Budget Warm Hatching - Saxo VTS 1.6i 16v
Discussion
It's been a while since I've had a thread on here, my last proper effort was my Range Rover P38 which I did a fair bit of tinkering with:
and even managed to get a cheeky feature in LRO Magazine at the start of last year:
However, I ended up with a long commute, and no place for the Range Rover, which was a real shame, as it's still one of my favourite cars. Anyway, I dabbled briefly with an MX5, and didn't really get on with it, before settling into an E39 520i for commuting duty, which it did excellently.
Roll on to now, and things have settled out a bit, I've moved nearer work, taken up cycling for some fitness, and don't even need to drive to work. I am limited by garage space though, so I needed something smaller again. I've had a saxo and a 106 before, and I honestly think they take some beating in the cheap / fun / great to throw around / easy to fix stakes. It's as well they're easy to fix with the build quality really.
Set on a VTS, I started looking and found this delight locally:
I know, I know. On the flip side, it was used by a 28 year old woman to ferry her kids about, and adorned with appropriate pink tat, including a lovely white and pink CD player (RIP). It also came with receipts for a full top end rebuild @ £900 4,000 miles previously as the timing belt had snapped, with water pump and timing kit included in the receipts folder.
Basically I bought it to be cheap and entertaining, and keep my idle fingers busy, which it's done admirably. Being french, things immediately started falling off. The only real problem was I'd already talked my mate into getting one, and he didn't need his for daily duties, so this happened:
We did a day at Donington in his car, my first time on track, and I realised just how fun these little cars could be. By then he'd done quite a few modifications to his car, and the monumental difference they made to the car was great. So I started buying bits and pieces here and there.
First I cleaned it, and removed all the pink tat:
Then I started cleaning the shell up, and removing excess weight. I removed all of the foam sound deadening from recesses, the spare wheel and cage from under the boot floor, then I started removing the tar sound deadening from the floor pan and rear arches, before whipping the dash out to remove the big sound deadening mat from behind there:
The sound deadening that was there weighed 5kg alone, it doesn't take long to all mount up, and the car only weighs 935kg to start with!
By then the exhaust had snapped in the centre, so I bought a stainless 2" system:
That decatted the car as well, as the cat on the VTS is under the car rather than on the manifold. I relocated the post cat lambda back up into the engine bay so it would get clean air and fitted a lambda sleeve:
A random choice next, but the headlining was grubby and bugged me, so I dyed it black and painted the interior plastics;
Then cleaned it up again, and drove it a bit, taking some more photos of the comically high standard ride height:
Especially next to my mates:
Next up my rear beam started to suffer. This is a common saxo / citroen / peugeot trait, and I started to get play in my rear trailing arms, so I needed a new beam. I sourced a 2nd hand item that was known to be good, but also fitted with uprated 21mm torsion bars to stiffen it up (arf). I also fitted polybushes and braided rear brake lines:
Then it was just a matter of swapping them over:
Then came an OMP lower brace, which basically ties the 2 bottom arm mounts together:
And then stiffer is exactly what it was!
errrrrrr
Then it passed it's MOT, and I drove it in anger some more, and more things broke / required uprating.
I neglected it for a bit at this point, work got busy, work moved, I moved again (I move a lot, fml) and generally it was a bit shagged. The clutch release bearing was terrible, the driveshafts were knackered, the bottom arms and ball joints were vague and loose, the gear linkages were sloppy and terrible, it just wasn't great, or that healthy, so I biked it to work again for a bit, and bought a load more bits. Then I took the front off:
and pulled this out:
You know you're a 'motorsport professional' when you're removing your engine with a Sabelt harness. Or '
', one of the two definitely.
That left me with this:
and this:
This may seem a bit of an extreme way to fit some new driveshafts, but hey. I'd discovered the engine needed an oil leak fixed from the cam ladders, and I had to remove the cams and timing belt to do this, and it made doing the clutch easier, so out it came. While I was on, I bought new gear linkages, new selector arm and rod, an 'OBP Motorsport Quickshift' lever, which looked like this with new adjustable linkages:
I also bought a front brake setup from a 306 GTi-6, which replaced the standard puny 247mm discs and small calipers with some rather larger items and 283mm discs. I fitted braided lines to the front as well, along with a flush and AP Racing DOT 5.1 Fluid.
Shell wise, I decided to save some more weight by removing the EGR / Air Pump system and the Power Steering system. I only really use the car as a toy, to properly 'drive' it, so I don't need to worry about parking it in Sainsburys every day, and it was quite chunky. I also prefer the steering feel in non PAS Saxos. It turns out, by removing the fluid, hoses and hydraulic ram from the Saxo, you can retain the PAS rack rather than fitting a manual rack, which is beneficial as it's less turns lock to lock.
So this got binned:
again, this little lot weighed in at 10kg alone, the EGR system is 4.5kg too.
Nipping quickly back to the gearchange, the selector arm on the MA gearbox succumbs to wear and tear over the years, and the arm itself is located on a rod that comes out of the gearbox, with a roll pin to locate it. Over time, the rod it's secured to starts to move in and out of the gearbox, and mine had around 4mm of play in it, which wasn't helping my sloppy gear lever. I drilled out an M12 washer and fitted it between the arm and the box, you can just see it protruding in this picture:
It's all back together now, and the gear change is really terrific. It notches perfectly into gear, with a satisfying click, I'm really over the moon with how good it is. It's not far off the gear change of an EP3 Type-R I'd say, and that's probably my favourite gearbox yet.
It was time to get back to the engine, which had turned itself into this:
I had to remove the pulleys from the cams, and remove the cams from the head, in order to remove the cam ladders they sit in and reseal my oil leak. This was probably the most daunting part, as I've never removed cams and the whole timing thing isn't really something you can get wrong very easily. I unfortunately know this through previous saxo related experience, and that was on an 8v, not a twin cam. Eek.
Anyway, out they came:
And I waited for the wife to pop off to work before sneaking it all in the kitchen for a clean up:
Back in the bat cave, I spruced the block up:
fitted a nice new head gasket:
and popped the head back on:
I put some oil in the tappets, and applied a thin bead of sealant around the cam ladder channel:
popped the cams back in, stuck the pulleys on, and threw in a new water pump, tensioner and idler pulley for good measure:
I timed the engine up, then re-checked it, and checked it again, just in case:
shiny new thermostat while we're on, may as well!
and then with a spruce up of the cam covers, it was starting to look enginey again!
Citroen charged me a reasonable 18 spoons for new manifold studs and nuts and a gasket, and I grabbed a 2nd hand stainless 4-1 manifold from someone breaking a track car, and added that too:
and finally the pictures run out! At this point I started to get my finger out as I was running out of xmas break, so I popped it all back together and got it running last weekend. Thankfully the timing was right, I was bloody nervous turning the key! Once you've heard an engine firing into life eating it's valves it stays with you lol, this wasn't the case here happily, it seems for once I sort of knew what I was doing.
Anyway, that's the story of my budget warm hatch to date. I'm hoping to get some daylight and dry weather this weekend (yeah, right) to give it a clean and get some current photo's, but really it's just a great little car that's kept me entertained over the year.
In 2013 I'm hoping to take it to a few tracks, definitely back to Knockhill, and it's spec has slowly shifted from fun usable daily into something more fast road / track focussed, that still usable on the road. It's a crappy little french tin can, but it's mine, and however rattly and noisy and bumpy it is, it's got a wonderful way of making you feel like you're hanging on to the fastest car on the road when you take it for a blat on a nice morning. I think it's probably lack of grip and poor driver talent that explains that!
If you've read this far you deserve a medal, but thanks for reading!
and even managed to get a cheeky feature in LRO Magazine at the start of last year:
However, I ended up with a long commute, and no place for the Range Rover, which was a real shame, as it's still one of my favourite cars. Anyway, I dabbled briefly with an MX5, and didn't really get on with it, before settling into an E39 520i for commuting duty, which it did excellently.
Roll on to now, and things have settled out a bit, I've moved nearer work, taken up cycling for some fitness, and don't even need to drive to work. I am limited by garage space though, so I needed something smaller again. I've had a saxo and a 106 before, and I honestly think they take some beating in the cheap / fun / great to throw around / easy to fix stakes. It's as well they're easy to fix with the build quality really.
Set on a VTS, I started looking and found this delight locally:
I know, I know. On the flip side, it was used by a 28 year old woman to ferry her kids about, and adorned with appropriate pink tat, including a lovely white and pink CD player (RIP). It also came with receipts for a full top end rebuild @ £900 4,000 miles previously as the timing belt had snapped, with water pump and timing kit included in the receipts folder.
Basically I bought it to be cheap and entertaining, and keep my idle fingers busy, which it's done admirably. Being french, things immediately started falling off. The only real problem was I'd already talked my mate into getting one, and he didn't need his for daily duties, so this happened:
We did a day at Donington in his car, my first time on track, and I realised just how fun these little cars could be. By then he'd done quite a few modifications to his car, and the monumental difference they made to the car was great. So I started buying bits and pieces here and there.
First I cleaned it, and removed all the pink tat:
Then I started cleaning the shell up, and removing excess weight. I removed all of the foam sound deadening from recesses, the spare wheel and cage from under the boot floor, then I started removing the tar sound deadening from the floor pan and rear arches, before whipping the dash out to remove the big sound deadening mat from behind there:
The sound deadening that was there weighed 5kg alone, it doesn't take long to all mount up, and the car only weighs 935kg to start with!
By then the exhaust had snapped in the centre, so I bought a stainless 2" system:
That decatted the car as well, as the cat on the VTS is under the car rather than on the manifold. I relocated the post cat lambda back up into the engine bay so it would get clean air and fitted a lambda sleeve:
A random choice next, but the headlining was grubby and bugged me, so I dyed it black and painted the interior plastics;
Then cleaned it up again, and drove it a bit, taking some more photos of the comically high standard ride height:
Especially next to my mates:
Next up my rear beam started to suffer. This is a common saxo / citroen / peugeot trait, and I started to get play in my rear trailing arms, so I needed a new beam. I sourced a 2nd hand item that was known to be good, but also fitted with uprated 21mm torsion bars to stiffen it up (arf). I also fitted polybushes and braided rear brake lines:
Then it was just a matter of swapping them over:
Then came an OMP lower brace, which basically ties the 2 bottom arm mounts together:
And then stiffer is exactly what it was!
errrrrrr
Then it passed it's MOT, and I drove it in anger some more, and more things broke / required uprating.
I neglected it for a bit at this point, work got busy, work moved, I moved again (I move a lot, fml) and generally it was a bit shagged. The clutch release bearing was terrible, the driveshafts were knackered, the bottom arms and ball joints were vague and loose, the gear linkages were sloppy and terrible, it just wasn't great, or that healthy, so I biked it to work again for a bit, and bought a load more bits. Then I took the front off:
and pulled this out:
You know you're a 'motorsport professional' when you're removing your engine with a Sabelt harness. Or '
', one of the two definitely.That left me with this:
and this:
This may seem a bit of an extreme way to fit some new driveshafts, but hey. I'd discovered the engine needed an oil leak fixed from the cam ladders, and I had to remove the cams and timing belt to do this, and it made doing the clutch easier, so out it came. While I was on, I bought new gear linkages, new selector arm and rod, an 'OBP Motorsport Quickshift' lever, which looked like this with new adjustable linkages:
I also bought a front brake setup from a 306 GTi-6, which replaced the standard puny 247mm discs and small calipers with some rather larger items and 283mm discs. I fitted braided lines to the front as well, along with a flush and AP Racing DOT 5.1 Fluid.
Shell wise, I decided to save some more weight by removing the EGR / Air Pump system and the Power Steering system. I only really use the car as a toy, to properly 'drive' it, so I don't need to worry about parking it in Sainsburys every day, and it was quite chunky. I also prefer the steering feel in non PAS Saxos. It turns out, by removing the fluid, hoses and hydraulic ram from the Saxo, you can retain the PAS rack rather than fitting a manual rack, which is beneficial as it's less turns lock to lock.
So this got binned:
again, this little lot weighed in at 10kg alone, the EGR system is 4.5kg too.
Nipping quickly back to the gearchange, the selector arm on the MA gearbox succumbs to wear and tear over the years, and the arm itself is located on a rod that comes out of the gearbox, with a roll pin to locate it. Over time, the rod it's secured to starts to move in and out of the gearbox, and mine had around 4mm of play in it, which wasn't helping my sloppy gear lever. I drilled out an M12 washer and fitted it between the arm and the box, you can just see it protruding in this picture:
It's all back together now, and the gear change is really terrific. It notches perfectly into gear, with a satisfying click, I'm really over the moon with how good it is. It's not far off the gear change of an EP3 Type-R I'd say, and that's probably my favourite gearbox yet.
It was time to get back to the engine, which had turned itself into this:
I had to remove the pulleys from the cams, and remove the cams from the head, in order to remove the cam ladders they sit in and reseal my oil leak. This was probably the most daunting part, as I've never removed cams and the whole timing thing isn't really something you can get wrong very easily. I unfortunately know this through previous saxo related experience, and that was on an 8v, not a twin cam. Eek.
Anyway, out they came:
And I waited for the wife to pop off to work before sneaking it all in the kitchen for a clean up:
Back in the bat cave, I spruced the block up:
fitted a nice new head gasket:
and popped the head back on:
I put some oil in the tappets, and applied a thin bead of sealant around the cam ladder channel:
popped the cams back in, stuck the pulleys on, and threw in a new water pump, tensioner and idler pulley for good measure:
I timed the engine up, then re-checked it, and checked it again, just in case:
shiny new thermostat while we're on, may as well!
and then with a spruce up of the cam covers, it was starting to look enginey again!
Citroen charged me a reasonable 18 spoons for new manifold studs and nuts and a gasket, and I grabbed a 2nd hand stainless 4-1 manifold from someone breaking a track car, and added that too:
and finally the pictures run out! At this point I started to get my finger out as I was running out of xmas break, so I popped it all back together and got it running last weekend. Thankfully the timing was right, I was bloody nervous turning the key! Once you've heard an engine firing into life eating it's valves it stays with you lol, this wasn't the case here happily, it seems for once I sort of knew what I was doing.
Anyway, that's the story of my budget warm hatch to date. I'm hoping to get some daylight and dry weather this weekend (yeah, right) to give it a clean and get some current photo's, but really it's just a great little car that's kept me entertained over the year.
In 2013 I'm hoping to take it to a few tracks, definitely back to Knockhill, and it's spec has slowly shifted from fun usable daily into something more fast road / track focussed, that still usable on the road. It's a crappy little french tin can, but it's mine, and however rattly and noisy and bumpy it is, it's got a wonderful way of making you feel like you're hanging on to the fastest car on the road when you take it for a blat on a nice morning. I think it's probably lack of grip and poor driver talent that explains that!
If you've read this far you deserve a medal, but thanks for reading!
Awesome, looks like you're doing all the right stuff.
A lot of people badmouth saxo's without having driven one but they are great imo and reasonably cheap to fix.
A half decent spec vts is a great fun! I miss mine a lot, might be time to get another this year.
Will definitely keep an eye on this thread, keep up the good work!
A lot of people badmouth saxo's without having driven one but they are great imo and reasonably cheap to fix.
A half decent spec vts is a great fun! I miss mine a lot, might be time to get another this year.
Will definitely keep an eye on this thread, keep up the good work!
Don't suppose you read my thread about the washer trick on Sax P did you? Found it made a massive difference to my VTS gear change when I did mine, that was a brilliant little car. You seem to be doing what I had planned for mine until I got bored and bought a scoob instead!
http://www.saxperience.com/forum/showthread.php?t=...
http://www.saxperience.com/forum/showthread.php?t=...
Darkslider said:
Don't suppose you read my thread about the washer trick on Sax P did you? Found it made a massive difference to my VTS gear change when I did mine, that was a brilliant little car. You seem to be doing what I had planned for mine until I got bored and bought a scoob instead!
http://www.saxperience.com/forum/showthread.php?t=...
I did indeed mate! Excellent write up! What a difference! http://www.saxperience.com/forum/showthread.php?t=...
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