there is some more work to do, preparing the body and a little gearbox make over to be completed too. But that will have to wait until next time.

Thanks as always for you time!

Hi, and first an apology for the far too long time without an update, call this a New Year's resolution if you will, but I have promised myself to get back in the habit of sharing my projects and their progress, not only the 205 project but also all the other work that i have been up to over the last few months.

So where to begin? Well, I will start at the point where I left the 205 "Bulkhead Forwards" restoration, and that was at the point of stripping it apart and removing the engine.

Once that ratchet is set to un-do it really doesn't take long to pull a car apart. I had the engine out and in pieces in just one weekend, and when I say in pieces, that's exactly what I ended up with! 
Once out and with the head removed it was clear that the cylinder liners could do with re-honing, and the main and big end bearings, although not totally worn, were definitely showing signs of wear. 
In the head the valves all looked to be ok, but in need of de-coaking and lapping, and the stem seals were very crunchy.
So the strip was all the way to a component level, and I was now facing the prospect of checking the crank and liner dimensions, to make sure they were serviceable. Before making a concerted effort to source all the right replacement parts.

On the body side of things, after a close inspection and a poke with a screwdriver it really wasn't looking too bad, there was a fair amount of superficial rust, but only the chassis leg, that I already knew about and the right hand head light panel were badly rotted, and there was another small hole through the bulkhead just where the right chassis leg attaches to it (where there is a little recess that was full of damp dirt, so not surprising it had rotted really).
The pictures below show before and after removal of the offending headlight panel. It's quite a complicated shaped part which needed careful removal so as not to damage the other panels, and their flanges that would provide locations for puddle welding on the new part.

I sourced a new panel, from E-Bay, which was a good match and then by sub assembling the bolt on slam panel and the bonnet made sure I had it in exactly the right position before welding it in place.
By this time I had also stripped the rest of the engine bay of all it's parts, and cleaned it all down with thinners, then a wire brush and finally a good rub with a scotch bright pad to 'key' the remaining paint ready for primer, and then the top coat. The end result being a nice shiny white engine bay, which was then just waiting for a nicely restored engine to fit into it (and a nicely restored pedal-box and servo, and a nicely restored wiring loom, and new break lines, and restored brackets etc etc! It's never quite as straight forwards as you hope it might be is it?). But it is all very enjoyable and to see the body starting to really improve was motivation enough to push me down the long road of engine restoration! Which I will cover in my next blog entry (I promise it won't be such a long gap this time either!).

As a little teaser for my next blog. I decided to experiment with the 'new to me' component cleaning method of "Aqua Blasting" for all the Ally engine components. It's a process that blasts using a soft grit impregnated water jet, and is said to be gentle enough to only clean and not leave a surface finish of it's own (like you get with normal grit blasting). The only area that I protected was the cam bearing journals in the head, as the cam run's in the parent metal of the head and I really didn't want any damage or dimension change on that surface, but looking at the end result, I'm not sure i needed to bother. Anyway, more on that next time...

Thank-you for your time.
Rob.