The cursed Rallye

[bitwrx]

Thanks. Glad you're enjoying it.

I mounted a hundred miles assault on the Welsh borders today (in the Elise). Definitely the best run out in anything I've had all year. (Maybe. There was that a/b road run from Dijon to Laguiole, which, given it took all day, really was special.) But today, the weather was perfect, road conditions perfect, car pretty much perfect. I was actually shouting and yelping with joy at one point.

And I _still_ couldn't choose between the Elise and the Rallye for handling. Driven within the constraints of their respective architectures, they really are both brilliant.

I think where 'electric' sums up the Pug in one word, 'exquisite' would do the same for the Lotus.

PS - thanks to the PHers in an Alfa 147 and GT86 that let me past on the road to Abergavenny. Much appreciated. Hope you had a good run out.

[bitwrx]

bitwrx said:

Got the timing belt done this weekend.

The old one looked fine, but the tensioner and idler bearings had both lost a bit of grease past their outer seals, so maybe they weren't far away from end of life. Must've been all that time up at 7200rpm The old water pump was identical to the new one in all respects bar the date mark, casting mark, and logo on the box it came in. Even if the old one was First Line, it came out of the same factory as the SKF one.

fking hairy ball bags. April 2016 to Jan 2018. What's that? 20 months? fking second rate bullst.

Did a regularity type 12 car sort of rally thing just before new year. The rally Rallye rallied really well. Had my bro's American brother in law as navigator. His Boy Scout of America training served us well, and we hardly got lost at all much. Went OTL, but a cracking day out. Might have dinged the rim a bit out on Salisbury Plain. Now have slow puncture. Bawbags.



But since the car did well to get round, and I'm using it to commute to Glos a fair bit at the moment, I decided to treat it to a new clutch cable. The original one was replaced a while ago cos it was sticky. Used one of EuroCrapParts' finest. It snapped after a year or so, IIRC. (Still made it to, and from, where I was going). Boxed into a corner, I stuck an identical one on there (the local ECP had one in stock, and it was open on a Sunday). Needless to say, that one is on its way out as well... The auto adjuster periodically fails to adjust and I can't change gear. So did some preemptive maint, and got a gen Pug one on there.

I'm getting pretty good at that job now, so was feeling pretty pleased as I slid the cable in up past the engine/manifold/servo. That's when I found out why I'd been losing a bit of coolant recently... Unmistakeable blue glycol dripping out of the timing cover. fk nuggets. fking fk balls.


'Whipped' the timing cover off (20 mins for 5 fasteners, fking thing) to confirm it was definitely the water pump. But also that the belt had shifted away from the engine, and was merrily rubbing itself to pieces on the crank pulley (I reckon). fking bloody parts quality.


This is where doing all your own work comes back to bite you. If I'd paid someone to do the timing belt I'd have a sniff at getting them to rectify the fault due to substandard parts that they supplied. But I supplied the substandard parts, and I did the work. So I have to do it all again. FFS.

Have made up my mind to buy Peugeot wherever possible from now on. It's just not worth the rework. But then, some of the Peugeot stuff is obsolete, and 'superseded' by some right shonky old bks.

Speaking of which, remember those First Line bushes that lasted all of 13k miles. The Lemforder replacements aren't looking too special. What's that, 33 months since Apr/May 2015? Not bad, but the original Pug ones that came off weren't in any worse condition, and that was 14 years / 90 odd thousand miles.

Oh, and while I was there, I spotted the CV boots looking a little perished. And the clutch fork shaft bushes were a little shagged. And the gearbox input shaft oil seal is gone (or maybe the crankshaft oil seal). And the crankshaft pulley needs replacing. I can buy a whole car for the price of one of them. Admittedly, it would be a 106 with a short MOT and rust, but still... And anyway, 106s are really good cars.

So it's starting to look like an expensive year coming up. Still an absolutely belting car though.

[Esotericstuff]

Your posts remind me of why I promised to never buy a French car again, but also, why I miss them.

The constant maintenance is a frustration/masochistic pleasure, but the driving experience unmissable.

[bitwrx]

Esotericstuff said:

Your posts remind me of why I promised to never buy a French car again, but also, why I miss them.

The constant maintenance is a frustration/masochistic pleasure, but the driving experience unmissable.

To be fair to the car, as it left the factory, it was really quite reliable. (Availability is a bit low by today's standards, what with short maintenance intervals like the 3 or 4 year cambelt one.)

But the thing that seems to be letting it down at the moment is availability of decent replacement parts. They stopped producing the 306 well over 15 years ago now, so you can kinda forgive Pug for not being to bothered with spares (not that the Germans would take that view). But the non genuine parts are just ste, it appears.

Having said that, there may be something else going on here. There is definite play in the water pp bearing. But also significant play in the tensioner bearing. Other known faults in the area are:

• Crankshaft pulley vibration damper shagged.
• Aux pulley idler and tensioner bearings shagged.

Quite how all these fit together is unclear, and it may just be bad luck or usage related - I've done a track day and nav rally on this belt/pump remember - but the pump failure is definitely premature.

Anyway, the belt is off and the pump out. Gonna get the best parts I can to replace, and be super diligent when putting it back together next Friday.

(The 25.4 mm wide cambelt had worn down to less than 23 mm. )

Edited by bitwrx on Sunday 14th January 13:07

[bitwrx]

Well this is going worse than expected. All parts sourced, a mixture of Gates, INA (boxed as Gates) and genuine Peugeot.

The pug water pump is better quality than the one that came off. The gasket mating surface is actually machined flat! If it lasts the whole service interval it will be good value at £102... £136 for the crankshaft pulley made me wince, but at least I know it's back to OE spec.

Timing belt is all back on now, but somehow I've managed to lose one of the bolts that holds the aux belt tensioner on. While trying to get the first bolt in from underneath, I dropped it and was fairly sure it dropped onto me. So I used the other one. But now I can't find the one I dropped. Anywhere. Yes I've checked my overall pockets. FFS.

Spent about 2 hrs looking for it. Have run a magnet all around the engine bay, scoured the street and pavement, unpacked and repacked all my tools. It's gone. Is it lodged somewhere that's going to wipe out the cambelt when I fire it up? Don't know. Can I find another one to fit? Probably. Will it annoy me I've lost a bolt? Certainly.

ETA: new and old crankshaft pulley. The new one is the one without cambelt shaped notches worn into it!

Edited by bitwrx on Saturday 20th January 16:36

[bitwrx]

fking fkity fk balls. Just went upstairs to change into clean clothes. Guess what fell out of my fleece as I picked it up off the bed?


The fleece doesn't have any sleeves, or pockets, so fk knows where it's been hiding for the last 26 hours.

[Darren1101]

I loved my Cherry Rallye. Spent years restoring the underside, etc. Drove like a peach. Then within 24m of selling it was no longer showing up as MOTd and hasn’t the 4yrs since. Make me want to cry!

Well done keeping this one alive.

[bitwrx]

Darren1101 said:

I loved my Cherry Rallye. Spent years restoring the underside, etc. Drove like a peach. Then within 24m of selling it was no longer showing up as MOTd and hasn’t the 4yrs since. Make me want to cry!

Well done keeping this one alive.

Wasn't the one Matt from PH bought and promptly binned was it?

On a serious note, I'm sad to hear of your loss. And I know that phrase equates a car being off the road with bereavement, but in my view the emotions associated with both are part of the same continuum. It's st losing something you care about and have put a lot of time and effort into.

That's partly the reason I'm keeping this on. I don't want it to die, and I know whoever I sell it to wouldn't put in the same level of effort into it. Unless they were slightly defective like me...

The designers put their heart and soul into designing this. The factory workers toiled long and hard to put it together. It just seems disrespectful to not get the most out of all that human endeavour, just for the sake of a few (more) hundred quid's worth of parts.

This is at 142k miles and counting at about 1k / mth at the mo. I have an inexplicable desire to get it to 250k, but I think the surface corrosion that is creeping in will have killed it by then. At current progress, that's another decade, give or take!

Although just yesterday the boss asked me if I was interested in a project near Bridgewater, four days a week for a year. My first thought was "that'll get me closer to target", quickly followed by "can I run it for the mileage rate". It would be 400 mi a week, so maybe 18 k per year when hols are taken into account. So 10k * 45p/mi, then 8k*25p/mi gives me 36p/mi to run with. Over half of that goes on fuel, so it's pretty marginal when you chuck in tyres, repairs and depreciation (still over £40 a month, even after 5 yrs, so 3p/mi at 18k mi/yr).

Not sure if take the job anyway, but would certainly help me achieve a life aim!

[bitwrx]

After finding the bolt yesterday, I was keen to crack on with getting it all back together. Only the forecast gave >95% chance of rain in Bristol from dawn till dusk.

Got cracking after lunch, all went back together as expected. If I wasn't the weirdo of the street before, I am now. Who spends all Sunday afternoon in the pissing rain lying on a bit of cardboard in the gutter?

Clutch cable - which started this all off - is a vast improvement. Engine is nice and smooth, quiet, and if anything, goes better than before.

All my tools are now drying off by the rad in the dining room while I update the service history. :geek:


Did the front pads while I was there. Turns out the £130 Ferodo DS2500 pads I put on in 2014 have cost about 0.3p/mi, lasting just shy of 43k mi. I wonder how the £25 EuroCrapParts Brembos I just put on will fare?

Edited by bitwrx on Sunday 21st January 21:01

[PerfectDark]

bitwrx said:

Wasn't the one Matt from PH bought and promptly binned was it?

On a serious note, I'm sad to hear of your loss. And I know that phrase equates a car being off the road with bereavement, but in my view the emotions associated with both are part of the same continuum. It's st losing something you care about and have put a lot of time and effort into.

That's partly the reason I'm keeping this on. I don't want it to die, and I know whoever I sell it to wouldn't put in the same level of effort into it. Unless they were slightly defective like me...

The designers put their heart and soul into designing this. The factory workers toiled long and hard to put it together. It just seems disrespectful to not get the most out of all that human endeavour, just for the sake of a few (more) hundred quid's worth of parts.

I felt the same about my old 306 GTi6. Ended up spending double what I paid for it getting up to a quality standard with all new OE / upgrade parts, then annoyingly it decided to stop feeding oil into the head one day. I sadly ended up selling it for what I paid for it to a guy from Tamworth, and it hasn’t been taxed or MOT’d since - last I checked it was SORN. In hindsight I should have spent the £500-odd a second hand engine would have cost but then there was always the fear that I’d encounter the same fate, and needing the car for work (and lack of space to store it / fix it) meant I had to make a snap decision that I still regret.

On the right roads, when you were in the mood for it, these old 306’s really do put a Cheshire Cat grin on your face (especially if you fit a K&N and a Piper exhaust, and some lighter wheels with PS3’s). Stuck like pigeon guano to a car bonnet, not to mention with the induction bark and exhaust noise it made the commute through the M25 tunnels fun - changing down to 3rd and blatting it like a chav on a Friday night in a deserted industrial estate never got boring! (Although as you’ve found, the ability for it to absolutely rape your wallet soon does start to irk somewhat!)

If you really want to go next level on these, I’d heartily recommend the TTV flywheel and a billet crank pulley. It really transforms the feel of the engine. Not cheap but they certainly work. Never took those off the car when I sold it either, so the guy got a real bargain

Best of luck keeping it going!

[Ben_W]

Just spent an hour reading this....very enjoyable.

I'm certain I recognise this car. There isn't many Rallye around with the wrong rear seat...... absolutely certain I've seen it around before now but can't place it.

Anyways, keep up with the good work. I'm currently balls deep in a full on restoration of a Red Rallye. If you are on any of the 306 forums, you may have come across it.