Citrojim's Pixo, Saxo and Cycling Tales

Xaccers · Post by **Xaccers** » 28 Nov 2009, 21:58

Congratulations

Xantia would have been better

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 28 Nov 2009, 22:08

Xac wrote:Xantia would have been better

Never worry Xac. she'll come round to a Xantia as soon as she drives one of mine

KP · Post by KP » 28 Nov 2009, 23:18

Good work Jim

if i had known your were bidding on that RAM i wouldn't have bid on it so it would have been a bit cheaper

She will come round when the fuel bills and so forth start to come her way...

If you come across some spare time oop north jim i'd love a lexia session and a Jim going over my activa

lol

Glad to see some bonus's are still being given out at some places and that are taking things a little easier though hope you don't get too bored though with the new slug coming to your driveway the initial prep work on it should be a good week for you to sort over

Clios are truly atrocious of that generation as some are very leaky from past experience of rentals and friends owned ones. Oh and i think the bonnets pop-up of their own will don't they??

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 05 Dec 2009, 22:04

KP wrote:Good work Jim

if i had known your were bidding on that RAM i wouldn't have bid on it so it would have been a bit cheaper

So it was you then Will

Still a good price and it looks a good 'un

KP wrote: If you come across some spare time oop north jim i'd love a lexia session and a Jim going over my activa lol

I'll have to check that my visa for Yorkshire is still valid Will. Yes, I'd love to and it seems a long time since I've been up your way. It's good to Lexiate an Activa every now and again, if only to clear hydractive faults..

Today has been quite a day

I've just finished for the evening and it's been a busy old day. I'm bushed but happy.

I began last evening the mammoth task of clearing space in my garage to make space for rather a lot of V6 salvage from the silver one Mike and I are busy breaking. I am such a hoarder of rubbish

Mike arrive at the break of dawn this morning to get cracking and found me in the midst of still sorting out the garage and loading my own V6 up to the gunwales with stuff destined for the tip. I never knew a Xantia could hold so much

Don't worry, Mike will vouch that all that has gone for scrap is pure rubbish and good for nothing. Upshot is that I have loads of lovely space to stash away a lot of treasure the dead car is giving up.

Most dead is the gearbox. It squeals like a good 'un and to cap it all, it is full of Dexron

Remarkably it still drives.

I went off and left Mike busy to collect the Pug 206 I bought Robyn for her 17th birthday. An early 1.4 LX on a T plate with an ultra-rare full-width electric sunroof. Never seen another sporting one of these.

I've really fallen for the 206

It is a great little car! I drove a friend's V*****ll C***a to pick up the 206 and to be perfectly honest, a 206 is the better car by an order of several magnitudes. I've always thought the 205 was the best of breed but the 206 beats even that. Shame Robyn's insurance cover costs more than the car!!! I've extended my Admiral Multi-car policy to cover Robyn and discovered their call-centre switches to Halifax, Nova Scotia when the Taffy one closes for the day. I ended up nattering to a Canadian petrol-head in the call centre for ages and ages and Robyn's insurance was dealt with almost as an afterthought! I rate Admiral and their customer service. Whether Canadian or Welsh, it's second to none.

Progress on breaking the V6 is going very well. Next weekend should see the engine lifted

I broke my duck with driveshaft intermediate bearings and finally had one that yielded relativity easily

My elation was short lived though, the LH lower swivel joint really put up a fight and ended up bending my balljoint splitter

We ran the car for the final time to get the suspension up on high and Mike suggested it would be a good time to crack the rear corner spheres. I agreed but then forgot. By the time I got round to it, the car was a long way from ever running again and despite some pressure still being in the hydraulics they were not going to play. In the end I devised a "method" to hold the rear cylinders to crack the spheres. It worked but I'd not specifically recommend it

Rain finally stopped play this evening but not before the physiological milestone (for me at least) of removing the driveshafts was completed.

Final job this evening was stashing away a lot of bits already removed and tidying up.

MY Activa has gone into temporary winter storage, sadly not under cover but tucked up nicely at the end of a friend's drive. I'll be taking her out on fine winter days but not when there is any salt about. My V6 continues to do what a V6 does well and touch-wood has been as good as gold although she gets a rest now for a couple of weeks as I'll be using the 206 on a daily basis to make she's good before handing her over to her young custodian...

DickieG · Post by **DickieG** » 05 Dec 2009, 22:29

I find it quite therapeutic stripping parts from a car and I know from the silver estate we stripped at my place you also rather enjoy the experience

the trouble for me now is that for some reason I have a mental picture in my mind of seeing you rushing to and fro from the car to your garage with these parts just like a squirrel at this time of year

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 05 Dec 2009, 22:51

It is very therapeutic indeed Richard

Yes, I do squirrel away stuff and just like a squirrel I forget where quite often.

Sorting out the garage was like a voyage of discovery

I had a lot of stuff I had forgotten I had

XantiaMan · Post by **XantiaMan** » 05 Dec 2009, 23:18

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 06 Dec 2009, 08:56

Must be an old photo of me Gareth,

I've been banned from drinking Red Bull for some time now

KP · Post by KP » 06 Dec 2009, 11:36

You should get an old laptop in the garage and just have an excel sheet or something on there with the parts and where you have stashed them in said garage Jim

Citroenmad · Post by **Citroenmad** » 06 Dec 2009, 11:39

Im pleased your liking the 206 Jim, they have a bit more about them than the Saxos and 106s do, a bit stronger and safer. Ive found mine to be a great car, though i find it a little cramped on a long run, hence why ive bought another C5 which will be replacing my 206. So if you know anyone who wants the HDi version ...

With the 206 LX, you got the SR or AC version, so it was an option from new to have either the huge glass sunroof or air conditioning. Its very rare to find one with both.

I used to be with admiral, i found them to be ok too. Im now with Bell which is pretty much the same company. I cant fault them either.

Chris.

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 06 Dec 2009, 15:58

Yes, the 206 has impresed me greatly Chris. I was actually quite pleasantly surprised by it. This one has no AC, just that brilliant sunroof. It began life in Scotland so that may be the reason.

I've already found a problem

The cambelt tensioner or waterpump is noisy at just above idle so I'll be doing the cambelt and waterpump sooner now rather than later. Still, it's an easy job on an 8V TU

That is planned for next weekend so the V6 breaking will have to go on hold for a few hours whilst I do that. I also need to give my V6 a little TLC. It has a tiny coolant leak and today I found it is from the joint in my heater matrix piping. The joint is formed from 22mm copper water pipe and it's not quite cutting the mustard. I hope I can recover the pipes from the breaker V6 and transfer those across.

No breaking today, I've had a lot of non-automotive work to catch up on and I'm suffering from very dry skin on my hands from too much wet and washing them. This has led to fissures and cracks on my thumbs and it's quite painful at times.

Also, this coming week is a busy one for me, demanding maximum mental alertness. I'm on a very heavy trainnig course for the week involving lots of Visual Basic and even Unix

Theonly good thing is the venue for it is a De Vere Venue and the one chosen is the one more or less at the end of my road! I'll be walking to work and being fed

Will, that's a great idea with the old laptop in the garage

I've just dug one out from another of my stashes and typing this very post on it. It's seriously old; a Compaq Armada M700 with a 350MHz PII processor and 64Mb RAM

It runs XP reasonably well though, if a tad slow!

Post by **xantia_v6** » 07 Dec 2009, 22:54

Just a little update on my transmission that Jim rebuilt recently...

xantia_v6 wrote:
CitroJim wrote: All is good, the engine runs sweetly and the 'box is now sweet. Gearchages are like oiled silk.

The car has been running sweetly for a couple of weeks now.
After about a week I noticed that very light 2-3 changes had developed a bit of a jolt (actually very slight), but another week of auto-adaption, and everything is perfect again 8)

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 12 Dec 2009, 18:09

After a really quite fraught week of IT horrors I indulged in a lot of spanner therapy today

The weather was good and just the job for giving the RobMobile (206) a good going over and replacing its cambelt and water pump.

What a simple and straightforward job it is. Honestly it is so easy it would barely rate one spanner in the BoL. Speaking of spanners, very few are needed for the job too. That's on the 8V TU engine. I expect the 16V TU is a little trickier.

No need even to touch the engine mounts.

I've photographed the job and I'll do a write-up on how to do it as I think Superloopy is needing to do the job.

As the TU has a manually adjusted cambelt tensioner, Richard (DickieG) loaned me his SEEM gauge to set the tension.

This is the gauge in action:

Business end-

Reading end-

Richard, thanks for the loan and using the gauge does confirm that the old rule of thumb of tensioning a belt until it can be twisted 90 degrees on its longest run by moderate finger/thumb pressure is sound. I initially tensioned the belt using this method and then popped the gauge on. I was not far out... I did find it necessary to reset the tension slightly after removing the locking pins and spinning the engine over a few times.

The top picture shows how much space is available in the 206. The TU really is a little speck of an engine in a fairly commodious bay. It'll take a 2.0HDi in there quite easily. So, that means a V6 will also fit in there

8)

I swapped the waterpump and tensioner as it would have been false economy not to. The tensioner was a bit noisy but not on the verge of giving up. The old coolant was a murky brown so well due for a change.

And no faffing around bleeding the cooling system as you do on a 106/Saxo. Just fill up, open the bleed valve on the heater matrix pipe and the job is a good 'un.

After putting some air in the tyres (they should be 2.3 bar and were all down at about 1.5

) I took the car out for a spin. Steering is now a lot lighter and boy, does it go well for a 1.4 8) I do seriously like this little 206 8)

My V6 had it's routine checkover and all was well. I did attend to the small coolant leak by replacing the copper-pipe heater matrix pipe coupling (which was too short) with a pukka pipe joiner. The old leak was almost invisible as coolant evaporated as soon as it leaked but it was enough to drop the level in the header tank by about an inch over the course of a week.

Final job was to swap the rear wheels with a couple from the scrap V6. I now finally have a fully matching set of (albeit MK2) wheels and I can now speak to Gareth about having my MK1 wheels refurbished.

Time ran out to do any further breaking of the scrap V6 but work on that will recommence tomorrow. Weather permitting, Mike and I hope to lift out the engine.

Don't forget there are some juicy bits from the V6 on offer, including a pretty nice leather interior. Get your orders in soon as I'm not wanting the remains of the car hanging around too long. I'm pining for my Activa

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 12 Dec 2009, 21:15

Mike,

I can assure you that you will have absolutely no problem in changing the cambelt at all and the procedure is virtually the same for the Activa, even down to tensioning it

The only thing is that space is a little less generous in the Activa

Having a SEEM gauge is a boon and takes all the guesswork out of it as the old finger/thumb method does admittedly take a tad of practice.

Yes, almost sure yours is an 8V like Robyn's

Here's a picture of the Robmobile...

Pretty little thing, just like her custodian

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 12 Dec 2009, 21:44

All you need for locking tools is an M10 bolt and a length of copper brake pipe! I'll show how they're used in the writeup.

The water pump is sealed by an O ring that comes with the new pump. I even have a picture of the pump to show the fitting of the O ring...

90,000 miles

And when you see just how big (or otherwise) the belt is, it does make you gulp. Like the engine it's tiny! I've seen bigger ones in printers

Procedure is the same for the 1.1 and the 1.4. A day will see both done...