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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