£50 Puma shed

[Gallons Per Mile]

lickatysplit said:

great work, following with interest

Cheers!

GrantD5 said:

I like the idea of keeping a tally but think it would soon rule out shedding.

Just had to buy a condenser, battery, discs and pads & a starter motor for my S50 D5 and thats come to around £450 alone incl a free re gas at work. Car was £1000. That's without service bits I have done and tyres. Only covered around 3000 miles also as I have hardly been using it. Poor shedding from me!

Yes but that's the point of keeping tally! You now need to go out and do loads of miles to get the PPM figure reading right. Sounds like you're set for an easy 10k miles and £0 further to spend My car's only needed bits and pieces as the miles have gone on, but it's the same difference if I'd spend all the money in one hit and then done the 20k miles. You might be on a winner yet!

A friend of mine has gone down the shed route while he tinkers with his M3. He spent £150 on a Honda Civic, about £20 on a rocker cover gasket and about £20 on a service plus £35 on an MOT. He doesn't do the mileage I do but for physical money spent he's totally winning! A rough guestimate says his PPM is probably less than mine too, but there's no surprise there when his commuute to work is 0 miles... Also, a Puma is much more fun to drive

[shalmaneser]

GrantD5 said:

I like the idea of keeping a tally but think it would soon rule out shedding.

Just had to buy a condenser, battery, discs and pads & a starter motor for my S50 D5 and thats come to around £450 alone incl a free re gas at work. Car was £1000. That's without service bits I have done and tyres. Only covered around 3000 miles also as I have hardly been using it. Poor shedding from me!

But the true shedman would argue that the £1.5K is a mere five months payments on a new 114d or something so as long as you can keep the car longer than that you're quids in!

Plus the Volvo is a fine automobile anyway!

[Gallons Per Mile]

shalmaneser said:

But the true shedman would argue that the £1.5K is a mere five months payments on a new 114d or something so as long as you can keep the car longer than that you're quids in!

Plus the Volvo is a fine automobile anyway!

Precisely!

[GrantD5]

shalmaneser said:

But the true shedman would argue that the £1.5K is a mere five months payments on a new 114d or something so as long as you can keep the car longer than that you're quids in!

Plus the Volvo is a fine automobile anyway!

Very true when you put it like that, I have had it 4 1/2 months already but not done many miles, mainly been used for a few motorway runs. My mums taking it now for commuting mainly, that will stick some miles on it for sure and get some moneys worth. I will have to try work out my PPM and get back to you ha.

Edit - £0.55 PPM so far. Time to add some miles. £1500 estimated and 2700 miles covered

Edited by GrantD5 on Wednesday 20th September 10:49

[Gallons Per Mile]

Get yourself a spreadsheet up and running! Mine has regular mileage updates when I top up the oil, but you could always add mileages every couple of months or so to see how the curve on the graph is going...

[Gallons Per Mile]

Another day, another update! This time it's a quick service. Oh, and dropping the subframe

As usual, child-like excitement at getting oily meant I only remembered to take pics after I'd got the car in the air and changed the oil. Here's a pic of a clean shiny sump and new oil filter though:



Here's the old oil. According to my records it's done 9600 miles since the last service. I've topped it up 6 times during the year too, with just over a pint a time. That's about 3.6L. So, really, that's a rolling oil change over the year, except the oil's not looking so fresh! Definitely needs dropping even with regular top ups needed:



New air filter:



Time to put some fresh oil in. Measured out first so I know how much has gone in, nice golden colour for comparison with above:



And now time for the fun stuff! Sub frame needed to be dropped down so I could access the rear bolt to undo the anti-roll bar bushes. I know you can undo the front one and bend the mounting to get the bush out but I decided that was a bit of a bodge and I didn't want to snap them. Bushes are only £8 a pair for proper Febi Bilstein ones, and the passenger one had a small amount of play in it. Might was well get them changed then!

Here's the sub frame about to be dropped down:



I undid the steering linkage as the rack is attached to the sub frame and I wouldn't have got any drop without undoing it. Piece of cake to access. I already knew how it came apart as I changed it the other month:



With that off, the sub frame could drop down a little bit. Which lead to this:



You can see what I mean about access to the rear bolt now.

The other reason for dropping the sub frame was to investigate some play I've got in the steering. I thought the new linkage above would solve it but it didn't. It's only very slight as nothing was said at MOT time but I can feel it so it's annoying! Especially when the Puma has such good steering. I bought some inner track rods so had a look at the suspected dead one on the passenger side:



It looks pretty well worn and I definitely think there's a little bit of play in it. Couldn't get it to undo in situ as the original inner rods don't have a hex cut in to the outer body of that ball joint. They're just round. I could get my mole grips in there and clamp them on but there wasn't the room to get enough torque on to undo it. Looks like I'll have to drop the entire rack. That's not much more difficult than the position I was already in, but if I'm going to drop the whole rack then I might as well have a new one and make sure the problem is 100% fixed, rather than just replace the inner rods and hope the play isn't in the rack. I put everything back together at this point and I'll decide if I can be bothered to spend the money on a whole new rack!

Over 20k miles completed now. No major wobbles, couple of bits have tried to fall off, some preventative maintenance and lots of fun had in the process. PPM now in the 5's. What next? More miles? Change of car? I'm not sure at the moment!!

[avenger286]

Interesting thread. I would be changing the oil every 5k or so not getting on towards 10k these yamaha engines will go on to do silly miles if you change the oil regularly. My old rally puma was on 167k with well over 100 events on the original engine and box also had another 2 with well over 100k on them. Look after them and they will last.

[Jakg]

Gallons Per Mile said:

It looks pretty well worn and I definitely think there's a little bit of play in it. Couldn't get it to undo in situ as the original inner rods don't have a hex cut in to the outer body of that ball joint. They're just round. I could get my mole grips in there and clamp them on but there wasn't the room to get enough torque on to undo it. Looks like I'll have to drop the entire rack. That's not much more difficult than the position I was already in, but if I'm going to drop the whole rack then I might as well have a new one and make sure the problem is 100% fixed, rather than just replace the inner rods and hope the play isn't in the rack. I put everything back together at this point and I'll decide if I can be bothered to spend the money on a whole new rack!

Bit late but you can get an inner tie rod removal tool - has a set of cams inside that tighten as you turn it to grip and undo the tie rod.

Not cheap (£35) but a lot easier than dropping the subframe. I'd also think with the tie rod removed you'd be able to get at that bolt no issue?

Just an idea.

[Gallons Per Mile]

avenger286 said:

Interesting thread. I would be changing the oil every 5k or so not getting on towards 10k these yamaha engines will go on to do silly miles if you change the oil regularly. My old rally puma was on 167k with well over 100 events on the original engine and box also had another 2 with well over 100k on them. Look after them and they will last.

Yes they do seem to be reliable even on 10k oil changes. This is a shed motor and not a rally car though! I didn't think it was really worth changing the oil that often on a car like this. Noted for the future though, thanks.

Jakg said:

it late but you can get an inner tie rod removal tool - has a set of cams inside that tighten as you turn it to grip and undo the tie rod.

Not cheap (£35) but a lot easier than dropping the subframe. I'd also think with the tie rod removed you'd be able to get at that bolt no issue?

Just an idea.

I didn't know that tool existed, cheers for the info. I may look in to one at some point. More tools are always better!

The front bolt wasn't a problem - sub frame didn't need dropping for that one. The rear one sits right on the chassis of the car though, so you need to drop the sub frame to do the job properly. To be fair it was only 4 bolts one side and 3 the other to drop it, and about 5 mins taking the steering linkage off, so not particularly labour intensive. I think I'd have needed to drop the sub frame anyway to do the inner track rods as access was tight to get the boot clip off.

[colinevan]

I really really want a puma as a second car . But I just can’t get a reasonable quote for one.

For comparison I’m 39 , Manchester postcode and have around 19 years of ncb. Zero points and my current 530d is around £650 fully comp.

A puma as a second car is around £700 with around 3k mileage.

Would be Interested to hear how others are managing to insure them for a reasonable amount .

Thanks and great thread ( my inspiration ha ha)

Col.

[Steve_F]

Great thread, thanks for taking the time to detail.

Rust (and colour) looks very similar to the better rusty areas on my Transit. Might not be an exact colour match but so much better than rust patches. Have been focusing on a winter project MX5 recently but you've inspired me to have a go at the rust patches on the van myself! Need to have a wee practice on the MX5 with the grinder first though

[Gallons Per Mile]

colinevan said:

I really really want a puma as a second car . But I just can’t get a reasonable quote for one.

For comparison I’m 39 , Manchester postcode and have around 19 years of ncb. Zero points and my current 530d is around £650 fully comp.

A puma as a second car is around £700 with around 3k mileage.

Would be Interested to hear how others are managing to insure them for a reasonable amount .

Thanks and great thread ( my inspiration ha ha)

Col.

Thanks! I'm surprised about that insurance quote, that's rather expensive! I'm in the South East, age 32, max NCB (9 or 10 years) and I got an all-singing-all-dancing policy for 300 quid... Oh and insured for 12k miles a year too. I wonder if the car would qualify for classic insurance now as it's 16 years old?

Steve_F said:

Great thread, thanks for taking the time to detail.

Rust (and colour) looks very similar to the better rusty areas on my Transit. Might not be an exact colour match but so much better than rust patches. Have been focusing on a winter project MX5 recently but you've inspired me to have a go at the rust patches on the van myself! Need to have a wee practice on the MX5 with the grinder first though

Cheers! If you're not overly bothered about paint match and just want to tidy it up then definitely do it yourself as I did above. It's better than leaving the rust to get worse, and frankly, I don't really care what the car looks like as it's a shed motor. It's still more presentable than it was though! Get some flap discs for the grinder and some clean and strip discs too. Clean and strip the paint and loose rust off the top and then use the flap disc to get back to shiny metal as far as possible. Bit of rust converter, primer, base coat, lacquer, and jobs a good'un

[Gallons Per Mile]

The Puma is still going strong! Not a particularly exciting update, but the clock is over 120k miles now and my PPM is almost exactly on 5.

I gave it a wash and hoover out earlier on as I couldn't remember the last time I did either! Plus, someone tried to key the driver's rear quarter panel and I wanted to see if it would polish out as I had to look at it every time I got in or out of the car. Luckily, it wasn't a deep scratch and my MOP took care of it no trouble at all, yay! I couldn't help myself and had a go at the wierd staining on the driver's front wing that had been there since day one. Looks like something had been spilt on it and tainted the lacquer somehow. That disappeared too!

Looks quite presentable for an old shed:

[Gallons Per Mile]

A great big update for all you Puma fans!

Where to start? Well, back in February I thought it wise to do some preventative maintenance. Namely changing the spark plugs, coil pack and leads. In the two years I've owned the car none of those items had been replaced. Apart from one single spark plug because I broke one taking them out of the old engine. The plugs in the old engine looked a lot newer that the ones in the donor engine so I stole them. Also, I'd had a couple of lumpy running episodes and found random coil packs and leads in my garage from old Puma or Zetec engines and swapped around bits for a free fix. So, after spending a whopping £30 odd I spent about 10 minutes fitting new shiny bits:



And that was all the preventative maintenance done!

Apart from that I have mainly been:

Playing in the snow:






Removing another heat shield that didn't want to be part of the car any more:




A little while later I was offered a new job with a somewhat longer drive to work. Unfortunately the sensible hat went back on and I decided to buy something dieselly with 50MPG on offer instead of driving something fun but only around 40mpg.

I sold it for £200 to a friend the same day as picking up the diesel machine, so I'm £150 up on what I paid for it all those months ago. Result!

My total cost for about 27 months of ownership on buying and maintaining the car (ie no petrol/insurance/tax as those costs come with any car) was a very reasonable £937.32. By my calculations I did 27,139 miles too! That's 3.45P per mile. Which was nice. Oh, and I won at cam belt roulette