Another week rolled around and Saturday duly arrived. I hired a small 12 volt air compressor and hooked it up to a donor vehicle (my work van). An air line was connected to a brake bleeder in order to remove the old brake fluid from the reservoir and the four brakes. the first part was easy enough - the fluid was drained out of the reservoir quite quickly and fresh fluid was poured in.
Starting with the right rear brake, then the left rear, right front and finally left front. The two brakes furthest away from the master cylinder were slow to drain. There were pulses of tiny bubbles coming from both rear brakes before the clear fluid began to show.
The two front brakes bled rather faster, with no bubbles. I checked the reservoir frequently, preparing to top up the fluid if needed. Oddly, there was no topping up of the reservoir required from the rear brakes. It was the front brakes that seemed to drain the reservoir.
Having finished the task as best as I could tell, I re-checked the brake fluid level, tightened the bleed nipples, and put the wheels back on.
Unfortunately, the battery in my work van decided it had had enough and I couldn't re-start the van to move it out of my garage. I had other things to attend to so instead of checking the Peugeot's brakes, I left everything where it was.
The Hyundai was pressed into service as my work van for the day, the following morning. After work, I had to jump start the van, then take it for a long drive at around 80 km to re-charge the battery. It was getting late by then and I had to work the next day.
I never saw the Peugeot again until today, when I finished work. I took the opportunity to test the brake pedal feel while the car was stationary, then take it for a short drive to a petrol station to top up the fuel.
While the brakes are noticeably firmer, they still aren't anything to write home about. As this is my first attempt at brake bleeding, it has me wondering what could have been done better.
I've had to trickle charge the battery again as there is still that niggly charge issue. Not as bad as before - the multimeter reading is 14.2 volts at rest and the car starts easily enough. However, it won't start if the volts drop below 12 volts, which happens after about a week of no activity.
This weekend I have to catch up with relatives in Auckland and it's a long weekend so there won't be much work done with the Peugeot.
Next Monday, I will take the Peugeot to a local independent service agent to have the charge system diagnosed.
It's another damp, wintry day here in Whangarei. Just waiting for my colleague to arrive at 7:30 to begin the work day. The Peugeot has been sitting all night, locked and with the flashing dashboard light going. The battery reads 12.4 volts at rest and the car started easily this morning and runs reasonably smoothly.
I probably should check the voltage with the engine running at idle and with a few revs built up but I don't have the time. Perhaps after work....
Monday morning heralded the new month and I got up earlier than usual to take the Peugeot down to the local independent service agent to have the charging system diagnosed. Unfortunately, the rather fat key fob wouldn't fit in their key slot. I merely dropped the key into the driver's side door pocket with the car left unlocked and walked home to pick up my work van and start the day's work. I left a voice message for the service agent so he could find the keys - assuming of course the car was still there.
As it turns out, I received a call from the service manager confirming my suspicions - the alternator had completely failed. I had a good discussion with him when I came to uplift the car. He had checked the entire system and the only fault was the alternator. He did say that the various ECU's may be triggered also whenever the battery charge drops below a certain level.
This was certainly evident on the way home. The weather had packed up nicely by the afternoon, which meant I needed to run the HVAC system to demist, the windscreen wipers to clear the rain, and the lights to be seen as it had gotten rather murky. With no alternator to keep the battery's state of charge up, things went south rather quickly.
By the time I arrived home (and discovered I had neglected to duck shove the cars around in the right place), the warning lights for various functions like ABS and airbags had lit up, the battery charge light and warning had chipped in and the annoying blip of the audible warning alarm would join the chorus. The transmission began to behave rather erratically also.
The demisting turned itself off and wouldn't come back on, the windscreen wipers became more and more languid and the lights were getting dim...
I parked the car at the curb below my steep driveway and very stupidly put the car in PARK. The big red STOP light came on, and I realised the transmission had actually locked itself.
I left the car on the street for the night. Early this morning, armed with my trusty multimeter, I found a voltage on the battery of 9.6 - that wouldn't start a riot and so with the help of a long extension cord and my battery charger, I left the car to charge for the day. A pair of gumboots laid at the front of the car, supported the bonnet until I could come home from work in the afternoon and deal with the car then.
A text from the service agent later in the day confirmed the arrival of a replacement alternator.
When I came home, the battery had charged again, so I started the car and drove it back up my driveway and into my garage for the night. At some point I will need to book another appointment to have the new alternator fitted.
The new alternator was fitted midway through the following week. What a difference! I can leave the car now and not worry about the battery going flat. During the week, I replaced the CR2016 battery in the key fob and I now have keyless entry again! Very exciting...
The service manager who fitted the replacement alternator kindly gave me the old dead one. It may come in handy as a door stop.
He also asked me about the pesky warning chime which sounded when the car was fired up - he identified it as being from the folding roof. I hadn't paid much attention to the roof as I was more interested in getting the car road worthy again, and to be honest the weather at this time of year isn't conducive to open top motoring - my ears don't appreciate the cold! I was made aware by the vendor that the roof had stopped working.
Sure enough the warning chime niggled at me on the return trip home. So I decided to investigate further when time allowed.
The service manager suggested that there may be a hydraulic actuator issue. So the at the first opportunity, I opened the boot and checked the position of the hydraulic system, using the supplied Allen key in the slot at the right of the boot. It wouldn't turn in the anticlockwise direction, so I carefully turned it clockwise until it stopped. That tells me that at some stage the hydraulic system had been de-pressurised.
I closed the boot and spent the morning washing the exteriors of both of my cars. Later I went for a short drive. The chime didn't sound.
So far so good. I have one more day off so in the morning I will buy a pair of new wiper blades to replace the squawking floppy blades that came with the car - I will probably cheap out and just get ordinary blades as I can't justify the added expense and I'm not that impressed with these modern floppy things.
Next weekend, the set of new tyres I had ordered last week will have arrived and I will have car re-shod and the front wheels re-aligned. One step closer to making the 206CC legal and roadworthy again.
When I present the car for it's Warrant of Fitness inspection, the garage will hook Lexia up to the car and run diagnostics on the roof functions.
It can clear the airbag warning light that has annoyingly appeared tonight as well...
Today I took the Peugeot to a tyre shop, who replaced the four old tyres for new ones and performed a front wheel alignment. They informed me that there was a misalignment which caused the front wheels to splay outwards (think Charlie Chaplin).
Once the car was ready I took it for it's first long run (about 80km).
The route I took is coastal, lots of twisting corners of varying radii, undulations and a coarse chip seal that varied from reasonable to badly de-laminating. The car has nice steering response, good feel, the suspension is firm but very compliant on the at times rough roads.
Although the car is very similar to my Hyundai on paper in terms of it having McPherson struts up front and a beam axle in the the rear, the difference in suspension tuning is very apparent. Both ride on 45 series tyres, with the Hyundai having 17 inch rims and the Peugeot 16 inch rims.
Success!
However, although the automatic gearbox was well behaved in the early part of the trip, when the car had warmed up, it began to show another side of itself.
This was apparent when I pulled over to send a txt message, left the car idling and went to move the car again. The gearbox would cause the engine revs to flare in first gear then clunk roughly into second gear before settling down and changing up to the next gear. I observed the problem seemed to occur when the car was stationary and the coolant temperature gauge reading would climb to 90 degrees.
Once the car was on the move, the coolant temperature gauge would ease back to around 80 degrees and the gearbox would behave again.
I tried changing the shift protocol to "S" mode, but that only made the engine revs increase. I also tried starting start in Manual mode, which didn't make any difference.
On Monday, the car is booked for it's Warrant of Fitness inspection and a scan via Lexia to determine the issue with the roof.
The next stage of the re-commission process will be to prioritise changing the engine oil and filter and changing the gearbox oil - mainly to check on the condition of the oil in the gearbox and work out a plan for subsequent changes depending on how dirty the oil is. I will be considering a number of options later for future dealing with the gearbox.
Although the roof is not yet fully operational, I did drive along a section of coastal road with the air conditioning off and all the side windows wound down (pillarless coupe mode). In spite of the humid 12 degree ambient temperature, the wind in the hair feeling was very enjoyable!
It has been some time since my last post - life has a habit of overwhelming us at times and in the past month I have found myself in exactly that position.
Not that the Peugeot has been laying idle - far from it.
As stated in my last post, the Peugeot was booked to have it's Warrant of Fitness inspection completed by the following Monday, 22nd of July.
After some remedial work to replace a number plate lamp and the rear brake rotors and pads, it passed. I contacted the Land Transport authority and re-licenced the car to be legally used on the road.
Not too bad for a vehicle which only two months earlier was a heart beat away from being scrapped as a dead loss.
The next task was to determine where the coolant was disappearing - this was also picked up by the Warrant of Fitness inspector. He advised me that the thermostat was the culprit. I had intended to replace this as part of the original coolant system service, but I was short on time. I had to re-visit this procedure.
I checked the area around the thermostat housing and did a little on line video research on this component. Sure enough, it was evident that fluid had been escaping from under the thermostat housing.
I decided to remove the thermostat housing and take a closer look. The plastic housing was, as we say here, munted. Crumbly bits of plastic and a shredded gasket betrayed the escape of fluid.
I ordered a replacement thermostat specific to the Peugeot TU5JP4 engine at a cost of cNZD193,00.
The thermostat arrived midweek a couple of days later. On it's arrival, I carefully checked the new and old thermostats to ensure I had received the correct part. I carefully adjusted the position of the green temperature sensor on the new thermostat to ensure that it would marry up to the wiring plug upon fitting to the car.
Saturday the 3rd August came around and it was time to fit the new thermostat. I got off to a great start - cleaning the area where the thermostat was to be re-fitted, and replacing pinch clips on hoses with jubilee clips. I had intended to replace the top hose as matter of course - this hose links the thermostat housing with the radiator. However, there were none to be found.
After careful cleaning and visual inspection, I deemed the top hose to be still serviceable and re-fitted it.
The other issue is, when I am working on a car, I like to be alone. I am not a talker - I am a doer. I just get on with it. My flat mate, however, likes to talk - especially when he has nothing better to do. At that point he was between jobs.
He started jabbering away about nothing that was relevant to me, and my concentration went out the window. A series of small but irritating mistakes ensued and I had to re-start the fitting process. Naturally, my own temperature gauge quickly hit the "RED" zone and I spat out a series of finely calibrated Anglo-Saxon expletives that sent him ducking for cover.
In due course, the thermostat was fitted, the hoses and temperature sensor were re-connected and carefully checked, and fresh coolant was re-introduced to the system. After checking for air in the system and carefully topping up any fluid as required, I had to leave the car for a time as I had an important engagement to attend to. I returned later, re-checked everything, including the fluid levels and HVAC operation and when I was happy with this, I took the car for a drive.
The car performed very well. Even the automatic transmission behaved better than before. I have been regularly driving the car as and when I have time and it has proven to be very reliable. There is now less focus on trying to nurse the car and more focus on just enjoying the driving experience.
Unfortunately, one of the issues of having more than one vehicle is a tendency to forget things.
I've just realised my "daily driver", the Hyundai requires an updated Warrant of Fitness. So, it's off the road until this coming Saturday when I haul it in for an inspection at a local LTNZ depot before it is re-licenced next month.
The Peugeot has now become my runaround for the time being.
I have three days off this weekend, to give myself a long needed break from work. I have some automatic transmission fluid and an infrared thermometer to play with so I will change the gearbox oil on the Peugeot this weekend.
The next topic is that roof. I will document what I have found and what my plans are for getting it to function properly again.
It's been another 7 months since my last post - time flies. A lot has happened in the intervening time so just picking up where I left off last.
By September, I had gotten around to changing the engine oil and the filter - and re-setting the service indicator.
The car was running a little better and I changed the gearbox fluid again after a month of driving the car.
I replaced a rear turn indicator bulb as well.
As spring had arrived, my focus was now on the roof.
I checked the luggage blind was extended, made sure the hydraulic system was pressurised, unlatched the roof at the front (noting the chime sound) and pulled on the switch.
The system opened the four windows and the motors could be heard changing tone as it prepared to unlatch the forward part of the boot lid.
The boot lid didn't unlatch. Very soon after, the warning chime began to sound.
Back in July, I had the car hooked up to Lexia to look for roof faults.
There were four faults:
An intermittent fault 0508 - right rear opening time exceeded.
A permanent fault 0905 - Time for left and right locked boot loss of contact.
A permanent fault 0601 - Boot position.
A permanent fault 0603 - Roof position.
The specialist advised the issue lay with a non-communicative sensor in the boot latch mechanism - I guess he meant a microswitch.
He advised that the part seemed to be unobtainable as a new part.
As an alternative, he managed to track down a functioning part from a parts car in Auckland. He obtained the part and installed it in my car. It didn't work.
I had decided to leave things as they are, and figure out a work around and this is the subject of my next post...
One day in September I decided to do the unthinkable - to open the roof manually, thereby bypassing the electronic and hydraulic functions. By now, I had gotten very familiar with the functioning of the roof and the process for opening and closing the roof.
I started by opening the boot, de-pressurising the hydraulic system, and moving the white U clips from the automatic position to the manual position.
I switched on the ignition, and opened the windows.
I switched off the ignition, and unlatched the roof.
I opened the boot, and released the crab claw latches by moving the white triangular tabs located near each U clip.
This allowed me to open the lid and insert the Allen key in the white circled slot located at the rear right-hand side of the boot.
The roof was now ready to detach from the windscreen and fold into the boot space.
This is a quite heavy steel and glass structure, so care is required with regard to body stance and hand positioning (hands must be on the outside of the roof structure and away from the internal mechanisms, feet apart and body core braced - the roof is best opened on the right hand side if performing the operation alone).
I carefully guided the roof all the way into the boot, removed the Allen key from the slot and carefully lowered the lid.
I then opened the boot, re-latched the crab claw catches, and with two fingers slotted into the underside of the retractable parcel shelf, withdrew the shelf until it locked into place.
I closed the boot.
The car was now ready for it's first drive with the top down.
It was a dry, overcast day, but that first trip was a revelation. It was my first drive in an open top car.
The only issue was the roof alarm chimed continuously from around 10km/h in Drive. What to do?
By late October, the weather was getting drier and warmer, and I would open the roof and go for longer and longer drives with the top down.
I decided at this point to de-odourise the A/C system and replace the very manky cabin filter.
To mitigate the warning chime, I would position a JBL bluetooth speaker at the rear if the console, pair it with my phone on YouTube Music and play my music.
To be honest, the alarm was barely audible above 70 km/h with the top down anyway.
The other issue is the factory AM/FM/CD player isn't functional, and there is no trace of the code.
It doesn't matter, as I don't like commercial radio and I have no CDs.
Summer dually arrived. It was very dry and very hot.
Autumn has now arrived and equinox has peaked. It's still very hot and dry by day.
Two weeks ago, I found the solution to silence the roof alarm...
It's always interesting to read what other people are fettling with around the world whilst I sit here sipping a cup of tea 
