Steering Wheel Control

The steering wheel control works by sending different voltage to the radio player when you press a button on it.

This the the steering wheel adaptor that I've been using for the past few years with my pionneer head units. 

It's very easy to use. Just plug in the original swc wiring and then plug in the 3.5mm jack into the player. 

The new touchscreen player I bought didn't have this swc input jack. The input for the swc control was just a single wire on block 1 of the iso connector. 

So to make the steering wheel control stalk work, I had to connect the scw wire to the 3.5mm adaptor jack

I did this after testing the 3.5mm adaptor jack. The bottom ring is - ve/ground. The middle ring is +12v and the top ring is the scw input

After I got the wiring sorted out, it was time to program the new player with the inputs from the swc stalk. Do this according to the player you have. 

380,000kms Service

This little car has been very reliable these past couple of years, hence I had nothing much to blog about. Just the normal oil and fluids change at the required time

Today its in the garage to do its 380,000kms service. 

Apart from the normal oil change, I had to replace the engine cover/rocker cover gasket, front brake pads and front right abs sensor.

Oil leaking from the cracked gasket. Can't remember when I last changed it.

I was quite amazed at the condition of the camshaft and valves. No sludge build up after all these years

This shows the importance of using good quality oil and changing oil on time. I do mine every 10,000kms regardless of time. I always use semi synthetic.

300,000KMS, 7 Years On

Today I hit the 300,00km mark on my 206, something I never thought possible, 7 years ago, without the AL4 gearbox breaking down.

I celebrated today by having a nice drive from Bukit Belacan to Bt. 18 Cheras, and continued to Semenyih. The car still handles well, and the auto adaptive gearbox, awesome as ever.

I can still remember, 7 yrs ago before getting this car, did my 'research' on the AL4 gearbox. Wasn't worried about the TU3 engine as my previous TU1 engine on my Tiara/AX clocked about 550,000kms before the piston rings gave way. So i was sure this engine would not give me any major headache.

My fear was with the 'notorious' AL4 gearbox. Heard and read many horror stories about this gearbox. Water getting into the gearbox, hard jerks when changing gears, expensive gear oil change, gearbox failure as early as 100,000kms. One mechanic even told me that it would be a miracle if the AL4 survived 150,000kms without needing an overhaul.

But since I love the 206 very much, ever since it appeared in 1998, i told myself i might be able to save enough in my piggy bank for a gearbox overhaul by the time I clock 150K kms. So I went ahead and got myself this 206.

So, my first headache I had with this gearbox was the solenoid valve which gave way in 2010 at about 70,000kms. Lucky It was replace under warranty. And from them until today, the gearbox has performed wonderfully well.

Other than the normal wear and tear items, this car has given me trouble free motoring.

Peugeot 206/ Naza Bestari Trip Computer

One of the first mods I ever wanted to do on the car was to get the trip computer working. Finally after 6 years, it is done.

I got my cd player replaced. I bought over Bug's awesome Pioneer Head Unit. You can get details on the CD player here on His Blog . After replacing the Head Unit, i decided it was high time I get the trip computer working.

Not many of you might know that the Bestari does have the trip computer. I guess because of cost cutting measures, it was not made available as a standard feature on the car.

You'll need only two things for this mod. First being the bigger MFD display

Bestari's MFD

Secondly you will need the trip button.


You can get this button from a spoiled comm2000 or get it from me.

Replacing the MFD is straight forward, plug and play. I wont go into details on here.

Next is to fix the trip button. Use a needle or a tiny screw driver and slowly pry out the cover at the end of the wiper stalk. Its clipped into place. One the cover is taken out, this is how the stalk will look like



Then you'll need to remove this stopper.




Then just clip in the trip button and Job is done.




If by any chance your standard radio isn't working, you'll need to set the display type on the BSI using PP2000.

Pressing the trip button will cycle you thru date, distance to empty, distance traveled, average fuel consumption, instant fuel consumption, average speed.

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Leather Steering Wrap

Over the long weekend, I finally found the time to wrap my deteriorating steering wheel. Since I my sewing skill extremely poor, I wasn't too happy with the end results, but acceptable la for a guy who is holding a thread and needle for the first time in his life.

Followed the instructions given, first I lined the inner part of the steering wrap with double sided tape.

 

 But I would advise NOT to do this. Because once you stick the cover on the steering wheel, it is impossible to adjust the position of the cover while stitching. As you will see later, because of this I was unable to wrap the sides of my steering wheel properly. What you will need to do is just stick a bit of double sided tape on the 3 'spoke'edges. Because these edges will be folded in between the steering wheel and air bag cover.

Once done with the double sided tape, position the cover on the steering wheel.

Fold in the 3 edges to make sure you've got the position 100% correct. It should look something like this

Once its position correctly, you can start sewing. There's many videos on YouTube to see how the sewing is done.

When sewing around the 3 'spokes' edges, do not pull the thread too tight as u will need to pull and insert the cover in between the air bag cover. While sewing, don't worry if its not 100%perfect or it looks like a pile of garbage on your steering wheel. Everything will eventually fall into place nicely.

Once done it will look like this. I took almost 3 hrs to complete the job.

Notice how The righ and left sides are not folded into the airbag cover? This was because I used too much double sided tape and pulled the thread too tight when sewing round the edges.

If done perfectly, it would look like this

Here are some before n after photos of my steering wheel

Badly worn off

Looks brand new

Shake, Rattle and Roll

My litte 206 is now 6 years old and has covered about 265,000 km. Been noticing the car seems to be rattling a lot when driving over uneven road surface. So decided to spend last Saturday solving this.

Found that the rattle comes rear left door. Knocking on the door, I could hear something was loose inside the door. So I proceeded to remove the door panel and check

Removed the foam insulation carefully

 The culprit was that top metal piece which has become loose

 Used some silicone to hold it in place. I applied silicone along the whole length of this metal piece.

Since everything was opened. Cleaned and re-greased the hinges. Also cleaned up and re-greased all necessary moving parts inside the door

Door Hinge looking much better after being cleaned

After cleaning everything, refitted the door panel and the rattle is gone. The door closes with a solid thud once again. 

Adventures With My 206: Improving Acceleration

Adventures With My 206: Improving Acceleration: foreverdeals.ecwid.com/sharer?ownerid=1589558&productid=17336928

Timing Belt Premature Wear

At 242,000kms, Just about almost 40,000kms covered after changing my timing belt, the timing belt slipped while driving.

Down into 2nd gear, 3500+rpm, going uphill, getting ready to overtake a 40ft container truck. The road clears, I floor the accelerator, engine roars 4000, 4500, 5000, just as I'm about to pull out from behind the truck, a loud grinding and the car lost power, lifted off the accelerator, floor it again, engine screamed at me "are you crazy!!?" and it died. Shifted the gear into N, and luckily I had enough speed to cruise to a stop by the road shoulder. This happened near Bukit Putus, on the 2nd highest bridge in Malaysia

 Lucky I was nearby my local garage, called my mechanic to come take a look. After opening the timing belt cover, it was confirmed that the timing belt slipped. Had to tow the car to the garage.

After opening up the engine, all four of my pistons had two nicks in them from valves hitting. I had to replace all the 8 valves. Although the nicks on the piston head were quite deep, My mechanic assured me that it was re-use-able. Phew, quite a lot of money saved there. He took about 4 days to get my car ready. And in that 4days, There were another 3 cars that came in with the same issue. premature wear of the timing belt.

Piston Nicks on Piston No.1& 4. This is another car which had its timing belt slipped too. Mine were double the size of this.

I've never seen this kind of damage on a timing belt. Usually the 'teeth' wear off or the belt breaks, but never the 'teeth' coming off from the belt.
My mechanic said, these past few months he has seen many cases of premature belt failure like this. Most occurring between 60,000kms - 70,000kms.  So, if you've covered 50,00kms on your current timing belt, PLEASE have your mechanic check on its condition.

Squeaky Clean

The damage done

I opted to use 2nd hand valves to keep the cost down. brand new valves costs RM55 each for intake and RM65 each for exhaust.

The engine feels brand new now. So much smoother and more definitely more torque

Crickety Blower

Over the past few weeks, my blower motor would sound like cricket whenever I accelerate, brake or go over a hump. Very noticeable in Fan speed of 1 and 2.

So, after much procrastination, I finally got down to checking the fan blower motor.

Accessing the blower motor is relatively easy. You'll have to remove the glove compartment first. The blower motor is situated towards the top part of the dashboard.

Un-clip the wire from the blower motor. Then get a good grip on the blower motor and turn it clockwise to unlock it from its position. Then pull it out. Please Note the position of the blower motor when you pull it out, because it has to go in the same way. Otherwise you'll find it a bit hard to place back the blower motor

Upon removing the blower motor, I found it filled with dust, just as I have suspected.

The design of the motor is such that it sucks in air. I guess this is to keep the blower motor cool? How ever this causes a lot of dust built up in the motor itself.
I took out my air-gun and cleaned the insided of the motor and also the blower. Could not believe the amount of dust. To clean the blades real good, I decided to jet it with water. Carefully covered the motor with plastic

Once everything was cleaned, fixing back was a breeze. The blower motor works fine now. No more noise and lots of money saved :-)

Door Projector Light

Just completed a small project over the weekend. I fixed a pair of door welcome lights for my little lion.

Wiring was pretty much simple and straight forward. There's no way to tap power for the lights from the door switch. This is because the Door lock, central locking, and door switch is combined into a single unit and is controlled by the BSI. I try to stay away from any wiring that's connected to the BSI a.k.a Bloody Stupid Interface, fearing that the BSI would get corrupted. Hence I resorted to tapping power from the cabin/courtesy lamp.

The light blue wire is +ve and yellow/green is -ve.

Ran the wire from the cabin light to down the left A - Pillar to under the glove box. Now that that the power source is settled, next was to wire up both doors.

Start with removing the door trims. There are 3 screw to remove, the rest are just clips.

Once you've removed the door trim, next is to carefully remove the white foam sheet

When you fix this back, make sure it is fixed properly, otherwise water from outside will seep thru the gaps into the car's cabin.

With the foam sheet removed, its time to wire the power cable in. If you have the energy and like things to look proper, you may push the wire thru the  rubber grommet. But this is very tedious and time consuming

I first used a thin flexible wire thru. Then tied the power cable and pulled the thin wire back out.

Once the power cable is thru, line it up securely so that it does not interfere with the power window mechanism.

An easier way to wire the power cable is just run it thru the door seal and into the door. Much more simpler this way.

For the right hand side, I just pulled the wire following the path of the wire loom.

Now with the wiring done, it was time to drill the door panel and fix the Led projector lamps.

Finally, just connect the projector lamp to the power cable, fix back everything and smile for a job well done.

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